As a Republican voter, I'm tired of seeing leading figures from the GOP engage in class warfare. Seems every day brings a "news" story of another member of the party elite or the presidential candidates themselves engaging in race or class warfare.
From the pack and the media lobbing race and class charged grenades at Mitt Romney to Romney's shots back to the pack to the media and the candidates obfuscating the real issues facing our society, the campaign has been hugely disappointing to voters interested in reversing America's rapid slide toward Eurosocialism. All the rancor and the name-calling have served to reinforce in the minds of Republican voters that issues and discussions of the numerous challenges and threats facing us have taken a backseat to this media driven cult of personality.
Instead of a race to the top, the media, with the acquiescence (or complicity) of the Republican party and the candidates, seem to be plumbing the depths to find the lowest common denominator. Whatever the goals of the GOP and the media for this election cycle, they seem to be antithetical to the hopes and aspirations of Americans everywhere. Sure, we want to see Obama limited to one term, but merely replacing a president is but a small part of the changes that must take place if America is to confront the crises and challenges before us.
If one I were to describe the GOP field, I couldn't be much more complimentary to them than I could to Obama. In Romney we have a big-government statist and moderate flip-flopper on global warming, abortion, gay rights, who ran for Senate to the left of Senator Edward Kennedy. His claims to fame are saving the winter games in Salt Lake City and instituting the Massachussetts model for Obamacare. Gingrich is a weird mix of Third-Way globalism, grandiose notions and class warfare, with global warmism for good measure. Ron Paul is simply untenable. And Santorum is occasionally intemperate and never seems too far removed from the rhetoric and small ideas of the modern Washington political class.
The Obama years have been a disaster for this nation. The 2010 congressional elections did nothing to reverse, or even slow the radical socialist agenda from Obama's first two years of democrat control of the executive and legislative branches. The presidential campaign has done nothing to clarify the situation. Media outlets right, center, and left, are jockeying for influence and the Republican candidates are playing along. The GOP elite are advising nothing more than a soft version of the left's class warfare.
Jeb Bush says a kinder, gentler campaign and special outreach to the Latino population in Florida is key to electoral success there. Allen West says black outreach is the key. The GOP candidates are hawking strategies lifted straight from the Obama playbook based on wealth-envy, class warfare and division along racial and ethnic lines. They should be aware that the only thing this pandering will accomplish is more division.
Pretty soon there won't be a Republican or conservative base left, and Obama will be the shoo-in that he hopes to be. Rhetorical though it may be, this class and race warfare is a lousy substitute for solid conservative ideas and ideals and policy solutions. At its end, all this infighting is as damaging as the real-life policies of the Obama administration. And will have the same outcome.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when there's very little hope and even less change...
