CHICAGO, November 24, 2011 –It’s the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and, in homes across the country, Americans are just now recovering from the festivities. On Thursday, Americans drowned their economic woes in dishes of sweet potatoes, platters of once gobbling turkeys, and pumpkin pies laced with whipped cream.

They’re just now starting to come out of the tryptophan-induced mellowing that is Thanksgiving. They’re starting to pile back into their cars, buses, trains, and planes after gathering with their families in celebration.

Gathering to remember what America still means and to give thanks for what we have.

Unfortunately, for many Americans, that means a lot less than last year and the year before and the year before that.

But this Thanksgiving is significant in another important respect: this could be Barack Obama’s last official Thanksgiving as President of the United States.

By November 6, 2012, Obama could be a lame duck president. By November 2013, someone else could be pardoning those presidential turkeys. And, over the years, this president has had quite a few of those. Someone else could be celebrating Thanksgiving dinner with friends, family, and various Solyndra VIPs. Some other First Lady - an Ann Romney, Callista Gingrich or a Gloria Cain - could be finalizing the White House holiday decorations.

But that is not the only reason we, as Americans, would be thankful.

If Mitt Romney is elected President, Americans would be thankful for a president who actually understands the free market and values it. They would be thankful for a president with a proven track record of success in private business – his net worth is $250 million - and chief executive experience as a governor of Massachusetts to lead us out of the financial mess we are in. Romney would see Barack’s Harvard law degree and raise him an MBA. Notwithstanding the failure of the Occupy Wall Street movement, America could use a Chairman of the Board about now.

We would be thankful for a President who would never apologize for America to Europe or anyone else. Who would never say– as President Obama did during his European tour at the beginning of his presidency – that America “has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward Europe. This time next year, Americans would be thankful for a President who believes with all his mettle that America is indeed exceptional and that it should stay that way. Who would never say, as President Obama did during his tour of France in 2009, that he believed in the concept of American exceptionalism in the same way the “Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, there is nothing exceptional about America – except in the delusional American mind. We are all the same. If no one country is no better than the other, then why strive to be more? If “exceptional relativism” exists, President Obama has certainly made the case for it and that is not something we should be thankful for.

If Newt Gingrich is elected President, Americans would be thankful for the former House Speaker’s grasp of foreign and domestic policy. Formulating public policy, understanding its consequences, and navigating it through Congress has been Gingrich’s stock in trade.

Over twenty years plus years as a legislator, Gingrich’s aggressive style earned him both friends and foes inside and outside the Beltway. But with congressional gridlock threatening America’s economic stability, leadership is needed and President Obama has been noticeably absent.

Even the President’s most passionately biased defenders have criticized his lack of leadership on critical issues such as the debt ceiling and the super committee failure. President Obama used to give MSNBC’s Chris Matthews a thrill up his leg but no more. Just last week, Matthews complained, “I hear stories (from members of Congress) that you will not believe. Not a single phone call since the last election.” That isn’t leadership.

But a President Gingrich, with his demonstrated hands-on management style, would be calling and lobbying members of Congress. Americans would be thankful that the Commander-in-Chief wasn’t another Turkey-in-Chief.

But if any of the GOP presidential candidates were elected President – Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachman, or Rick Perry – Americans would be thankful that their president understands the fundamental concept of responsible governing. That it isn’t about golf, photo ops, teleprompters, or misusing taxpayer-funded Air Force One for a date night or for a lavish trip to Spain for the First Family. That it isn’t about having your energy secretary, Steven Chu, sign off on $535 million in risky taxpayer-funded loans to Obama contributors like George Kaiser and their failed solar companies.

Americans would be thankful that their new President understands that the Washington Way shouldn’t be the Chicago Way.

Americans would be thankful that we aren’t Greece and that we finally have a president that wants to make sure we will never be Greece. A President who would never try to junk America’s tried and true capitalist system and replace it with a failed European socialist one. A president that understands that you just can’t spend and spend and borrow your way to prosperity. That this is not the American way and never will be.

That would truly be something to be thankful for.

Conservative satirist and commentator William J. Kelly is also a contributor to Breitbart.com and edits the Tea Party Reports for the Washington Times Communities. He is a native from Chicago’s Southside.

Email questions to him at williamjkellyrebuild@gmail.com.

Find him on Facebook/Williamjpkelly

Read more of Bill Kelly’s Truth Squad in The Communities at the Washington Times.

 

 

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