Radio Talk

I was driving back on Sunday afternoon from a wedding between one man and one woman, channel surfing on my car radio, when I landed on a talk show station that had just broadcast a long interview with Mitt Romney. The station had asked Laura Ingraham to do a post-interview analysis of the speech and preview this week’s Republican convention in Tampa. Ingraham, the host informs me, is the most ”listened to” woman on the radio. She got right to the point. The interview, she said, had shown a man of strong principles and deep faith who is comfortable with himself. This humanized Romney could now focus on the state of the economy, a subject his opponent desperately wanted to change. All the Democrats have to offer, she said, is “higher taxes, more aborted babies and gay marriage.” That, she concluded, was not a winning agenda.

Now, I don’t often find myself in agreement with a Fox commentator, but I think she’s onto something. If that’s all Obama’s got, he is in trouble.

As I thought about Ingraham’s trifecta, it occurred to me it was actually the mirror image of the GOP platform, which calls for constitutional amendments on taxes, abortion and marriage. That’s a lot of fundamental changes to a document we are told has been sacrosanct since 1789.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to create a fair tax system that recognizes our obligations to each other and to allow each of us to make personal decisions based on our needs rather than the dictates of the state?