A little free advice to the GOP

Hi Republican party. Middle aged white guy in the top 10% here. How are you? I'm fine. Managed to keep my family fed and warm, plus get the tree off my roof, the last 2 weeks as my area recovers from the double blow of Sandy and the Nor'Easter, without requiring government help. Thought that you would like that as it is kinda boot-strappy. I even helped create a few jobs by hiring a traveling tree service to help me get at some high tree branches I couldn't reach, plus remove the rest of the tree that hit the roof (chainsaws and 45 year old Jewish NYC area lawyers just don't go together as I'm sure you'd agree). Mom's doing well, but you wouldn't like her now as, after a full life of working hard, raising a family and teaching children, she is part of the 47% (though I don't recall her voting for Democrats in presidential elections) in a nursing home sucking down that government juice, but thanks for asking. Anyway, I digress. I'd like to explain why I didn't vote for you last week and, at this rate, may not vote for you again, at least on the national level, and it is not because I want "gifts."

Traditionally, especially as I am Jewish and a Middle East war seems imminent (we all know you love Israel, while the Democrats are a little more reserved), I should be in your base, except I am probably a little too progressive (I'd say liberal in the traditional sense since that means open minded but I know you've twisted that word just as conservatism as been twisted)  for you these days. I'm educated, pretty tolerant of others, don't care what people don't do in their bedrooms or who they want to marry, agree there should be less abortions but feel that should be a personal or medical decision, don't have a problem conserving for tomorrow while keeping the family's debt limited to our mortgage, and don't mind paying taxes to invest in our country's infrastructure. I think that used to be called a Rockefeller Republican or maybe even a Regan Democrat. I don't know. What I do know is that not only did I not vote for your presidential candidate, but I didn't vote for my local Senate and Congressional Republican candidates because your radical right and financial overlords scare the heck out of me and what they would mean for this nation's future.

I know you are trying to broaden your base without resorting to "gifts" but here's the thing, I don't consider the social security and medicare I will receive at the end of my working life a gift. I don't consider new and improved schools to be a gift. I don't consider improved infrastructure to be a gift. And while, technically, my taxes being used to help those less fortunate then myself can be called a gift, I am thankful I am not in a position to need that gift, whether it is food stamps to keep my children fed or FEMA grants to help me rebuild my life. I consider all that, and more, part of what makes this a civilized nation.Maybe I am just too stupid to understand how torpedoing our fragile economy while worsening the plight of a huge majority of the country  to further fatten the wallets of the rich so they can continue to outsource jobs and invest their money overseas is good for America. Or maybe I am not as dumb as you think the majority of the population are in rejecting such a divisive Presidential candidate who, through his words before and after the election,  demonstrate he really held the 99% in disdain (and was an emptier suit than W).

Even though I am not a member of "those groups" you so despise, I don't mind paying taxes to pay for new schools, transportation projects, utilities etc for my grandchildren to live just as I have relied on all my grandparents generation built for me. I consider those "gifts" that I paid for with my payroll taxes since I was 16 to be paying me my money back, whether I see all of it or I don't (and I really, really hope I do see all of it as I'd like to die quietly in my sleep in old age like my great-uncle, not screaming in fear like the passengers in his out of control car). And I am fine if some of that goes to a disabled widow to help her raise her underage children because, well, that's how I think the richest nation to ever walk this earth should roll.

But going back to the broadening of your base, ain't going to happen until you stop being slaves to those who care more about a bunch of cells that could potentially be human life inside of a woman's body over what happens if and when those cells become a human and who believe men should be stoned when sleeping with a man because you misinterpreted that part of the bible that approves drug legalization and gay marriage (think about what I just wrote for a few seconds). Not saying there isn't room at the table for those who oppose abortion and gay marriage for whatever reason, but until you lock your radical righthwads in the damn closets the way Democrats locked their looney, truly liberal associates, you aren't going anywhere near 1600 again. And just picking a token woman for a leadership post to demonstrate your openness is not enough, especially as your leaders imply that there was voter fraud because blacks voted. You have to mean it in your hearts.

There are other things too that bother me. I could mention that, as you continue to politicize the Benghazi attacks, that 9/11 happened on your watch, plus several other attacks on diplomatic sites (including a certain embassy in Lebanon that President Reagan pulled marines out of after a suicide attack killed hundred of Americans). I know its politics etc, but not everything is a conspiracy (though I agree there is more to the Petraeus affair than what we have been told as of this writing). If you want to win again, not only do you have to stop looking backwards at ideas that worked 30 years ago, but you also need to stop making every statement a passive-aggressive attack on Democrats. Half the country agrees with them. 

But how can I explain all this to those who believe the Republican Governor of NJ saying nice things about President Obama for helping his state recover from Hurricane Sandy, caused Mitt Romney to lose the election. Heaven forbid, a leader serving those who voted for him first. I'm sure the loss had nothing to do with a candidate so out of touch that he thought cuts in the capital gains tax would help the middle class when they sold all their stocks. What stocks?! My wife and I make well more then $150,000 combined, our only stocks are in our 401(k) accounts and in the college education cuts we have set up for our children -- if we don't have enough disposable income for stocks, how does a family making just $60,000 have enough to worry paying taxes on dividends or capital gains (the tax on our savings, which would have been cut, is miniscule thanks to low interest rates). Don't any of you watch something other than Fox News?

And, going back to my mother, if you ever saw her medical bills from her nursing home, you'd see that her medicaid payments to supplement her social security and my parents' pensions, were not gifts, but a lifeline in return for her decades of hard work (now if you want to argue that limiting medicare/medicaid payments to grants will force nursing homes etc to lower their prices, I'm listening, but I don't trust the free market that has you where they want you as much as you). And I am not going to get into the fiscal cliff you want to throw the country over because a few of your friends, who will be rich no matter, don't want to pay more taxes unless the entire middle class, already reeling from four decades of your wealth consolidation programs, givers even more of the few crumbs they have left (can't leave the serfs with anything that might look like savings now can we?). As long as your opening bargaining position is to hold a gun to the country's head while telling the other side "no and no discussion until you do what we say," there is no point.

So, in conclusion, GROW UP! Stop blaming others for your failures. People don't vote for you because they don't like what you say, don't like what is in your hearts, worry that the increasing concentration of wealth is bad for a republic and a whole host of other concerns. We are individuals making up a nation of one, not a nation making individuals of 300 million (yeah, that got away from me too, sorry). No matter how much we adore individualism, we all need each other to some extent. Not many of us live on small family farms anymore, with fewer every year. This isn't the 18th or even the per-industrial 19th century where Americans could live easily enough by themselves, off the grid, without any help from neighbors (assuming the army kept the Indians away and local law kept the bandits at bay). This is the 21st century. Maybe you should remember that.

Signed, Moderate, but conservative, independent white guy

Wishful thinking by the GOP?

Not even 9 months complete, some political handicappers consider President Obama's presidency to be such a failure that right now is not "will Republicans make gains at the midterm elections?" but "how large will those gains be?" I don't know about that. While the party in power almost always loses seats in midterm elections, a lot has to happen or not happen before next November for big changes. However, ignoring that incumbents tend to win in a very high percentage and that a number of somewhat moderate Republicans who could probably attract Obama supporters, have already announced they are not running again next year, the GOP has a bigger problem -- their leadership gap. In 1994 the GOP had Newt who, while out there, was somewhat rationale. He had a 10 point Contract for America plan and some of it made sense to Clinton supporters. Also, the purge of moderates that Reagan democrats could vote for hadn't begun yet. I don't see that with the GOP today. While there are those who do have good ideas they are being shouted out by the crazies whose main goal is just to obstruct. But even so, the GOP has other problems.

Just because they choose to highlight their celebration of ignorance and their passion for stupidity does not mean the rest of the country is going to follow that path. They point to the teabaggers as their new base but, if that is the case, why were the teabaggers not out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the other pork-barrel spending that President Bush refused to veto -- much of which was passed when the Republicans held both houses of Congress? Are we seeing a real grass roots movement or just a bunch of Republican hacks in disbelief that they have been exiled from their seats of power?

If this movement was a majority, we would have seen rioting in the streets months ago. Instead we seem to have a few thousand hard-core individuals intent on destroying and undermining the man that a majority of Americans elected without any proposals of what they would do, aside from not doing what the President wants to try. That is not a grassroots uprising; that is a communication strategy, same as the ability of a very few people to mess it up for everybody because they can.

Instead of growing their base, they are appeasing their worst by chasing away Latinos, who Bush, in theory, was going to bring into the party as natural Catholic conservatives, at the same time their demographics continue to increase. Their embrace of the birthers who think the state of Hawaii was part of Kenya for a brief time in the early 1960s, and other crazy theories is also chasing away voters. Add in that many in what is left of the middle class may have finally come to the realization that the GOP doesn't always have their best interests in mind and it may be hard as sooner or later more will realize that they spent the Bush years working more hours for less dollars, at least until their jobs were outsourced so CEOs could enjoy the additional profits that their tax cuts failed to provide. Their only real hope is that President Obama continues to show the lackadaisical leadership lately that has helped to lead his poll numbers down. If the President stops speaking softly and starts using his big stick then that might be it.

Who do the GOP have now on the national scene? Rush Limburg? Glenn Beck? Sarah Palin? Screaming "you lie" is not leadership. Instead of grooming new leadership they have concentrated on chasing away all but the pure, who will just follow without question. The GOP's supporters may be loud but they are fewer in number then they were 16 years ago and coverage of some of their antics feels more like filler news because there is not much else interesting going on.

The GOP may gain some midterm seats, many if the healthcare war ends badly, or the auto and bank bailouts turn out to not have helped the economy and unemployment remains high. But unless they get the crazies out, like the Dems did over the last 25 years or so (with Kennedy gone are there any real liberals left?) they're going to set themselves up for a bigger disaster in 2012.

I'm mad as heck and I'm probably going to take it some more

Well the debates are over and I still feel that no matter who wins the election my 40 year old self better plan on working until the day I die as there will be no social security, no Medicare, no pension, no 401k etc (at least as we know them). Sending the children to college so they can hopefully get good enough jobs to support us in our old age? As if. All I see are mountains of debt, getting larger by the second, that will have to be paid down and no real plan to do so; just promises of more tax cuts and more spending. Aughhhh!!!!! And I thought NJ politics pandered!

Good grief people. We have been spending like there was no tomorrow for many moons and now that tomorrow is here it seems like we are using the opportunity to go on one final drunken spending spree. I wouldn't be so upset if all the recent deficit spending had been used for investing in our schools, transportation or energy infrastructures, but that has not been the case. Instead we went out and created thousands of jobs in Asia and the middle East as we ran out to buy fuel for large SUVs to haul home our 52 inch flat screen TVs.

Ok, fine. That was free choice. But what really gets my goat is that the politicians are still promising us we can continue living like that, a life of leisure followed by a long, healthy, luxurious retirement, despite mounting evidence to the contrary for most of us if only they can cut more taxes and increase spending on anything but investing in our country's future. The sooner we realize that we are being sold a bill of goods and we have some real hard choices to make, the better.

Sorry folks, the social security retirement age is going to have to be raised. The average person in their late 60s in the 1930s probably only had a few years to live when they started collecting their social security, today anyone dying in their 60s is considered to have died young. I am already realizing that I better plan to stay healthy, something that really came home this week as my mobility was quite limited (fortunately I can telecommute).

We're also going to have to do something about health care. One of the claims people make to say why socialized medicine is horrible is the long wait to see a doctor. Well, I severely sprained my ankle last weekend, and the earliest I can see the orthopedic doctor will be almost 2 weeks later, by which time my ankle will have healed or I will have really messed up my foot. And I get to pay a nice chunk of change, on top of the Medicare & social security taxes which I'll never see again, from my paycheck for this privilege. Whoopee. And about our infrastructure: we can short change our schools, roads, trains and ports all we want to save a few pennies, but our competitors are not and they will continue to take advantage of a country living off its past legacy.

Instead of tackling these tough problems we have instead been focusing on abortion, what associates did 40 years ago, whether cavemen had dinosaurs as pets and other irrelevant issues in these tough times. Those arguments are for a rich, fat, lazy nation at peace. Well we're fat and lazy but we are no longer rich or at peace. Low taxes are nice, but the goods and services we as a society want costs money, as is evidenced by a now over $10T debt. If we're not going to cut services, we can't keep cutting revenue like there is no tomorrow, especially when tomorrow will soon be yesterday.

Of course we the people are to blame. We listen and accept all this garbage and never concentrate on the real issues. The real issues are boring. Cutting the budget can be done, but that takes courage and will cost some pain. It is also dull. It is more entertaining to discuss whether Osama bin Barack blew up a weather station when he was 8 or whether Caribou Barbie really believes her ancestors had pet dinosaurs as she ponders international security matters from her suburban house. We can say we're mad as heck, and demand a government that will do what is best for the country, but we're probably going to take more of what we've been taking because that is much less work anyway.

They usually know how to campaign

Senator Obama recently noted, "the Republicans don't govern very well, [b]ut, they know how to campaign," recent events notwithstanding, such as the interesting events surrounding Gov. Palin and the federal government's apparently decent response to Hurricane Gustav. By that he was implying that the Republican party is very good at talking people into voting against their own best interests, such as voting for the party that wants to keep health insurance in private hands by implying people have a choice in their care (as if, even for the middle class realistic choices are few) that they wouldn't have under socialized medicine. As evidenced by many events of the last years, one could argue that the GOP seems to want incompetent people running government so they argue that government is so bad that voters will demand that there be less of it.

Of course, what Senator Obama failed to point out is that the campaigning by the GOP doesn't stop with the election. They keep on going. The GOP has been excellent in getting the public to ignore that the Bush administration has greatly expanded the federal government in budget, departments, people, and intrusion into average Americans lives while increasing the nation's debt by hiding behind his social conservative views, such as his love of the religious right (his base), anti-abortion stance and privatizing social security. Of course, the Democrats don't exactly have clean hands over the last 8 years. The Patriot Act was voted in almost unanimously without even being read. Under pressure from the GOP, most of the Democrats in Congress abandoned their jobs and just let the executive branch roll over them. This continued even after they got control of Congress. Whether that is the Dems being weak or the GOP being strong, with that record, it is hard not to admire the Republican party. And if it weren't for the federal government's failed response after Hurricane Katrina 3 years ago, their dreams of a super majority may have continued.

Still, the last few days have been amusing as more comes out about Governor Palin. From what I read, she seems like a nice, bright person whose qualification for being vice president seems to rely on the Constitution and views that appeal to conservative right. In fairness, the role of the VP is basically to go to funerals, breaks ties in the Senate and to make sure that the President still has a pulse so in that regards, she is fine. However, as McCain is a 72 year old cancer survivor, I worry that she may not be qualified to step in as President if something happened to a President McCain. I imagine most of Vice President Cheney's detractors would admit that Cheney has the experience and ability to run the country if something were to happen to President Bush. It seems, in an effort to break away from the "corruption" that has overtaken the GOP over the last decade or so, that McCain has thrown out the baby with the bathwater -- throwing out the good campaigners along with the Washington insiders that has broken the system.

Personally, I don't really care about labels. Give me a socially liberal/fiscally conservative candidate willing to re-evaluate our entitlement programs, make proper investments in our future, which includes understanding that our borrowing from the Chinese to pay the Arabs for oil needs to be addressed ASAP and I'll be happy. Whether that person is a Democrat or Republican is besides the point. I just want a leader who will put this government back on the right track.

Clintonitis

Many of Sen. Hillary Clinton's supporters are blaming sexism in the media for her defeat to Sen. Obama for the democratic presidential nomination. And while it is hard to argue that there was not sexism (i.e. Chris Matthews calling her a she-devil), her being a woman isn't why she lost. There were other factors in play.

For starters, I, as a 40 year old man, was insulted when some of her supporters, in explaining why there was sexism, used an example of "here's the woman, staying home with the kids and having the husband come home at 5 and, with all his male power, take over the house by asking what's for dinner." Talk about old fashioned. Both my wife and I, equally educated, both work in our fields. However, my job allows for much more flexible hours then hers. So, while she shuffles the kids off to school and pre-school in the morning, because I'm out the door before 6:30, as I have a long commute, I am home before her most evenings (by just a few minutes) and beginning dinner. Though we do not equally divide our domestic duties, with my wife doing the majority of house work -- I have been banned from laundry, aside from putting the laundry in the washer or drier (or hanging it outside in summer) for "philosophical"differences regarding folding and the proper way to put clothes away -- I do 95% of the cooking, plus the grocery shopping, she brings my car to the mechanic to me (mechanic is walking distance to her office so it just works out easier that way). We kind of split the other chores, 60-40 favoring (so tho phrase it) my wife, though that closes to 50-50 when yard work gets thrown in. Additionally, I work from home several days a week and am the one who meets the school bus several afternoons. I attend way more school functions then her because it is much easier for me to slip away for a few hours. Same for staying home with a sick child (though, granted, my nursing usually means putting on the TV and working in the other room). So, while I'm not Mr. Mom, I'm far from the typical father of Hillary's generation. Somehow, I suspect the message that many of today's youth didn't have the same issues and expectations of Hillary's, was lost among her handlers. But there are other reasons she ended up losing my support.

When Bill Clinton was running for President in 1992 I was 24 and under employed after college, caught up in the Bush I recession (I was temping and working in a deli). I looked at George Bush as yesterday's generation and wanted fresh blood from someone closer to my age, someone who had a better understanding of my life. I had this experience again with Barack Obama, except this time I was pleased that it was someone from my generation, or at least born in the same decade as me. I was not one of those caught up in Obama mania, nor completely swayed by his superior oratory skills. But, I was intrigued enough to do a little research on him. Somewhere along the way, probably when my Clintonitis returned, Obama's relative inexperience, stopped bothering me, which was interesting because I thought George W Bush's inexperience (Governor of a state where the legislature only met every other year and, before that, a reformed druggie who ran businesses into the ground) really harmed his presidency.

When the primary season started, I was pretty sure I'd be voting for Hillary in the fall. While I wasn't in love with her, I felt she'd be a good president. Even when Obama started his campaign up, I still thought Hillary had more substance. But then, when it was just Hillary and him, something happened. During this portion of the campaign I remembered what always bothered me about Bill Clinton's presidency, even though I voted for him twice and generally thought he was an ok president. It was their always following the polls and the diverseness they brought.

When Hillary started going negative, she reminded me how tired I was of the Clintons when their presidency ended. I can't put my finger on any one thing, it was just that I was really tired of their act. I had forgotten about it though, that is until she and Bill went on the attack. Then I remembered, and, when added in with the diverseness that George W Bush has brought over the last years, decided I wanted to get off this 16 year merry go round and go a different route. With John McCain sounding more like W everyday, my route has put me squarely in Obama's camp.

I don't care that he is a black man just I didn't care that Hillary was a woman. I don't think it's generational, I think it's something else. The country is tired, or at least I am, of the rehashing of the 60s culture wars over and over. Though not a child of the 60s, McCain is squarely in this demographic from his service in Vietnam. Enough. It was 40 years ago. Can't we move on already?

Still I am a little sad that Hillary won't be president (at least this year). Hopefully she can find something in the senate or Obama's administration (assuming he wins). When explaining this to my wife's 22 year old cousin, I explained it as Clinton was our Obama and it's a little hard to let them go. Yet, I'm ready to do so.

Obama and Generation X?

A few weeks ago I was at a barbecue at my wife's aunt's house. As we were chatting, the topic turned to politics. My mother in law, in her early 60s, started out by saying she wouldn't vote for Barack Obama, if he got the nomination, due to what she felt were his lack of qualifications (and race, but that's another story). When the aunt asked me, age 40, who I would vote for, I replied, "Obama. Your generation (baby boomers) have messed this country up enough." She sighed and said I sounded just like her early 20s son. Sorry about that. While the World War 2 generation held the White House for almost 30 years (JFK to Bush I), after only 16 years, it is already time for the baby boomers to pass the torch to a new generation.

So here we are, a few weeks later, and here is something I never thought I'd say, at least for another decade or two: a black man has been nominated for President by a major party (of course, if a few votes had gone the other way, I'd be saying the same thing about a woman). Not that I really care. A black candidate or a woman candidate are just symbols: what I really care about is substance. So, it is with that in mind, that I really didn't expect to write this for many years is that someone from my generation, or at least close to my age, is being nominated for President. For me, this election wasn't about a man or a woman, it became generational: Generation X versus the Baby Boomers.

Born in 1961, Barack Obama is technically a baby boomer (though some define those born in 1961 as part of Generation X), but he came of age after Vietnam, hippies, the draft etc were history. Just as John McCain, born just before WW2, was affected more by the boomers values then he was by his own generation's, so has Obama been affected by Generation X's. He himself has said it is time for a new generation to take over and remove the old, such as Bill Clinton did when he defeated George Bush, and then Bob Dole, the WWII generation. He is not weighed down by the baggage that seems to have followed the Clintons and George W. Bush. There was no draft to evade. Sampling drugs, while still not approved (obviously), were more accepted. Like many of Generation X, he grew up in a broken family and is of mixed heritage. We're the ones who understand our elders' concerns and values, and can turn our noses at their sometimes greedy ways (don't get me started on the big deficits they are leaving us as they finance their early retirements on my dime) yet are eager to embrace the technology that will define the next generation. We're also the ones who realize that we're going to have the clean up the mess baby boomers have made, paying for their retirement while hoping our job isn't outsourced. .

I liked Bill Clinton's presidency and thought Hillary would've been a decent president. However, as her campaign went on and it became negative, she reminded me why I was tired of the Clintons after the 1990s and am tired of the baby boomers in politics in general. Her campaign reminded me of all the partisan fighting that seemed to really have stemmed from the college campus "debates" of the 1960s. Enough of this already. That war is over. I'm tired of wars and fights of 40 years ago being rehashed. I'm neither liberal or conservative (best definition is I am socially liberal, but fiscally conservative -- meaning that I don't care if gays want to get married, I do care about the large debts we're leaving for our children). There seems to be a different outlook to the way things need to be done in this country that is generational. Everything is not red or blue, republican or democrat.

I don't mean to generalize an entire generation, but there is something there. For me, perhaps it is because I am tired of hypocrisy. I grew up listening to how bad Vietnam was by the same people who have now brought us Vietnam on location in Iraq. I listened to the horrors of the welfare state by my elders. I watched them vote for candidates who ended welfare, as we knew it, and, due to fiscal necessity, also eliminate some of the programs they benefited from, such as low or free college tuition. I learned to live with it. Now, however, as those same people are approaching retirement, the "me generation" is demanding that no changes be made to their special welfare program: social security, no matter the cost. They want to live off of that welfare for the next few decades, forgetting that when social security was enacted it was really for those at the end of their lives, not really healthy enough to work anymore, to spend their last few years, not decades, in relative comfort. The thing is, I've also learned to live with is a generation about to retire and, perhaps, suck social security dry. However, don't rub my face in it.

I've learned to live with the fact that social security won't be completely there, if at all, by time I retire in 25-30 years, assuming I do retire. I'm not one of those who were advocating private accounts in lieu of the current fund, primarily because I thought the only ones to really benefit would be Wall St as they made tons of money on all the fees from managing individual accounts (why was putting a portion of the trust into a few funds never really looked into anyway?). I'm not one of those demanding cuts in medicare/medicaid. But my disillusion with the way baby boomers run things goes deeper than that.

Obama is not necessarily an elitist because he tells us the truth, such as we can't keep driving our gas guzzlers, keeping our homes at 72F, while wearing our flag lapels, because the rest of the world can't support us (though you can argue Obama is being a little hypocritical himself as he is driven around in SUVs). We knew that oil is a limited resource, we should've been exploring alternatives instead of building bigger trucks over the last decade. He is not being an elitist for saying voters are bitter and turning to God because they don't believe government can help them, he is insightfully telling us what many of us already suspect.

I can see how good or bad things are. I don't need a President who will tell me everything is fine, ignore the man behind the curtain. I want a President who will, rudely if necessary, lead us back to the right path.