BY CHRISTOPHER G. ADAMO – With less than a month to go before the November elections, a political Tsunami seems imminent. Despite Democrat denial of the overwhelming public rejection of the liberal agenda, evidence mounts daily suggesting that “We the People” fully intend to make their pro-America, anti-statist sentiments known on November 2.
Massive infusions of cash from leftist endowments, endless stumping by Barack Obama, and the incessant drumbeat of liberal media lapdogs notwithstanding, the combined authority of those innumerable small voices from “Tea Parties” during the past eighteen months has all-but drowned out the liberal “mainstream” spin. The commonly proffered viewpoint of only a few years ago, namely that the nation was deliberately and irreversibly shifting to left, is now in complete disrepute.
Few on the Republican side of the aisle, and virtually nobody among the Democrats really understood the defining factors which determined the outcome of the last two major elections. Nor did they have any interest in learning the truth. The advent of the Reid/Pelosi Congress in 2007, and the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 were construed to prove that statism, liberalism, and ultimately socialism were the cornerstones of the new America. Fiscal responsibility, traditional morality, conventional concepts of patriotism, and even the Constitution itself were mere relics of the past.
Yet it was not long after the advent of the leftist governing cabal that the common citizens began to make their fury and outrage known on the streets of the nation. The first “Tea Parties” were held on April 15, 2009, barely three months after the Obama inauguration. Despite attempts by the media and Democrats inside the Beltway to downplay their significance, these gatherings proved to be enormously popular among the grassroots, and widespread throughout the nation.
Subsequent events have been held throughout the nation, and on a grand scale in Washington D.C., on July 4 of last year, as well as September 12. Nor did the movement dissipate with the coming of 2010. On the contrary, its popularity as a means of expressing old-fashioned flag waving patriotism, while concurrently protesting the devastation being wrought on the United States by the political left, has only increased.
Contrary to the incessant predictions from the liberal punditry that they were nothing more than a passing fad, they have continued to grow phenomenally in size and scope since their inception in the spring of last year. The crowning event of this kind was held by talk radio icon Glenn Beck at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 of this year. Crowd estimates of possibly a half million clearly reflect a passionate resolve by the people of the heartland that they will not sit quietly by as their magnificent and beloved country is ravaged and destroyed by the twisted philosophies of the left. This is conservative America, roused from its slumbers and flexing its muscle.
Across the political aisle, things could not be more starkly contrasted. As Election Day approaches, the mood among Democrats is becoming decidedly grim. Though they are doggedly attempting to paste on confident faces in front of the cameras, the impending backlash against their arrogant and ham-fisted abuses of power during the last twenty months is weighing heavily on them. Promises of a statist utopia now ring as hollow as the prospect of economic bliss that was supposed to spring forth from the nearly two trillion dollars of TARP and “Stimulus” spending. Betting the future of the nation on failed economic theories, all they ultimately succeeded in accomplishing was to bankrupt the national treasury, while their rosy Keynesian prognostications failed to materialize. This was simply not how it was supposed to happen.
So now, in the eleventh hour, they revert to the old and vastly overused alarmism of former years. Once again we hear that if Republicans are elected, old people will be forced out onto the streets and left there to starve. But this time around, the wholly predictable and contrived hysteria does not seem to be working. America has had about as much of this compassionate socialism as it can stand. Somehow, with official unemployment levels edging towards the ten percent mark (and unofficially nearing twice that), the pursuit of fiscal responsibility and a renewed vibrancy in the economy fails to conjure up those former horror stories of an insensitive capitalist society that Democrats invoked so successfully once upon a time.
Nevertheless, those real Americans who are not and have never been enamored with the nanny state collectivism of Old Europe, need now more than ever to assert their values as an integral part of this battle for the future of the country. The present dismal condition of the nation is not ultimately a financial problem, but a moral one. And while the Republican “Pledge” portends a much needed infusion of fiscal responsibility where foolhardy spending reigned on both sides of the political aisle only a few years ago, it does not go nearly far enough to deal with the underlying causes of such highly corrupt and disgraceful behavior.
Merely repealing the legislative outrages of the past twenty months is simply not enough to restore the former greatness of America. Doing so, even if the effort is completely successful, would essentially only put the nation back to where it was in late 2008 and early 2009, philosophically and morally rudderless, and waiting for the next opportunistic leftist to try again. And since the second attempt at something new is often not nearly as scary as the first, the nation might not recoil as violently and resolutely as it did in response to the unconstitutional onslaught of Obamacare or any of the other formerly unthinkable tenets of the liberal agenda that have ensued since January of 2009.
Enormous havoc has already been wreaked upon this nation. But if conservatives can win as big in November as now seems likely, the American people will have a golden opportunity to truly reverse the disastrous present course. Ultimately, this year’s mid-term elections will mark a critical first step in the right direction.
Christopher G. Adamo has been active in Wyoming politics for many years. Contact information for Chris Adamo, and his archives, can be found at www.chrisadamo.com