EMPTY CAMPAIGNS.

The candidates in the Republican Party race for the party's nomination are getting pretty frisky and greatly perturbed.

They are looking for the proverbial straw to hang on to for dear life, as the least utterance by President Barack Obama, will scathingly be described as being bad for the country.

They are grabbing the "straw" as a man or woman, drowning in a big river, like the Hudson, at its confluence in New York City; and no one knows whether they are doing so in desperation to win the Republican nomination or to cause a distraction from the busy schedule of the president.

The president has been in Hawaii for the APEC conference of world leaders. He is now in Australia, and his itinerary has been keeping him so busy. People are wondering where he gets his energy from.

Yet, on the campaign trail on mainland America, his words are being monitored, and they are being used against him by his "opponents to be".

The latest is his comment of Americans being, "a little bit lazy," during a speech at the Hawaii summit.

Minutes later, Rick Perry, a presidential candidate, will be in front of a camera, vociferously disowning the president by saying,

“Can you believe that? That’s what our president thinks is wrong with America? That Americans are lazy?” and “That’s pathetic.” (Politico, 11/17/11).

The chorus is then taken over by Mitt Romney, the front runner of the Republican race, uttering the most stupid and infantile statement thus,

“Sometimes, I just don’t think that President Obama understands America,"

What? The person has been president for the past three years, and he did not understand America?

The scenario looks like they are saying, "Please, do not pay any attention to the president of the United States; pay attention to us instead," and "What we are doing here is more important than what the president is doing abroad,"

However, what the Republican candidates are up to is very simple to figure out; they are using the president's own words to ridicule and undermine him in their individual sluggish and empty campaigns.

Many believe that the president's remarks are to encourage Americans to do better in their business endeavors. Just as those before them, who have built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge, they are capable of doing the same. They (Americans) should never despair.

The entrepreneurial spirit is not dead in them, and like sleeping giants, they must wake up and replicate the achievements of their forebears.

That is what the little phrases the president is sharing with his audiences are all about. They are not to insult people; they are to pry them to do more for their country and fellow Americans, so that the nation will maintain its "city on a hill" status to the rest of the world.

The Republican candidates must concentrate on their own fragile campaigns, while remembering what another president, President John Kennedy, had said before,

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." (http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm).