Time flies when you’re having fun – especially when it’s at the other guy’s expense.

In a recent column, The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer wrote:

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell - and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

With the Repubs so thoroughly routed The Stiletto, too, had taken the long view back in November:

Arguably the least qualified candidate ever to seek the office of president … Obama talked himself into the job and now he’s got to do it.

Despondent conservatives need to suck it up and gut it out until the 2010 mid-term elections, at which point voters may well decide that more or different change is needed than what they got in the 2008 election and the balance of power in Congress could shift back to Republicans. Then Obama will find that glibness and governance are not synonymous. 

But it looks like we won’t have to wait months or years for the Repubs to become resurgent. The fight over the “stimulus” bill has put a s**t-eatin’ grin on the faces of GOP legislators “all over Capitol Hill, in the hallways, the hearing rooms, the gathering spots,” reports The Washington DC Examiner’s Byron York (yes, it’s a new gig for him):

It would be an understatement to say GOP lawmakers were pumped after unanimously opposing the stimulus bill in the House. Although they lost, they were thrilled that not a single Republican voted for what all agreed was a terrible bill; if even one or two among them had broken ranks to join the Democrats, the feeling wouldn’t have been nearly as good. …

“When we held our guys together, that had people extremely excited,” [AZ Rep. John] Shadegg said. “Then there were the ongoing scandals with Democratic tax cheats, and I think Republicans are beginning to say, ‘Ah, there could be some fun in the minority.’ ” …

“We have a focus we did not have before, because we were just trying to hang on to power,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told me. “Instead of hanging our heads, we’re picking good fights. In that regard, there is an energy among Republicans that is counterintuitive to the beating we just took.”

Another reason they’re smiling: A string of polls suggests that American voters are on the same page as the House Repubs. In a Rasmussen poll, 62 percent want the plan to include more tax cuts and less government spending, 57percent say tax cuts are good for the economy and 48 percent think increased spending is bad for the economy. Respondents to a CBS poll were even more emphatic: 59 percent said tax cuts are better than increased government spending to end the recession.

Toby Harnden of the The Daily Telegraph (London) reminds us that during last year’s election campaign, then-presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both warned that the a president does not have the luxury or “on-the-job training," and notes “the words of his former rivals are returning to haunt President Obama”:

After a distinctly rocky start to his presidency, he has admitted he "screwed up" and is returning to one thing in his political career that he has perfected – campaigning. …

Already, however, he is struggling, and the product he is now selling is not himself but a near-trillion-dollar economic "stimulus" package loaded with pet Democratic spending projects that has awakened slumbering Republicans in Congress and is now supported by barely a third of Americans. …

Last week, he began as a wide-eyed bystander buffeted by events as he lost his key confidant, Tom Daschle, amid an uproar over $128,000 in unpaid taxes for a chauffeur and limousine. Mr Obama and his advisers … seemed out of touch in believing that ordinary people would not notice the contrast between the practice of politics as usual and his campaign slogans against it. …

In the early days of his presidency, Mr Obama has seemed passive and uncertain. Instead of drawing up his own economic stimulus bill, he sub-contracted the job to Democrats on Capitol Hill. They opted to spend money on projects for contraception and beautifying the National Mall – their doorstep – and gave Republicans an [sic] plenty of ammunition against the package. …

Governing, as Mr Obama is finding out, is not like an election campaign. … [M]aking decisions and operating the levers of power is something completely new to him. And it shows.

Well no one can say that the voters – and Obama himself – weren’t warned (second item) by his campaign opponents and conservative pundits that there’s a difference between “looking” and “sounding” presidential and actually having the chops to be presidential.

Editorial Note: The Week’s executive editor Francis Wilkinson has a hilarious analysis of the role The New York Times played in Tom Daschle coming to the conclusion that his nomination had become untenable:

After getting off the phone with Daschle, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported that Daschle said he had been pushed over the edge in part by an editorial in The New York Times, which had called for his withdrawal.

What a remarkable admission. It was as if Daschle had entered a time machine and been transported back to 1965, when the Times could mint money and break politicians with the same casual ease. Like its peers, the Times editorial page projects the voice of an over-educated Foghorn Leghorn, dispensing avalanches of advice to the indifferent, the unreceptive and the openly hostile. (Boy! I say, Boy! Now if you wanna make friends you’re gonna—I say you’re gonna have to fiiiiire that Donny Rumsfeld, Boy!) Surely no Republican could have been similarly persuaded by the Times to quit the scene.

Yet despite the death spiral of newspapers and the distress of the MSM, it seems the old rooster can still crow. …

The White House’s lack of control (mirrored by a tough week for stimulus) was bad for Obama, bad for Daschle, and quite possibly, given Daschle’s nearly unique skill set, bad for advocates of health care reform. But it was good for the elite press, which spontaneously read, and reflected, the public mood in a manner that suggests it’s not nearly as out of touch as its critics contend.

Look Before You Leap: Part II

Following SC’s lead in passing a law requiring that a woman be given the option of seeing an ultrasound image of her unborn baby at least one hour before having an abortion, lawmakers in 11 other states are considering similar legislation, reports The Associated Press:

The most stringent are proposed laws in Nebraska, Indiana and Texas, which would require a doctor show the ultrasound image of the fetus to the woman, despite legal challenges to a similar measure in Oklahoma. …

"Many times, these are young mothers who are in vulnerable situations. And they are about to make a very grave choice." said Nebraska Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln …"This is about informed consent."

Sixteen states already have laws related to abortion ultrasounds, some requiring they be performed and others requiring a woman be told where she can get a free ultrasound. …

Fulton, who said he opposes abortion, also introduced a less restrictive bill (LB676) in Nebraska. It requires the physician performing the abortion to tell a woman an ultrasound is available, but it doesn't require the ultrasound to be performed.

Sen. Heath Mello, a Democrat who said he opposes abortion, signed on as a co-sponsor, calling the measure a "positive first step to reducing the number of abortions in Nebraska."

"It seemed like a good compromise, without bringing in the constitutional issues seen in other states," he said.

Critics of these bills complain that their real purpose is to make a woman feel guilty enough about having an abortion that she will change her mind. Maybe so; not every woman seeking an abortion reacts the same way when looking at an ultrasound. But what pro-abortion activists are really afraid of is that their claim that a fetus is nothing but “a clump of cells” until its head is in the birth canal will be incontrovertibly shown to be a lie.

Reagan: “The Original ‘Yes We Can’ President”

FOX News political analyst James Pinkerton was at the world premiere of the documentary film, “Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny,” at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on Friday night, which would have been Reagan’s 98^th birthday. Here are highlights of his review of the film, which is narrated by Newt and Callista Gingrich:

The film focuses on two big missions of the Reagan presidency: reviving the US economy and defeating communism.

So we go back to the ’70s, to Jimmy Carter, stagflation, and “malaise.” What was needed was something new: the supply-side revolution, as explained on camera by Jack Kemp, who made marginal tax-rate cuts his life’s work …

[A]t a time when America, in 2009, is beleaguered by the bad effects of careless fiscal and monetary policy, we should remember that Reagan faced similar challenges 30 years ago–and that he, and all Americans, triumphed over them.

Or as David Bossie, co-producer of the film, quipped in his opening remarks, “Ronald Reagan was the original ‘yes we can’ president.” …

Bolstered by interviews with Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and Natan Sharansky, “Rendezvous” shows how Reagan, veteran negotiator that he was, built up his anti-Soviet hand with a combination of rhetoric, military spending increases, and economic growth. …

At a time when Hollywood is grinding out four-hour love songs to the communist  Che Guevara, it is laudable that others outside of the Hollywood “leftstream” - Bossie, the Gingriches, and writer-director Kevin Knoblock - have done something different: They have begun a vital process of historical reassessment. 

Putin Is An ABBA Fan. Who Knew?

ABBA cover band Bjorn Again tell The Australian about a very unusual gig they played in a remote Russian military outpost some nine hours by bus from Moscow:

A small stage, complete with new drums, keyboards and guitars, had been set up in a tiny makeshift theatre …

When the foursome took to the stage for the show, there were just eight people in the audience, two of whom were seated behind a sheer lace curtain.

A security guard instructed the band members that they were not to leave the stage during the show under any circumstances.

The group sang 15 ABBA hits including Waterloo, Gimme Gimme Gimme and Dancing Queen, and were able to discern that behind the curtain that the couple “cheered, danced, and even threw their arms in the air during Mamma Mia when asked to by the band's resident Agnetha.”

After the one-hour show, for which they were paid $45,000, Bjorn Again learned that “the mysterious man who knew all the words to Super Trouper” was none other than Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]