After too many Republican debates to recall in a political season that has yet to see the first primary votes cast, only one campaign strategy has emerged with clarity…no serious discussion of the issues is forthcoming.

Nor does it seem likely that this will change in the Presidential campaign once the Republicans have named a nominee and President Obama has entered the discussion.

Either because the nation is so divided that solutions of any stripe are broadly panned, or because the solutions require pain for the voters that the candidates are unwilling to risk stating, truth is going to be an early victim here.

We cannot sustain our current debt and deficit.

Either we must cut the costs of government programs, eliminate some programs, and shrink the purpose of government, or we must pay for the services we need and value. The third alternative is to do some or both, cutting and paying, an alternative a majority of Americans favor in poll after poll.

But Republicans don’t discuss the paying part and Democrats won’t discuss the spending part, so there is no national dialogue moving towards a solution.

We cannot solve our Immigration policies by having no policy.

Conservatives argue the Rule of Law, if you are here illegally, even for 30 years, you must be expelled from America.

Liberals argue that justice and compassion must infuse any solution and casting our 12 million, mostly Hispanic aliens, is simply not reasonable or responsible.

Instead of attempting to reconcile these positions our elected officials have determined to do nothing, leaving the Border States conflicted about solutions.

We cannot solve the jobs problem without a national strategy.

Democrats tell us the economy is slowly recovering. Republicans tell us the economy is dead until the “job creators” are unchained from regulation.

Neither party has even remotely identified just how we turn around the globalization of labor that has diminished the American middle class.

But there are clues about how to turn the economy from “soft” to dominance in the world again. Those Americans with a college degree have unemployment numbers below 5 percent, a target the nation would embrace, so we know education is part of the solution.

Maybe we need the kind of bold thinking that once characterized America … free college or trade school for anyone who maintains a B average or better.

This would be an investment in our national future that has already shown demonstrable results.

We cannot free America from foreign energy by current energy policies.

Republicans suggest more oil is the best solution, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, and building a pipeline from the Canadian shale fields to the Gulf of Mexico. Democrats want to develop alternatives like solar and electric and wind.

The problem with the Republican solution is all oil simply goes into the world market, not to America, and the pipeline is an export solution.

For Democrats, alternatives are fine, but what about conversion right now to natural gas while the U.S. has the world’s richest resources of this form of energy?

But the 2012 presidential elections will not generate any serious answers to these stalemated and persistent problems that cause voters to see their leaders as weak and the solutions as unattainable.

Because elections are not won by telling voters they have to expect cuts in popular programs, some higher taxes and fees; elections are not won by accepting a complex solution to immigration or a costly solution to global jobs competition; elections aren’t won by creating a national energy policy that directs research and economic security at the cost of current industry profits.

Nope, in 2012 we will talk about abortion again, states’ rights, big government and Gays.

We should be talking about the vision thing.

 

Jim Crawford is retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.