What happened to Obama the Uniter?

This speech prompted conservative commentator Mark Steyn to say, with reference to Mr. Obama's future,  that "the Republicans are in trouble".  Review this video from 12:50 to 14:20 for a taste of the rhetoric which really set Barak Obama's course toward the presidency.  What happened to THAT Barak Obama? Wasn't voting for Obama supposed to reduce the issues that divide us?

Stephen Green has some thoughts about Obama's current problems in his own party:

If you haven’t read today’s Wall Street Journal column by Senator James Webb (D-VA), you owe it to yourself. The key line is this one, where Webb argues that our “present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.”

What makes it key is: Why now? Why write this column today? What brought this particular issue out at this particular moment?

These questions are important, because Webb’s column is a virtual declaration of war on President Obama — at a time when Obama’s head must be already spinning after two weeks of racial strife from the NAACP and Andrew Breitbart. And a “recovery summer” that’s anything but. . .
. . . what Obama really ought to fear is losing his own party — because Webb’s column is just the most recent sign. . . 

And about the reasons for those problems:

Candidate Barack Obama ran as a moderate. He promised a “net spending cut.” Health reform was not, we were assured, intended to take over the insurance industry or feature an individual mandate. Taxes would go down for anyone making under $250,000 a year. “Too big to fail” was to be a thing of the past. Our nation was to become post-racial by the long-awaited election of a black man to the White House. And so it goes.

Instead, we got… more of everything. Taxes, spending, regulating, mandates, racial division — the entire liberal waterworks turned up to the max and pretty much all at once.

And moderate Democrats — genuinely moderate Democrats — like Messrs Bayh, Conrad, Nelson and Webb must be horrified. The candidate from 2008 who ran on the notion of returning us to Clinton-era surpluses has instead repudiated every policy and notion that made them possible. . .

Read the whole thing. Calling Candidate Obama  "moderate" may surprise some liberals who remember positions presented in venues dominated by the party faithful.  But the Barak Obama of the presidential debates DID present quite moderate positions which led to support even from some individuals in the conservative elite.

And remember that the current alarm over the "shock and awe statism" of this administration is not all the President's fault. He has turned a lot of policy decisions over to the Pelosi-Reid  Congress.  Other thoughts on the dissolution of the dream here.

And a new piece by Wretchard with some history concerning the Napoleonic Wars which may be relevant to the current tensions between congressional Democrats, conservatives, libertarians and President Obama.