WASHINGTON D.C.—One thing can be said about this year’s midterm elections. It’s estimated to be the most expensive battle on record. Billions of dollars poured into the coffers of Republican and Democratic hopefuls. Here in California, the Republican candidates for Governor and U.S. Senator poured over $100 billion of their own money into their efforts to win the offices they sought. Although, the American people have turned out Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and placed more Republican governors in office, they are wholly unimpressed by both parties and both parties have a lot to learn about governing the nation and its 50 states.
Notwithstanding having spent untold billions yet to be calculated by tacticians and political hacks, we seem to never be able to vote into offices the brightest Americans who truly are capable of making the tough decisions to cut looming deficits and entitlements that have grown astronomically, which choke the life out of our young people’s future. The new House of Representatives majority leader John Boehner promised from his Ohio party headquarters to the Tea Party, “I will never disappoint you.” Republican star on the rise, Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia said, “We must cut the deficit!” Though he was only capable of telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about a $100 billion project he could earmark to be placed on the chopping block politically. We heard these same promises in November of 2008, we get angry when we don’t see action and then we turn out another group of professional politicians for the next group who sat on the wings for two years in order to get back into power.
In California, the voters chose to ignore the advice of a woman who created a multi-billion dollar empire from nothing, to return a career politician who was governor of the state over three decades earlier. However, we also put a movie star as governor, who went from being an immigrated body builder to one of the wealthiest and most successful movie stars in Hollywood history, and four years later, the state is in the worst economic shape it has ever been in. Deficits forced days off and unpaid holidays for state employees, but the promises keep on coming from both sides of the political aisle.
Perhaps this week we will find true change. Perhaps cynical Americans like myself will be proved wrong. Maybe the answer is term limits? We heard all about that in the 1990s, but saw no one leave Congress of their own volition. They had to be voted out or put out in a heated scandal, such as cheating on their wives or cheating the taxpayers. Here’s hoping that after the outlandish, often racist rhetoric and most unappealing number of incumbents and candidates in a lifetime have battled out for supremacy, we’ll finally settle down with Washington politicians, who will finally listen to the people back home.
Please remember our brave troops, who received no promises or support from either party during the midterm election of 2010. Parties that promised everyone else everything to get their votes never gave any of the brave men and women in the military any consideration at all. That includes the Republican Party that uses the military for political posturing and arguments against the Democrats, and the Democrats who have barely supported the troops in the recent past.
