Vote for the Centrist in 2012: Vote for Barack Obama for President on November 6th

In this election the Democrats have the ground game and the small donors.  Many of the right like to say unions but they are only a small part of the total picture.  People from all walks of life, men, women, college students, young, middle age, senior, those from various ethinic backgrounds, minority groups, and religion are out pounding the pavement for Barack Obama because he represents all of us.  For a President who has been demonized so much by the right  being called names and lied about on conservative talk radio and Fox Tabloid News,  I cannot believe he has kept his positive attitude that no matter what he is not going to let it get to him.  I have sat here at my desk and listened to his speeches and so many times I have gone WOW -- his ideas for America are really good.
Thank God I took my GOP blinders off thanks to Romney, RNC, Rove, conservative talk radio, pundits, etc., because I now see a man who only wants what is best for all Americans.  When I saw the interaction between the Obama's and the Bush's at the unveiling of the Bush's official portraits for the White House, I knew for certain that I was on the right track.  I have gone from saying that I will vote for Obama because I cannot stand Romney and what the Republican Party is turning into in this election, to a proud supporter of Obama and a member of Republicans for Obama where I found a home with other disenfranchised Republicans.  First it was the moderates that felt pushed out of the Party but now it is a lot of us who are center right in our thinking they want out.  When I signed onto the site, these paragraph spoke for me:

The Republican party isn't what it used to be. Our leaders and our most vocal activists have written moderates out of the party and have refused to work with the other side, to the detriment of the nation. Center-right presidents such as Reagan, Bush Sr., Ford, Nixon and Eisenhower would have no chance being nominated today. 

Unfortunately, Mitt Romney has not proven to be able to stand up to our party's most extreme elements. Instead, he has fallen for the "one-size-fits-all" mentality that tax cuts for the already-wealthy will solve all of our problems, and has no workable plans to solve the challenges we face. 

President Obama has shown himself to be a common-sense centrist. He has cut taxes when necessary, has taken steps to protect the environment, and has aggressively pursued Islamic extremists who threaten America. Most notably, he has reformed our healthcare system by signing a Republican-inspired healthcare plan into law. In most other points in our party's history, Obama would fit in well as a Republican.

Reading those words made me realize how far hard right the Republican Party had gone.  Today I am not sure it will ever come back to center right as some hard right Republican Tea Party types like Senators DeMint and Rand Paul have vowed to double down on moving even more hard right in the GOP.  After the election,  it will be decision time for many of us including some leaders who are not hard right like Jon Huntsman, Colin Powell, and others from the years of Reagan/Bush.  Former FL Governor Charlie Christ has already made the move to Independent -- will his next step be running as a Democrat for FL Governor to throw out Republican Rick Scott?  Will center right Republicans start to help centrist Democrat candidates in the future?  No one knows, but I can guarantee on thing -- I will never lift one finger to help a hard right Republican win anything ever again.  
Last night was I was watching this football game, I saw someone remark on line about this story.  Was going to look it up this morning but when I logged on a good friend had sent me the story.  It is something that every last Republican should read and realize just how nasty and bigoted  the Republican Party has become.as it moved hard right and supported the 'severely conservative' Mitt Romney in 2012:

The Pulse: The smearing of a president: From start, unrelenting, unfairMichael Smerconish, Inquirer ColumnistPOSTED: Sunday, November 4, 2012, 4:01 AM 

This election has always been a referendum on Barack Obama. For some, not on matters of substance. They can't have it both ways. It's hypocritical to distribute a vicious, false narrative about him while fancying yourself a patriot and a great American. Vilify a sitting president of the United States with fiction and innuendo, and you are neither.

I objected when George W. Bush was the subject of undeserved hyperbolic criticism, but the baseless scorn heaped upon President Obama makes Bush's detractors look diplomatic. The president, the office, and our nation deserve better. 

It's been unrelenting. The day after Obama took office, Rush Limbaugh told Sean Hannity he wanted him to "fail." Later, Glenn Beck called the president a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred of white people." Donald Trump's birtherism took hold while words like socialist were uttered with increased frequency. And a prairie fire of falsehoods spread through the Internet suggesting, among other things, that Obama is a Muslim or refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, paving the way for Dinesh D'Souza's fictionalized "documentary" 2016, which characterized Obama as fulfilling the anticolonial agenda of his father - a man he literally knew for just one weekend! 

Among the usual memes used to undermine the president is the threat of some apocalyptic cataclysm, usually in the form of an assertion of federal power, like the seizing of guns. These predictions demand unthinking acceptance of the notion that the president, like a bizarre Manchurian candidate, is saving his nefarious agenda for a second term that might never arrive. By my count, the website Snopes.com has evaluated and debunked 103 of 124 Internet assertions about Obama. 

Just before Hurricane Sandy hit, Ann Coulter called our sitting president a "retard," Sarah Palin mocked his "shuck and jive shtick," and John Sununu openly questioned Gen. Colin Powell's weighty endorsement as being motivated by race. At least earlier in the campaign there was some effort at camouflage. Such as when Mitt Romney aired an anti-Obama welfare commercial that falsely suggested Obama supported handouts ("They just send you your welfare check") when, in fact, Obama was accommodating requests of several governors, two of them conservative Republicans, to try new ways to put people back to work. A similar sentiment was expressed by Romney when he maligned the 47 percent who don't pay federal income taxes, overlooking that 83 percent of that group are either working and paying payroll taxes or they're elderly.

And, almost daily, there have been dire warnings about Obama, often with sirens, from the Drudge Report. Example: the Sept. 18 edition featuring a hideous picture of Obama (eyes closed) emblazoned with the all-capped quote: "I ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN REDISTRIBUTION," a 14-year-old excerpt that conveniently excised the future president's explicit embrace of "competition" and "marketplace." No wonder I routinely field calls from radio listeners who, with no hint of embarrassment in their voices, say things such as "I call him 'comrade' " or "he's not my president." 

Their best evidence? Obamacare - crafted by the same people who wrote Romneycare. Critics ignore that the Affordable Care Act is premised upon personal responsibility and was born in a right-wing think tank. Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning website of the Tampa Bay Times, called the idea that Obamacare represents a "takeover" of the health-care system the 2010 Lie of the Year. And while some have also labeled the president a "socialist" for signing the $831 billion stimulus, no one ever used such language when Bush acted similarly with the $700 billion TARP.

In the final days, the critics have turned to Benghazi, drilling down on the shifting narrative regarding the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, but ignoring that, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 22, "The CIA was consistent from Sept. 13 to Sept. 21 that the attack evolved from a protest." There's another problem with the criticism. Romney now gets intelligence briefings, too. Perhaps that's why he took a pass on this kerfuffle when Libya was the first question at the final debate.

So why the attention on the recent 9/11? Perhaps to deflect attention from Obama avenging the first 9/11. Most disturbing, the president's critics have sought to diminish that achievement by treating his order as a no-brainer. As a candidate in 2008, Obama was roundly criticized when he said (to me and others) that he would act on intelligence regarding the al-Qaeda leader even if he were in Pakistan. To Bush that was "unsavory." To John McCain that was "naive." Hillary Clinton said this was "a mistake." Joe Biden said Obama "undermined his ability to be tough." And Romney regarded that pledge as "ill-timed" and "ill-considered." Imagine the criticism Obama would have faced if the mission had failed.  

The reality is that there is much to be admired in the president and his rise to power. Replace Kenya with Poland or Germany, and you'd have observers rightly saying that only in this country could such a career path be possible. He is a loving husband and father who, with the first lady, is ably raising two daughters in the glare of the White House. He is an intellectual heavyweight. And his personal ethics have been above reproach.

Real patriots vote for or against candidates based on substance, not smears.   

That last paragraph from Michael Smerconish says it all.  I have added the bold to the article to highlight various parts that jump at you.  Several topics get me the most:  

Libya which Fox Tabloid News is still pushing the lies on Libya for Romney to the stage that anyone who believes what Fox Tabloid News  has to say is not thinking. 

Capture of Bin Laden who now the GOP says it was routine when in the past he had been attacked for never losing site of the fact he wanted Bin Laden sleeping with the fishes which he is today.

Attacks on the President's character and background from Republicans with calling him names, saying he doesn't understand America, or is not American for starters.  Even Romney got in the act on the birth certificate.  Many of the comments you hear are bigoted and an insult to any person who thinks.  

These items speak more about the lack of class from today's hard right GOP then they do about Obama who has weathered all of these attacks with his sense of humor in tact that comes out from time to time:

Also in the Tonight Show interview, Obama made light of Donald Trump's much-hyped offer to donate $5 million to charity if the president released his passport application and college records. The real estate mogul also has championed the "birther" movement, contending that Obama cannot be president because he was born in Kenya. Actually, the president was born in Hawaii. 

On Leno, Obama joked that Trump's beef dates back to when he and Trump grew up together in Kenya. 

"We had constant run-ins on the soccer field," Obama said. "He wasn't very good and resented it. When we finally moved to America, I thought it would be over."

To me that last paragraph says it all about the type of person Obama is that he can take all these hits and come back with a sense of humor.  He not only has my vote and the votes of my family but I can now say:

I wholeheartedly support President Barrack Obama for reelection and will be casting my vote for him on November 6, 2012.