Don's Tuesday Column

         THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   2/02/2016

      Americans begin choosing direction

Those of us in the land of—well, you know the rest—with our nearly-last-in-the-land primary voting in June’s warmth (while Iowans now trudge to caucuses through snow), can easily get tired of the obsessive media coverage. I even mute (or don’t even turn on) news reports, or even radio talk shows, due to exhaustion over it all.

However, it is still the greatest exercise of representative democracy in the entire world and, judging by what’s at stake for the party devotees—even for non-party independents—there is much to ponder in the process. I read that Iowa is, like many states, composed of vastly diverging political worlds: The rural areas are given to conservative Republican leanings and evangelical Christian values; The urban enclaves have strong universities and a cosmopolitan presence that leans strongly to the progressive/leftist side.

Not unlike our state with its Democrat dominated cities (and state government) which have little in common with the geographically predominant inland rural and mountain communities, the Iowa voters don’t see eye-to-eye from their political redoubts. They often talk past each others’ deeply held beliefs and issues. “Income inequality,” racial and economic justice, environmental/global warming/climate change issues, as well as student loan debt dominate the Democrat list; national security, terrorism, excess (and illegal) immigration, departure from America’s constitutional system and loss of traditional values hold sway among Republicans.

Regular readers of powerlineblog.com have benefited from local Iowa attorney David Begley’s reports on all of the candidates’ appearances. His last filing before the state’s caucuses paraphrased some important thoughts from a Republican presidential aspirant. “He started out by stating that this election is a referendum on what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to be an exceptional nation with our rights derived from our Creator? America is exceptional because of free enterprise and individual liberty. Obama, on the other hand, seeks to continue his transformation of the United States. I heard murmurs of approval from the crowd.

“Obama assaults and violates our constitution. He also wants to cut America down to size. Result? Americans are angry. We don’t want fundamental change. (The speaker) considers himself the person to amplify the conservative movement. The Republican Party is its vehicle. ‘We don’t need two Democratic parties.’ He grew up paycheck-to-paycheck. As a parent, he is concerned about how ‘they’ jam popular values down the throats of our children. But anger alone is not a plan.

“(He) then adopted the format that (other Republican candidates) use by stating what he will do his first day in office: Repeal Obama’s executive orders, stop Common Core, and cancel the Iran deal. Wild applause. Like all the other GOP candidates, he promised that he would repeal Obamacare and replace it with free market solutions with respect to which he went into some detail.

“On immigration he repeated what he said in the debate: enforce the border, hire 2,000 more border agents, build a 700 mile wall/fence, use E-verify and stop visa overstays. Sanctuary cities are to lose all federal funding. (He) noted that the next Commander-in-Chief will face many dangerous enemies: North Korea, Russia, Iran and ISIS, but military spending has been cut. He rattled off the numbers and they are frightening. He vowed to fix that problem.” DP: I would add that Supreme Court appointments by any Democrat President would undoubtedly overturn the pro-Second Amendment right to individual ownership of guns, so that’s on the ballot.

I haven’t identified the candidate, who was Senator Marco Rubio, only because I think his speech on those topics could be said by any Republican candidate. Such proposals would not even be in the universe of ideas from the Democratic candidates except as laugh lines for mush-filled, liberal skulls happy to look upon conservatives with derision, insults and snide disregard.

Here’s my take on the Republican side: If they were all on a plane that crashed, and only one candidate survived, it wouldn’t matter which one made it out alive—they would serve America, our values and national interests exponentially better than any current Democrat. Based on their rhetoric, they are running for Emperor Obama’s third term (BO: I can’t change immigration law because I’m not an emperor. He then proceeded to change the law by executive fiat). They won’t acknowledge, let alone propose solutions to, the worst economic recovery since WWII (worse then G.W. Bush’s and B. Clinton’s, way worse than R. Reagan’s).

They have not uttered a word of criticism of Obama’s (and America’s and our military’s) humiliation over Iran’s high-handed, and illegal, seizure and propaganda use of Navy personnel. Illegal if we were at war with Iran; inexcusably outrageous for a nonbelligerent deal “partner.” Cartoonist Michael Ramirez (investors.com/cartoons) drew a kneeling, hands-behind-head Uncle Sam next to our sailors on an Iranian boat deck; look up “The Humiliation” by Mark Steyn, 1/14.

Any Democrat will 1) likely continue, and even expand, Obama’s extra-legal executive orders (Look up “The Administration Is Ruling by Decree,” Iain Murry, 1/21, NationalReview.com); 2) remove committed terrorists from Guantanamo to American soil or to foreign lands for short transitions back to the battlefield to kill American military; 3) continue dismantling our immigration laws while all-but-erasing our borders, replaced with an all-in-come-free welcome mat. There’s things to be for, things to be against—I happen to like my team a lot.