Obama Democrats: War hawks, tax cutters and terror monkeys

Craig, down below, offered insight on the inner workings of my mind regarding the presidential election:

… it’s the old “lips so no but the eyes say yes.” An accountant like Mark can do the math and see which candidate advances the bottom line of Mark’s agenda. He’s not stupid, just arrogant.

I’ve been somewhat troubled by the comment. First, as an accountant, I do not do math. I do arithmetic.

Secondly, when I think about the election outcome, I do get a fearful tinge when I think of a Romney victory. Craig’s got a point. But it’s an emotional response. Bush, after the stolen election in 2004, announced that he had “political capital” and immediately attacked Social Security. That was upsetting, but the attack failed*. Democrats rallied against him. Even Sen Max Baucus (D-MT) came to the program’s assistance. It was a situation where the institutional appearances overrode shared underlying goals. Democrats carefully gauged public opinion before responding. Seeing the attack would fail, they championed the program.

But as I mentioned in the footnote to that post (Craig never made it that far, but good blogging requires short and concise posts, so I take responsibility there), Obama pledged in the debate to adhere to Simpson-Bowles. That was a failed commission consisting of Democratic and Republican right wingers that urged that the government stop the bleeding caused by aggression and war spending (“defense”) by attacking social spending.

I noted there that Obama is obliged to speak in dog-whistle sentences. His administration recently let Goldman Sachs off the hook for its many crimes. He’s begging! And he’s signaling to Wall Street with the S-B remark that after all of the fluff of campaigning is done, it is back to business as usual: Dismantling of the New Deal.

So Obama vs Romney – why do I cringe at a Romney victory? Perhaps I would rather be attacked by the guy with the pen knife than one with the butcher knife. But if the pen knife gets me fifty times, I might bleed to death. On a non-emotional level I see how the Democrats, even after they were warned of triangulation, bought in. I saw them turn into war hawks and tax cutters, free traders and terror monkeys. At least we have a fighting chance with Romney, who they will reflexively oppose even as he goes about Obama’s business.

So Craig, you were right to a degree. On an emotional level I instinctively fear Romney. But on a thinking level I realize that Obama is the greater threat to the remnants of our Republic.
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*Even if we successfully defend Social Security, each attack has harmed it. One, we cannot make even the modest changes needed to fix its minor problems, as that opens the gates for another attack. And two, with each attack the perception is more firmly rooted among our youth that the program will not survive, a self-fulfilling prophecy.