Romney Lost the Election That Was His to Win

Political pundits aside, Romney lost the presidency for one basic reason: he aligned himself too close with the Tea Party’s ideology that since its inception in the early months of 2009 has been an albatross on the Republican Party’s vision for America.  

The Tea Party’s visionaries are in fact reactionaries: people who would like to have this country return to the good old days of the 1950s and the 1960s when America was a giant of prosperity and economic power. It was that economic wonder that sparked the great wave of immigration that brought my father and many other immigrants to this country.

Yes, the fifties and the sixties were decades of economic wonder and prosperity for this country when good jobs were plenty and easy to find, housing was affordable, basic necessities easy to afford, durable goods of good quality and affordable, insurance moderately priced, taxes moderately low all, in an environment of peace and tranquility unequal in the world. Yes, the America I found when I arrived here was the envy of all the industrialized countries of the world because the United States offered anyone and everyone willing to work, the best chance for success.

Unfortunately, today’s America does not resemble the country that so many years I adopted as my own because today the landscape of this country in all aspects has changed dramatically and to expect this country to return to the good old days is at best impractical due for the most part, the social, political and economic landscape that in recent years has changed drastically and dramatically.

Yes, the Tea Party’s political ideology cannot be realized today and anyone running for office especially at the federal level who thinks that aligning him or herself with the Tea party’s mentality will win an election, is a dreamer at best. The United States will not and cannot in good faith return to those days again. America must move forward in a new direction and that direction is not where Obama wants to take this country.  

America today is on the wrong track in both the social and the economic agenda because although it is unrealistic to return to the good old days of the past, to be a successful country with a prosperous future for our children and grandchildren, we must change our overcall current culture of takers and start giving back to this country that has given us so much.

We must once and for all adhere to those immortal words of John F. Kennedy when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

The United States of America became the great economic power because people were working and paying taxes.  In 1960, there were four workers paying for one retiree. Today, the ratio has been reversed where we have one worker paying for four retirees. According the latest statistics, 47% of the American people pay no taxes; we have 47 million Americans on food stamps and according to the Senate Budget Committee of the United States, more than 100 million people are currently on some form of welfare program or government assistance. That is one third of the American population collecting on the shoulders of the remaining two-thirds of American’s taxpayers.  

This is not the United States of America. This resembles Fascist Italy of the 1940s when half of the people held the money and the power while the other half collected.  If this is not collectivism, I like to know what is. Of course, democrats and republicans disagree on these current findings and that is why I say, the United States needs a new voice, a viable third party, a party of the people because today republicans and democrats cannot be recognized from one another. 

Yes, there are differences between the two; republicans are for limited government and welfare for the rich while democrats are for big government (big Brother) and welfare for the poor. But the real truth is the fact that neither party cares enough or does enough to protect the rights of the fast disappearing working middle class that day in and day out goes out to work for the increasing takers of this country that see the government as the their only salvation.

I tell you what: no one can save anyone except self. I saved myself when more that 50 years ago when, unable to go to college, I went to work and today some 50 years later, I can tell you, no government agency, no government assistance program, no government’s job-training project took me out of poverty. 

Government handouts and government assistance are a form of glorified
slavery and no more.  You can call it help, but it is pure bondage.  You want
to rise above the ranks on the poor and into the ranks of the middle class? Start working for a change. It is in the American spirit. 

Therefore in the final analysis, Romney lost for many reasons. Picking the wrong vice president who did not even carry his own state of Wisconsin; campaigning always from behind instead of attacking the policies of this president; letting Obama define him and spending most of the time on the defensive instead of attacking the economic and social agenda of this nation; not having a clear economic plan for the future, etc.

The mistakes were many, but the main reason Romney lost was the alignment with the Republican Party with the ideology of the Tea Party that is too strict for the United States of the 21st century. 

America of the future cannot be governed on the stringent terms of Tea Party’s reactionaries because that is what they are all about.  They want to govern by reaction; a return to the better days of the fifties and sixties. But, just like the America of the 1930s, the Great Depression days could not return to the 1920s' “Age of Good Feeling," we also cannot return to yesterday. 

The United States has for more than 200 years prospered under constant change and that is the strength of America and the reason why today even with all our problems we are still the best in the world. But we must change the course if we are to continue that trend but to do that; we must first change our “mentality.” We must once again return to the days when “work” was an honorable profession because in the end, nothing can be accomplished without hard work, personal responsibility, perseverance, and a sense of loyalty to the country that has given me and all the people of America so much.