It's Beside the Point

For quite a while now I have been telling any Obama detractor who would listen that I think they are missing the point by focusing on our organizer-in-chief.

It's not to say he isn't a problem, because he is. But it's kind of like your cough is a problem when you have strep throat. When it comes to your health, the cough is really beside the point. And like Obama's damaging presidency, it's actually useful to a degree.

As Thomas Sowell has said; "Barack Obama is not so much the cause of our decline but the culmination of it." The ideas he holds are the problem and he is only the latest in a long line of people who push them. And so it goes with the candidates for the Presidency in this messy Republican primary season.

For many conservatives, the Mitt Romney candidacy is heresy. He isn't a conservative and therefore should not be the Republican nominee. True enough, but it's beside the point if your goal is to turn the situation around before it's too late. What passes for conservatism now-a-days won't fix the situation. Nor will electing a technocrat who thinks that the only problem with our government is that he's not in charge of it.

Then there is the newest "anyone but Mitt" candidate, Rick Santorum. Rick, whose trademark sweaters are only slightly more stylish than Jimmy Carter's were, is basically a clone of George W Bush. Bush was godfather (or the puppet, perhaps) of the neo-con version of what passed for conservatism in the eight years before people signed on to the dream of hope for leftist change. George made the situation worse during his turn, and so will Rick if he gets the chance. Between trying to pound his version of morality down the country's throat and attacking the people who favor individual liberty, he seems anxious to attack Iran for good measure. Whatever he would do as President other than those things would be beside the point of saving the currency or addressing the debt catastrophe.

So now let's turn to the last Republican in the "anyone but Mitt as long as it's not Ron Paul" candidate. The music seems to have stopped for Newt Gingrich's dance with the nomination, so he himself is beside the point. I thought about leaving him off the list, but darn it, it's just not fair that someone as grandiose as Newt should be left without a chair when the music stops. But alas, that's just the way it is. Life ain't fair, I guess.

Which leaves one last candidate, none other than Ron Paul. At least in his candidacy we finally find some honesty because Paul has been telling anyone who will listen that he himself is beside the point when it comes to addressing the situation we find ourselves in. That makes one person in this whole mess who finally "get's it." The most unlikely of candidates; he's too old, he's not a slick campaigner, he doesn't articulate the positions as well as so many others in his movement, and he has been proclaimed a million times as irrelevant by the media pundits. But, he "get's it."

He knows it's the ideas that matter if you are actually trying to do something other than just get elected. It's the ideas that turn into the policies that will finally address this situation. It's not the guy, it's the ideas.

And since the country has tried all the other ideas of the left and right, and none of them have done anything except spend, borrow and print money while making things worse, the country might finally be ready to try the only thing that has ever worked over the long term. Freedom, not intervention. It works everywhere and always. Government doesn't have the answers. You do.

And THAT is the point.