The Republicans won a significant election on Tuesday. I feel they did so by creating hysteria about things like Ebola, the Affordable Care Act, fracking, the IRS, and on and on, but look, they won.
So, now is the time. You won, you get to do things your way. Just like you got to do them your way between 2001 and 2007 in Washington, just like you got to do them under Pawlenty (mostly) here.
My suspicion is that the country took their frustration with the overreach that Obama committed in promising the world, out on Obama. They forgot the failures of the Republicans, the needless wars, the economic calamities brought about in part by under-regulation and an equal part of a lack of other good investments outside real estate here in the US quite simply because our "new ideas" didn't exist in reality, we moved manufacturing away and didn't replace it. So we built a "market economy" on middle-class home equity loans, and very little else. In 2007, 40% of all profit in the US was from the financial services industry as it managed the wealth of the ultra-wealthy and the equity transition to that wealthy of the middle-class as they took out home equity loan after home equity loan. Sure, they talked in 2008 about "drill baby drill" but they didn't mean the shale oil in North Dakota, that was just a happy surprise. There ARE jobs there (in shale oil), but at what cost? Do we even care any more as a nation? Are we so desperate for good paying jobs that we're going to trade our future? Apparently so, apparently the 31 permanent jobs the Keystone Pipeline will create, to allow oil companies to avoid US taxes worth BILLIONS, are more important than the billions.
So, let's see it. It's time to put up or shut up. Let's see how your policies create GOOD PAYING jobs, not just jobs. Let's see you balance the budget (federally), let's see you improve/re-define the health care system. Let's see you do all this while cutting taxes on the highest earners, just like you said would work between 2001 and 2007, but didn't. Your ideas were failures then, I think they'll fail now, but you get a do-over, you get to show that they can work - even though basic economics say they cannot, vast empirical evidence showed they don't and didn't, but perhaps you can come up with something which will. I hope you can, I mean it, our country needs it, badly. I don't think the vote on Tuesday was a repudiation of Obama as much as it was a repudiation of the government generally for failing to deliver those good paying jobs, the ones lost to your economic calamity in 2009 and into 2009, and Obama was the face, the face YOU made it become. Congratulations, but now YOU get to deal with a public that doesn't trust you due to the trust you destroyed, and a minority party (the Democrats) who get to blame YOU just like YOU blamed them. The difference being the Dems are generally wimpy about calling you devils - well anyway, I hope you can - we need it as I said, badly. I hope you succeed, nothing about your policies suggest in the slightest way you CAN succeed, but still, I hope and pray you can.
