Conventional wisdom

Today the GOP's convention nominating Mitt Romney as the party's presidential candidate was supposed to start. Mother Nature in the form of Hurricane Isaac says otherwise. But in the end it doesn't matter. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will be nominated and continue to complain about anything negative coming out of the Democrats' camp while churning out their own buckets of political vitriol. The latest is that the Democrats are using GOP senate candidate Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comment to stir up discontent among women. As if the comment itself didn't do that! And as if Akin's views are not exactly the views espoused in the GOP 2012 platform and by at least one of the candidates himself.
Yes, the presidential race is almost always decided by the economy. The terms "vote your pocketbook" and "are you better off than you were?" and even "it's the economy, stupid." are all indelible indications that the jobless rate, poverty rate, and inflation rate carry more weight in the voting booth than any other factor. Honestly, I know of quite a few businesses who have been doing very well lately, but it's hard to know just how much of the rhetoric they will believe over their own bottom line. Because, reducing regulations doesn't increase employment. Nor does reducing taxes on the wealthy. The only thing that increases employment  --the ONLY thing-- is increased demand.

In the end though, we are choosing the direction of more than just the economic philosophy we want our country to go. We are choosing, in November whether or not we want to live in a country that offers a safety net to the poorest among us, that offers health care to all its citizens, that sees a woman's body as her own about which she alone should make the medical decisions, that embraces free speech for its citizens but not its corporations, that embodies the principle of "for to whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required," that sees all its citizens as equals in rights and privileges.