Reality Check 101

 According to Real Clear Politics averages, since March of 2009, Congress has managed to maintain a steady decline in job approval ratings beginning at only 37%.  Right now, the average is about 8.5%. 

 Those numbers include every part of the left-right-libertarian political spectrum.  Given that fact, conventional wisdom would hold that it would be almost impossible to find any unifying grievances among all the different camps.  As happens in politics, conventional wisdom doesn’t work.

 Democrats recently cleaned Republican clocks by protecting Obamacare and removing the debt ceiling, all with an anemic 17% government shutdown.  You would think that if their win had really represented the will of Americans there would have been celebrations in the streets.  There should have been coast-to-coast praise for their brilliant leadership.  There was none of that. 

 Instead, the reaction on the street was “same old-same old”.  There was good reason.  On the Democratic side, there was not even the façade of openness to discussion, compromise or negotiation.  Their strategy was hard line take no prisoners.  On the Republican side, conservatives were maligned and principled leadership died.  Establishment Republicans marginalized and occasionally vilified conservative colleagues who were simply standing by the principles they were elected to defend. 

 Power-pounding on the one side and waffling leadership on the other side verified the public’s cynicism.  In spite of disputes across the nation between ideological groups, within the public conscience, there remains a unified revulsion for the power mongering, elitism, hypocrisy, corruption and ineptitude in congress.  Aside from the fact that too many Americans have begun relying on the nanny state, more still value their independence.  They are searching for courageous principled leadership.

 In 1832, Senator William Marcy famously attempted to justify Andrew Jackson’s corrupt patronage system by saying “To the victor belong the spoils”.  That principle is a two-edged sword for both the victor and the vanquished.

 Democrats now own our souring debt and will be forever linked with the damage it does to our country.  Obamacare’s squashing of our personal medical rights – choices about our own bodies, its autocratic take-over of one-sixth of the economy, its subversion of our free market and its destruction of the best health care system in the world will be their legacy.

 There are nasty spoils for Republicans also.  People yearn for leaders with integrity, humility and the strength to guard individual liberties and control the abuses of government. The John Boehners and John McCains of the party continue to protect the old guard against principled newcomers.  In doing so, they justify the public’s distrust and demonstrate that politics as usual is still the norm. 

 As more and more of the Obama administration’s Chicago-style corruption surfaces, as our freedom to live our personal lives without the permissions and judgments of Big Brother continues to evaporate, Americans will look for someone to lead them out of the mire.  As distasteful as it is for liberals and kowtowing Republicans, it will be the ones courageous and resourceful enough to defy big party handlers who will help salvage the nation.