Fighting to be RIGHT!

At a Glance

What:Political Battles
When: This political season
Where: Nationwide
Why: The losing party hates the new leader/the winning party doesn't trust their new leader's ability
Pundits who have weighed in: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin

Every now and then I have the urge to reach through my TV screen, grab the lapels of a speaker, jerk him or her close to my face and hiss, "What is wrong with you?"

After eight years of distress, fearfully enduring the leadership of a man I voted for twice, why on earth would anyone block the agenda of a president who is actually trying to do positive things for this country?

I am so confused, frustrated and just plain angry!

I am amazed at the way people have changed since the election of Barack Obama.

I was watching "Hannity & Colmes" the night of the 2004 Democratic National Convention and heard Sean Hannity gush about how incredible the keynote speech Obama delivered was and how we just needed to get him on "our side."

As a Republican at the time, I heartily agreed!

However, once Obama decided to run for president, Hannity turned. That meant demonizing the opposition at any cost.

I expected that.

I did not expect that people would turn who loved this president when he was a senator and when he appeared as a light on the Democratic horizon. They now act like rabid dogs--in the furious stage.

They nip at his heels at every turn.

As one blogger said on the The Democratic Party website, "President Obama is being treated like an intelligent African American student in a mostly white classroom. Every mistake he makes is a grave one and every achievement he gets is not good enough and (sic) underrecognized."

He has been called "uppity" by people such as Congressman Westmoreland and Rush Limbaugh.
According to the Urban Dictionary, the word "uppity", when applied to people of African descent, means they have forgotten their place and was usually applied to those who dared to look a white person in the eye.

That might explain why the GOP and Tea Party crew use the word "uppity" and treat him like someone who has forgotten his place and just needs to be taught a lesson.

That is one thing that makes me angry.

What makes me angrier is this: The leadership of his own party acts like "He's our boy, so we gotta support him, but frankly, between you and me and the fence post, I ain't quite sure we can trust him to make the right decision on the 'big' stuff." (That's Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of that motley crew.)

In their own way, Biden and Clinton said he couldn't be trusted to make the right decisions during the campaign each time they said he wasn't ready.

Their words became Republican talking points.

It is as though they support him and trust him until he makes decisions with which they are uncomfortable, then they go weak in the knees, back pedal and leave him hanging.

They second-guess him.

That makes me even angrier because what I am left with is this: Obama is not going to get a break from either side of the aisle. Not yet.

He is the man caught in the middle.

He ran for office from the left and came back as close to the middle as he could get in order to work with people who disagreed with him politically. He risked angering his own party members in order to "reach across the aisle" and embrace his enemies.

And for what? To be denigrated by his own?

Too bad he had the audacity to believe that the people who voted for him actually believed in his ability to do the job.

So, in my rage, I scream at the individual I have snatched through my TV screen, whose lapels I clutch and whose face is within inches of mine: "Wake up!"

We are in debt up to our eyeballs, we are still a country at war--sacrificing our kids for a cause "W" believed in--we are losing jobs rapidly and in a huge recession.

Wake up!

As a country divided, we are imploding, being pulled down from within, as the world watches from the outside.

Do you need an example?

In her closing address to the recent Tea Party Convention, Sarah Palin mentioned the hope and change promised by President Obama and asked this question: "How's that hopey/changey thing workin' out for ya?"

For me, there is but one answer to her question.

Things are turning out far better than they would have been had we ended up with you and John McCain and the ideas conveyed by both of you as you rode on his "Straight Talk Express." When I consider the choice between "that hopey/changey thing" and "The Straight Talk Express," I choose hope and change every time.

Thanks for asking.