Message to Republican True Believers: Romney will be President; Ryan will be Vice President

Years ago, Vice President John Nance Garner, who knew from first-hand painful experience, said that the Vice Presidency was not worth a pitcher of fresh urination – or words to that effect.  Garner came from Texas; Texans have colorful ways of putting things.    

Some things have changed in the vice presidency since Garner left it in 1941 and retired to Uvade, Texas.  However, the dog’s body quality remains around the office of the Vice Presidency to this day.  

THE VICE PRESIDENCY COULD HAVE AMOUNTED TO A HILL OF BEANS.  

Way back in 1896, candidate William McKinley selected for his vice president a Republican party official and New Jersey state legislator by the name of Garret Hobart.  Among other things, Hobart is credited with saying “What this country needs is a good five cent cigar.”   He got that right:  we can make bigger fortunes selling many things for a nickel than a few things for 50 cents.    However, to get back on point, McKinley set out to make Vice President Hobart a sort of executive assistant president.   Heaven knows what would have happened if Hobart had not suddenly died two years into the experiment.    McKinley replaced Hobart in 1900 with the huge ego of Governor Theodore Roosevelt.  McKinley died a few months later.   Roosevelt became president.   When the Great Ego finally got himself a vice president in 1905, he did not want any powerful assistant blocking his limelight.    So much for an executive assistant president.

More than a hundred years later . . .

 candidate Mitt Romney won the contest for Republican Presidential nominee without exactly setting True Hearts on fire.  He did not win over the  minds of the conservative faithful.   Affection for him ran wide but not deep.     

Romney  decided to select as his vice president candidate a U S Representative from Wisconsin who had a nationwide reputation for fiscal conservatism of the hardest, coldest order.   Paul Ryan of Janesville Wisconsin also had gone on record with plans to reduce the dreaded national fiscal deficit.  Among so called Tea Party people (whomever and whatever they are) and among True Blue Conservatives of both fiscal and social varieties, Ryan was The Brilliant Star in the Midwest, The Rising Hope of the Generation.

In the weeks since Romney took Ryan to the mountaintop and showed him the Kingdoms of the World, news programs have broadcast many stories featuring people who now find themselves excited about the Republican ticket.   People willingly state for the record they really did not like Romney much or did not agree with him wholeheartedly.  Now they will work hard for the ticket.

Their enthusiasm, while admirable in its purity, is completely misplaced.  

Romney is the presidential candidate.   He is the same man who –

    ●    was the son of a Rockefeller Republican
    ●    labeled in the 1960s as as part of the rising generation of The New Liberal Modernized Mormons
    ●    went from riches to richer
    ●    created his own state health insurance requirement. 

The Romney Ego will eventually notice if crowds like his veep candidate better than himself.   I seriously doubt it will like it.    

Ryan can say what he wants.    Will  Romney consult him if the voters elect them to highest offices?  The Vice Presidency never did evolve into an executive assistant president:  it has only a few real constitutional duties from the beginning to now.   The Constitution does not specify that the President has to take his vice president seriously in fiscal consultation. 


RYAN MISSED HIS CHANCE

Representative Paul Ryan should have held out for a cabinet position in a department with a lot of entitlements.   Or he should have held out for director of budget.     Then he would have been in a better position to actually put his ideas into effect.

Representative Akin's brilliant career goes bust

That haze on the horizon is the career of Missouri Republican Representative Akin, as it goes up in smoke.

To review:   Missouri voters elected Representative Akin, Missouri Republican, as  this year’s candidate for Senator hoping to unseat a vulnerable Democrat senator named Claire Conner McCaskill.   He made the mistake of saying in public that victims of "legitimate rape" cannot biologically become pregnant and thus do not need access to legal abortions.

This raised a question in the minds of many Missouri voters:   should  we require a senator candidate  to know human biology?

Fire and brimstone fell over Akin’s head.  Republican candidates, leaders, and financiers back-peddled to distance themselves from him.  They urged [ if not ordered ] him to withdraw.  Never mind the fact that he was (yesterday) the darling star of the Missouri Republicans, their Great White Hope.  Missouri Republicans have few darling stars available at any given time to take up The Crusade.  He is the same person they elected a few weeks ago.  What really changed about him exactly?   The change came in voters’ perceptions; that is all.


Let this stand as a lesson to us all.   

Say something really dumb or really politically incorrect; it corrupts or invalidates your whole person.   The assumption, however, is silly.  Just because someone says something dumb in one area does not mean that someone is dumb on all subjects and in all respects in all areas.    

The Akin Crash does illustrate to what extent some  voters obsess over political issues sexual and the extent to which some of them will punish the baby in case of rape.   If people want to execute someone as punishment for these acts of violence, it should be the rapist.

LINING UP FOR MARRIAGE: an essay discussing real definitions of marriage and family values

On August 1, people lined up for blocks to buy sandwiches at Chick-Fil-A to show solidarity with a company president who publicly defined traditional man-and-wife marriage as a command of God and the best way to go.   A few days later, same-gender couples lined up around the restaurants and smoched openly on the kissers. 

People find it easy to stand in line to buy sandwiches.   Will these people stand in line to vote?  Will they write for the record their stand on marriage and family?  

Someone I know wrote on Facebook the other day: 

“There is real inequality and favoritism taking place with the government choosing who can and can't be married. It isn't fair. And while a lot of religious people take pleasure being "favored" by the government - it's immature. What if tomorrow the government decided to only recognize marriage between homosexuals and void everyone else's? Would you still be happy with the government's ability to favor?

“Everyone gets caught up in fighting the definition of "marriage" when the truth is we need to be caught up in the gross lack of separation between church and state that has taken place. That's what's causing all this mess, and causing my facebook feeds to read like a bipolor teenager (let's just say my Utah and California friends wouldn't get along very well).”

What does a parent say when his favorite son elopes to British Columbia with his sweetheart to get married in a same-sex marriage ceremony?   How does he respond to this --

“All Tom and I ever wanted was to get married because we love each other.   And if we hurt some people’s feelings, well — that is just too bad.  It is their problem, not mine.   I married the only man I ever loved and am glad I married the man I loved.  It meant a lot to me to marry the person I found most precious, despite the fact that some people thought he was the wrong kind of person for me to marry.   Government has no business forcing some people’s religious beliefs over others.  I support the right to marry for all – white or black, gay or straight.  That is what loving is all about.”

Interesting that in red states in general and in Utah in particular –

 When the homosexuals corrupted the concept of marriage, their opponents called it "sin."   However, when heterosexuals corrupted the concept of marriage they call it "progressive."

Marriage as political alliance.  Dowries.  Women treated as property with no rights.  Institutional violence between men and women.  Polyandry.   "la casa grande” for the mistress.  “la casa bonita”  for the wife.   No-fault quickie divorces.  Heterosexuals have done the most damage to the concept of marriage over time.    Changing the gender ratio is only just the latest step in the devolution of marriage definitions. 

Marriage is not a domestic agreement between two people.

Marriage is a covenant between at least four entities

the man

the woman

the culture in which they live

and or

God

and children, who have a vested right to a solid stable extended family. 

The central issue in this debate  needs to be stated a different way.    Children have a right to a legal family relationship.   They have a right to two parents, one of the male persuasion, one of the female gender. 

Civil governments in general have done a lousy job in protecting and preserving marriage.  Traditional orthodox churches, however,  have in the main been ineffective, as well.    In fairness, though, neither the Old Testament or the New Testament are really clear on the subject of when God considers a couple “married.”     The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains sections that do a clearer, more convincing, job of defining marriages both in the world and in the next sphere.

Marriage is not first and foremost about companionship.   People should not confuse marriage with companionship.   Marriage is about a stable legal framework to raise children.   Eventually most if not all marriages get various people and things attached to them:  houses, summer homes, yachts, in-laws, friends, ecclesiastical leaders, accountants, teachers, trainers, and attorneys -- as well as children.     If a married couple is not careful, their marriage will evolve into a way of insuring that they get what they do not want.

Marriage was ordained by God.   Civil unions were ordained by humans.   People in civil unions should have clear rights of inheritance and work benefits for themselves and their partners. 

The president’s comments on marriage on 9 May 2012 only shows how little those in authority have thought out the definitions of family life, marriage, and domestic arrangements.  Domestic arrangements have a long, sometimes honorable, history in the long evolution of human events. 

THE CALL TO ACTION

In the meantime, red-state, traditional family values political activities will insist on chicken sandwich lunches and blue-state progressive family values political activities will insist on Swedish meatballs or Greek salads for lunch.  Lunch will not have much fun in it.  We will accomplish very little in the way of getting strong solid families for children.  

Children deserve both a male and a female parent either at birth or at adoption.   If a government allow gay couples to adopt, then the law must stipulate that the child must have regular meaningful contact with someone of the other gender.