If your concept of the Presidency was how Bush ran the country with his rubber stamp Congress, Obama as President would terrify you.  Frankly, if Obama is elected and Congress rubber stamps everything Obama wishes, it would scare me too.  But that is not going to happen. 

Democrats do not ascribe to the tenets of blind loyalty.   There are no advocates for a Unitary Presidency on the Left.  Even if the Democrats get 60 Senators, there is little possibility laws will go through Congress without debate.  I feel fairly confident there will not be any midnight sessions to pass laws deplorable to anyone with a sense of fairness.  I also suspect Republicans can have a room to discuss whatever they wish without Democrats turning off the power, and that room will not be in the basement either.

The fear is due to the notion that the next President will be like the last.  That would be true only if McCain was elected.  I'll admit McCain is not Bush, but with a 90% cooperation with Bush, he does a darn good imitiation.

Is it possible that the frightened ones believe George W. Bush is an example of how a President should behave?  It is possible that they know how heavy handed this Administration was, but looked the other way because it was their party.  Has the concept that opposition is un-American caused them to believe that? 

Faux News and the Right Wing pundits have exerted a great deal of influence these past few years and many people have lost their bearings, or never understood freedom in the first place.  The only freedoms they know are guns and religion, but only if its their guns and their religion.

Obama brings freedom of expression.  He is not going to rule or govern.  He is going to lead.  An Obama Administration will not be anything like what we've seen these past eight years, and for the frightened it will seem like a foreign coutry, but to the brave it will seem like freedom.    

In the past couple of decades the religious Right has climbed into a place of prowess within the Republican Party.  During this time, they became this red-headed stepchild of the party.   The neo-cons found their loyalty and enthusiasm very useful.  But that was tolerable when they were in the margins, when they could make up the difference in a close election.  Now the religious Right has come to believe they can make the election of their own divine intervention.  But that is a leap of faith too far from reality to be true, at least not in 2008.

The rest of the party, the non-cons and left of the Farthest Right Christians, have had a little bit of self-awareness brought before them by the arrival of Sarah Palin.  She is the poster child of evangelicals, but far from politically astute.  In fact, her lack of awareness is downright embarassing.  Loyalties have been broken in the party because of her.  Stalwart advocates can no longer toe the party line because it is too far divorced from reaity.  They saw this with G. W. Bush, but he was a Bush, so by virtue of family, he had to be accepted and supported.  It was a challenge at times, but George made so many of them wealth with war after war.

Sarah Palin did not come from family.  She knows no loyalty to party either.  Her faith is only to her God.  Both of her previous mentors have been destroyed by her, both the previous mayor and the previous governor.  Things do not bode well for McCain either.  When this fiasco has wound down, he will be a broken man, and she will live to fight another day, believe that.  Whether she surfaces on the national scene or back in Alaska, remains to be seen, but there will be a second coming.

Right now the Republicans have a party to put back together.  They have lost their way with all this fanaticism.  Who will remain standing after the dust settles?  It is hard to know, but for the moment, it seems reason will prevail while the election closes and their power diminishes.  The party and the nation saw what extremism will bring and the wise want no part of it.  They both needed each other to win, but with Palin on the ticket, winning was no longer everything.  She was a pill too hard to swallow.  

There is a disturbance in the force.  The National Republican Congressional Committee has pulled the plug on two of the party faithful, two Zom-Bushes, the unblinking, not thinking, kool-aid junkies.  While John McCain went all mavericky in picking Sarah Palin, his failing campaign has opened the eyes of the party leadership.  Religious zealots can no longer get them to the top.  Sarah Palin's fervor alienated more people then it attracted.  Sure, there is now great zeal at the rallies, but the homogeneity is not bringing them victory in the diverse states of America.   

The recognition of this is clear in the decisions to terminate funding of the campaigns of Representative Marilyn Musgrave (CO - R) and Michele Bachmann (MN - R).  These lwomen are part of that segment of blind believers who see half the country as American and the rest as opposition.  The Republicans are already reforming their party to resemble soemthing more palatable to the American people.  A more approachable Republican will be good for the country, as a whole.  While this author has always favored the Dems, he is not blind to the moments of wisdom that have come from the Right. 

Let Freedom Ring USA recently put out an ad where a businessman, who has a tractor behind him, reports he will not hire "twenty or thirty more employees" if Obama is elected.   That sounds a lot like a threat to me.  But let's break ths down.  First, it makes me wonder what kind of business he has and if the tractor is his.  Second, it makes me wonder if he has all this money and such a big plan, what will he do for the next 4-8 years if Obama is elected?  My guess, he will expand his busines anyway.

Isn't it time to call the bluff of these blowhards?  Is he really going to hunker down in his home until a Republican gets back into the White House or is he going to move forward anyway, grumbling all the way, as he seems to enjoy doing? 

It sounds as though this person is another Joe the Plumber.  Joe reported that he wanted to buy a business he was not in anyway situated to obtain.  There is a huge difference between "twenty or thirty employees".  If this was an actual businessman who was in a place where he could expand to this extent, he would never be questioning whether he should hire "twenty or thirty employees",  He would know exactly how many employees he needs to achieve his goals.

At the end of the day, real businessmen move forward, going over, or around, any obstacles they cannot go through.  If those making $250,000/year have a higher tax to pay, they will still press forward with their ambitions using the money they have left.  The fact is, they always have and they always will.  The only barrier to moving forward is a lack of credit and that crisis is related to the deregulation of the financial industry.  It is not to taxes.