Better is coming

Everyone keeps saying, “I’m a conservative first and then a Republican.”  Which is like saying you are a football player first and a Cowboy only by expediency.  Try making a team out of that attitude.  Like many, I was a bit disappointed with Romney, but we ought to understand what the Democrats did.  They turned out their base by scaring people about Romney being rich, played the racist card about how he was “white” and anti-minority, and captured a small amount of low-information voters with Obama the Cult Figure.  Meanwhile they and the media kept beating the foolish drum that says a race is all about winning the independent vote.  So Romney failed to turn out his base by 3 million fewer R’s than McCain did while winning the Indies by 19 points.  Result was a net loss. Conclusion: turn your base on and don’t get snookered by your opponent’s lies about you.  Secondly, Dems did a huge Get Out The Vote effort and it worked. We need to match that. 

A  true, blue conservative would be good at base turn-out.  Well, as long as they aren’t a poor communicator or quirky or scandalous.  But I tend to discount the Republican navel gazing.  Politics is a team sport.  Arm chair quarterbacking may be the luxury of Joe Conservative as he sits and cusses at the TV.  But it won’t get conservatives elected.

However, better days are coming. The Dems and Obama are acting cockier than the last banty rooster standing who now has all the hens.  With such behavior, I smell a Big Mistake coming. Theirs is odd behavior for a team that won with 50.3% of the vote.  R’s are being lectured about how they lost because we are all racists.  Michael Moore says that the suburbs are full of guns and the only reason this can be is because all the suburbanites are racist. That ESPN sage said the RG3 wasn’t really “black”.  NY Times and Matthews attacked Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott as Jim Crow enthusiasts.  Really? 

Meanwhile Obama doesn’t negotiate over ways to end the fiscal cliff dilemma, holds a supposedly important news conference to make a big announcement an hour late, comes in to say that he talked to Reid and Boehner and if Congress doesn’t come to a conclusion it’s all their fault.  He’s heading for Hawaii.  Even CNN thought that was a bit cocky, since after all, the Prez threatening veto is the reason nothing has been passed so far.  Why is he so cocky?  Everyone from Time Ragazine to Limbaugh is saying that Obama really wants to go over the fiscal cliff (he really wants taxes from everyone), then will come back in as a white knight with tax relief for the middle class 98%, while the dispirited R’s wring their hands and get blamed for putting us over the fiscal cliff.  Yeah, well, that will work so long as the R’s don’t propose to restore tax rates first.  In fact, I expect some opportunistic R to pledge that if we go over the cliff next week, he would propose, right after Jan. 1, to restore taxes for those making under $1 million, a plan all the Dems have said they would vote for in the past.  And so what if there aren’t enough votes to pass it?  Well, then there sure won’t be when Obama comes back with a worse proposal thereafter. 

Going over the cliff also would galvanize the R’s over things like Death Taxes that would go back to 55% on every American estate that is larger than an average one.  It would put talking points in their mouths about killing business with high cap gains rates and corporate taxes.  All this would be like a prophetical loaded gun (nothing racist intended!) should the economy go into recession or inflate.  And we are almost guaranteed that one of these two will happen.  It would also galvanize the R’s about the debt ceiling. 

And concerning the cult figure status of Obama, he is lucky so far.  Things are not bad for most disinterested voters.  Interest rates are low. Jobs are scarce but government takes care of everyone.  And Slick Willie assured us that poor ol’ Barack was just dealt a tough Bush hand.  But if our country falls into debt crisis or recession or both, when the international bond market demands we stop spending or raise taxes drastically, all those low information voters will channel flip from American Idolatry and ask what the heck just happened!  There are times in politics when people want to nap and times when they are wide awake and foaming at the mouth.  When the public woke up to Hitler, they started looking for that Churchill guy who had been warning about the war and said he had a plan.  Give us solutions, not image!

The tragedy is that USA will have to fall off the cliff in order to come to it’s senses.  I just hope and pray that we won’t get a convenient concussion that always allows some to disregard disasters.  I guess I have to rely on the common sense of Americans.