In a recent LA Times article, Seema Mehta  quoted Romney:

“Over the last four years, this president has pushed Republicans and Democrats about as far apart as they can go. And now he and his allies are pushing us all even further apart by dividing us into groups. He demonizes some. He panders to others,” Romney said. “His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then try to cobble together 51% of the pieces.”

And of course there’s Biden:

“Romney wants to—he said in the first hundred days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street! They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

There’s certainly an uncomfortableness in both statements. Technically, both Biden and Romney are pandering. And personally, I haven’t “y’all” from a politician since I moved from Alabama in 2002. But then again, Ryan did discuss the need to ‘unshackle our economy.”  Each candidate panders to the religious. Each candidate wants to make you afraid. Hence, that’s why negative campaigning is all we will ever get.

The sad fact folks are that both campaigns combined have acquired over $198 million dollars (www.opensecrets.org). Let me repeat that, ‘both campaigns combined have acquired over $198 million dollars.”

In the end it’s all about the money. The fictional Senator Bullworth nailed it down:

“Obscenity?

I’m a Senator

I gotta raise $10,000 a day every day I’m in Washington

I ain’t getting it in South Central

I’m gettin it in Beverly Hills

So I’m votin from them in the Senate the way they want me too/ and-and-and I’m sending them my bills

But we got babies in South Central dying as young as they do in Peru

We got public schools that are nightmares

We got a Congress that ain’t got a clue.”

There is an inherent problem in intermingling religion with politics. When an elected official needs $10,000 a day in donations, no politician truly cares about abortion. No politician really cares about education. They say they do, but they never will.

President Obama once said:

“The particular faith that motivates each of us can promote a greater good for all of us. Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what has broken; to lift up those who have fallen on hard times.”

Mr. Obama … “We can only Dream.”