The Republican nominating contest is shaping up like a great poker game.   The former governor of Massachusetts is facing off with the current governor of Texas.  The odds-makers are number-crunching the hands.  The voters are laying down bets.  And the future of America is the stake.

Now, the word among the prestigious movers and shakers - [...]

It never ceases to confound me, dear readers, how on earth Republicans keep losing America’s propaganda war.

How do we know they’re losing in the public’s perception?  Easy.

Ask yourself when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative or even moderate political view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public or at a large social gathering - without hedging your every word and pulling your every punch - so as not to get even close to a single liberal sore spot.  When?  Can you identify a single recent instance when you felt your conservative or even moderate views would be tolerated without your being called names or shamed into the nearest corner of societal oblivion?

Everywhere one goes, save conservative websites, Republicans are widely connoted with tinges of racism, hate, selfishness, greed, war-mongering and conspiratorial theocratic designs against democracy.  Fox News has some opinion shows that try to give an ounce of conservative balance to the airwaves and they’ve paid for it with all out war declared against them by liberal activists.

And, honey, any way one chooses to slice, dice, puree or grind to bits this reality, it spells one thing for the Democrats:  VICTORY.

Democrats are nearly ubiquitously perceived - key word, “perceived” — as anti-racist, loving, un-selfish, generous, peace-making and unfailingly tolerant of all religions and all cultures.  And there is not a single, large cultural mechanism - whether in print or other media - that does not reinforce this liberal propaganda with its every waking breath.

When conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1 among the electorate, and yet liberal views have achieved such dominance that they are perceived as dominant even in private settings, then Republicans are not only losing the propaganda war, they are all but gone missing in action.

How to fix this?  First, fully identify the problem.

Towards that goal, here is my top-5 list of why Republicans keep losing the propaganda war.

5.  Modern media favors perception over reality, charisma over intelligence and personality over character.  Republicans remain the party dominated by reality, intelligent reason and high character; they lose.

While many conservatives tend to focus entirely on media bias towards the liberal agenda as the primary reason Republicans lose so many public-perception contests, I see this as only a fraction of the real problem.

The bedrock problem isn’t bias.  Opinion research demonstrates again and again that Americans have been exceptionally resilient against vigorous liberal indoctrination on some fundamental issues.

With a near-complete media bias promoting abortion “rights,” the American public remains a majority pro-life nation.  With a 150-year bombardment by academia promoting the theory of godless evolution — pure Darwinism — Americans are defiantly pro-God as the divine “designer.”  With a 40-year attack on the institution of marriage, a bare majority of voters in the past few years has come to favor same-sex unions sanctioned by the state.  Christianity is routinely bashed in liberal media, yet 78.4% of Americans still self-identify as Christian.  Bias isn’t winning nearly as many arguments as is widely assumed.

It isn’t merely liberal bias that’s helping Democrats in the propaganda war.  It’s the very medium in which ideas are spread to vast numbers of Americans.  Whether it is television news or entertainment, or whether movies or music or even the magazine format, national arguments take place more and more impersonally in formats given to dramatic license and less and less face-to-face among friends and family.  The more we have shifted as a society towards mass media, the more politics has become a popularity contest as opposed to a contest of ideas and solutions.

Democrats first recognized the power of the medium when young, attractive and charismatic John F. Kennedy debated old, gnarly and stodgy Richard Nixon on television in 1960.  Since that very day, it has been entirely necessary for Republicans to field candidates with not only real substance, intelligence and character, but also the hard-to-define charisma that translates to popular appeal.  But Republicans often ignore this essential demand of the modern era and put forth candidates who don’t stand a chance in the media spotlight.

It is simply no longer enough to be reality-based, intelligent and of high character.  To win, modern Republicans must have it all, including media presence and charisma.

But liberal bias does stack the deck profoundly towards Democrats being able to field candidates with none of the essential reality, intelligence and high character, as long as they possess the façade of charisma.  Hence, we have President Barack Obama, in large part because he was faced off with a candidate having zero media presence, much less charisma.

This is reality.  And Republicans must adhere to it or perish.

4.  When openly mocked and ridiculed, Republicans are stymied.

The most shocking example of Republican ignorance I’ve ever seen occurred in September 2008 in an exchange between candidate John McCain and Whoopi Goldberg on The View. John McCain wasn’t doing too badly - not well, but not horribly - until Whoopi Goldberg, with theatrical hyperventilation, fanning the sudden sweat from her frightened face, asked candidate McCain if his nominating strict Constitutionalist judges to the Supreme Court would mean that she should start worrying about having to be a slave again.

McCain got that sickening caught-with-my-pants-down look on his face and mumbled something about understanding why such a thought would frighten Ms. Goldberg…the interview was then abruptly ended with John McCain still looking like the loser he was.

So, why wasn’t John McCain quick enough on his feet to respond in an amiable manner with something like this:

“Ms. Goldberg, you can’t possibly be that ignorant regarding the U.S. Constitution.  Surely, you remember your 7^th grade civics well enough to know that all amendments to our constitution have absolutely equal weight with the original document itself and that the 13^th amendment, ratified in 1865, bars all forms of slavery.  I understand that as a comedienne it is your habit to make jokes, but do you really think it is wise to mock our constitution and spread falsehood and fear on national television - especially at an hour when children could indeed be watching”?

Instead, McCain’s pitiful surrender to Goldberg’s propaganda ploy allowed the audience to conflate the original topic of Roe v Wade (a Supreme Court decision) with a ratified amendment to the constitution.  It was a moment that will live in American civics infamy.

Until Republicans understand that liberals lie, goad and mock with full intent to destroy America as we know it, they are rhetorical road kill.

3.   Many Republicans don’t understand the modern liberal’s value system and make the horrible mistake of projecting their own conservative values onto their political opponents.

In modern America liberals and conservatives hold to vastly different value systems.  This fact is borne out by the General Social Survey (GSS) every year.  The GSS has been conducted yearly since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center, founded in 1941 and headquartered at the University of Chicago.  The GSS is the largest project funded by the Sociology Program of the National Science Foundation. Except for the U.S. Census, the GSS is the most frequently analyzed source of information in the social sciences.

Year after year, the GSS confirms that by and large modern liberals are less charitable, less honest, less hard-working and less reliable to their friends, families and co-workers.  By the same token, liberals are far more likely to believe that success is the product of luck rather than work and personal sacrifice.  Liberals are far more focused on money than conservatives and the liberal focus on others’ perceived greed is a reflection of their own envy.  Liberals are far less likely to volunteer their time to help others, in both public and in private among family.  Liberals lie, cheat and steal at far higher rates than conservatives and tend to excuse themselves with bad-luck or rigged-system arguments.

These widely varied value systems among liberals and conservatives seem to stem from a few very basic internalized attitudes towards life, especially concerning good and evil.

From Peter Schweizer’s book, Makers and Takers, which heavily relies on the GSS, we glean this fundamental difference between the modern liberal and his conservative counterpart:

Only 23 percent of those who call themselves “very liberal” say that there are objective guidelines about what is good and evil, compared with 62 percent of conservatives.  Only 40 percent of liberals consider God very important in their lives, compared with 70 percent of conservatives.

From Arthur C. Brooks’ book, Who Really Cares, also heavily reliant on the GSS, we learn that conservatives - regardless of income or education - are far more likely to give of both their money and their time to charitable causes.  Using GSS data, Brooks was able to pin down the two basic definitive differences that lay the foundation for generous charitable giving:  going to church every week and believing in the personal responsibility (as opposed to the government) to help those in need.  Liberals by and large believe that it is government’s responsibility to reduce income differences; conservatives believe it is their own responsibility to do so whenever and however they can.

In other words, liberals view the state as their church substitute and as they are inclined towards rejecting set guidelines of good and evil, they generally feel satisfied with themselves if they verbally and electorally support government “charity” as opposed to actually giving it themselves.

When a Republican argues with reason against government waste and profligacy, he has both feet planted in civics, while his Democrat opponent thinks he is arguing from the secular equivalent of a church pulpit.

Without knowing these fundamental differences between liberal values and conservative values, Republicans are always on the losing end of every rhetorical battle.

2.   Republicans don’t know how to use their yang in the Democrats’ yin-dominated politics.  When hit with a Democrat hissy-fit, Republicans cower like whipped dogs.

The overt feminization of the Democratic Party over the past 40 years, has resulted in a politics dominated by emotionalism.  The emotional tactics used by modern Democrats in the political arena have been developed by women over millennia in the battle between the sexes.

Faced with brutish environments, where brawn was the chief bargainer in all realms, females learned to use what they had to get their own way.  Since fighting it out physically was an always-losing proposition for women, they developed emotional tactics to leverage power.  A great deal of what aware conservatives recognize as Alinskyite methodology is actually just a new spin on old-as-the-hills female wiles.

Alinsky tactics rule #3:  Wherever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

American civics has traditionally been dominated by reason and rational argument, minus an emotional component.  This, then, defines the political experience realm.  Reason absent emotion is still a realm we more often associate with men than with women.

All male readers who have ever been in a cohabitating relationship with a woman should recognize this power tactic:

Man to woman:  “Sweetheart, I understand you really want the $5,000 sofa, but we simply can’t afford it.  You know that.  We need to find an $800 sofa so we can still pay for the food.”

Woman to man:  “You don’t really love me.”

He’s using the facts; she is using emotion.  This emotional tactic throws the argument into another realm entirely, confuses the man and often leaves the woman walking out of the store with the $5,000 sofa, while the man is scratching his head wondering how in the heck they are going to pay the credit card bill and still feed themselves.

This same scenario gets played out ad nauseum in our modern political arguments over government budgets.  Because American political wars are fought with words, not fists, age-old female power tactics have enormous power.

Paul Ryan, the Republican, sees the coming debt train wreck and uses logic to draw up a real plan and publicly goes to bat for it.  In response, the liberal group, Agenda Project, ran ads showing a Paul Ryan look alike pushing granny over a cliff in a wheelchair.

Same argument.  Same female tactic.

When faced with unpleasant numerical facts, Democrats employ emotional blackmail.  Republicans throw their hands up in the air.  Decades of this hissy-fit budget bashing have got us where we are today.

Winning these fights requires shaming the emotional blackmailers for their underhanded, deceptive tactics.  Republicans don’t even know how they’re being confused, much less how to shame their enemies.

1. Many Republicans have undiagnosed Stockholm Syndrome.

In the mouths of modern Democrats, words have become the rhetorical equivalent of cattle prods.

When push comes to shove and Democrats are losing, they inevitably pick up the nearest rhetorical cattle prod and aim it at their victims:  Racist!  War-monger!  Selfish beast!  Homophobe!   Misogynist!  Islamaphobe!  Child-hater!  Ignoramus!  Science-hating-idiot!  Religious nutcase! Redneck!…you know these cattle prods, dear readers, and see them in constant use not only in public on the airwaves but in private conservations with liberal friends, co-workers and family members.

When one side of a philosophical divide is willing to employ such bully tactics with ferocious tenacity, the other side understandably - quite humanly - begins to psychologically identify with their abusers, just as hostages come to identify with their kidnappers and abused spouses come to identify with their abuser.  This phenomenon, called Stockholm Syndrome, now afflicts many Republicans and forces them into a defensive, fetal-like position more often than we would ever like to admit.

These rhetorical cattle prods have been so successful in reducing Republicans to psychological mincemeat that they even resulted in the Bush-ordained “compassionate conservatism,” which nearly killed off fiscal reason.  An entire political platform and the wild government spending spree that sprang from it was built around conservatives’ massive case of Stockholm Syndrome.  Republicans have begun to believe that the Democrats are right about conservatives and many of them will go to outlandish lengths to show solidarity with the abusers’ aims.

Until Republicans can self-diagnose this widespread disorder, they will continue to be bullied in the propaganda war.

Recognizing the problem, as psychologists tell us, is the first step on the road to recovery.

There really ought to be a self-help group for Americans seeking to recover their common sense.  A whole nation suffering the kind of verbal abuse we’ve been subjected to by liberals needs a massive intervention - posthaste.

From the moment she raised her dainty foot to the national stage, Sarah Palin has intrigued Americans.

She has been a lightning rod in the fight for the soul of feminism, incurring the wrath and scorn of now-dominant leftist feminists, even as she has rallied the usually silent forces of traditional women.  The struggle for the hearts and minds of young women is ongoing, but Palin’s Momma Grizzly feminism has at least made it a real fight, in which traditional women have got a shot at reigniting the “we want both” (family and paying careers), genuine feminism.

Palin has attracted a sizable swath of male supporters, not only because of her obvious appeal and coy charisma, but also on the strength of her feisty record against entrenched interests in her home state.  Palin’s earthy, down-home persona seems perfectly fit for the citizen government our founders designed.   She is enormously popular in the heartland, as evidenced again and again by her hugely successful bus tours and public appearances.

And there is no question that vast numbers of Americans are yearning for a return to constitutional populism.  This can be summed up in two words:  Tea Party.

These factors, along with Palin’s motherly, yet all-American-girl-next-door image, have made her one of the most popular women ever to enter our national psyche.

But as Sarah Palin contemplates a run for the presidency, she must surely be asking herself whether her immense popularity will indeed translate into real votes in the hotly contested Republican primaries.

I think it is very possible - perhaps even likely - that if Sarah Palin runs for president now, she will be disappointed.  Americans voted for the cult of personality last time around and the results have been so disastrous that there has been a national sobering since 2008.  Americans voted for a “first” black president, only to see once again that no man ought to be judged by the color of his skin, that character does indeed count and that proven competence counts even more.

This national growing-wiser from painful, rash decisions will affect votes for Palin in ways that may seem unfair.  But are Republican primary voters really going to run out in big numbers to hoist another “first” - the first woman - onto the national ticket?  I just don’t see that happening.  But life is not fair.

Michele Bachmann has enormous appeal as a very conservative female candidate too, but her leadership bona-fides are restricted to a mere 2-1/2 terms in the U.S. House.  Despite having won the Iowa straw poll, and having herself declared the “smart Sarah Palin” by some influential media people, Bachmann’s candidacy has been quickly eclipsed by the very experienced and successful governor of Texas.  The other governor in the race, Mitt Romney, is in 2^nd place.  Governor creds are stacking up as all-important.

Palin’s resume is almost as thin as Bachmann’s.  Being governor of Alaska, the least populous state in the union, with only a little more than 700,000 residents, for a mere 2 years, does not really seem to hold enough weight this time around.  For instance, the single city of Austin, Texas has more residents than the entire state of Alaska.  Would Americans vote for a guy or gal who had nothing real on his/her resume but a resigned position as Mayor of Austin as president?  I don’t think so.   This isn’t 2008.

When Sarah Palin resigned the governorship of Alaska and traded real political office for celebrity status, many of those who still admire her and listen to her on political matters marked her off a list of those they would consider for the job of president.  And Palin’s rather defiant thin-skin seems to many all too similar to Barack Obama’s.  Not a few conservatives have even said that Palin seems the mirror image of Barack Obama - young, charismatic, appealing - but thin on real experience.

I sincerely hope Sarah Palin decides to keep doing the job she has now, which is of huge benefit to conservatives, most especially conservative women.  But if she does decide to run, I believe she will find that popularity will not translate into substantial numbers of real votes among a sober, looking-for-proven-substance electorate.

I might be completely wrong.  Been wrong so many times I lost count at about age 20.  I remain a stalwart admirer of Sarah Palin’s many gifts.  But I can’t help thinking that if even I would not vote for Sarah, how about those who never really warmed to her in the first place?

What we have here is catastrophic failure.  The horrendous costs of this hopey-changey  Obama presidency mount daily.

We well remember candidate Obama’s ‘08 throngs laying in breathless wait for the “Lightworker” to appear and speak as “sort of like God” from his teleprompter on high.  Now, with nearly everything this president has touched lying in shambles, a shrunken Obama whines from town to town, transported in a taxpayer-purchased bus that resembles a big, fat hearse - a perfect symbol for the harbinger of death to our economy that Obama’s presidency has been.

It’s painfully apparent now that we - the American people - were scammed in ‘08 by Barack the Great Bamboozler, in what will be known historically as the most audacious scheme of fraudulent branding the world has ever seen.

I would just love to see a crackerjack team of litigation attorneys put together a class action suit with a dollar amount on both the tangible and intangible “pain and suffering” costs of the Obama presidency.  In fact, if I were a Republican strategist, I would commission a legal team to devise such a case and put it in a PowerPoint presentation for voters by next fall.

The all too apparent costs, of course, are those numbers economists lob forth every day, to a mouths-agape public:

• The staggeringly high unemployment rate - 9.1%, not counting the Americans who have given up looking for work or who are underemployed.
• The still-tumbling housing values, now worse than the Great Depression.
• The inflation indicators, with uncounted sharp inflation in food and gasoline.
• The debt and the deficit, now too big to even fathom without an advanced degree in mathematics.
• The unfunded future liabilities –Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, public worker pensions and the like - not even counted in the debt figure.
• When the S&P downgrade  is thrown into this cliff-hanging mix, our fiscal situation goes from bad to worse to truly the worst state America has ever been in.

But as all litigators worth their salt wind up telling every claims-award jury, the most horrendous costs to victims are those which largely remain hidden from cursory view and are less tangible.  We, the public, recognize this litigious category as “pain and suffering.”

So, on behalf of my fellow Americans, here is my list of the 5 most horrendous hidden costs of the Obama presidency:

5.  President Obama’s pass-the-buck, blame-it-on-the-other-guy, it-was-just-bad-luck example as a no-account “leader” sends a horrible message to our youth — an example so bad that it will reverberate for a generation at incalculable cost.

Well, should we really have expected more from a guy who freely admitted to doing “blow” and smoking “weed,” who never released a single transcript from a single school he attended, who never wrote a law review article, who voted “present” over 130 times as a state legislator and thought listening to hate-whitey political speeches qualified as going to “church”?  Probably not.

But these were the facts intentionally glossed over by fraudulent brander, David Axelrod, and his client, Barack Obama.  These were the facts given short shrift by a mainstream media with tingles up their legs and pants-crease fetishes.  These were the facts hidden from view by the hope, hype, hoopla, glitter, glamor and celebrity poppycock.

When the President of the United States cannot accept responsibility for his own decisions (or lack of them), then he sends a message to every young person in this Country that “the dog ate my homework” is an acceptable excuse for doing nothing.

Yes, the president’s own blame game in his own heralded “new era of responsibility” has become so ubiquitous that Investors Business Daily is waiting for the expectable Obama excuse:  “Bo Ate My Recovery.”  From IBD’s list of already-worn-very-thin Obama excuses we remember the blame targets:  24/7 Bush did it - all of it; ATMs steal jobs; Republicans stole the cookies; businesses that “sit on piles of cash” and refuse to hire are the bad guys; Gridlock like Chinese premier doesn’t have to deal with is killing him; “splintered” media not totally under Obama’s control confuses people.  And, finally, last week, the fallback excuse of no-accounts throughout the ages:  “a run of bad luck.”

The cost to this country for electing a man with the work ethic of character Maynard G. Krebs to the presidency is truly incalculable, not only in terms of work undone and opportunities lost, but also in the message of non-accountability hammered home to a whole generation of American youth.

4.  ObamaCare Lawsuits by more than half the states at a combined hidden cost of thousands of dollars per hour - per hour!

ObamaCare mandates are forcing states to sue to protect their own solvency.  While most of the media attention, of course, is on the unconstitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate, 27 states - more than half of all the states! - are actively entwined in a lawsuit to stop this debt-forcing law from being enacted.  As the Heritage Foundation documents, the future funding forced upon every state in its provisions for Medicaid will quite frankly push many states into either bankruptcy or a shutdown of basic services:

“While Obamacare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years of the law, and 90% of it after that, Obamacare never pays for any of the state administrative costs for adding those 18 million Americans to their welfare rolls. That amounts to billions in unfunded federal mandates for states to absorb. That is why 33 Republican governors signed a letter to the White House and Congress making an emphatic appeal that Obamacare’s Medicaid provisions be repealed.”

Look carefully at the list of states.  They are not all “Red” states.  It’s not political; it’s fiscal.  In fact, 11 of the 27 states suing over Obamacare voted for the president in 2008:  Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington and Nevada.  Harry Reid’s own state - Nevada! — is on the list, having filed suit a mere 2 months after passage of Obamacare.

The point here is that lawsuits are very, very expensive.  And state taxpayers are footing the bill for all of this hidden cost of the Obama presidency.  As the president glibly dismisses the Tea Party with ridicule and says they “ought to be thanking him,” the real costs mount alarmingly.

President Obama thinks he is cute to mock those disputing the constitutionality of his big-bleeping-deal healthcare law.  This week on his campaign bus tour, the president declared that it is fine for folks to call it “Obama cares.”  “I do care,” he affirmed, though failing to mention that he “cares” with other people’s money.   He concluded this folksy little chit-chat with his even-cuter punch line:  “If the other side wants to be the folks who don’t care, that’s fine with me.”  He comes off sounding like the dependent spouse berating the family breadwinner for stinginess when her credit card bills threaten the family with homelessness and starvation.  What a pile of whiny poppycock.  And from the president of the United States.

If President Obama had had an ounce of responsible forethought, he and his cabal of Democrat enablers would have thought the healthcare bill through, but instead they marched on without a care in the world except their highfalutin, shallow claims to “care.”  The cost is already in the billions and that’s before a single act of real “caring” comes to pass.

3.   Obama’s federal regulations, growing like kudzu in uncontrolled, maniacal frenzy, form a stranglehold on American business.

Once again, we turn to Investors Business Daily for the heavy-lifting on Obama’s wretched big government stranglehold.  From John Merline’s detailed  IBD article last week, we learn that one of the very few “businesses” actually booming in Obamaland is the “Regulation” business, which has seen its combined budgets grow by a whopping 16% since 2008.  This meteoric rise in regulatory budgets coincided with a pitiful increase of only 5% in overall economic growth.

Employment at these regulatory government behemoths has grown a staggering 13%, while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6%.

Mr. Merline puts this picture into pitch-perfect perspective for even economics-challenged citizens like me:

If the federal government’s regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.

The obvious take-away from this profoundly disturbing reality is that while McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing create real products/services for real people, and have the added advantage of supporting themselves as opposed to being supported by American taxpayers, the federal regulatory “do it like this” pencil-pushers actually cost us not only their bloated salaries and benefits, they also cost the businesses they regulate billions more dollars every year to ensure “compliance.”  Every dollar spent by business in compliance with federal busybodies’ new rules is a dollar passed on to consumers.

In Obama’s America, big government is running its own protection racket aimed at consumers and taxpayers.  They play; we pay.

2.  The specter of uncertainty stalks every American in the wake of Obama’s Changeopoly Blitzkrieg.

Overwhelming uncertainty has become the ever-present silent partner in every big-ticket spending decision, every business start-up meeting and every hiring discussion in America.  The S&P downgrade was merely saying out loud what all sentient Americans already knew.  The only change Obama brought to Washington was bigger government, higher deficits and less will to get our budget in order than all of his predecessors put together.

My favorite brief summation of business uncertainty came from a new member of Congress, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), speaking to Treasury Secretary Geithner in June:

Overwhelmingly, the businesses back home and across the country continue to tell us that regulation, lack of access to capital, taxation, fear of taxation, and just the overwhelming uncertainties that our businesses face is keeping them from hiring.  They just simply cannot.  (Emphasis added.)

Due to uncertainty as to what cockamamie, economy-killing idea will strike the feds next, consumer confidence is in the tank - at its lowest since President Carter’s infamous “stagflation” years.  These things don’t just happen and no, it isn’t the fault of “bad luck.”

The elephant in the room of all this despair and uncertainty is the president himself.  Everywhere Obama goes with his whiny “me-myself-and-I” excuses tour, it becomes more and more obvious that the president himself is oblivious to real economics, completely out of touch and out of his depth on the real nuts and bolts of American enterprise.  Yet, it is in his own powerful hands that the entire behemoth federal government lies and from his own lips that agencies get their marching orders.  This is a recipe for disaster and the people know it, which is why every homemaker, breadwinner, business owner and entrepreneur has overwhelming uncertainty as his Obamaland unwelcome bedfellow.

1.  The Great Demoralization of America under Obama.

If Barack Obama were a football coach, rather than president, his glaring lack of leadership skills would be contained to a single 100-yard field once a week.  But a president, who thinks highfalutin speechifying substitutes for genuine leadership, has put a pall of demoralization over the entire citizenry, from coast to coast and in every hamlet in between.  The agony of Obama’s defeated economic policies has become a palpable presence throughout the country.

While President and Mrs. Obama have partied hardy, running up exorbitant tabs for such public folderol as useless foreign travel, vacations to Martha’s Vineyard, Hawaii and Spain and celebrity fests at the White House, the American people have become more and more demoralized by the profligate spectacle.  As the President goes from one golf course to another, making light of real Americans’ suffering under the yoke of his own policies, the people have become discouraged, resentful and downright angry.

How much has this ubiquitous “downgrade” in the national psyche cost us in terms of recovery unrealized?  How might the first couple’s putting their “own skin in the game” have helped the Country to get back on our feet?  Boy-oh-boy, would I love to see some zealous lawyers put a price tag on the Great Demoralization factor of this presidency.  It might actually come close to the national debt number.

Oddly enough, Barack Obama presciently explained in his book, The Audacity of Hope, why he should not be elected - though no one in the mainstream media paid attention to it.  Writing on the mess in D.C., Obama declared:

Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives - professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.

President Obama - the lawyer - has proven his own theory beyond all possible measure in his utter failure to actually solve a single problem and in his unwavering insistence upon shackling America’s genuine problem-solvers with overwhelming regulations and class-warfare demagoguery.

In President Obama’s very first meeting with then-minority Republican congressional leaders, efforts at real bipartisanship were met by Obama’s gleeful assertion, “I won.”

And Obama’s thrill of victory has become America’s agony of defeat.

Can anyone anywhere put a dollar figure on this mountainous hidden cost?

I would love to see someone try.  In fact, I’m quite certain that you readers can think of vast uncounted costs I haven’t even thought of.

Now,  what does our Community Organizer in Chief do to quell the roiling flood waters?  He pouts and goes out to play golf at the Vineyard.

Have we actually seen the moment when the real sea of debt began to stop its threatening rise?  In a word, No. In two, hell no.

Obama lied; hope died.

You just can’t put a price tag on so many opportunities lost.

I’m closing this piece with the very best Obama-debt analysis I’ve seen to date.  This video comes from the down-to-earth Political Math genius who explains astronomical numbers to math-challenged people like me.  Don’t deny yourself the opportunity of seeing this National Debt Road Trip in full.  It’s worth your gas - pun fully intended.