There is a reason why it is of vital importance to educate the American population, particularly in civics and history. It was a shock to many Republicans that Romney lost the election, like Karl Rove’s freak out on Fox news. All over twitter and Facebook, people started raging and throwing their two cents down as if complete disaster had suddenly struck the country. But the complete lack of intellectual thought behind the outrage took me aback. The interesting thing about politics is that raw intelligence often takes a backseat to ideology. Peers I consider competent were suddenly spewing the dumbest things to first come to their minds. Rather than listening to your crazy uncle who sends you those conspiracy emails or listening to Fox commentators, let me bring you back down to earth with logic and facts.
Barack Hussein Obama is not a crusading left wing socialist coming to destroy your freedom. He isn’t a Muslim, he isn’t a Kenyan, and he was born in the U.S. His election doesn’t mean the destruction of free enterprise or an insane levying of new taxes.
Tax burden is at its lowest level since the 1950’s. Despite what your parents might be freaking out about, the only income tax increases Obama has been proposing are on incomes over $250,000 by letting the Bush tax cuts expire on that end. That’s an increase of 3% on those incomes. That’s about the same difference of fat content between your choices of milk. It’s miniscule and doesn’t affect the vast majority of tax payers. If you are worried about the debt, you can’t live in the Reagan fantasy world where we do things as a country, but don’t have to pay for them.
Obamacare. I’ve talked about this countless times, but I’m going to drill this point until I stop seeing the fake outrage. The healthcare law isn’t a catastrophic tax increase. Most of the revenue is generated through increases in the amount of tax higher income households pay on Medicare and capital gains. The only way that a small business is burdened with coverage for their employees is if it has more than 25 employees. And even then, the federal government is providing subsidies and accommodations for businesses to meet that goal. This center right approach is the only way to un-socialize the cost of the uninsured, unless opponents of the law are suggesting that the uninsured should be left to emergency care, which is obviously a poor cost effective policy. We might as well eliminate social security, Medicare, and Medicaid if the right thinks even moderate attempts at reform are too ambitious.
And let me remind the naysayers to Obama that it is more than likely that they or their parents supported George W. Bush, a man who took federal power to its max and created the fiscal climate we now live in with poorly handled wars and tax breaks.
I wrote something a couple weeks ago where I made the case that the Republicans actually love Obama being in power because they can stick to their hard line principles without actually having to face the consequences of acting on them. That goes double for their supporters that still think the Bush years were fantastic.
Obama’s second term won’t bring any radical surprises. New initiatives brought forth will be things he has talked about before, like immigration or jobs programs, and it will be done in a pragmatic way that will reach out to the Republicans in a bipartisan effort. But I doubt Obama will repeat the mistake of assuming that Republicans always want to do the same.
As AJ Thinks 