mikegarcia25.com

05 November 2008

It was a bad day to be a Republican..........

Now that I've had ample time to cool off from the devastation that occurred yesterday, I'm ready to make a few comments about what happened in this year's elections. I liked Jay's introduction to his note, and I'll start by saying the same thing - these are my views, and if you don't like them, feel free to comment with an EDUCATED response.... many of you haven't been working in politics as much as I have this year, some of you have and I love being able to respectfully debate issues with you, but regardless, I'm not being racist, blasphemous, or otherwise arrogant, and I trust that you won’t be either. I’m going to put a lot of this in the language that everyone will understand because this is how I understand it best – I’m not a political guru, but I will be analyzing the facts as best and as unbiased as possible. I look forward to comments from those who have voted Democrat, but only if they are more educated than “ha ha, look who won!”

While I didn’t anticipate the disaster that occurred yesterday, I was paying attention to the signs that could have led to its occurrence. The two candidates had to make a choice earlier this year to determine how they would be raising money for their campaign, and the two choices were to accept federal money valued at $87 million and NOT be allowed to accept donations or to attempt to raise money via political contributions. Both McCain and Obama stated they would be accepting federal money, only McCain upheld his word, as Obama decided he would try to raise the money to campaign on his own. The average contribution to Obama's campaign was $175.... there were over 3 million people that contributed to his campaign.... doing the math, that's $525,000,000, and correlates to the fact that he did indeed spend over half a BILLION dollars on campaigning.... Let that sink in for a minute - he spent over 6 times the amount McCain was ALLOWED to spend since he accepted Federal money to campaign with, and there are millions starving who voted for him in hopes that he will SAVE them! What would liberals be saying if McCain spent $525M and Obama "only" spent $87M and McCain won? They would say he BOUGHT the election..............

There are people like Joe the Plumber whom we’ve all come to love or hate or ignore, and then there are people like Peggy the Moocher as she’s come to be known:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI

Does anything strike you about what she says? I’ll copy some of the quotes – she says that after attending an Obama rally that it is “the most memorable time of her life” even though she’s there with her daughter…. as if her daughter’s birth wasn’t the most memorable time of her life. When questioned why it was so memorable, she states “because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know, if I help him, he’s going to help me.” This may not be the views of anyone I’m friends with (Lord, if I am friends with you and you believe this way, first delete yourself from my friends list, then deport yourself to another country and stop being a burden on society), but this is how many Obama supporters felt about what he was saying to them about supporting the middle class! No, I’m not taking this out of context either – she believes that if she votes for Obama and helps him become president, she’ll get something out of it in the form of being able to pay less money for gas at the pump and less money on her mortgage. I’m not assuming she truly meant that Obama was going to pay those things for her (or is she?), so don’t assume I’m that much of a cynic or poor loser. 

Gas prices are plummeting and soon interest rates will too once the bailout comes into effect. This is still occurring in Bush’s second term, by the way. For all those who blamed Bush for high gas prices and the failing economy, both of which have been attributed to the war in Iraq / Afghanistan, as the weak link between the two negatives and the Middle East revolve around oil and deficit, what did anyone have to say about the recent drop in gas prices or the 70 month equivalent of the war in Iraq (we spend $10 billion per month fighting the war in Iraq, 70 times that equals the amount of the bailout just approved by the senate, the house, and President Bush)? Is that Bush’s fault too? Interesting how some people have selective memory when it comes to what they’re putting down our president for....

McCain’s concession speech included something very important if you caught it – he commended Obama on being able to get people to believe in his cause and to get out there and vote in a way that has never been done before. Hundreds of celebrities and musicians attempted to do the same thing in past elections, but during the last two, they didn’t do a good enough job of promoting Gore or Kerry, and now they succeeded. Unfortunately, the millions who had never voted before or were too young to vote before didn’t know what to do about voting for other candidates in other races, and nearly achieved a supermajority, preventing the possibility of any opposing viewpoints to be heard – very UN-American if you ask me. Since 1994 and through Bush’s first term, it was a Republican majority in the house and senate, but the latter half of his second term had a Democratic majority in the two, which was “coincidentally” when we had the worst of our economic problems. I still don’t know why all the problems weren’t solved in the first 100 days as Nancy Pelosi said they would be though…. but anyways, dozens of important Republican members of all facets of government were ousted as the hoards of uneducated voters stormed the polling places yesterday because they simply went “DEM” all the way down the ballot. 

My father has always questioned my voting record – not because he wanted to condemn me if I voted differently than him, but to question whether or not I knew who or what I was voting for after casting the ballot, insuring that I was voting for something or someone because it was what I truly believed in. My father lost in his campaign to become Supervisor of Elections for Orange County, Florida because those millions called out to vote uneducated on the issues or candidates, as did many, many other more-qualified-than-their-opponent candidates in Orlando and in every other city nationwide, without reason. 

Obama won the country with 7.488 million votes, but the states that mattered most in this election were much closer:

NEW MEXICO – Obama leads by 120,000 votes (788,000 total, or 15% lead)
NEVADA – Obama leads by 120,000 votes (942,000 total, or 13% lead)
IOWA – Obama leads by 141,000 votes (1.495 million total, or 9.4% lead)
NORTH DAKOTA – Obama leads by 27,000 votes (309,000 total, or 8.7% lead)
VIRGINIA – Obama leads by 155,000 votes (3.429 million total, or 4.5% lead)
OHIO – Obama leads by 204,000 votes (5.142 million total, or 3.96% lead)
FLORIDA – Obama leads by 195,000 votes (8.011 million total, or 2.4% lead)
INDIANA – Obama leads by 26,000 votes (2.708 million total, or 0.96% lead)
NORTH CAROLINA – Obama leads by 14,000 votes (4.232 million total, or 0.33% lead)
MONTANA – McCain leads by 16,000 votes (456,000 total, or 3.5% lead)
MISSOURI – McCain leads by 6,000 votes (2.878 million total, or 0.2% lead)

By saying Obama won “BIG TIME” with 364 electoral votes verses McCain’s “dismal” 174 electoral votes is misleading…. In the states above, the battleground and party change states, just over 1 million votes decided the election where only 120,300,954 voted in a country with 301,139,947 residents, representing only 39.95% of the total population of the United States. By the numbers again, 0.85% of the lead was taken in those states above by those who actually voted. Just over 8/10ths of one percent of the amount of votes decided this race in the big deal states listed above declared Obama 44th President of the United States. 

The last point I want to make is that although it will take some time for me and probably a lot longer for others, this is still democracy, this is still America, and we should still support our president. The one quality I admire most about those I learn so much from in Republican politicians is to be non-partisan after the elections are over. Not to say that everyone in the right-wing follows that concept, but many like John McCain exhibit traits of both parties and vote according to their better judgment and with help from advisors rather than up and down party lines. A very hypocritical thing to do that occurred daily from 2004 until yesterday was to be unsupportive to President Bush and still enjoy the freedom of living in America – in dozens of other countries around the world, like Cuba namely, unpatriotic comments about the leaders would involve harsh consequences, but in America, they have their own channel to be unpatriotic (MSNBC). Bumper stickers like “Impeach Bush” and “1.20.09 – the last day Bush is in office” are not only disgraceful to the president, but to the country. I will continue to be critical of our next president, and will most likely not agree with a lot of his plans to CHANGE this great country, but I was always taught to be respectful. I am deeply saddened by the loss for many Republicans who deserved their positions, but look forward to see how the Democrats will CHANGE America given all the power necessary to do so, and then compare the quality of life without bias in 4 years from now.