ONE GENERATION AWAY – AT 10:27 A.M. ET:  Ronald Reagan liked to say, and my friend Silvio Canto Jr. reminds us each day at his site, that freedom is only a generation away from extinction. 

As we watch the polls, and maybe draw some solace from Obama's declining approval, let's not forget that elections in democracies are won by 50% plus one at the polls.  You can have 49.99% of the nation thinking the leader is a complete disaster, but it doesn't matter if he's able to patch together enough interest groups to win the office.

Let's not forget that the British people, whom we like to think of as resolute and stalwart, turned Winston Churchill out of the prime minister's post in mid-1945, before the war in the Pacific was even over.  Let's not forget that Jimmah Carter was ahead in the polls for most of the 1980 campaign.  Had that trend persisted, no one would remember Ronald Reagan today. 

Rasmussen is reporting this morning that the president's support, which increased a bit in his survey last week, is surging among Democrats.  Yes, I know – neither Dems nor Republicans are a majority.  But if either party can pick up enough independents, it can win and take power.  And it can strangle the next generation through fiscal chaos, which is what we're heading toward. 

So I worry that the increasing enthusiasm of Democrats for the "victories" of Obama, like Obamacare, will bring us closer to the day when the nanny staters will have a rock-solid base, and only need a relatively small number of disgruntled independents to hang on to power.  That has happened in Europe.

And it can happen here. 

One generation away.

April 3, 2010