March: not a good month for the left

At Powerline Steven Hayward recaps the month of March.

First came the Sandra Fluke controversy. What looked like a well-staged triumph for the Left because of a rare overreach by Rush Limbaugh resulted instead in a ferocious blowback against Bill Maher, Louis C.K., and HBO, while Rush’s ratings have spiked and advertisers came groveling back after the anti-Rush boycott was revealed to have been trumped up by Media Matters. Meanwhile, while the media elites identify with Fluke as one of their own, it is less clear that ordinary Americans think the government owes free contraception to 30-year old college students.
Second, Obama is in full retreat and panic mode over gasoline prices, and energy generally….Byron York flatly predicts that Obama will be forced to approve the Keystone pipeline before the election. Obama’s embrace of the GOP slogan of “all-of-the-above” energy means that environmentalists are being largely thrown under the bus.
Then came the Trayvon Martin incident. But what looked like a by-the-numbers drill for the racial grievance industry has started to collapse beneath certain inconvenient facts that don’t fit the narrative such as Zimmerman’s ethnicity and political party registration (Democratic), eyewitness testimony that Martin was assaulting Zimmerman, and Spike Lee advocating vigilantism against Zimmerman, but tweeting an incorrect home address, endangering an innocent elderly couple.
:
Then of course we have the Obamacare argument in the Supreme Court this week. Even if the Court ultimately upholds the Affordable Care Act, the course of the argument is extremely damaging to the Left. And if it is struck down, I predict the Left will overreact in ways that will also backfire badly.
Finally, yesterday the House voted down Obama’s proposed budget for next year by a vote of 414 – 0. Not even the most leftist members of Obama’s own party are willing to go on record in support of his unserious and irresponsible budget. Political stunt by the GOP? Sure, but so what?
:
None of this should be taken as a sign of a decisive “turning point,” or that our side has won, or even that we’re winning…But it’s been a lousy last month for the Left.

Then, the blogger at House of Eratosthenes analyzes it all here:  http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog/cautious-optimism/#comments