Election 2012 Review: $6 Billion Dollars Spent……Keep The No Change

The electorate spoke on November 6^th, 2012.  The message was loud and clear.  After both candidates spending a combined $6 billion dollars, there will be no change in Washington.  We will still have the same divided Congress.  The House will remain in Republican control, with perhaps the pickup of a few seats; the Senate will remain in Democrat control.  Nothing changes.  As for the office of President, with the aid of a fawning media who would never take him to task for anything, or shine any bit of light on his real record, 50% of Americans astonishingly re-elected a man who does not, and never has shared American values.  A man who has presided over the worst economy of our lifetimes.  A man who has driven gas and energy prices to record crushing highs while presenting no energy policy of his own.  A man who left 4 Americans  including our own Ambassador to die in Libya after they called for help for over 7 hours and help was only a few hours away,  and then ushered in a scandalous cover-up of the actual events.  A man who has left $16 trillion dollars in debt to the next generation, effectively taxing them at an eventual 90%.  A man who presided over 7.9% unemployment on election day.  A man whose policies have created 23 million out of work Americans, and a man who has left 50 million Americans on some sort of government assistance.  Here is a man who (see picture) shot hoops with his pals in the White House on Election Day while storm victims in New Jersey lined up with gas cans to fill their cars.  You don’t transform something you love, you fix what needs to be fixed, and yet here is a man who told us up front that he would “fundamentally transform” America.  He is well on the road to doing just that.  The beauty of this unique nation and its founding is that our country is like no other in the world, indeed like no other in history.  All of that is about to change, however, as we become more like Western Europe and less like America.  The dream may very well be over, and if it is not it is going to take massive effort to fix.  And the uninformed, misinformed by the media people that swoon to the smooth talker voted style over substance.

Thomas Jefferson once said “The government you elect is government you deserve.”  One thing is very certain.  We are all about to get what *some* of us deserve.   The real tragedy here is the apathy that has tightened its fingers around the throats of so many citizens.  In the end, it will be that apathy, with someone always waiting in the wings to take advantage of  that apathy that will destroy our nation.   A look this morning at the numbers shows exactly that.  Obama got more than 14 million LESS votes than he did in 2008.  Romney lost because he got more than 6 million less votes than McCain did in 2008.  So in other words, absentee votes notwithstanding, more than 20 million people that voted four years ago did not vote last night.    Had they all done so, Obama would not have won this election.  Americans have been dumbed down to think that $4.00 / gallon gas is the norm.  That a decrease of 10 cents a gallon is a good thing, forgetting that it could decrease over $2.00 per gallon and it would still be higher than the $1.80  it was when Obama took office.  The media has dumbed us down to think that an announcement of unemployment rates of 7.8% is wonderful progress.

Romney, for his part, failed to carry the ball over the goal line.  After finally coming to life in the first debate with Obama, and taking it to him, he left Conservatives and other voters clenching their fists and shouting “More…More!!”……..and then he chose to walk away and play it safe.  He backed off, arguably putting the nail in the coffin of his own candidacy.  For all of Romney’s good qualities, we ended up with a rewind of John McCain.  Benghazi, a golden opportunity for Romney, was taken off the table.    Romney played safe, staying with only the economy, while Obama played hardball with anything, real or imagined that he could put out through a media that would never challenge him. In the end it was a media that served to do no more than disgracefully function as an arm of the Obama campaign.  Obama’s past and his associations and record were taken off the table.  Just as McCain before him had done, Romney had assumed that taking this high road would serve him well in the end.  It did not.  No hardball was played by Romney, while Obama played nothing BUT hardball.  In the end, a storm in the Northeast took the final focus off of Romney’s fragile gains in the polls, and the mental picture of Chris Christie strolling virtually hand in hand along the beach with Obama gave rise to the very misguided perception that Obama was trying to work across the aisle in a gesture of non-partisanship.  Thanks, Chris Christie.

I never personally supported Romney as my first choice in this election, but when he won the nomination, I supported him 1000%.   He is a good and decent man, and he has the experience to lead this economy back to robust health.   He is a patriot.  He loves his family and his country.  Whatever my personal disagreements with Romney policy might have been, they paled in comparison to the number one goal of putting someone in the Oval Office who could begin to fix our broken American pride, our broken and polarized society, our broken government, our broken health care system, our broken and nonexistent energy policy, and our broken leadership position in the world.  That is not to be, however.  We’ve decided as an electorate to instead have four more years of exactly what we have had for the past four years, which has accomplished none of these things.    So then, what to do?  Answer:  the only thing that someone who loves their country CAN do.  Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and redouble our efforts to hopefully someday once again return to living in the nation that was so very clearly and painstakingly given to us by our own Founding Fathers.

During the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, an aged and very frail Benjamin Franklin asked that a colleague read his final speech to the members.  Part of what Franklin said is the following:

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“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good.”

As Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at the close of the convention, the story goes that a woman came up to him and asked him, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a Republic, or a monarchy?  Mr. Franklin replied, “A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

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This morning, November 7^th 2012, I am prone to think that Thomas Jefferson’s musing about electing a deserved government and Franklin’s warning about Despotism were both right.  And I think it’s going to hurt.

Someday, our children and grandchildren, those who will be the ones to bear the crushing debt and loss of their own liberty to be all they can be may come to us and ask how we voted on November 6^th, 2012.  We’ll all have to live with the consequences of our own answer.