...and if he wins?...

 

 

"To the victor go the spoils..."

 

Senator William Marcy

1831

 

An old saying goes as follows: "When you are in a ditch, the worst thing you can do is keep driving".

Lately, I have been thinking the unthinkable. With weekly and daily polls showing the distance between the two candidates being razor thin, the outcome could be a "jump ball". Many had said the October debates would tell the tale of the tape. That did not appear to have happened. As hopeful that I am Mr. Romney will be our next president, I have to face the reality that our current president might get a second term. 

Frankly, I am amazed the race is as close as it is. Romney should be leading by 20 points or better. This first term was a mess and the second term promises to be worse. Leadership has been non-existent and our National Debt is on the verge of ruining the country. Simpson-Bowles, which was suppose to address our chronic debt problem and give us a good start on fixing it, was ditched by the person who authorized it in the first place. The fiscal cliff is two months away and the only action by the President is a threat of a veto if any resolution does meet his redistribution philosophy.

So what will the next four years look like if he is re-elected? My predictions are as follows:

• The House will stay under Republican control with a large majority. The Senate will remain (barely) under Democratic control. Gridlock will dwarf the gridlock we had the first term.
• The murders in Benghazi will haunt this Administration for quite a while. This story has legs and much more is going to be learned and then told in the near future. The second term will have a "Watergate" type of haze hanging over it.
• Fast and Furious is far from being dead. The hearings will continue and the truth will come out. This could end up with the top tiers of the Justice Department either being under indictment or resigning. Stay tuned on this one.
• The fiscal cliff will happen and there will be a chorus of teeth gnashing and hand wringing. The country will be thrown back into recession and the President will try to blame Congress. The "blame game" has run its course - consequently, the majority of the country will now blame the President. Poll numbers will tank in January and February.
• With the election over and the candidate of choice re-elected, Iran will be emboldened to show the world it is within an eyelash from the nuclear club. Israel, knowing that our Administration will not support it, will attack Iran early in 2013. Oil futures will go through the roof and we will be paying over $5/gal, which will deepen the recession.
• There will be three retirements on the Supreme Court and will be replaced with three left of center activist ideologues, which will change the tone of the court for decades.
• The National Debt will be $20T by 2016 and our dollar will continue to be devalued.
• Millions of Americans will realize the true cost of ObamaCare and suffer "buyer's remorse". There will be unanswered calls for significant changes to the law.
• With the "war on coal" continuing and no new nukes built, the price of electricity will skyrocket.

There are more, but I wanted to keep this brief. Four more years will be more of the same, and worse. History will judge this President harshly, as it should. We are much more of a divided country than we were four years ago, and four years from now it will be worse. We have a strong, resilient country that can survive many hardships and calamities. However, I don't know if we can survive four more years of this.