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The redoubtable Mark Tapscott posted last week his “Notes on Obama’s Coming Caracas on the Potomac” in the DC Examiner. 

Conservative journalist Tapscott explained:

“Once he is sworn in, expect Obama to move on multiple fronts to intimidate or silence critics. He has expressed opposition to renewal of the Fairness Doctrine, an action that would all but destroy Talk Radio and cripple the expression of conservative dissent. But he could accomplish much the same effect by imposing ownership caps and other measures, as Jesse Walker pointed out recently. . . .”
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The conservative non-profit and think tank communities will also be targeted. The Clinton administration used IRS investigations of trumped-up charges of tax exemption abuse to force The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and other other major conservative tanks to spend millions of dollars and countless man-hours defending themselves and their donors. That diverted millions of dollars worth of resources that could have otherwise been devoted to making the case against Slick Willie’s liberal policies.

Expect the same from the IRS under Obama, plus even more aggressive efforts in the form of attempts to impose racial and other quotas on think tanks at their director and management levels, via regulatory changes in tax-exemption administration. Legislation to do this in California at the state level is already progressing in the legislature there, so similar federal efforts are a virtual certainty.

And business community organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business shouldn’t think they will be exempt, either. The same exemption regulation that will be used to throw Heritage and Cato back onto the defensive will be deployed against business associations.

Ditto for defense and other firms doing business with the government. Expect massive increases in regulatory interference in the way these companies do business, including particularly their hiring and firing processes. Davis-Bacon’s “prevailing wage” requirements on federal contractors are a mere taste of what an Obama administration will do to insure company executives think twice before criticizing Obama policies in internal communications or in comments to the media.”

Print this link to the Tapscott post here out and paste it where you can refer to it as a reminder of what we likely will be up against - including nuts-and-bolts examples - if Senator Barack Obama prevails tomorrow.

We are grateful to Power Line’s “An irregular campaign” here commenting on Glenn Reynold’s New York Post useful article here “Stealing an Election?” Reynolds alerted us to Tapscott’s piece.

But we dissent from professor Reynolds “it can’t happen here” perspective –

“[I]t’s probably over the top to compare Obama to Hugo Chavez and warn of a “Caracas on the Potomac,” as the Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott did last week.”

Jim Boulet reminds us this morning here in Human Events that Caracas-like foundations may already be in place –

“Making matters worse, the Bush Justice Department announced a new policy on July 2 which forbids anyone from mentioning that only American citizens should vote in American elections. One DOJ official even suggested, according to published reports, that anyone who dares to say so should be hauled before a federal grand jury to explain his ties to ‘anti-immigrant’ groups.”

National Association of Scholars executive director Peter Wood hits the nail right on the head here:

“In the world of higher education, I am used to meeting Obama-like people who combine facile intellectualism, pride in high-minded utopian principles, and outright thuggery. They dream of ruling America the way they rule the campuses. Obama seems likely to make the dream come true.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

But what should conservatives have expected when the presumably center-right Republican Party had failed to come to grips with the curricula and teaching practices of American education at all levels?

How many university and college students have been graduated in the last decade steeped, willingly or not, in the prevailing authoritarian values of higher education today? Michael Barone discusses here, for example, the support senator Obama has in the affluent suburbs.

As NRO’s Stanley Kurtz wrote in an essential post on the subject last February here –

“The Bush administration’s attitude was that Bill Bennett/Lynn Cheney-type culture war issues sap political capital that could more profitably be put toward the war effort or social security reform. This was a huge mistake. Fighting the education culture war would have accumulated political capital. When it comes to the left-leaning craziness of the education system, the public is with us. The Lawrence Summers dispute, for example, was a disaster for the academy in the public eye. Linking the Democrats with their crazy leftist pals in the academy is the best way to beat them. The public is with us on this. (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Tomorrow we expect the best but must prepare for the worst.

Even if senator Obama does not prevail, the apparatchiks behind him will still keep pushing for his vision in a Congress even more Democratic.

What concrete strategies will conservatives, not only nationally but in Maryland and Virginia, contrive in the next months to come to grips with a “Caracas on the Potomac”?

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