The Devils We Know

March 27, 2012 by Ben Crystal

UPI

In 2008, the Republicans offered Senator John McCain in retort to the insult which is Obama.

Let me warn you right now: If the idea of President Barack Hussein Obama continuing his occupation of the Oval Office past next January will ruin your day, click through to the Personal Liberty Digest’s™ cheerfully presented tips on health and finance. They’re entirely worthwhile expert opinions and what’s more—they’re free.

Meanwhile, those of you who continue perusing this piece must confront this premise: barring a miraculous removal of Republican heads from Republican posteriors, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is going to win the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Extremely well-capitalized (as opposed to well-versed, well-prepared or well-vetted), Romney will then set about introducing his Vice Presidential nominee to the Nation while engaging Obama in combat. But I fear Romney will be unable to reassure voters who are increasingly hungry for respite from the unrelenting disaster which is the Obama Presidency. In an effort to counter Obama’s far-flung big-state liberalism, the GOP has selected as its standard-bearer a big state liberal; albeit a less awkwardly gangly one with better hair.

Obama is dominated by billionaire vermin such as George Soros and Warren Buffett. If he was any more beholden to the union thugs, Richard Trumka would be the Secretary of Labor. And his ties to Wall Street banksters like Goldman Sachs are stitched tighter than a pop singer’s hair extensions. Meanwhile, the names on Romney’s best friends list might be different, but they were all dressed by the same tailor.

In 2008, a majority of American voters swallowed the empty, race-baiting hype surrounding a little-known but reasonably polished-seeming Senator from Illinois. Following a campaign long on nonspecific catchphrases and overt support from the corporate media, Obama stepped into the Oval Office and immediately set about rearranging the national furniture. By 2010, the same American voters, fully aware of the spectacular mistake they made in electing Obama, set about correcting that mistake at the polls. And ideologically welded to Obama, Democrats from Capitol Hill to small-town mayors’ offices packed up their family photos, raided the supply closet for one last box of toner cartridges and headed home. Even the Democrats who managed to keep their paws on their offices had to fight tooth and nail to do it.

In 2008, the Republicans offered Senator John McCain in retort to the insult which is Obama. Despite slight mitigation in the form of Governor Sarah Palin’s presence on the ticket, the Republicans failed to offer anything more than Obama-lite, and the electorate responded with the same lack of enthusiasm the Republicans displayed in choosing McCain in the first place. By 2010, the GOP seemed to have developed an understanding of the disdain Americans show toward those who threaten liberty in the name of some twisted and/or stupid concept of the greater good. Unfortunately, the lesson clearly didn’t stick.

Indeed, when one factors in no fewer than four highly questionable primary or caucus outcomes, the Republican establishment is showing signs of not only forgetting what they learned at electoral politics class, but cribbing from the Democrats’ textbooks. Behind Romney in an increasingly suspect Republican race for the nomination lurks the unsettling Rick Santorum (“Republicans, I think to our credit, have sort of morphed away from the Goldwater idea that really government just needs to be smaller..”) and the unpalatable Newt Gingrich. Congressman Ron Paul, who is clearly the only candidate remaining who considers the preservation of true Constitutional liberties a matter of absolute honor, has been shut out of the spotlight thanks to a political establishment which—from the White House to Speaker John Boehner’s office—hopes that if they wish upon a star, he’ll go away. Short of that, they’ll behave like ACORN volunteers “community organizing” their desired outcome.

The odds of Paul surviving through a brokered convention are worse than the odds ofMSNBC hiring a primetime mouthpiece who isn’t struggling with a serious personality disorder. And a third-party run would simply relegate Paul to the role of Ross Perot, version 2.0. Simply put: Mitt Romney is probably going to win the nomination; and he will probably select a running mate who is almost as exciting as one of those annoying precinct captains who thinks voting at the convention is the coolest thing he or she has done since that time they got their picture taken with the showgirls in Las Vegas. For those of you who have ever attended a major Republican gathering, you know precisely to whom I’m referring: the guy with campaign buttons dating back to Ford/Dole ’76 tacked to his lapel.

Therefore, I feel compelled to make a remark which may well shock you even more than my earlier prediction that Obama will likely be reelected this fall: so be it. If the Republican Party is content to react to Barack Obama’s almost virtually criminal arrogance by offering a more telegenic version of—well—Barack Obama, then they deserve to lose my vote… for starters. It’s entirely possible that the Republican establishment risks political oblivion in nominating a candidate who only edges Obama in the hair and wardrobe departments. Perhaps that’s a fate they’ve earned.

Conservatives have repeatedly been forced to hold their noses and cast ballots for candidates who are only marginally better than the shrieking liberals whom they oppose. As a result of our own excessive flexibility, we have unwittingly played a part in allowing an incremental shift in the Republican Party away from its conservative roots and toward the sort of monster-government espoused by the Democrats and their hordes of dependent minions.

I am no longer willing to select the lesser of two evils on Election Day. I will acknowledge that casting a third party ballot carries an inherent gamble: the reelection of Barack Obama. But given the Republicans’ intransigence in moving toward the true conservatism demanded by the people, they have hardly earned the right to replace him. Presuming we can survive four more years of “the madness of King Barack,” another four years of Democrats in the White House might finally wake us all up to the fact that we can do much, much better.

-Ben Crystal