Sunday, October 12, 2008

What Republicans are afraid of. (Part 1)

You know, I know a lot of conservatives, and speak with them on a fairly regular basis. They're actually family and friends and I care a great deal about them; not because they're conservatives of course, but because their family and friends. So when the issue of the election comes up, which is probably a stupid thing to be talking about in the 1st place with family and friends, I often get the same response, "I'm afraid of Obama." Now on the face of this, I can understand. They say they don't understand exactly what he would do or stands for because he's an unknown. You don’t have to argue that point with me, because here on these very blog pages I have not been so friendly to Obama during the primaries and had endorsed his rival Hillary Clinton. But since, politics affects health care reform and this blog is actually about both, I feel it's time I weigh in on this election although I have been uncharacteristically silent compared to previous elections. So, in part 1 I am going to state my thoughts on what conservatives are afraid of, and then in part 2 we are going to hear from our favorite pollster from Hell; he's lean and mean and a soul searing machine… he puts the Satan in satanic and the devil in the details… he's no stranger to you and he’s a friend of this blog… Satan. But first, I look at the country and the world today. I think back to eight years ago, when we ignored the warnings about Al Qaeda using our own airplanes a month before 9/11. I think about the fact that the military we used to clobber the Taliban in Afghanistan and defeat Saddam Hussein's armies in Iraq was the military that Bill Clinton maintained and armed. Certainly, we know this to be true, because George Bush didn't have time to alter the military. Now, every conservative likes to say that Democrats will decimate the military if given the chance. They say this for two reasons. First , because they need to find something to say, because they used to say it was the tax-and-spend Democrats. A funny thing about that. While it's true that you can't say the Republicans like to tax people, although I like to call them the unfairly taxing Republicans, because they have no problem with an unfair tax code that more burdens the middle and lower classes. You can however call them the free-spending Republicans. How can they any longer attack the Democrats for big government and high spending, when in the last 28 years, the only time we did not have hundreds of billions of dollars being added national debt every year , was under Bill Clinton --- a Democrat. I've actually heard a couple of conservatives have the nerve to claim that the credit for that goes to the Republican-led Congress and Senate that Bill Clinton had to deal with during much of his presidency. They fail to note that under Ronald Reagan, the Democrat led Congress and Senate gave into most everything he wanted because the public support was behind Reagan, and also that under George W. Bush he mostly had a Republican-led Congress and Senate that led to the biggest deficits of all time. This despite all the spending in Iraq and Afghanistan only totaling a little more than one year's deficit under George W. Bush, is pushing through tax policies that he said was going to increased tax revenues because they would expand American business, the fact that his wars have expanded America business by war spending on materials, the fact that we have had growth in stock market and housing price values for much of his terms and decent employment figures. If we had these raging deficits during reasonably good times under most of the W. Bush administration at least economically (which was certainly a hold over from the wonderful Bill Clinton years) and in what circumstances could Bush and the Republican Congress and Senate have imagined America would have to have had to start to reduce deficits during their terms? Conservatives also like to say that the Democrats will cut spending and ruin the military because they like to scare people. After all it worked so well in 2004 when it reelected George W. Bush. Now, go back to 9/11; we can blame 9/11 on a combination of factors, but none of them relate to Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton built up a fine military, a good reputation for the US around the world and had Richard Clarke in there fighting terrorism. George W. respected Richard Clarke so much he kept him around for a while. And after all, George W. Bush was being George W. Bush. Why would we expect him to take anything seriously, and not be playing golf, which is just the way he's always been as all his successive business ventures collapsed. It wasn't a surprise to me that Mitt Romney wasn't the Republican candidate for this election, because clearly conservatives like to choose business failures not business success stories. So you take a lazy failure and you make him president, you have no right to expect he's going to do any better than he did. Now jump ahead eight years, our initial success in Afghanistan and Iraq was destroyed not by a bad military, but by a bad commander-in-chief and the poor people he put under him to manage the warfare. Did the surge work? Of course, sending in thousands more troops to kill more Iraqis worked just like Bill Clinton sending in 100,000 new police officers across the country to curb crime. Eventually, if we send in enough troops and kill enough Iraqis, when their leases many troops as there are Iraqis left, we will have created a real and lasting peace. At least from our viewpoint, apparently. Besides Iraq and Afghanistan, we have the economy, which we drove so into the ground thanks to George W. Bush and six years of conservative Congress and Senate that voted along with him all the time, that we have driven the rest of the world's economies into the toilet as well. I actually have seen conservatives blame the current state of the economy on the Clinton administration's deregulation. When I stopped laughing, I point out that whether deregulated or regulated, a situation is only as good as the current oversight. Nobody has been minding the store during the entire Bush administration. Plus they have continued to deregulate, and pass rulings that encouraged less oversight. The lone exception is the Sarbanes-Oxley act, passed under George W. Bush out of panic for the last corporate greed mess stimulated by the attitude and lax oversight of this administration, that has onerously burdened smaller businesses, while clearly not handling those areas of business practices that were going to cause us these problems. Then of course, we have the rest of the Middle East, where we have accomplished nothing of note in the last eight years, but of course not much of note had been accomplished before that. We have the environment which has gone a bit downhill in the last eight years. We have North Korea and Iran which have basically been mishandled in the last eight years. The world is a much worse off place than it was eight years ago. Some conservatives point to the fact that we haven't been attacked on American soil since 9/11 as proof that their policies, at least in some ways, work. But as I point out, the attacks on our soil were the two on the World Trade Center eight years apart. We weren't necessarily due yet. We have certainly seen terrorism across the world, terrorist recruitment up thanks to some of our policies, and Al Qaeda enter Iraq where it never was before we invaded. You will notice that 9/11 happened in 911 2001 not during the Clinton years. You can blame the conservative supreme court and the poor voting procedures of a Bush run Florida for 9/11 as much as anything else. You see, if the actual elected person, Al Gore, had taken office, we would have every reason to believe based on past experience that he would've read the reports and taken them seriously and acted a month before 9/11. It may never have happened. Of course, we'll never know, but it should keep you awake at night thinking about it, because no one has ever accused Al Gore of being uninformed or not on top of what's going on. So after all this, what is my point? What are conservatives afraid of? I've tried to point out, that what I truly believe they are afraid of, is that things will get better under Barack Obama. They like to say they're afraid of the unknown and the terrible things that might happen, but could the consequences be much worse than what's happened under George W. Bush, which is why I stated everything or I should say, restated everything, here now. No, what conservatives don't even have the ability to admit to themselves, which is why they just have this blanket statement "Obama scares me", is because what they're really afraid of is that things will get better and they won't have a shot at the White House again for a very long time. You see that's what happened last time, after things are great on the Clinton, Al Gore won the election. However, because of shenanigans in Florida and a conservative supreme court they were able to steal the election for George W. Bush. They know that won't fly with the American people again. The American people don't forget and they will remember for a very long time what happened when they allowed the Supreme Court to steal an election and how bad everything has been since.
I have weighed in here on the negatives of Obama in the past. I have weighed in on some of the positive aspects of John McCain from the distant past. Haven't bothered to weigh in on some John McCain's weaknesses when he was a Republican that I liked. Why bother? And all his time in the Senate so, actually hasn't accomplished much. It's true, what he said in the debate about his record, that he is reached across the aisle, but also that he hasn't always been like by people in his party or the other party. It's true. He doesn't get along with enough Republicans or Democrats to accomplish very much. He never has. More recently, for several years, he has tried to get along with the most conservative Republicans by kissing up to George Bush and showing that he can be the kind a guy that they can get behind. Pathetically, they still haven't really gotten behind him, but that's okay because let's be real, they’re not going to vote for Barack Obama. I guess McCain is most worried that they won't come out and vote at all. Now in the last debate, John McCain explained in just a couple of sentences, that he's going to fix the economy and catch Osama bin Laden because those things are really not that hard. Not that hard?! John McCain is either a liar or is sadly confused and deluded. These have been two of the greatest hallmarks of the George W. Bush administration. In just a couple of sentences John McCain has proven what he's been trying to stop the Democrats from doing for quite some time. He proved he is just like George W. Bush. And as I have stated here, anything we could possibly fear about the unknown of Barack Obama, has sadly already been realized by George W. Bush and company. This is why I can wholeheartedly endorse Barack Obama for president and why I dearly hope his deeds will match his words and the feeling and compassion behind them, and that he will do his best to fulfill the promises and expectations his belt among the people who were going to vote for him. His words and deeds and what actions we have seen, have all been of a man who cares about this country and all the people in it. There is no history or uncovered documents and letters that would lead us to believe there is anything more to fear from Barack Obama than fear itself.
Next up: we'll hear from Satan.

6 comments:

Bruce said...

Hm.

You are guessing that Mr. Obama can govern. But you could be wrong. Since he has a severely limited record, it is conjecture that he can turn any of his words into policy. He has never reached across the aisle...ever.

A fainthearted endorcement I could understand. But a "wholehearted" one i'm finding hard to wrap myself around.

LHwrites said...

I believe John McCain has shown he is not in a position to lead. Perhaps Barack Obama will rise to the occasion, but as the pressure has mounted John McCain clearly has not. He has shown poor judgment in choosing his running mate. His health care proposal is not very good. He was the last person to believe the economy was sound. He has no foreign policy beyond staying Iraq for 100 years and Israel-Israel-are you listening old Jews in Florida, Israel. John has reached across the aisle to find that he turns off both Republicans and Democrats. He has achieved very little for his long time in the senate and has never led much of anything. True, Barack Obama is untested, but John McCain sold all his values (he used to have some, really) when he decided if you can't beat 'em, join em for the right wing and Bush Republicans. No, in so many ways John McCain has espoused the worst parts of W. Bush and his time has passed. Things can't get much worse. It is time to make a change and lead in a new direction. Maybe even the right one!

LHwrites said...

Of course, let us also remember that no one governs alone. Just as George W. Bush had Cheney and Rove to mislead him, Obama can find many able minded advisers. The risk is that someone like McCain, who seems to believe he 's got it all going on, and can find bin Laden like that, and fix the economy so easily, is like a George W., willing to go it alone, or accept bad advice from a few close advisers who are off the beaten path. Obama doesn't act like he knows it all, or can solve it all alone. Many of our Presidents, including good ones like Bill Clinton, never had the opportunity to show they could work much with anyone, but rose to the opportunity because they genuinely wanted to make the country better and help ALL the people. McCain seems to have adopted the trickle down theory of W. Bush and Reagan before him. Bush unbridled by a Republican Congress and Senate begot the financial horror show we are witnessing now. We cannot afford 4 more years of this.

LHwrites said...

Let me say one more thing, about fainthearted versus wholehearted backing. Few things are black and white in this world, but the Presidential election is one of them (no pun intended). It is not simple, obviously, but it is clear. It is either Barack Obama or John McCain and I have tried to lay out the case, as I see it, as someone who used to like John McCain a lot more. Others have also weighed in. Rolling Stone has an award winning history of good journalism. Here is what they found: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain/page/1

Bruce said...

It's true that McCain tied his wagon to the Republican base [after trying to join the Dem/Kerry ticket].

But he will govern where he's always been: alone and independent. He's bucked his party many times and will do so if elected President.

Don't be taken with posturing...from either guy. Hey, Obama is pretending to be a centrist..

LHwrites said...

I don't believe loners make good Presidents. Certainly not in today's complex and global climate.