Boulder is a Stoopid Place

The news on two initiatives is better. The voter-ID constitutional amendment leads by a 2-1 margin, 62/31, winning every demo with majorities except Democrats and self-described liberals, which have majorities opposed. The latest strategy by opponents is to claim that the requirement will escalate costs, but that’s not going to put a dent in this momentum. Minnesotans are still embarrassed by the 2008 Senate race and want the voting system cleaned up. This one won’t be close.

The other ballot initiative looks more in doubt. Conservatives won a court fight over the constitutional-amendment question description on the ballot that makes it clear that it doesn’t change the state’s definition of a valid marriage. It moves the existing statutory language defining marriage as between one man and one woman into the state Constitution to keep activist judges from changing it unilaterally. Nevertheless, opponents are campaigning against it by saying that voters shouldn’t put limits on marriage, ignoring the fact that the limits are already in place. The initiative leads by seven points, 50/43, and it leads in every gender and age demo — but narrowly among women (48/43) and the 35-49 and 50-64 age demos (47/45 and 48/47 respectively). Interestingly, it leads by a substantial amount with the youngest and oldest voters, double digit margins in both cases.

Also, any time this happens we should cancel all visas from the offending country, and have at least a 90-day moratorium on new ones. Plus instant aid suspension.

The criticism of the film actually bothers me less than the neglect of the film. If I were Michael Moore and I were to make a film that was the No. 2 political documentary of all time, I would be on every network. I would be on Meet The Press, and I would be profiled in The New York Times, and I would be all over MSNBC. Instead large sectors of the press are refusing to cover the film. They are just pretending it doesn’t exist.

Romney is a decent business manager. He’s a decent man. He likes America. He wants America to like him. He’s not going to actively dismantle our way of life, as will the one now in power. There will be no attacks on freedom of religion, no wild power grabs for the Internet, no executive orders that violate the laws of the land. He will not hanker for more “flexibility” so he can give more to Putin. And — this is petty but important for how the world sees us — he will neither apologize nor bow to foreign leaders.

Is he perfect? Oh, goodness, no. Is he exactly what we need? Probably not. Who is? Do you know the trouble we’ve got ourselves into by trusting presidents for this long? It’s a big hole. No one man can get us out of it. Only we can. And it will take time.

But that’s fine. He won’t be anointed by any gods. There will be no halos and no Greek columns. Instead, he’ll be the elected by the people and the people — the sovereign people of this free land — who are now awake will stand ready to make sure he knows it.

Perhaps we will once more save our democratic republic for another generation. Perhaps we’ll turn the tiller and start the long way back from deep blue statism.

In the end, as someone said, perhaps we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. No hero will ride to the rescue — we will.

We’re Americans. We don’t need emperors. (If that’s what you want, to quote Romney, “you must vote for the other guy.”) We don’t want lords and masters. We’re free and at last aware that we must work to stay that way.