Last Tuesday night, Mitt Romney conceded the Presidential
election to Barack Obama. Obama, ever
the snide, self-serving narcissist he is, was quick to praise himself and promise
even more of the policies which nearly bankrupted America in his first term.
This was a strange election.
Not the GOP losing, but the fact that Romney and his supporters were
blind-sided. In 2008, most Republicans
saw it coming but this year most Republicans genuinely believed Romney would
win. And there was reason to believe as
well, with most national polls showing Romney ahead until the last few days
before the election. Exactly what
happened to give Obama a second term will be examined and discussed for quite some
time. Either the national polls were
wrong until the very end, literally millions of voters changed their mind in a
matter of days for no significant cause, or something else happened that defies
easy explanation. The sneering derision
from the Left, that America is leaving the GOP behind, is a malicious lie, but
something happened.
One thing that does annoy me, though, is the character of
the election. Obama’s job performance
was so abysmal that he certainly could not be honest about his record and win
re-election, but there is also no question that Obama lied, pretty much
throughout the election campaign, about what Mitt Romney stood for and what he
meant to do. My wife is Asian and some
of my friends are Hispanic, and they noted that a lot of TV and radio ads in
non-English language which claimed outrageous lies, like Romney wanting to
abolish Medicare or defund school programs for at-risk children, that he wanted
to deport all immigrants or give billions in tax cuts just to rich people. There’s no justification for such outrageous
behavior, even if Obama wants to hide behind the canard that the PACs putting
out those ads did not represent his position.
The United States is healthiest when political debate is
lively and substantive. Demonizing the
opinions and beliefs of half a hundred million voters just so you can win an
election is not merely unethical, it damages the framework for effective decision-making,
and plays all too often into the hands of demagogues. If President Obama wants to establish a
legacy of honor and to build genuine accomplishments, he better back off his
hate speech and start listening to other opinions besides his own.
