Americans Vote For Gridlock
November 7, 2012 by Bob Livingston
Let the gridlock continue.
A 50/50 Nation voted to tack two more years of gridlock onto the two we’ve just endured by sending the undocumented White House usurper back to the White House along with a divided legislative branch.
The margin was a razor-thin 1.5 million votes out of more than 110 million cast. But President Barack Obama collected more than 300 electoral votes by taking all the so-called swing States (Florida remained too close to call early this morning). Democrats maintained control of the Senate, and Republicans held the House. The final numbers were still to be determined.
In his victory speech, Obama doubled down on his vacuous and Marxist-inspired slogan: “Forward.” Why anyone wants to continue forward with unemployment above 20 percent, rising food stamp rolls, inflation, a bottom-bouncing housing market, money printing and drone wars is beyond me.
Of course, when you consider the alternative was essentially a clone of the incumbent, why not stay with the horse you’re familiar with?
Republicans pinned their hopes on a disgruntled Democratic electorate and an “anybody-but-Obama” mindset. But putting a progressive candidate up against another progressive was not a winning strategy in 2008. It wasn’t this time either.
Republican voters are obviously disheartened this morning. They should take heart. The false left-right paradigm may finally be on its death bed. We know that conventional wisdom holds that Republican policies favor the rich while Democratic policies favor the middle class. But when more money printing, Federal spending and redistributionist tax policies take us over the fiscal cliff, progressives will no longer be able to blame conservative fiscal policies.
Had Romney won, we still would be headed over the fiscal cliff. Progressives would have falsely pinned the blame on conservatives.
It’s going to be interesting watching the Republicans’ post-mortem on the election. Already, the talking heads are laughingly blaming Romney’s conservatism. The Tea Party/conservative wing is blaming his liberalism.
Conservative voters — duped by the neocons into supporting Pax Americana and subverting American foreign policy to Israel — no longer have a home. Their ideas are rejected by the GOP, and they reject the libertarians and anti-imperialist, sound-money conservatives.
Meanwhile, the entitlement class grows. Obamacare has been set in stone. Several States, including my home State of Alabama, voted to nullify it. But as the U.S. Supreme Court has as little regard for the Constitution as the political class, there is little chance that any efforts to stand up to Federal overreach will succeed.
So here’s what’s next: sequestration, the fiscal cliff and the debt limit must be dealt with by a lame-duck Congress. That means tax increases or default (neither Democrats nor Republicans will cut spending). Then Obamacare taxes kick in in 2014.
Obamacare will lead to job losses. Physicians are saying they’ll have to close their doors. Employers are saying they will cut workers’ hours rather than pay the additional taxes.
The war on coal, oil and natural gas will continue. Obama’s EPA will continue its unfettered assault on fossil fuels.
Green crony capitalism will continue. Obama will continue to pump money into doomed green industries, ignoring that wind will not power the millions of gasoline engines tooling down the Nation’s highways.
Drone wars will continue. Obama has made it clear Congress is irrelevant. The anti-war left is silent.
It will be interesting to watch what the GOP does with Obama scandals Fast and Furious and Benghazi, Libya. Obama and his Attorney Criminal Eric Holder have clearly lied to Congress and the American people about these two scandals. People died and Obama lied.
Holder clearly ignores the rule of law. Senate Democrats have no interest in these two issues. Mainstream media whores have all but ignored both scandals.
Any efforts to hold Obama accountable will occur in an echo chamber.
So what will the next two (or four) years look like? Just like the last two.
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