The Political Year That Was Saturday Political Soap Box 49

It's almost over!  2012 has rolled through and left things....pretty close to the same!

We watched a parade of Republican candidates take the forefront of the Presidential race, only in the end for the bulk of Republicans say, "Well, great!  I guess it's gonna have to be Romney."  The hatred of President Obama was so great that even those who had a great distaste for Romney set it aside and convinced themselves that he would be an alternative to the President that Independents and marginal Democrats would accept.

The President himself, never really seemed to be in danger at anytime in the year, except for one really bad debate.  Yes, the economy was not recovering fast enough, but it was beginning to dawn on people that that was due as much to Republican obstructionism as it was anything else.

Obamacare survived it's greatest challenges.  The Supreme Court upheld it.  The voters returned the President and others who had voted for it.  The remaining challenge comes from foot-dragging Governors and legislatures coming form Republican dominated states.  And they are not eliminating Obamacare - just turning more setup responsibility of the exchanges to the federal government. Forgive me, but to me it represents an unprecedented level of stubborn stupidity.

Mitt Romney (yes, I have to say it one more time - the Mittbot) proved to be an incredibly inept candidate.  Every time it seemed like he could shake his image of being an out of touch plutocrat, he would say something mammothly stupid, like the 47% remark.  And then he picked probably the most dangerous selection for Vice President in American history (and given Cheney and Palin - that's saying a lot), Paul "Ayn Rand" Ryan.It confirmed in many voter's minds that yes indeed, Republicans wanted to shred the social safety net and eliminate Medicare and Social Security.

At the Senate level, in almost every election  the tea party extremist lost to the more moderate opposition.  You would think, by now, it will have sunk into Republicans that the outside of conservatively gerrymandered Congressional districts that Tea Party  don't hunt!  Ergo, there was less change at the House lever due to the brutal gerrymandering that has been done, but we did lose Allen West (thank God!) and regain Alan Grayson (huzzah!).

Republican dominated states continued to do insane things, like making Michigan a right-to-work state.  But the general trend has been for people to wake up, smell the extremism, and move away from it.

We stand at the edge of a tea-party driven, artificial fiscal cliff.  I pray that we find a way out of this lunacy.  But there again, I don't think the Republicans are doing themselves in favors by their extremism.

There has been shift in attitude towards sensible gun control, and there is some hopes of some hope that things will be done in this area in 2013.  It is just one of the things we need to do to help us back away from the violent precipice we teeter on.

What were your political highlights (or lowlights) of the year?