Americans resisting pull to the left

The left is determined to stuff opponents of the Obama administration's health care plan into two small boxes, one labeled "right-wing whackos" and the other, "gullible citizens deviously misled by right-wing whackos."

Tuesday morning, ABC news anchor Charles Gibson was asked by WJR's Paul W. Smith about the growing public unrest over health care reform. He quickly defaulted to what's become the standard explanation for the anger: Too many Americans, Gibson said, have been duped into believing the elderly will be denied life-saving treatments under ObamaCare.

It's inconceivable to the liberal political establishment and their pals in the media that the people might have legitimate and fully informed objections to the grand government expansion they've orchestrated.

The only answer that makes sense to them is that evil Republicans are scaring people to death.

President Barack Obama came into office with a fat majority of Democrats in Congress, believing his victory was evidence of a giant lurch to the left by what had traditionally been a center-right country.

Liberal Democrats claimed a mandate to rewrite all the rules and saw in the nation's economic desperation an opportunity to implement an agenda that had been consistently rejected by voters in the past

What they're seeing now is a swelling pushback to their interpretation of the chants for change.

As it turns out, Americans haven't lost their natural distrust of a government that grows too big and reaches too deeply into their personal spaces.

They may be mad at corporate CEOs and Wall Street fat cats, but that doesn't mean they're enamored of politicians. They still see the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as a major part of the problem, and not likely to deliver the solution.

Even Obama, who took the oath in January as one of the most popular new presidents in American history, can't convince them that Washington has changed so much that it can competently manage their health care.

The president is back on the campaign trail full-time, shucking his coat and tie and talking "just folks" as he tries to reassure a suspicious public that it has nothing to fear.

Yet, he can't turn this tide. Wednesday's Rasmussen poll put Obama's approval rating at 47 percent and falling. Even a majority of Democrats -- 53 percent -- now oppose his version of health reform.

It's as if Americans have chosen health care as the ground on which they'll make their stand against this blitzkrieg offensive to install government as the dominant player in our society. Stop this, and maybe the politicians will retreat to the center.

It can't be dismissed as solely the work of Republican dirty tricksters. Up until a few weeks ago, the GOP was written off as impotent and irrelevant. And now it can muster the muscle to counter Obama's move-on machine? No way.

Democrats are handing their opponents a victory by misjudging the appetite of Americans for a European-style nanny state.

The liberal elite makes a critical error in assuming the protesters don't know what Obama's health care plan stands for and where it's likely to take them. Americans recognize a slippery slope when they're about to slide down one.

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The Detroit News. His column runs on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com">nfinley@detnews.com or (313) 222-2064.