Post Election Thoughts

Some random thoughts:

The President has won the election. Now the slogans of "Count every vote!" and "All votes will be counted, and all votes will count" are being followed by more interesting yet equally vapid replacements: "The President should know he doesn't have a mandate", "Now he needs to heal the divide", and "He needs to come to the center". Apparently majority of the popular vote is not a mandate if won by a Republican.

These bromides are being uttered from the Michael Moore Party, whose criticism of everything Bush has been savage. It is assumed the President will have to heal the divide by compromising with those whose talking points reflect Osama Bin Laden's(Michael Moore's reaction to the recent Bin Laden missive was a suggestion that he must have access to a DVD player in his cave and therefore must have seen Fahrenheit 9/11.) How about some healing from the Democratic Party?

I have always thought that the best legislative/executive balance of power in this country comes from a situation whereby the White House's occupant belongs to a different party than the majority of Congress, thereby pushing legislation to the center of the political spectrum. Ironically, when a majority, the republicans tend to spend like a drunken sailor, seemingly following the adage that in order to beat a democrat, you must outspend him. It seems the entitlement mind set of the populace abhors a vacuum even in Congress, whose members rush to spend taxpayers' money in efforts to appease the masses. Barry Goldwater is turning in his grave.

The Left cries about four more years of the "religious right" controlling this country, but the evidence is scant and the noise rings hollow; an amendment to ban gay marriage is highly unlikely, as is a ban on abortion. Are they referring to anything else? Unlikely. These are the same people who bend over backwards to explain away the intolerance of Islam, and it is small wonder that Islamic followers have gravitated towards the left. But, to paraphrase Mark Steyn, it must be strange for those who favor gay marriage to share the same party with those who would like to bury them alive.

John Kerry lost, but in a greater sense, it was the Anti-Bush who lost. The Senator's approval ratings were extremely low even among his own followers, who seemed to cast their lot with him because his greatest recommendation was that He Isn't Bush. It isn't surprising that an echo chamber didn't win the election, regardless of the slimness of the margin.

Which brings us to the next point. Even with all the failings of John Kerry and John Edwards, with all the bitter tripe flowing from their campaign, they still came close to winning. This country is changing for the worse, its citizens have forgotten what it is to be American. The decadence of the citizenry will be responsible for the eventual destruction of this country. Pause and consider the fact that we started a revolution against a government which was much less pervasive than what we have today. The slow creep of government growth will eventually remove all individual responsibility. The nightmare of Socialism is that everyone is responsible for everyone else, and no one is responsible for themselves. The Left leads the charge, whose continued pursuit of forcing people to do Good Things with other peoples' money necessarily involves strengthening the power of the government over the individual. With all of their press that they are the party of conscience, the party of civil liberty, it is a sad fact that they will be responsible for the erosion of individual rights, not some Patriot Act. Ask yourself if the FCC or the IRS are constitutional.

The Libertarians have fared better than Nader this time around. However, as Neal Boortz muses, "I wonder how the Libertarians would have done if their candidate was willing to protect America from Islamic terrorists?" Good question. Maybe they should analyze some planks in the platform; I see many gaps to the sea below.