I don’t care what any Presidential candidate thinks about:
abortion
gay marriage
global warming
evolution
My dream candidate for President is not someone who agrees with me about all of these subjects. My dream candidate for President is someone who believes that none of these matters are in any way a part of his or her job description. That makes Rick Perry my first choice. I only agree with his positions on three quarters of the above listed issues. He is my first choice because he said, “I’ll work to try to make DC as inconsequential in your life as I can.” A sentiment worthy of my hero Calvin Coolidge.
My worst nightmare of a President is one who believes that abortion, gay marriage, global warming, and evolution are problems that require the attention of the Federal government. I fear we have just such a chief executive in the White House currently.
The press is of course obsessed with Governor Perry’s and Congresswoman Bachmann’s opinions about these irrelevant questions, because the press and the Democrats always do their darndest to portray all popular Republicans as dangerously ignorant dunces. They have always done this, from Abraham Lincoln to Dwight Eisenhower to Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin to Rick Perry.
Until they’re dead. Then the press and the Democrats pine for the days when Republicans were so much smarter and more reasonable than they are today.
I pine for the days when Republicans like Lincoln threw copperhead Democrats in jail for treason. Only when absolutely necessary of course.
I want a Federal government that maintains a strong dollar, provides for the national defense against enemies foreign and domestic, enforces the Bill of Rights and Amendments 13-15 for all American citizens, and does the absolute minimum necessary to keep the free market as free as possible. Leave the rest of it up to state and local governments and the free citizens of the Republic. Any attempt to expand the power of the national government beyond this should ideally be subject to the extreme skepticism of an alert polis.
I know this is an idle fancy. As Devo says:
Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want
We are no longer primarily a country of people who want to be free. We have become a nation of people who want to be taken care of.
Having said that, President Perry better not mess with my social security and medicare, or my son’s unemployment checks and food stamps, or my mother-in-law’s veteran benefits, or my mother’s U.S. Air Force widow’s health benefits, or there will be Hell to pay, Hell being a place in whose existence Rick Perry may actually believe.