If you remember, Rahm Emanuel noted after the 2008 election that the Obama administration should not fail to seize crises as opportunities. The administration did it with the stimulus, they’ve tried with cap and trade, and now they are trying with healthcare.

My friend Greg Mueller suggests the strategy is failing.

Obama’s “opportunity in crisis” agenda initially lost him the Republican vote he won during the election.

Fast-forward a few months and polls now show how independent voters are drifting away from the president.

As the guns of August sound over health care policy, Obama’s government takeover of health care is on the ropes and being met with grassroots intensity not seen since the immigration debate. So how are Obama and his fellow Chicago politicos in the White House confronting the dropping polls and increased angst among the electorate? They’re attacking Americans protesting at town hall meetings, attacking debate, essentially attacking free speech.

Greg rightly notes that now Republicans have an opportunity because of Obama trying to take advantage of crisis.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity. What used to be long-term problems — be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area — things that we had postponed for too long that were long-term are now immediate and must be dealt with. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.”

Rahm Emanuel, 19 November 2008

There is an unsettling perception emerging that the Obama Administration, far from seeking to define and control the current economic crisis is actually seeking to use this crisis as a stalking horse for its legislative agenda. It is hard, for instance, to look at the trillion dollars in new spending proposed by the Obama administration that has little to do with either fixing the systemic problems which got us here or stimulating new economic activity and everything to do with expanding the scope and reach of the federal government.

One could attribute the statement by Obama’s diminutive chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to the hubris of a bare knuckles pol who knows he will be at the right hand of the most powerful man in the world. Lately, though, it there is increasing evidence that Emanuel’s statement reflects the governing philosophy of the Obama Administration.

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