Why I’m Voting Romney/Ryan in 2012

The election of 2012 is less than 30 days away. Good thing… this election season has been interminable. The attack ads, the Obama Triumphant narrative from the lapdog press, the win at all costs mentality, and every street corner in Phoenix littered with dozens of signs from politicians all hoping to be the next holder of whatever office they are running for have all combined to make me weary.

Despite the all pervasive nature of the presidential campaign, several polls still show the race between the candidates of the two major parties to be too close to call. This, even though, under the current President, we have had 43 straight months of official unemployment above 8%. When you add in those working only part-time because they cannot find full-time employment and those that have simply given up looking for work, the actual number is over 14%—over 23 million Americans—and has been steady at that rate for months, even including the anomalous data in the recent September jobs report.

Gas prices have doubled under this President. The prices of anything related to, associated with, or dependent upon gas for transportation have summarily spiked as well.

Our government spending is out of control. The heretofore AAA credit rating of the United States has been downgraded because our government borrows 40 cents out of every dollar it spends and our elected representatives have repeatedly shown no real backbone or desire to curb the spending, reduce entitlements and restore some fiscal sanity to our financial house.

The President wants to put coal-fired electrical plants out of business. Coal is the source for generating roughly half of the electricity produced in the United States. (http://www.clean-energy.us/facts/coal.htm, http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states) and yet, with no viable alternative or replacement, the President wants to end its use. According to the President himself, “The price of electricity will necessarily skyrocket.” (http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/294671/under-obama-electricity-rates-are-necessarily-skyrocketing)

[SIDEBAR]: This may well be the only documented occasion in which the current President has demonstrated an adequate understanding, or at least a cogent grasping of the facts, as to how a free market system works. Costs incurred by a business are passed on to their consumers. It’s called staying in business, which usually involves making a profit to one degree or another.[/SIDEBAR]

Despite massive infusion of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, alternative energy sources are not yet (and may never be) capable of replacing the energy supplied by coal. Never mind, says our current President. The American people will simply have to gladly fork over more of their money to support these cleaner energy sources that I and my administration are certain that they want.

For the last several years, in nearly every speech, the President talks about wanting to hire new teachers. He’s lying. If he really wanted to hire new teachers, he could have used all or most of the $90B he squandered on green energy boondoggles like Solyndra, and the Chevy Volt and a number of lithium-ion battery plants in Michigan, several of which have failed or have been purchased by China (but, I repeat myself).

Under the current President and his administration, our foreign policy is one of appeasement and groveling. Meanwhile, a terrorist attack on our Libyan embassy was ALLOWED TO HAPPEN with nothing but empty phrases and a bucket of hope for security. – ( http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/09/State-Dept-Comes-Clean ) Four Americans were murdered in that attack that could have been prevented, or subdued with proper security measures. After the fact, our government, those people that are supposed to work for us, spent three weeks adamantly lying to the American people about the events, the causes, and the prior knowledge. The day after the attack, our current President felt his most important duty of the day was to fly to Vegas for a FUNDRAISER. That same week, he also made an appearance on a late night TV show, and found time to make an appearance in New York hosted by two celebrities of the music world. Isn’t gross neglect of duty an impeachable offense?

And yet, somehow, beyond any reasonable deduction or rational observance of the facts, this man is still in the running to be reelected. There are hundreds of others of reasons why the current President should be removed from office on November 6th by the voting public. Among them are: his anti-American associations; his blatant disregard for the Constitution; his persistent class warfare; his stated intention of continuing, out of control deficit spending—more than enough in any normal election year to ensure zero chance at reelection. But, the electorate is fickle, and appears ready to vote for celebrity over substance.

I have spent several months debating the idea of voting for Mr. Gary Johnson of the Libertarian party. I agree with Mr. Johnson’s stance on a number of issues, and intellectually understand why he and I differ on a few. His belief—I’m paraphrasing here—that the government should be seen (infrequently) and not heard (from) is a stance I have long advocated. If it’s not explicitly addressed in the US Constitution, it is not a matter for the federal government, not the executive, legislative, nor judicial branch, to be involved in. The 9th &10th Amendments to the Constitution explicitly state such:

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

We have moved far from those simple truths over the course of the last (nearly) 240 years. I believe Mr. Johnson supports and espouses these principles, probably better than any of the other candidates currently vying for the presidency. And, in any other election year, he would most likely have my vote as soon as it was possible for me to cast it. Many of my friends, also of the Libertarian stripe will be voting for him this year specifically because of his stance. They insist that if I truly held to my principles I would vote for him as well.

I disagree and would posit that because of my principles, this year I cannot vote for him. Because we, as a country, have traveled so far from the vision of the Founders, because we have allowed the federal government to intrude so deeply into our lives with regulations and oversight and confiscation of personal property and infringement upon our freedoms, because we have permitted the entitlement mentality to dictate our course of actions and the import of our legislation, because the process has been so long in vitro, it is virtually impossible to reverse the entirety of the damage in one fell swoop. First and foremost, this election must be about preventing the current President from inflicting anymore damage, either willfully or incompetently, on the country. Gary Johnson’s projected 6% of voting totals does not accomplish that.

Some of my more idealistic friends offer the solution of just tell everybody to vote for Gary. Unfortunately, the electorate as a whole is not ready for Gary Johnson, or anyone cut from the same cloth. There is much brainwashing to be overcome and much ignorance to be outed. There is, at almost every turn, a complete lack of enlightened self-interest which Mr. Johnson, or others proffering true American freedoms again to Americans will need to be present in order to carry the election. Work yet to be done before elections to be won.

Given my priority, stated above, of defeating the current President because of the abysmal mess he has made of nearly everything he has touted, touched or meddled with, and the unpreparedness of the electorate to actually understand how a vote for Johnson’s hands-off approach could benefit individuals of all classes, divisions, and sectors, there is only a single choice left to me: Mitt Romney.

That sounds bad. "The lesser of two evils" kind of thing. In reality, it is not. I believe he is the most viable choice to accomplish my primary goal. After defeating the current President, my primary concern is getting the economy moving again, getting people back to work, and getting the country back to building, inventing and producing things again. I believe Romney’s experience in the business world is a huge asset in this area.

My second concern is the debacle that has become our finances. The debt needs to be reduced. Spending (entitlements) need to be cut. Waste needs to be trimmed. The deficit needs to be eliminated. Once again, the business experience serves Romney well in these areas. His success at Bain is a testament to that fact. Don’t get me wrong… I don’t want him to "fix" the federal government so that it starts turning a multi-billion dollar profit, but producing and operating within a budget designed to address the financial issues stated earlier will go a long way on the road to repairing the damage.

Some of my friends tell me that Obama and Romney—Obamney they call them—are just the same, that there is not enough difference between the two for it to make a difference regardless of whom you vote for. I believe there is a noticeable distinction between the two, but even if that distinction turns out to be a slower dash toward the fiscal cliff, a lesser degree of erosion of freedoms, in this election, that is enough for me at this time. This American journey is just that.. a journey made up of small steps and sidesteps, leaps and bounds, backtracking and sometimes casting about to find the trail.. or the right trail. There will be other elections with other candidates and somewhere along this journey, Gary Johnson, or someone like him will win. Not this year, and not this election.

However, I have it on good authority that the next presidential election is in only four years. Which means campaign season won’t start again until… somewhere around February 2013, I would think.