I’m predicting a moderate-sized Romney win, but the Democrat’s intimidation tactics and destruction of Republican registrations are already well-documented and could swing the results. Given how Obama used your tax dollars to buy votes from millions of people I’m amazed that it could be a Romney victory at all. But I’m encouraged that even with the seemingly non-stop Obama (free) infomercials from the mainstream media that enough people see how he is actively destroying the country and how a second term would be step functions worse. He’ll be as unrestrained as the blind men of Sodom.
And a Romney win will be just as huge of an impact. With some natural business cycle improvements plus Romney/Ryan policies they would sail to re-election in 4 years based on the dramatic improvements in the economy. It would be the easiest campaign ever: “We promised, we delivered. Want some more?”
But it gets better than that. The Clinton Democrats will throw Obama under the bus before the Romney inauguration and keep him there permanently. The Liberal extremists would be damaged for a long time.
Will I still have joy if Romney loses? Of course. That is my birthright as a Christian to have joy and contentment whenever I choose.
But will there still be something to mourn about? Of course. While I’m a huge fan of God’s sovereignty and how we shouldn’t act as non-Christians do when it comes to mourning or celebrating the wrong things or in the wrong way, there is nothing wrong with lamenting a Romney loss. And as one blogger noted, there is no reason you’d tell a Romney supporter, “no big deal, God is sovereign!” any more than you’d say that to someone going through a medical issue.
As I responded on a Facebook thread, I definitely agree that our hope should be in Jesus. Mine is. And we need an eternal perspective. But taking that to an extreme would also mean that the “love your neighbor” command isn’t a big deal. After all, this life is just a short blip, right? But if I love my neighbors, I want them to have religious freedom, I want them to have jobs, I don’t want them to be killed just because they are unwanted, I don’t their minds poisoned with sexual perversions in public schools, etc. And this election deals with all of those things.
The lesser of two evils is still less evil. We aren’t voting for a religious leader. We are electing someone to govern us with the values most approximating a biblical worldview, and our choices are limited. Even if a self-proclaimed Christian ran you can never be 100% sure he is legitimate. Remember, Obama claims to be a Christian.
And remember, it isn’t just about the President. While the incumbent has violated the Constitution at will, most Presidents don’t. So the Congress is crucial. When people long for the “Clinton years” what they are really longing for is a conservative Republican Congress. And the “Bush years” that Obama blames the most were the “Democrat Congress years.”
So get out and vote Republican if you haven’t already! And remind Democrats that until their platform is changed, they are officially pro-abortion: No restrictions of any kind plus taxpayer-funding.
Eternity Matters 
Thanks for another great post, Neil. Right on all counts. I’ve been reminding myself (as did my church pastor on Sunday) that God’s sovereignty doesn’t depend on elections, and that in fact He uses them to bring about the results He wants.
On a side note, a man resigned his position at my company about eight months ago and moved to the Austin area there in Texas. Our relationship was usually friendly but not so close that we were hanging out together outside of the office. While at work, politics was frequently discussed during slower periods among the other employees, and on hearing such talk, he always made a point of saying that he wasn’t political and/or was independent…but usually made sure to issue an opinion anyway.
Out of the blue, he “friended” me on FB the day before yesterday, then posted on my Wall. He said that he was sorry and wished he’d been nicer to me while working with me. He went on to say that living in a red state for the past eight months had made a conservative out of him, and he’d even gotten himself a concealed carry permit a month after moving to Austin. I told him it was great to have him aboard, all was forgiven (not much to forgive, really) and asked him to stay in touch.
Still, I couldn’t help grinning ear-to-ear.
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That’s good news! Always nice to know that some people are open minded.
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I have to disagree slightly with your pastor. Due to free will, God can only use an election if his followers are in the majority and they are willing to vote according to his will. Sadly too many Christians have been tricked into thinking elections are none of God’s business.
That said, we know that God knew what the outcome of the election would be long ago and he has planned accordingly, for indeed he is sovereign.
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Neil, have you read Mark Steyn’s After America? I think it makes the persuasive argument that we MUST make a serious course correction, and soon, to avoid a serious but entirely predictable fiscal catastrophe.
You write, “With some natural business cycle improvements plus Romney/Ryan policies they would sail to re-election in 4 years based on the dramatic improvements in the economy.”
If Romney/Ryan uses the Ryan Plan as a starting point for even more serious reform, I’d be inclined to agree that the economy will be in much better shape four years down the road. But the Ryan Plan doesn’t balance the budget for (at least) another TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS, and so it must only be the first step.
Responding to the Ryan Plan, Steyn has noted the uselessness of budget assumptions pushed into literal decades, writing, “When the most notorious extreme callous budget-slasher of the age cannot foresee the government living within its means within the next three decades, you begin to appreciate why foreign observers doubt whether there’ll be a 2040, not for anything recognizable as ‘the United States.’ ”
He continues:
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Yet it’s widely agreed that Ryan’s plan is about as far as you can push it while retaining minimal political viability. A second-term Obama would roar full throttle to the cliff edge, while a President Romney would be unlikely to do much more than ease off to third gear. At this point, it’s traditional for pundits to warn that if we don’t change course we’re going to wind up like Greece. Presumably they mean that, right now, our national debt, which crossed the Rubicon of 100 percent of GDP just before Christmas, is not as bad as that of Athens, although it’s worse than Britain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, and every other European nation except Portugal, Ireland, and Italy. Or perhaps they mean that America’s current deficit-to-GDP ratio is not quite as bad as Greece’s, although it’s worse than that of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and every other European nation except Ireland.
But these comparisons tend to understate the insolvency of America, failing as they do to take into account state and municipal debts and public pension liabilities. When Morgan Stanley ran those numbers in 2009, the debt-to-revenue ratio in Greece was 312 percent; in the United States it was 358 percent. If Greece has been knocking back the ouzo, we’re face down in the vat. Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute calculates that, if you take into account unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare versus their European equivalents, Greece owes 875 percent of GDP; the United States owes 911 percent — or getting on for twice as much as the second-most-insolvent Continental: France at 549 percent.
And if you’re thinking, Wow, all these percentages are making my head hurt, forget ’em: When you’re spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece’s total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of treasury bonds every month — or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India — every year. And those numbers don’t take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College-debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy — tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.
“We are headed for the most predictable economic crisis in history,” says Paul Ryan. And he’s right. But precisely because it’s so predictable the political class has already discounted it. Which is why a plan for pie now and spinach later, maybe even two decades later, is the only real menu on the table. There’s a famous exchange in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Someone asks Mike Campbell, “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” We’ve been going through the gradual phase so long, we’re kinda used to it. But it’s coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/294304/sun-also-sets-mark-steyn
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Steyn concludes that the ONLY option is “taking a stand here, stopping the spendaholism, closing federal agencies, privatizing departments, block-granting to the states — not in 2040, but now. ‘Suddenly’ is about to show up.”
Romney and Ryan haven’t yet begun to be that serious, and if they try to kick the can to 2040, I don’t think the good times will be around when they seek reelection.
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That’s close to how I view it. We’re going downhill quickly, but we destroy ourselves more slowly with R/R. Sadly, anyone who would propose a long-term fix would never get elected.
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“We destroy ourselves more slowly” is an argument for Romney, albeit a weak one: his election buys us time.
But, at the same time, if he governs as the managerial progressive that I think he is, he’ll further compromise the Republican party, possibly beyond salvaging: the time he buys would be wasted with that slow-motion evolution into what Steyn has described as a two-party, one-party state, where both parties accept Leviathan as a given and argue over who can best manage it.
I REALLY hope my well-founded pessimism ends up being spectacularly wrong.
I suspect you’re right that “anyone who would propose a long-term fix would never get elected,” especially since Ryan was vilified for a plan that projects deficits for another seven presidential terms. (!!!)
If so, we can go ahead and discuss fat ladies singing or quote the Bible passage which Steyn made central to After America:
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.
But, good grief, this would have been a great opportunity to present a clear choice between reason and insanity. If not now — when the debt has been doubled and the credit rating downgraded, all because of a radical who clearly holds the Constitution in contempt — when?
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I don’t think I have enough faith in the American people to elect Romney. It just seems like America wants Obama. I hope I’m wrong.
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Sadly, roughly half want him. It may be one of those Romans 1 “He gives us what we ask for” things.
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