Senator Bob Bennet (R-UT) is going to face a solid challenge for his seat from Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. Via the Deseret News:

The winds of change, they are a-blowin’,” Shurtleff proclaimed Wednesday. “Not the bigger-government, corporate-welfare, radical-liberal-nannyism kind of change promised and now being implemented by (President Barack) Obama.”

Shurtleff is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, whom he accused of breaking promises to his constituents and overstaying his welcome in Washington, D.C.

“It’s true that in Washington, seniority matters,” Shurtleff said. “But not if that seniority is taking us in the wrong direction. More of the wrong medicine never cured anybody.”

Cross posted at Time To Keep Score

I spent an hour yesterday at the Salt Lake City TEA Party.  Event organizers are estimating that 2,000-3,000 people attended.  The crowd was energetic and enthusiastic.  And contrary to what you might read in the news, this was not some gathering of lunatics.  It was not steeped in insanity.

And lest you think this was only an anti-Obama rally, you ought to know that Senators Hatch and Bennet received bellowing boos when their support of several spending bills was brought up.  Gov. Huntsman also received raucous jeers at the mention of his eager acceptance of the “stimulus money”. None of them were in attendance.  But other local elected officials were.

From other accounts it appears that GOP officials were similarly called out at rallies around the country.  These rallies, and the sentiment behind them goes beyond partisan politics.  They represent a movement of people who are tired of an intrusive government.  And yes, that includes many domestic programs and spending that President Bush engaged in.  The frustration around the country has escalated recently because the Obama administration, along with Congress has accelerated our descent into a dignity sapping nanny state.

(Incidentally, I was driving home from an early morning ski (powder in April!) on I-215 and saw a big road-work sign that said “Putting America Back to Work: This project is Funded by the American Reinvestment Act”.  Do road work projects usually declare on big orange signs what congressional bill funded them?  Turns out that one of the stipulations of the construction company receiving the money, was displaying the propaganda sign…but I’ve digressed)

Back to the rally.  No, it wasn’t a recruiting station for the next national threat, nor was it a hotbed of plotting and scheming.  Try as I did, I never was able find anyone from Starkwood accepting resumes.

However there was something very disturbing that I witnessed.  I was offered at least four different times a very suspicious and subversive looking booklet.  The people handing it out said that it was a document that “limits the power of the government” and that gives “power to the people”.  I was skeptical, but curious, so I pocketed one of them.  Its title was brazenly displayed on the cover:

The Constitution of the United States

After reading through some of its pages I was appalled, and yet also relieved.  And why was I relieved?  Because I knew that if President Obama had ever read this right wing propaganda about States rights and limitations on federal power, about free speech and gun rights (guns!) he’d know for certain just how extreme we conservatives really are!

I sure am glad he has never read it!

Cross posted at: Time to Keep Score:

I recently read a speech given by Charles Murray at the 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture. And I think I can say without hyperbole that it is the best, or one of the best speeches I have ever read. It perfectly articulates the concerns that I have, not just about the Obama Administration, but about the general direction that the United States is heading.

He asks the question:

Do we want the United States to become like Europe?

Now, before you dismiss this as yet another diatribe against socialism, read on. Murray acknowledges that are things to admire about the European system. He also points out that the desire to emulate Europe is not necessarily an evil or sinister master plan:

In short, the question has suddenly become urgently relevant because President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe’s social democrats. There’s nothing sinister about that. They share an intellectually respectable view that Europe’s regulatory and social welfare systems are more progressive than America’s and advocate reforms that would make the American system more like the European system.

Not only are social democrats intellectually respectable, the European model has worked in many ways. I am delighted when I get a chance to go to Stockholm or Amsterdam, not to mention Rome or Paris. When I get there, the people don’t seem to be groaning under the yoke of an evil system. Quite the contrary. There’s a lot to like–a lot to love–about day-to-day life in Europe, something that should be kept in mind when I get to some less complimentary observations.

One of the primary reasons that this speech stood out to me the way it did was that often we focus on the European economy when pointing out the weaknesses of the socialist system. High unemployment, high taxes, inflation and low incentives are all part of the European system that we would do well to avoid here in the U.S.

However that is not Murray’s focus. He only mentions the economic issue in passing:

The European model can’t continue to work much longer. Europe’s catastrophically low birth rates and soaring immigration from cultures with alien values will see to that. So let me rephrase the question. If we could avoid Europe’s demographic problems, do we want the United States to be like Europe?

Tonight I will argue for the answer “no,” but not for economic reasons. The European model has indeed created sclerotic economies and it would be a bad idea to imitate them. But I want to focus on another problem.

He makes two fundamental points in his speech:

First, I will argue that the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish–it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness. Second, I will argue that twenty-first-century science will prove me right.

So, instead of listing economic reasons that the United States should avoid becoming like Europe, he outlines cultural reasons. That is, that there are fundamental principles that guide our lives, and that have separated the United States from every other nation on earth.

At the core of those principles is the God given right for each and everyone of us to pursue happiness. He elaborates:

I start from this premise: A human life can have transcendent meaning, with transcendence defined either by one of the world’s great religions or one of the world’s great secular philosophies. If transcendence is too big a word, let me put it another way: I suspect that almost all of you agree that the phrase “a life well-lived” has meaning. That’s the phrase I’ll use from now on.

And since happiness is a word that gets thrown around too casually, the phrase I’ll use from now on is “deep satisfactions.” I’m talking about the kinds of things that we look back upon when we reach old age and let us decide that we can be proud of who we have been and what we have done. Or not.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

He then outlines four areas in which all our happiness, or deeply satisfying endeavors can be defined in:

If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith. Two clarifications: “Community” can embrace people who are scattered geographically. “Vocation” can include avocations or causes… Seen in this light, the goal of social policy is to ensure that those institutions are robust and vital. And that’s what’s wrong with the European model. It doesn’t do that. It enfeebles every single one of them.

I realize that already this post is growing long. And so I will get to the heart of it. What does he mean when he says that the European model “enfeebles” each of the areas of our lives that provide meaning?

The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality–it drains some of the life from them. It’s inevitable. Families are not vital because the day-to-day tasks of raising children and being a good spouse are so much fun, but because the family has responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the family does them. Communities are not vital because it’s so much fun to respond to our neighbors’ needs, but because the community has the responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the community does them. Once that imperative has been met–family and community really do have the action–then an elaborate web of social norms, expectations, rewards, and punishments evolves over time that supports families and communities in performing their functions. When the government says it will take some of the trouble out of doing the things that families and communities evolved to do, it inevitably takes some of the action away from families and communities, and the web frays, and eventually disintegrates.

In other words:

A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn’t. I could give a half dozen other examples. Taking the trouble out of the stuff of life strips people–already has stripped people–of major ways in which human beings look back on their lives and say, “I made a difference.”

And that is the heart of the problem. And that is why I am so opposed to the policies of liberalism. Liberalism, or Progessivism would seek to eliminate personal responsibility, personal accomplishment. It seeks to replace the individual with an institution and to define that individual as only a member of a group. “Middle Class”, “African American”, “Hispanic”, “Rich” and so forth. Liberalism tries to define what “happiness” is, when that is obviously an individual pursuit.

When the government declares that it is going to step in an take over your duty as a father or a mother, or that they will lessen the financial burden of raising a family, then where is the incentive to be a good father, or hold gainful employment?

We need not look further than the “War on Poverty” which almost entirely destroyed the Black family in urban America. The number of single mothers and dead-beat dads among that demographic sky rocketed as the government took more and more responsibility away from fathers and mothers. And of course, poverty also sky rocketed, because there was simply no reason to work, to get ahead, to become exceptional. Why do what is difficult, when the government will provide a meager and meaningless existence?

And what does the “War on Poverty” have to with Europe?

It simply is a microcosm of what is happening on a continental level. The culture of Europe – family, religion – and the motivation to work hard is dying, or even might be already dead.

What’s happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality. Let me emphasize “spreading.” I’m not talking about all Europeans, by any means. That mentality goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.

If that’s the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that’s the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble–and, after all, what good are they, really? If that’s the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that’s the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?

The same self-absorption in whiling away life as pleasantly as possible explains why Europe has become a continent that no longer celebrates greatness. When life is a matter of whiling away the time, the concept of greatness is irritating and threatening. What explains Europe’s military impotence? I am surely simplifying, but this has to be part of it: If the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, what can be worth dying for?

Charles Murray goes on to cite more details and data to back his claims. Its an important speech, and frankly I think it perfectly describes what is happening in the United States. He concludes with a call to action, and a solution for stopping the Europeanization of the United States:

It won’t happen by appealing to people on the basis of lower marginal tax rates or keeping a health care system that lets them choose their own doctor. The drift toward the European model can be slowed by piecemeal victories on specific items of legislation, but only slowed. It is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious.

Today in America religion is ridiculed. Stay at home mothers are mocked. Working hard, and becoming good and great is dismissed and rejected. We celebrate and rejoice in a collective mediocrity. Is that what we want? Are we willing to trade the exceptionalism of America for the leisure and mediocrity of Europe?

The “Progressives” who embrace liberalism may be willing to trade one for the other.

I however, am not.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has created a petition “to show Rush Limbaugh and all of the Republicans what they’re up against if they start attacking President Obama.”  Rush has responded by encouraging folks to leave pro-Limbaugh comments at the petition website.

It only took 2 weeks, but the war on free speech has begun.  I for one, am ready for a fight.

h/t NewsBusters.

Cross posted from Time To Keep Score

Dear George W. Bush,

Thank you. Thank you for standing up in the face of an adversary that despised you, mis-characterized you, lied about you, and even burned you in effigy. The American left is obnoxious, angry, and unhinged. Lesser men have folded their will and principle in the spirit of so called ‘bipartisanship and unity’. But you, as you so often reminded us, “stayed the course”. Thank you for ignoring their chattering criticism and for making difficult decisions in the face of enormous evil. I have appreciated your candid, if at times inarticulate, demeanor and style. I have laughed and cringed and facepalmed along with the rest of the nation at some of your “Bushisms”.

But you have always been a man of integrity and honesty. Your vision for the world has spread the light of freedom and democracy to dark corners of the earth, places in which those same chattering critics breathlessly declared would never be able to grasp the ideas that democracy and liberty encompass.

Thank you for your relentless pursuit of terrorists throughout the world. I can only hope that your replacement will continue the dogged chase, and that he too will help cripple the faceless enemy that threatens our existence. The world is better off today than it was in 2000. And though there is turmoil and uncertainty and death and war, there is also light and faith.

I have not always understood, nor I have always agreed, with your decisions. Your recent abandonment of free market principles has been mind-boggling. The corporate bailouts and golden parachutes have left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially so since The President-elect will use those funds and ideas to propel government spending and intervention into an unprecedented tailspin. I cannot, nor will I attempt to, defend the bailout fever that gripped your final months in office. However, I believe you made the decision to press forward down that road with the best of intentions. Intentions that, as you ought to have known, came with devastating and unforeseen results.

But we are safe. For now.

It is a great blessing, and a reflection of your effective presidency that our nation is in a position to gripe and complain at all. After September 11, 2001 there was nothing but questions plaguing the minds of each citizen. Our lives were forever changed, forever altered. The world was no longer a welcoming and encouraging place. In the blink of an eye it became dark and subversive.

But you did not fear. There were no interment camps of Arab-Americans. There were no propaganda wars, and there were no McCarthy-esque accusations and fear mongering. Within months our economy recovered, confidence grew, and our enemy was weakened.

Thank you.

Your legacy many not ever be appreciated. Your name may be a curse for generations to come. The whispering elites and the blowhard pundits, the terrorists defenders, and the treasonous, unrelenting radical left will never understand, nor will they ever care to understand, the sense of duty and honor that has driven your mission these past eight years.

But there are some of us who understand.

And we will remember the chance for liberty you brought to 100 million people in the Arab world. We will remember the prosperity at home, and the victories abroad.

We will remember.

And for that, again Mr. President, thank you.

During the campaign season, President-elect Obama made clear his intentions for the United States of America. He spoke with clarity of the need for a bigger, more influential government, one unfettered by the “restraints of the constitution.” He spoke of a National Civilian Task Force, stronger than the United States military. He spoke of group sacrifice in many forms, including what kind of cars we drive, how far we drive them, what temperature our homes are kept at and how unhealthy we will be allowed to be.

In short, he proclaimed that the government would be in charge of every aspect of our lives. From what we eat to how we spend, the government was going to be involved.

The financial crisis is the ideal cover for this government intervention.

“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” So said the now missing in action Raum Emanuel. And just what are those “important things that you would otherwise avoid”?

Who knows?

But one thing is certain. The government is going to expand beyond anything we have seen in history. And if history has taught us anything, it is that big governments lead to an increase in financial distress, and to an increase of incompetence. Big government causes decreases in personal liberty, military might and free market enterprise.

But for Barack Obama, a massive government, heavily involved in the lives of its citizens is the “only solution” to our current problems. It is the “only solution” to social and economic turmoil and the “only solution” for changing the behavior of the American people. In other words, Obama plans to use crisis, and the largest government in world history to implement every warmed over liberal policy ever conceived.

Which is why he has stated that he plans to create 600,000 new government jobs. Six hundred thousand.

Already the road is being built for universal health and day care, the socialization of the free market, and the government mandate of “healthy living” and “green living”. Not far behind are more restrictions on free speech, irrational gun laws, mandated abortion, and a foreign policy based on “bold diplomacy” that will cost the lives of American soldiers, and possibly civilians. For those listening closely to Obama’s words during the campaign season, instead of being distracted by all the mindless chanting, this is not surprising. Throughout his stump speeches are references, cryptic and overt, to increased government involvement in our lives. Recently Obama declared that “everyone is going to have to sacrifice, everyone is going to have some skin in the game.”

And what if I don’t want to “sacrifice”?

I suppose then, that the National Civilian Security Force will put me to work in the rice fields.

Indeed, this all begs the question: When has liberal policy ever led to an increase of prosperity, freedom, liberty, and independence?

Or conversely: When has liberal policy ever not lead to an increase in poverty, economic depression, widespread despair, and longer unemployment lines?

It is interesting that liberal politics are not the politics of results, but rather the politics of intent. Or as Hillary likes to say, the “politics of meaning”. And with the focus on intent, rather than results, those results can be altogether ignored. For example:

It doesn’t matter that the New Deal prolonged the great depression; it was intended to end it.

It doesn’t matter that the War on Poverty led to more poverty; it was intended to eliminate it.

It doesn’t matter that minimum wage leads to more unemployment; it is intended to increase employment.

It doesn’t matter that universal health care eliminates incentives for excellence, and thus decimates the population of competent doctors. It is intended to help the poor people.

This fits in line with Obama’s entire career. the housing projects he championed in Chicago have now been either bulldozed or condemned. His education theories, and the millions of dollars he and Bill Ayers threw at them have helped Chicago students become some of the worst in America. But all that is irrelevant, because his intent behind his failed career in Illinois was good.

I predict four years of good intentions ahead of us.

History is a stark, and brilliant teacher when it comes to economic and political “experimentation”, as FDR put it. Especially when it comes to the well-intentioned, but destined to fail economic dogma of, yes, here comes that bad word again, socialism.

And while the failed examples of German, Italian and Soviet socialism (all kindred spirits, but different in detail) are common and widely accepted, it is worth noting that Obama has spent a lifetime at the feet of socialists and marxists. One can assume that the ideological honey poured into his ears drowned out the historical failures of such ideology. But then again, perhaps he believes that because he is Barack Obama, he can cause the failures of the past to become the successes of the future based solely on the fact that he is, who he is.

Who could possibly ever forget:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth

So, while the iconic examples of European socialism are overplayed, they are still in fact striking examples of the utter and consistent failure of Socialism, Fascism, Marxism, Communism and every other “ism” of the left. China, Cuba, South America and even that mostly irrelevant country to the north, Canada, continue to show that socialism, and all its siblings, leads to, at best mediocrity, and at worst, genocide –in one form or another.

And yet that is exactly what Barack Obama is ready to bring back to the United States. Socialism, not genocide. Yes, back to the U.S. It has been here before, most prominetly under FDR. So the while comparisons to Obama are lame, they do bear some historical accuracy, although not the kind I think time Magazine was going for when they ran the fawning manipulation of the famous FDR-esque photo of The One.

And did American socialism, like European socialism fail? Absolutely.

Even before FDR, Woodrow Wilson, who has been called the world’s first fascist dictator implemented policy and prose that, surprisingly, influenced such stalwart socialists as Mussolini and Stalin. Yes, that Mussolini and that Stalin. FDR nationalized everything he could in order to hold back the tide of a financial crisis, when the solution was, as it so often is with financial turmoil, to let the free market correct itself. Instead the depression lingered onward, unemployment grew, and national despair increased. But not to worry, artists were painting murals and posters (some quite neat, incidentally), roads were being built, museums constructed and bridges repaired. Sound familiar?

But today’s crisis is nothing near the Great Depression. The American people are the punch lines to an ongoing national ruse. Our situation today is nothing like the recession and the crash that led to the depression.

But it could get that way, if Obama follows through on his promises of killing domestic industry, raising the taxes of “rich” people, and his 1.2 trillion dollar (and rising) stimulus package. Spending money is not the solution to a problem that spending money has caused.

But it is the only method Obama knows.

And for the people, who are to worried about witnessing history to read anything about history, it is distasteful to question the policy or the career of Barack H. Obama. Instead, we are to smile and wave at the historical historicity of this historic election and inauguration, which will cost some 200 million dollars. Again, Obama demonstrates that his only real competence comes in spending tax-payer money.

It would take a very small executive order to fix the current economic distress. A moratorium on capital gains and corporate taxes would send the market skyrocketing, restore consumer and investor confidence, put money in peoples pockets, and encourage businesses to expand and hire. In other words, the solution is for the government to stand down, step aside, and, as it always has been in situations like this, let the market correct itself.

Which is why I am extremely skeptical, and even frightened when Obama declares with all the confidence that ignorance can breed that government is “the only solution” to our problems. Such an attitude is not new, nor is it uncommon. But it is on the wrong side of history.

But nobody seems to realize that.

Or care.

As the attacks in Mumbai, India have reminded the world, Jihad, and radical Islamic terror is still alive and well. Despite the election of a transcendent, all-encompassing, new world savior in America, the Jihadists are marching onward in their mission to destroy the infidel, regardless of his nationality or politics.

The megaphone Left, both domestically and internationally have spent 7 years calling George W. Bush a terrorist. In a twisted and disgusting irony, Muslim Bollywood star Imran Khan arrived at the premier of his new film in a “Bush=International Terrorist” t-shirt. While at that same moment, just blocks away real terrorists were on a killing spree. A brutal, murderous rampage that left hundreds dead, and a Nation in shock and mourning.

I wonder if the irony is lost on Imran Khan?

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Cross-posted from UncommonRight.

We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.

~Barack Obama, November 22, 2008

Where, exactly does Barack Obama think we live? America is not the war torn Italy of the 1950s. Nor is it a third world country struggling to modernize infrastructure. It is the United States of America. Our highway systems, our ports, our buildings and our technology are the best in the world.

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The evidence clearly indicates that our most cherished rights and interests are all a part of the American way of life. Can communism, socialism, fascism, or any other coercive system provide these priceless blessings which flow to us as a part of our American way of life? The common denominator of all these coercive systems is the curtailment of individual liberty. Surely we will all agree that our Constitution provides the basis for the only economic system acceptable to true Americans.

~Ezra Taft Benson, 1974

There is an unsettled and anxious energy spreading throughout conservatives today. With the election of Barack Obama, and his impending presidency, the question is being asked: Will Obama try to limit our individual rights?

It is a legitimate concern, even if some on the Left see it as unwarranted paranoia. The political environment that fostered Barack Obama is founded on the socialism of State dependence. It is predicated upon individuals being reliant on the State for, not only income and care, but for permission and clearance to pursue life liberty and happiness.

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Cross-posted from Uncommon Right.

The most interesting, most controversial, and most watched ballot item after the race for the White House was California’s Proposition 8. The initiative to amend the California Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. It predictably came down to a battle between religion and secularism. At least, in general. There are of course religious people who opposed the measure, and secular people who in turn supported it.

The Proposition is in reaction to the California Supreme Court overruling a previous initiative that defined marriage as “between one man and one woman”. The court tossed that notion out, and legalized same-sex marriage in the State.

Several churches banded together to support Proposition 8 including the Roman Catholic Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Knights of Columbus, and the Union of Orthodox Jews of America, to name a few.

Proposition 8 passed 52.5% to 47.5%.

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Barack Obama in 2001:

…one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

If there is racism in these United States, it can be found in the overtly discriminatory doctrine of Affirmative Action. What could be more condescending, more belittling, more racist than setting up laws that require schools and corporations to admit and hire minorities because they are unable to accomplish the same ends on their own?

Affirmative Action says you are not smart enough, not athletic enough, and not skilled enough to make it in this cruel world because of your race.

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With just one week until Election Day, I find myself continually asking the question of “why?” Why do Obama supporters back their candidate? Is it party loyalty? Hope and Change? Is it his radical friends that they relate to? Maybe they believe God should damn America? Perhaps it is Obama’s socialism? Do they want the wealth to be spread about? Do they want “redistributive change”?

Or is it that Obama speaks well, is handsome, and is, as Joe Biden observed, “clean”. Is it that he wants to legitimatize Iran by giving them exactly what they want: unconditional talks and meetings?

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“I’m going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me.”

~John McCain, 2008

When the returns started coming in, and results were being reported on Super Tuesday I found myself in a room full of Mitt Romney supporters. Josh Romney stood quietly in the back of the room watching the numbers. There was a sense of disappointment. A resignation that the campaign was indeed at an end.

And yet, each of us was hopeful for what the future would bring. Whether that future was 2012 and another Romney candidacy, or 2008 and a McCain presidency, we did not know.

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“What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?”

~Abraham Lincoln.

Is there a more apt way to describe Barack Obama than “new and untried”? There is nothing in his record that suggests competence in any leadership capacity. Nothing. He might speak well and look good and be the first African American to be this close to the presidency. But what does that really mean when, as Joe Biden predicted, this nation is tested with an “international crisis, a generated crisis”?

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Ezra Taft Benson wrote:

“To all who have discerning eyes, it is apparent that the republican form of government established by our noble forefathers cannot long endure once fundamental principles are abandoned. Momentum is gathering for another conflict — a repetition of the crisis of two hundred years ago. This collision of ideas is worldwide. Another monumental moment is soon to be born. The issue is the same that precipitated the great pre-mortal conflict — will men be free to determine their own course of action or must they be coerced?”

Joseph Smith, the founder and first president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) has been said to have made a statement that the “…constitution of the United States [will be] almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as silk fiber.”

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One of the great speeches given during the primary season was Mitt Romney’s CPAC speech. Unfortunately it was also his concession speech. Shortly after that speech I wrote my reaction to it. I recently re-read that reaction and was struck at how relevant my feelings in February are today, just 14 days from Election Day.

Below is what I wrote in February. It strikes me that the Dependency Doctrine of Barack Obama is the central issue going into the final sprint of this long election cycle. Everything Obama proposes has to do with citizens of the United States becoming more and more dependent on the Government.

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There are supporters of Barack Obama who like to toss aside problems that have come to light with the candidate as this campaign has progressed. Supporters of Obama may say, “Well, he went to Wright’s church, but does not anymore.” Or, “Ayers blew people up 40 years ago!” Or, “Rezko took advantage of the Obamas.” They may claim that “things have been taken out of context”, such as Obama’s incredibly disgusting abortion stances. They may claim that his tax and spend philosophies will benefit poor people, thus raising the overall wealth of the nation. And so on and on, ad-naseum.

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