President Barack Obama visited Richmond again on Thursday at
the Carillion in Byrd Park where close to 15,000 onlookers waited to hear the
president speak.
President Obama reminded the crowd that Richmond gave him
his second-widest vote margin in Virginia in 2008. So, President Obama said, “I
need your vote. I’ve come to ask for your help in keeping American moving
forward.”[1]
Continuing the theme of ‘moving forward’, Obama stated, “We
don’t turn back. We look forward at that distant horizon, at the next
destination.”[2]
Thus, the president offered a sober view of America’s prospects for the future,
in contrast to the much more optimistic political vision offered by President
Obama in 2007.
While conservatives and members of the Republican Party have
been quick to fault President Obama for failing to deliver some of the campaign
promises he made while running for president four years ago, President Obama
has achieved quite a few policy successes during his first four years: health
care reform, higher fuel efficiency standards, the rescue of American
auto-manufacturers, progressive environmental legislation, and the list could
go on. President Obama’s achievements are all the more impressive given the
outright obstructionism of the current U.S. Congress.
The Republican Party’s counter-argument has essentially
been, ‘more can be done’. Sure, more can always be done. But if it isn’t too
cliché at this point, what the Republican Party has offered Americans are more
of the failed policies that engulfed us in two wars, threw our economy into a
depression, unleashed the floodgates of unemployment, and turned a blind eye to
environmental degradation and, in some cases, almost seemed to encourage it.
The GOP was once a party with a number of good ideas. For
instance, the debt should be curtailed; excessive spending is the sign of inept
or corrupt political representatives[3].
But even this policy position has transformed inside of an ideological vacuum
that has sucked off the most practical aspects and replaced them with ideas
like absolutely no deficit spending; Great in theory, but impractical in the
real world. And guess which classes of Americans get negatively affected the
most?
Thus, putting Mitt Romney in the White House will only serve
to send America down a worse path than even George W. Bush could have achieved.
America can’t afford a Mitt Romney presidency.
[1] http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/oct/26/tdmain01-obama-rallies-15000-at-carillon-in-richmo-ar-2312500/
[2] http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/oct/26/tdmain01-obama-rallies-15000-at-carillon-in-richmo-ar-2312500/
[3] http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/mailbag/jack-degnan-eisenhower-was-last-republican-president-with-balanced-budget/article_e09859d7-8a9f-5aa3-8528-76e2a89eeaa5.html
No comments:
Post a Comment