Republicans Need to Talk with More Heart

It’s tough out there. It’s tough just about everywhere.

This will be one of those blogs my wife wishes I wouldn’t write because I’ll reveal far too much personal feelings and personal information.

This Obama recession just keeps dragging on. Now we have the buttressing good news of declining gas prices which are made worse by the declining oil prices which is caused by declining economic forecasts. Economists say things could be getting worse…again. But then again…we could just be early with the annual Post-Memorial Day decline of oil and gas prices.

Are you struggling right now financially? I don’t talk to anyone these days who isn’t. It seems a lot of people are like my family…making a steady average to above average income…less than in years past but definitely average or above average…not saving anything…meeting all bills, but just barely…all while living humbly (at least humbly compared to the past 20 years). Things around the house that break, stay broken, at least for a while. We have a desire to help our adult kids, but not the means, other than a roof over their heads, which they reject. And it’s been this way for 2-3 years now.

I have one huge fear. No, not that I or someone in my family gets sick. But now that I mention it…that gives me chills too. Actually my biggest fear is that Barrack Obamawins re-election six short months from now.

Barack Obama

It’s not hard to argue that Obama is the most Progressive/Liberal President in U.S. history. And if he’s not he’s a close second, at least on domestic matters to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933. Lietuvių: Fra...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933. 

And what do they have in common? Both inherited serious economic problems and prolonged them through their own economic policies.

In June 1933 FDR signed into law a series of bills that were anti-competition, like the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, and pro-union measures, like Obama’s pro-union agenda including suing Boeing for having the audacity of locating a plant in a right-to-work state, thereby raising wages to artificially high levels and prices for goods in eleven key industries 25-percent higher than they otherwise would have been.

Such Government control has never been shown to work on a large economy effectively. Or as Winston Churchill said when assessing socialism’s inherent virtue, “the equal sharing of miseries.”.

Question: Can you name one government social program that makes you rich? How about one that makes you reasonably well-off? How about one that sustains you at average life-style levels? You can’t. Because it doesn’t exist. Government entitlement programs give you enough food and shelter and medicine in order to survive; never to thrive. So, with more people dependent on government for subsistence fewer people are eligible for a life of thriving success. The Heritage Foundations 2012 Index of Government Dependence showed more Americans dependent on government for subsistence than ever before.

Which leads me to the question: Has government made it too easy to rely on pay-outs for assistance. Rather than helping the truly needy, are we not creating more needy by creating dependence?

With unemployment benefits now extended 99 weeks in most circumstances dependence on that weekly government check is paramount. How can a teacher who’s been unemployed for nearly two years still be considered a teacher? Isn’t it obvious that if you can’t find employment in your field after two years you are no longer in THAT field? I think its obvious that too many people refuse employment or to look for employment in whatever job they can land in order to hold out for employment in their chosen field, subsisting ever so precariously on government assistance, until that job materializes and not coincidentally after their skills have diminished through nearly 2 years of unemployment.

Republicans consistently miss the boat on winning the support of these people and others who display sympathy for such folks. Republicans don’t talk enough about how they can help the poor and the lower middle-class by expressing the obvious: we have a better plan. How many people would prefer a government check that barely meets their needs over a paycheck no matter what the source for the paycheck?

Mitt Romney at one of his presidential campaig...

Mitt Romney can be our next President. But he has to show the compassion for the millions of those who are lost in this meager “recovery” or barely surviving. He can do it by simply emphasizing the obvious. Jobs are better than social programs. And he can do it by better demonstrating the compassion that non-thinking independents and Democrats like most. A sense of sympathy and concern for the most down-and-out will go miles in pulling them from the clutches of the Democratic party.

The Democratic party does a far superior job of giving the poor hungry man a fish; but as every Republican knows the Dems do a far inferior job of teaching a man to fish. We wrote a parable on such a subject some years ago called: The Fisherman, the Hungry Man, and the Wise Man.

Those who are struggling is a long list that sadly seems to be growing longer. An about-face can be achieved by repeatedly emphasizing the words of John Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you…”, and instead emphasizing what can you do for yourself, your family and your country. Do what you need to do, and pretty soon you will be able to do what you want to do. The Republicans have historically been more vocal in support of “traditional values”. They now need to show how those “traditional values”, like a rising tide, can and will lift all boats.

Thanks for visiting. Comments are welcome.