Posted on 11/02/2010 7:19:00 AM PDT by The Pack Knight
The expected Republican upset at the voting booth today is bound to leave many inside the Beltway confused. What on earth do the American people want? After all, just two years ago they threw out the Republicans, and now they are throwing out the Democrats.
What Americans want is a government that stays out of their pocketbooks and out of their private lives. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, we've gotten just the opposite: government program after government program created with our money to socially engineer the economy.
Evidence of voters’ desires lies in the huge swing we are seeing in the so-called independents. They are leaning heavily Republican in every poll. Pundits and political observers use the word independents frequently, but rarely do they define it. Now would be a good time.
I believe independents are fiscally-conservative, yet socially-liberal. How do I know? I’m one of them. I don’t want to be taxed to death, and I don’t want to tell other people how to live their lives.
Yet, for decades the choice has been either A.) a party that didn’t want to overtax me, but seemed awfully concerned about what happens in people bedrooms, or B.) a party that was far more tolerant on social issues but loved spending taxpayer money to “fix” things.
But many believers in small-government think it is a concept that should dictate every aspect of Washington, not just the size of say, the Department of Commerce. Laws designed to legislate social values run contrary to the idea of small government because making laws about peoples private lives is about making government bigger, not smaller.
Now to today’s election and the supposed flip-flop of the American public. To independent voters, Presidents Obama and Bush look awfully similar. Both have presided over enormous increases in government spending, and deep government intervention into large portions of the economy. From President Obama we got health care reform, from President Bush we got the largest federal intervention into education in the nations history, and huge subsidies for people to buy homes. Both have given us protectionism. Both bailed out the banks. Both bailed out the auto industry. For 10 years now we’ve had no difference in governing policies regardless of who was in power.
So now what?
After the Republican sweep of 1994, President Clinton was forced to find fiscal religion, and independents finally got policy changes they wanted: welfare reform, an embrace of the free markets with the passage of NAFTA, and a balanced budget driven in large part by less spending. (Thank you Newt Gingrich.) With the glaring exceptions of the tax-hike of 1993 and the Defense of Marriage Act, President Clinton looks pretty good to the independent voter of today.
Will President Obama learn from President Clinton? Only if he corrects his view of history.
Right now, the President consistently blames a lack of government oversight and regulation under the Bush years, as one of the key reasons for the nations economic woes. The truth is just the opposite and the American people know that. President Bush may have been Republican, but he didn’t preside like one. We haven’t seen a Republican president who truly believed in keeping government small in the lives of its people since Ronald Reagan.
Despite an enormous amount of new legislation (the stimulus bill, health care reform, financial regulatory reform, and education finance reform) President Obama’s ratings have never been lower.
He needs to ask himself why.
The answer: because he is doing exactly the same thing his predecessor did. Spending too much, regulating too much, and intervening too much, with little to show for it in the way of economic improvement.
To the American people, less is more. They know exactly what they want. Now if only the politicians they vote for would give it to them.
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera is an anchor of CNBCs Power Lunch and author of 'You Know I’m Right, More Prosperity, Less Government.'
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FYI to everyone - Reporting Voter Fraud
The Republican Party has set up a National Hotline, which will be staffed with Attorneys to handle polling issues as well as possible voter fraud or intimidation.
1 - 888 - 775 - 8117. IF you even SUSPECT this is happening, PLEASE call for their free advice. DOCUMENT AND FILM EVERYTHING.
The truth about The Imam is that he considers himself the first American dictator. The Imam and his cohorts in Congress have legislated themselves the power of life and death over all Americans while exempting themselves from their DeathCare genocide.
Please give me an example of Republicans being "awfully concerned about what happens in people (sic) bedrooms". I hear this all the time but see no evidence of it. And being against gay marriage isn't a concern of what gays do in their bedrooms.
Sorry, I don't buy it. Hussain certainly never campaigned on these ideas either. If anything, he promised MORE government intervention...much more.
According to MSNBC and others, the dims are losing because they weren’t liberal enough.
Thanks for sharing this article and agree with her assessment.
During the Bush presidency, I told many people that I did not think he was conservative enough....and many of them laughed at me. I have always considered myself a Reagan Republican.
What's interesting, though, is that two years ago, The American People were completely and utterly inundated with news about how awful the economy was and how terrible the deficits were and how horrible the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were going.
This time around, the press is downplaying the crappy economy even though unemployment is twice what it was two years ago. They are downplaying the skyrocketing deficits even though they are twice what they were under President Bush. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Still no noticeable improvement but what's missing is the daily body counts provided by the media.
So, yeah, go figure. The supposed "fixes" we voted for in '08 haven't materialized and STILL we're not happy.
The only thing that's becoming more and more clear in people's minds is the lying, manipulation and outright scheming taking place by the Corrupt Bastards in the media.
It took a while, but we caught on to you.
So, in the famous words of erstwhile Professional Leftists like the RAT Governor of Rhode Island and media mogul Jon Stewart, "Shove it, dudes."
Re “fiscally conservative but socially liberal”:
I think there’s a governing majority in them thar hills...
But such smaller governement would be anathema to either party. Hence the battle lines drawn where they are: on a variety of largely peripheral hot button issues.
Better to draw attention away from the real issue of liberty.
------------------------------------
And then there's the train wreck economy to keep in mind also.
The Rats are shovel-ready for the dust bin of history.
The defining “social issue” is not what people do in their bedrooms; it is abortion. There is a huge divide between people who think a fetus is a choice and those who think it is a baby.
I'm associated with many thousands of Independents across the land. And we're all 100% personhood pro-life, pro-natural family, peace through strength, constitutionalist, Reaganite conservatives.
Because we know that as independent as we are, we are not independent of America's founding principles, and that we are utterly dependent on God.
Unlike this writer.
“There is a huge divide between people who think a fetus is a choice and those who think it is a baby.”
Yes, there is. But there’s also a huge divided between those who want immigration enforcement or not, or legal drugs or not, or prayer in the schools or not.
It all depends what’s important to you.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c60bf53ef013488a2c2e7970c-pi
It’s, well, a space hog, but it is funny.
From Pam over @ Atlas Shrugs
The keyword to defeat the left is
“defining”.
Make them DEFINE the terms they use.
What do you mean by “social issues”?
What do you mean by “what people do in their bedrooms”?
What do you mean by “progressive”?
Most don’t WANT to define what they mean,
because it would expose the dark side of their beliefs.
On a more direct note - if we were truly “fiscally conservative” with no programs that alleviated the consequences for immoral choices,
“social issues” would regulate themselves.
Right on. I always hear that from the lefties but they can never actually show any evidence of it. It’s another lib lie like the lie that claims that the RATs brought about civil rights for blacks. All propaganda.
Many social liberals want the government (that is, us taxpayers) to FUND abortion and embryonic stem cell research. We want to be able to send our kids to private religious schools -we don’t want to force these schools on anyone else - but they want us to subsidize secular public schools for their kids.
The swing voters who decide elections think it is a baby, but "with exceptions".
You won’t care about the economy if you’re in a hospice center awaiting death after having been denied life-saving health care by some political hack.
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