For the past year it has become the public mantra of Democratic Party politicians: "Elections have consequences." Whether they were talking about bailing out large corporations or taking over the banking, auto, and health care industries, that simple phrase has been their fallback position.
To some extent, that is true. When the nation elects a leader such as Barack Obama, the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, it has definitely sent a message. A majority of the citizens of the United States spoke up in November of 2008 and sent the message that the direction the country was headed during the Bush years was not one that they wanted to continue following.
The American electorate sent a clear message for 'change' to Washington politicians at that point. The problem, however, and it is a big one for the Dems, is that the voters quite obviously wanted 'change' with a small 'c', not the "Change" that marked the Obama campaign's signature slogan.
What Obama was trumpeting was "fundamental change", a message that he banged home time and time again. The mass electorate heard those words and decided that he meant a simple change in direction, something they wanted indeed. What he actually meant was to change the very nature of what it meant to be America as a nation.
After winning election, Obama got his house in order, got his Democratic Party leadership organized, and then set out down the path towards that fundamental change from a democratic, capitalist society to a full-blown European-inspired socialist one. The American 'system' that had made us the envy of the world for generations had somehow "failed" in is words and needed to be almost completely trashed.
Problem was, the American public didn't go along for the ride. As the depth and scope of Obama's vision of change came into view and practice, as Dem national leaders like Nancy Pelosi in Congress and Harry Reid in the Senate began to push the legislative agenda, it became crystal-clear to Americans that socialism was the order of the day.
The Democrats were making a fundamental political mistake, one that the Republicans had made a couple of times in the last couple of decades. They assumed that their election to power now gave them a mandate for major changes to America, and they began to institute those major changes.
Quickly, the American public began to voice their concerns. In every major public opinion poll, the public shouted at the top of it's lungs for the Dem leadership to slow things down. Some changes were needed to the system, yes. But almost no one wanted socialist restrictions and control to replace democratic capitalism's freedom and liberty.
Socialism has failed everywhere that it has every been tried on earth. The reasons are quite simple. Taking away incentives from individuals to work harder, to dream bigger, to achieve more results in less production. Citizens come to rely on their government to provide for them. Eventually, the government can no longer do so, because it simply lacks the resources.
You cannot possibly tax individuals and businesses enough to sustain government control. And let's face it, that is the only place that government gets it's money. Government is, in fact, you and I. We pay into the system to keep it functional. We elect people to run things as our representatives. In a socialist system, those representatives just keep raising and raising our taxes to take on more and more control over our everyday lives.
Eventually a system such as the Obama administration is attempting to install will collapse on itself because it is economically unsustainable. But before it does, society will degenerate into a mess of ennui and disillusionment, or worse. If those who have control in a socialist system see that control slipping away, their response has often been to use force to remain in power. They change the laws and keep themselves in the life boats to protect their own interests as the ship sinks around them.
Many Americans did understand that this would be the direction that Obama and the leading Dems would take once in power. Those are the tens of millions who voted against them. They are now being joined by the millions 'in the middle', those Americans who wanted the small 'c' of 'change', not the capital 'C' of Obama's socialism.
Yes, Democrats, elections have consequences. However, what you are failing to remember is the lessons of politicians and Parties past. That there is always another election coming. This November, Americans will again go to the polls. All signs point to the Dems losing control of Congress, which will seriously cripple Obama's ability to continue his agenda.
Obama and Pelosi and Reid have led America down this path of 'Change' at full speed, recklessly disregarding the public's wishes time and time again. Reid and many of his Dem leadership co-horts will undoubtedly pay the price in the Fall of 2010. They will pay that price because, despite their election victories in 2006 and 2008, they are now ignoring the American electorate in 2010.
Now is a time of opportunity for the Republican Party to reassert itself, but it must be willing to return to basic American principles of democracy, capitalism, and traditional exceptionalism in order to take full advantage. The Republicans must reflect core American values, pledge a change in direction to fiscal sanity and responsibility, and to fully and effectively preserving and defending our nation and it's founding principles.
In the fall of 2010, the Democrats will be reminded that elections do indeed have consequences. When they lose their control over Congress, their control over the purse strings and the power and the direction, then they will cry and wail and moan. They will blame one another, point fingers, and become disgruntled. And they will have no one to blame but themselves, because elections do indeed have consequences, the next one as strongly as the last one.
