By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Convention season is mercifully over. Whew.
I was reaching my B.S. limit.
Initial thoughts: this year’s DNC that wrapped up last night was different, Save Jerseyans. Very different.
Yes, we saw the first major party female presidential nominee (in case you didn’t hear them say it the first million times).
The 2016 Democrat National convention also couldn’t decide whether the world is awesome sauce or racist and awful. Confusion over reality is this week’s common thread. On Thursday night, Hillary Clinton accepted her party’s nomination and offered a surprisingly strong defense of President Barack Obama’s track record (“America is stronger because of President Obama’s leadership“), only to wake up the next morning to reports of anemic 2nd Quarter economic growth.
It was… strange.
What wasn’t ambiguous? Hilldawg took the stage last night and delivered the most apologetically leftist, pro-big government address in U.S. presidential history.
Gun control. Climate change. Abortion. Higher taxes. Job programs. Free college! Workers of the world… unite!!!
She didn’t miss a beat from the ’60s playbook. Somewhere, Saul Alinsky is smiling.
But most of the evening — and by most, I mean 90% — was spent attacking Donald Trump directly with varying degrees of effectiveness, and the most revealing moment was perhaps also the most subtly-delivered portion of her attack for those of you who aren’t highly trained like yours truly to identify liberal triggers.
“And most of all, don’t believe anyone who says: ‘I alone can fix it,'” the Democrat nominee lectured her faithful. “Those were actually Donald Trump’s words in Cleveland. And they should set off alarm bells for all of us.”
Okay. I kind of/sort of agree with that first part, Save Jerseyans. I do!
This year’s RNC was different, too. For the first time in my lifetime, the GOP nominee spent far more time talking about his opponent, and “security,” and yes, himself, than an optimistic, pro-liberty vision of the future where individuals are empowered to fix their own lives as the Framers envisioned. A contract to the past eight years of chronic mismanagement. A true path forward to a brighter tomorrow.
God — and limited government — were missing in action. No amount of red, white and blue balloons can compensate for these disturbing, historic omissions.
It depressed the hell of me and a lot of other fellow conservative Republicans who are feeling a little homeless in the Trumpian era.
Hillary’s response, however, is obviously an unacceptable alternative. “The worse of two evils” if you will.
She may’ve followed up by talking about the contributions of first responders and teachers, but each and every one of her policy prescriptions called for MORE government, not individual, control.
So the board is officially set with both conventions behind us, and both candidates having made their cases to the nation and the world, and 2016 is clearly coming down to a choice between an ideologue (Hillary) and a demagogue (the Donald).
A socialist criminal and a morally-malleable megalomaniac.
An incompetent public servant who lost sensitive secrets and got people killed and a businessman who would be worth MORE today had he simply invested in inheritance in index funds.
Someone who wants to make all of our choices for us and… someone who wants that same power, but who may make different choices. Trump did, after all, spend his convention emphasizing stuff like “wage equality” and recently reversed himself on the federal minimum wage. He thinks it’s a crown just like she does.
The Democrat claimed government is the answer. The Republican believes he IS the answer. Neither nominee devoted energy to promote empowering Americans to help themselves.
Neither candidate believes you, me, or our neighbors are capable of driving the bus without one of them talking in our ears, map in one hand while the other reaches to wrest away the wheel. Perhaps a crash is inevitable.
These two believe all rights flow FROM THEM which probably explains why the Almighty was relegated to the nosebleed seats in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
Neither believes individual liberty is the first, second and 1,009th solution in terms of primacy for righting America’s listing ship.
What am I going to do on November 8th?
I’ll get back to you on November 7th.
Maybe there’s a chance that Trump’s unique cocktail of narcissism and crazy tempered by pragmatism (bringing on Pence when his gut reportedly leaned in another direction) proves less awful than the guarantee of Clinton’s criminality, incompetence, and radicalism. Our short-term hopes for the country are likely inextricably tied to that chance.
That’s an analysis for another post. Until then? We’re going to continue using Save Jersey to talk about liberty since it sure doesn’t look like you’re not going to find it on the ballot this fall.
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