When Barack Obama was elected president, many of us were able to suspend disbelief that someone with as little leadership experience could gain the White House. This was made easier by the most anemic Republican campaign since Bob Dole ran for office.

We put aside candidate Obama's less-than-savory personal associations and inexperience and gave the newly elected president the benefit of doubt because of a hope that maybe, just maybe, this charismatic personality, the first black president in the history of the land, would truly unite the country, both racially and in a spirit of bipartisan middle-of-the-road politics. This is what was promised the nation, and Obama deserved a chance to live up to his rhetoric.

Two years later, Americans know the truth. Together with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have slingshot the country so far to the political left that it was only a few months into Obama's presidency that our nation witnessed the rebirth of conservatism.

Said to be dead and buried by a fawning and sympathetic media and other politicos, conservatism, as represented by a broad spectrum of public grassroots movements, has arisen from interment to the point that, according to Democratic pollster Peter Hart in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, "It's hard to say Democrats are facing anything less than a Category 4 hurricane."

Nonetheless, races are tightening as we get closer to Nov. 2. This comes as no surprise since we now live in a country where allegiance to political correctness reshapes us in a mold of moral relativity, and worship for big government and entitlements has gotten to the point where the members of the left in America are so politically wedded to the false hopes of liberalism that they refuse see that French, English, Irish and German governments are bankrupt and reining in runaway deficit spending on entitlements as fast as they can. One wonders, does the left read newspapers?

So if Republicans reclaim the House of Representatives, and less likely the Senate, Democrats will have nobody to blame but themselves. There was no mandate for Obama, Pelosi and Reid to shove America so far to the left.

That's why Democrats are losing independents. They gave Obama the benefit of doubt with their vote, and he has betrayed them with a far-left political agenda, the signature legislation being a massive and disastrous health care entitlement bought and paid for by Pelosi's political threats and bribery.

It should be clear now what Obama meant by "change," and I for one respect the man's passion and unwavering doggedness. President Clinton pranced to polling data. Not Obama.

Unlike so many progressives on the left, scared to admit who they are, and herded about like so many collective sheep, Obama truly believes this stuff. As he told Joe the plumber, America would be a better place if wealth were redistributed more evenly. And he's following through with that social-justice agenda despite the fact these policies have economically crippled Europe.

Wealth redistribution is the core intent of the Obama government. Pelosi said so in a speech to the United Steel Workers Union last week. Getting there is more problematic. It means bypassing an opposed electorate, reworking the Constitution to suit the 21st century, and subjugating the role of the individual in American society to that of a central government.

Evenly distributing wealth means that government must receive higher taxes and unearth more taxable income from new sources to pay for these entitlements. It must control health care to further control the economy. It must regulate and control banks, insurance companies and other big business. It must have education and labor union support. It must be able to count on liberal federal judges to overrule state and federal legislatures. With media friends, it must isolate and demonize detractors.

It will deflect blame to others if policies don't show immediate fruit, and it will ignore public sentiment to pass laws by whatever means necessary.

Once willing to give Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt, can we doubt any longer what our own eyes have seen? If we do, we commit ourselves to the broken roads of history.

Geoff Cutler is owner of Cutler Tree LLC in Southern Pines and is a regular contributor to The Pilot and PineStraw magazine. Contact him at geoffcutler@embarqmail.com.