One Last Word to the Troops Before the Election

As President Obama ends his bitter and petty campaign of character assassination against his challenger Mitt Romney, one is struck by just how low the lofty orator has fallen from his 2008 bid. The erstwhile freshman Senator rode into office on a wave of disingenuous half-truths and outright lies promising “hope and change.” But at least Obama sounded vaguely optimistic and sunny while he lied — repeatedly — to voters’ faces.

About ending the War in Iraq in 16 months. About bringing the War in Afghanistan to a speedy close. About shuttering Guantanamo Bay. About extraordinary rendition. About cutting the deficit in half. About the need to curb healthcare spending. About not taxing the middle class. About becoming a post-partisan president.

Instead, he extended the War in Iraq to double his pledged time. He has our troops in Afghanistan at least until 2014, if not until 2024. He launched a new war in Libya, without Congressional authorization. He couldn’t bring himself to call America’s enemies ‘terrorists’ at Fort Hood and Benghazi.

On the economy, he tripled the deficit, starting with the 2009 Democrat-drafted budget he signed. Then he passed Obamacare, which has exploded to three times original cost estimates. He passed taxes on the middle class dozens of times. He hasn’t passed a budget at all in nearly three years. And then he recently implored his Democrat base to exact “revenge” on their opponents (for paying for all the Democrats’ compassionate social welfare programs, presumably.)

The suddenly churlish Obama then scapegoated former President Bush for the “same old” disastrous economics, apparently the one that led to 52 straight months of job growth. And at least Bush warned about the coming housing bubble burst. But whatever the legend is around liberal watercoolers to this day, President Bush did not save a free market, because there was no free market to begin with — especially when it came to housing mortgages.

But the GOP is still somehow to blame for the poor economy in Democrat voters’ minds, because we are talking about a right-wing party that is so insidious and formidable in Democrat mythology that not a single Republican voted for Obamacare and the bill still passed easily. Then the nefarious law was rubber-stamped by a Republican-appointed chief justice who bought a line about the Obamatax that not even the president’s council believed. The government lawyers argued it both was and was not a tax and apparently won. Heads we win, tails you lose.

So how are Republicans rigging the system? How can the GOP be considered the establishment? Some Republicans are lazy and apathetic, but they are not the face of big government, not even big business. The Democrats have handed trillions to big business on a silver platter, whether we are talking about green subsidies or flat-out stimulus slush. But the left still cries about “tax cuts for the wealthy,” as if they have prima nocta to screw taxpayers, rather than allow them to reward businesses with their hard-earned cash.

But maybe that’s what separates us and them the most, meaning conservatives and liberals. We assume that life is hard work, overcoming adversity, and dealing with unpleasant realities. The Democrats want to grant a make-believe generous and compassionate government with the power to control everything in the world. Oh sorry, make things “fair.”

What isn’t “fair” is when politicians and their crony capitalist allies determine what we do with our lives: in business, in society, in our homes. And cutting taxes is returning more power to us, to the market. De-regulating is returning more power to us, to the consumers. The Republican Party is not the establishment party, even if it concedes far too often to the political left and special interests. It is largely unprincipled, yielding ground to the entitlement state, and even swelling it drastically on occasion. It is far from ideal; even seriously flawed.

Tomorrow, I am voting Republican in the biggest race of my lifetime to limit the damage the Democrats can do, and voting Libertarian anywhere else I can to voice my contempt and disgust for the two-party status quo. People believe they can change the system by simply registering their objection to it by voting Gary Johnson. I disagree. I don’t think this will do anything but lead to a worse income in both the short-term and long-term.

We need to engage and fundamentally transform the Republican Party, and use it as a tool to advance freedom, even if that means exposing and throwing out any politician that is against the cause of liberty. We cannot just throw up our hands and abandon the best possible chance to advance our interests; even if it is incremental change, and even if it turns out to be too little, too late.

We on the conservatarian side of things have to feel good about New Media’s chances to change the culture, and thereby, change the conversation in a way that makes it harder for both parties to damage our freedoms.

We don’t need a political messiah in this election; what we need is time. Mitt Romney gives us that.

Note: Some of the documentation for this article’s claims can be found here: “1001 Reasons to Vote Against Barack Obama.”