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Naturally, with 32 million Americans out of work, 46 million people on food stamps and unemployment levels between seven and almost nine percent in the last four years of Obama, Republicans stood behind Romney and cheered him on as he held fast to holding Obama to his devastating economic policies and record. We were wrong.

We should have known something was amiss when David Axelrod agreed to shave his mustache should Obama lose any one of three core battleground states. When Axelrod appeared on Fox News Sunday the Sunday before election Tuesday – looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth – all but declaring an Obama victory why didn’t we sense ruin?  All polls were tight, the economy in tatters, and the Benghazi attack should have been a scandal for Obama, yet Axelrod bantered and joked about mustaches and Obama danced with Jay-Z as if all were well and rosy.

We must give credit to Obama and Axelrod where it is due: they knew the changing heart of the American people much better than Republicans.  After all they spent the last six years campaigning to transform those hearts away from liberty and common sense.  In fact, Obama has been more candidate than he has ever been President. He and Axelrod spent the last six years plotting the moment they could convince most Americans that America was no longer the land of opportunity, rather a land of inequality too long dominated by rich, wealthy white men and an overbearing religious mainstream who wished nothing but woe to the middle class, malevolence to minorities, and the barring of contraception and abortion rights to women.

A record deficit of the last four years wouldn’t matter. He could blame Bush. And for that matter, kill two birds with one stone – get a pass on the economy and lay it at the feet of a rich, white Republican. Four years of constant golf and vacations despite the rising cost of living would not count because in the meanwhile Obama was also giving: one million Obama phones to Ohio residents; free health care coverage to all Americans; a bailout to GM; a record stimulus package. And in his bag of bottomless goodies there was even more to give and something for every one of the Government’s good children. Given four more years Obama could lavish even more benefits: free college tuition, free contraception, amnesty to illegal aliens, and tax increases on Americans making more than 250k a year.

Meanwhile, Republicans and conservatives logically sought to appeal to the dignity of Americans who were out of work and families faced with living on less and paying more for everything.  Republicans focused on the message that we could get the economy moving again and create jobs. Mitt Romney, an experienced and bipartisan Governor and successful business man would know exactly how to get our nation back to work and thriving again. It seemed the critical course at the time and what the country wanted and need most; employment and economic growth. It was a good plan.

We were wrong. While Republicans were stomping and rallying on creating jobs, Obama was making jobs a footnote.  Instead of sound economic policy, President Obama rallied for economic “revenge.” And, in a word, revenge is exactly what the 2012 election and the last six years have been about for President Obama and what he has been able to convince the majority of the American electorate that this country needs.

For every criticism of why Romney failed to win the White House: during the final debate he was soft on Obama on Benghazi; Chris Christie gave Obama presidential credibility during Sandy; Romney lost momentum at the end and didn’t go on national TV enough, there is one prevailing truth that stands out above the woulda, coulda, shoulda of the election: we are outnumbered, but more relevantly, we were out maneuvered.  The Obama team spent six years buying this country’s dignity and values with the promise of a new type of liberty for the poor – the oppression of the rich.

Yet there is more to how Obama wooed voters off their free couches and into the voting booth. Obama and Axelrod made Americans fear morality.  The same trick the devil used in the beginning to cause Adam and Eve to fall, Obama’s team’s duplicated beginning with gay marriage.

It was no accident the Obama was the first President to come out in support of gay marriage even though California voters rejected it in 2008. It was only slightly risky since Obama knew that African Americans, known largely as church goers and conservative when it came to gay marriage would be alienated, but not alienated enough to vote against the first black President for Republicans who Joe Biden charged “is gonna put y’all  back in chains.”

At first it just seemed tacky that Sandra Fluke would speak at the Democratic National Convention appearing alongside the likes of Bill Clinton and rising star Julian Castro in a crucial election. Sandra Fluke, not Hillary Clinton, would be an example the ideal American woman? A baseless woman whose idea of women’s health was someone else footing the bill for her contraception and promiscuity was chosen to help garner the women’s vote.  Where the Republicans and conservatives were proud to have Condoleeza Rice, the Democrats paraded out Sandra Fluke. What should have been embarrassing for the Democrat party was actually their trump card.

The Obama administration would make the freedom to sin an urgent ballot initiative. They would scare voters into thinking that losing the freedom to sin and bowing down to an established morality was the new road to serfdom rather than an all encompassing Government. In fact, freedom to marry whomever you love, to abort a baby at will and at tax-payers expense, to smoke marijuana legally (curiously tied to this election cycle), and freedom to choose a life of convenience and recklessness at the expense of others was to actually take the moral high ground.

Obama thrust these issues into the fore even though they were never on the Republican agenda.  In fact, Mitt Romney never made gay marriage, contraception, or abortion an issue. Obama and Axelrod figured by default his faith and devout religious beliefs incriminated him.  A vote for a devout pro life Mormon who doesn’t drink is as good as a vote for an antiquated and deliberated America – a throwback to a time when blacks were lynched, women couldn’t vote and blacks sat at the back of the bus.

Romney’s religion, wealth, and his stance on the economy became indefensible to the those who were defensive about being unemployed, being on welfare and food stamps, and who wanted their chance to re write the laws of nature and morality with gay marriage, free contraception, and abortion. Obama and Elizabeth Warren would assert that the wealthy and business owners didn’t “build that” as if there were no point in anyone aspiring to building anything in the first place. Not only would Obama make people comfortable in their poverty, he would make them indignant in it. Obama not only put Americans at ease in their sin, he would call them to be self-righteous and revel in it.  The American electorate turned out keep the devil they knew rather than the saint they had been groomed to fear.

What went wrong for Romney in the 2012 election was that Republicans and conservatives fought a spiritual battle with their wallets and not their hearts and minds. Obama and his team have been experts at expanding a secular American culture to the degree that we are not only outnumbered in terms of getting the minority and women vote, but we seem outnumbered in terms of our values and principles of basic right and wrong.

Though overwhelmingly people responded in both parties that the economy was key to their vote, they were not truthful. Had economy been the thing, Romney would be President. This election was a moral election we were blessed with a moral candidate who was told to focus on the economy.   For too long conservatives have either been too shy or too afraid to defend our stance on gay marriage, welfare, and abortion in accordance with our faith and devotion to God’s word.  We have been tricked into believing the other side of the lie which is that tolerance means we cannot boldly assert our love of God and apply his principles to our politics. The truth is we are on the right side of these issues only we need to articulate our hearts and minds not just argue about our wallets.   A conservative, God fearing candidate is what this country needs and wants. Mitt Romney was and is a fine and noble example of both.  That’s about the only thing we got right in 2012.

Lisa Fritsch is the author of Obama, Tea Parties and God and a national television and radio commentator with appearances on Fox News Channel. www.lisafritsch.com

First Published in the American Thinker 10/6/12

First published in the American Thinker 9/10/12

Michelle Obama had a real eye-opener of a line at the Democratic Nation Convention Tuesday night when she so poignantly recognized that “being president doesn’t change who you are – it reveals who you are.”  And she is most certainly right — only not in the way she might expect.  Being president has not shown Barack Obama to be the man she so adamantly describes in her speech.  Instead, being president has revealed Barack Obama to be divisive, hypocritical, and quite frankly untrustworthy with America’s future.

Divisiveness

President Obama strode in on an uplifting message of unity and togetherness.  Who can forget his powerful assertion in 2004 that “there is no black America, there is no white America, there is only the United States of America”?  Michelle Obama tell us that she loves “that we can trust Barack to do what he says he’s going to do, even when it’s hard — especially when it’s hard.”  This does not sound like the same Obama who promised unity but instead was revealed to take sides and divide the country at many turns.

When in a press conference saying the police acted stupidly in arresting Harvard Law professor Henry Louis Gates without knowing the facts and laying the blame on race, Obama was not living up to his promise.  When our president accused the rich in this country of not paying their fair share at the expense of the less fortunate without acknowledging that they pay more than half the taxes while some Americans pay none, Obama took the easy route of divide and conquer instead of explaining the hard truth.

Still, Michelle Obama continues, “for Barack, there is no such thing as ‘us’ and ‘them’ — he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above…he knows that we all love our country…and he’s always ready to listen to good ideas.”  This doesn’t sound like the same president who at one time said that he would work together and on both sides of the aisle but then quipped to Republican leaders that “elections have consequences” and “I won.”  Nor was it shown when the same president who invited Paul Ryan, now the Republican vice presidential nominee and the author of a budget plan for our country, to a speech on the economy only to snub him.

And his divisive tactics and rhetoric don’t begin or end on Capitol Hill.  In describing small-town Pennsylvanians and rural American voters, Obama sniffed that “they get bitter; they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”  Sorry, Michelle, but no, this is not the voice of a man we can trust to desire the best for all of us or to lead all of us.  Neither is this a voice of hope; rather, it is a voice of bitterness and cynicism.

Hypocrisy

Despite Michelle’s strong and eloquent delivery on how she and President Obama empathize and desire to work harder for the American people, it is hard to see where they have found the time betwixt their extravagant vacations and frequent tee times.  It is difficult to picture them reading letters from struggling Americans who are having trouble paying their bills in one hand and confirming a reservation for the Obamas to take two separate planes to Hawaii for vacation (where they will arrive within hours of each other) in the other.  But Michelle insists that America has a president who says to her, “You won’t believe what these folks are going through…it’s not right . We’ve got to keep working to fix this.  We’ve got so much more to do.”

Many of us would certainly argue that President Obama has done enough already.  Moreover, he is the cause and catalyst to the misery in the letters he is reading.  If not for President Obama and his insistence at not leaving “health reform for another, day, another president,” many more Americans would have their jobs because their companies would not be in fear as to how to make payroll and pay out health benefits for a part-time minimum-wage worker.

And if it is true as Michelle says that for Barack that “success isn’t about how much money you make,” but rather the “difference you make in people’s lives,” then why is he so obsessed with taking more of the earnings of those making over $250K a year rather than finding out the impact and difference they are making in their communities and peoples lives?

And those children “with so much promise but so few opportunities” have fewer now because President Obama swiftly did away with D.C.  voucher programs that would give promising and low-income families a choice in their education.  Instead, they are now stuck in failing and often dangerous public schools that your husband supports.

No, none of what Michelle Obama said of Barack Obama reflects his presidential reality.  All of these contradictions add up to a president we cannot count on in the future.  For if these words were true, his actions and policies would not be set apart from them, and we would be better off today than we were four years ago.  Instead we see the suffering consequences of his presidency which finds us more jobless, more in debt, and less optimistic for a future with him in it as president.

And by the way, sure, he may have started out with certain disadvantages, and perhaps she, too.  But let it be known that every person is born with an adversity.  Of course, money helps ease the pain of life’s daily struggles, but not all adversity comes in the way of lack of money and privilege.  This is what the Obamas cannot see.  Money is the lens through which they see all people — those born of fortune and those born without.  This distorted vision is what prevents our president from being the leader that all Americans deserve.  This is what prevents him from understanding that diversity is about more than race and color.  Equality is about more than our tax returns.  Good fortune is about more than who your father is or how much money one is able to earn.  Obama is prevented from understanding that our country is about equal opportunity and not equal outcomes.  And this is why, Mrs. Obama, our president spends too much of his time trying to make government God instead of humbly working to make our country one nation under God.

While Mrs. Obama loves her husband more today than 23 years ago, she is obviously privy to a sides to Obama less revealed to us.  Without a doubt, many Americans admire the Obama family and the Obamas’ marriage, and they doubtless find her enduring love a great example of loyalty and matrimony.  Still, many of us find ourselves relating more to a line from Marco Rubio’s speech at the Republican National Convention: “Our problem is not that he’s a bad person.  Our problem is that he’s a bad president.”

Here is the clip from the interview on 7/17/12:

The U.S. Supreme Court did not “affirm a principle,” as President Obama deceptively pushed in his press conference after the ObamaCare ruling was announced.  In fact, the Court really just conceded that the Obama Administration could get away with implementing ObamaCare as a tax increase. President Obama succeeded in raising taxes for all Americans — rich and poor alike.  He made certain that our economy will be further stifled with uncertainty
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It would seem that the President believes our lives are only to contribute to the state and that government will direct and control the course of our lives.  Obama appears to have determined that his governing power is absolute under the disguise of fairness for all.  This is a significant detriment to American freedom and advancement. And it would seem that the Court only empowered him to soldier on with its decision in the ObamaCare case.

Ultimately, Chief Justice Roberts and those who joined his decision left Americans with a responsibility and some soul-searching homework.  Because ObamaCare is now unmasked as a tax, it is time for all Americans to get serious about becoming more activist in halting government expansion. In short, the Tea Party movement is needed now more than ever.

Liberal pundits and supporters of the regulatory state applaud Obama for pulling off what many of his predecessors could not by essentially making health care a government-controlled service.  Could this be because something in our nation’s anatomy has changed?

We’ve rested too long on the hard work and sacrifices of those in the past that made our core strong. Generations of a carefree attitude about government encroachment on our lives has made us weak and naïve about how quickly our liberties are slipping away.  ObamaCare is less about new taxes than it is a new way to define America. We’ve come to a decision point: Are we opportunistic and eager for individual growth and success, or are we a stagnating body of monoliths complacent to allow an all-consuming government to rule each and every aspect of our lives?

Juneteenth has always been a celebration of freedom but today it must also be a celebration of leadership.  When Republican Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 he displayed courageous leadership in freeing American slaves and restoring true liberty for all in America. And while the country was bitterly divided over the issue of equality for all mankind, Lincoln reminded the world that freedom was endowed by our creator and not by man. Still, in Texas it would take another two years and another courageous leader, General Gordon Granger, to bring this news to Galveston, Texas.

As an African-American, when I think about Juneteenth, I remember the past, but think more and more about the future of our country. I remember my grandfather, who emphasized Juneteenth over all other summer holidays. I remember his stories about the emancipation of African-Americans and how after emancipation the quest for true freedom through opportunity would begin.

With each generation, it is harder and harder to understand the significance of this special day. It is our duty, however, to keep these old stories of struggle alive so that future generations will remember the value of freedom and recognize threats to it. Because Freedom is not white, black or Hispanic. Freedom is a gift from God to all Americans, and it is our responsibility to preserve it.

As Ronald Reagan so prophetically said, “freedom is not passed through the bloodstream.” We owe it to our children to share these stories and let the truth be known about our values and which leaders have always been on the side of courage, truth and freedom.

History shows us that Republicans have always been on the side of freedom for all Americans, whether it was standing up for emancipation in 1865, standing up for the unborn, or standing up to preserve the liberties threatened by the growth of government power today. Never has liberty been more threatened today, and we need strong leaders in the mode of Abraham, Lincoln and Ronald Regan today. That’s why I’m standing behind Ted Cruz. We need strong leaders like Ted, who will stand and fight the radical Obama agenda. Liberty isn’t just something you go to Washington to vote for. It’s something you go to Washington to fight for.

I was reminded recently – at church no less – of the Tina Turner song from Thunderdome. “We don’t need another hero…we don’t need to know the way home.” These lyrics might very well fit the theme of the 2012 election. As conservatives rally behind Mitt Romney and gear up political battle of epic proportion, conservatives would do well to consider this sentiment. Americans voted for a hero in 2008 when they elected Barack Obama only to find out the cape didn’t fit.

Recently Obama commented on his “evolving” opinion on same sex marriage which by the way has evolved to his being in support of same sex marriage. As a presumptive nominee Romney was asked to follow-up on Obama’s stance with his own opinion. Romney took the conservative point of view he has long held: marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman. This distances him from Obama on the issue, but this is not the only point.

Americans want a life beyond what Washington and politicians are trying to offer. We are yearning for a simpler time where everyone knows your name but not all of your business. Perhaps it is our own fault with all the social networking, tweeting, and round the clock news, but it seems everywhere you turn someone has the answer or at least bluff so convincingly that it looks like they do. Americans are in a Thunderdome of our own, one that is fragile and headed for ruin.  We are looking for a world beyond this Thunderdome of class warfare, legislative immorality, and financial destruction. Turning back the clock to the time of our founders is not an option. Who can ever really go back home again?

Whether most of us know it or not, we don’t want to be told the way home in 2012. What we yearn for most is finding a way back to our selves so that we can figure out who we are and where we stand in our choices. We are so distracted and overwhelmed with commentaries, programs, legislation for this group and that, groupings, and activism on both sides that we have lost touch with the basic understanding of morality. As we group together, we drown out the voice of our creator that helps us decide we know right from wrong and the way home. We don’t need hope and change from a leader. We don’t need to know what Mitt Romney thinks about two men or two women buying a house and shacking up no more than what he thinks about heterosexual couples doing the same.  The point is they are individually responsible to their creator for their life choices, not Mitt Romney, nor their fellow Americans. Welcome to freedom!

Mitt Romney and conservatives would be wise to start defining conservative values beginning with individual responsibility. That is, I will not make a list of moral right and wrongs for you in this world. Let your own conscience be your guide in your life choices.  It’s time to get Let’s this country thinking again and wrestling with their choices and the consequences thereof. As long as we are always arguing and disagreeing, we take up all the space needed for the sort of self reflection that empowers people to turn inward to their own responsibility and away from the opinions and noise of the world.

The song of course is not entirely true. We do need another hero and we do need to know the way home. Only, the hero is beyond this world and the way home offers a unique direction for each one of us that only He can give us. What might Obama and Romney say to that? Well, it doesn’t really matter because the cape doesn’t fit.

First Published at BIGGOVERNMENT 1/9/12:

A friend of mine called me after the Iowa caucuses and asked, “Why isn’t John Huntsman getting noticed in this race? He’s the most intelligent candidate in the field!”  I would say the GOP nominees are much like what we say in Texas about the weather. If you don’t like the weather right now, wait five minutes.

GOP insider and strategist Charles Krauthammer recently tagged the 2012 Republican candidates as “embarrassing.”  To the contrary, I believe the GOP has good candidates who have A: failed to learn from their predecessors mistakes in 2008 and/or B: suffer from a timid, frantic, backbiting GOP establishment who distrust the minds and intellect of the conservative voter and the power of conservative ideals. Therefore if Huntsman can wait on the GOP to choke on Romney he will by default he get his turn and perhaps just in time. How is that for embarrassing?

The problem for Republicans in 2012 election isn’t a fleet of poor candidates. The lack of support and backbone from the Republican establishment that would allow them to play to win is killing us. The GOP is choking. In tennis, choking happens most when the better player realizes he should and can win. Instead of going for the shots that got him in a winning position, he plays not to lose hoping his opponent will give him the match.  One backhand in the net or one forehand sailed long, and he is immediately thrown off course, convinced that he must play it safe. This has been the GOP for the past nine months which explains the ushering in and out of every running Republican candidate where no one has shown the longevity to make it to the final.

Each GOP candidate has found a way to self destruct at the moment of their ascent with their base helping them to the door on the way down. Of late, it is Santorum who after being non-existent in the media’s and voter’s eyes (at least it appeared) followed Mitt Romney by a mere eight votes in Iowa. Santorum placed well because he is a true family values candidate who isn’t afraid to put God, family, faith, and conservative values first.  But look at Santorum now. Not only are his GOP allies saying that he cannot win, but he helped support that theory by using black and welfare in the same sentence. A rookie mistake for any white conservative candidate running against the first black President.  With the NAACP and Hillary Clinton on his tail and unwillingness by conservatives to have the courage and will to take a hit for a candidate in the face of controversy and trouble, someone may as well cue the “nana na-na, nana na-na, hey hey hey…

It isn’t that Santorum is alone. Just look at how quickly Herman Cain’s bags were packed as soon as the media told the establishment he had to go. Though Cain’s infidelity scandals were circumstantial and a matter of he said she said folly the media told us we could not abide immorality. The GOP establishment balked – since they never approved Cain anyway – and the media got away with the same scam they pulled in 2008 with Sarah Palin. (The truth isn’t that the media objected to the affairs but that they couldn’t risk all those white Iowans handing Cain a significant victory.) Win for Obama.

Did we learn nothing from the media with McCain/Palin in 200?  The media initially tolerated McCain because they knew he was no threat to Obama.  And the establishment approved of McCain because they approved him. Nothing to see here.  But as soon as McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate bells rang. The media sniffed defeat at her strong conservative values and outsider appeal. With that the media wore McCain and the base down with their scoffing of Palin. The fact that the media was all over Palin should have told McCain that he was finally cooking with hot grease. Instead, he choked. The uncertainty and fracturing of the party was toxic to the voters. Win for Obama.

With Cain out, Newt Gingrich was next on top.  Voters found Newt Gingrich’s quick wit and insider experience reassuring imagining he could cut Obama down to size in the debates and lend common sense to getting the country back on track. He’d had affairs but was forgiven by the media, the establishment and conservative voters. (The media knew they couldn’t replay the sex scandal card so quickly after Cain so they let the GOP base do their work for them.) The establishment quickly warned voters of Newt’s deception: his wisdom, arrogance; his experience, political profiteering. And, his mood and temperament volatile and explosive.  Before Gingrich could have the “courage to run a positive campaign” as he instructed Mitt Romney, his campaign bled out to fourth place in Iowa.  Win for Obama.

At least Cain, Gingrich, and now Santorum were given some credence for a spell whereas other candidates peaked too quickly or were over rated before they took the stage. Michelle Bachmann who won the first Iowa straw poll and debated gaffe free for nine months was foiled from the start for being a woman. Ann Coulter made it clear that Republicans are not willing to take any chances on “making a Congresswoman the first female President” no matter how sensible and sound her platform and judgment. Win for Obama.

Governor Rick Perry was someone the establishment could get behind until they couldn’t. When Perry made the gaffe at the debate where he forgot a department of Government he would cut, he was immediately off the list. The establishment turned away as the leftist media licked Perry’s bones clean. The point was made clear that while a good ole boy Governor was good enough for Texas, it wouldn’t do against Obama and his teleprompter on the national scene. His Texas twang is just too risky. Perry had the record, the name, and the money, but in the end lost the backing of the GOP establishment over a delay and a drawl. Win for “57 states” Obama.

Which leaves Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and John Huntsman.  In Romney’s case the GOP is firmly behind him as they believe he can win: he has the money, looks, charisma, some conservative ideas – when he needs them – and experience. What Romney does not have however, is the confidence of the core conservative voter. The fact that Ron Paul was a close third in Iowa proves as much. While establishment conservatives approve of him, something about RomneyCare, even if it is in Massachusetts, and his slick ways from his hair to his tongue holds back the approval of the average American conservative. Still, Romney has yet to double fault or put a backhand in the net so he lives for now. This is still a win for Obama since Republicans are betting on Romney by default (admittedly so) and for all the wrong reasons.

Instead of making these last nine months about how any one of these candidates run circles around Obama in class, values and experience, the GOP participated in childish infighting against their own that actually made Obama appear all grown up and Presidential. It is not that we are missing prime candidates; rather our candidates are being thwarted by a disloyal and conformist base. While Obama can do no wrong in the eyes of sycophantic Obamaphiles on the left, Republicans demand that candidates not use “um” and “you know” in a debate. A pointed finger, or a curious tilt of the head towards the candidate in question and the GOP is unsure, unsteady and on the defensive.

And, then there is Huntsman yet to get his due. With no one for or against him at this point, it’s a win for him.  Only thing is he will have to peak at just the right moment and wait for the establishment to see that the only reason no one on the left is picking on Romney is because they are not threatened by him. Or, he can hope that conservative voters get a backbone and listen to their gut and not the media, right or left. This would finally be playing to win.