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Crazy me. I always thought the best way to get elected president would be to align oneself with the overwhelming majority of the American public on critical issues. Apparently both candidates see it differently. How out of touch are Barack Obama and John McCain? Consider just two issues where they are at complete loggerheads with most Americans:
1. Illegal immigration. What most Americans want is crystal clear: border enforcement first, everything else second.
What both Obama and McCain want: another incarnation of the “reform” Congress failed to foist on America last year. Another round of obfuscation, double-talk and browbeating designed to obscure the fact that Congressional vote-whoring and big-business wage-busting are the primary motivations behind the attempt to legalize 12-20 million border-busters–and their extended families.
2. A rational energy package. What most Americans want: not to go broke filling up a gas tank. Not to underwrite thugs, jihadists and other assorted scumbags with trillions of dollars of wealth transfer in order to protect the caribou. Not to watch the Cubans and Chinese drill for oil off our coastlines while they remain off limits to American companies. Not to pretend that “green” energy is “just around the corner.”
What McCain and Obama want: to “save” the planet from global warming even if it destroys the economy–and even if it won’t do anything remotely significant to reduce global temperatures. To institute one of the greatest expansions of federal power in American history under the facade of “cap and trade.” To continue characterizing those who provide us with energy as “profiteers” and those who question reality of global warming as “deniers.”
Such a disconnect with the American people on two vital issues raises a troubling question: are John McCain and Barack Obama merely arrogant, or representative of a paradigm shift in American governance in which the will of the majority can be summarily dismissed? Anyone with half a brain knows that Americans are furious with Congress for one over-arching reason: our wishes are being ignored.
There are those who will say that such dismissals of the majority represent genuine leadership. In some cases that is correct. But when does genuine leadership become arrogant paternalism? How about when both parties and their presidential standard-bearers are willing to mortgage the future of the country and ignore the will of the majority in favor of special interest groups and junk science?
That does it for me. How about you?
atahlert@comcast.net
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