Defining the New Electorate - What It Requires To Preserve the American Way

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Nov 6, 2012 at 17:03

Not normally wanting to engage in straight political exchanges, for I am of the opinion: to each his own, as long as there is not the imposition of one view being 'more right' than another. But this previous post is curious since I am also a baby boomer from democratic, even latent progressive roots; and yet as I was 'processed' through one of more left leaning environments in schooling and contemporary thinking in higher education in California, these things prompted more questions than the rationale being taught could answer to my satisfaction. It did not get any better while in Colorado.

Politics came intrusively into my realm of awareness when adults were trying to explain the Cuban missile crisis with a wary and paranoid look in their eyes. Those eyes filled with tears as teachers could hardly restrain their grief at the news of the Kennedy assassination. Viet Nam loomed in the fluttering shadows of the night time TV news; and this did not lose its momentum as time passed and it was close to my turn to make a defining decision about life and the future. Circumstances out of my control eventually made that decision for me and I remained a civilian. Some contemporaries and family were not so fortunate.

Remaining independent from a political perspective for much, if not all my early life, this shifted to the extent that while I did not agree too much with any of the political proclivities of many with whom I associated, I was struck with the independent spirit exhibited by Ronald Reagan and began an exploration of why he seemed to me to be different, even from many mainstream republicans – the different drummer sort of thing.

That having been said, being conservative and being republican started to have symptoms of duplicity and this showed itself more and more as the distinctions between republican and democrat were polarized around identifying issues, but the methodologies of achieving political goals were not all that distinguishable. So my conservative leanings needed redefinition that allowed for the return to the independent mind set. Becoming more and more comfortable with allowing a Biblical worldview to enter in and provide a means to discern the fallacies of either party's political scheming helped go a long way to seeing just how both sides are culpable for this country's vacillation from pure Constitutional governance. Make no mistake: the Libertarian perspective gets no high marks from me either.

This election is one that will distinguish America from its past, one way or the other. Candidate Obama was successful in the respect that he told Americans just exactly what he was about, of his proclivities towards Marxist/socialist tendencies and his desire to transform America into a vision he associates with his father's view of America; and people were either mesmerized with the self-promoting view of how he would get the socialist agenda past the normal restrains of Constitutional law; or was able to appeal to those who were disgusted with how the democratically challenged congress could be so easily manipulated by democrats and republican who were less concerned about America than their self-promotional plans of what they could get from America.

To be sure, September 11, 2001 was a watershed moment, one that in some sectors will never be allowed to be forgotten; and yet the message that was supposed to be learned was forgotten. Almost within a month all that it meant to be an American was no longer under the protection of the Constitution, but its proposed replacement in news laws and regulations were allowed to sweep over the nation because the perception was that which was already law was now considered inadequate. It was forgotten how we suffered through the Civil War, World Wars One and Two and we were brought out of those with a renewed strength and determination, only to have it softened and diminished by allying ourselves with the lesser mentalities and ideologies that formed the United Nations and the global agenda that a global community was a stronger community.

What this meant to the voter in America was the obfuscation of a reality that was encompassing the world; all at the same time the fortunes of the world were in a different transformation because of what was thought to be a minor shift in the fortunes of the Middle East – the rebirth of Israel. This became the center of the attention of global politics. It also started a redefinition of left of center/right of center politics.

This latest election does have the economics of a struggling nation as a centerpiece of the national issues, but these are locked together with the international issues that America has been involved in for around forty-five years; all of it now coming to a culmination. President Reagan's major offensive against the Soviet Union was that he borrowed and bought the military strength he thought necessary to topple that socialist entity; and he was proven right. If America continues in its path to follow Candidate Obama into a more progressive Socialist entity, guess what will happen to America.

By 2016, Candidate Obama, if given the chance, will have made the master stroke against America, countering everything that Reagan did: so that when he goes off into the sunset he will not care about America anymore because there will be nothing left for him to care about. By this time, the Middle East will have begun its implosion and there will little strength left in America to do anything more than what was done in Libya.

Does this mean there are better chances to turn things around, to be ready for what happens in the Middle East, if Gov. Romney becomes president? There are no guarantees; but the biographies of each of the candidates tell compelling stories about who was trained in the American way of life and who was not. If for no other reason than that, one can tell in this case that the republican would have a better view of life in America that at one time provided the strength to master the struggles of things like World War's One and Two; and come out on top. The less than compelling actions of Afghanistan and the responses to the Arab uprisings bring no such confidence. Couple that with out-of-control budget-less spending that provides less and less resources for the upcoming need for defense and it becomes apparent that what we have and what we might get is easily seen- and this time it is the republican that seems to have a better vision. Now all we need to do is get Wall Street and the banks out of politics.

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