It always seems so lame, the whine that goes up from the loser that the other guy barely won. Or that the beauty contest had all ugly contestants and so nobody wanted anything to do with the result. Remember this: every contest has to have a winner… and the winner gets the prize.
The majority of the country now realize what a foolish mistake it was to elect and, even worse, re-elect Barack Obama; but spin those results any which way and the bottom line remains the same. And yes, he gets the mandate that goes with winning. Fortunately that works both ways, so after the 2014 elections Congress should again have a say as well. But that assumes the weasels that got elected were going to be serious about their oath to uphold the Constitution.
Part of the reason the country now realizes it made a prodigious error voting Obama-the-fox into the chicken coop is that he has some real strange ideas that he is inflicting on America and the world. For example, he apparently is OK with radical Islam…wow.
Not least of Obama’s harmful ideas is his thinking that he can ignore the Constitution. And let’s be honest, the executive order on immigration was not his first attempt to shred the document. Congress is suing him over “recess” appointments, which are also a violation of the basic rule of law and the checks and balances of the Constitution.
Obama famously said that “elections have consequences.” Note that he did not clarify his remarks by adding “only elections that go my way, of course.” Since the most recent elections progressives would have you believe the results did not carry a mandate because only 36% of those who could vote did so. When hearing that nonsense refer back to my opening comments about being lame and that “the winner gets the prize.”
In fact, the elections of 2014 were huge producing as they did the greatest control over state legislatures by one party (GOP) in the history of the country. It wasn’t just growing the majority in the House and gaining control of the Senate in Congress, the prize from 2014 also included Governors in deep blue states (36 of 50) and legislatures too (69 of 99). We should see some improvements as a result.
Try as they might to refute the obvious, the elections of 2014 were a tidal wave that washed the progressives power out of elected office in government. Obama said his policies were on the ballot, indeed, they were. The last nail in the coffin of Obama’s useful idiots was Senator Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, the runoff election there didn’t go her way and Harry Reid spent more than 40 million dollars trying to buy the elections…all for naught.
But let’s not kid ourselves, there is still the fourth branch of government to deal with; the bureaucracy is alive and full of progressives still. Remember that regulations often have the effect of law, and for every page of law there is, on average, ten pages of verbiage written by those faceless public union minions known as “government workers.” The Lois Lerner’s (of IRS infamy) inside the beltway who wreak havoc with our democracy, well, the Founding Fathers never intended power to reside at the desks of government employees.
Thomas Jefferson our 3rd President once said, “The two enemies of the government are criminals and government. So let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become a legalized version of the first.” Such comments stand as an enduring testament to the wisdom of the leaders that spawned this country and the model of limited government that was central to their thinking.
We must always remind ourselves of the original intent imbedded in the Constitution and at elections do our best to flog those who would suggest that the flavor of the week politician is superior to the rule of law. The history of progressivism is like “Choc-full-of-nuts,” a niche taste like a Ben/Jerry ice cream flavor that passed into oblivion as better more established norms asserted themselves once again. To complete the cleansing we must clear out the desks in DC…and that must be the goal of the 2016 election.
The mandate given to the winners in America is the flavor of the ages; its colors are red, white and blue and it tastes like freedom…how sweet it is.
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David W. Thompson worked in government, education and the non-profit sector for more than forty years. A graduate of Westminster College and Harvard University, he resides in Easley, SC. You can follow him on his blog, “Smokealarms2015.com.”