Unemployment is over eight percent.  The stock market has sunk to its lowest level in decades.   Regardless of how many trillions the President throws at problems, the stock market just won’t respond.  But, of course, the President really does not watch the stock market because -- as he said last week -- they are just like polls and he does not pay much attention to those either, after all.  Someone must have dropped that line into the teleprompter by accident.  

In fact, since the President took office and went on a spending spree, the market is down over 20 percent while housing foreclosures continue.  Treasury Secretary and renowned tax evader Timothy Geithner cannot find people to work for him.  Late last week, two of his would-be deputies withdrew their names from nomination.  

Obama and Congress’ wild eyed spending spree has not only rallied Republicans, but now leading Democrats such as Evan Bayh and Russ Feingold are saying, that’s enough, I cannot support all of this spending and pork.  Due to intense frustration and Democrat infighting, Congress postponed a vote on the omnibus (or is it ominous?) budget bill saying it needed five more days to work things out.  Some columnists and editorial writers are suggesting that President Obama has not offered a stimulus or budget plan to grow our economy and stave off job loss, but rather is using the economic crisis to forward a Keynesian social engineering project that amounts to LBJ’s Great Society on steroids.  So when the going gets tough, what does Team Obama do?  Some may say turn to the teleprompter and load it with another great speech. 

Nope. Attack Rush Limbaugh.   

Are the wheels starting to pop off the Obama band wagon?  While these are telling signs to suggest maybe so, the real evidence is in the ongoing attacks by Team Obama against Rush.  Last week, Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported that the attacks on the nation’s top conservative talk show host were a scheme concocted by none other than James Carville, Paul Begala and Rahm “there-is-opportunity-in-crisis” Emanuel, the President’s Chief of Staff.  Their lush idea:  when you can no longer defend the President’s policies and the public is starting to grow weary of all the spending, bad economic news, and wondering where the change is, the change Team Obama comes up with is to, well, change the subject -- attack Rush. 

As the saying goes, history repeats itself.  Carville and Begala have tried this game once before in the early years of President Clinton’s first term.  Soon after the 1992 election, National Review Magazine featured Rush in a cover story titled:  “The Leader of the Opposition.”  Team Clinton swung into action, pushing and spinning that Rush Limbaugh was now the defacto leader of a dying GOP.  Rush did what Rush does every day: promotes and defends full throttle conservatism with great eloquence and humor. Something liberals fear is an articulate, funny and entertaining conservative.  Yet what Begala and Carville, as smart as they supposedly are, have not figured out is that Rush’s millions of listeners don’t just include conservatives but also center-right Democrats and Independents, i.e. the Reagan coalition that wins elections. 

So, what happened?  With Rush on the dial, Haley Barbour at the RNC, and Newt Gingrich in the House, the conservative movement mobilized, and along came the Contract with America and a historic Republican victory in 1994.  This history cannot be forgotten by Carville and Begala, which tells us how concerned and fearful Friends of Obama really are when they dust off the Clinton playbook and pull out the when- in-dire-straits-change-the–subject-and–attack-Rush Limbaugh and talk radio strategy.   

To quote the famous Clint Eastwood line:  “Go ahead: make my day."