As always, there was talk that too many religious conservatives and libertarians stayed home, and that the latter wasted votes on Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Reports on the Internet stated that 49 percent of the registered voters did not vote, meaning that Barack Obama was in essence elected with approximately 25 percent of the registered voters.

This gives those who preach that Romney was not a “true conservative” the ammunition to claim that if a true conservative had run, those who stood on the sideline would have shown up at the polls. This fear was expressed to me well prior to the election in a private conversation at a Republican Party rally in my own district. A young man who worked for the state GOP said the greatest worry the Republican Party had was the possibility of low turnout. The Party felt its best strategy was to work on getting those who were already registered to vote.

Now, startlingly, statistics show that fewer people voted in 2012 than in 2008. Considering how important this election was supposed to be to the fate of America, it is interesting that this would happen.

So, it would seem, those who believe a more conservative candidate could win have their statistics to prove it. However, many of the people with whom I spoke about the election have said quite the opposite. In summary, they said the silent majority is gone.

For those of you unfamiliar with this group, the “silent majority” were those designated by the conservatives as the hard-working, conservative majority of the country who were not out protesting and rioting in the streets, but held the majority opinion. Their silence was broken when they voted. In more contemporary terms, I have been told by conservatives that 70 percent of the American public is classified as conservative, and that as long as a candidate appeals to this already existing base, he or she will win.

The people I spoke with said that the 2012 election proves that this notion of the 70 percent is delusional. In short, the American majority is no longer right-of-center. From the point of view of the left, this undoubtedly means that the last forty years have paid off. The American education system has done its work well, the American mainstream media has done its best to bolster the education system, and the Republican Party may have made its most grotesque error in pushing Bush/Cheney on the American public from 2000 to 2008.

The American education system and the media have had a non-stop campaign for forty years to denounce the religious American heritage. And it is appearing to work. I read a quote on the Internet that summarizes it best; to paraphrase, a man said the election showed that the left wants to punish the right for tea party beliefs that interfere with the left’s idea of progress. I think punishment is important. That is the end of any tolerance toward an American religious ideal. The American press is a lost cause and will not be discussed outside of saying the conservative radio world never looked as foolish as it did on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, when it predicted a landslide for Mitt Romney. It, too, is showing signs of living in delusion.

To end this, I will take you on a short journey I took on November 9, 2012, a mere three days after the election. Once a year I have to go to Cincinnati, Ohio, which is about an hour away from my home. I try to plan an itinerary that allows me to stop at some of my favorite places and visit old acquaintances. Two of the acquaintances I visited yesterday campaigned for Barack Obama. We discussed the election and, as I expected, Mitt Romney was not the topic of discussion. Instead, it was Bush/Cheney, the Demons of the air that came to earth for eight years. Old hatreds seem to never die.

At some point in the discussion, I asked them both what they thought of the right-to-life issue that had had been so prominent in the election, especially as this issue affected women. They both told me the same thing.

“There is no right to life,” they said. “That’s a conservative religious myth.”

When you say your prayers tonight, think about the fact that these people put Barack Obama in office.

It is abundantly clear that, when my wife and I moved from southeastern Pennsylvania to the Lowcountry of South Carolina in mid-2010, I failed to adjust my own metrics as to attitude and perception as needed due to the conservatives surrounding me here.

Hence the absurd overconfidence. In essence, I skewed my own poll.

For my abject failure as a political prognosticator, I apologize.

As for the election results themselves, I immediately want to blame someone on the right.  I want to eat my own.  Immediately, my gaze shifts to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and his decision to be a very gracious man at a time when businesslike would have done just fine.  I look at Gary Johnson and his league of pure libertarian voters, the vast majority of them remnants of the Ron Paul Revolution, and the fact that but for his presence in the race, Florida may have gone red.  I even find myself wondering about the wisdom of nominating the architect of RomneyCare in a race in which a contrast on healthcare philosophy was paramount.

Also, I find myself wondering about voter fraud.  Our military members deserve more than anyone else to have their votes counted.  Members of the New Black Panther Party should not be present at polling places, nor should polling places display artwork praising one candidate or the other.  Election judges should not be wearing hats from one campaign or another.   Party employees and campaign volunteers should not be advocating duplicate voting.

At the heart of it, though, is that we are witnessing a changed America, divided among takers and makers.  We are seeing the result of an electorate that, much like a teenager stuck in the middle of a divorce learns to play one parent against another, has figured out how to vote itself more benefits at the expense of others — benefits that range from free contraceptives to unnecessarily subsidized children’s television.

We have seen a paradigm shift in America, evidenced by an electorate that willingly embraced class warfare, intentionally ratified “you didn’t build that,” and knowingly sustained the rule–not governance, but rule–of an administration that will gladly stifle economic growth in the name of punishing success and perpetuating dependence.

And, unless the GOP establishment and the rest of us on the right learns to adapt, considers what happened in 2004, in 2008 and tonight, and radically modifies its electoral approach, we are doomed to repeat this time and time again.

Tonight, we were taught that we cannot continue to buy right into the left’s social issue entrapment.  They bait the more dull and PR-unconscious among us into taking the debate away from winning issues in favor of vaginal issues, and those people take the bait every single time.  Todd Akin losing to Claire McCaskill and Richard Mourdock squandering Dick Lugar’s sure-thing GOP seat has proven that.

Tonight, we were also taught that moderation is not the answer for the GOP, either.  Scott Brown lost to an avowed socialist, a former Talking Points Memo blogger who overtly faked Native American heritage.  Brown was by no means perfect, but now instead of having another GOP senator, we have Sen. Votes With Fake Feathers prowling Capitol Hill.

In 2008, while licking our wounds and forcing myself to find some sort of bright side in that year’s unfortunate–but certainly more predictable, as far as my political prognostication was concerned–loss, I suggested that we needed to do two things in light of a loss caused by the abandonment of free market principles by George W. Bush and a lackluster McCain campaign trounced by an Obama campaign powerhouse: First, I said that the right needed to get younger, more vigorous, more technologically sound, and better capable of rebutting arguments from the left; second, I insisted that we needed to return to the basic tenets of conservatism: fiscal sanity, smaller government, strong national defense, and solid family values.

Despite tonight’s result, I believe that we have accomplished that first part.  New Media continues to astound me, and it has been instrumental in fighting against the most offensive aspects of the Obama administration.  And we’re going to need it to continue — Lord knows that, popular vote split be damned, President Obama will consider his policies, tendencies and failures all but ratified by the American people, and will most certainly not wander to the center as a lame duck president as some are predicting.

Insofar as the second part is concerned, however, I believe that the key lies not in a GOP returning to conservatism, but rather tacking toward and embracing libertarianism.  The abandonment of laissez faire governance allowed social issues to distract from winning economic issues, and the doctrine of noninterventionism will better square with foreign policy attractive to the vast majority of America than the hawkish, neo-conservative, Bush Doctrine approach.

I have tacked in this general direction myself over the past four years, and as someone who more readily identifies myself as a libertarian than a conservative, I like to joke that I “get along with everybody, and get to argue with everybody as well.”  It’s not a joke, though.

When we look at exit polling data and consider this election from a distance, it is my belief that we will see that the contraception stuff and “legitimate rape” stuff did more damage to us than we would have liked.  Let’s get away from it!  There is no reason why elected officials cannot address social issues in the way that I address abortion: “Personally, I am pro-life; however, I do not believe that the federal government should be in the business of legislating it.”

The key is embracing the wide margin of agreement that small government is good government.  And the way to do so is by urging the GOP to tack libertarian.  Had we done that this time around, perhaps those votes that went to Gary Johnson in Florida would have helped the Republican nomination win the Sunshine State.

The other key is that we need to place blame exactly where it belongs.  We do not need to blame Mitt Romney — he is a genuinely decent man who, despite my misgivings, truly seemed to learn how to advocate the organic nature of fiscal conservatism.  As noted before, this election was lost due to our electorate. To quote Cicero:

“Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the “new wonderful good society” which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean “more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious”.”

Rome, of course, fell.  Frankly, I believe America to be more resilient, but only time will truly tell.

Now, in the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be at Disney World.  Seriously — I’m going tomorrow. I had hoped it would be a Super Bowl-like victory celebration, but it will be special nonetheless as a surprise for my six-year-old daughter.

Insofar as America’s Right is concerned, I hope to be here for the long haul.  I cannot keep up the frenetic pace as I did throughout 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, but I’m not going anywhere.  I hope that John Feeny isn’t, either, as he’s done some incredible work.

Be safe and be smart, America.  This is not the end.  This is trouble, for sure, and there will certainly be very hard times ahead, but we will eventually and inevitably prevail.

June 28, 2012 – 3 ½ years into a presidential administration that placed above all else the implementation of universal health care legislation into the American economy, and 2 ½ years following its forced passage on the process of “reconciliation”, the Supreme Court of the United States renders its long-awaited verdict on the bill’s constitutionality –

the bill stands. Well…sort of.  

In perhaps the most bizarre series of twisting and turning rulings in American legislative history, the Supreme Court rules 5-4 that the law can stand if it is, in fact, a tax – something that the Obama administration has repeatedly denied. In fact, the lead attorney for the administration had literally argued in the hearings on the matter back in March that the bill both was and was not a tax. Yet, Chief Justice John Roberts felt it important above all else to find a way to “save the legislation”. Funny, but I never knew that that was part of the Supreme Court’s responsibilities, let alone the Chief Justice of all the land.

So, for the first time in the history of a free republic, the American people will be literally and legally forced to purchase a product that they may not want – assuming, of course, that the bill is fully implemented by 2014. If that does happen, the American society and economy is doomed, because the financial structure of the nation will never be able to withstand the weight of such a legislative burden.

The long and winding road that far-left Progressives have taken to reach the point at which they control the health of each American citizen is worth noting, if for no other reason than to ask the question why – why has this always been such an important issue for them, especially when the American people have repeatedly scoffed at the notion of such a concept?   From where I stand, one only has to look to the words of the famous Communist leader Vladmir Lenin: full control of a society goes through its medical apparatus. The reason for that is simple – anything can be justified on the premise of “just wanting the best for you and your family.”

Of course, it just happens that the bill is a convenient 2,500 pages of really, really interesting reading, which makes it all the more difficult to find out what’s in it (about which those on the Left don’t really care, both because they don’t want to be confused by the truth of the details and because universal medical coverage “sounds so nice”). Have I read the bill? Certainly not in its entirety, but I have read portions to which I’ve been directed by people who understand such matters better than I do.

Let me step away from this issue by asking this: what does the ownership of gold and house sales have to do with medicine?

Go look it up.

July 12, 2012 – As the American people have seen on more than one occasion, once Barack Obama “goes rogue” from his teleprompter, the real man behind the mask becomes visible, which must drive his handlers to the brink of the bottle. One can’t help but think that Barack Obama is just chomping at the bit to tell the American people exactly what he thinks of them, but, alas, with a pretty important election just at the edge of the horizon, he can’t; he has to try to keep his mouth shut.

On this day, however, he goes off prompter, and we see a several-second fleeting glimpse of what he really thinks.

Remember, people….all the hard work that you’ve put into your businesses count for nothing in the eyes of the man responsible for your right to prosper as you see fit. You owe more than a fair share of gratitude to the public-sector workers, who are the actual people who allow you to chase your dreams.

As with all socialists, they always want to couch success and/or failure in the context of the collective. Nobody deserves credit for success, nor blame for failure.

Good stuff.

August 8, 2012 – The onset of desperation makes people do strange and sometimes reprehensible things. When one considers this all-too-human trait and applies it to a socialist political campaign, well, the results are usually fairly predictable.

Hearkening all the way back to the French Revolution, political/social movements ostensibly carried out for the good “of the people” are general marked by screeching appeals to base emotions and anger and eventually devolve into the will of the mob. Occupy Wall Street is a perfect case in point. On this day, the Obama administration once again shows just how far down the gutter it’s willing to crawl when one of their signature political ads indirectly blames Mitt Romney for the death of a woman who was married to a man by the name of Joe Soptic.

In what sense does this have anything to do with the issues faced by our nation, other than to appeal to the ignorant and baseline anger of people who feel as if they’ve been shortchanged in life by other really, really mean people?

It would have been even more poetic if the man’s name was Joe Septic.

August 14, 2012 – Of the many things that have been more and more fully exposed during this American political re-awakening of the past four years, the real history of the Democratic Party is perhaps one of the single most significant. From the end of the Civil War, when Southern elitist Democrats were more than a bit embittered over the loss of their way of life, to the beginnings of the Progressive movement and on to the administrations of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (both of whom had nothing but contempt for the Constitution), and Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Southern Democrats who have long been the cancer of our American society – think Clintons, Gores, Wilsons, etc., etc. – have managed to gradually convince over the course of roughly the past half-century roughly 50% of the American citizenry that Republicans are the racist, evil people. That’s really funny, because during the truly prosperous and happy periods in our history, it has been Republican administrations at the helm – Coolidge, Eisenhower, Reagan, etc. Even the reviled George W. Bush presided over an economy that was technically steaming along at what is considered full employment     (less than 5%).

While many people around the country were aghast at the words that came out of Vice President Joe Biden’s mouth on this day while speaking to a group of black American voters, nobody really should have been, for two reasons: 1)this is yet another Southern Democrat who more than likely has little regard for anyone different than he (especially those in lower classes), and 2) VP Biden could, quite conceivably, be the single, most stupid individual ever to occupy an elected office, to say nothing of being “one heartbeat away”.

Can you imagine the outcry if this had been a Republican who uttered the words, “Put y’all back in chains”?

The degree of hypocrisy is staggering. As one African-American woman said on a call-in talk show in response to Biden’s gaffe, “if every black person in this country doesn’t immediately run to the Republican party, then there is something seriously wrong with this country.”

Amen to that.

September 11, 2012 – Eleven years to the day of the original 9/11, Muslim extremists once again launch a terrorist attack against America, this time on the US consulate in Libya. For the two weeks following the attack, the Obama administration will continue to insist that the attack was not an organized terror attack at all but was actually a spontaneous uprising over a You Tube clip considered to be insulting to the Islamic faith and published by an unknown American citizen. Obviously, it was considered paramount in importance for the administration to begin to spin and cover, lest their foreign policy – or lack thereof – of the past four years begin to completely unravel in the eyes of the American public.

For the next seven weeks, however, the details that begin to emerge seemingly by the day tell an even more sinister story, one that at least on the surface points a very large and accusatory finger directly at Barack Obama.

Not only does it become evident that this was, indeed, a terrorist attack on American soil but that there are also more and more signs emerging that President Obama did little to nothing to either prevent it (in light of dire warnings from the consulate that had been raised for weeks beforehand) or assist when his people called for help. There are even accounts that tell us that the Navy Seals who were killed fighting in defense of the consulate and who were saving American lives had originally and unbelievably been told to stand down.

To which, of course, our Navy Seals disobeyed what could charitably be called incomprehensible orders and essentially told their President what to do with his office and did their very best to save people before losing their own lives in the process.

Pat Caddell, a lifelong liberal Democrat and pollster during the Carter administration, is one Democrat of integrity and common sense. While I’m sure that if I ever had the opportunity to meet Mr. Caddell we’d have reasonable disagreements on politics, I can say with assurance that he will always have my respect as an honest man. In the weeks-long wake following the Libya crisis, Mr. Caddell made plain his feelings about the cover-up by both the administration and the media, which has been working as an arm of the Obama administration throughout the past four years:

Obviously, I can’t speak for anyone else, but by this point in the game Barack Obama can only be classified as one of two things: probably the single weakest Commander-in-Chief in the history of the American Constitutional Republic, or perhaps, something much, much worse.

October 29, 2012 – In August of 2005, all of America watched as hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans suffered in the wake of the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina. We were then treated to years of the harshest, most vile criticism of George W. Bush for his alleged “non-response” to the crisis, when history actually records that the President was advised to stay away. What you also won’t hear liberals discuss is that the awful conditions created by the hurricane were exacerbated not by George W. Bush but by a bloated, incompetent federal government.

Fast-forward seven years and we have a very similar situation, this time in the destruction and suffering left behind in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, this time in the New York-New Jersey area. The really, really strange part of all of it is simply this:

Where’s the media with all of the  interviews and pictures of the human suffering?
Not so much, hmmm?

Funny – it makes the Katrina situation and its suffering seem more and more like a political tool, much like the Vietnam protesters of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Of course, Barack Obama did stop in to the devastated mid-Atlantic region for the photo-ops (with his campaign violinists in tow) before heading right back to the campaign trail.

I don’t know – all this talk of spinning and hurricanes – what goes around comes around, I suppose.

There is a phrase to describe this kind of thinking, it’s known as “Willing suspension of disbelief”.

While that is dandy if you are a Doctor Who fan watching the Doctor reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, it doesn’t do a whole lot of good if you are trying to figure out how an election is going to end up in the real world.

The fact that PEW and the left is flogging a D+6 poll with a +13 point sample of women is funny, that this poll shows Romney leading among independents yet has Obama up 3 is funnier, that you are releasing a poll two days before an election that has a sample whose members supported Obama at double the rate of 2008 isn’t just funny it screams one thing:

“Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell”!

A great piece of writing, digging and calculating by Peter, one of the hardest-working bloggers in New Media. (As opposed to me, who is increasingly becoming what I shall call a BINO: Blogger In Name Only.) It’s a phenomenal look at the way polling in this election cycle has been skewed, on so many different occasions and in so many different ways.  This is the sort of thing that reinforces my gut feeling that Mitt Romney is going to win, and win big.

It’s almost become a joke at this point for me.  I’ve been saying it for months now, long before Romney started building momentum following the very first presidential debate in October.

I even have a potentially humiliating bet going with an ultra-liberal close friend: if Romney wins by eight percent of the popular vote or more, he’ll don an embarrassing amount of camouflage and go shooting with me, while if Romney doesn’t “cover the spread” I’ll throw on a rainbow wig and march in an LGBT parade.

I’m confident, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not nervous.  Election day is tomorrow, folks, and it’s the sheer magnitude of the importance of tomorrow’s vote that has me nervous. That, and I’m nervous because the source of my confidence is anything but quantitative.

My months-long prediction doesn’t come from any specific polling numbers.  Much is derived from polling over decades which shows that there are nearly twice as many Americans on the right than on the left, and from that my belief that, in this incredibly polarized time, this year’s election was more about shoring up and exciting each party’s respective base than about wooing independents.  Since the birth of the Tea Party following Rick Santelli’s CNBC rant in early 2009, we have seen a Resurgent Right in this nation, and it is that resurgence that has me as confident as I am.

At the same time, however, I have this lingering doubt, and therefore a worry that I am dead wrong.  A few weeks ago, I wondered aloud whether my confidence came from my domicile in decidedly red South Carolina.  We rarely even see campaign ads during prime time television here — incredibly different from being in Pennsylvania in 2008.  Could my confidence be geographic?  Am I projecting some of the common sense conservatism surrounding me on areas of the country far less sensible?

I hope not.

I see things like Mitt Romney’s rally yesterday in Morrisville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and between that and his mention of a woman from Philadelphia during the final presidential debate, I wonder if the Keystone State–which has been trending right for decades–has finally tipped the scale and will go for Romney tomorrow.

I see things like Barack Obama doing events today in Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin, and I consider both Paul Ryan’s impact on the latter, as well as the union-busting steps taken in Wisconsin by the recall-surviving Gov. Scott Walker, and I wonder whether the president is on the defense.  Certainly, his “voting is the best revenge” comments insinuate as much.

And then, I see the crowds — not in tried-and-true red states like South Carolina, but rather in places like West Chester, Ohio … Red Rocks, Colorado … Morrisville, Pennsylvania.

If Barack Obama stands a chance at this tomorrow, it is only because a tremendous amount of momentum for both Mitt Romney’s campaign as a whole and the account of the September 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi were building exponentially — and stopped by Super Storm Sandy.  In Sandy, the media had a genuinely big story (this was no small storm) that could reasonably distract from the gains Mitt Romney had been making, and the president’s vulnerability on Libya.

The thing is, I see this as a year for challengers.  The status quo is unsustainable.  Unemployment is at 7.9%, though the overall feeling in this country seems to match the untold numbers, as joblessness and underemployment seems to touch everyone at least tangentially.  Economic growth as a whole is anemic, and to the extent that the numbers reflect at least some marginal growth, again the overall dynamic here in America says otherwise.  And, of course, foreign policy — does anyone trust their government anymore?

Compared with some of the statistical, well-thought-out work I used to do here at AR, it feels awkward to feel so definitively about what’s going to happen tomorrow solely on a guess.  But, even though President Obama is on the wrong side of so many vital performance benchmarks, this is an election about basic ideology, about the proper role of the federal government as it pertains to those more specific benchmarks.  This isn’t so much about which candidate we think can build jobs and turn around the economy and keep us safe — this election is about WHY one particular candidate can do the job, and the other one cannot.

In that, I believe that this supercharged election will ultimately be good for America.  We’re finally asking WHY, and we’re not necessarily content with the answers we’re given.  Maybe some poll says otherwise, or maybe it’s just that I’m surrounded by hard-working, right-leaning Palmetto Staters all the time, but I feel as though our electorate is for the most part as informed and prepared for tomorrow as they ever have been.

Sure, there are still some mental midgets who want to vote for Obama because he’s black, or vote for Romney because he isn’t, but for the most part people seem to have at least a pedestrian understanding of various issues.  And, golly, I’d have to say that informed voters favor the right.  These are people who are looking at numbers, listening to ideas for job growth, not people who are easily incensed by reckless rhetoric about contraceptives.

The people are prepared.  (And, if you know someone who isn’t, have ‘em check out John Feeny’s nine-part series deconstructing in detail the last four years.)  The people are excited.  And there are more of our people than there are of their people.

So, that’s it. I remember sitting at my house in the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the eve of the 2008 election.  I wrote so much more then; I was probably up until 3:30 a.m. that night.  I remember being terrified for our nation should Barack Obama win, and I recall knowing in my heart that John McCain was going to lose.

Much has changed.  I still worry endlessly for our republic in the case that President Obama prevails, but in my heart, I believe that Romney is going to win.

By eight.

August 2 – August 8, 2011 – With the national debt now approaching $15 trillion dollars (as though anyone in America can even fathom what those numbers actually mean), the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democrat-controlled Senate reach what appears to be an absolute stalemate over the proposition to

raise the debt ceiling, an act that if approved, would completely run aground of the most basic tenets of comprehension and common sense. The federal government does, indeed, have bills to pay and will be forced to shut down if the measure is not approved; however, the one largely unspoken idea upon which this situation sheds light is that the United States of America no longer creates its own wealth. It is now dependent on taxing its own people into non-productivity and borrowing billions of dollars from other nations merely to keep its pecuniary nose above water.

After what seems interminable discussion in Congress and on the 24-hour news cycle, a rather haphazard – not to mention extra-constitutional – agreement is reached: the creation of a “Super Committee”, which would be comprised of six Republicans and six Democrats. In exchange for the Republicans’ acquiescence to yet another increase in our national debt, this uncharted committee would be charged with the duty of finding items in the national budget upon which both sides could agree that could be cut from spending.

Clearly done merely as a manner of buying off the American people, it is doomed from the start and never succeeds. At a pre-determined deadline, automatic cuts that had been built into the Super Committee’s charter, in the event of yet another stalemate, go into effect, the most notable being significant cuts to national defense. Worse still is that by the time this situation has completely unfolded, the credit rating of the United States of America is downgraded from its rock-solid “AAA” rating to “AA+”, essentially making it official to the rest of the world’s economy that America, for the first time in its history, is not necessarily a safe financial bet. There’s no hiding from the fact that this takes place on Barack Obama’s watch.

The larger story of this roughly one-week period, however, is the conduct of prominent Democrats. While Republicans – especially members of the new freshmen Tea Party Caucus – were stubbornly trying to hold the line on federal spending and trying to discuss financial policy, members of the Democratic party and the media took to the airwaves in what could only be interpreted in a coordinated offensive intended to assign blame for the fiasco to their conservative opponents.

In addition to the repeated terrorist talking points, David Axelrod and John Kerry (card-carrying member of the “tax everybody for everything” party who avoids paying property taxes on his yacht, for Heaven’s sake, by mooring it in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts) also take to the airwaves, consistently repeating the words “Tea Party” and “downgrade” in an obvious and unconscionable attempt to have viewers psychologically associate the two terms. Kerry goes as far as to suggest that the mainstream media outlets stop giving equal time to the Tea Party in their political reporting. After all, we wouldn’t want both sides of the debate out in open discourse, now would we?

Strange…. I was always taught that the media’s responsibility was simply to report what was happening in the world, not to decide for us what was actually worthy of telling us. I think the Nazis had other words for it:

censorship and propaganda.

The coup de grace to the entire episode came on August 8th, when Barack Obama held a press conference to discuss the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating. As Obama speaks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 200 points, and it plummets 600 points for the day. Clearly, the principal players in the American economy were preparing to abandon the ship-of-state as piloted by a hard-leftist.

January 18, 2012 – It’s not too much of a stretch to say that amongst the many financial considerations coursing through the DNA of the American economy, oil is arguably first and foremost. Of course, this drives environmentalists out of their minds, so they are therefore determined to prove that we can power our chainsaws and lawnmowers with wind.

Hey – whatever works, right? 

In mid-January, however, Barack Obama found himself between barack and a hard place. With the Canadian government having offered first dibs on a strategic oil reserve to the United States, it seemed like a no-brainer and a win-win for everyone in America. We could take the initial steps in weaning ourselves off Middle Eastern Oil, the economy gets a much-needed boost in terms of real jobs, and the Left’s union acolytes are plenty happy.

Over the past 75-100 years, the Democratic party has cobbled together a loosely-fitting coalition of special-interest social groups that all expect to be treated as favored child number one when it comes to their own agendas. In this case, Barack Obama had to resolve a pesky conflict: if he were to approve the construction of the Keystone Pipeline (running from Canada south, down roughly the middle of the American heartland and finishing at the Gulf of Mexico), his union workers would be plenty happy, but his environmentalists would be plenty mad. As stated earlier, it would still seem to be a no-brainer: the President should first decide for the betterment of the country and then deal with his special interest groups afterward.

Barack Obama’s solution to his quandary? Quite strange, actually. He opts to deny America and his union workers access to the infusion (wouldn’t that be a “stimulus” of sorts?) of work and dollars – to say nothing of the oil – and appeases the environmentalists. In the aftermath of all this, Americans learn that the unions mysteriously gained extra seats on the National Labor Relations Board. Weird.

It might just be me, but it certainly seems to me that Barack Obama chose a middle path that would allow him to continue to pursue his personal political agendas, rather than America’s.

But, like I said, it might just be me.

March 6, 2012 – In a scene that couldn’t possibly be made up by a gifted screenwriter – then again, when one considers the ease with which liberal Democrats magically create social issues out of thin air, perhaps even this one didn’t even warrant the raising of an eyebrow – Sandra Fluke is given a national stage from which she is allowed to fire the first shot in the fictional “war on women”. The beautiful part of the entire breathtakingly sad and pathetic scenario is that not only is the issue a complete fiction, but it is also “propped up” (something with which the Democratic Party never has any reservations) by a completely fictional hearing – since Fluke was denied permission by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrel Issa, on the grounds that she lacked professional expertise, was not a member of the clergy (freedom of religion being a foundational tenet of the debate), and because her name had not been submitted in time (I think he probably included a fourth reason – “this is a f***ing joke”, but probably had it struck just before submitting the paperwork), the Democrats simply created an official-looking “hearing” in an adjoining room, to which they made sure all of the major networks were invited.

Fluke’s facial expressions when she is applauded by her adoring admirers at certain points during her speech are both the most precious and most infuriating – clearly, this moment in the spotlight was not something that she took upon herself with any degree of reservation, which is typically why individuals of honesty and integrity take up a legitimate cause. No, for Sandra, this was all about her and impressing her friends, showing them just how important she really is and that she, too, can fight the big, bad culture that is holding down all the little people.

It was clearly also an easy spotlight-and-money-grabbing opportunity as well, since the Democrats have been more than happy to continue extending her sad little 15 minutes of fame (including a major speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in August) whenever it suited their needs.

I’m sure there’ll be a book with her name on it that comes out eventually, one that tells us all in excruciating detail the degree of suffering that she’s endured throughout her life at the hands of a culture and society that have the temerity to deny her permission to sleep around with whomever she wishes and whenever she wants without fear of an unwanted pregnancy.

It’s rumored that if customers purchase the book and attend any of her book-signings, each copy will come with a complimentary violin.

After all, we wouldn’t want to punish her with a child, now would we?

Little did we know at the time, but this was probably only the first indication of just how low the Democratic Party was willing to stoop in its efforts to have Barack Obama re-elected and to prevent its entire existence from being functionally obliterated.

March 23, 2012 – As Rham Emmanuel famously quoted back during the beginning of the Obama administration, “A good crisis should never go to waste, because you have the chance to make things the way that you want them to be.” Personally, whenever I have family or friends experiencing some type of crisis in their life, I never think of exploiting it to my personal advantage. I actually think about helping them through it.

Silly me.

I often have to chuckle when those on the Left accuse conservatives of “politicizing” an issue, when, in fact, all we do here on the right is look at and for facts. I guess actually trying to determine what may or may not have happened in a given instance is now the “new politicization”. Of course, we can never, ever mention that throughout history, all the political Left has done is to create crises and politicize them in an effort to manipulate people and to gain power. Facts are, indeed, sometimes difficult to digest.

It was therefore not shocking at all when Barack Obama came out on this day and famously quoted, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”, as though a sitting President of the United States actually has a say in the legal and judicial proceedings of an incident in a small area of South Florida. Yes, George Zimmerman – the man dubbed a “white Hispanic” by the liberal, caterwauling news agencies – fired his pistol and tragically killed Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black youth. As details of the incident continued to make their way into the mainstream, however, it became clear that not only were the details of the incident at the very least somewhat murky but that the shooting may quite well have been in self-defense. Similar to Barack Obama’s “Cambridge Police” moment, though, this president opts to once again use what should be a law enforcement issue for political gain.

Let’s consider this: if this weren’t for political gain, then why hasn’t Barack Obama shown any degree of concern for the outrageous amounts of black-on-black crime taking place in his own Chicago?

I was just wondering.

June 5, 2012 – Yet another significant indicator that the country as a whole continues to move to the right in the wake of the Obama administration’s radical, leftist agenda for America takes place, as Republican Governor Scott Walker and the people of Wisconsin somewhat easily hold off the attempt by the forces of the progressive, unionized Left in that state to unseat him after only a year-and-a-half in office. Walker’s initiatives have, for the most part, turned the Wisconsin economy around on a dime, and people who have been “freed” from the chains of mandatory union dues being extracted from their paychecks suddenly seem to like the idea. Perhaps the most telling image from the evening is the state electoral map, a state that is traditionally one of the most liberal in the country and the birthplace of progressivism in America:

Red is, indeed, the new freedom.

June 6, 2012 – The gunrunning scandal dubbed “Fast and Furious” begins to take center stage, as the man arguably at the heart of the entire morbid scenario – including the death of two United States’ Border Patrol Agents – Eric Holder, is put on the hot seat and faces some serious questioning by congressional officials. Throughout the entire session, Holder seems to generally if not literally treat the people questioning him with disdain and as though they’re merely nuisances with which he must unfortunately deal; Republican Darrel Issa of California, however, takes a moment and seems to speak for the vast majority of common sense people in America who have had quite enough of the outrageous tactics of the Obama administration:

Days later, Eric Holder invoked “executive privilege” in an effort to not have to answer any more questions. Of course, invoking such a privilege would seem to suggest that his good friend, Barack Obama, also knows something about what happened in this entire scandal, something that he has repeatedly denied.

It’s pretty obvious by this point that these guys have begun to make the Nixon administration look like Boy Scouts.

And, in this case, the media is on the side of the Nixon administration.

Funny how that works out, isn’t it?

November 2, 2010 - As the polls had been increasingly showing over the course of calendar year 2010 – if not longer – the majority of the American people were essentially turning in revulsion from the all-too-obvious Democratic agenda. The flurry of attempted and actual destructive legislative activity in the span of merely 22 months – the furious health care debate and eventual bill (most of which we’re still “finding out what’s in it”), Cap & Trade, Card Check, a failed $800 billion “Stimulus” bill, amongst other deeply-seated controversies – results in the single greatest turnover in the House of Representatives in roughly 70 years. When considered against the fact that the Democratic Party – with only several notable exceptions – has essentially controlled the Unites States’ Congress between 1955 and 1995, the turnover is stunning.

Not only do the Republicans gain commanding control of the House of Representatives but they also come very close to taking the Senate as well. In fact, with a number of Democratic senators up for re-election in 2012, one could make the case the the Republicans did, in fact, gain “de-facto” control of the Senate as well. This severely divided Congress will result in some of the most contentious political days in recent American history during the early part of August in 2011.

There are probably several primary reasons for the upheaval, but the most obvious one is that the American people clearly do not approve of the Democrats’ all-too-clear pro-socialist agenda. Considering the fact that the mainstream media long ago sold out to socialism and had been carrying the president’s water for two years by this point, one has to wonder how the American people were able to disseminate information to one another and to rise up as one. There are two basic reasons: Fox News and the internet.

While those on the Left will maintain that Fox News is merely an arm of the Republican Party – and, admittedly, the leading cable news channel does lean right – even common sense Liberals have to own up to the facts that Fox does present a predominantly objective view of current events and that all of the other mainstream media outlets in addition to cable news outlets are unabashedly liberal. For them to cry about the nature of Fox News’ reporting is a degree of hypocrisy on a never-before-seen level.

The internet, on the other hand, was clearly not something against which this socialist administration was prepared to contend. Once the people begin to question the obvious nature of the legislative activity that ran against all common sense, it was only a matter of time before the conservative blogosphere basically became the “Fourth Estate” to which Thomas Jefferson once referred – that if the Republic were ever compromised by corruption, he hoped that those who made their living by watching and writing about current events would be the last line of defense in keeping the politicians honest. Jefferson clearly never anticipated that the media would ally itself with a specific part of the government, but his vision did manage to take on a new form. The American people themselves have now taken it upon themselves to monitor their elected representatives by blogging and organizing. It’s no wonder that this administration eventually begins to take preliminary steps in attempting to find a way to restrict the people’s access to the internet. Glenn Beck of Fox News does an incredible job in pointing to issues like this and others that the people would never have otherwise known to research and expose on the ‘net.

February 17, 2011 - Personal responsibility is one of the hallmarks of American freedom and individualism. Making a decision with regard to a course of action in any part of life – business, social, recreation, etc., etc. – and demonstrating the maturity and the willingness to face up to the consequences of such a decision, either good or bad, is the common-sense standard by which we here in America look upon our fellow citizens and judge their ability to work within the framework of freedom that we have in our country. It goes without saying that thanks to our liberal, Democratic politicians, we have during the course of the better part of the past four decades witnessed the devolving of our culture into one in which the concept of accepting personal responsibility for one’s decisions in life is not only more and more disregarded out-of-hand but is becoming the accepted part of the proper way to approach one’s life. People who actually do accept personal responsibility are either attacked for making others “look bad” or are laughed at and derided for being chumps.

Having said that, the events of 2/17/11 should have shocked no one. It has become more and more clear during the past 10-15 years, as the political left in this country has further exposed itself and its true intentions, that they are nothing if not two things: genetically pre-disposed and incapable of facing difficult decisions in life (see President Obama) and, when they do infrequently manage to make some type of a difficult decision, they want nothing to do with the consequences when things don’t go their way. They blame someone or something else and wash their hands of the fallout.

As a direct result of the draconian legislative activity of the two years leading up to the 2010 elections, the American people sent a strong, loud n’ clear message that they’d had enough of the socialist agenda and overwhelmingly brought Republicans back. The primary reason for this was that the people had had enough of the bloated government spending; they wanted people in place who would enact austerity measures and lower taxes. One of those states was Wisconsin, which, ironically enough, is a deeply-Democratic state and the birthplace of Progressivism.

The people of Wisconsin elected a Republican governor, Scott Walker, and brought the balance of state legislative power to the Republicans. When Walker and the Republicans moved forward with exactly that which the people of Wisconsin voted them in to do – work that they attempted to begin by bringing the collective bargaining power of the public-sector unions under control – the minority members of the Democratic party in the Wisconsin state Congress fled the state, so as to prevent the natural order of legislative activity from moving forward. 

As stated above, it became apparent that Democrats on both the state and federal level were now announcing that they had no intention of being held accountable for their behavior of the past two years, so the Wisconsin Democrats ran away. Is that, or is that not, the behavior of children?

As a consequence of the vote being held up for weeks, the political Left descended upon the Wisconsin state capital, and by the time it was over, had left it a disgusting mess. Say what you will about the Tea Party, but wherever they go, everything is orderly, clean, picked up, and non-violent. These clips show you the aftermath of the inauguration of President Obama on January 20, 2009, and the fallout from the assault on the Wisconsin state capital in February, 2011:

This one will certainly get your attention. Please be aware, the level of personal degredation is fairly disturbing. THESE are members of the Obama electorate:

Is this who you are, America? Just asking.

May 2, 2011 – Without question, an important day for all Americans, as arguably the most wanted individual on planet earth, public enemy #1 to our entire country, and the mastermind of the attacks on 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, finally meets his maker at the business end of the weapons in the hands of US Navy Seals. This is also, without question, the greatest “accomplishment” of the Obama administration, one for which he still is taking victory laps in his desperate attempt to be re-elected.

There are, however, a number of entanglements.

As information regarding the daring nighttime raid becomes public over the course of the next weeks, it becomes fairly standard knowledge that Barack Obama – having been informed that the opportunity was there to take Bin Laden out – refused to do so not once, but twice. After having been continually implored to do so by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Obama finally gives the green light.

Further, it becomes clear that much of what is supposed to be the most highly classified of high-classified information is gradually being leaked by the White House, seemingly for the purposes of a) making Barack Obama look presidential, and b) for the purposes of making a movie about the raid. About a year-and-a-half later, a group of former military men under the banner of OPSEC make a 22-minute video in which they make plain their feelings about the current president and the manner in which he is handling – or not handling – US national security.

Let’s see…whom do I trust more on this….a collection of men for whom honor, loyalty, and integrity come before everything else, or Barack Obama? Hmmm……

May 27, 2011 - History will no doubt show that the years 2008-2010 (and, to a lesser extent, 2010-2012 as well) were the point in American history for which the progressive liberal Democrats had been waiting, if not for a full century then at least since the time of LBJ. As a result of the 2008 elections, the Democrats held the White House in addition to supermajorities in both houses of Congress. Coming off near a decade of lining up George Bush and the Republicans to be held responsible for every problem on Earth, they were now in position to fully implement their socialist, progressive agenda upon America.

One of the most vocally outspoken and progressive members of the Democratic Party was Anthony Weiner, a representative from New York. As ’08-’10 unfolded and the Democrats began to see that the American people – awakened to what was being perpetrated upon them via social networking sites and Fox News – were actively resisting their efforts by threatening the re-election campaigns of certain Democrats, Weiner was more and more frequently seen on Fox News attempting to explain and/or justify the righteousness of the far left-wing cause. In fact, if you hearken back to the clip and the debate in question of 7/30/2010, you’ll see real congressional behavior in action.

Weiner’s antics became center stage on this date, however, when it became clear that he had engaged in lewd and promiscuous behavior on his Twitter account. At first he denied it, claiming that his account had been hacked; this, of course, raised national security concerns and called into question whether Weiner would stand by his story if questioned by the FBI, since lying to that agency is a felony. Weiner eventually came clean, which put his initial denial in an even worse light, hung yet another sex scandal around the neck of the Democratic Party, and provided the American people with enough joke material to last a lifetime. He resigned from Congress about one month later, with what was tantamount to a severance package of multi-millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Gotta love those Democrats – especially one with such a great name.

Recess must have been his personal house of horrors.

Is it really any wonder that his high school picture is the one on his Twitter account?

As with all liberals, they’re still fightin’ those bullies who hung them by their suspenders in the bathroom and beat them like a pinanda until their lunch money came falling out.  Of course, they’re now wreaking their life-long vengeance on the rest of America.

Is there a doctor in the house?

This is not a small matter. Prior to this event, the Obama administration had claimed they had not denied security requests from the embassy in Benghazi. The CIA made it clear that they didn’t deny any security requests, but their wording left it open to interpretation that someone else higher up in the chain of authority had.  Leon Panetta said they could not send in any military without sufficient information, further substantiating the claim that request were denied.

With this seemingly pedestrian interview, Obama could not answer whether he or anyone else in his administration had denied security requests while Americans were under attack from terrorists.

Because of conservatives on twitter, he had to deny this twice.

This is the new face of journalism, this is how we break through the pathetic and deplorable lapdog media complicity with the Obama administration.

On October 18, 2012, I had the chance to bring my wife and children to a Charleston Tea Party rally on the USS Yorktown in Charleston Harbor.  A friend, The Franklin Center’s Tabitha Hale, was speaking along with Congressman Tim Scott and others, and I always do what I can to support friends whenever possible.

A few minutes after arriving, I was introduced to a familiar face — Bruce Carroll, also known as @GayPatriot on Twitter.  Even though Bruce is fairly local here in the Palmetto State, and even though Bruce and I crossed paths at various New Media events, I’d never had the chance to say hello.

When the topic of America’s Right came up, I lamented how I never get to write much anymore.  He said much of the same.  I also mentioned that, most of the time, in those instances in which I really have the urge to vent about something, I turn to Twitter.  He, again, said much of the same.

Twitter is incredible.  For those who aren’t on there, join.  The Soopermexican piece highlighted above shows the power of Twitter and the impact it can have.  And, thankfully, in the case of Benghazi, conservatives were out in force on Twitter.

I look around AR, and I’m sad that it’s devoid of recent mentions of Benghazi.  Yet, when I look at my Twitter feed, it’s chock full of it.  Join the movement, and make a difference, folks.

May, June, July, 2010 – Public resistance and pressure against the plans to erect a 13- story mosque at Ground Zero – sacred ground to Americans as a visible reminder of 3,000 of our people murdered by Islamic terrorists – begins to build, and more and more conservatives begin to speak out. The Obama administration seemingly has nothing to say on the issue, but I can guarantee you that if these plans continue to move forward, the American people will. There really isn’t any more discussion necessary. 

Here’s a couple of good ideas – why don’t we erect a Shinto shrine on top of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor? Better yet – how about a memorial to Ted Bundy on the front yard of the families of the women whom he murdered?

June 15, 2010 – Some 57 days following the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama makes a televised speech to the nation from the Oval Office. Traditionally, a sitting U.S. President only addresses the nation from the Oval Office during times of national crisis (which, don’t forget, can never go to waste).

Beyond the obvious – President Obama’s waiting nearly two full months to respond to the oil spill in any substantive manner – the White House, in this case, makes an attempt to dress up a tragedy that is adversely and seriously affecting the working American families in the Gulf region in such a way as to suggest that the United States is under attack in some form or fashion. Certainly, President Obama’s handlers didn’t want this to become associated with the Katrina situation; therefore, they preferred to have his failure adequately address the situation under the guise of “heroism”, ala President Bush following 9/11.

Funny how that works out.

If one were to go back and listen carefully to President Obama’s speech, the viewer is meant to come away believing – albeit indirectly – that the “attack” that threatens the shores of the United States comes from big business, mainly big oil, and most specifically, BP (odd, especially when one refers back to January 27, 2010). The text of the speech makes rather liberal use of military terminology, which, merely on its face, is more than an offense to the battle-hardened members of the American military, both living and deceased, who have put their lives on the line to protect the ideals of freedom.

Nice try, boys.

July, 2010 - Despite the federal court’s ruling the Obama administration’s moratoriums on drilling in the Gulf to be unconstitutional – on more than one occasion – the White House seemingly ignores the decisions of its own court system and continues to impose its own personal will. Clearly, this goes against all dictates of common sense, leaves the American people wondering as to what, exactly, is happening with its own president, and drives the economic situation of the American people in the Gulf region into nearly dire straits, since hardly anyone is employed. The entire morbid scenario begins to reach a crescendo when Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana rails against President Obama, essentially calling him out for deliberately trying to keep the people of the region out of work.

July, 2010 – With the pressure of mid-term elections beginning to press against the Democrats and their agenda, the NAACP begins to more seriously call out the Tea Party movement for their apparent “racist” elements, despite the absence of any real evidence to that effect. Just prior to the passage of the health care legislation at the end of March, prominent members of the Democratic Party – including influential members of the Black Caucus – parade into chamber in what could only be called an act in defiance of the will of the American people. In the midst of all this, members of the Black Caucus claim that many of the people in the crowd used racial epithets as they yelled at them, and one man, John Lewis, even claims that one person spit at him. During the course of the days immediately following all of this, conservative activist Andrew Breibart offers $100,000 for any video and/or audio evidence of the alleged racial attacks by the protesters in Washington. In an age when nearly every person in America has a cell phone with a video recorder, not one person comes forward – even with $100,000 out there for the taking.

With all of this as backdrop, the NAACP and the New Black Panthers begin what is tantamount to a “destroy-at-all-costs” campaign against the Tea Party, which, as evidence will show, is nothing more than a nationwide collection of people who’ve had it with the political machinations taking place in their own federal government and who want the country restored.

Those on the radical Left, however, have reached a point in their long history of attempting to undermine the culture of the United States at which they can no longer surrender, because they know that the cosmic tumblers have aligned for them. They will most likely never have this opportunity again. Racism is their ace card and is usually the one they pull from the deck when all else has failed, and none of their plans are working in the court of public opinion.

They’re now beginning to find themselves backed into a corner, which makes them even more dangerous.

July 8, 2010 – The Obama administration files suit against the new anti-illegal immigration statute signed into law by the State of Arizona, a law which does nothing more than enforce the existing federal statute. In fact, the Arizona law is even less draconian than the federal one, which should, in theory, leave the average American scratching his head in confusion at the White House’s attempt to strike down this effort. The only conclusions at which one can reasonably arrive are that the Obama administration and the members of the hard Left who oppose the Arizona law are apparently against the rule of law on its very face, and that the White House ostensibly feels that its own federal laws are unconstitutional.

Wow.

July 21, 2010 – President Obama signs into law the financial regulatory reform bill, which is really nothing more than a bill that ensures that those in the middle class will never be able to ascend “above their place” and will have their wealth forcibly re-distributed to the lower classes, which, of course, will greatly assist the Democrats in their quest to dominate the voting tendencies of the lower class and to attain power in perpetuity. The bill will provide the government real-time access to every single financial transaction that all American citizens make, as well as real-time access to your personal bank accounts. Couple this with the health care bill, and, as Glenn Beck so aptly put it, the government now has access to your life (health care) and your pursuit of happiness (financial reform); all those in power need now to lock down the American people is to take hold of your liberty.

Now, think about it….what would the government need to take away your basic freedom to do as you wish? The answer is simple: KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION. Without the real truth, your personal decisions become increasingly determined by the information to which you’re allowed access…..the government’s version of the “truth”.

This is all quite strange because just coincidentally (of course), on the very same day that the financial reform bill became law, the racially-charged incident regarding Shirley Sherrod took place, and once all the details and the chronology of events became available, it certainly seemed as though the entire scenario was a well-orchestrated attempt to discredit Fox News. The far Left has been after Fox News for years, probably because they tell the…well…um….the truth. Put this together with the legislation to take control of the Internet that Harry Reid desperately wants to ram through before mid-terms, and it’s not really all that much of a stretch to think that on the very same day that our “pursuit of happiness” was ceremoniously taken away from us, it appeared that an attempt to restrict our ability to access information as we wish (our liberty, something that is rather Constitutionally important pursuant to the 1st Amendment) was also being made. Perhaps we could refer to it as a stealth Coup de Tat.

Now that’s what I call good ol’-fashioned tyranny. Yessiree. Sure makes one proud to be a socialist, doesn’t it? Makes your chest swell with pride.

The Sherrod incident, by the way, also served another purpose – it was one helluva distraction for the financial reform bill.

Tell ya what – if you’re a common-sense person who’s never been overtly political, but you voted for these people because it seemed as though it was the “right thing to do” because of your membership in a union, aren’t you happy now that you voted for nothing less than the dismantling of your own country?

Another reason to be proud.

July 24, 2010 - California Congressman Pete Stark, one of the single most unabashedly arrogant members of the Democratic Party, flatly claims in front of his own constituents that the power of the federal government is without limit and that the politicians in Washington, DC can do whatever they want.

Stop and think about that for a second. Geez, I always thought that liberals were against people with any sort of real power. I guess that doesn’t necessarily apply to Democrats.

July 27, 2010 – Details from the 2,500-page financial reform bill begin to emerge, which includes new demands on hiring for minorities and women, in addition to the creation of at least 20 new bureaucratic offices. Remember – Nancy Pelosi has told us that the legislative work being undertaken by the Democrats is all about “jobs, jobs, jobs”. As I’ve already pointed out, on that point, at least, she’s correct. Lots and lots of government-created, non-productive jobs are to be had by the American people, putting them even further under the thumb of the people who aspire to be the ruling class in this country. In fact, in an article written on the issue it says,

Deep inside the massive overhaul bill, Congress gives the federal government authority to terminate contracts with any financial firm that fails to ensure the “fair inclusion” of women and minorities, forcing every kind of company from a Wall Street giant to a mom-and-pop law office to account for the composition of its work force.

Oh, and one other little nugget – the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) no longer has to abide by the dictates of the Freedom of Information Act, one of the foundations of our Republic.

Yep, that should work out well. No potential for corruption there. No sir.

Lord knows what else is in that bill. But, as Nancy Pelosi once proudly stated,

Different bill, but alas, same point.

I’m breathless with anticipation.

July 28, 2010 – Judge Susan Bolton strikes down what is arguably the single most important part of the Arizona immigration law, that which requires police officers to determine the immigration status of a person detained or arrested. Strictly on its face, it would seem that the Democrats have just about sealed their fate in November.

Essentially, the U.S. Court system deems its own laws unconstitutional. Anyone who believes that there isn’t a larger agenda at work is either willfully ignorant or just plain incapable of seeing what’s going on, which is exactly the way that the Democrats would prefer you to be – ignorant and uniformed.

July 29, 2010 – President Obama appears on a daytime talk show, The View. Clearly, President Obama and his administration are in damage control, and an appearance on a talk show with an inordinately “user-friendly” audience is, for some reason, deemed to be politically expedient. The essence of the program is nothing more than a love-in and is a further demonstration that politicians in general feel that a little bit of style and charm goes a lot further than actually trying to run the country in a substantive fashion and doing right by the American people. Joyce Behar criticizes the right wing for “hijacking the narrative” regarding the information that is getting out to the people, when, in fact – either as a result of her own disconnectedness and elitism, her sheer ignorance, or her refusal to see the obvious – it is the American people who are making the difference in this country, as they still retain the freedom (at least for little while longer) to watch what they choose, which overwhelmingly is Fox News.

Perhaps the best part of the entire daytime appearance comes from the mouth of Katie Couric, one of the national news broadcasters who is becoming less and less relevant by the day (if not the hour) and is desperate to save her job with Pravda. When questioned about President Obama’s decision to appear on such a show and whether it diminishes the dignity of the office, Katie had this to say:

“One of my Facebook friends named Guthrie posted a message on my page today, asking if I think it’s beneath President Obama to appear on “The View.”
Guthrie, my answer is no.

It’s not beneath the President…or any politician…to try to reach out to all Americans, especially when our nation is facing so many challenges.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said the president should stick to “serious shows,” but it isn’t about Whoopi’s banter or Joy’s barbs…it’s about the audience. At a time when unemployment is near 10 percent and consumer confidence is falling, daytime television viewers may be exactly who President Obama needs to reach.

Many of those women and men…are home caring for their children…worrying about aging parents…or circling want ads looking for a job.
Now, the onus is on the guest and the hosts…to deliver the kind of serious discussion those viewers deserve…about the issues that matter most.”

Well, I’ll say this about Katie’s comments – she is right about one thing. With so many people unemployed as a result of President Obama’s job-killing policies, there are, indeed, an awful lot of people at home during the day whom he can reach. After all, they’ve got nothing better to do while they’re waiting for the government check.

Apparently, Katie…..our President is not the only one who’s a joke.

July 30, 2010 – The appropriately named Anthony Weiner, a Democratic congressman from New York, launches into a no-holds barred tirade on the House floor against Republican representative Peter King, screaming his claim that Republicans were once again stopping passage on an important bill, this one for medical benefits for the first responders during 9/11.

Wow. Sure makes those mean Republicans sound even meaner.

Well, as with all things left-leaning, Democratic, socialist, or liberal, there’s always something else behind the curtain. Apparently there was a pro-illegal immigration measure attached to the bill, in addition to the fact that if passed, it would reopen the Victims Compensation Fund until 2031 — instead of litigation, victims could try to get money from the fund. Republicans are calling the extension “well beyond what is needed to take care of latent claims,” according to a policy statement from the GOP.

Hmmm….that sure is strange. By having the bill primarily directed at assisting the real heroes of 9/11, one would think – at least on the surface – that nobody could possibly object to or vote “no” on such a benevolent measure. The problem, however, is that by “doing the right thing”, as Mr. Weiner suggests, a whole bunch of the Democratic undermining-of-America thing went right along with it into law.

What Mr. Weiner was also desperately trying to shield from the public’s knowledge – or perhaps hoping that they’d forget – was that the Democrats already had enough votes to pass the bill. The Democrats decided, though, that they would artificially inflate the required number of votes for passage so that Republicans would either have to vote for the measure (giving it a sense of bi-partisan validity) or object to it, therefore looking once again like those “evil rich white men”.

Of course, as a typical and really solid Leftist is wont to do, Mr. Weiner shouted down his adversary, thereby cutting off his ability to speak his mind (strange for a group of people who defend the right to “freedom of speech” so vociferously). In the end, Mr. Weiner’s “show” – which is really all it was – was sidetracked by the fact that the Republicans knew what was attached to the bill.

The temerity of those mean Republicans – actually knowing what’s in a bill ahead of time.

Outrageous.

Tonight was the final debate in a long campaign, something I’ve been thinking about since I wallowed in self-pity and fear for my nation after Election Day in 2008.  Unlike in the two previous presidential debates, when I thought that Mitt Romney hit every point with precision and persuasiveness, tonight I feel as though he left quite a bit on the table.

In a certain respect, I debate for a living.  Because of the nature of the Family Court in South Carolina, every hearing is on a case of first impression when it comes to the wonderful but taxed Family Court judges we have and, as a result, it comes down to oral argument and who can express their message as quickly and persuasively as possible.  I’ve sat second-chair during custody hearings, watching when the case I prepared was being argued by another attorney — no matter how good that attorney is, they can never hit all of the points I want them to.

The question is never whether they hit every point I wanted them to hit.  The question is whether they did enough to get the judge to hold in our favor.

The same goes for Mitt Romney.  I wanted him to hit every point. Not only did I want him to underscore everything with a systemic message of “peace through strength,” I wanted him to hammer the president on the Benghazi attack timeline, on his lack of interest in intelligence briefings, and on his subordination of Israel and PM Netanyahu to Jay-Z and David Letterman on his presidential priority list.  A good debater has a core set of arguments and themes to revert to whenever possible — I wanted these specifics to be at that core.

They were not.  I was yelling at my television, pleading with Mitt to hit the president hard on Benghazi.  Look at my Twitter feed.

That’s not to say that Mitt did poorly.  He was positively Reaganesque in his boundless optimism, he appealed to the libertarian in me through articulating his streak of noninterventionism, and he framed the “peace through strength” argument beautifully while simultaneously delivering a blisteringly specific attack on Barack Obama’s “apology tour” — right after Obama walked right into the specifics by saying that he never apologized.

Throughout this entire engagement, Mitt Romney has been impressive as can be.  He has been the candidate I hoped for in 2008 when he was the remaining alternative to John McCain.  And he has, admittedly, been the antithesis of the candidate I worried about during the GOP primary process this time around.

And, while I stick with my months-long prediction of Romney by eight percentage points on Election Day, I find myself wondering what the next two weeks will bring.  I still think that the president has something up his sleeve, whether it be conveniently leaked photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, whether it be some sort of student loan forgiveness, or whether it be the relentless rehash of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry’s indictment of Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital.

However, I don’t think that it’s going to be enough.  While I worry that my perception of the race may be colored by my d0micile in a decidedly red state, I still feel this certain air of inevitability right now.  I don’t see the yard signs I expected to see.  I don’t see the rallies that we’ve seen, or that I expected to see.  Instead, I see enormous crowds for Romney events, and I hear checkout-line conversations.  People aren’t scared anymore.  People are resolute.  People know that they are not alone.  And, dare I say, people are confident.

In order to erode that confidence, Obama needed a clear win of the sort that Romney had during the first debate.  Obama did decidedly better in the final two debates, but he didn’t do enough.  And, while I may never understand the wisdom of avoiding a discussion of the Benghazi attack timeline and the concealment of same from the American people, I trust that Mitt Romney did enough.

Much like how everyday Americans don’t need a poll or a debate or a speech to understand that there is something wrong with our economic engine, they don’t need a think-tank to tell them that there’s something amiss overseas, especially in the Middle East.  Romney’s overall theme of “peace through strength” was good — it was positive, it had specific ramifications without getting bogged down in detail.  And, for a challenger to an incumbent president, Mitt Romney did exceptionally well.

Now, let’s just see it translate to votes on November 6.