Soap Box

If there was ever an election cycle when the United States of America needed a change of direction and a strong and competent president who would take the first step in the long journey to restore our security, our stability, international prestige and our commonality and pride as Americans, this has to be the one.

The lines are drawn and have never been clearer. On the Democratic side you have Socialist and �Socialist Lite,� - Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton - who both not only represent the continuation of the Obama administration, but the acceleration of the socialist agenda that Obama has inflicted on this nation.

In an attempt to build a coalition of the far left wing of the Democratic Party, minorities, fringes and the naive young, who have no idea of what the ramifications of a few years of Sanders-type Socialism would do to their futures, they play one-upsmanship, trying to out promise each other, pledging pie in the sky impossibilities, basically ignoring the cold hard facts of reality that this nation is already broke and rapidly approaching the point of insolvency, at which point all the freebies go away and once again socialism fails, leaving behind a nation in shambles.

On the Republican side, where so many Americans have based their hopes, we have a bevy of able men, with solid ideas and forceful personalities who seem more intent on destroying each other than they are in changing the disastrous course America is currently navigating.

While I've heard several of the candidates say they were convinced that any Republican in the field - which was originally 14 - would make a better president than anybody on the Democrat side, it seems that as the field is pruned down the rancor only increases and the accusations, innuendo and hyperbole have become more personal and the childish attitude of "If I can't have it, I'm going to make sure you don't get it" is prevalent among at least two of the candidates.

It's as if every four years the Republicans convene a gladiator tournament and slash and stab until the last man standing limps from the arena, bruised and bloodied to do battle in the general election, fatally wounded and doomed for defeat.

If the candidates are truly patriots and not part of the establishment as some of them so vehemently claim, and they truly believe what they are telling the public, it seems that they would at least want their team to win and not take the acrimony to the point of no return and, like so many times before, hand the election to the democrats tied up in colored ribbons.

Can they not find enough to attack in a self-avowed socialist who spent his honeymoon in Moscow and a failed Secretary of State with a serious federal indictment hanging over her head?

Can they not point out the downgrading of the military, the dangerous expansion of the national debt, the worsening racial relations both Democrat candidates pander to, the fiscal train wreck America faces in the immediate future that would only be hastened by the profligate spending plans of Sanders and Clinton?

It seems they are more concerned in pointing out how dishonest, unreliable, incompetent and disreputable they all are than convincing the country that they have the answers and the ability to bring our nation back from the brink.

And, in the meantime, America waits for the outcome of the street brawl the Republican election process has become, to see who weathers the storm, to see if the establishment can pull off another victory or if one of the mavericks can actually walk through the fire and come out whole enough to win an election.

You can safely bet on one thing.

Whoever it is will be carrying enough baggage to fill a good-sized gully.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU POST

Feel free to comment on Charlie's soapboxes, but please refrain from profanity and "Anonymous" posts are not allowed, we need a name (it doesn't have to be your first and last name) and you MUST provide a valid email address. If you provide an email address, but leave the name as "Anonymous" we will pick a name for you based on your email address. No one other than website adminstrators will see your email address, not other posters. If you post without a valid email address, your comment (whether postive or negative) will be deleted. � TeamCDB