Bloodthirsty Liberal

Some moderate and Republican O-bots are getting nervous

I wish that I could empathize with these people, but I just think that naivete is unacceptable in the over-50 crowd.

Pauline McAreavy voted for President Obama. From the moment she first saw him two years ago, she was smitten by his speeches and sold on his promise of change. She switched parties to support him in the Iowa caucuses, donated money and opened her home to a pair of young campaign workers.

President Obama won Marengo, Iowa, by 14 votes last November, but some supporters are now second-guessing their vote.

“I really thought there would be immediate change,” said Pauline McAreavy, 76, a retired school nurse.

But by the time she received a fund-raising letter last month from the Democratic National Committee, a sense of disappointment had set in. She returned the solicitation with a handwritten note, saying, “Until I see some progress and he lives up to his promises in Iowa, we will not give one penny.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t realistic,” Ms. McAreavy, 76, a retired school nurse, said on a recent morning on the deck of her home here in east-central Iowa.

“I really thought there would be immediate change,” she said. “Sometimes the Republicans are just as bad as Democrats. But it’s politics as usual, and that’s what I voted against.”

She and her friends are now worried. But with Obama at the helm, what is there to worry about?

In Iowa, Ms. McAreavy fears that the president’s health care plan will shortchange her Medicare benefits and mean infrequent mammogram examinations. She worries that his decision on Afghanistan will mean that her son, a member of the Iowa National Guard, will return to the battlefield. And she believes that too many of Mr. Obama’s actions are rooted in Democratic politics.

“All my Republican friends — and independents — are sitting back saying, ‘Oh, what did we do?” Ms. McAreavy said. “I’m not to that point yet, but a lot of people are.”

These fears about Medicare are infuriating, considering the source. Ms. McAreavy is a retired nurse. Did she really expect the young and the middle-aged to sacrifice, but not the elderly? If we are going to give “free” health insurance to 40 million additional people, we have to pay for it somehow. And one of the ways that Obama has proposed is cutbacks to the added perks that come with Medicare. This was obvious from the beginning of the campaign. Other things we will give up? Medical research and early intervention for prostate cancer. Look at Canada and the UK and you will get a sense of the road we’re on.

A social studies teacher who saw Mr. Obama on his maiden visit here wonders whether momentum from the election is gone forever. A retired electrical engineer who became a Democrat to support Mr. Obama believes that the president too often blames others for his troubles. And a teacher who voted for Mr. Obama because she was fed up with President George W. Bush does not trust this administration any more than the previous one.

Again, you don’t get to be a teacher or an electrical engineer without a lot of schooling. Especially in the case of the engineer, math, physics, actual data are studied daily. The laws of physics do not respond to Hopey-Changey nonsense; they are immediate and merciless.

Gentle Reader, can you even wrap your head around what these people were thinking?

I can’t.

- Aggie