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Wanted: Grownups
Townhall.com ^ | September 26, 2014 | Erick Erickson

Posted on 09/26/2014 1:20:04 AM PDT by Kaslin

The United States had a cold war to win against the Soviet Union. For several decades, students were taught to dive under their desks should a nuclear bomb go off. People built bomb shelters. Americans got so tired of the containment strategy, they took a gamble on a guy from California whose strategy was simple: "We win. They lose."

President Reagan did win the Cold War. His Vice President, George H. W. Bush, swept into office promising to finish what Reagan started. The Berlin Wall fell. Then a threat sparked in the Middle East. Bush stormed into Iraq, freed Kuwait and saw approval ratings in the 90s. Then his ratings came tumbling down when the recession started and when people realized he was not Ronald Reagan.

Americans decided they no longer needed grownups to keep them safe. We won. The threats were neutralized. Bill Clinton and Al Gore became the faces of a younger post-Cold War America. Clinton may have been a philanderer who did not inhale, but he was laid back, cool, and the nation was entitled to finally relax. So we did.

Islamic radicals attacked the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, several of our embassies and the USS Cole -- the nation started to sense we needed to be more grown up again. The good times were over. A slight majority was willing to go with Al Gore, but he lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush, whose campaign slogan was "help is on the way."

Within eight months of his inauguration, more Islamic radicals brought down the World Trade Center. Serious times were back. Bush promised to keep the country safe, and the nation stuck with him in 2004. But by 2006, a war-weary nation decided to make a change. In 2008, the Republicans promised more war, and the Democrats offered hope and change between Greek columns.

Barack Obama promised that, with his election, the world would begin to heal and the oceans recede. In the first two years of his administration, when Democrats controlled everything, all he and his party accomplished was destroying the American health care system that had been the envy of the world.

Now they tell us the oceans are still rising and we are all going to die, if not by government death panel, then by hurricane.

Meanwhile, around the world, nearly seven decades of peace are starting to crumble. China is rattling its sabers. Russia has taken Crimea, invaded Ukraine, and is threatening the Baltic nations. Turkey is drifting away from its secular state. Iran is on the rise. Israel is threatened. Commercial airliners are missing from Libya. Now ISIS is chopping off heads throughout the greater Middle East.

Americans are starting to long for adults again. They want someone to tell the president that he has homework to do and cannot go back out to the golf course this afternoon. Polling suggests the public still does not care for Republicans, but the public is willing to cast its lot with the GOP if only to hold the president accountable.

In fact, Republicans never win national elections on their domestic politics. Tightening belts, cutting taxes, and cutting government in and of themselves sound like buzz kills. But getting government off the back of the people, sealing the border and keeping us safe are what grownups do.

Moms in Middle America are worried. For the first time in our history, they do not think their children will be better off than they were. That bothers them. They are worried about their jobs, their husbands' jobs, their children's education and their safety. They see a president on a golf course and a Washington establishment peddling hope while picking the American carcass clean.

A sense of fatality has set in on the public consciousness. Americans want someone who does not just say they believe in the greatness of America, but actually believes it. Those people do not exist in high number in Washington. Americans know the answers will not come from there. Americans want grownups back in charge and, right now, it looks more like Republicans are grownups, even if they are not the popular kids.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Russia
KEYWORDS: 0bama; china; republicans; ronaldreagan; unitedstates

1 posted on 09/26/2014 1:20:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

There are no “grownups” in the democrat party.... Not even one.


2 posted on 09/26/2014 1:36:26 AM PDT by Bullish (You ever notice that liberalism really just amounts to anti-morality?)
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To: Bullish

Correct, there are only imbeciles


3 posted on 09/26/2014 1:42:31 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin
People built bomb shelters. Americans got so tired of the containment strategy, they took a gamble on a guy from California whose strategy was simple: "We win. They lose."

The boy king from Kenya/Indonesia/Hawaii/Chicago has an equally simple strategy: "They win. We lose."

4 posted on 09/26/2014 1:51:13 AM PDT by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Kaslin

As a country we are experiencing mass cognitive dissonance. People want the federal government to address more of their individual desires while at the same time feeling that the government is interfering in their lives too much. The people want a more efficient legislative branch of government to pass more oppressive laws and then complain the government is interfering in their lives too much.


5 posted on 09/26/2014 2:48:47 AM PDT by monocle
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To: Kaslin

So where are these grownups of which he speaks?
Every poll I see has all these races within a few points of each other,so where is this move being demonstrated?
The republicans with leaders like McConnell and the cry baby,Boehner,are pathetic.
Now I read That dope Romney is going to run again,please,this story is just wishful thinking with no basis in reality,the country is just playing out its string.


6 posted on 09/26/2014 3:38:58 AM PDT by ballplayer
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To: Kaslin
>"the public is willing to cast its lot with the GOP if only to hold the president accountable. "

Fat chance. They fold faster than Superman on laundry day.

They got theirs, screw you.

7 posted on 09/26/2014 4:23:10 AM PDT by rawcatslyentist (Jeremiah 50:32 "The arrogant one will stumble and fall ; / ?)
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To: Kaslin
Americans want grownups back in charge and, right now, it looks more like Republicans are grownups, even if they are not the popular kids.

IMHO, Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin could provide the things Americans are looking for. There are others as well, but not as well known as Ted and Sarah.

8 posted on 09/26/2014 4:41:03 AM PDT by upchuck (It's a shame nobama truly doesn't care about any of this. Our country, our future, he doesn't care.)
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To: Kaslin
There are few Republican grownups in that there are few who wish to return the country to health and prosperity. Most are dependents of the Democrat Party and will continue Democrat domestic policies. They will continue and expand Obamacare and will allow the EPA to continue its drive to clip and curtail energy and raise energy costs for the middle class.

While Republicans will probably buy some respite from the foreign dangers, they will allow- some will continue to promote- economic disintegration at home so the economic base for America as the peacekeeper of the world and guarantor of the sea lanes will disappear. We will not be able to support the military that we must have in order to continue in prosperity.

History suggests strongly that there is no maintaining stasis for an empire and yes America is an Empire. It cannot opt out of its role without commencing a rapid decline. Once the middle class has sunk into the welfare and subsistence class there is no more prosperity. It will not come back again.

A change is conceivable. We know how it could happen if only the right things were done. It won't. The civil war that would occur would more likely result in a strong man or cabal at the top of a classic tyranny that will no have the resources for national resurgence and will suck out the last resources of the nation trying to survive against Islam and Russia and China and Communism and whatever other forces of evil arise.

9 posted on 09/26/2014 5:39:59 AM PDT by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson ONLINE http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/)
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To: Pollster1

I have become convinced he is an Indonesian citizen by birth and has never had American citizenship other than by assertion. The Constitution does not support citizenship by assertion.


10 posted on 09/26/2014 5:42:29 AM PDT by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson ONLINE http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/)
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To: Kaslin

Gore had a plurality in 2000, not a majority, of the popular vote.


11 posted on 09/26/2014 5:43:23 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: upchuck
Palin and Cruz as P and VP- in either order- would be wonderful but they would have the rest of the Republican Party fighting them or rather doing a "passive-aggressive" thing with them and would have less success reducing the bureaucracy than Reagan had.

Without wholesale elimination of bureaus and departments and 75-90% of the government personnel and elimination of transfer payments there is no long term improvement or even more than a very brief pause in the economic and military decline.

12 posted on 09/26/2014 5:48:19 AM PDT by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson ONLINE http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/)
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To: upchuck
IMHO, Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin could provide the things Americans are looking for. There are others as well, but not as well known as Ted and Sarah.

I would add Allen West to that short list.

13 posted on 09/26/2014 6:30:18 AM PDT by The Duke
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To: arthurus

I am not convinced that the drug-addled communist baby in our White House is the same baby reported to have been born in Hawaii 54 years ago. It’s not unusual to assume the identity of a dead person - that’s the easiest way to create a durable false ID - and that sort of fraud seems entirely in character for someone who has never told the truth in his contrived professional career.


14 posted on 09/26/2014 8:46:41 AM PDT by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Pollster1

He didn’t have to assume a dead baby’s ID. His confederates- the Democrats and Communists and leftists in general- have hidden and covered up all records that pertain, including the births of his children and the actual identity and sex of his “wife.” If there are no records one claim any damned thing he wants, so long as one is mostly consistent.


15 posted on 09/26/2014 9:07:18 AM PDT by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson ONLINE http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/)
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To: arthurus

Even his assumed SS# isn’t NBC eligible either!


16 posted on 09/28/2014 5:27:50 AM PDT by rawcatslyentist (Jeremiah 50:32 "The arrogant one will stumble and fall ; / ?)
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