Fortune cookies and Mark Udall have more in common than Colorado’s Democrat U.S. Senator might like to admit.
You probably know the juvenile prank of reading the message inside a fortune cookie – like “Now is the time to try something new” – and then adding “. . . in bed” to give it an off-color twist.
Sadly, Udall’s campaign rhetoric is strikingly similar.
The 64-year-old Udall hasn’t had a for-profit job in more than 30 years. But he’s made a political career by telling ordinary Americans that he and his Washington cronies know better than the rest of us about everything from educating our children to the type of vehicle we drive.
Ironically, he says in his campaign commercials that “each of us has the freedom to make our own choices, to live life on our own terms. That you have the right to be an individual.”
If Udall were honest, he would have added “. . . about sex” after each of those clauses because he doesn’t seem to appreciate freedom elsewhere.
Udall is pro-choice in one area – sexuality – but nowhere else. He gives the unborn child absolutely no voice in the decision to end her life, and he now says he’s “evolved” to support gay marriage – now that he’s not afraid it will damage his electability.
How does Udall perform in protecting other freedoms? He’s pathetic.
Bosses, he said, shouldn’t make health care decisions, but he’s quite content to let bureaucrats do it. He voted to take away everyone’s freedom to choose health care coverage that best fits our needs and our budget.
He’s so unconcerned with our Second Amendment rights that the National Rifle Association gave him an “F” four times. He’s voted for restrictions even more severe than those recently passed by Democrats at the State Capitol.
Freedom to choose how we spend the money we earn doesn’t mean much to Udall, either. Instead he prefers to raise our taxes, grow government spending, and dig a deeper debt to deprive our children and grandchildren of the opportunity to realize the American dream.
He regularly surrenders our freedom to choose essential goods and services at affordable prices and does so to satisfy environmental activists, which employed his wife for 20 years. He repeatedly voted to raise the cost of fuel by blocking the Keystone XL pipeline that allow us to get more oil from Canada and less from the Middle East. He also opposed energy exploration in America’s own coastal waters, in Alaska, and on other government-owned land.
He voted to increase our home energy costs by supporting President Obama’s costly “cap and trade” scheme and then voted to allow EPA bureaucrats to impose a similar scheme without congressional approval. Such regulations would drastically increase the cost of manufacturing and drive up the cost of most everything we buy.
He voted to strip workers of their right to a secret ballot in union elections, opening the door to intimidation by union bosses.
He seems to think even less of District of Columbia residents – 51% of whom are black. Udall voted to end D.C. Opportunity Scholarships that allowed low-income kids to escape the worst public schools – a political payoff to teachers unions. He also voted to prevent law-abiding D.C. residents from legally owning a gun.
But Udall is betting that no one cares about those freedoms.
He arrogantly ends his campaign commercial by proclaiming, “No one, not government, not Washington, no one should ever have the power to take those freedoms away.”
That’s right, Senator, and you shouldn’t either because freedom is much broader and more important than your limited understanding of it.