With the rise of the Left in American politics, the Democrat powers-that-be have been passing record-breaking spending bills and trying to pass bills that put the federal government in direct control of free enterprise. Freedom has been taking a beating. From the Robin Hood budgets, which skew tax credits away from the people who pay the most taxes and give them to people who do not pay any taxes, to the Health Care Deform bill that burdens the American public with mandates, fees, additional taxes, and more government intrusion into daily life, the American Dream is being replaced by a Leftist scheme of American Dependency. When voters tried to send the president a message via Democrat upsets in three states (including, bastion of the Left, Massachusetts), he responded with empty rhetoric and promises that were broken before he even made them. On terror, he refuses to treat Al Qaeda like the enemy, instead insisting on giving them civil rights and having us think of them as mere criminals. In the meantime, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are embolden by the administration’s dithering and weakness on all matters national security (see Christmas Underwear Bomber and Afghanistan escalating violence). Right now, the state of the union is in dire shape… the results of one-party big-government rule have made America less prosperous and less safe.

Here I will quickly address the causes of the recession to those who are new to this blog, to everyone else you guys can skip this paragraph. From Clinton to Bush, the federal government’s emphasis on home ownership and low interest rates set the stage for a housing bubble. First of all, we needed the housing bubble, at least some of it, to get out of the post-Clinton and post-911 recession. For those that do not remember, recovery during that time was steady and sustained. Unemployment was low, consumption was high, the markets were healthy, etc. Nowadays, the Democrats and the Left are trying to rewrite history, calling the Bush decade a “lost decade” because wages were stagnant… if this was a lost decade, I would like to get lost in it again. It was only when the Federal Reserve failed to apply the brakes early on (a reason why the Fed may be bad for the economy, it’s a type of central planning), only when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were being offered preferable rates for the issuance of bad loans by the government and the Fed, only when government policies interfered with the free market that the housing bubble got out of control. Does anyone seriously think that any of the banks that went out of business wanted to go out of business? The federal government’s interference in the free market is the direct and ultimate cause of the recession, it built the first ten floors of the house of cards that came tumbling down. Big-government Democrats and big-government Republicans alike were to blame for letting the government monster grow out of control. Moving on…

Now, we are at a crossroads. This year, the entire weight of voter ire will fall on those candidates closely linked with the shenanigans in Washington, both past and present. The solution to our problems comes not from increasing government size but from creating smart government, a government that is efficient, a government that is large enough to take care of necessities (like defense) but small enough so that it does not swallow the free market system whole. More importantly, we need a government that both unleashes American creativity (iPads anyone?) and does not help create an under-achieving underclass by subsidizing failure, e.g. excessive welfare, excessively extending unemployment benefits, etc. This reality has not been lost on voters who have been mobilizing via the Tea Party movement, a truly grassroots sort of Mom-and-Pop “uprising” that is being demonized by Democrats as being extremists, a laughable claim once one sees videos of older ladies and gentlemen advocating for less government, less taxes, and more common sense. Die-hard rebels indeed. While the conditions exist for a reversal of the big-government policies that got us here in the first place, what does not seem to exist is a viable alternative to the Imperial Democrat party. The Republican party has not fielded many attractive candidates and time is short. We would do well to remember that Obama was being groomed in 2004, during John Kerry’s campaign, and that Hillary Clinton was expected to run and win for years. During my time rummaging through news articles, blogs, and personal contacts, I know of a lot of local politicians who seem promising, but no one of national stature or who seems interested in the top spot which will be open in 2012. The Republicans I do see are a lot of these old-establishment types who contributed to the growth of the state and helped bring us here. Ultimately, some of these younger candidates, the ones with little to no experience, need to step up to the plate and let themselves be known. Otherwise, we will be condemned to another four years of this insanity. So I ask anyone and everyone out there, where are the viable candidates that can challenge Obama?

-AG