Election Thoughts

Race, religion and the economy seem to be at the top of the media interests covering this campaign. And with these three issues, the media has cornered three issues that seem to warrant an opinion and garner concern from everybody. None are a science (although economists would have you believe that) and each issue has almost limitless points of view. Race has stalemated Democrat campaigns with both Obama trying to "outblack" Hillary in South Carolina (with ~50% black voters). Republican candidates are taking strong positions on religion. Romney did his best Kennedy impression passionately displaying his separation of his Mormon church and state and Huckabee has supported making constitutional changes with regard to abortion (which should be the nail in his campaign's coffin). The economy has become a central piece to the Edwards "two America's" mantra. McCain seems the likely choice for those who are afraid to support another candidate who advocates broad-reaching programs for change. Giuliani's track running on the 911 train has seemed to have reached its frontier. Whatever the case, the election is still very much up in the air.

Tag-Words that I am getting very, very tired of hearing this campaign season:
Republican in the tradition of Reagan, Hope, Change, economic stimulus (package), housing crisis*, tax cuts, faith-based _____.

Tag-Words that deal with issues we should want to hear from candidates:
Fiscal conservatives, Recession, Iraq War, National Debt, Borrowing money, Trade deficit with _____. So far, we have heard more words from the former list rather than the latter. The problem with this is that the former list contains terms that connect vaguely to real issues while the second list contains terms that connect with real issues that our country must deal with in the near future. It's time for the candidates to start dealing with the real issues and stop candy-coating the future with mere buzz-words. Enough buzz.