Mitt's Bad Week

After a summer haitus, I’m back, just in time for the final grind to this most momentous election.  This has been a most unsettling time, one in which I believe that Western Civilization could hang in the balance.  We have a clear choice in front of us.  This election features Barack Obama, who, in many ways, represents the antithesis of all that is truly American—hostile to individualism, private enterprise, and American exceptionalism pitted against Mitt Romney—the embodiment of those ideals.   Crucially, the main stream media has picked its candidate and acts as an uncompensated PR arm of the Obama campaign, effectively multiplying  Obama’s fundraising.

It was almost with disbelief that I heard the MSM talk about Romney’s “bad week” last week because of the release of the surreptitiously obtained video in which he decried the 47% that are dependent on government and whose vote he will never get.  My reaction was—big deal.  Maybe he got the number a bit wrong—it’s probably more like 30%.  But the principle is correct.  The overarching strategy of the Democrats is to get as many people hooked on government largesse as possible to create a permanent coalition supporting the Democrats.

But it was Barack’s bad week, but we heard little about that.  It has really been Barack’s bad year.  Despite the stimulus, despite unprecedented help from the Federal Reserve Board, the economy is going nowhere.   Second quarter GDP was revised downward to 1.3%.  Durable goods orders are down.  Unemployment is stuck above 8%.  Family income is down.  Regulations promulgated by the EPA, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank suffocate our economy.   Our rank in economic  freedom and competitiveness has tumbled.  Millions of job seekers have lost hope.

Overseas, the picture isn’t any prettier.  Obama’s interventions in Egypt and Libya have enabled radical Islamism, and further imperiled our ally, Israel.  The Middle East has been in flames.   Our Afghan strategy is in disarray.   Japan and China are nearly at war.  The Middle East peace process is dead.  Iran’s centrifuges continue to hum, and each day, they unveil a new weapons system design to damage us while we are happily snipping away at our defense budget to make even more room for the Obama welfare state.    In the 2008 campaign, Obama pledged to meet with any of our adversaries without precondition.  In 2012, he will not extend the same courtesy to our friends, preferring time with Letterman, Jay-Z and Beyonce to our only steadfast ally in the Middle East.

Most egregious has been the patent falsehoods put forth by this administration concerning the rape and murder of our ambassador to Libya.  Blaming this horrendous incident on a kooky anti-Islamic film produced by an American citizen, the initial reaction was to decry the filmmaker and take him into custody for questioning about his alleged parole violations and to once again apologize to the Muslim world (for the free exercise of a private citizen’s First Amendment rights).    Now we are learning that Benghazi was a huge foreign policy and security blunder covered up by the Obama administration.

Both at home and abroad, Obama has been a disaster.  That Obama is polling ahead of Romney (or at best is dead even) is extremely troublesome to me.   I have deep worries about the America that my children and grandchildren will inherit if America renews Obama’s contract.