Stopping the Train Wreck

There are many people responsible for the actions and state of the government of the United States in the last year, capped by the passing of the health care bill. However there is one person who is most responsible, and that person is George W. Bush. By his costly and pointless obsessive crusades in Iraq and post-Tora Bora Afghanistan, by his expansion of government, by his deficits and bailouts, by his apparent indifference to the need to preserve political capital, by his general failure to convince the American people that he knew what he was doing, he made the present political situation in Washington possible. It is said in his favor that he protected the nation from another attack, and that is true. However that does not come close to offsetting his failures. He opened the door for those now in power, and there is nothing that Osama bin Laden could have done to this country to damage it as lastingly and profoundly as they are now doing or trying to do.

We have the worst government in thirty years. Barack Obama may or may not be anti-American by conscious conviction, but he gives clear evidence of being so by deep emotional inclination. (Indeed he manages to exemplify simultaneously two of the most common stereotypes of the contemporary anti-American – the smug, resentful academician and the chronically offended, self-proclaimed victim.) His domestic policies are generally anti-growth, statist, hostile to personal liberty and responsibility, inflationist, and power grabbing. His foreign policy is weak, ineffective, insulting to friends, and encouraging to enemies. He seems the nearly perfect avatar of Jimmy Carter. The leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives are equally bad and probably more corrupt.

So it is imperative to elect a Republican majority in the House and to reach or approach a majority in the Senate this November. This is so not because the Republicans are going to be competent or good, but because the present gang of Democrats is execrably bad. The campaign should not be based on divisive social issues nor on a return to something like Bush’s Nixon as an alternative to Obama’s Carter. It needs to be focused on freedom, shrinking government , cutting deficits and spending, actual Americanism, the national interest, and creating the conditions for economic growth. It is time to create a coalition and to welcome anyone who will join it. I would prefer that the nation elect Republicans who are thoughtful, liberally minded, rational, and consistently disposed toward liberty. However if it comes to it, I will cheerfully accept a gaggle of tub thumping creationists or black helicopter boys so long as they help put a stop to what Obama and the leftists are doing to this country. It is time for all of us who care about keeping this a free, safe, and prosperous country to hang together, putting our differences aside, so that we can save the situation. We can argue those differences after we stop the train wreck.