Political Crazyness

ldsgeek:

Lessons from the Iowa Caucus

Transcript:

Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government?

Can a man who essentially agrees with President Obama on all the key issues realistically become the Republican nominee for president? Tonight, the tale of the Iowa caucuses.

Happy New Year, America, from our Freedom Watch team to you and thanks for inviting us into your homes tonight. Regrettably the news is not all happy.

While we were on a Christmas break the President of the United States of America violated his oath to uphold the constitution by signing into a law a statute that purports to give him the authority to use the military to arrest Americans on American soil, and to confine those arrested to a jail in Cuba away from judges, juries, and lawyers for as long as the President wants.

This directly violates the Constitution’s guarantee of due process, which requires a jury trial before the government can take anyone’s life, liberty, or property.

Do you know anybody who voted for this hateful statute? I bet you do. It passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly. Only libertarians on the right and progressives on the left opposed it. All Republican candidates for their party’s nomination – except Ron Paul – support it.

The Republican candidates faced off against each other in the format of the now well-known (and somewhat mysterious) Iowa caucuses last night and the results were very interesting. There was effectively a tie for first place between Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Rick Santorum who each won 25% of the vote. Congressman Ron Paul won 22% of the vote and finished either second or third depending upon whether you think that an 8 vote difference – out of 125,000 votes cast – between Romney and Santorum is effectively a tie.

These two candidates actually struggle to find differences between each other. And they did so over personality and personal history. Both claim to be pro-life, yet Santorum once held his nose and voted to fund abortions and Romney once openly and gleefully endorsed them. Both like the idea of a government at home as a mechanism to do for people what they cannot do for themselves no matter what the Constitution says. And both want the government abroad to threaten other countries into conforming their behavior to what the U.S. expects of them.

In my view, the Santorum vote was a “flash in the pan” for the senator rejected by his home state. And the Romney vote was very troubling for him.

Mitt Romney is obviously the choice of the Republican establishment. Those are the folks who brought us TARP and “stimulus”, wars fought on credit cards, federal agents writing their own search warrants, and the federal government taking over education.

Mitt Romney believes in all these things, but here’s the crusher: so does President Obama. There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Name the topic on which the President has a real say and they agree.

Can the government mandate healthcare? “Yes” from both.

Should income taxes stay where they are on those who pay the most? “Yes” from both.

Can the President start a war on his own without a declaration of war from the Congress? “Yes” from both.

Can the President kill any American he wants? Incredibly, “yes” from both.

Oh, there is some difference in tone. One of them likes labor unions and the other one likes big business. But both love big government – a concept that was rejected by the 22% of Iowa Republicans who voted for Congressman Paul.

That’s the ideological argument against Mitt Romney. Everyone from John Bolton to Rush Limbaugh has said that Romney is simply no small-government conservative. So have 75% of Iowa Republicans.

Think about it. Governor Romney has been campaigning in Iowa since 2008. He’s spent more money there than any other candidate and he either tied or won “by a nose” to a former senator who had no organization and no cash. Governor Romney actually attracted a lower percentage of Iowa Republicans this year than he did four years ago. And in poll after poll 75% of Republicans nation-wide reject him.

So where does this leave us? It manifests what Freedom Watch and Tea Party Republicans have been saying for the past year:

There is a hunger in the land for a game-changer, and Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are not up to that.

There is a need in the country for a government that stays within the confines of the Constitution or we’ll all end up like the socialists in Europe. And Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are not up to that.

There is a rumbling in the countryside that the government should shrink and live within its means. And Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are not going to make that happen.

The race is getting tight and Michelle Bachmann is out. John Huntsman and Rick Perry will probably be out after New Hampshire.

Only one man remains faithful to the principles of free market and small government, to the Constitution and to personal freedom, to defending the nation without being the world’s police force. Only one. You know who he is.