REPUBLICAN HANGOVER

2008-11-08T14:42:00.000-08:00

By Steuer Gray, November 9, 2008

If you, like me, woke up Wednesday morning already knowing that Obama had won but not by how much, you were dismayed, discouraged, disillusioned and frankly, pissed.

I decided to wait a few days, the mandatory waiting period, before commenting.

If you are looking for someone or somewhere to vent your frustration, look not to the future President but the current residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. BUSH-CHENEY. The Republicans got a long-deserved ass-whipping.

The Iraq War – Bush/Cheney, ignoring warnings from Colin Powell and most of the world, couldn’t wait to rush into Iraq after a quick “victory” over the Taliban in Afghanistan without an exit strategy and without any apparent understanding of the thousands of years of deep religious differences. The war has now lasted twice as long as WWII and while the casualties have been 1% of those in WWII and less than 10% of those in Vietnam, both of which were started by Democrats, the economic cost has been $1 trillion in direct costs and another $1 trillion as we suffered oil prices which increased from $28 when Bush took office to $147 last summer.
Government Spending – Bush and the Republicans in Congress got exactly what Reaganomics promises: increased revenues with lower taxes. The problem was and the reason McCain voted against the first tax cut was that the tax cuts needed to be tied to a reduction in government spending. That didn’t happen. For the last 4 years, Bush/Cheney were on their hands and knees begging for Iraq war funding and clearly it was a tit-for-tat as Bush never vetoed any spending bill.
The October Surprise – John McCain, thanks to a huge boost from the Palin pick, was leading Obama in September when all of a sudden Bush announces that the US economy will go into a complete meltdown if a $700 billion bailout bill isn’t passed immediately. Obama soared to the lead and never relinquished. If AIG and Lehman were hurting, why didn’t Bush and the Treasury Dept. quietly try and buy some time? Why was it that Congressional Democrats jumped on the bailout and got it passed so quickly? Was Bush punishing the Republicans for hanging him out there as the scape goat or getting back at McCain for being a thorn in his side and taking the credit for the surge?

Obama won for two big reasons:
The Media Bias – It began during the primaries as the mainstream media openly and blantently favored Obama over Hillary Clinton despite her protests and wide-spread acknowledgement that the press was being unfair. Obama got a pass if he flip-flopped, when his numbers didn’t add up, when he kept lower the threshold for tax relief, his radical associations and his spending plans that he can’t possibly pay for. Oh, yeah and his complete lack of experience.
Illegal Record Campaign Contributions – I am absolutely convinced that if McCain was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars over the internet, main stream media would have been all over it. I believe, using prepaid credit cards, individual limits were exceeded and money poured in from foreigners which is illegal. Obama was able to do this because he reneged on his pledge to take public financing. McCain kept his pledge.

Unfortunately, McCain’s best speech of the campaign was his concession speech.

STEUER GRAY BLOG

REPUBLICAN HANGOVER