Romney-Ryan: They can smile and wave, but 2012 is anything but politics as usual.

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My most recent syndicated column:

First, kudos to Mitt Romney for choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate. Now, the danger: Romney, Ryan, their surrogates, their supporters and the American people will continue to treat election 2012 as just another contest to determine whose hand is at the helm of state for the next four years.

No, this election is for keeps. If Barack Obama doesn’t lose his bid for a second term, he and his vast, left-wing support network of Marx-inspired think tanks, strategists and elected officials will fulfill Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to “fundamentally” transform this nation, thus bringing the American experiment in liberty to what could be the final curtain.

This is not idle hyperbole. I have just finished Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott’s chilling new book, “Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed” (WND Books). I recommend it as must-reading for all Americans, but particularly for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. In their run for the White House, the GOP standard-bearers don’t seem to realize what they are up against – and, by extension, what lies in store for us all if they are not victorious in November.

“Fool Me Twice” is Klein and Elliott’s third in-depth political study of Obama. “The Manchurian President” (2010) examines Obama’s lifelong ties to anti-American radicals; “Red Army” (2011) explores Obama White House links to the Marx-inspired policy world where, in research papers and “progressive” legislation, the foundations of Obamacare, for example, went unnoticed for years before being passed in 2010.

Having learned to track the left’s policymaking subculture, the authors now turn to what an Obama second term likely holds. To this end, they examined thousands of documents, including initiatives from the Center for American Progress, or CAP (the Obama administration’s “idea factory,” as Time magazine calls it); sundry pieces of legislation introduced by “progressives” in Congress; and both well-known promises and little-known executive orders issued by Obama himself. The book-length result is what Klein describes as “the secret template for Obama’s next four years – the one actually created by Obama’s own top advisers and strategists.”

In meticulous detail, the authors lay out the plans of Obama and his allies to, among other things: reconceive of U.S. defense as a fight against “climate change,” national sovereignty and other leftist bogeymen; “green”-ify the U.S. energy industry; open U.S. borders and register illegal aliens who are soon to be given amnesty by Obama (and who overwhelmingly vote Democrat); and, of course, move to a single-payer government health-care system. From the morass of technical jargon and policy wonkdom the authors sift through emerges a terrifyingly sharp image of centralized federal control of practically everything – even political dissent on the airwaves via the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

This not-so-nascent form of totalitarian power is what the 2012 election is all about. Whether they realize it – and they don’t – Americans are about to decide whether to empower the increasingly dictatorial executive branch of Barack Hussein Obama, whose future plans to distort “checks and balances” promises to transform the U.S. government out of all recognition, or to break the momentum of government centralization by electing Romney-Ryan.

Most Americans, ill-served by mum media and silent politicians, will be shocked at the executive branch usurpation of powers Klein and Elliott describe as being in the hopper, and always at the expense of the people through the steady attrition of congressional powers. For example, there are plans “to wrest budgetary control from Congress” of Pentagon purse strings and vest them in an “independent panel,” and ideas to strip Congress of its powers over immigration by empowering a White House panel to allocate all visas. Other centralizing and, in fact, truly fascist ideas afoot include plans for a federal “green bank,” which would use taxpayer dollars to finance “clean” energy companies (such as the notorious and now-bankrupt company Solyndra), as well as a national infrastructure “bank,” which, as the authors put it, “would concentrate even more power in Washington while creating a giant cesspool for government cronyism and corruption.”

All of which is to say, this election is not merely about jobs or deficit spending or fixing Medicare, as the Romney-Ryan ticket would have us believe. Such blinkers only lull the electorate into complacency and, worse, preserve the Obama machine’s politics-as-usual cover.

Election 2012 is anything but politics as usual. It is an existential crisis. For many reasons, I would vote for my dog over Obama-Biden, not least of which is that she always warns me of danger. Romney-Ryan must find the courage and love of country to do the same.