Every recent US Presidential election has been deemed a critical one– but the stakes in this election are indeed exceedingly high and portentous for the future of America. Why? Because when President Obama came into power he said he was doing so with the intention of “fundamentally transforming” America. Many thought he meant this merely in regard to the way politics is done in America, that he would somehow operate in bipartisan fashion (which he utterly failed to do). But over these past 4 years Obama has shown us exactly what he means by “transforming America” — he is in the process of creating a government state that will have increasing power over Americans and their liberty. He has started America down the road to socialism with Obamacare. In the process, he failed to deliver on his promises to turn around the economy and to become a unifying rather than a dividing figure. In addition, the Obama Administration’s response to the September 11 attack that killed our Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave American men serving in Libya has been, not only a great tragedy, but symbolic of the failure of Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East. President Obama’s handling of the situation demonstrates his lack of trustworthiness as a leader and a lack of fitness to be America’s Commander-in-Chief. Thus, there are at least 3 important reasons we need to fire President Obama: Obamacare, the terrible economic recovery, and the “Benghazigate” cover-up.
Obamacare
It is true that Obama came into power in the midst of a very deep recession, but with a resounding Democratic victory, he had lots of political capital to spend. He chose to spend this capital by focusing his energy on radical reformation of the healthcare system during his first two years in office, rather than focusing on job creation. His Administration’s signature achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, was an unpopular bill that most Americans were against and which received zero votes from Republicans. A 2,700 page monstrosity of rules and regulations, Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said we’d have to pass it to know what’s in it. Needless to say, the legislation was not posted at a website for public comment as Obama promised all his legislation would be. Instead it was pushed through in the most partisan fashion, when the opportunity (a 60 seat Democratic Senate majority) presented itself.
Obamacare is the symbol of this Administration’s way of doing things and of its political philosophy. When this Administration doesn’t agree with a law or policy, it circumvents it by non-enforcement. On issues such as gay rights, drug enforcement, Internet gambling, school achievement standards, immigration, defense of marriage, and welfare reform, “the administration has chosen to achieve its goals by a method best described as passive-aggressive”, reports Steve Friess. This bypassing of established law sets a dangerous precedent for the executive branch of government. Yet such a methodology fits an Administration that operates according to the philosophy that government always knows what’s best for the country, and that usually includes more government.
For Obama, the answer to poverty, the answer to a poor economy, the answer to education, etc. is inevitably increased government spending via more government programs. Again, Obamacare symbolizes this– it imposed an unconstitutional mandate that forces Americans to buy insurance from the government, or pay a fine, in the form of a tax. Not only is this system a serious blow against freedom, but according to some studies it won’t improve health care nor reduce costs. As Ann Coulter has argued, is government involvement really going to improve upon the private sector’s efficiency? Obamacare is wrong for America- not just because critics advise that it will ultimately increase costs and reduce consumer choice, but because of the political philosophy it represents– we-know-what’s-best-for-you government as the primary solution to societal ills, which leads to creation of huge, expensive and inefficient bureaucracies that dangerously concentrate power in government. Is Obamacare what America really needed in the midst of trying to emerge from a crippling recession? When he did turn his attention to the economy, President Obama got what he requested–a $700 billion dollar stimulus package– yet this failed to turn around the economy, which continues at record levels of unemployment and anemic growth. Adding Obamacare to our nation’s struggling economy was certainly not what the doctor ordered.
So President Obama gave us a healthcare program we didn’t ask for, all the while failing to deliver on his promises to dramatically turn around the economy and be a uniting rather than a dividing figure as President. Amazingly, with broken promises and failed policies as his record, President Obama says to us now, “we’ve come too far to turn back now”! Yes, we agree, we have gone too far down this road of failure. Still, Obama without shame asks America to give him 4 more years to continue his fundamental “transformation” of our free country into one more dependent on government.
The Ailing Economy
While campaigning Obama in July 2008, Presidential candidate Obama said that adding $4 trillion in debt was “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.” Obama was referring to the $3.764 trillion that had been added to the national debt during the seven and one-half years Bush had been president. Obama of course got his facts wrong when he falsely claimed President Bush increased the national debt by $4 trillion “by his lonesome.” When Speaker Pelosi took over Congress on January 3, 2007, the national debt was $8.7 trillion. So the Democrats must get some of the credit for one of the four trillion dollars candidate Obama tried to blame on Bush.
But as President, Obama has added in just four years an additional five and a half trillion dollars to the national debt! Is President Obama now pointing the finger at himself as both irresponsible and unpatriotic? No, but he’s still blaming the Bush years for the manifold failures to improve the economy that have happened under his watch:
- 23 million Americans still unemployed
- 43 straight months of 8 percent unemployment
- Current unemployment at 7.8% same as when Obama took office
- Household income down by about $4,000 dollars or -5%
- 15 million more on food stamps
- US credit rating downgraded for 1st time ever
- 2011 budget increased total welfare spending to $953 billion, a 42 percent increase over welfare spending in 2008.
- Through September 2012 job growth averaged 139,000 per month vs. an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011. Job growth is decelerating.
- Persons in poverty increased by 6.4 million
- Gas prices are up 106%
To be fair, there are a few signs of growth in the economy under President Obama. The stock market has rebounded, and consumer confidence index has risen to 86%, from 37.7 % from when he took office. We’re not losing jobs at the pace we previously were and have begun adding jobs. Still, the pace of the recovery has been exceedingly slow under Obama’s economic policies — job growth is not keeping pace with population growth. Comparing Obama’s recovery to both the Reagan and the Bush recoveries in a similar 29 month span, theirs created more jobs than Obama. In addition, by this point in the Reagan and Bush job recoveries, the unemployment rate was 7.2% and 4.9% respectively, compared to Obama’s average of around 8%.
Of course, arguments about which economic policies work best are always contentious. Competing experts tout statistics which support their opposing arguments. The economy is a complex topic, so a healthy debate on this and other issues is most welcome. Yet political discussion has become more and more a negative enterprise. President Obama has betrayed his promise to rise above the partisan fray and has diminished the office of the Presidency with the tenor of his re-election campaign. Of course, there is guilt on both sides, with all the highly negative ads and the strident tone of so much of the political conversation. Nevertheless, Obama campaigned as a President who promised to be better than this kind of politics, yet has run a campaign chock full of petty attacks (“Big Bird, Binders and Bayonets”) . He calls Mitt Romney a liar at every opportunity, even using crass language (BS’er) in an interview with Rolling Stones to do so. A recent ad compares voting for Obama with being de-virginized. Obama has not disavowed it. Through it all, Obama claims Romney is not a man to be trusted, but points to himself as a man who can be trusted. We must beg to differ. Which brings us to Benghazigate.
Benghazigate
On the anniversary of September 11, our Libyan embassy was overtaken by hundreds of well-armed men who in the course of obliterating the embassy by burning it down, brutally murdered 4 Americans on what is considered sovereign American soil. Despite the President’s closing campaign pitch as the man who can be trusted because he “means what he says”, evidence is mounting daily that President Obama and his Administration have been, and are now engaged, in a most serious cover-up of these tragic events in Libya that took the lives of four brave men: US Ambassador Chris Stevens, Former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Dougherty, and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith. It is becoming apparent that although the Administration had ample forewarning of dangers in Libya they failed to provide the mission with adequate security, denying the additional security measures the mission had requested prior to the attack. They also apparently withheld available military aid during the attack (see the following articles for detailed reporting that supports these statements: Cable Shows Benghazi Consulate Not Prepared for Coordinated Attack, New Bombshells Rock Benghazi Scandal, Unfolding Benghazi Disaster Destroying American Confidence, The Obama Doctrine: American Lives Are Expendable, Behind the Benghazi Cover-up, Why Obama Chose to Let Them Die in Benghazi). This is horrific, and if true, the President and his team have much to answer for. One report claims “Ambassador Stevens was engaged in smuggling sizable quantities of Libyan arms from the destroyed Gaddafi regime to the Syrian rebels, to help overthrow the Assad regime in Syria.”
Whatever the true story, the Administration has not been forthcoming in providing details. How has the Administration responded to inquiries thus far? First, they presented for weeks a phony narrative of a video being somehow behind the attack, and now, they’re stonewalling (until the election is safely past) claiming an investigation must first be completed in order to get to the bottom of what happened and answer the many pressing questions of the American people.
During the 2nd presidential debate, Obama used a clever word game to trip up his opponent. Romney was attempting to point out the Obama Administration’s many days of delay before they definitively labeled the Libyan attacks as terrorism. But Obama knew he had used the phrase “acts of terror” in his initial Rose Garden remarks about the embassy attacks, and used this fact to score a cheap debate point.
Obama implied that in his initial Rose Garden statement he was saying that he knew the Libyan attacks were terrorism from the beginning, when in fact he knew full well that his team spent the next two weeks following the Rose Garden remarks specifically denying the acts were terrorism!
Even debate moderator Candy Crowley, who in effect handed Obama a win on this point by interjecting herself into the debate, voiced her agreement with Romney on the latter.
In any case, if indeed President Obama was calling the acts terrorism in the Rose Garden, the Administration becomes all the more culpable, because they then have no excuse for the media campaign they conducted in the days that followed in which they emphatically denied these acts were terrorism, and instead continually pushed a narrative of a video protest gone wrong. It was not until Sept 20, nine days after the attack, that Obama’s WH press secretary Carney stated that the Libyan attacks were a “self-evident” terrorist attack. In these remarks, Carney acknowledged (contrary to the President’s debate insinuation) that the Administration had NOT called the Libyan acts terrorism prior to his statement. But even as the Administration finally acknowledged these Libyan acts as terrorism, Carney still did not fully abandon the prior narrative, saying, “We do not have any specific intelligence that there was significant advanced planning or coordination for this attack.” So here we have the Administration for the 1st time acknowledging that the acts in Libya were terrorism, yet at the same time still pressing the idea that these terrorist acts were somehow unplanned and uncoordinated.
Since much of the mainstream media has not given priority to this important but politically damaging story, it is not unreasonable to conclude they harbor bias towards re-election of President Obama. But now, as even mainstream stations such as CBS, CNN and ABC begin covering this story, I’m convinced the truth is going to emerge, even if only post-election. The President owes the American people a full explanation of what happened in Libya– why these brave men died under his watch. The evidence gathered thus far indicts President Obama as, at best, guilty of gross incompetence and negligence, and at worst, guilty of calculated political coldness that was willing to let these brave Americans die.
Friends and fellow Americans, I believe President Obama has shown by both his actions and the governing philosophy behind them that he is not the man many thought they were electing. He promised positive “hope and change”, fundamental transformation of business as usual in Washington, and transparency in government. He made specific promises about where he thought the economy would be, if his stimulus was passed. He has not delivered on any of the above. Additionally he has shown a willingness to acts in ways that set a dangerous precedent for the executive branch of government by appointing unelected czars that wield incredible power, not enforcing laws he disagrees with and/or writing executive orders to work around them. Obamacare seems to have been pushed through, not because Americans were clamoring for it, but because Obama and his team thought it was good policy and took advantage of a rare political opportunity to get it passed in partisan fashion. Last but not least, President Obama and his team have misled the American people regarding the events that took place in Benghazi, apparently to protect their political interests. This is not the kind of leadership America needs at this hour. We need a leader who views America as great despite its flaws, one whose view of America is not so fundamentally negative that it feels compelled to essentially apologize for America’s ways. As we can see from watching the news of our embassies under attack all over the world, this approach has not in fact earned the respect of our enemies around the world but has emboldened them to hate us and attack us all the more.
As a Christian, I also have other reasons for thinking Obama is not right for this country. Perhaps I’ll share those reasons in my next post. But for now I share with you the above thoughts and urge you to cast your vote for Mitt Romney for next President of the United States. I commend the following articles to you for the positive case for supporting Mitt Romney:
Romney Is What the Country Needs Right Now
A Better Choice: The Case for Mitt Romney
Columbus Dispatch: The case for Romney
Bring in the turnaround expert: The case for Romney
And some helpful articles to help keep this all in proper perspective:
ReformingChristianity.com 