ABOUT US  • COLUMNISTS   NEWS/EVENTS  FORUM ORDER FORM RATES MANAGEMENT CONTACT

Herman

Cain

 

 

Read Herman's bio and previous columns

 

August 25, 2008

Counting Houses . . . and Adding Up the Real Elitists

 

If not knowing how many houses your family owns is being an elitist, then the amount of attention John McCain got from the media over this memory lapse is bull-feathers. This is just another chapter in the mainstream media’s class-warfare playbook.

 

Fortunately for the John McCain presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate will dominate the weekend news, and the Democratic National Convention this week in Denver will feed the political junkies right up to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul next week.

 

The real attention to elitism should be a U.S. senator’s selection of another U.S. senator as his vice-presidential running mate. An Obama/Biden ticket is no JFK/LBJ combination of 1960. If John McCain also selects a U.S. senator as his running mate, then the inside-the-Beltway mentality will be the political equivalent of the Great Wall of China.

 

Instead of keeping our enemies out, four U.S. senators seeking to run the country would make it harder for the will of the people to find its way in. You see, the U.S. Senate has long been viewed as an elite club. John McCain has been there for more than 20 years and Joe Biden for more than 30 years.

 

But McCain has not revealed his choice for VP yet, so let’s wait and see. I may have to write about McCain’s choice next week. Let’s hope not.

 

The real elites are not people who can not remember how many houses they own, but the people who share Obama’s and Biden’s views for more taxes on the rich, bigger government, socialized health care in the U.S. and windfall profit taxes on big corporations that make money.

 

The last time I attended one of the three corporate boards on which I serve, thankfully, the objective of making money had not changed. If it had changed, then where would the government get more than $1 trillion a year to spend and redistribute?

  

The answer: Borrow more from the Chinese and other countries by selling more U.S. Treasury notes. This is a big part of our nation’s economic problems, and a growing threat to our national security.

 

Class envy is the desire to have what someone else has without working for it. Class jealousy is wishing someone else did not have what they own, because you are not about to work that hard. Class warfare is consistently feeding the flames of envy and jealousy, which is a classical Democratic election theme that plays well to a lot of people.

 

Look for a lot of that rhetoric at the DNC. Count on it.

 

The class warfare grenade lobbed at John McCain started when the media wanted his wife, Cindy McCain, to release her tax returns. To her credit, she released them in order to avoid a distraction for her husband’s presidential campaign.

 

The media then confirmed that Cindy McCain and, thus, John McCain are “rich”. Woo hoo! Now they are counting houses.

 

If any of John McCain’s staff is reading this article, please give him a cheat sheet on the price of a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. I know those questions are coming, because they are in the earlier chapters of the class warfare playbook.

 

Of course, the major mainstream media outlets will want you to think that John McCain is out of touch with the mainstream public by not immediately knowing the answers to those questions and remembering how many houses his family owns. But what it really shows is how some reporters are out of touch with most people’s common sense.

 

They think we are stupid, but not that stupid.

 

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

 

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

 

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

 
This is Column # HC125. Request permission to publish here.
Op-Ed Writers
Eric Baerren
Lucia de Vernai
Herman Cain
Dan Calabrese
Alan Hurwitz
Paul Ibrahim
David Karki
 
Llewellyn King
Gregory D. Lee
David B. Livingstone
Nathaniel Shockey
Stephen Silver
Candace Talmadge
Jamie Weinstein
Feature Writers
Mike Ball
Bob Batz
The Laughing Chef
David J. Pollay
Business Writers
Cindy Droog
D.F. Krause