19 months and it comes down to this. I am currently watching Fox news and the electoral count stands Obama 207 and McCain 129 with no path to victory left for the McCain camp. Obama will become the 44th president of the United States and the first radical Marxist ever elected to the U.S. presidency and this will be Bush's legacy. This lies at the foot of President George W. Bush. As the old saying goes – "The buck stops here." No other president has done so much to squander his earlier successes and damage the Republican brand. – On the bright side it doesn't appear there will be a 60 seat filibuster proof Senate.
On the downside, Barack Obama appears to be winning in an electoral landslide, and he will be free to govern as he wishes. Will this mandate cause Obama's arrogance to surface and doom us like it did with Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
It didn't matter that Obama openly advocated socialism. It didn't matter that Obama's string of relationships would only be found in the inner-circle of the Cosa Nostra. It didn't matter that Obama attended a church where the preacher spewed anti-American hatred for twenty years and taught liberation theology. The hatred for Bush was so strong, that the electorate may have voted for Bill Ayers himself had he run.
This now needs to be time for a lot of soul searching on the part of the Republicans. It should be a time where we return to our conservative principles and not cow tow to Democratic pressures. We need to weed out the RINOS (Republicans in Name Only). Of course, the biggest rino of all is John McCain. Reagan conservatism still works. And now the torch will be handed to Sarah Palin.
We need a voice to articulate the message, and we have not been very good at it. Plus a few Hispanics and a few African-Americans in the convention wouldn't hurt either. I do not know who set up the convention for the Republicans, but it was like looking through a time machine of 50 years ago into an all white America.
But then there were the blunders of McCain. He never wanted to bring up any of the relationships of Obama until forced to even though he had every reason to do so. And for some idiotic reason he thought Jeremiah Wright was off limits. He stopped his campaign to go to Washington to fight against the bailout bill, but accomplished nothing. He came back in support of the same bill that Bush and Obama supported. If he had gone with the Republican version, he would have separated himself from Bush and also Obama, but he did not. He cloistered Sarah Palin instead of letting her get out there and be herself. That was a huge mistake. She made errors but nowhere near the errors Biden made, and it was her first time on national stage, plus she is a quick study. One's world view is much more important than their experience especially when you compare the experience to a radical neophyte like Obama. But that was not all.
When Obama aired his 30 minute infomercial, McCain was offered a free 30 minute unedited interview on Fox News (which has a huge audience) and he declined the invitation. Instead he went on the David Letterman show which does not have near the audience of Fox News nor is it a serious format. In addition, Sarah Palin never went on the O'Reilly Factor when all the other candidates or VP candidates had, and they tried to get her. Fox News tried to be impartial when interviewing either side. Instead the McCain campaign would let her interview with Katie Couric and others in edited interviews that did not show her in the best light. McCain still never got over the fact the media just didn't like him anymore.
The debates also were not very good. These should have been places for McCain to shine, but he failed to articulate his message well, and even after he threw some good punches, he never countered Obama's answers. McCain never got angry at the people responsible for the financial mess. The third debate should have been his first, but who was watching anymore?
Of course, Obama ran a flawless campaign from the get go. The media whole heartedly supported him. Had the media gone after the relationships of Obama like they did Palin's background, maybe the result would have been different. McCain's campaign was better than I thought it would be because he did get down and dirty like he needed to, but he still made too many errors, and in this hostile environment, his campaign needed to be at least as good as Obama's and it wasn't.
France we are you.
It is my fervent prayer that Barack Obama works for the American people without his radical associations, and that he truly gains the wisdom and knowledge he needs to make this country a better place in which to live. His past does not suggest it, but there is still the hope.
Let's just hope Obama doesn't destroy the economy and Biden's prescient words do not come to pass, "Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking,"
