Spring training.
Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on KTBB AM 600, Friday, February 3, 2012.
The fight between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich has gotten nasty and many Republicans are worried about it. Not me.
I’m glad to get the things the Democrats are going to hurl at the nominee out in the open as early as possible. Gingrich has been hammered about his marriages. Romney has been taken to task about his taxes and about his tenure at Bain Capital. Gingrich — and Rick Perry before he dropped out — often sounded like Democrats as they attacked Romney.
Good for them. Let’s just get it all out on the table now and frame the debate. Let’s be prepared for the demagoguery of the Democrats.
If it’s to be Romney as the nominee, let’s use the balance of the primary season to allow Gingrich, Santorum and Paul to serve the role that the practice squad serves on a football team. Let’s watch the opponents game films, defend against their offense. Let’s mix it up in the primary and get prepared for the Big Game — the general election. Mixing our sports metaphors, let’s think of this primary season as spring training.
The fact is, the country’s current circumstances render things like marital indiscretion and populist envy of wealth less relevant than in more sanguine times. I believe that a higher percentage of the electorate than the pundits give credit believe this to be the case.
Which for me means that so long as Romney didn’t steal the money, I don’t care how he got rich. I don’t care what Newt Gingrich said to his wife about their relationship or how their sex life played out.
I, like millions of voters, care about the fact that the country is in deep trouble and that President Obama, if left in place, will likely make it so much worse and to render the situation hopeless.
I care about the fact that the treasury cannot issue a check for $100 without first borrowing $40.
I care about the fact that so many people now rely on the government to get by that soon there will be too few self-reliant and economically productive citizens to maintain even the illusion of economic freedom and opportunity.
Related to the dependency problem is the unsustainability of the entitlement state. So many politicians of all stripes have footballed this issue that entitlements now threaten to bankrupt the country. I care about the fact that if the next president doesn’t deal with this problem he very likely will have squandered the very last chance to do so.
I care about the fact that because entitlements suck up all available resources the administration is now proposing huge cuts to the defense budget in what will prove to be a vain effort to use the money saved on defense to prop the entitlement state up just a bit longer. The world didn’t suddenly become less dangerous and less chaotic. History has shown time and again that the best way to get in a war is to be unprepared for one.
In this election, I care about nothing except getting back to Jeffersonian principles before it’s too late. In my perfect world, Romney would stand up and quote John W. Davis, a lifelong Democrat and former Solicitor General of the United States. He said,
” I believe in the Constitution of the United States; I believe in the division of powers that it makes. I believe in the right of private property, the sanctity and binding power of contracts; the duty of self-help. I am opposed to confiscatory taxation, wasteful expenditure, socialized industry, and a planned economy controlled and directed by government functionaries. I believe these things to be inimical to human liberty and destructive of American ideals.”
Except for the fact that a shocking number of college graduates don’t know what the word “inimical” means, given the actual experience of three years under Obama, John Davis’s way of thinking is exactly what people want to hear in this campaign.
Let’s get good at saying it.
Gingrich is another Bill Clinton, he cannot be believed. Romney is the way to go. He has been successful in business and politics, and he doesn’t have the baggage of being unable to be truthful with his wives. Romney can beat Obama in 2012. For the sake of our nation, let’s hope he does.
If Mark Levin is right, Romney needs to be re-educated on the fundamentals of how a robust free market is intended to work (without damaging government interference). He is sending Romney a copy of Milton Friedman’s book: “Free to Choose”.
I saw the TV series back in 1980 and it was wonderful. It should be required viewing or reading for every high school student. I just discovered that videos of the PBS TV series are available at:
http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/
It is a shame that our present culture probably doesn’t know anything about John W. Davis or Milton Friedman – two great Americans.
All this bickering has done nothing but cloud the issues. Each one is trying to fake the handoff so to throw a touchdown pass! Well, all it has done is create an interception by the opposite team! Why can’t people get that romney is a LIBERAL…he has always been a liberal and no amount of words he says now are going to change that FACT! A leopard DOES NOT change it’s spots!WHY do you think the democraps want romney? Could it be that they see that if obama were defeated, they would still have a liberal and author of obamacare in office??? Newt is not the best choice either and to tell the truth, we just do not have a good choice in any of those left running. Santorum is probably the least of the evils but people are too busy with the conflicts between romney and newt to even look at santorum. Which is by design. If people were REALLY listening to what romney has been saying, his slip ups tell it all. The man is what he is…A LIBERAL through and through! Newt doesn’t really know what he is, he hasn’t made up his mind. You can’t be all things to all people!
I truly fear for this country because we have no one who will take a stand and STAY there. You romney supporters will find yourselves very disappointed if he is the nominee because he does not have the GUTS to stand on principles. Just take a peek at his debates with Kennedy some years back…he AGREED with 90% of what Kennedy was saying! He will do the same with obama! romney just doesn’t have it in him to launch an attack on obama and his FAILED POLICIES!
I’d take Romney over Obama, granted, that is like taking a broken toe over a broken leg but Santorum has no chance, neither does Newt. Newt is just a flat our lying piece of something or another who has no respect for women or vows he makes to his supposed loved ones.
George W. Bush had 8 years to reduce the gargantuan size, scope, and unconstitutional interference in our daily lives due to the bureaucratic sacred cows of the Washington establishment that is hell bent on maintaining their micro-management through their regulatory dictatorship. He only vetoed 12 bills in eight years, becoming the most veto-less President since the early 1900s. He didn’t stop the cancerous housing bubble that burst on his watch. He began the ridiculous bailout of Wall Street with the statement that he had to “abandon the free market in order to save it.” He used the language of the LEFT by saying that he “didn’t want to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.” He ran on a “Compassionate Conservative” creed, whatever that means. (I think it means that he was ashamed of the Conservatives that believe in elimination of the welfare state in favor of a work requirement to get paid, i.e., push adults to have enough self-respect not to be a burden on society). Bush was a very timid economic and social conservative. It is amazing that we got an income tax reduction passed. On the whole, he was an ignorant tool of the Liberal establishment in the Republican Party. In summary, he did not have the fire in the belly to EXPOSE and roll back the Progressive agenda that has plagued this country for the last 90 years.
He abandoned the bully pulpit to educate the American people on this Progressive disease and, in fact, allowed the Liberals in Congress and the Press/Media ALWAYS to get the last word. It is no wonder that the Conservative cause to keep what is left of Constitutional government is on the rocks. I blame Bush and McCain for the election of the Marxist, Mr. Obama, to the office of President. Both Bush and McCain were brain-washed by the Left-wing media and moderate Republican consultants to appeal to the so-called mysterious “independents” whose importance was blown totally out of proportion to reality. McCain was particularly AWOL in the exposure of the extreme Socialist pedigree of Mr. Obama. He was afraid of the racist charge being made against his own campaign.
Now, we are faced with yet another moderate Republican establishment choice (Romney) that is NOT a real Constitutional Conservative in his heart. If he is elected President, at least he can talk and seems willing to use the bully pulpit to advance his cause, whatever that may be. Unfortunately, the Conservatives MUST keep his feet to the fire every day to roll back the Progressive agenda as part of restoring the free market that will not recover or survive if he doesn’t. It is impossible to grow the private sector and return sanity to the American economy (and personal liberties) unless the government sector is severely defanged, decentralized, and defunded by executive order, if necessary. If Mr. Obama is not re-elected, the new Republican President MUST risk everything to restore this country to fiscal sanity and Constitutional government with all deliberate speed or all will be lost, anyway. It is now time for desperate and decisive action and damn the Liberal Republican establishment, Left-wing Media, and closet Marxist Democrats. I have serious doubts that Romney is aware of the unrecoverable economic and Constitutional collapse that is staring us in the face. I hope I’m wrong. It is too bad that the most consistent Conservative, Santorum, can’t seem to get any momentum, so far.
Sorry for the long speech, but somebody must say it!