Reflections: Election 2012

I eyeball 🙄 😯 😕 😐 the political scene without entangling myself in the political drama (or is it merely a play?).

When I go grocery shopping, I also eyeball others’ unbelievably loaded shopping carts and the “food stamp” Oregon Trail cards they use for payment…and I remember Alexis de Tocqueville:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

So I look at so many of my fellow shoppers with their crammed carts and government payment cards…and doubt they would vote for an austere politician…even while I resist again the enticement to tap into such provisions for myself and my family. 🙁

That aside, several days before the 2012 edition of US Presidential Elections, I finally posted this on Facebook:

Two days later I followed up with this observation:

Well, in the course of election day, I had various thoughts and mullings, some of which I record here, numbering for ease of reference and certainly not ordering them by importance.

1. President Obama survived the Libya debacle so close to the election! I see his political survival as a huge success for the traditional media and a stunning defeat for the conservative new media. President Nixon would be…oh, never mind.
2. What would have been the effect in the streets and in the courts of America had the outcome been closer or even reversed?
3. Was Hurricane Sandy a non-human October surprise carefully crafted to benefit one candidate and hinder the other?
4. Romney did worse than McCain in 2008 — that’s amazing! And Obama did far worse than Obama in 2008?!
5. In the Republican primaries, Romney savaged his more conservative challengers with negative ads. You reap what you sow. Did he drive away the conservative Tea Party people and their (alternating) favorite candidates: Bachman, Gingerich, Santorum, Caine, Perry, etc?
6. Were those projecting confidence in a Romney win (if not a landslide) right or wrong in their calculations and analyses?
7. It wouldn’t have taken much to swing Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia…and with them, the election.
8. Might have fraud and voter suppression made the difference?
9. How discerning and stable can a country be that embraces divorce, abortion, homosexuality, sensuality, immorality, and materialism?
“America is great because she is good.
If America ceases to be good,
America will cease to be great.”
–Alexis de Tocqueville
10. What do Israel’s enemies make of the result? What about Canada and Mexico?
11. God still rules in the affairs of men — “The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will…” (Daniel 4:17).

With full confidence in God, His power, and His wisdom, I Facebooked that fateful day:

Then:

Perhaps you’re inclined to think that “they” chose for the American people, but the fact remains that God did the choosing. The sinister, mysterious “they” may have done a lot of scheming and orchestrating and whatnotting, but ultimately, the will of the Sovereign One held sway.

The Sovereign one has spoken — in that I rest.

Amazon book links in this post:

• Alexis de Tocqueville
• President Nixon