“What we now have is tyranny by apathy, tyranny by chicanery and corruption of our election process, a tyranny of dark money, and a tyranny of incompetence by the opposition party” (Octopus).My purpose here is to embellish upon an earlier comment that originally appeared under this post. How can you expect voters to support a candidate who acts ashamed of his or her own party! This year, all too many Democrats distanced themselves from President Obama. If I were an undecided voter, I would have a hard time finding good reasons to vote for any person who claimed to be running as a Democrat - yet failed to support the policies of party and president. These milquetoast toadies even went out of their way to avoid campaign appearances with the POTUS.
The most hypocritical and cowardly of all was Alison Grimes who embarrassed herself by tap dancing around this question: “Did you vote for the president in 2012?” Her evasive and lame reply failed the test of courage and leadership.
By all accounts, KYNECT, the Kentucky Healthcare Exchange, has been one of the most successful rollouts of ObamaCare in the nation and popular among Kentuckians; yet Grimes missed a golden opportunity to remind voters that KYNECT is a state healthcare insurance exchange made possible under ObamaCare. Even her opponent, Mitch “Blobfish” McConnell, extolled the virtues of KYNECT while vowing to repeal ObamaCare; yet Grimes missed this opportunity to make her opponent appear petty and foolish.
Speaking of political malpractice, no Democratic candidate took any Republican to task for budget cutbacks at the NIH or CDC that delayed development of an Ebola vaccine. Nor did any Democratic candidate cite new economic data that showed record improvements in GDP and employment. According to press accounts, at least two Democratic Senate candidates petitioned the president to delay executive action on immigration reform until after the election - a misstep that kept Hispanic voters away from the polls and cost the Democrats crucial votes in key states.
Not just political malpractice, but criminal cowardice! When you run and hide from the very same principles and policies you are supposed to espouse, then you deserve to lose.
"If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?" It appears those cowardly Democrats never read this.
ReplyDeleteWhen you run away from your own beliefs, who you are,then don't be surprised when the people you hope to lead, run away from you, too.
Perhaps they - and notice I say they and not we - have come to believe they are what the bastard Republican criminals say they are.
ReplyDeleteLast night I heard an ad on CNN calling for Tea Party Patriots to impeach the "tyrant" Obama for his crimes. I'm thinking of renouncing my citizenship if these tea traitors get away with shutting down the government again while Putin is playing games with nuclear bomber fleets off the coast and nuclear submarines practicing missile launches in range of our major cities. I don't use the word traitor lightly.
And where are the Democrats? Busy alienating moderates and fighting with themselves and proving how incapable they are.
In this election, the Democrats certainly acted like dimwits and dunderheads, and here is the tragedy of their cowardice:
ReplyDeleteThe credo of contest versus the credo of conquest
In a distant galaxy not long ago, politics was approached as a “contest” where the rules of engagement were embodied in this poem:
"For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes - not that you won or lost -
But how you played the Game."
(Alumnus Football by Grantland Rice)
You may consider me quaint and naïve – and bit old fashioned - but these were the values of my upbringing; and I still believe in the credo of honesty, integrity, good sportsmanship, and fair play. Somewhere along the way, we lost our way as the credo changed to this:
“Winning isn't everything," [followed a long pause] "it's the only thing!" (spoken by UCLA Bruins coach Red Sanders).
Honesty, integrity, and fair play no longer matter as long as you “win” by any means necessary. Consider me quaint and naïve, but politics is NOT football; and the politics of “my-way-or-the-highway” and “winner-take-all” is no way to run our public affairs. All citizens, regardless of background or means, are contestants in this grand experiment called “democracy;” and no citizen deserves to be disenfranchised by a credo of “conquest” - the politics of bullying, intimidation, obstruction, chicanery, deception, dark money ... or cowardice in the face of bullying, intimidation, obstruction, chicanery, deception, and dark money.
Although my friends of different partisan persuasion may disagree on many issues, at least we share this “American” heritage in common:
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” asked Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia.
“A republic, if you can keep it,” replied Ben Franklin.
Question of the day: Can we keep it ... or will we let extremism, hyper-partisanship, and the politics of mutual self-destruction ruin it?