Ed J. Pozzuoli: Barack in Wonderland

In his State of the Union speech last night, President Obama spoke to a country, but unfortunately it was not the actual United States of America.

We are peering into a looking glass where up is down, left is right and right is wrong, and where the shadow of crises has passed. This elaborate fantasy convinces only people who stare into the same ideological mirror.

The President imagines that we live in a nation bursting with treasury surpluses, and looks only for the most exciting opportunities where the federal government can spend the money that is burning through our pockets. After telling us that the speech would not be the usual laundry list of newly proposed government adventures, the President provided just that. After hearing this speech, one could be lulled into forgetting the growing national debt and believing that the right to free day care for all children equates to freedom of speech.

The President wants to “turn the page” on the post 9/11 world, and give the impression that the world is now more tranquil due to his administration’s deliberate approach. To this president, the United States dwells in a world where the greatest threats to freedom are: slow Internet access, Islamophobia and low enrollment at community colleges.

In that same world, the Cuban regime deserves a free pass on all its human rights abuses and anti-American meddling, Iran deserves a second, third, and fourth chance to outwit nuclear inspections, until it finally builds an atomic bomb it can use to menace our ally Israel.

Here is a memo to the President, about the actual state of the Union and the world. In the United States, on the existing earth:

• Since employment has crept back up, the President has decided to punish Americans who produce and invest with new and aggressive taxes on such job-creators.

• With ISIS and similar groups becoming more aggressive, the world is anything but tranquil. While we are losing territory in the fight with terrorists who want to kill us and take away our freedom, the President refuses to call Islamic terrorists “Islamic.” The administration showed disdain for America’s constitutionally established values of freedom of expression and free speech when it failed to send even one representative to the international free-speech demonstration in Paris. At the same time, more and more prisoners are released from Gitmo, only to rejoin the fight against the West.

• Those who protect us from chaos and crime, law enforcement officers, are targeted for hostile scrutiny and even physical attacks. They are falsely accused of hating the communities which they risk their lives every day to protect. In fact, if we handcuffed the police and went back to the old crime rates of the 1980s and 1990s who would suffer the most? Minority Americans, who nationwide are disproportionately harmed by crime.

• Exactly as critics warned us, Obamacare has proved to be a baffling and inefficient Rube Goldberg. The architect of the plan admitted that he counted on voters’ “stupidity” in selling the plan—a massive tax increase that shuts down Americans from choosing their own physicians.

• Our entrepreneurial U.S. energy producers have slashed gas prices and boosted natural gas production, devastating hostile regimes such as Venezuela and Russia, and cutting into the cash which flows into the Middle East. In response, the president wants to crack down on hydraulic fracking. With the labor force participation rate hovering at a historically low level of 62.7 percent, the self-proclaimed “jobs President” threatens to veto the 40,000 jobs created by the Keystone pipeline.

The recent Congressional elections made it clear that most Americans are in touch with what is really happening. They are done with the President’s progressive daydreams and squeamish denials of reality. They are ready for leadership that will tackle the country’s challenges, crises, and opportunities.

Republicans must lead now. Republicans have a deep bench of articulate, smart, thoughtful and common sense leaders. Americans are waiting for them to wake Obama out of Wonderland by fighting his politics of division and standing for freedom and prosperity for all Americans instead. It’s now time for Republicans to bring us back into the real world where Americans have always excelled.

Ed J. Pozzuoli is the president of Florida-based law firm Tripp Scott. He was the co-chairman of Jeb Bush for Governor (Broward). He also served as an integral member of the Bush/Cheney legal team in the 2000 presidential recount litigation. He is an active member of the Republican Party and served as the chairman of the Republican Party in Broward County.