This iPhone app image got me thinking about our recent experience with my husband's campaign. No, we are not heading to Washington D.C.. There never was any thought that we would be. As a "third party" candidate, the cards are too stacked against you to ever make that a possibility in the near future. I debated about wether to post this or not, because I knew it would probably sound like sour grapes, but we really weren't concerned with "winning or loosing" and we gained such interesting insights into "how to play the game" that I just had to share. We have learned so much and have had a lot of positive experiences as we have met other patriotic, and like-minded people who are willing to do the work necessary to restore the freedoms we have lost in our country, but it was also a lot of work, and time, and frustration as we saw so many more people who don't know, and/or don't care about the detour we have taken as a nation. The frustrating thing to me is that so many people seem to think the problems have all been fixed now that the "Grand Ol' Party" has had such sweeping victories. What they fail to realize is that the detour we have taken didn't happen 2 years ago when Barack Obama took office, but over 100 years ago, and has been perpetuated by both parties ever since.
We have been asked if we will continue down this path and try to run for office again in the future. The answer right now is no. There are too many things about the game of politics that we found distasteful. We saw many of these things before running, but they were brought into the spotlight over the past eight months. For now we are content to leave the campaigning to those who are comfortable with having their name and face displayed everywhere around town, and have no problem wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars of special interest group campaign contributions in order to purchase things like "campaign vehicles", and advertising so that they can essentially buy hundreds of thousands of votes. It has never been as clear to me as it is now, how much our public elections are like the superfluous student body elections of our high school days. It almost always comes down to who has the most money, and the most impressive signs (or commercials), and the greatest number of them, and who is the smoothest and slickest of the bunch. We say we are fed up with career politicians, and yet we continue to elect them and feel good about it, just because they are backed by the "tea party", or are really good at regurgitating the "I believe in the Constitution" rhetoric.
Case-in-point: Utah's Senatorial Elections. Mike Lee was the poster boy for the tea parties this year. He was the master of Constitutional Rhetoric. He was constantly spouting his desire to help the country "return to the constitution", while in the same statements he would raise the call for amending the constitution to impose term limitations and balancing the budget. Although these are popular ideas right now, they are dangerous ones. The founders considered both of these ideas when they originally framed the constitution and opted not to include them because of the negative ramifications of each. (ex., If we are forced to balance the budget most politicians are more likely to just raise taxes, not cut spending.) These are band-aids, not cures to our current problems, and I find it troubling that someone so highly acclaimed and so supposedly knowledgeable can't see this for himself. These are not the only affronts to the constitution that Mike made while running either. He supports government mandated health care reform, just not "Obama Care", among other things. Mike Lee raised almost 1.5 million dollars for this campaign, and he spent most of it. To put this in perspective, his Democratic opponent raised less than $300,000 dollars, and the only true defender of the constitution running, Scott Bradley, raised much less than that. How can anyone hope to compete with that?
So what are our options? Education. Education. Education. That was the only goal of my husbands campaign. He knew he couldn't win against an incumbent republican, in the most republican district in the country, with over $500,000 dollars to spend on his campaign. His only goal was to reach as many people as he could with the message of true liberty and the proper role of government. We had many rewarding experiences in cottage meetings and other gatherings around the state as he was able to share this message with others. Many people are searching for this message right now, as evidenced by the growth of the "Tea Party" movement, but unfortunately many are being deceived into thinking that the answers can be found in the current establishment. The answer isn't in our politicians, it is in "We the People". Until we educate ourselves and our neighbors, and read and re-read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and their supporting documents, and above all, until we return to God and recognize Him as the Author of our liberty, nothing will change.
