The re-election of President Obama says a couple of things about the electorate, and sets a new template for political campaigns.
The voters chose to ignore the worst economy since the great depression and, incredibly, still blame Bush for it. They chose to ignore the largest debt of any country in history. They chose to ignore increasing government control of business and industry, private enterprise. And they chose to ignore the increasing intervention into the private lives of the citizenry. All of which must have our founding fathers turning over in their grave. And, all of which was on the Republican platform to fix.
Yesterday was the time for choosing. And we chose to vote ‘present.’ Same President, same Senate, same House.
Why? Simply because fixing the problem necessarily means ‘taking away’ 
something from someone. It means tightening our belts as a country and not spending more than we make. Neither President Obama nor his party will have any of that. They have become, as Rush Limbaugh characterized it today, ‘Santa Claus.’ Santa Claus to voting blocks that Obama and his advisers spent the last four years cultivating. Voting blocks of recipients of government money that comes from taxpayers and China.
Republicans have a HUGE up-hill battle to get people to understand that their policies are geared toward helping people help themselves move up and out of poverty, instead of depending on the government to be their caretaker, and keeping them in poverty. Encouraging personal responsibility is so easily demagogued as Republicans hating the poor (or any other segment of the population they find). And Democrats never miss the opportunity to do just that.
That battle was lost yesterday.
The winning campaign strategy for the President was to attack his opponent on a personal basis, not policy basis. It is how Obama won all his political campaigns. Painting Romney as an evil rich guy that doesn’t care about them. It never got down to the policy level, or as I call it, “the high road.” And telling flat-out lies about his opponent doesn’t matter. All from a guy who preaches civility, and does the opposite. Credit the community-organizer-turned-president for setting a new precedent in American politics.
