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In discussing the Presidential election results, USA Today quoted ex-Senator and onetime Presidential candidate Rick Santorum as saying that Republican candidates need to show voters that "We care about them." As evidence, Mr. Santorum reminded us that voters said that President Obama "Cares more about people like me" by a margin of 81% to 18%. Mr. Santorum claimed that, having failed as President, all that Mr. Obama could say was, "Republicans don't care about you," but that was enough to win him the election.
Mr. Santorum gave Mr. Romney a decent level of competition in the Republican primaries which makes him a voice to be reckoned with, but he's wrong. Mr. Obama's primary message wasn't just "Republicans don't care about you."
The critical argument which won Mr. Obama a second term was a more pointed one: "Republicans won't give you as many new goodies as I'll give you and they'll take away the goodies I already gave you."
Remember the Obamaphone lady? Remember Peggy the Moocher? Mr. Romney was optimistic when he estimated that 47% of the electorate was more interested in getting goodies from the government than in finding opportunities to better themselves working in the private sector; it turns out that a controlling majority actually do, and elected themselves a President who proudly proclaimed his goal as accomodating their desires.
It's taken fifty years to reach this point, but at long last the Democrats have become a self-licking electoral ice-cream cone. Democratic policies keep people locked into the welfare system which keeps them voting for Democrats who'll continute their unearned benefits.
At the same time, Democrats diligently work at sawing the bottom rungs off the economic ladder by raising the minimum wage and perpetuating our execrable public school system. Kids who in past times would have been willing to start at the bottom and work their way up, now can't get any job at all because our Democrat-protected public education system doesn't give them enough skills to be worth minimum wage. Never having held a job, they're suckers for candidates who promise to increase benefits and even give out free cell phones!
Confucius observed thousands of years ago that there's no limit to bureaucratic greed, and from that day to this history has piled up a measureless mountain of evidence that he was right. Government employees always want more money for less work; politicians always want more loyal government minions who'll reliably support their meal ticket. In China, this steadily increased government spending unless the Emperor kept the bureaucracy pruned. Whenever the Chinese government cost more than society could afford to pay, China collapsed into anarchy. This happened 13 or 14 times throughout Chinese history.
The American economy produces much more wealth than the traditional muscle-powered Chinese society could imagine. America can indeed afford more government than ancient China ever could, but we have far more government. Imperial China didn't offer our broad range of entitlements, so government employees were the only group whose demands could bankrupt the society. Now that so many groups besides government employees - retirees, voters wanting free medical care, welfare recipients, unemployable college graduates, former workers who plan to collect unemployment forever - seek to take more out of the system than they put in, our costs are exploding.
Mr. Obama's regulatory agencies are busily raising the cost of energy, which is a major consideration in all economic activity. This is locking us into a "new normal" of 1-2% growth per year, less than the growth of our population when you include illegals.
This slow growth rate doesn't provide jobs for all the new high-school graduates, much less the legion of unemployed. Lack of net growth leaves all our unemployed people high and dry for the indeterminate future. With the economy growing more slowly than the population, there will be more and more unemployed people seeking more and more goodies when they vote, as their only hope of keeping their bellies full.
Given that we can't even cut the few billion dollars we spend on already-wealthy Big Bird, we can't cut anything at all.
The problem in Election 2012 wasn't that Mr. Obama cared more about the voters. They voted for him because Mr. Obama was willing to pay more for their votes - Mitt Romney was outbid with taxpayer dollars.
It's too bad that Rick Santorum got the wrong answer, but it's not clear what his party can do about it. Republicans can't outbid Democrats - anyone who wants more government spending will always vote for a Democrat because they have a well-established track record of big spending. What sort of a Republican party could run to the left of an opposing Democrat?
Confucius argued that citizens had a duty to rebel when government got so costly and so unwieldy that society couldn't afford it any more. On some level, an increasing number of Americans seem to agree - gun and ammo sales are taking off as they did after Mr. Obama's first election. This time, people are also signing petitions to secede from the United States and citing the Founders who defended that as the people's ultimate right.
It's hard to be optimistic about the United States. When a cancer gets too greedy, the cancer kills the patient and they both die.