Looking at the Postive Side of the Obama Administration

I read a OP-ED piece by Ted Nugent on how Americans are to blame for the current state of our government.  I completely agree with his assessment.  We have been apathetic for far too long.  We have lived our lives and expected our government to do it's job without really keeping a close eye on how they were doing that job.  We just expected them to follow the constitution and protect our freedoms.  We have left out the nature of human beings and the warnings that our founders gave us: power corrupts. 

But, one of the things that I have been saying for quite sometime now is, that we liberty loving Americans should be grateful for the Obama administration.  Obama has carried the country far more to the left than the average person in this country is comfortable with.  But, would McCain been much different?  I don't think so.  If anything, republican lite is even more scary to our liberties.  They do the same type of things, just more slowly and in the dark of night, to the point that many people don't even notice. 

Obama is very much in your face with his leftist views and the radical people he has appointed.  One needs to look no further than Van Jones; an admitted communist, to see that Obama has a very different view of our liberties and what exactly the Constitution does and does not allow.  This has awakened the American people.  This is a positive thing, and we must embrace this opportunity. 

The one way to save our liberties and to keep our country from veering away from the founding principles is for the American public to stand up and force the government to adhere to rule of law.  The congress passes laws that they don't read nor understand.  Both parties have become far too powerful, and seem more interested in party unity than actually getting the job done. 

I say that people that love the liberties that this country offers, need to stand up and realize that freedom is something that can easily be taken away.  It will happen slowly, it will happen before most people will notice.  Obama has made it almost impossible not to notice. 

The real question becomes do the people that have stood up since Obama has taken office do once he is GONE?  Do the mommy bloggers that turned to politics keep their eye on the next administration as closely?  If not, the problems will just return.  We need to be in this for the long haul.  We can't assume that if so and so gets elected that our problems are solved.  They will not be.  This is a generational change.  We need to weed out the politicians that are more concerned for party and for themselves than they are for you and me.  Pay attention to local politics and allow the cream to rise, it always does.  Get involved in your community and pay attention to what the people who have control over how our money is spent are doing.  We need to demand honesty and integrity and vote out the ones who don't provide that.  Don't allow yourself to be fooled that simply getting rid of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid will solve our problems.  It will not, we have a long list of people on both sides of the aisle that are not acting in our best interests and until we rid ourselves of all of them, we cannot rest. 

Senator Bennett's Parting Shot to the Tea Party

Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976 by riding the wave of anger and disillusionment that followed Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Carter tapped into that anger with the slogan "I will never lie to you." An angry electorate, disgusted with Nixon, decided that was reason enough to give Carter the presidency. He won, in large part, because he made it clear that he wasn't Richard Nixon.


Pundits called Carter a political genius.

Four years later, however, he was a political pariah. Voters embraced Ronald Reagan because he wasn't Jimmy Carter, proving that good slogans do not necessarily produce good government.

Unlike Carter, Reagan had more than slogans. He came to Washington with a clear plan to revive the economy and overhaul the tax code, revitalize the military, and, most important, boost the national spirit. He saw the Republican Party as a "big tent," and he successfully did what is considered political suicide today: He worked across party lines and tried to find compromise.

With Carter, Democrats had the White House for one term; with Reagan and the first George Bush, the Republicans held it for three. That has happened only once since World War II.

There's a profound lesson in this for the Tea Party movement.

Like those who voted for Carter because they were fed up with Nixon, the Tea Party is made up of people who are fed up with Washington profligacy. The combination of the Obama stimulus package, a bloated budget, stubbornly high unemployment and an expensive new health-care entitlement program has fueled their anger, convincing them that the federal government is out of touch and not listening. To a large extent, they're right.

Their two strongest slogans are "Send a message to Washington" and "Take back America." I know both very well because they were the main tools used to defeat me in Utah's Republican convention two weeks ago. They also worked in Kentucky on Tuesday. They are more powerful than most pundits inside the Beltway realize.

Yet when the new members of Congress whom these slogans elect in November take office, the question becomes: Will they be Carter or Reagan?

Will they stand firmly on partisan sidelines continuing to shout slogans? Or will they reach across the aisle in the interest of the country? Will they offer constructive proposals to help solve our problems?

As president, Carter was downright depressing. His famous "malaise" speech warned us that America's best days were behind us and suggested that we are a country in irreversible decline. Too many Tea Party speeches sound the same note, even as they invoke Ronald Reagan's name. They are wrong to do so, in my view, because Reagan never lost his optimism and his hope for the future. He was elected because he was good at slogans, but he succeeded as president because he focused on solutions.

I urge all of the Tea Partyers to follow Reagan, not Carter. If they want their movement to be more than a wave that crashes on the beach and then recedes back into the ocean, leaving nothing behind but empty sand, they should stop the "gloom talk." These are not the worst times we have ever faced, nor is the Constitution under serious threat.

Our economy is still the strongest and most resilient in the world. Our government is still capable of responding to the leadership of men and women who believe our problems can be solved. We must not follow the siren song of those who are in a frenzy of despair.

After all, we survived Jimmy Carter, didn't we?

Op-Ed in The Washington Post