Tuesday, October 23, 2012

You Big Dummy!

The final presidential debate last night was a victory for Romney.  This is because the exchange completed his primary objective through this autumn of introducing himself to America as the competent alternative to an incumbent.  The foreign policy subject matter served to round out the image of Romney as commander-in-chief.  Obama had some well-rehearsed zingers, but those didn't hit as hard given the subject matter and came across as adolescent.  Otherwise, the President looked like Fred G. Sanford, poking his fists in the air in a comical attempt to box the opponent who has pierced him with the truth.

The debate moderated by the far more competent Bob Schieffer was really a sleeper.  One Tweeter said in the first 30 minutes, "I'm calling it for...Zzzzzzz."  It's good our politics are returning to normal.  But Obama had one line in there that aroused that deep, dark place inside me.  I can banter with the best of'em about politics, philosophy, theology, etc., make dumb statements and foolish predictions, come up with sarcastic, crude insults all in a spirit of passing the time.  But if you offend the history nerd in me, my face turns to stone and I'll consider arson.

Last night, this occurred when the President accused Romney of wanting to "go back to the 80s on foreign policy, the 50s on social policy and the 20s on economic policy."  I felt a shudder at this statement.  Why?  Not because our idiot-in-chief attempted to oversimplify American history - that's no surprise.  The soul sickness I experienced at this line by Obama was due to the fact that he was trying once more to ridicule our country's strengths.  The President tried to deny his "apology tour"; with his terse reference to some of our nation's brightest decades, Obama revealed, unequivocally, that he hates America.

Yes, the 80s brought us Max Headroom, but they were a glorious period centered around celebrating our strengths with Ronald Reagan as the MC.  This exuberance was what brought the Berlin Wall down, more than anything.  Yes, the 50s subjected untold numbers to B movies containing atomically-enhanced insects, but it was a stunning era that saw black Americans organize successfully to overcome institutional racism.  Backing them up were Eisenhower's Supreme Court and the 82nd Airborne, not Barack's lazy, pot-smoking professors.  And while it's true the 20s saw the biggest failed experiment in moral legislation - Prohibition - it was also the era that proved the middle class could share in and benefit from the financial system until then utilized only by the elite.  Yes, there were bumps in the road in this sharing, but Americans today would have no hope of growing their wealth such as we do without the low-tax vision of Calvin Coolidge.

Obama hates America because his father suffered from alcohol-fueled envy, borne of I truly don't know what.  This negative, ungrateful spirit of covetousness was impressed upon him by a weak-minded mother who couldn't make sense of the polygamous man who abandoned her and their son.  As such, Obama has pitifully bought the liberal line that America's strengths lie not in our innovation, courage and responsibility, but in our darker passions of domination, sloth and manipulation.  What Obama calls good government, history calls the 1930s.  What Obama would call liberty history calls the 1970s.  What Obama calls success, history calls the dot-com era of the 1990s, a time of financial fakery that is like a stain on the dress of our past.  This twisted perspective stirs in me another of Fred Sanford's reactionary statements.  I want to cry out to the President, "You big dummy!"

It's time for him to go for so many reasons, but Obama's lame revisionist history demands we toss him over the side.  Vote straight ticket Republican, starting yesterday if you live in Texas!








Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Dreaming in Color Television

Last night's second presidential debate messed with my mind.  Everyone's talking about the rough-and-tumble of it, which was exciting, but I was enshrouded by that old spirit of being turned off from the gobbledygook that our politicians seem stuck in.  I actually failed to concentrate on the segment dealing with automatic weapons and the kids who love them, or some such.  Romney's "binder of women" comment was his worst example of this - an as clumsy an answer to the pay parity myth as anyone could muster.  For the President, it was his long-running onomonopoeia of rank dishonesty, basically making up his policy (oil and gas) and revising it (Benghazi) as he went along and deceiving everyone about his support of free enterprise.  The old Obama was indeed "back" last night; it was the nauseating, Tyler Perry-melodramatic actor that has effectively tuned out the nation from our serious public problems.  This is what Biden reminded us of last week.  Democrats are just good at doing this.  We used to say of Harry Reid and Tom Harkin during Senate floor colloquies:  they're whining now, and frankly they're better at it.

I had an intense dream early this morning that I was helping the Romney campaign.  I was corralled in a room full of fresh volunteers, where I seemed to get closer and closer in proximity to the Governor, hoping to respectfully proffer some advice.  Then I saw him smoking a cigar, which is odd since he's LDS.  I think because his performance two weeks ago reignited a long jaded pleasure center in my brain - the same spot that is stimulated by my pipe and the occasional cigar - that is why I followed him out of the volunteer room in my dream in the hopes of correcting some of his missed verbal opportunities during the debate.  But then I felt in a rush to go pick up the kids from school and woke up.

But what discouraged me the most during the broadcast last night was the fact that simply by climbing back into this manufactured role he has as President, Obama's sychophant supporters cheered on the liar-in-chief as if nothing has happened in his campaign and to the rest of the country.  This, Candy Kommissar the moderator, and that pathetic collection of so-called undecided voters (who were really upstate New York Democrats that were undecided only because they either supported Hillary last time and skipped the general, or they can't bring themselves to vote for a black man at all) all served to stoke the darkness again above my head about this election.  Even if Romney wins - which I think he will - we will have four more years of the 47% howling and hollering that our ideas are worthless and that they should get more, that they need it to "make it."

I share the growing frustration of many of my friends about Romney not obliterating the underpinning of the left's ideology.  Why is college so expensive?  Because WE SUBSIDIZE it through loans and Pell grants.  Why are food prices high?  Because WE SUBSIDIZE ethanol production through the tax code and its feedstock through farm programs.  Why is housing still in a slump nationwide?  Because WE SUBSIDIZED the sub-prime lending market and ruined opportunites for modest earners who were credit-worthy.  Why is crude oil high?  Because we SUBSIDIZE its availability through the Pentagon and the blood of our young people.  Why is health care expensive?  You guessed it...and Obamacare is but the straw on the camel's back after decades of Medicare extending Americans' age longevity.  Why doesn't Romney take on what's at the heart of these problems?  We don't have to chuck these programs; we just need to require more skin from their participants.

I'm willing to roll the dice that Romney can do this if we can just get him and Ryan in the White House.  This is my dream.


Friday, October 12, 2012

Why We Fight

Last week I wrote:  "If the Democrats think tonight was bad, wait until Ryan gets a hold of Biden."  What transpired last night was a bit of surprise to my prediction about how Ryan would handle the Senator from Plugaware, but Ryan's calm, solid performance was no less damning.  Ryan had only one objective last night:  reassure America that he could take over the Presidency at a moment's notice.  Biden, on the other hand, was a washed-up, class warfare hack called on to save a second-rate politician who's in over his head - Obama.

What surprised me was how Biden assisted in his own damnation.  Last night, the Vice-President was the old, rude, snobby, liberal jerk that, in my opinion is the purest form of the poison that has ruined our ability to have a discussion on anything in a rational manner.  It's all about pushyness, not policy; deceit, not discourse.  Esteemed presidential historian Larry Sabato tweeted, "Biden is treating this debate as a Sunday morning talk show. He's done them 40 yrs, knows how to dominate panel."  You could almost add the media to the mix of "old, rude, snobby, liberal jerk," but that is too obvious.

I was concerned that the debate last night would be more like two Congress guys arguing on a Sunday talk show, people would get turned off and shrug, well, so much for the revitalization of our republic we saw last week.  This kind of happened.  But the saving grace was how Ryan stood in as the calm, competent Good Republican.  This is in keeping with the R/R strategy of presenting the ticket as the adults in the room.  This demeanor is what I signed up to be a part of in the GOP thirty-two years ago.

But more than campagin brass-tacks, Ryan also demonstrated why Republicans fight.  We are the creative ones.  We are the true problem solvers, remembering government is part of the problem.  We are the ones who think freedom means responsibility, and that an extra $4300 a year for a wealthier senior's health care is reasonable.  We are the ones who empathize with and honor the widow and the veteran and who want to bring them into a community - made up of ourselves - that can help them, as opposed to government.  This is the Ryanesque order of battle.

We can do it!








Thursday, October 4, 2012

Good Television

Yes, it is true, the first Romney-Obama debate invigorated us GOPers.  The Romney Campaign has been pursuing a simple, low-key strategy all along, which has been:  present Mitt as the competent alternative.  This was successfully done during the GOP Convention.  It was executed magnificently last night.  The plan will continue during the remaining debates, including the Veep forum one week from today.  If the Democrats think tonight was bad, wait until Ryan gets a hold of Biden.

But in the words of Charles Krauthammer, a former clinical psychiatrist, "I don't expect [the President] to hold back next time" (I paraphrase).  I don't either.  However, what I do expect - and this is why this tired, old Republican hack is excited - is for Romney to do what he's been doing and doing well for the past 5 1/2 years:  debate.  He will rebut every false premise and falsehood Obama utters.  If Obama is more forceful with prepped soundbites, Romney will deflate them.  There is nowhere to hide.

Romney was downright thrilling last night because he provided so many things that Republican candidates - any candidate - have been lacking for so long:  substance.  He was a master of facts and figures without being boring.  He was energetic without being hyper.  He was heartfelt without that sweaty, fake passion that  others try to muster up.  He was sharp.  He was, in short, a good Republican.

But what Romney accomplished last night was something far greater than just winning an important debate.  For one key moment early on, he actually captured the voice of the American people.  Jim Lehrer - who I am surprised hasn't been hung in effigy outside the White House yet, and was generally horrible - asked Romney to ask the President what he wanted to ask him about the economy.  In one of those defining moments that Presidential campaigns are made of, Romney was the frustrated voice of the hard-working enterprise class, the folks in the country who "get it."  He never lost my attention afterward.

Equally important was that, really for the first time, Americans saw that Obama and all Democrats absolutely don't get it.  The heart of the debate last night was about getting the economy moving.  Every domestic issue is tied into that.  It is true that the best economy is a spending economy, as my high school economics teacher drilled into us.  But where Democrats are lost on this principle is on just who the spender really is and should be.  They seize upon somewhat isolated examples of the past (wars, the Great Society, the Clinton years, etc.) as the proper way to stimulate an economy.  In their pseudo-economic way of thinking, they believe the household is the central economic unit.  This is incorrect.  The reality is that businesspeople - not households - are the true spenders.  They spend on hiring, which then in turn stimulates the household.  Obama doesn't understand this at all, and he said so in so many words last night.  Romney does, and has the street cred to prove it.

Recently, the Dallas Morning News endorsed Governor Romney as a "Chamber of Commerce Republican."  I couldn't agree more.  There's a world title in his future if, like the Rangers, he can keep it up.