The Arab regimes from North Africa to the Gulf are in a death spiral
March 03, 2011
By James Lewis
It's crunch time in Washington, D.C. President Obama must know that a dozen Republicans are saving those boastful videotapes of Mr. O pushing President Mubarak out of power, followed by an endless series of breakdowns throughout the Arabic world.
Just think about that as a 30 second commercial next election year:
Obama: "Mubarak must resign. Now means Now!"
Map of the Middle East with fires exploding in a series from Tunisia to Bahrain, to the sound of breaking glassware. Over and over again.
Those chandeliers will still be falling from the ceilings in the next election campaign, because the instability in the Arab world is not going to be settled quickly. Obama will be seen as another Jimmy Carter, and like Carter, his first challenge will come from inside the Democratic Party.
It was Ted Kennedy who challenged Carter in the Democratic primaries after the Iranian fiasco. Kennedy weakened Carter, and Reagan got elected as a result. Democrats who lived through that disaster for the left haven't forgotten it, and Obama is now looking into the same abyss. His biggest challenge is likely to come from Hillary and Bill, who are aching for revenge.
But Hillary is also implicated in the fiasco in the Middle East, where Obama deliberately told Mubarak to leave, after raising expectations throughout the Muslim world that he couldn't possibly satisfy. The voters can also be reminded of HillaryCare, as ObamaCare runs into the longest economic recession in history.
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