Friday, August 10, 2012

Fed Up


I am fed up. I’m fed up at Harry Reid and Barack Obama. I’m fed up with Obama’s campaign team. I’m fed up with those people who support and encourage this kind of behavior. And I’m especially fed up with people who claim that they are conservative but refuse to see the difference between the two candidates in this election.

I have never seen a campaign so dirty, so underhanded, so dishonest as the Obama campaign, aided and abetted by upper levels of the Democratic Party. Last week, Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, made a claim to the leftist rag, “The Huffington Post” that Mitt Romney hasn’t paid taxes in 10 years. His source? A “Bain investor” who called Reid on the phone. Reid said that he didn’t know with certainty that Romney hadn’t paid taxes, but that Romney has the “burden of proof” to show he isn’t a tax cheat. Later in the week, he doubled down on that accusation on the floor of the Senate. Well, Harry Reid, I was told that you are a pedophile. I’ve made the accusation and it is up to you to prove it isn’t true. That seems fair, doesn’t it?

Today, the Obama campaign released a campaign ad that questioned whether Mitt Romney has paid taxes over the last 10 years – a very ironic accusation coming from this administration, which knows something about tax cheats. Again, they have no evidence, whatsoever, they are just slinging mud and hoping something sticks. They know that Obama’s first term as President has been disastrous and he has nothing to run on, so they have resorted to character assassination.

Earlier this week, an Obama Super Pac came out with an ad accusing Mitt Romney of causing a woman’s death from cancer. Subsequently, almost everything in that ad was shown to be false, but the administration has yet to denounce it and the Super Pac refuses to pull it. The Obama campaign claimed that they knew nothing about this man or his story but, as is their routine, they were lying. This man had appeared in two Obama campaign commercials and was recorded on a White House conference call. It is illegal for campaigns to coordinate with Super PACs, yet White House employees openly raise money for Obama Super PACs.

That should come as no surprise to anyone who has watched this administration thumb its collective nose at the laws of this land. This is, by far, the most corrupt administration I have ever seen – and I was around for the Nixon administration. The Eric Holder Justice Department has been an embarrassment from their dismissal of an obvious voter harassment which had already been won against the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia to “Fast and Furious” to suing states over everything from border control to attempts to limit voter fraud to its refusal to submit subpoenaed documents to the House committee responsible for the oversight of the Justice Department.

Don’t tell me, “Everyone does it.”  When Romney, Mitch McConnell, and Romney’s campaign team claim that Obama is a murderer, a felon, and a tax cheat, come talk to me. Until then, you don’t have a leg to stand on. Now, I am a fan of negative advertising. I think running against policies and positions that you think are wrong are perfectly fine, but unsubstantiated lies and character assassination should be met by the electorate with contempt.

The fact that almost half the country continues to support these despicable people is very disheartening. Don’t tell me that you want a “change in tone” in Washington; don’t tell me that you want men and women of high character in elected office; don’t tell me that you want moral leadership if you continue to support people who use these tactics. I don’t even want to hear it. Just admit that character means nothing to you or you are a hypocrite.

And for those people who claim that there is no difference between these two candidates or that people are voting for the “lesser of two evils”, I have only this to say, “Are you freaking insane or have you just not been paying attention?” It would be nice if we could afford to be ideologically pure, but this election is just too important. The only person with whom I agree 100% of the time is myself, and even then I’m inclined to change my mind from time to time. It is time to realize that perfect is the worst enemy of good enough.

The fact is that there is a clear difference between these two candidates. On one hand, you have a decent, intelligent man who has been a success in almost everything he has done; a man who has seemingly done everything right; a man about whom there has not been a whiff of scandal; and a man who has demonstrated he understands free market economics. On the other hand, you have a scorched-earth Chicago machine politician whose first term has been marked with continual job loss, a disastrous approach to economics, class warfare, and corruption. Staying home or voting for a third party candidate who has absolutely no chance of winning may make you feel righteous and pure, but it is irresponsible if you want to at least slow the rapid descent of this country into socialism.

I happen to think that Mitt Romney will make a pretty good President. If you don’t like the idea of voting for him, at least cast a vote against Obama. It will send a message that we will not tolerate the type of character, or lack thereof, that resides in the White House now.