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.
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