Many people are equating incumbency in elected office with lack of commitment to freedom, individual rights and limited government. We might label this the “Sarah Palin premise.” This attitude that “new equals good, old equals bad” is misguided. While Big Government may be the dominant trend among incumbents, it’s also the dominant trend everywhere — because of prevailing (and wrong) ideas. Ideas, not number of years in office, are the determining factor in the quality of a candidate. An incumbent with a proven record of fighting for individual rights, free markets, limited government and freedom (if any actually exist) should be supported; likewise, a candidate with views in opposition to both Democrats and Republicans (as we’ve known them) should likewise be supported.
Remember that Obama was a Washington outsider, in the U.S. Congress only two short years before becoming President, and he turned out to be the most socialist and fascist President in the history of our fragile Republic. I’m worried about the argument against incumbency because it’s incumbency. It’s not that any of the career politicians who went down in flames (including in my home state of Delaware) were worth saving; they weren’t. What worries me about the rush to attack incumbency is the evasion of ideas implied by this approach. People who support the continued expansion of Big Government — and this includes most conventional Republicans — hide behind the phrase, “Ideology is pass It’s efficiency and winning that matters.” They might as well just say what they mean: “Power is what matters.” But power is meaningless without the ideas to make the exercise of that power sane, just and beneficial. We could vote the old-time socialist-lite Republicans into office who failed us almost as badly as the all-out socialists currently in charge are failing us. To what end? These idiot Republicans who say, “We have to have power even above principle” should be called on exactly what they’re saying. They’re no different from, or better than, the power-lusting monsters currently in control of Congress and the White House.
We need new leaders. But they had better be the right kind. Otherwise: No more America as we’ve known it. Think I’m overstating it just a bit? Then wait until Obama’s policies really start to take effect. Up to now, they merely haven’t succeeded in ending a nasty recession. What happens when, left in place, they possibly create a monster depression? And wait until our first major security crisis under the amateurish (or worse) watch of this commander-in-chief. If we don’t start to elect people who really know what they’re doing — i.e. people who have the right ideas and the integrity to stick to them — then things will not get better; they’ll only get worse. The right ideas could save us, but only if we support people who think and act on them.