Soap Box

As I watch the upcoming election season begin to unfold, I'm once again reminded what a powerful force political ambition really is. Powerful enough it seems, that it can turn a decent person into a conniving, lying, backstabbing charlatan, who is neither true to themselves and their core beliefs nor to the promises they make with no intention of keeping.

They reverse courses on policy and stands on issues, tap dance around questions they once answered openly and honestly and become a driven caricature living in a parallel universe of poll numbers and handlers chasing the friendly media and avoiding the ones who would ask the tough but meaningful questions that the electorate has a right to hear.

They present themselves in whatever light they feel will garner the most support defending, denying, claiming positions they have no allegiance to and promoting any kind of smut they can dig up on their opponents.

Harry Reid's cowardly lie about Mitt Romney's non-payment of taxes (which Reid recently said he had �no repentance� about making) on the floor of the Senate, knowing he was protected from libel by senatorial privilege was loathsome, premeditated and calculated to take media attention away from important issues in a presidential election.

And that will more than likely be the Senator's legacy, the thing most people will remember about him, that he is an unrepentant liar.

Barack Obama said during his first campaign that he believed that marriage could only be between a man and a woman but after being elected he showed his true feelings, which he admitted he had all the time and had defended man-woman marriage for nothing more than political expediency.

One of the current Republican hopefuls has already done a 180 on Pentagon budgets, another recorded himself as being Hispanic on his voting ballot and now that the serious jockeying for position has begun, we'll see flip flops, denials, capitulation, compromise and some Olympic class mud slinging.

I won't even go into Hillary Clinton and the tons of political and verbal baggage she will bring to her campaign and make good use of the "get out of jail free card", a fawning media has always afforded her.

The point I am making is that in the political arena, what you see is what you get does not apply because we are not dealing with real people, but images created by consultants, handlers, advisors and media experts, even down to grooming and fashion consultants who hone and polish, advise, caution, warn and rehearse a candidate with the snappy sound bite phrases, the artful way of ducking a sticky question and which television shows to do and which ones to avoid.

By the time a candidate hits the national scene, many times they have been coached persuaded and polled out of the very commitments that got them there in the first place and when hit by the bright light of national publicity, wax lukewarm about core issues they had been on fire for at the beginning.

Instead of sticking with their base, they start trying to pander to the entire political spectrum, thinking they can maintain their grassroots support while appealing to a broader electorate, and even should they be lucky enough to get the nomination, the betrayed base is just as apt to stay at home on election day.

I am a cattle rancher and associate with the salt of the earth common folks who serve in the military, support their families, cling to their God and their guns and respect the flag and all it stands for.

And folks, these good people have not had a presidential candidate they really believe in in a long time. Every time they get energized, the candidate they were excited about changes horses in midstream or caves to media pressure and waters down the stands that gave them reason to support them in the first place.

If a candidate would come forth expounding the family values, patriotic, strong America, respect for the Constitution and religious rights they so value and stick to his or her guns, they could be energized into strong loyal support and a formidable voting block.

Abraham Lincoln said that God must love the common people because He made so many of them. 

And we're sick and tired of pigs in pokes.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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