On What is at Stake

We are now four weeks out from the election.  Considering everything that has happened in the past month, let alone the past year and half, I rather wish there wasn't another four weeks.

So, as the day looms ever closer, the question is, what is at stake?

I believe the best way to answer this question is to take a look at the past four years.

Do we want another four years of a stagnant economy, where the norm for unemployment is 8%, millions are out of the workforce and millions more are settling for jobs well below their capabilities?

Do we want four more years of swelling food stamp rolls and poverty rates, as people, who were once forging ahead in life, suddenly fall back as the economy fails to recover for years and years?

Do we want four new years of an administration encouraging people to go on entitlements?

Do we desire another four years of $1 trillion+ deficits for years to come?  Where the administration, almost as a bad joke, presents ten-year budget proposals that increase the national debt by nearly the same year after year?  Do we want an administration that will not take its profligate spending seriously, doesn't even care to know the numbers and pass that spending down to the young, to people of my generation on, to deal with and collapse under?

Do we need four years of an administration that continues to look at the growing entitlement crisis, shrug its shoulders and say, "Nah, I don't wanna deal with it."?  Must we endure an administration which, by creating a vast new bureaucracy and a massive entitlement, has proven it neither sees the looming cliff of entitlement spending nor the effects of an entitlement society in Europe?

Do we deserve four more years of an administration that recklessly throws money at companies it likes and demonizes those it does not?  An administration that ignores the failures of those companies, all the while calling them our future? 
 
Do we want another four years of an administration that rams legislation through on purely party line votes?  Legislation that radically transforms the private sector in ways the government should have no power to?  Moreover, do we want an administration that ignores congress at will to wage secret wars in foreign nations and enact rules and regulations that the Constitution provides no authority for?

Do we want four more years of an administration that "spikes the football" continually about lone successes, but continues to ignore ongoing threats?  Do we want a White House that goes so far as to allow those threats to do us harm, then do nothing about them?  Even worse, do we desire an administration that will lie to the American people about the truth and attempt to cover up their own lies weeks later?

Do we need a president who, for another four years, believe he's a celebrity?  Should the man in the White House be more interested in fundraising, golfing and hobnobbing with celebrities?  Or should he instead be spending more time in his office, ready to deal with the nation's crises and meeting with foreign leaders?

Do we want a president who absolutely refuses to take responsibility for his policy failures?  Do we want a president who, instead of changing course, desires to spend more on those failures?

Do we tolerate a president who desires to divide us, the American people, along lines of race, class and gender?  Whose mere existence encourages people to call all who oppose him racists?  Who says that the rich are the cause of all of our ills, no matter how much their success benefits us all?  Who claims that his opponents hate women and minorities, despite no real evidence?

I don't think we do.


I believe this, is what is at stake in this election.  If you are willing to accept all that I mentioned above as an acceptable situation, then by all means, vote to re-elect the president.  If you think that we, as a people, can do better, then vote to remove this president from the White House.

To see the words I believe President Obama should be saying to the American people, see this article by David Limbaugh.