CONSISTENCY, NOT HYPOCRISY

"Honest discussions - even and perhaps especially on topics about which we disagree - can help us resist hypocrisy and arrogance. They can also help us live up to the basic ideals, such as liberty and justice for all, on which our country was founded."   -David E. Price

"The world is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet everyone has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the affairs, of his neighbor."  -Benjamin Franklin


I can hardly be labeled "Liberal" in my steadfast defense of the clearly Constitutional Right to Life, the First Amendment Right to Free Speech and Peaceful Assembly, the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms, Tenth Amendment States' Rights, etc.  But, as Dr. Seuss writes in Oh, the Places You'll Go!, "[w]ith your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street."
 
The base of any political party may generally accept with little question the perspective placed upon any event in a particular era. But the Independent Voter--that individual who will cast that marginal majority vote that catapults one candidate over another in a particular local, state, or federal election--will not soon forget the shifting opinions from one year to the next, from one administration to the next, from one decade to the next.
 
Is it right in one era to caricature and curse one American President, and to condemn those who do likewise to an American President of the opposite party in another era? Why don't we all rise above it regardless of the President's party and move on to SUBSTANTIVE bi-partisan conservative Constitutional SOLUTIONS.


When one group engages in mass demonstration and speeches condemning government abuse and decrying the usurpation of power (immigration reform; healthcare; deficits & taxation), this self-proclaimed mob is called patriotic, a Tea Party; when another group engages in mass demonstration and speeches condemning government inaction (immigration reform; healthcare; deficits & taxation) and decrying their lack of opportunity, this second group is labeled unpatriotic, unAmerican. 
 
When the federal government, through legislation or enabling regulation, sets standards, protocols and reporting requirements for private sector entities (i.e. oil companies), that federal government action is labeled as interfering with the free markets or overstepping states' rights to regulate the business climate of its own state. When the federal government complies with regulations that direct the private entity (i.e. oil companies) to pay for and remedy its own fatal environmental disaster, that same federal government is accused of not doing enough to engage itself directly in the private entity's affairs.
 
Can that same state government Chief Executive who publicly rejected federal stimulus dollars destined for infrastructure improvement projects and working class financial stability justify now requesting that federal dollars and manpower be directed to correct a private corporation's infrastructure failure that imperils Gulf Coast working class financial stability?
 
In this 24/7/365 media circus that our elected officials operate in, one can understand the political pressure that they are under to communicate decisions that appear to effectively address the concerns of the moment, the crisis, or the era. But, I caution incumbents of both parties that this is a year where Independent Voter memories are long, discernment is deep, and inconsistency is fatal career-wise.
 

TODAY'S QUESTION: Will a thorough review of your public record (votes, statements, positions, alliances, contributors, appearances) reveal solution-oriented consistency...or will it betray self-interested hypocrisy to the inquisitive Independent Voter.