Sad as it may sound for my fellow independent friends, the GOP wants nothing to do with us during this critical California primary season.  Oh, a new law has allowed us to vote for primary candidates among the Democrats and the American Independent Party.  But California Republicans want nothing but GOP purebreds selecting the Republican winner of the February 5 California Primary.

It is never good news for Republicans when they throw off those of us who are independents.  As an independent I am free from using up my weekends on golf courses, I am free from being a cloying disciple of Rush Limbaugh and I actually prefer to take a city bus to work. But those golfing and driving Republicans should understand that if it were not for us independent thinkers and kingmakers, the greatest GOP power brokers in California history would never have conquered the odds against a state vote that has more Democrats than Republicans.

Surely it was our independent vote that made it possible for Thomas Kuchel to become Senate minority whip in the Sixties, and in the same vein it was only our swing votes that brought Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger into the governor’s mansion.  And what do we independents get as thanks for creating these Republican winners?  A shut-out from the California primary and so state independents like me – even very conservative one like me — now have to vote and in our tradition decide the Democrat winner of the California primary.  What a murky business.

Certainly, I would rather vote for McCain, Romney or Giuliani than any of the entered Democrats.  But since I am really only allowed to vote for either Hillary or Obama – with Edwards standing by for protest voters – I will try to beckon the hidden Democratic parts of my soul with the help of this commentary.My first impression is that Obama is a true American gentleman and a very nice man, even if he is an inveterate Democratic liberal.  Curiously, the Clintons have chosen Obama to be the African-American whom they have rendered their most disrespectful public contempt. 

However, I think we all know why that is.  It is clear that the Clintons are now banking on the heavily-populated Latino vote to overcome Obama’s African-American support.  However, the Latino community should be aware that the Clintons would surely seek to destroy any good and decent Latino leader who was blocking their path to the White House as viciously as they are now seeking to dispatch Obama.

I see the current Democratic race as being a classic clash of styles, between the Clintons who have adapted the maligning and whispering style of Nixon, and Obama who reminds me a lot of former Colorado Senator Gary Hart when he ran against Vice President Walter Mondale for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984.  Like the handsome Hart, the handsome Obama speaks kindly and glibly, but not profoundly. 

In 1984, I learned a lot more about what was going on in America from any daily paper than reading all of Hart’s speeches.  Ultimately Mondale defeated Hart by responding to the senator’s repetition of “new ideas” — which greatly resembled Obama’s over use of the word “change” — with the memorable question, “Where’s the beef?”One would think that Obama could be attacked as effectively as was Hart. 

However, the Clintons – who never seem to enjoy anything unless they can be sneaky about it – have instead engaged in a nasty whispering campaign against Obama, as everyone well knows.  Here is how it really works.Someone in the Clinton campaign says something horrible about Obama that raises eyebrows everywhere.  It gets in the news, especially the Horrible Thing that Obama is accused of.  Then when the Obama defenders deny the Horrible Thing, the Horrible Thing gets in the news again glued to Obama’s name.  Then the Clintons fire their campaign official who accused Obama of this Horrible Thing – and again the Horrible Thing gets in the news and this time it is cemented to Obama’s name.

Down the road, the Clintons rehire their malicious campaign worker, which creates another news story that is forced to explain once again why Obama is finally welded to this Horrible Thing. This strategy reminds me of the covert work that Bill Clinton did to create his own prosperity scenery during his administration, which as we have seen actually turned out to be a kind of Ponzi prosperity.Ponzi schemes are usually associated with small-time swindlers who get caught and go to prison. 

Their scheme is to throw investments into an area that has no real hope for consumption, but which hints at success and seems to deliver riches only by drawing more money in from more investors.  Once all the investor money is maxed out with nowhere to go, the Ponzi broker gets out of the picture and the investors are left holding the bag. Bill Clinton did more than hint in a Ponzi style that his global economic policy would produce an American windfall. 

In effect, he created a whispering campaign for Wall Street to listen in on about where his global trade policy was headed.  The whispered message to investors in the Nineties was that China was to release a billion future consumers to the tech products invested in the NASDAQ Composite Index. To amplify this message, Clinton even got into “trouble” getting too close to Chinese tech financiers. 

However, the Clintons know that when ordinary people get into trouble, they are usually destroyed, but “getting into trouble” for the Clintons has usually meant that their strategies get enhanced.Like all Ponzi schemes, the Nineties build-up in the NASDAQ Index stocks finally collapsed when the investment had no where to go and investors were maxed out of cash for more investments.

China clearly was not about to become an American market, but instead America has become a market for Chinese leaden toys and toxic pet food. The Americans whom Bill Clinton injured the worst with his China policies were the working poor and the lower middle class.  America was suffering only from a mild recession when the Clintons came to power in 1993.  They left in their wake a poorer America with millions of people finally unable to afford even a simple shelter and retired people whose 401K pensions have disappeared with the crash of NASDAQ-driven mutual funds. And so we independents who are now forced by California state law to choose between Obama and the Clintons do not feel the same way about this race as either Republicans or Democrats. 

All the two parties seem to care about is winning.  I am more concerned about the long-term effects of the malicious whispering campaign the Clintons have been waging against Obama, who is perhaps the most important elected African-American in history.   Truly, we independent thinkers have seen where those Clinton whispers have led to in the Nineties.So I’m voting for Obama in this primary.  Shut out from the candidates whom we would normally vote for, at least we conservative independents can prove ourselves useful by voting for an end to the Bill and Hillary dog and pony show.

Chris Sharp                                                                                                                                             Commentary

Photo by Stephanie Sharp

Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon