Now that the epicene John Edwards is out of the race, to whom will fall the task of promising groceries and heating oil, medical care and more medical care, all the medical care you could ever want, and bread and circuses to the huddled masses yearning to get freebies?
On the Democratic side, it appears that any candidate will do. "Promise them anything, but tax somebody else to pay for the Arpege" is the motto. Nobody stops to think that taxing everybody else puts a damper on the economy and soon there isn't enough money to provide all the promised bennies. Communism-lite never works, and neither did communism-heavy for that matter.
Freedom and personal responsibility do work, and while everybody is for freedom for themselves, they aren't above taxing away somebody else's freedom to avoid personal responsibility instead of providing for themselves. Thus selling freedom and personal responsibility is always tougher than selling free bennies.
On the Republican side, it appears only John McCain is left to promise green cards and social security payments for all who sneak over the border, promises to rob from the rich and give to the poor (though he's semi-rescinded those promises recently), and the usual bread and circuses.The question is whether those ideas will sell to sufficient Republican voters, most of whom have always been too educated in economics and too full of common sense to buy those promises. The exit polling in Florida, however, suggests that the glory days of The Republic and the Republicans may be over. Former Cliton advisor Dick Morris's analysis of the results suggests that Republicans have drifted farther into the fantasyland of leftist politics. Indeed, one blogger, Josh Trevino, reported in Best of the Web, has noted the following:
Romney won pro-lifers.
Romney won the mainstream religious. (Huckabee won the very religious--less than one-fifth of the pool.)
Romney won the Protestants.
Romney tied Huckabee with Evangelicals. Romney won the pro-GWB voters.
Romney is the primary second choice of Giuliani voters, Thompson voters . . . and McCain voters.
Romney won the immigration hard-liners.
Romney won the upper-middle class, earning between $100,000 and $200,000 annually.
Romney won the terrorism-oriented voters. Romney won the self-identified conservatives and the self-identified very conservative.
Romney won the values-oriented voters.
Romney won the white voters.
Romney won the tax-cutting voters.
But doggone it, there just weren't enough of those voters! In Florida, at least, conservatism may have declined. Perhaps too many Massachusetts and New York transplants have moved south.
As was demonstrated with the Roman Empire and feared by our Founding Fathers and others, when sufficient numbers of the population discover they can vote themselves bread and circuses at the expense of others, a country is doomed to collapse. The modern-day political process has certainly become a circus, what with David Letterman messing up John Edwards' hair on TV, Obama dancing on the Ellen deGeneres show, and Hillary and Obama squabbling like contestants on the Jerry Springer Show.
And with the politicians promising lots of bread to the voters, it looks as though the days of bread and circuses have arrived, and assuredly the collapse of the Republic will inexorably begin. Sic transit gloria mundi on Tuesday. It all depends upon the level of common sense and economic education of the Republicans in the remaining states.
