President Obama has a Colorado problem. His poll numbers are falling. His electoral prospects are waning. As the devastating effects of his failed policies continue taking their toll on Coloradans, voters are hungry for a new direction.
So, with his popularity plummeting, Obama is hitting the campaign trail, stopping in Colorado on his three-day, five-state, taxpayer-funded campaign trip. Barely three weeks into 2012, the president is setting aside his job as commander- in chief for his preferred role of campaigner in chief.
Barack Obama knows that if he has any hope of a second term, he has to distract voters from the failures of his first. But voters know that the 2012 election is a referendum on the president. It’s all about the president’s record.
You won’t hear President Obama talking about his record, though. That’s because even he knows it’s a record of failure and a record of broken promises.
The most obvious broken promise is the economy. The president promised he could fix it. He promised that his $825 billion stimulus package would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. But unemployment skyrocketed past 8 percent in 2009 and hasn’t been back. More than 13 million Americans are unemployed, and millions more have given up looking for work altogether.
While the stimulus failed to create jobs, it did succeed in creating a mountain of debt. Despite promising to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term, President Obama produced three record annual budget deficits in excess of a trillion dollars each. That reckless spending has added more than $4.5 trillion to the national debt, even though in 2008, Barack Obama called adding $4 trillion to the debt “unpatriotic.”
But the broken promises don’t end there. Obama promised his housing plan would save up to 9 million families from the pain of foreclosure. Over the last three years, though, 7 million properties have received foreclosure notices, and home prices fell 3 percent last year.
With Obamacare, the president’s top legislative priority, Obama promised that health care costs would go down. Specifically, in 2008, he promised his plan would bring down premiums “by $2,500 for the typical family.” Yet last year alone, health care premiums for families rose 9 percent. So much for the “Affordable Care Act.”
On energy, the president said in 2008 that now was the time to end our addiction to foreign oil. But in 2011, he admitted that his energy policy is “just a hodgepodge” and that “we’re not where we need to be.”
With his promise of “hope and change,” candidate Obama promised to change the way business is done in Washington. He promised to end the influence of the special interests and the power brokers. He even vowed to ban lobbyists from his administration, saying they would not “find a job in my White House.” Since then, the White House has hired nearly 100 lobbyists.
The president regularly bashes Wall Street executives as rich “fat cats,” saying they have too much money and too much influence in politics. But he’s using that money to fuel his campaign for re-election. The Obama campaign in 2011 raised more money from Wall Street than all the other presidential candidates — combined.
On his last trip to Colorado in October, the president was touting his new slogan, “We Can’t Wait.” Three months later, Colorado is still waiting — for jobs, for spending restraint, for a reasonable, workable plan for economic recovery. In reality, though, we’ve been waiting for three years for the recovery Barack Obama promised. In 2009, he was so certain he was up to the task that he promised that if he didn’t have the economy fixed “in three years,” then his presidency would be a “one-term proposition.”
Barack Obama has broken most of his promises to Colorado and the rest of America, but that’s one promise he can still keep. In November, Colorado can make sure of it.
Reince Priebus is chairman of the Republican National Committee.
