"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." — James Madison
With the withdrawal of Rick Santorum from the GOP nomination process and the waning of Newt Gingrich Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee for the President of the United States and will go head to head with Barack Obama and his minions and sycophants in the media. He will soon learn what John McCain discovered in 2008 when he was the darling of the media until he got the nomination and they threw him under the bus in favor of their real favorite Barack Obama.
An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal states:
"Rick Santorum dropped out of the Republican Presidential race Tuesday, having enhanced his political reputation and forced Mitt Romney to become a better candidate. Not bad for someone who few beyond his own family gave much of a chance of getting past Iowa, much less to April. Mr. Santorum outlasted everyone who was thought to be Mr. Romney's main competition to become the chief conservative alternative. He did so in large part with a forthright appeal to religious conservatives that was both a strength and weakness. Mr. Santorum nonetheless deserves credit for making Mr. Romney lift his performance and improve his platform. Mr. Santorum's overarching theme of restoring American freedom had more resonance than Mr. Romney's recitation of his resume, and the likely GOP nominee has since picked up some of Mr. Santorum's words if not the music. The Pennsylvanian was also by far the most effective Republican critic of RomneyCare. When he stood on stage in a debate and took apart the Massachusetts health law as a prototype for ObamaCare, Mr. Romney realized he couldn't coast to the nomination. That's when the former Massachusetts Governor came out with his own tax cut and tax reform plan to appeal to economic conservatives. Among the major candidates, Mr. Santorum ran the least negative campaign, and by leaving now he will let Mr. Romney focus his attention and monetary resources on Mr. Obama. Mr. Santorum also departs before the April 24 Pennsylvania primary, where a defeat in his home state would have tarnished his 2012 achievement. There are no consolation prizes in Presidential politics, but if Mr. Romney does win in November, Mr. Santorum's strong run will be part of the victory story."
If in fact Romney is a better candidate he better be the best candidate for the media and Barack Obama have already began to attack him. At a Boca Raton, Fla., event ostensibly touting the Buffett Rule on Tuesday, President Barack Obama appeared to be putting the finishing touches on his stump speech as his re-election campaign gears up to take on Mitt Romney in the fall.
Minutes after Rick Santorum dropped out of the GOP race, Obama jokingly alluded to his rivals as “people who are running for a certain office right now who shall not be named” and tore into the Republican agenda as pouring more tax breaks onto the wealthy while draining investments in the middle class.
“I believe the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history,” Obama said, but he made a pitch for government to step in as well — for schools, the military, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance and public investments.
For months, we've heard the chattering class tell us that Mitt Romney was the only acceptable Republican nominee. He was the only candidate who could beat Barack Obama; he was the only one smart enough, savvy enough, and milquetoast enough to defeat Obama in a general election. While Newt Gingrich was too hot and Rick Santorum was too cold, Romney was the Goldilocks candidate, everyone's second choice.
The question now is whether Romney will be Americans' first choice.
He faces an uphill climb. President Obama rides at about 50 percent in the polls nationally, despite the fact that he has presided over the worst economy since the Great Depression, destroyed the possibility of a moderate Muslim Middle East for the next generation at least, and polarized Americans along sex and race lines. Obama has rammed national health care down our collective throat, and he has threatened openly to raise taxes — and yet half of Americans are perfectly happy with him.
Meanwhile, Romney lags behind Obama in key swing states, according to the most recent polls. He has trouble with female voters — Obama defeats Romney 57 to 38 percent among females as of this week — and blue-collar voters. He leaves most conservatives lukewarm; the others he leaves absolutely ice cold.
So can Romney win?
His electability was always based on the notion that Republicans must win the independents. Romney, it was assumed, could appeal to the independents because he is not a social issues candidate. He's widely considered a manager rather than an ideologue. He's a pragmatist rather than a conservative. He's a "get things done" guy, largely void of vision but capable of putting America back on her feet. You won't hear him make a convincing case for American rights, freedoms and liberties — but he'll sure make a solid case for fiscal reform of particular entitlements if the debt is unsustainable. That's not inspiring stuff.
For that sort of candidate to win, the incumbent must be perceived as a full-fledged extremist. Obama, it was safe to assume, would be seen that way by the American public. But the public has largely refused to cooperate. Thanks to a pliable public and a militant media, Obama is seen not as a radical but as a typical Clintonesque, left-leaning moderate. Obama, in other words, has a solid lock on a large swath of the middle of the country.
Conservatives needed either a crystallizing candidate — a candidate with a unique capacity to identify the ideological conflict — or a crystallizing moment, in which the American public suddenly recognized Obama for who he truly is. They didn't choose a crystallizing candidate. They chose a risk averse candidate, highly competent but bland.
And so conservatives must wait for a crystallizing moment. That moment will not come on the domestic policy front. Obama will shy away from any major initiatives from here to the election. He will largely rally against the rich, against the "elites" — against the Mitt Romneys of the world. And Romney will be left to campaign on Obama's record, twisted and turned by the media from dross into gold. Obama's inflationary policies have driven up the stock market and driven down the unemployment rate, thanks to massive workforce dropouts. Oil prices will undoubtedly drop precipitously at a convenient moment, so long as Obama makes OPEC countries a few promises on Israel behind the scenes.
Over the past twenty years, the American left has been largely successful in intimidating much of the conservative movement and creating the impression that leftists are much smarter and thus able to stay one step ahead. Things have evolved to the point where every utterance or action by the current titular leader of the left, Barack Obama, is analyzed and dissected by many conservatives as if they were part and parcel of some grand strategy.
In fact, those on the left, including Barack Obama, are not as intelligent as they perceive themselves to be (and often are perceived to be by others), and oftentimes their actions and words are not part of a master plan, but rather symptomatic of either their personal failings or being mind-numbed robots promoting the left-wing agenda.
Recently Barack Obama made some intemperate and absurdly false statements about the Supreme Court and the pending decision on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Obviously he, as a graduate of Harvard Law School, knows that the Supreme Court has the duty and right to decide the constitutionality of any law passed by Congress. As a matter of fact, anyone who has studied American history and government to any degree would be aware of that fact. Were his remarks part of some grand strategy, or those of a spoiled child lashing out at the possibility that his favorite toy could be taken away by an evil stepmother?
This is not the first time Barack Obama has thrown a temper tantrum. His recent dealings with the Republican House of Representatives on various budget issues and raising the debt ceiling revealed a similar mindset and evoked a torrent of lies, obfuscations, and foot-stomping over not getting his way.
Obama has lamented in public how hard his job is and how even Mother Nature has plotted against him (the tsunami and earthquake in Japan). Not a day goes by without his blaming someone or something else, be it George W. Bush, the Republicans, ATMs, technology, or whatever or whoever is in the headlines for his failures and tribulations. He can, without any qualms, tell deliberate falsehoods about what may be contained in a budget or bill sponsored by the Republicans or about any subject or issue at hand, as his ideologically based objectives are the only thing that matters, along with an inability to accept being questioned or challenged. Further, he appears to be incapable of admitting a mistake or apologizing for his errors.
Any parent or grandparent who has encountered a spoiled child determined to get his way has experienced and seen these traits firsthand.
In an adult, these traits are symptomatic of people who not only have a high opinion of themselves, but have been told throughout their lives that they are special. Having experienced this excessive fawning, such people expect everything in life to go their way and never to be confronted by others with opposing views. In Obama's case, because of his demeanor, speaking ability, and skin color, many doors to the upper levels of society and the power structure were magically opened for him with little or no effort on his part. It can readily be presumed that in his three years of case discussion classes at Harvard Law School, he was never corrected for inaccurate use of basic concepts like "unprecedented" when he spoke up.
As is the case with a spoiled child whose parents consistently explain away and cover for their creation, so too with Barack Obama, as the mainstream media, the entertainment complex, the unions, the Democratic Party hierarchy, and the hardcore left are quick to protect their creation regardless of how much of a fool he makes of himself.
However, Barack Obama is not alone in self-aggrandizement; virtually all those who espouse the tenets of American leftism have an extraordinarily high opinion of themselves. Yet how much intelligence does it take to publically espouse a philosophy designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of mankind: a free lunch for the masses and the acquisition of unbridled power for the self-appointed chosen? None of those who publicly declare themselves "progressives" or "liberals" can explain why socialism has failed wherever it has been tried, except to say that they can do it better and to denigrate those who would dare ask the question.
The masterminds of the left sitting in think-tanks, government offices, newsrooms, and faculty lounges, regaling each other demonstrating who may be the smartest in the room, are essentially incapable of initiating an original political thought or having any independence of mind. In the realm of political theory, the only accepted and promulgated ideology is of an all-powerful central government controlling the day-to-day lives of all Americans — no opposing views, historical facts, or reality are allowed to intrude on these bastions of conformity.
Much of the success the left has enjoyed in recent years has come about through leftists' domination of the so-called mainstream media, whose primary utility has been to execute the tactic of vilifying and destroying those identified as the opposition, all the while promoting the concept that those on the left are so much brighter and caring than the Neanderthals on the right.
What has this selling out accomplished for the media? In a recent poll, 63% of respondents said the media were "politically biased in their reporting"; 66% believe that news stories are often inaccurate; 42% say the press is immoral; and 72% believe that "they [the media] try to cover up their mistakes." Recent events such as the coverage of the Trayvon Martin case will further exacerbate these results and cause the mainstream media to become even more irrelevant, as the alternative media is now poised to dominate the dissemination of news in the United States.
Why, then, do many in the conservative movement accept the notion that those on the left are so much more intelligent and are always in the midst of executing some grand strategy? There is only one grand strategy: seize the reins of power by promising the people anything, and destroy through lies and demagoguery the enemy — who are whomever the left identifies as such, which at times can include the judiciary. All else is merely an adjunct or spin-off of that foundational core. This is Alinsky 101.
With the 2012 election, it is time conservatives and Republicans stop cowering in the corner and accepting the notion that the left and Barack Obama are so much brighter and well-organized, with a bottomless pit of successful strategies. The current occupant of the White House is not a grand strategist or the smartest man on the face of the earth; in fact, he may be the most dishonest and least qualified president in the nation's history. And the left has but one theme to play, and they do so over and over again.
This theme can be countered through a constant and steady drumbeat of a few major premises. 1) Government cannot create wealth or jobs; 2) only one's neighbor down the street willing to risk all to start up a business can create wealth and jobs as well as income for the government; and 3) the more government taxes and spends, the less money is available for wealth and job-creation.
The American left is in no way different from the Wizard of Oz, who was exposed as a fraud and a fake relying solely on image and reputation. The time has come to draw back the curtain and see them for who they are; they are not invincible.
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