Saturday, November 6, 2010

An Uninformed Electorate: Emotions Over Facts

A case can be made that voters in the November congressional election voted their emotions rather than checking a candidate and his party's record. One can even say that the constant personal and political attacks on a daily basis by the republican party in general and their leaders inside and outside of congress in particular against President Obama and democrats played a major role for emotions to take over at the voting booth. The conservative news media and the wealth lobby also played a major role to inflame those same emotions.

One can also understand how emotions can run high when the economy is not in full swing and jobs are hard to find. That is no excuse however for not being an informed voter. If jobs and the economy are really what was behind returning republicans to a majority in the House, the voters forgot history and the republicans past record, especially their record under President Bush which still should be fresh in their minds.

The Bush Presidency and the republican party who rubber stamped his failed economic and fiscal policies created economic devastation that takes the country back to the Hoover administration and the great depression. It is ironic that many of those republicans who rubber stamped Bush's failed policy will be leading the House once again.

The people's emotions also over shadowed the fact that the Obama administrations policies reversed the massive job losses under Bush, ended the recession and a negative GDP for the economy. No one can question the slowness of the recovery but should understand it is related to the severity of what happened to the economy. Emotions will not hasten the recovery and the Obama administration has never stood pat on trying to create more jobs for the people. What was lacking was help from the republicans in congress and their desire to see the economy fail on Obama's watch.

After the election Tuesday the republican leadership said they would not compromise with the President. So what is new? Is that what the voters voted for? Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told the Heritage Foundation President Obama would have to come to him. Like conservatives in general, McConnell thinks he is elite and better than anyone else. The President should tell McConnell to go play with himself. (This writer would be a little more nasty)

The President needs to take another page out of President Truman's book on how to deal with the republican party. President Truman said, "To Hell with them, when history is written, they will be the sons of bitches, not I." Give the republicans hell President Obama, you have the power to do so.