Ruminations

It’s the morning after, and I have a hangover.

Well, a political hangover, at least.

As a matter of functional providence and in the interest of matrimonial bliss, it has come to pass of late that I collect a great deal of my televised news from the more “progressive” networks (MSNBC, CNN)…and as such, I believe, it forces me to see the world tainted by their spectacles.

But enough bleeting from an old goat.

CNN reported something interesting last night that caught my ear.  I barely heard a portion of it, and my wife repeated it for me later (did you hear that?) – that “most” of the very wealthy in South Carolina voted for Romney.

It immediately paints him as “old guard”; the Republican party that caters to the fat cats.

And why would the Commie News Network pull such a stunt?

They want him elected…pure, and simple.

They think that Republicans are dumb enough to fall for that one.

“He’s one of us, ergo, we should vote for him.”

Problem is, we don’t fit into that asinine and gargantuan pigeon hole the commies at CNN would like to wedge us into.

We are much bigger than that (eh, eh).

To the point, we are NOT the party of the fat-cat rich (much as everyone would like to paint us with that broad brush).

And what is worse, IF it were the case that Romney were pandering to the fiscally elite, the old guard would recognize that his efforts do not fit into their desire to make more money.

A free market capitalist would much more fit that mold.

Now the travesty here is, none of this is in any way, shape or form fair to Romney.

But he is being used as a pawn.

The trouble is, so are we all.

But we are defining what it means to be conservative (and not just fiscally).

We are demonstrating what leadership by a Conservative really looks like.

And for the first time (I think in a long time), we are defining for ourselves (and the world) EXACTLY what it means to lead from the right.

For years I’ve heard the metaphor of politics as pendulum; that it swings left and right and always somehow balances out, just like a scale.

My own model is a bit different.

What I see is a pendulum, but the pivot point is fixed on a gear, and that gear lays in the track of what we “shade tree mechanics” would recognize as a “rack and pinion”.

With each swing of the pendulum, the gear will move in the rack a couple of gear teeth in one direction or the other.

For far too long, it has been tremendously out of whack.

There has been too much of a gravitational force on the left that has been pulling this pendulum further and further down the track, left.

The reason it has happened is that the American public has become enchanted by this concept that the government is there to take care of us.

In actuality, we are on this earth first to take care of self.

One person, feeding one mouth.

Now, when that person is fed, that person (like a car with a full tank of gas) can then work, and though work, produce.

We’ve gotten so good at it, we can feed more than just ourselves.

We can feed our family as well.

Trouble is, some people in the larger community fancy themselves as some sort of “kissing cousin”, and that they too should be in on that setup.

And they’ve convinced practically everyone that we are just one, big, happy (albeit, dysfunctional) family.

Well here is the dealio.

All those big, fat, slovenly slobs who have been portending to be our “cousins” are acting as some sort of gravitational force on the order of the planet Jupiter and they are not only gobbling up all our food, but they are attracting that political pendulum rig so far to the left that the train’s done jumped the tracks in California and is now ploughing out into the Pacific.

Is Romney really that far left?

Well, compared to Goldwater, Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan and others, I’d say “hell yes”.

But here is the thing…the pendulum has moved so far to the left that the concepts those folk stood for as so far on the horizon right that they seem faint and distant stars.

The pendulum still swings, but the rig has moved so far to the left that it swings only in the left.

Conservative principles have all but been abandoned.

So is it fair to call Romney liberal?  Only as much as it is to call all of the slate liberal.

Consider this.

It is the debate that is beginning to force the sleeping populus to come to (thank God it is not another WW II).

People are now asking themselves, what does it mean to be conservative.

And what, indeed.

Anyone listening to the debates should come to a new understanding that we are practicing a sort of preventative set of policy-making here.

We see the collapse that is happening to Europe.

We are watching it unfold.

It is market forces that have driven their decline.

We have the opportunity, in our grasp, to change that course for America.

We can do it, and we can do it without a radical change.

Something else we bear witness to is just what radical changes implemented by a brigand bunch of radicals can do.

Team Obama, Biden, Clinton are a living testimony to that.

But look what can happen when in spirited debate the Right demonstrates what it looks like to lead in a principled and ethical manner.

I think that perhaps in all my own history hear on earth (from the time I first became politically sentient), this is the most principled set of debates I’ve witnessed.

I do not think that it is just Newt who makes it so.

For me, after last night’s debate, I see Newt somewhere between Santorum and Romney…but I have this extreme sense that they all (and perhaps the whole of the Nation) recognizes that through whatever methodology, one of these candidates is going to move that pendulum rig back to the right.

It is my attitude that, for once, we should act like a liberal and apply that grease that will make it so…liberally.

Can Romney do it?

If he takes a clue from what is happening and rather than run toward the soft center at this juncture in that ballgame, to (from football) “open the field, and run to the right”, he just may.

With it looking very much like most of the Nation is solid conservative, how can any of the candidates go wrong running to the right?

What’s more, look at just how the nation would benefit.

We would get off this train ride to hell following Europe down a path of utter destruction.

We would get the train back on its tracks, and the pendulum swinging correctly, balanced and centered so that it is more satisfactory to both the left and the right.

Of course, there is an alternative.

I think everyone can “feel it in their bones” that Obama’s reign of tyrrany, oppression and rabble rousing is not going to be conducive to pulling this portion of Western civilization out of this ditch.

Intellectual, spirited and reasonable debate, of the kind witnessed in South Carolina could very well spell a much brighter future for this nation, and perhaps even the world.

Following conventional wisdom and “the way we’ve always done it” just won’t work this time.

Romney has a big choice here now.

He can pander to those in the middle and on the left, or, he can watch Gingrich and Santorum soar.

Go RICK !