An Un-American Election Result In America

click on graph to enlarge

 

Now there was plenty of spilt milk to cry over in Tuesday's election but there was also one bright spot & I didn't have to look farther than the last post to find it – "those Virginians who resent the government shutdown will favor Democrat Terry McAuliffe & those who are being hurt by ObamaCare will favor Republican Ken Cuccinelli."

 

Although Cuccinelli lost the overall election by 2.5%, exit polling indicated that 80% of the voters who opposed the ObamaCare law voted for Cuccinelli & 11% voted for McAuliffe.  It is also true that almost 90% of the voters who blamed the government shutdown on Republicans voted for McAuliffe so our original premise was correct.  Also working against Cuccinelli was the (fake) Libertarian candidate who took 6.6% of the total vote & got on the ballot in the first place thanks to a wealthy Texas Democrat. 

 

The immediate point is that Cuccinelli could have won this race.  Tea Partiers have to steer clear of matters like legitimate rape, God intended rape, & government shutdowns – they have hurt the movement the past 12 months & the government shutdown affecting the Virginia governor's race is just the latest example.

 

But the government shutdown is a short term issue of local interest in northern Virginia where 300,000 people work for the government – it will fade in importance in future elections.  ObamaCare will not fade if the problems persist.

 

The long term point & bright spot coming out of this election going forward is the chance that people, including supporters, will turn on BO due to the constant uncovering of the inevitable problems resulting from the deceit with which ObamaCare was enacted & is being implemented.  This could be the issue that finally sticks to BO as the 80-11 ratio indicates.  Cuccinelli came from a double digit deficit in many polls to lose by 2.5% after the main issue turned from the shutdown to the first hand problems people were having with ObamaCare – see above graph.  So hang on – it will be a rough ride but this is the first chink ever in BO's armor.

 

The rest of the election results are the spilt milk – or reality – that we have to face. 

 

The thought of two great Tea Party candidates like Steve Lonegan in NJ & Ken Cuccinelli in VA – respectively replacing the late Frank Lautenberg in the Senate & Bob McDonnell in the Virginia Governor's House – is a very compelling motivating thought.

 

In the case of Lonegan all we needed was Chris Christie to appoint Lonegan as interim senator to finish Lautenberg's term instead of deciding to have a special election that was run on October 16 @ a cost of $12 million.  Christie said he preferred the earlier date for the special election so that NJ would have their senator in place as quickly as possible following Lautenberg's death & that holding this special election 20 days before the general statewide election was crucial to achieving this goal.  It also kept Cory Booker off the ballot on November 5 which would have ensured a larger turnout than the actual 37% turnout thereby diminishing Christie's 22 point reelection win – a big win was Christie's real goal.

 

Too bad Senator-elect Booker did not feel the same urgency that Christie did in getting NJ's senator to Washington.  Booker was sworn into his senate position last Thursday only 5 days before the general election.  All of this for five days & no Senator Lonegan – a real loss for NJ & America.  Christie's obvious not-so-hidden agenda was enough of a reason for Tea Partiers in NJ to not vote for Christie who did win his big-margin reelection but had no coattails in that not one Republican replaced a Democrat in the Assembly or State Senate.

 

In essence Christie handed the NJ Senate seat to Booker & this is unpardonable.

 

The worst result in NJ was the overwhelming acceptance (61%) of State Public Question No. 2 which asked for the approval of an amendment to the NJ State Constitution to set a minimum wage & index it for inflation.  The other four states with constitutional provisions on the minimum wage & indexation are Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Ohio.  Arizona, 

Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, & Washington have non-constitutional provisions to automatically increase the minimum wage.  Eighteen states & DC already have mandates for wages higher than the federal minimum wage – Washington state has a $15 an hour minimum "living wage".

 

Here are portions of a Lonegan op-ed before the election from a NJ newspaper – ". . .But it's not just younger employees who should be worried, though — it's the state's taxpayers. As a former mayor, I know that it's not just private employees who earn the minimum wage, but state and local employees as well. Not because they make minimum wage, but because many labor contracts are indexed to a minimum wage basis. One recent study estimated that New Jersey taxpayers will be on the hook for at least $22 million in additional costs each year if Proposal 2 passes, with that figure growing even higher along with the inflation rate."

 

So the argument that people need a hike in the minimum wage to live is really a disguise to raise union wages by a commensurate percentage.  Michael Saltsman writes that "The federal minimum wage was set in 1938 @ 25 cents an hour.  Had it tracked the cost of living since it would today be $4.07 an hour. . . & it's 44% less than the current amount of $7.25." 

 

Politicians are masters @ tracking the minimum wage & inflation to their advantage by providing percentage increases from one arbitrarily selected time to another – quite often picking 1968 as the starting point when the minimum wage hit its real inflation-adjusted high.  If you chose 1948 the minimum wage today on an inflation-adjusted basis would be $3.81 an hour; choose 1988 – it would be $6.50 an hour.  

 

So once again information regarding what our elected representatives are doing is crucial to understanding what is really going on.

 

Please click on Four Points Highlight The Needed Change In Mindset to see a contrast between real solutions to our economic problems that will return America to the excellence of our founding principles & the mediocrity of proposals for raising the minimum wage as an answer for anything except keeping the wrong politicians in office.

 

Although there is one bright spot mentioned above make no mistake that all the rest of the results from Tuesday's election are un-American – the only problem for us is that this slide toward mediocrity is happening in America.

 

Who in this readership believes that BO & Sebelius did not know in March 2010 that all of the current ObamaCare problems (& more to come) would occur?  Why else did they have such a staggered implementation with key provisions falling after elections – like November 2012?  Imagine if all of the current problems had surfaced in October 2012.

 

The way the ObamaCare law is being implemented is not the law enacted – waivers & extensions granted by BO really nullify the original law.  And Congress just goes along.  What we have is not a statute or healthcare insurance – it is something new – a new word is needed.

 

So will the Tea Party take the lessons learned & present candidates who will not make the types of mistakes that cost good people like Ken Cuccinelli elections?  I can think of numerous examples where our candidates came closer than expected but still lost & that will not carry the day. 

 

We will need a top notch candidate in 2016 because 54% of the electorate in 2012 were women.  A duplication of this statistic in 2016 will make the defeat of either of two potential Democrat candidates I can think of just about impossible.