The Soapbox

What You Get with the "Hope" Candidate

by Joe Shehan

On the eve of the New Hampshire Primary it looks as though Senator Barak Obama (D-Illinois) will upset Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) for a second time to win the New Hampshire delegates. With this win Sen. Obama sets himself up as the new leader of the Democratic party, and as one MSNBC pundit said, "he is now a movement". A movement to where? Racial equality? Well, I will agree that an Obama presidency would take a lot of wind out of the race baiter's debate, however, I believe his movement may take our country in the wrong direction.

For the first time in recent U.S. history there is not one true moderate running for president on the Democrat side. All three top tier candidate are selling a socialist, even communist platform. The only difference is that Obama is claiming he is willing to work with Republicans, and he has also been able to hide a lot of his desires in euphimistic language.

As the Author of the New York Times bestselling The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama outlines his dream for America. Hidden in the language of hope and dreams are very real nightmares and dispares. As the great hope to knock down the racial ceiling in American politics, Sen. Obama wishes to create a national affirmative action program. Nothing would be more detrimental to race relations in this country than mandated racial quotas where less qualified African Americans are chosen over whites for highly contested jobs. This would destroy everything that Obama's presidency would stand for.

Another nightmare that would be unleashed by an Obama presidency is unversal healthcare. Like many pie in the sky ideas that liberals/communists come up with, Universal Healthcare tickles your heart strings, but would be destructive to the quality of healthcare Americans receive. Granted, healthcare is in a pretty bad place right now, but it is still better than 99% of the world, and would go down the tubes if the government took it over. My example...Walter Reed Army Medical Center or the V.A. Ask any veteran and they would tell you that when they have the money they perfer to go to a private doctor because waiting as few as three hours for a doctor when you have the flu is not fun. A three hour wait is a good wait when socialized medicine is the only game in town. One more negative about socialized medicine is, like Social Security, it will not go away once enacted. If you don't beleive that Sen. Obama would vote for such a bill if elected president remember with a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate he would be hard pressed not too.

Finally, Sen. Obama would sell away our national sovereignty in the name of unversal brotherhood, and has admitted so much in his speeches. He would remove our troops from Iraq thus creating a power vacuum, and therefore creating more islamic radicals and terrorist who hate America. If you think that that is the price you pay for Bush's failed policy, well I think you fail to realize that the Iraqis don't separate Bush from America, and will blame America as a whole for destabilizing their country. At least right now they see America is at least trying to help. Any policy that does not appreciate that we are dealing with an enemy who does not believe he has to honor any agreement made with an infidel is doomed to fail and make America weaker. Remember it is our culture that radical Islamists hate more than our foreign policy.

I am excited to see that for the first time in our nation's history an African American is getting a fair shake, and may even stand a chance of winning his party's nomination and even the presidency. However, like Martin Luther King Jr. hoped for our country, I am judging Senator Barak Obama not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character (platform),and so should everyone else who is looking at the Senator from Illinois.