The Choice We Face

I have written to you that this election is the most important since Lincoln's in 1860.  If we allow this President to continue in office for another four years we may never recover the foundation of our prosperity: our economic liberty.


This morning I wrote about the first presidential debate of this election year that "The most important part of Romney's performance was his ability to focus on the way the President and his supporters want to change our nation, certain as they are that it is founded in evil."  If I could say it better than George Will does here, I would elaborate on that now, but there is simply no chance that I could improve on this:

Romney needed to rivet the attention of the electorate, in which self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals 2 to 1, on this choice:

America can be the society it was when it had a spring in its step, a society in which markets ­ the voluntary collaboration of creative individuals ­ allocate opportunity. Or America can remain today's depressed and anxious society of unprecedented stagnation in the fourth year of a faux recovery ­ a bleak society in which government incompetently allocates resources in pursuit of its perishable certitudes and on behalf of the politically connected.

This is Romney's most important accomplishment and, to a conservative, the most thrilling achievement by a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan devastated James Earl Carter with "There you go again," in 1980.  It is both important and thrilling to me because it focuses the debate on exactly the right choice.

We can choose the central planning and the greater equality of individual result that this President's progressivism demands, but if we do, we will certainly lose our economic liberty and the prosperity we create under it.