The Shellacking that Hubris Wrought

[Geee]

National Review:

The Shellacking that Hubris Wrought
“The party of no” was rewarded in “the election of no.”

There may be no more deadly force in politics than hubris. It sneaks up on politicians at their weakest moments — the height of their success — and destroys them, sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly.

Pres. Barack Obama is suffering from a case of hubris so far-reaching and debilitating, it will fascinate political epidemiologists for decades. His intellectual boosters egged him on. They greeted his election as the advent of, as Peter Beinart put it in Time magazine, “The New Liberal Order.” Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times rushed to print a book called “The Death of Conservatism.”

It was all settled, then — except of course it wasn’t. “Public opinion is the lord of the universe,” Thomas Jefferson said. The Obama Democrats governed in blatant defiance of it and didn’t care to notice the trends that should have been a flashing red light on their ambitions.