After breakfast at Bob Evans, we’ll head to one of the sites for early voting.

Then, after months of waiting, we’ll be able to tune out all of the negative ads and spinmeisters being interviewed on television.

It’ll be a freeing feeling, I’m sure. (I know that was the case when we did early voting in 2008.)

Throughout my life, I have intensely followed presidential elections. From Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey in 1968 to Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama in 2012, some races have been more exciting than others.

For me, elections are not life and death.

Never have been, never will be.

As the saying goes, you play the cards you’re dealt.

Americans don’t seem as willing to adapt these days. Our enemies must be loving our selfish behavior — it’s straight from the “divide and conquer” playbook.

I’ve voted for third-party candidates in the past (John Anderson in ’80 and Ross Perot in ’92), but I’m going mainstream this time.

Three days out, though, I still don’t know if I’ll be voting for Romney or Obama.

Perhaps my recent “tweet” on Twitter will explain:

“For the first time in my voting lifetime, I like all four major-party candidates (president and vice president) and have no real preference.”

Some people will find that hard to believe.

Just like some find it hard to believe I don’t have a favorite baseball or football team.

Oh, I’ve had presidential preferences in the past — strong preferences a few times — but not this year. I’ll be OK with either one.

Again, you play the cards you’re dealt. Too many Americans on the losing end of an election want to take their ball and go home.

Country is right after God and family, right? Political parties would be way down the list.

Romney has positive attributes, and so does Obama. Likewise, each has negative attributes.

As I’ve said many times, I can’t stand partisan politics. Mainly because extremists in both parties demonize their opponent. Look no further than the letters to the editor to see what I mean.

In Indian River County, I’m considered liberal — some have even called me a “flaming liberal.” I can only laugh, as it proves everything is relative.

Ask me who were the two best presidents of my lifetime, and I’ll tell you Ronald Reagan (a Republican) and Bill Clinton (a Democrat).

Ask me who were the two worst presidents of my lifetime, and I’ll tell you Jimmy Carter (a Democrat) and George W. Bush (a Republican).

Obama is in the middle of the pack. For now.

In 2008, Obama won Florida and scored a convincing victory nationally. However, he received only 42 percent of the vote in Indian River County.

He’ll be lucky to hit 42 percent in ’12. That’s just the way it is here.

From my perspective, respecting those with a differing view is one of the responsibilities we have as American citizens.

Which reminds me of a call I received earlier this month after writing a column about Shannon Roberts. She is a Democrat running against incumbent Bill Posey, a Republican, and Richard Gillmor, an independent, for the District 8 seat in the U.S. House.

The woman who called was quite perturbed with what I wrote. She took great delight in trying to belittle me. She said what I wrote was “a front-page ad for Democrats.”

Seriously?

Yes, she was serious.

No one in her circle of friends likes me, she explained. I must say, she was rather snooty about it.

“Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” she asked.

Of course, she never identified herself. (Thanks to our Caller ID system, I knew her name and her phone number.) I’m sure she was proud of herself when she hung up the phone.

It’s been a few years since anyone told me to go back to where I came from.

All because I wrote about a Democratic congressional candidate.

Yeesh.

By the way, please don’t ask me who I voted for — because I’m not going to tell you. I won’t ask you, either.

Deal?

Russ Lemmon is a columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. This column reflects his opinion. Contact him at 772-978-2205 or russ.lemmon@scripps.com. He will appear on WTTB 1490 AM’s “Morning Magazine” at 8:50 a.m. Friday.

The majority of American Jews have been voting Democratic for some eighty years, often overwhelmingly so. Before each national election the Republicans try to break the pattern, and pundits wonder whether this time it will be different. Up to now it hasn’t.

AJC, the nonpartisan Jewish advocacy organization that has tracked Jewish voting behavior for more than three decades, used a new approach this year. Besides its usual survey of a national sample of American Jews, it also polled representative samples of Jews in two crucial swing states, Florida and Ohio, where the Jewish vote could make a difference in a close election. The surveys, conducted in September, asked not only about voting preferences, but also measured President Obama’s approval ratings in the Jewish community and gauged Jewish attitudes on the key issues of the day. A separate AJC survey was conducted earlier, during the summer, of Russian Jewish voters in metropolitan New York, containing some differently worded questions. All surveys are available at www.ajc.org.

The AJC data suggest that nationally Jews continue to favor the Democrats by a wide margin, 65 percent reporting that they will vote for President Obama, 24 percent for Governor Romney, and the rest undecided. The support for Obama is consistent among all age groups, and Jewish women tend to be more pro-Obama than men. Ohio Jews split roughly along the same lines as the national sample, 64-29 percent for the president.

In the other swing state, Florida, Obama did even better, attracting 69 percent of the Jewish vote as against 25 percent for Romney.

In the national and both state surveys, more Jews approve than disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, health care, national security, U.S.-Israel relations and other issues, and believe that the Democrats are more likely to make the right decisions about those issues than the Republicans. The great majority of respondents say that the economy and healthcare are the most important issues in deciding who to support for president.

Still, more than 90 percent in all three surveys are concerned over the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. And, reflecting deep pessimism over the situation in the Middle East, the percentage of Jews who think that prospects for Arab-Israeli peace have risen in the past year languished in the single digits in all the surveys.

However, there are two Jewish subgroups that appear to diverge from the majority-Democratic consensus—Orthodox Jews and Russian Jews. While the Ohio and Florida samples do not contain enough Orthodox respondents to draw any conclusions, the national survey shows Romney beating Obama by 54 percent to 40 percent among the Orthodox. The edge for the Republican is also reflected in the president’s high unfavorable ratings in the Orthodox community on each of the issues.

Although it was held earlier in the year and hence includes many more “undecided” responses — 41 percent — than the other surveys, AJC’s survey of Russian Jewish New Yorkers similarly favored Romney over Obama, 47 percent to 12 percent. This was consistent with the last two presidential elections, when a majority of Russian Jews also favored the Republican candidates.

Barring any October surprise, then, Jewish voters will in all likelihood give the bulk of their support to the Democrats, as in presidential elections past.

Yet there are signs that this political tradition might erode over time. The Orthodox tendency to maintain high levels of Jewish affiliation and to have more children than other American Jews—characteristics clearly evident in the recent demographic survey of the Jews of New York City—portend a far greater voice for Orthodoxy in the Jewish community, and together with the steady integration of Russian Jews into American Jewish life, may eventually change the political profile of American Jewry.

Brian D. Lipton is the executive director of the West Coast Florida chapter of the American Jewish  Committee.

1. There were no knock-out blows delivered during this debate, but neither were there any gaffes.  It was a solid and mistake-free performance by both Obama and Romney.

2. Both candidates showed themselves, as expected, to be skilled debaters with an impressive command of the issues.  The debate was a non-stop resuscitation of facts and figures on the economy, healthcare, and deficit.

3. There were a number of significant differences between the candidates on the issues and the disagreements were heated.  However, they never became personal.  The disagreements remained focused on the issues.  Romney, however, was the clear aggressor and he did have the President on the defensive much of the evening.

4. We are likely in the very same position we were in before the first debate.  It is still a tight race with Obama likely retaining his slight edge in the polls in swing states. Nevertheless, Romney did himself a favor with a strong performance, which may help bring some of the undecided voters his way.

5. Both men will have the same charge going into the second debate that they had going into the first debate: Avoid a serious gaffe and appeal to the remaining undecided voters in the middle of the political spectrum.  The only difference is that the onus is now on the President to come out stronger and more passionate in the second debate and Mitt Romney has less time remaining with which to make his case.

Robert Watson, Ph.D. has published 34 books on American politics and history and is Professor and Coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University, site of the third/final presidential debate of 2012

President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney offer vastly different visions for turning around the economy and putting Americans back to work.

Q: What is the state of the U.S. economy?

A: The economy is showing signs of improvement, albeit slowly. The country has seen 23 consecutive months of jobs growth that resulted in the creation of some 3.2 million jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that is still a far cry from replacing the 7.9 million jobs lost during the Great Recession.

Despite the job gains, the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high. The jobless rate hasn’t fallen below 8 percent since January 2009. In August, the most recent month for which figures are available, unemployment stood at 8.1 percent nationally.

What’s more, many of the jobs lost during the recession have been replaced by those paying $13.83 per hour or less, according to the National Employment Law Project. Some 60 percent of the jobs lost during the recession paid hourly wages between $13.84 and $21.13, yet 58 percent of the jobs recovered since 2010 have been low-wage jobs, the project said.

In another sign of the slow economic recovery, the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced that median household income in 2011 had fallen to $50,054, a 1.5 percent decline from the year before.

Q: What is President Barack Obama’s plan to improve the economy?

A: Obama has offered the $447 billion American Jobs Act, which he says will put Americans back to work without increasing the federal deficit. The plan includes a combination of tax cuts and incentives for employers, such as cutting in half the taxes that businesses pay on their first $5 million in payroll and offering tax credits of up to $5,600 to encourage the hiring of unemployed veterans and $9,600 for the hiring of unemployed workers with disabilities.

The plan also calls for modernizing at least 35,000 public schools across the country and pumping money into roads, rail, airports and other infrastructure projects. In addition, the package includes a number of proposals to help Americans looking for jobs, such as requiring states to come up with more rigorous re-employment services for the long-term unemployed and giving states more money to help those workers start their own businsses.

Q: What is Mitt Romney’s plan to improve the economy?

A: Romney initially offered a 59-point jobs plan but recently boiled it down to five points that he says will create 12 million jobs over the next four years. The package focuses on making the United States energy independent, improving jobs skills, opening up new opportunities for international trade, cutting the federal deficit and reducing regulations on small businesses.

Specifically, Romney wants to: allow for more oil and gas drilling off the nation’s shores and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, provide more affordable higher-education options, open up new markets for American goods and services, curtail the unfair trade practices of countries like China, cap federal spending below 20 percent of the economy and reduce the taxes and bureaucratic red tape that he says burden small businesses.

Q: What is the “fiscal cliff”?

A: That refers to a one-two punch to the economy that could occur next January when $109 billion in automatic cuts to the federal budget are slated to take effect and tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush are scheduled to expire.

The mandatory budget cuts were set in motion last year when a congressional “super committee” failed to agree on a deficit reduction plan, triggering automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. The first round of cuts total $109 billion and will kick in next January unless Obama and Congress reach a deal to stop them.

If the cuts take effect, the White House says millions of dollars will be slashed from federal programs such as Medicare, farm price supports, national parks, food safety, border patrol and many others.

Economists warn the spending cuts and the end of the Bush tax cuts could push the country back into recession.

– Michael Collins is a reporter with the Scripps Howard News Service

The ol’ paratrooper got our liberal friends in a bit of a huff recently when, while speaking at a town hall in Jensen Beach, he said “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party … it’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

Other than finding out that the local Whole Foods is out of quinoa, nothing gets a liberal more hysterical than being called a Communist.

Just how pink is most of the left wing of the modern Democrat Party? To steal a line from Richard Nixon, pretty much down to their underwear. After all, as the well-known aphorism goes, communists are simply just “liberals in a hurry.”

Consider a few of the Ten Pillars of Communism from Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party: “2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax … 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance … 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State … 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State … 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State.”

That’s pretty much the legislative program the Democrats have tried to pass since they took over Congress in 2007, not to mention putting the state in control of health care. And rest assured that if Marx had written his Manifesto in 1948 instead of 1848 that nationalized health care would have been included in his list.

Also of particular note is the Obama campaign trotting out “Forward” as its new slogan. As the Washington Times notes, the word has a “long and rich association with European Marxism … Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name ‘Forward!’ or its foreign cognates … The slogan ‘Forward!’ reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.”

Indeed, Friedrich Engels and Leon Trotsky used to write for Vorwärts, the official daily of Germany’s Social Democratic Party. “Vorwärts” is German for “forward.” Even East Germany named the official soccer club of the National People’s Army “ASK Vorwärts Berlin.” Vladimir Lenin also got in on the game, founding a publication called Vpered. Roughly translated, “vpered” means “New York Times.”

And would it surprise you that the grass-roots movement of the Democrat Party, those infantile mouth breathers known as Occupy Wall Street, planned a day of public protest on May Day, the high holy day of Soviet Communism? Where the Russkies were content to do laps around Red Square, parading their armored columns and missiles in front of the general secretary, the Garbage Pail Kids intended to make your life miserable through a “general strike,” pretty laughable since most of that motley crew is unemployable.

At its core, what Col. Allen West said at that town hall meeting was true: Many of his House and Senate Democrat colleagues are sympathetic to the substance of Marxism. Read the Manifesto, then check the voting records and statements of the members of the CPC. You won’t find a lot of daylight between them. There is certainly more in common between the CPC and Marx, Trotsky and Lenin than there is between the CPC and James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

West should be applauded twice: Once for bringing this discussion to the national stage, and again for not backing down despite the hysterical animadversions of those on the Left. Unlike most politicians who speak in euphemisms, West isn’t afraid to call things as he sees them, nor is he averse to dropping the gloves when need be.

This is exactly what I’m looking for in a congressional representative, and I’m proud that Allen West is going to represent our district.

Tim Benson, Jensen Beach, is a member of the Martin County Republican Executive Committee. Email: Bence851@gmail.com

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/may/14/timothy-benson-democrats-in-congress-have-much/

by Robert Watson/FLDemocracy2012.com contributor

Blog 5: Making Sense of South Carolina

Here are five quick “take-away” points fromSouth Carolina’s primary:

1. They say thatSouth Carolinians know how to pick `em. Ever since 1980, the winner of the Republican Primary in the Palmetto State has gone on to capture the Republican presidential nomination… a point not lost on Newt Gingrich (or Mitt Romney).

2. On the other hand, Romney’s second-place finish is not surprising. In 2008, he came in an embarrassing fourth place in South Carolina, losing to John McCain (who ended up claiming the party’s nomination), Mike Huckabee, and even the hapless Fred Thompson. A majority of those who vote in the state’s Republican Primary are evangelicals and are very conservative. Romney is neither. TheDeep Southwas never supposed to be his stronghold. But he will need to do better in Dixie if he hopes to win the nomination. Plus, any Republican nominee needs a clean sweep of the South in general elections in order to win the White House.

3. Part of the story was the “other” candidates. Ron Paul did well in Iowa and New Hampshire, and, with his loyal libertarian base, he expects to get his 20% in every state. However, he failed to hit his mark inSouth Carolina. Likewise, Rick Santorum has only one play in his playbook, having built his entire career around so-called conservative values issues (anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage). Yet, in one of the most evangelical, conservative states in the country he failed to hit 20%. Another poor showing inFloridafor these two candidates and it is a two-way race.

4. Speaking of which, Gingrich would like nothing more than to make this a two-way race. Romney is the lone moderate in the game but Gingrich had to spend the last year sharing time with a field full of conservatives. As the field has thinned, Gingrich is able to be the only option for these candidate-less conservatives (and their money) as well as the sizeable “anyone but Romney” faction of the party. At the same time, Gingrich’s strength is his debating. When there were eight candidates he had to share the stage and settle for perhaps two short questions per night, which made it hard to get into his rhythm or make a pitch for votes. But with only four (and soon perhaps less) candidates debating, the dynamic changes and advantages Gingrich. Smaller debates allow for direct exchanges and the former Speaker of the House, who is bombastic and plays to the “movement” crowd, makes mincemeat out of Romney, who is awkward on stage and has never been accused of making an emotional connection with his audience.

5. The results of the three early contests have made for the perfect storm going into Florida. As I stated several times on WPTV, it was likely that no one candidate would win all three early contests. Sure enough,Iowaended up going toSantorum,New Hampshireto Romney, andSouth Carolinato Gingrich. So, Florida is set up to be the kingmaker. It is the first mega-state and will thus test the candidate’s ability to organize statewide and reach large Latino, Jewish, and senior voting groups. Florida is the first winner-take-all state (there is no second-place as far as the Sunshine State is concerned) and will help one of these candidates get the critical momentum and money going into February’s full primary calendar and the crowded “Super Tuesday” vote in early March!

Robert Watson, Ph.D. is Professor and Coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University and has published 34 books on American politics and history.

One of the reasons McCain beat Romney in Florida in 2008 was the Latino vote. Whereas McCain won over 50 percent of Florida’s Latino vote, Romney managed a paltry 15 percent. McCain did what Romney did not do – he picked up the endorsements of key Latino/a leaders such as Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the powerful Diaz-Balart brothers and was visible in the Spanish-speaking media in Florida.

 Florida will again be one of the most important states on the road to the Republican nomination. Consequently, Romney has wisely been prioritizing the Latino vote. He picked up the endorsements of the three leaders who backed McCain in 2008, he is focusing on Latino media outlets, and has used one of his sons (who is fluent in Spanish) to warm up audiences in south Florida.

 Romney will need to win the Latino vote if he is to beat Newt Gingrich in Florida and secure the Republican nomination. Moreover, the Latino vote may also prove to be the key next November. In 2008, the Democrats won the Latino vote nationally by a two-to-one margin but that advantage has disappeared… especially in Florida. In 2010, for instance, Rick Scott managed to win 50 percent of the Latino vote, which helped him win Florida’s governorship, and he did so despite being one of the most anti-immigration candidates in the country. The Latino vote is in play and whichever candidate wins it is likely to win Florida and perhaps the White House.

(Robert Watson, Ph.D. is Professor and Coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University and the author/editor of 34 books on American politics and history).

The year 2012 marks the 56^th quadrennial presidential election, and it is sure to be a real barnburner! This election cycle features some very stark differences among the presidential candidates as well as those running for Congress in terms of their vision for the country, political ideology, and even in matters of temperament and style. Also, with a shaky economy at home and countless international crises – Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, the trade deficit, climate change, years of shameful outsourcing, conflict in the Mideast, and more – the outcome of this election will matter for years to come. Add to that the fact that the nation is more bitterly divided at home than perhaps any time since the Civil War, and the United States finds itself at a crossroads politically.

 The 2012 election will likely be the most expensive, one of the nastiest, and one of the most important in history. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone scripting a more intriguing election than this one. I look forward to blogging over the coming months and hope you find both my blog and this website to be helpful resources during Campaign 2012.

(Robert Watson, Ph.D. is Professor and Coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University and the author/editor of 34 books on American politics and history).