The Patriot Post® · Have Americans Exhausted All Other Possibilities?

This election is a referendum on Winston Churchill’s statement, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” In a few days, American voters must decide if they have exhausted all other possibilities and are willing to do the right thing, or if they will continue to endure pain and suffering as the result of Obama’s vision and policies.

This November voters will get to choose from two competing and starkly contrasting visions of America. We can either believe that America is no longer exceptional, despite 237 years of history to the contrary, or we can “Believe in America” as the Romney campaign states. On one hand there is the Romney/Ryan vision of the future best defined by the Reagan saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” On the other hand we can continue to accept the mantra of hope and change, which were just resentment and envy repackaged. After almost four years, we now know that the Obama vision of America is “a falling tide can be used to sink some ships.” However, the ships that Obama wants to sink are the ones that create jobs and prosperity in America.

If the assertions made in Dinesh D'Souza’s movie, 2016: Obama’s America, are even partially correct, the vision of the Obama administration is not of American economic success but of American failure. The statements that “redistributing the wealth helps everyone,” “the private sector is doing just fine” and “you didn’t build this business” were not isolated lines taken out of context, but the overall philosophy of the Obama administration.

Our Country was founded on the unique and at the time, radical, concepts that ordinary people are capable of self-government and that the free enterprise system utilizes human rational self-interest to improve society. These are really the concepts that President Obama promised to overturn when he pledged to “fundamentally transformed America.” This is a campaign promise that he has kept.

He has encouraged the EPA to expand its control far beyond the intentions of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. These actions restrict the availability of affordable energy and threaten the economics of coal producing states like West Virginia. While environmental groups were key supporters of the Obama campaign, his actions have the added benefit of destroying the incomes of coal companies and oil refiners – groups long vilified by the extreme left.

The Obama administration has supported private and public sector unions to the detriment of the taxpayers and business owners. The majority of the Stimulus Bill was spent on temporarily subsidizing state and local government union jobs. The GM bailout was really just a way to circumvent the legal bankruptcy procedures to use $25 billion of taxpayer money to avoid the United Auto Workers reducing their wages and benefits. The passage of Obamacare was an opportunity for SEIU and other unions to unionize 21 million additional government healthcare workers.

While there is no doubt that SEIU and other unions were one of President Obama’s primary supporters, unions are one of the forces that help to reduce the wealth of small business owners, who he seems to have particular animosity towards. However, without the confidence of small business owners in their government, the economy will never recover and jobs will not be created.

The ultimate irony is that those groups that overwhelmingly voted for “Hope and Change” have been the most hurt by Obama’s policies. While the overall unemployment rate is a dismal 8.6%, despite being sold an $835 billion Stimulus Bill that was supposed to reduce unemployment to 6%, the unemployment and underemployment rate for young people, and minorities is far higher. The unemployment rate for young people is 17% and over half of all recent college graduates are working in jobs that do not require a college degree. The unemployment rate for Hispanics is 11% and the unemployment rate for blacks is 13%.

Despite an effort by an overwhelming liberal news media to obscure the truth, it should be clear by now that the economy will not recover as long as the policies of wealth redistribution, rather than the wealth creation are in place. This November will be a test of whether American voters have exhausted all other possibilities and are ready to do the right thing.