Can't Believe

I went to bed early discouraged at the prospects.  Heard the results before truly falling asleep.  Can't sleep now (2am) as I remain flabbergasted at the outcome.   

My first virtual stop was to my favorite conservative political website, a site that I enjoy because they get right to the point while mixing in a little humor.    Their opening line completely summed up what's keeping me up tonight.

"I think this time it's a little more painful because we can't believe that half of America could possibly vote for a man whose policies have been so costly and so ineffective."

I was literally tossing and turning thinking that exact thought.

Continuing down the blog, an earlier post noted this,

"A hurricane. I can't believe it. A hurricane a week before an election, in which the president doesn't do anything but place a few phone calls and get his picture taken with a [staunch conservative] who's in love with Bruce Springsteen, swings the most important election of our time.  Such is life."

He used a more derogatory term for Chris Christie, who failed to show his support for the candidate he supposedly supported and yet heaped undying praise on the opponent who visited him for a mere few hours, but I felt it unnecessary to use it.

What bothers me most - the fact that Romney lost bothers me a lot, a real lot, but what bothers me most is the fact that Obama ran, in my opinion, such an intellectually dishonest campaign and yet millions buy into it.  Rather than standing on issues, the Democrats Presidential tactic this election has been to fuel hate and derision (albeit this has really been the tactic since the opposition to George W. Bush began during the second Gulf War).  They take meaningless and innocuous items and spin them into soundbites that sound horrible and menacing.  They label in order to make talking points even if the underlying premise doesn't actually support the argument.  They call on their base to hate a candidate because, "they should."   It's like the school bully, who picks on one student calling him or her names, because he is insecure with his own ability to win over people.

Finally, it blows my mind that Obama portrays himself to have no responsibility for the results of the past four years, but everyone else holds ultimate responsibility for not only what happened on their watch, but everything that occurred before, during and after.   And somehow people buy that.

Economic cycles happen.  I have always contended that Presidents don't cause them, but policies can nudge them one way or another.  They can mitigate the results, or worsen them.  Even in his final WSJ Editorial pitch, Obama pointed his finger at GWB for a terrible record of job growth and deficits while lauding Bill Clinton for the economic prosperity.    The hypocrisy is incredible.  Bill Clinton entire economic prosperity was due to the credits of Ronald Reagan and Bush 41 creating an environment where Clinton could slash defense expenditures as well as the enormous fictitious wealth created by the Internet bubble.  The economy was already headed into recession by the election of 2000 and the crash of the Tech companies.   It was later exacerbated by the incredibly destructive events of 9/11, both in physical terms as well as economic harm.  In response, Bush 43's tax cuts (the same tax cuts that Obama praises himself for extending) did an excellent job of staving off a bad recession by keeping it a mild recession.   Job growth inched along in the early part of the decade, but well under what was needed for fast paced recovery.   Anyone who remembers political divisiveness will surely recall the Democrats chants of, "Where's the Jobs, George?" and they constant derision of the "jobless recovery."   In the eyes of Obama supporters, perversely George Bush was responsible for all that mess, yet Barack Obama holds no responsibility for his actions since 2009.

Much like his predecessor, Obama wrapped up his campaign with the economy headed south.  Unlike Bush, the economy began its slow start of recovery within a few short months of his arrival in office.  Sticking to the theory of his own chief of staff ("don't let a good crisis go to waste"), Obama pushed an enormous stimulus bill that had no chance of actually providing stimulus [I wrote about it on these very blog pages in real time].  Almost EVERY program of that stimulus package failed.  By his own admission later, highly touted "shovel-ready" projects didn't really exist, and the government's own PR tracking of "jobs created" showed little to no job creation.   Like most rear-view mirror politicians, he championed legislation that closed the barn door after the horse was already gone.  Dodd-Frank is a regulatory nightmare that is billed as preventing "too big to fail," but does nothing of the sort.  Investments meant to spur "Green" energy demand by building uncompetitive supply were colossal failures that not only lost billions in government dollars, but effectively doubled those losses by creating huge tax shields for the investors.   His "saving of the auto industry" is no different than that of his political opponents except that his plan "saved" the unions rather than the bondholders and lost the government approximately $15 billion.  His hugely partisan tactics and talk alienated the political system leading to three straight years without a budget.  Spending has lead to enormous deficits and record debt, which he - himself as a Senator - called "immoral."   As such, an economy that could be and should be in full recovery now is a morass. 

Yet, amazingly, none of it is his fault.  Bill Clinton termed the phrase that was used much of the rest of Obama's campaign that, "it was so bad, it couldn't be fixed."   1.  b*** s***, 2. Obama had campaigned in 2008 under the guise that, "I can fix it."   I recall a Tweet earlier in the campaign that summed it up best, "Somehow Romney is responsible for what Bain does 20 years later, but O isn't responsible for the last 4 years."

Ironically, the only thing he happily takes 100% credit for is having the Navy Seal pull the trigger on Osama bin Laden despite the years of work and intelligence that went into creating that moment.  He mentioned it at every rally.

However, instead of being about true issues, the rallying cry was some ludicrous "war on women" that had basis is silly political language rather than reality, or the "47%" comment.   Romney was labeled an elitist who failed to care about the common man.  Anyone who spent a modicum of effort in researching the man would know about Romney's gift for connecting with those in need.   I hope no one listened to election coverage tonight, in fear of finding each and every anchor must be an elitist who hates the common man.  Time and again, when analyzing the result, anchors would highlight "[XYZ] county's results aren't in yet, but that county is heavily democratic and will vote for Obama."    Here we have someone analyzing results that haven't been tabulated yet determining that Romney CAN'T win those votes.  That is exactly the derivation of the "47%" comment that Romney made on hidden camera.   There are two groups of Americans that won't look at the issues in an unbiased light.  47% will vote Democrat, 47% will vote Republican - you need to get the vote of the 6% who swing.

Sadly, America passed on a chance to elect a President who understood the problems we face, had solutions, has experience implementing solutions, and the ability to work the political system to get results.  Instead the electorate college will fall for the River City Salesman because he once promised Hope & Change, but has yet to provide either.  But no fear, we're promised it's coming soon.

God help us.