Remember Republicans for Obama?

His GOP supporters in 2008 may have intuited best the

opportunity Mr. Obama blew. On Election Day, 9% of self-described Republicans told exit
pollsters they voted for Obama, half again as many who had voted for John Kerry in 2004.

ENLARGE

The president at a White House news conference, March 10. PHOTO: RON SACHS/CNP/ZUMA PRESS

One of them, Robert Lucas, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, later said, I thought he was
going to be more Clinton-like in his economics and politics. I was caught by surprise by how far
left the guy is.
Mr. Obama chose expanding governmentredistribution and regulationover repairing the
broken engine of American confidence and growth, as if the urgent matter was to re-enact the
priorities of Western Europe circa 1975. Alas, our transformational president couldnt transform
himself. He couldnt see beyond his campus-lefty shibboleths to what the country needed of him.

For whom exactly was Mr. Obama acting? It wasnt his party. As Dana Milbank enumerated in
the Washington Post the other day: Since Obamas election in 2008.