Editorial: Obama SOTU recycles Granholm SOS

Governor Mitch Daniels’ stirring, pro-growth, small government rebuttal to President Obama’s class warfare, Big Government State of the Union speech surely left GOP primary voters praying that Daniels will reverse his decision not to run for president. But the Indiana governor is also a reminder of what is possible when voters choose leadership.

Daniels’ gubernatorial twin, Michigan’s Rick Snyder, is carrying out similar, metrics-oriented reforms after years of Big Government ineptitude under Obama’s’ twin, Jennifer Granholm. Yes, we can, America.

Indeed, Obama’s SOTU speech was a loud echo of Granholm’s infamous 2006 State of the State address in which she promised that “in five years, you’re going to be blown away” by her program of green investment, government spending, and government job retraining. Obama quoted chapter and verse from the Granholmnomics textbook.

- He heralded Washington’s failed investment in green energy companies like Solyndra – a repeat of Granholm’s 21st Century Fund and its failed investments in green companies like Fisher Coachworks, RASCO, and Evergreen.

-He scapegoated the Chinese for robbing American jobs, lifting a graph right out of Granholm’s speech when she promised that “I will continue to go anywhere and do anything to bring jobs to Michigan. Instead of seeing our jobs outsourced to China.” Echoed Obama: “I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules.”

- He found a mom – “Jackie Bray is a single mom from North Carolina” – who had been restrained by government to find a job. Just as Granholm did – “Armenia Smith, a Detroit mom who lost her job but gained the training she needed to become a nurse.”

- Obama even invited a Michigan man – Bryan Ritterby of Energetx, a wind turbine manufacturer – to declare that American manufacturing is back. Just as Granholm did in 2006 when she invited Greg Boll of Cummins Bridgeway.

And so on. Eerie, huh?

But Obama did go somewhere that Granholm dared not go: He presented himself as a capitalist pioneer at a time when American businessmen agree he is the most anti-business president in memory.

Governor Daniels used the late Steve Jobs to illustrate Obama’s contempt for out-sourcing, risk-taking One Percenters, while Obama tried to hijack Jobs’ memory for political gain.

“We should support. . . every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs,” said the president. ” So let’s pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow.”

In fact, Obama has been the enemy of innovators by tying them up in red tape and demonizing the private equity “wealthy” who provide their seed capital. “Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with,” says Home Depot legend Bernie Marcus. “Home Depot would never have succeeded if we’d tried to start it today.”

“Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew,” said Daniels, getting the Jobs lesson right. “The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands. . . is a pro-poverty policy.”

Obamanomic is a pro-poverty policy. But we already knew that. Granholm tried it in Michigan.