By Stan Welch
It’s almost May, which means there are just about six months left before the November mid-term elections for the Congress, as well as various local and state offices.
It also means the pollsters and the talking head media types are in full swing with their efforts to set up certain candidates so they can go ahead and shoot them down, clearing the way for those they support. Ten years ago, I would have laughed at such an allegation. Today anyone who thinks the mainstream American media is still interested in reporting the truth is a fool.
Just ask Chris Christie, or Jeb Bush, neither of whom has declared an intention to run, but who have both been set up as targets for the snipers that masquerade as reporters and commentators today. On the other hand, has anyone heard a single Democrat mentioned as a serious candidate for the presidential nomination besides Hillary Clinton? Even Vice President Biden can’t get anyone to drop his name on a Sunday morning talk show. That question has been settled.
No, the effort to discredit conservative leaders is well underway, and unfortunately, conservative candidates continue to walk out in front of bus after bus. You know, the Reagan years took place while I was still in the phase of my political development that found me more to left of center than to the right, where I find myself today. But in recent years I have come to understand Reagan’s genius, and it wasn’t just his solid conservative philosophy.
It was his proactive, straightforward, unabashed expression of those beliefs, so that everyone could understand them clearly. Not everyone agreed, but if you didn’t know where Ronald Reagan stood on issues, you weren’t paying a bit of attention. That lack of attention is translated these days into the term “low information voters”. Those voters are the folks you see interviewed from time to time as a joke on late night television. You know, the ones who can’t name a single U.S. Senator, or who think George Bush passed Obamacare?
It is one of the great ironies of human history that in the Information Age, when literally any fact can be found within seconds, our electorate is more ignorant and under informed than at any other time in our history. I mentioned earlier that conservative candidates insist on walking out into the political traffic. What I mean by that is that they react to liberal positions, like Obamacare, ceaselessly; offering criticism and only occasionally, an alternative.
They get bogged down in minutia and partisanship, and make it easy for the media pigeons to strut and coo and peck at crumbs on the ground. Reagan’s genius, and the aspect of his presence that modern conservatives need most, is his unabashed pride and belief in America. I am certain that a conservative candidate, like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or Ben Carson who stepped up to microphone after microphone and delivered this message over and over would sweep the left to the very edges of the political map.
The message is this: America is indeed the land of exceptionalism. The rest of the world still envies us and longs to live as we do. We will no longer apologize for that exceptional nature that made us the greatest nation on earth. We will not apologize for trusting ourselves and our fellow Americans more than we trust our government.
We are going to secure our borders, and reform our immigration system; making it much easier for immigrants to come here legally, and much harder for them to come here illegally. We are going to do right by our veterans and we are going to rebuild our military to the point that the American tiger is paper no more. In the arena of world affairs, we will do what we say and say what we do. Neither friend nor foe will have any reason for doubt as to which nation stands for freedom. It will be us.
We will repeal Obamacare; not because it is a failure, but because it is an unacceptable intrusion by government into the lives of American citizens. We will engage the private sector in a real and determined effort to establish a workable health care system. There is no reason that such a goal can’t be attained.
We will restrain, or abolish, the IRS, the NSA and any other federal agency that invades our homes and our privacy. We will establish an energy policy that puts America back on top when it comes to energy independence. We will use that policy as an engine to create and sustain jobs, and to reshape our military commitments around the world.
The first candidate that accepts this challenge will have my vote, and I believe, the votes of tens of millions of other Americans as well.
