Friday, December 22, 2006

Football and Politics

On Monday Night Football, the Indianapolis Colts were leading the Cincinnati Bengals by 18 points going in to the fourth quarter. The Bengals marched the football down to Indianapolis's 11 yard line. It was fourth down, and considering the vast point differential, Cincinnati was undoubtedly going to go for the Touchdown. But no. Instead of taking the risk, the Bengals brought out the field goal kicker, who nailed the kick throuh the uprights. Yippee! 3 points! Nevermind that any chance the Bengals had of winning the game went down the drain. At least it looked better on the stat sheet than a failed fourth down conversion.

I could not help but see the parallel between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Republican Party. For instance, days before the 2006 midterm elections, the Senate was able to pass a bill which authorized the construction of a border fence over 700 miles of the 2000 mile border between the United States and Mexico. However, it gradually leaked out that while the bill passed the Senate by a wide margin, it had NO funding. In other words, nearly 80 Senators passed a bill to construct a border fence for the sole purpose of political expediency. Republicans wanted to inflate the stat sheet while doing nothing to solve America's nagging problems.

The federal budget deficit is yet another area where half measures have been put into place. Our Senators and Congressmen have decided to "trim" the budget, instead of drastically reducing spending and cutting government waste.

In recent years, politicians have kicked field goals instead of taking the risk and going for the win. While failure is a definite possibility, half-measures will never fix our problems or ensure that America wins the future.

LWS

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't think the Republicans realize that they are being considered the inferior party on certain issues. For all their talk about trimming the deficit (cutting the deficit in half by 2010, not ever eliminating it), the democrats are being seen as the ones with the answer (which of course they don't have). Property rights in Virginia are going the same way, with our Senate stopping a property rights protection constitutional amendment last year. I suspect that they will pass it this year so that it will come up for a vote by the people during 2008, and will garner support for republican candidates. However, because of their inaction this year, the democrats are being seen as the ones who will protect property rights, and when the issue comes on the ballot in 2008, I dont' think it will help the republicans.