President Obama said, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” Let’s look at his record.

In America today the real unemployment rate is in excess of 15 percent. Employment among women is down 530,000 jobs. If you have a job, you may be working several part-time jobs with no benefits. Household income is down $4,100. Forty-six million Americans are now receiving food stamps. Gasoline prices have more than doubled and in California have reached $5 per gallon. Health care costs have skyrocketed notwithstanding the “promise” of Obamacare. Food prices have gone through the roof. Our national debt is $16 trillion. Your share is $56,000. The president says he won’t tax the middle class, but it’s the middle class that is paying the price.

Libya tragedy

Our foreign policy is in shambles as evidenced by the Libya tragedy from several weeks ago. For two weeks President Obama claimed on “The View,” Letterman, and in front of the United Nations, that the death of our ambassador and his associates was due to a movie trailer about Islam. He knew that wasn’t so. When he couldn’t hide it any more, he blamed the intelligence agencies. He blamed Romney. Then he let Hillary Clinton take the fall.

At the end of the road in the Mideast are a bunch of nuclear weapons. Peace through strength is not on Obama’s agenda. He actually is using a non-existent peace dividend as part of his deficit reduction plan. What peace dividend? What part of radical Islam wants to kill us doesn’t he understand? Meanwhile, he turned his back on Israel, our staunchest ally in the region.

His Green Agenda has collapsed. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been lost as his cronies lined up for government handouts to support so-called green businesses that have since gone bankrupt. Meanwhile, he has destroyed the coal industry. Fracking, the basis of our Valley’s economic revival, is next. Oil rigs that used to be in the Gulf of Mexico are now in Brazil. And that increase in oil drilling he talks about here at home is being done under permits issued by George Bush on private land.

Even more troubling has been Obama’s class warfare. From the beginning, President Obama and his friends Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi never intended to work in a bipartisan way. He promised a “United” States of America, and yet he has pitted black against white, rich against poor, men against women, Republicans against Democrats, states against states. His belief that government can dictate equality of economic outcomes has never worked. It makes the rich poor and the poor, poorer.

Valley’s recession

Here in the Mahoning Valley we have been in a recession for 40 years. We understand losing jobs, homes, and retirements. We know the effects of politicians that do what is in their best interest and not ours. We have lived it. We can’t afford to make a mistake. Four more years of Barack Obama will slow progress in our community. Do we want a nation of government dependence or American Independence? The direction of America and the future of our children depend on our decision.

“One nice thing ... is I will be held accountable,” President Obama said on the “Today” show Feb. 2, 2009. Vote Mitt Romney for president in 2012.

Tracey Winbush of Youngstown, a delegate to the Republican National Convention in August, wrote this for the Mahoning County Republican Party.