Editor's Note: This article, written by Gary Aminoff who is president of the San Fernando Valley Republican Club, describes the effort of many conservatives to come to terms with the election of Barack Obama as president at a time when the nation faces a severe economic crisis.
By Gary Aminoff
Do you remember how we laughed at Democrats when President George
W. Bush was elected. They were going nuts. We even gave it a label, "Bush Derangement Syndrome." We thought, how weird and how irrational. It also hurt the credibility of Democrats.
I have been concerned ever since the election that something similar is happening with Republicans. We have all this blogging and email correspondence going on about whether he is a "natural-born citizen" and why he won't disclose his birth certificate. The same has been taking place with respect to whether he is a secret Muslim and was "planted" here to enable the radical Islamists to take over the country. Someone objectively looking at Republicans could well say we have been infected with "Obama Derangement Syndrome."
I have consistently said that all of this is not going to accomplish anything except to hurt our credibility. Barack Obama was elected by nearly 53% of American voters - over 62 Million people. He hasn't done anything yet, except to appoint what seem to be, for the most part, fairly reasonable people. The criticism continues nonetheless.
By Gary Aminoff
Do you remember how we laughed at Democrats when President George
W. Bush was elected. They were going nuts. We even gave it a label, "Bush Derangement Syndrome." We thought, how weird and how irrational. It also hurt the credibility of Democrats.
I have been concerned ever since the election that something similar is happening with Republicans. We have all this blogging and email correspondence going on about whether he is a "natural-born citizen" and why he won't disclose his birth certificate. The same has been taking place with respect to whether he is a secret Muslim and was "planted" here to enable the radical Islamists to take over the country. Someone objectively looking at Republicans could well say we have been infected with "Obama Derangement Syndrome."
I have consistently said that all of this is not going to accomplish anything except to hurt our credibility. Barack Obama was elected by nearly 53% of American voters - over 62 Million people. He hasn't done anything yet, except to appoint what seem to be, for the most part, fairly reasonable people. The criticism continues nonetheless.
I am going to re-state what I have said in our SFVRC Yahoo forum.
Barack Obama is my President-Elect and will be my President when he is inaugurated on January 20, 2009. That means that the destiny of our country, to a great extent, will be in his hands. For the sake of our country, I hope he is a good President. I will support him unless he makes decisions which I feel are not in the best interest of America, at which time I will protest with all the resources at my disposal. Until then, I will support and respect the President-Elect, and soon to be, President. I expect that we are going to have an expansion of government during his tenure, and I expect that we are not going to see an expansion of individual liberty during his tenure, but that is what happens when Americans elect a Democrat. Our job will be to urge our Republican representatives to limit the damage as much as possible.
I am not giving him a pass. I am just saying that he hasn't done anything yet that we can reasonably object to. That being the case, let's hold our fire, and stop the conspiracy theories. The reality of his birth certificate is really irrelevant. He was elected by a substantial majority of Americans. Despite the potential constitutional breach, you have the practical aspect of disenfranchising 62 Million Americans. A result where someone determined he wasn't eligible to be President because of some technicality of his birth would result in chaos in our country, make us potentially vulnerable to our enemies and strike a blow to Representative Democracy. The time to vet Mr. Obama was before he was elected to the office. We, the American people, failed to do that, with the complicity, of course, of the mainstream media.
We Republicans did not make our case to the American people and as a result we lost the election. We have to come back in two years and regain seats in the House and Senate, and in four years we have to present ourselves again to the American people with more technological expertise and better funding and make our case. In the meantime, we want America to succeed. It does not benefit our country to have half of our citizens opposing the President, until he does something that gives us reason to oppose him. We don't want to lose our credibility with Americans by being irrational, as the Democrats have done in the past.
Barack Obama is my President-Elect and will be my President when he is inaugurated on January 20, 2009. That means that the destiny of our country, to a great extent, will be in his hands. For the sake of our country, I hope he is a good President. I will support him unless he makes decisions which I feel are not in the best interest of America, at which time I will protest with all the resources at my disposal. Until then, I will support and respect the President-Elect, and soon to be, President. I expect that we are going to have an expansion of government during his tenure, and I expect that we are not going to see an expansion of individual liberty during his tenure, but that is what happens when Americans elect a Democrat. Our job will be to urge our Republican representatives to limit the damage as much as possible.
I am not giving him a pass. I am just saying that he hasn't done anything yet that we can reasonably object to. That being the case, let's hold our fire, and stop the conspiracy theories. The reality of his birth certificate is really irrelevant. He was elected by a substantial majority of Americans. Despite the potential constitutional breach, you have the practical aspect of disenfranchising 62 Million Americans. A result where someone determined he wasn't eligible to be President because of some technicality of his birth would result in chaos in our country, make us potentially vulnerable to our enemies and strike a blow to Representative Democracy. The time to vet Mr. Obama was before he was elected to the office. We, the American people, failed to do that, with the complicity, of course, of the mainstream media.
We Republicans did not make our case to the American people and as a result we lost the election. We have to come back in two years and regain seats in the House and Senate, and in four years we have to present ourselves again to the American people with more technological expertise and better funding and make our case. In the meantime, we want America to succeed. It does not benefit our country to have half of our citizens opposing the President, until he does something that gives us reason to oppose him. We don't want to lose our credibility with Americans by being irrational, as the Democrats have done in the past.
Ron Kaye
Is this a joke?
President's Message (Gary Aminoff's)
From the SFVRC website
http://www.sfvrc.org/events.html
President Gary Aminoff's
"Our children are indoctrinated in the public schools in the benefits of diversity, equality and collectivism, none of which are traditional American values, but are, instead, European values.
By the time they get to a university, they are already pre-programmed to be susceptible to the influence of leftist professors who will turn them into socialists, or socialist-leaning, anti-capitalist, collectivists who oppose individual liberty. This does not portend well for the future of America. "
Gary, with statements like this, it's no wonder the GOP is defunct.
When Barack Obama announces the most conservative (save for Susan Rice perhaps) national security team that he could assemble with Hillary Clinton - a pro-Iraq war hawk as Secretary of State (which by the way was the KEY difference between Obama and HRC) AND GW Bush's Secretary of Defense, there isn't much to worry about with Obama.
At the same time with his tax and spending increases on hold for the time being, the "change we can believe in" appears to be really more of the same.
Obama is the guy who will smile and then laugh when they leave after visits from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and very disciplined make sure he doesn't let the Democrats drive him off Jimmy Carter's cliff.
The bigger issue will be when his punch-drunk supporters realize the goodies aren't coming and they say "Dang we've been bamboozled!"
I know that many Republicans don't understand what I'm about to write, but I'll write it anyway in an attempt to bridge the divide between us.
The Bush Administration has hurt more people in this country than it has helped. That is the simple truth of the matter. If you are one of the lucky few who have been helped over the past 8 years then please try to understand that you are in the minority. Most of us have been hurt deeply by Bush.
Those of us who chose Obama chose him because, whether you care to hear it or not,the Republican leaders for the past 8 years have hurt most of us. More of us are poorer now than when we started 8 years ago. Most of us have figured out that the oil companies, thick with Republicans, ran gas prices up to $5.00 a gallon because they knew no one in the Bush Admin. would stop them. It was old fashioned, monopolistic price gouging, plain and simple.
Add to this the fact that there are more private contractor employees working for Republican-owned companies in Iraq than their are soldiers and it is clear to many of us that invading Iraq was primarily a business decision made by our MBA president so that private companies could make a ton of money there.
It was a hostile takeover not of a company, but of a country with resources businesses wanted to exploit. The invasion of Iraq was a financial decision made for the financial benefit of a few, shrouded in an argument of fear over weapons of mass destruction that never did materialize.
You're right. Selling the current Republican platform to America will be difficult. Most Americans cannot understand how killing innocent Iraqi civilians for profit can be called a good thing for America.
Most Americans don't understand how torturing detainees and never bringing them to trial on any charges can be called a good thing for the moral character of America.
Most Americans don't understand why all these resources of Armed Forces and private contractors were never focused on capturing Bin Laden.
Most Americans don't understand why Wall Street, GM, Ford and Chrysler can get easy money from the Federal government but individuals are forced to lose their homes, their jobs, their kids' college fund, or their health insurance. Individuals cannot get help from the Feds, but giant companies who made terrible financial decisions for years, can.
That's what the economic policies of the Bush Admin. have led us to. No one was watching the shop and greedy investors were, how shall I say it?....greedy!!
If these are all policies that Republicans still believe in and still uphold, then the GOP will never be able to sell death, destruction, fiscal irresponsibility and bankruptcy to many citizens. I hope the GOP will break away from the beliefs of the Bush Administration, the Neo-Cons, and the ultra-right fundamentalist Christians and form something new.
Aminoff had more of an open mind he would understand that Obama was vetted even by his party's own candidate.
At the Alfred E. Smith fund raiser this year where McCain and Obama roasted each other it was quite apparent that they both respected each other as did the city's elite. If there was any possibility that Obama was a non-citizen do you really think that the FBI and the Republican's would not have enlisted the devil himself to prove it? The Republican credo of unbridled capitalism exacerbated by a President Bush unconcerned about details of the American economy has been an unmitigated disaster for the country. Unbridled capitalism does not serve America, its true master, it serves the privileged elite.
I grabbed your blog from a collection of it on exactly the same matter. I'm glad that I hit a bingo