Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on KTBB AM 600, Friday, March 9, 2012.
If you are a conservative like me and you find yourself alternately frustrated or scared to death, I think I know why. It’s because you understand just how monumentally screwed up things are and yet not only is nothing being done about any of it, very little of use is even being said.
I cite as my evidence the websites of the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns.
Let’s start with Romney.
If you click on the “Issues” tab a menu flies out that gives you 25 clickable choices. Significantly, “Debt” is not one of them. This despite the fact that the country is $15 trillion in debt and that no matter your political stripe, the reckoning cometh, and that right soon (to paraphrase the Apocrypha).
“Spending” is among the choices and spending at least relates to debt. Romney proposes to reduce spending to 20 percent of GDP by the end of his first term and he sets forth a list of reductions — from repealing Obamacare to privatizing Amtrak — that according to him add up to $319 billion (leaving a mere $1 trillion to go before the budget is balanced).
On Social Security, Romney offers 215 words that boil down to; raise the retirement age and slow the rate of benefit growth for higher-income recipients. As to how, when, by how much and against whom these changes would apply; silence.
On Medicare, there is some arcane language about changing Medicare into a “premium support system,” that few will understand. What Romney specifically avoids saying is that Medicare is insolvent and will soon enough collapse altogether.
Romney’s website does deal with the subject of Iran rather exhaustively and with a fairly high level of forthrightness. Make no mistake, Iran is going to be a huge issue in the next presidential term.
If, for all of this, you’re not yet sold on Romney I completely understand. But let me offer you the alternative.
Obama’s website also has an “Issues” tab. Within that tab the choices are “Jobs & the Economy,” “Education,” “Energy & the Environment,” “Equal Rights,” “Health Care,” “National Security,” and “Taxes.”
Notably, there is not a word anywhere about the deficit and not a word about the debt. Nothing either on Social Security or Medicare.
On the National Security tab, the words “Iran” and “terrorism” do not appear.
But there is a rather exhaustive treatise on “Progress on Women’s Equality” on the “Equal Rights” tab. Evidently terrorism is all taken care of but equality of the sexes remains elusive.
On the “Jobs & the Economy” tab, arguably the issue in 2012, Obama talks about how Obamacare supports and helps small business, how Wall Street reform will help protect consumers, how the auto bailout was a good thing and how his proposed American Jobs Act will help Hispanic families and women. Nothing, however, on reducing the regulatory burden or lowering the corporate tax rate.
On the “Energy & Environment” tab need I even tell you? Yep, you guessed it. Wind and solar. The only time the word “drilling” appears is when he talks about having imposed increased safety regulations on offshore wells.
Put simply, even if Romney’s website is a bit vague at least he actually brings up most of the real problems we’re facing.
Obama’s website doesn’t even mention them (unless you think that repealing the Defense of Marriage Act is more pressing than a nuclear-armed Iran).
Assuming Romney staggers into Tampa as the nominee, this is the choice we’ll have in November.
So you’re frustrated? Scared? Well, look at the bright side.
At least you remain sentient.
Paul,
I agree. We’re screwed. I am going to the Islands and open a bar. Want to come?
This is excellent. The contrasts aren’t surprising, but the links each candidate uses are telling.
Have said it time and time again. romney is nothing more than the “white” obama. We have had romney rammed down our throats and YES! I am frustrated because…HERE WE GO AGAIN with a DUD candidate like Dole and mccain! Meaning we will more than likely have 4 more years of obama. Can’t people understand that we are in a life and death situation here? This nation is in it’s death throe this very minute? Frustrated??? I’m MORE than just FRUSTRATED…I am FURIOUS! People go around like everything is fine, their heads in the sand. This is not going away by ignoring the problem. More is at stake than they could ever imagine. AND romney is NOT the answer!
Rick, Newt and Mitt all have tarnished “conservative” credentials. But we do know that Rick will compromise his principles “for the team” and be a big wasteful spender to appease Pennsylvania unions. According to conservative Republicans, when Newt was Speaker, the Contract With America was more the Contract With Clinton. And his inability to stay focused eventually lost him the speakership. Mitt also will lean left to convince liberal Massachusetts voters to vote for a conservative. Liberal politicians get praised for doing the opposite. But once he was governor he defended conservative principles.
According to GE’s Jack Welch (a Romney supporter) who is from the Boston area, RomneyCare had great support. Even the conservative Heritage Foundation was at the signing. What Mitt does have that neither Newt and Rick have is he has successfully led large organizations evidenced by his personal wealth. Newt and Rick had to wheel and deal as members of Congress and after retirement, personal wealth with some mystery just sprung up here and there. Anyone that has been reading Anne Coulter’s website should have a fair measure of all three candidates by someone who knows them all in way most of us would not. See you at the polls!
Obama is going to win. Newt and Rick will split the conservative vote (though Newt really isn’t conservative) and neither will win the nomination. Many true conservatives will not come out and vote for Romney in the general election, nor will many bigoted Christians who do not like Mormons, as one caller stated himself on a KTBB morning show call-in earlier this week. Brace yourself America. 8 years of Bush and 8 years of Obama is going to be one of the worst hardships this country has experienced.
Frustration is more or less built into the human psyche. Not much to be done about that, and contentment is highly over-rated anyway. Would we ever get anything done if we didn’t cast a critical gaze on the details of our existence? God gives you all you need to deal with fear in this world and the next. Prepare yourself to be a survivor in all aspects and notice that fear gives way to hope and confidence. It is always best to operate from a position of strength.