Calm down, conservatives

Through our nation’s 232 years of existence, America has survived wars, depression, overthrow attempts, Nazism, communism, fascism and threats of nuclear annihilation.

I think we can survive Obama.

I am conservative, and I am against Obama’s policies, but I think we need to put Obama’s election into perspective and look beyond his image.

His policies on many issues are not as extreme as they are made out to be.

There is no doubt that his health care, energy and tax policies are bad and that they will hurt America, but Obama has always been able to project a much more radical image than his policies suggest. It’s not his policies that cause so many people to hate Obama. His policies cause people to dislike him, but it’s his image that causes outright disdain.

It’s his arrogant claim to change the world. His pompous campaign art. His messianic cult, otherwise known as “the ones we have been waiting for.”

It’s his grandiose speeches. The videos of children pushed to sing “Obama Youth” songs. His socialistic calls for the government to “look after not only ourselves, but each other.”

Obama doesn’t really live up to his flashy marketing campaign though.

He isn’t much more of a socialist than Bill Clinton.

He will return the top tax rate to 39.6 percent, the same level it was under Clinton.

He claims he wants to pull out of Iraq, but his policy there is no different than President Bush’s.

His own Web site says he will remove combat troops by the summer of 2010 and leave a residual force there. The Bush administration has already planned to remove combat troops by 2011.

On energy, Obama has told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial staff, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, energy rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

McCain also proposed a cap-and-trade bill in Congress earlier this year and continues to support the plan on his Web site.

Will Obama actually end up enacting a policy that causes energy prices to skyrocket?

All three presidential candidates missed the vote on the divisive bill this June. It didn’t pass and was never brought up for vote again.  The bill failed even before the economic crisis forced Obama to admit some of his policies might not be affordable.

Still, his policies are economically hurtful regardless of whether they include the cap-and-trade. His government mandates on businesses for health care  will result in job losses and continue to slow the economy. His tax increases on corporations and capital gains will stifle investments. But this is nothing we have not weathered in the past.

We survived the gasoline rationing of the 1970s and the 18 percent inflation rates.

The 100-point net gain registered in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1970 to 1980 was followed by a 1,900-point net gain from ’80 to ’90.

Remember conservatives, after each Jimmy Carter, there’s a Ronald Reagan.