Free In Idaho!

No, I didn’t forget Sunday Music.  This morning it is “All Creatures of our God and King“.

Lots of disappointment around the blogosphere this morning, in the wake of the results coming out of SC.  I’m thinking there is more angst about how well McCain and Huckabee are doing, rather than how weakly Fred did (in a state he’s said for weeks he was counting on to show well).  I think the American voter is asking for something, and all I can say is “be careful what you ask for…”

Bill Quick at Daily Pundit had this to say, and more (go read it all)

In essence, the GOP has rejected the one real conservative in the race, and will now pick from a NYC moderate, a “maverick” RINO, a budding populist theocrat, and a Massachusetts country club Republican in the Rockefeller/First Bush vein.

None of them can be trusted very much on any of the issues I care about, from immigration, to liberty, to the Second Amendment, to a lessening of federal power, or to federalism itself. They are all, to a moderate or greater extent, wedded to statism, and I think it has now become quite clear that the GOP, once, but no longer, the party of conservatism, small government, and liberty, is now just another statist gang like their counterparts who are very slightly across the left/right divide from them.

Over at Traction Control, it reads like this

It appears that I, in my support of Fred Thompson, have misjudged the American people.

And I think there is a clue in that.  The American people right now are less like the freedom and liberty loving, hard-working folks we would hope them to be, and more like the fat couch potato watching “Dances with Sluts”, only looking away long enough to complain, or belch out another “gimme something”.  The first group of folks will certainly listen to a candidate speaking about lower taxes, cutting spending, smaller government, and more liberty, and they would be willing to decide the issues based on who had the most practical propositions for accomplishing those goals.  But the second one doesn’t want that because it looks like work.  Rather, that second “citizen” wants free health care, cheap gas, a guaranteed job with a big retirement package, free education for the kiddies, and no consequences for bad behavior.  It matters little to him that none of those things are the province of government, or that in order to provide those things said government must wreak havoc on the lives and liberties of all of his neighbors.  “What’s in it for me?” and “who’s going to give it to me?”… that is where the American population is today.

The media can pontificate all it wants about Bush’s failures, his stubbornness and arrogance as being the cause.  The blogosphere can argue about campaign tactics, dirty tricks, and flip-flopping all it wants.  But the state of the National elections can be explained more easily by looking at the American people than at the candidates.  The American people aren’t deciding this election based on ideals and principles, they are deciding this race based on what feels good.

It’ll feel good to vote for the first black guy.  It’ll feel good to vote for the first woman.  It’ll feel good voting for a preacher.  It’ll feel good voting for someone who is going to give me everything I wanted and believe I deserve. I know that’s too simple an explanation for most of you… but the American people are pretty simple-minded right now, and they’re going to vote for what they want.

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.  Benjamin Franklin

Complain about them when they screw up, but praise them when they’re right.  And praise God for giving us men like these cops (and all you EMTs, firefighters, docs and nurses too).