My Only Election Speak
October 26th, 2008A lot of friends have started asking me about my lack of an opinion on this year’s upcoming election. Normally I have divulged my opinion to the countless masses on a point, counter-point basis, but as I get older I’ve started to realize that talking politics usually ends up a fruitless endeavor and I would rather waste my lung air over things like cheering for football games and running through the woods chasing deer. You know - useful stuff.
Just in case no one has ever noticed, I’m a fiscal/social conservative in my personal views and a libertarian in my political views. What that means in a nutshell is that I believe we spend too much money. Our government is too big and we have let our politicians steer us away from our nation’s core values by allowing them to inflate their roles by finding “necessary” reasons why they need to inject themselves into every facet of our lives from how we should spend our money all the way to changing the very nature of what the term “Constitutional Right” means. I’ve always been able to take pride in myself for having the common sense and the discipline to be able to separate what I believe is best for me from what I believe is best for America. And that sometimes not abusing our rights/opinions/values by forcing them on others is what secures them for us.
It’s not that I don’t care about this election; it’s just that it’s pointless to argue with people who are voting the way they have chosen to vote for all the wrong reasons. I voted for Bush, twice. I guess the difference between my vote and the average Bush vote was that I knew what I was getting. Everyone knows the quote about those that forget the past are condemned to repeat it. It’s not that people are forgetful in as much that often they just don’t know what they shouldn’t be forgetting the first place.
I think it’s time for a history lesson that goes all the way back to the late, great Ronald Reagan. When Reagan was running in the Republican primary there was a time when it looked like he wouldn’t take it. Ronnie was running against George Bush Sr. and the party was split. About half thought that Reagan was too conservative, and the other half thought that Bush Sr. was too liberal for the Republican base. After Reagan won the primary he quickly realized that if he was going to win the votes from the liberal wing of the Republican Party in hopes of taking the presidential election he would need Bush Sr. to do it. So he named George the 1st his running mate and the rest is history.
Bush Sr. sat as VP for a very quiet 8 years before running against, and defeating Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. He sat for one term and then came the Clinton years with Bush Sr. fading into everyone’s distant memories. I remember when “W” ran for president. The consensus was that he was a conservative, which “naturally” meant he was a fiscal conservative. What people had already forgotten was what daddy originally stood for during the Reagan years. Like father, like son. Just like Clinton was a liberal in moderate clothing, “W” has been a fiscal liberal in conservative clothing and much more fiscally liberal than daddy ever was. Many people would choose to argue that point, but those people are wrong. There is nothing conservative or small government about the Patriot Act, insane war spending (a war which I fully support) or government bailouts to public corporations. There is NOTHING conservative about government owning a piece of a corporation and it took both a republican president and a democratic body of government to secure that situation. Now the entire nation is somehow surprised that banks are sitting on the money instead of injecting it into the economy. Again, the result of not fully understanding what one is hoping for. Bush didn’t start all of it, but he certainly didn’t do anything to prevent it.
I’ve heard several people talk about how they were fooled twice and they won’t be fooled a 3rd time. George W. Bush didn’t fool you; you got exactly what you voted for. You just didn’t understand that aspect of what your vote was buying. But the notion that voting for someone even MORE fiscally liberal than George W. Bush going to somehow fix things, is the same naive trap that has you grasping question marks over Bush Jr’s economic policies. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t particularly like McCain’s economic policies. I just dislike them less than Obama’s. I guess my point in writing this, is that I, for the life of me, can’t figure out why one that chooses to vote for Obama is doing it because they are under the assumption that the economic policies of someone who is supposedly more liberal than the majority of the Democratic Party are magically more fiscally conservative than George W. Bush’s. There is this disconnect in the brains of many, many people that I know that prevents them from being able to realize and accept that we have a republican president that has very liberal economic policies.
Everyone is screaming for change. That’s great. But Bush isn’t running for president again. Either candidate will bring change and mark my words, neither candidate is fiscally conservative. Neither candidate has the tools or desire to do anything other than expand government. And the laws of economics do not allow you to expand while spending less. Government just expanded again. It expanded into the private sector and that should scare the living daylights out of EVERYONE regardless of any retarded political affiliation. As you vote this time around all I can say is know what you are voting for and ask yourself, “What’s the first thing I should do when I find that I’ve dug myself into a hole?” The experts say:
1) Stop digging.
2) Don’t panic.
3) Climb out.
4) Learn not to stand in the same hole that you’re digging you dummy.
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