Change 'Till You Barf!

By Alan Caruba

In the run-up to the opening of the Democrat convention Monday evening, I listened to the usual Democrat politicians being interviewed on the Sunday shows and it did not take long until it occurred to me that I was, in fact, watching a group of automatons who had been programmed to say “change” as often as possible.

It was nauseating. It will be nauseating. If I could get the Democrat National Committee to send me a dollar for every time the word “change” will be uttered between now and the end of the convention, I will be able to retire in comfort.

All elections are about change. That is to say, the party in power wants its supporters to vote against change, i.e., to elect its candidates to further its agenda, and the party out of power wants its supporters to vote the current rascals out so the Great Work of America can be transferred to their greedy hands.

Let us understand that what passes for government in Washington, D.C. is entirely devoted to dividing up the money that taxes and other levies accrue to that drained swamp. The party in power, the majority, gets to spend the money to the benefit of its constituents and special interests. The minority party is mostly just flat out of luck.

It has far less to do with governance than simple piracy, extortion, and connivance.

Sen. Barack Obama, a man who has possibly spent less time in the Senate chambers than previous elected members who had the misfortune of dying soon after taking office or possibly en route, has managed up to now to wage a brilliant campaign based solely on “change.”

He has fashioned himself into a messiah who is going to chase the money changers from the sacred halls of Congress, banish the lobbyists, and “require” Americans to lose weight, drive smaller cars or take the bus, end our dependence on anything and everything made from oil, blah, blah, blah. And, oh yes, pay more taxes.

The Obama version of “change” may not sit well with voters as they begin to contemplate it between now and Election Day.

Indeed, several nights of listening to Democrats rant about “change” may just produce a reaction quite contrary to their expectations and their assumptions.

Primary among those assumptions is that the voters are so dumb that, if you repeat the same phrases over and over again, those idiot voters will march like zombies to the polls and pull the Democrat levers. Underestimating the intelligence of voters is always a bad idea.

I have no idea what the Republican convention will sound like, but my guess is that it will be a far more low-key affair and one that actually deals with reality as opposed to trying to convince voters that the nation is in a “Depression”, that Osama bin Laden will quit trying to destroy America, and that if we just talk nicely with Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Mamoud Amadinejad and the host of other gangsters running a big chunk of the world, they will accommodate us.

I am pretty sure we will not hear Democrats tell us that part of the change they want is to give more money to the United Nations as Sen. Obama proposes. We will not hear about drilling for the billions of barrels of domestic oil we have or utilizing the nation's century’s worth of coal.

Whoever is elected the next President of the United States is going to face the kind of “change” that no one, not the candidates and not the voters, can possibly anticipate. It will be along the lines of the change that occurred on 9/11. It will be the kind of change that a Category Five hurricane produces. It will be an economy struggling to revive from the unanticipated change inflicted by feckless, greedy banking and lending institutions.

The only change I want is someone old enough and wise enough to know that and with the steely courage to deal with it.