I'm a bit too shell shocked to go into any real analysis of the election, so I just wanted to get down some of my general thoughts:
- This is now the second presidential election in a row where the Republican party decided it was best to run a "nice" campaign. They are so kowtowed by the threats of being called racist, that they would not deal directly and firmly with Obama's history and record. They allowed the Democrats to continue to distort facts with very little response. This is a complete lack of leadership and the Republican party deserved to lose.
- It seems to me that we have now become a country, as a whole, who is willing to follow Europe down the socialist debt hole toward insolvency. Alexis de Tocqueville is credited with saying, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” We seem to have reached this point. We no longer ask what we can do for our country, but want only to know what our country can do for us. We seem to be willing to sell our legacy for free health care, food stamps and Obama phones.
- The nation has reached a state of shallowness and vapidity from which I fear only truly hard times will shake us. I saw polling information that said something like 43% of those responding to exit polling said that President Obama's handling of the hurricane Sandy disaster was "very important" to their decision. This is absolutely astounding...and more than a little distressing...to me. That someone could, after four years of broken promises, failed policy and nonexistent leadership, see the President acting "presidential" in a brief, staged photo-op after a storm and think that made him a good president is incomprehensible. The fact that the response of the Federal government has been less than stellar since then means nothing to the Obama groupies with stars in their eyes.
- Half the country seems to be hopelessly invested in class warfare...just like the Russian people were before the communist revolution...or the Germans before the Nazi take over. This has caused them to draw stark, black and white lines in their minds. Corporations are always evil and Unions are always good. Democrats always acts for the good of the people and tell the truth...Republicans are selfish liars who only care about what's best for them and their Corporate overlords. The rich have stolen everything they have from the poor. They are blind to the fact that absolute power corrupts, absolutely...regardless of party, occupation or income. They are easily fooled by 20 second sound bites and focus-group tested tag lines.
- Facts and details mean nothing to many people. They will not hear the truth that the largess they vote themselves is financed by trillions of dollars of indebtedness to our enemies. They will not see that the policies of their chosen representatives have caused the financial woes we have been experiencing. No discussion of corruption...no discussion of the rule of law moves them. They mock, scoff at and ignore anything that does not agree with the approved party line...and this is on both sides of the political divide. When confronted with hard issues, they do not answer them...they will only excuse, obfuscate or ignore them...but never deal with them. If all else fails, they just blame Bush.
- There are no statesmen left...only power hungry politicians.
- The Republicans are only marginally better than the Democrats...but we were unwilling to move even incrementally toward smaller, less intrusive government.
- I fear for our future.
