Year End Political Wrap-up and Outlook

 Published in the December 16, 2011 Lynchburg Ledger.

With the Obama economy performing so poorly, small local newspapers such as us are feeling the financial squeeze.  We no longer can publish weekly but hope to be able to publish more frequently in the spring.   However, we won’t likely be able to return to our normal schedule until Obama is out of the White House and Harry Reid is the Senate minority leader.

I was very pleased with the local and state elections this year.

Our newly formed conservative independent political organization was very successful in re-electing the two incumbent supervisors targeted by Rick Boyer and the rogue Campbell County Republican Party.  We were also successful in electing the chief deputies to Commonwealth’s Attorney and Sheriff.

Steve Hutcherson garnered 85 percent of the vote for sheriff and the Republican candidate probably set a record low with only 4.7 percent of the vote.

In the Sunburst District, Steve Shockley won a resounding victory against Republican Tip Killingsworth with a 70 to 30 percent landslide.

In the Concord District (where I live), incumbent Eddie Gunter won a good victory in a three way race.  I suspect Rick Boyer recruited Gary Stewart to be a spoiler to defeat Gunter.  Stewart came in last in the three way race with 18 percent, Ed Foster (who nearly beat Gunter last term) received 37 percent and Gunter won with a plurality of 45 percent.

This race was marked by false statements by Republican Stewart who claimed Gunter supported a meals tax, online sales tax and a hotel tax when in fact Eddie Gunter was the only supervisor to vote against the resolution supporting those items this year.

When I tried to explain all this to Stewart and Kurt Feigel (with the Lynchburg Tea Party and Stewart supporter), neither wanted to hear the facts.  In the past, I have found liberal Democrats to be as closed-minded, but it is disturbing when we find so-called conservatives as equally closed-minded.

On the state level, Republicans picked up two Senate seats resulting in a 20-20 split.  Virginia’s Constitution specifically states the Lieutenant Governor is to preside over the Senate and only vote in the case of a tie.  Predictably, the Democrats have run to the courts trying to find some judge who will mandate some shared power arrangement as was once done in the past.  Democrats want to share power only when they have the disadvantage.

I suspect Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will vigorously defend our constitution in court.

For those of us who noticed, we have seen the Democrat Party and Obama’s supporters on display throughout the nation in recent months with their “occupy Wall Street” movement.  Once again, the liberal media shirked their duty and responsibility to report honestly of this radical band of misfits, perverts and freeloaders. 

If you ever have wondered just what a “community organizer” does, this was a prime example.

The media tried unsuccessfully to equate the “occupiers” with the tea party. I have been to tea party events and before there was a tea party movement, I had attended numerous conservative and pro-family rallies.  At each and every one I attended, people were not only well behaved, but went out of their way to be courteous.  An hour after one of these events, you could not tell anyone was ever there.  There was no trash or other waste left behind.

The occupiers, on the other hand, trashed every place they gathered, defecating, urinating, raping, robbing and assaulting.  It was so bad in some areas that parks had to be closed because of health risks.

The occupiers were promoting only one thing: socialism.  Barack Obama has divided this nation by pitting the workers against the freeloaders since he has no record he can run on.  If by chance Obama is re-elected, our nation will be so divided that it would be ungovernable and some believe that is exactly what he wants.

On December 6th, Obama went to Osawatomie, Kansas, retracing the footsteps of former President Teddy Roosevelt.  In his address, he made some of the most outrageous statements ever made by a U.S. President and left no doubt in my mind that he is a socialist through and through.  He ramped up his class warfare attacks giving us a preview of his 2012 campaign. 

For example, he said, “For most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people.”  That is a lie he would like many to believe.

He continued his class warfare attack when he said, “Those at the very top grew wealthier…but everyone else struggled.”

He distorted the credit collapse when he said, “In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them.”  What he omits is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some of the biggest Obama contributors and run by Democrats, was the driving force behind it.  Republican attempts to reign in Fannie and Freddie were blocked by Democrats like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Maxine Waters.

Finally, he commented on our free enterprise system by saying, “It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.”

What a  complete revision of history.  The problem is many will believe his lies and vote to re-elect him in 2012.

Roosevelt lost his attempt at re-election as a third party candidate (Bull Moose Party).  Let us hope Obama follows in his footsteps.

We have a lot of work to do next year and the first step is to select a candidate to oppose him.  We have seen what they did to Herman Cain with a bunch of unproven accusations, and before that to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

I believe the liberal media believes Mitt Romney will be the easiest candidate for Obama to beat so they have left him alone.

Now it is Newt Gingrich’s turn, but I believe he can take it and deflect it.  Gingrich, a historian, has come under fire for referring to the Palestinians as an “invented” people.  This is correct.  A century ago, there was no Palestine, it was indeed invented by the British when they controlled the Middle East after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. 

2012 is not going to easy politically, but the fate of our nation will hinge on the next election.