I’ve started to get posts in my facebook profile about the “In it to win it” effort to re-elect Obama in 2012. Pop quiz, which party starts wars and expands existing ones, adds trillions and trillions to the federal deficit, busts people legally selling marijuana to cancer patients, has a terrible track record on civil rights, operates secret (and not so secret) detention centers across the world and routinely denies habeas corpus to it’s inmates, and bails out and supports large business and special interests on the taxpayer tab? Trick question, it’s both parties of course.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Obama supporters still support him, he has become everything he professed to hate when he was running in 2008. Where have the anti-war protestors gone? Where is the anger about Gitmo? Why does Obama seemingly get a free pass on all of these things? The only thing I can come up with is that the people that were protesting before were really protesting the fact that the “wrong” team was in office. That would also broadly fit into the reasons behind the more recent protests. Anything the tea partiers are protesting could have been relevant when Bush II was in office, and yet they didn’t show up then. Cheerleaders, that’s all that republicans and democrats seem to be.
Despite all of my gripes, Obama is in a weaker position now then he was last election. Luckily for him, the republicans don’t seem to be able to come up with a real candidate. It reminds me of when dubya was running for a second term and all the Dems could come up with was John Kerry. I really think that the only republican that would have a real chance against Obama is Ron Paul. That’s because he is, and has been, anti-war, anti-drug war, anti-deficit, pro 2nd amendment. He was against the bailouts, doesn’t trust the federal reserve, and is adamantly against corporate welfare. The really wonderful thing about him is that all of that is philosophically consistent, all of his positions are based upon individual liberty and autonomy. He hasn’t flipped his positions, check out the speeches from Obama’s 2008 campaign if you want to see the definition of a weasel politician. Of course, the reason Paul won’t get the nomination is because he is too different from regular republicans. The irony is that makes him different from most Democrats too, making him the ideal candidate to run against Obama.
I predict more of the same fiscal mismanagement, foreign entanglements, crony capitalism, and vacuous assurances that they are doing everything possible to make everyone better off in 2012. I know, crazy prediction, right?