The Book of the Shadows

The State of the Union is a Constitutional mandated report card the Executive Branch must deliver to the Legislative Branch once every year. It is an update of what accomplishments and failures the nations has had, where the nation needs to go, what it needs to focus on. Often times it is also a “to do” list from the Executive Branch for legislation it wants the Congress to complete in the next year and lays out not just the president’s agenda, but a roadmap of potential compromise and contention.

No this isn't about the new Godzilla movie coming out next year, although it is looking quite amazing so far. This is about a sort of mis-characterized debate that has gone on in our government for a long time; big government versus small government.

Esquire magazine conducted a survey whose goal was to determine the political leanings of the American community. Such surveys have been done in the past, and have established the popular assertion that the country as a whole is “center right”, meaning we as the American public are mostly independent, but lean towards the conservative side of the spectrum.

The Republican Party is a party in need of friends. They don’t have many right now. They have a number of loyalists among their members and voters, and they have their opponents in the Democrats. They even have outright enemies all over the place. But they don’t have a whole lot of friends. Perhaps the long talked of revolution in the Republican Party is finally at hand.

I can’t say that I like Newt Gingrich. His politics and mine do not align. I think he holds a lot of responsibility for the corrosive strain of conservatism that dominates the Republican Party right now. But during the 2012 Republican primaries, I think he got a bad rap for an actual decent idea.