It's All Over but the Crying, or Why I will not Vote Again for Barack Obama

For starters, after a brief flirtation with the John Edwards candidacy, I strongly supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primaries.  I had many reasons, but they may be summed up anecdotally in terms of a telling contrast.  On the one hand, long before her White House tenure, Hillary had been a staffer on the Senate Watergate Committee, and had seen and known Republican skullduggery at close range;  then during her husband's presidency, she was also served a walloping great helping of the same, which led to her correct diagnosis and identification of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' at work.  Barack Obama, on the other hand, praised the cheerful optimism of Ronald Reagan, and mixed up (so to speak) a large pitcher of Kool-Aid, labelled 'comity' and bi-partisanship.'

To any objective observer of American politics, who had been awake since, say, 1978, the contrast between Hillary and Obama was rendered stark by comparing these motifs: Watergate versus Bi-partisanship.

I had a sackful of other reasons for dis-liking Obama in the primaries, but let this simple metaphorical take stand in for the rest.  When he won the nomination, I considered withholding my vote in the general election; but in the end, the spectre of Sarah Palin as vice-president was frightening enough to compel my vote -- the latest in a continuous string for Democratic Presidential Candidates, since McGovern in 1972.

But no more.  The debt ceiling comedy, and its horrific denouement, has torn it for me.  This has been from the start a manufactured crisis, in which Obama's principle goal was to attack the great Social Insurance policies of the New Deal and Great Society: Social Security, and Medicare. He has succeeded, beyond the dreams of any Republican president.  I will not provide hyperlinks, but the curious reader who has been asleep may, if he so desires, consult the writings of Nobel laureate and progressive gadfly and truth-teller Paul Krugman, who, from his perch on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, has analyzed with deadly accuracy the follies and mis-steps of the Obama administration in the run-up to this disastrous piece of legislation.

I will only state in conclusion what should be obvious to all.  Barack Obama is no Democrat.  He is not even a moderate Republican.  He is a mainstream Republican masquerading as a Democrat.  I will not vote for him again.  A Republican in name and deed both could do no more harm.  I weep for the future of our once-great nation.