As frontrunner Rick Perry continues to have subpar debate performances, the question remains for conservatives and Republicans. Who will lead us?
If you’re a reader of conservative blogs and commentaries you’ve already known that Perry’s record on immigration was pretty soft. Apparently being very pro business in Texas (which is a good thing) requires one to be pro illegal immigration to keep that cheap labor coming across the border (which is a bad thing). The issue though for me wasn’t Perry’s stance so much as how he would handle answering questions about it. And in the latest Fox news debate, he didn’t answer questions about it too well. He also just didn’t look good in general. Conservative voters are watching these debates, Governor Perry. It is time to start brushing up and practicing. Romney obviously takes these debates seriously and it shows.
Of course the media is pushing for Romney. They see another McCain (with better hair) waiting to be put up as a sacrificial lamb against “The One,” but it doesn’t have to be like that. The media is preaching that Romney is the only one who can win swing states. However, this would be a time where true economic conservatism, when communicated effectively, could really win the day in all fifty states. It appears so far that Perry is not the one to communicate such a message well. And Romney is keeping to a playbook of Democratic-lite in these debates. Does Romney really have it in his soul to go after the jugular against Obama in a way that McCain wouldn’t in 2008? I ultimately don’t think he does.
It’s getting disheartening, because Obama is becoming increasingly beatable the more this thing moves forward, but no clear front-runner has emerged to take him on effectively on our side. I think Perry has less serious liberal mistakes in his background than Romney does, but he better start explaining them better and practicing his message. Herman Cain is the only candidate to actually release a detailed economic plan he actually runs on, but while winning the latest straw poll in Florida, he hasn’t really caught on with conservatives or Americans in general.
Who will take the mantle, run a serious campaign and beat Obama in 2012 before the country truly slides off a cliff?
Who will lead us?
-R. Patrick Sullivan
Ok kids, raise your hands if you think soaking the rich with higher taxes will jump start the economy.
Obama came out last week or the week before with a jobs plan. The jobs plan was “tax the rich.”
Hell of a jobs plan.
Ok first off, this is an old line in conservative circles, but, “Have you ever received a job from a poor person?” Of course you haven’t. Taxing the rich doesn’t do anything but make the rich park their money in tax exempt holdings or leave the country. Higher rates bring in less revenue. I’ve discussed that ad naseum in these hallowed halls of The Drunken Conservatives. Our already anemic growth would stall further. Also, the rich pay the vast majority of the taxes in our country anyway, why keep soaking them?
Now to the political side of the President’s job plan. He’s been trying this political loser of an idea (soak the rich) for more than six months now. Every time he trots it out, he loses. Republicans always make him compromise without raising taxes. He lost the argument in extension of the Bush tax cuts, and most recently in the debt celiing fiasco. Yet, here Obama is raising the issue again. Third time’s a charm? There’s no way this plan is going to pass a Republican House. How does the message of a jobs plan that’s selling point of taxing the rich go over with the chronically unemployed? Even if they think taxing the rich is a great idea, they’re probably asking, “How does this help me get a job rightnow?
Old Clinton political hack, James Carville is raising alarm bells and red flags with the Democrats saying the Obama team is in real trouble. I have said it before, but how does the politically astute Obama team, the ones who won so convincingly in 2008, behave so stupidly now? Obama needs a staff shakeup to get some politicial mojo back for 2012.
Here’s hoping he keeps things exactly the same.
-R. Patrick Sullivan
For those of you who don’t know Thomas Sowell, he’s a brilliant man. He has a PhD in economics and has been writing books and columns from a conservative / libertarian standpoint for years. He’s on Fox News occasionally, usually when they need to bring out a very smart man to explain why something the Democrats are doing is not going to work.
Sowell recently wrote a column featured in National Review entitled, How Obama could Win. The thrust of the column was that although FDR’s constant meddling in the economy made it much worse (contrary to what you’re taught in school), he was able to win reelection by running against Hoover and the Republicans who he blamed for the bad economy. Sowell writes:
Doing nothing may have a better track record in the economy, but government intervention has a better political record in getting presidents reelected.
People who say that Barack Obama cannot be reelected with unemployment at its current level should take note that Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected a record four times, despite two consecutive terms in which unemployment was never as low as it is today.
I’ve been saying all along that President Obama is going to be harder to beat than people realize, however I remembered some things from a book JK gave to me awhile ago, New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America
The time honored practice of patronage played a huge part in Democratic victories in 1934. The Democratic Party would identify Congressional Districts where they thought Democrats (even if behind in the polls) could win. Federal patronage New Deal jobs would then come flooding into those districts. Jobs were hard to come by in the Depression that Roosevelt was prolonging through his continuing government interventions, and voters were thankful thusly to Democratic politicians who brought New Deal projects into the area. So yes, Roosevelt’s interventions were the cure to the problem, but they were also the cause.
Dr. Susan Hockfield, in her recent op-ed piece article for The New York Times titled, “Manufacturing a Recovery” (August 30, 2011), reveals much of the liberal/academic mindset and selective blindness that, in seeking government solutions originated through politicians, academicians, and selected businesspeople, has and continues to foster many of the problems of American manufacturing.
Dr. Hockfield, a neuroscientist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes the case for increased federal spending in research and development and the need for “more graduates with greater proficiency in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.” Barack Obama recently appointed Dr. Hockfield, along with Andrew N. Liveris, the chief executive of Dow Chemical to “lead the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, a group of industry, academic and government representatives that will find ways to speed up research in advanced materials and processes and increase our pool of skilled labor.” In her article, she also decries the “recent debt-ceiling compromise [that] could compel some 10 percent in cuts to federal research and development money in 2013.”
Government involvement in research and technology has and continues to provide benefits when it occurs in those areas in which government has a legitimate, if not mandatory, involvement. R&D undertaken in behalf of national defense is responsible for numerous advances in fields ranging from the digital revolution in communications, to aviation and logistics, to name but a few. The space program, justifiably an adjunct to defense, originated a wide range of materials and technologies that continue to improve the quality of everyday life. In an era when the worldwide transportation system could speed contagion and terror along with people and cargo, the Centers for Disease Control provides an invaluable protection.
When the government steps unnecessarily into the private sector, however, the system deteriorates rapidly. The political calculus quickly neglects pure science in the interest of selecting winners and losers based on factors ranging from financial contributions, to home districts, to ideology.
Dr. Hockfield cites Boeing as an example of a producer of products that “require sophisticated manufacturing equipment, operated by skilled workers, and benefit from the tight integration of design and production.” Can she possibly be ignorant of the fact that the administration, through the NLRB at the behest of its union contributors, is currently attempting to stall Boeing from opening a newly completed plant in South Carolina because South Carolina is a right-to-work state? Boeing’s new plant would not only create jobs at that locale but add an estimated 2,000 more at its existing unionized plants.
How many times have conservatives said, “If this were Bush…” since Barry Obama burst upon the scene in a big way in 2008?
Basically it means: Bush would be driven into the ground rhetorically by the mainstream press for the same news story that Obama is given a pass on.
I’ve said it too, but I usually don’t give it too much credence because hey, the mainstream press loves Democrats and Obama in particular and that’s just the way it is.
However, the latest two nonstories that are in fact huge stories have me crying, “If this were Bush…!” from the rooftops.
I refer to the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal and the Solyndra massive taxpayer waste scandal. If these happened under the Bush administration, Bush himself would have had to resign by now. However, with Obama and his administration, the story is barely even covered and the parts that are handled with a collective yawn.
Not only are millions in taxpayer money being flushed down the toilet in green energy scams, but people are actually getting killed (!) due to the administration’s incompetence, and yet the citizens of this country are barely hearing about this unless they happen to watch Fox News.
For background on these stories you can go to:
Our own Drunken Conservative, JK’s coverage of the Fast and Furious Story.
A Fast and Furious Roundup found here.
These are huge news stories barely receiving the coverage they deserve. Our press is doing a huge disservice to the population at large by refusing to cover these stories of not only gross incompetence, but of actual murder (border guard shot down by guns our government provided to Mexican gangs) perpetuated by a hopeless, bungling Obama Administration.
If this were Bush…
-R. Patrick Sullivan
Democrats have held the New York-9 seat since 1923, through the Republican sweeps of Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.
It took a Democrat, Barack Obama, to turn the seat back to the Republicans.
Republican Bob Turner beat Democrat David Weprin for the seat earlier this week.
It was nice to see Jewish voters finally wake up and realize that the Democrats are not friends to Israel. Since the early Bush II presidency I’ve been pondering how the Jewish vote can keep going Democratic especially because the Republicans have been decidedly pro-Israel, and the Democrats have been lackluster in their support for Israel, yet full of gusto in supporting Palestine. It was just shocking to me from the 2002 elections on that the Jewish vote kept going to Democrats in pretty healthy numbers.
No more. The Obama Administration’s call that Israel return to the ’67 borders and its ham –handed dealings with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu have finally caught up with the Democrats. Weprin saw nothing wrong in Obaam’s Israeli policy. However, it seems the heavily Jewish vote turned out for the Republican in large part to send a message to Obama that they don’t, in fact, like the administration’s Israeli policy.
Also on the minds of Orthodox Jewish voters was the state legislature’s vote allowing gay marriage, which Weprin voted for. We’re told over and over that social issues are dead and it’s all about the economy, but in the blue states, social issues may drive groups of traditionally Democratic voters into Republican arms. Maine has rejected same-sex marriage on the ballot and in California, a heavy turnout of African American voters kept same-sex marriage from passing there.
The Democrats’ Mediscare tactics failed also even though Weprin hammered Turner relentlessly for saying he supported the Ryan planned reformation of Medicare.
I’m not saying that this small district in New York portends terrible result for Obama in 2012. I actually think the race will be much closer than people think, but it is definitely something the President must take seriously and remains troubling for the Democrats in general. They rode to electoral victory in 2006 and 2008 because of people largely dissatisfied with George W. Bush. Once the voters got a taste of progressive policies and an economy under a liberal economic stranglehold, they’re suddenly thinking, “This is not what I signed up for.”
-R. Patrick Sullivan
I happened to be at the gym last week when President Obama gave his jobs speech. I thought it was a fitting metaphor that I was on the treadmill at the time because the first thing I thought was, “…well this sounds like more of the same nonsense.” There’s one part of the plan though that I find particularly unsettling and it doesn’t seem to get a lot of discussion about whether it’s morally right or wrong. A cornerstone of the President’s plan to get America back to work is a series of tax credits for hiring veterans or people who have been unemployed for more than six months. I might be in the minority here but I think the tax credits for hiring people based on anything other than merit is, at best, naïve, and at worst discriminatory toward other workers & harmful to the businesses themselves.
Let me share this little story with you:
From time to time I have to hire people at my day job. (I know, I know – tough to believe that that this isn’t my day job) Conducting interviews and hiring is hands down one of the most painful things I have to do. Read more »
I feel good when I hear Republican candidates talk about repealing Obamacare in sound bites I watch and listen to from debates, because that’s about the only place I’m still hearing anything about Obamacare.
We’ve got to repeal that monstrosity of epic proportions.
I came across a comprehensive list of tax hikes from the Obama administration last week from the Americans for Tax Reform. Twenty out of twenty-one of them come from Obamacare.
I know that you all think Obamacare is a giant crap sandwich like me, but the provisions need to be constantly reappraised and reviewed to keep front and center exactly how bad this thing is.
Here are some of the doozies:
Obamacare Medicine Cabinet Tax (Tax hike of $5 bil/took effect Jan. 2011): Americans no longer able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin). Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,957-1,959
Came across this one when my extremely tolerant fiancé went to use her left over money to stock up on non prescription meds we use throughout the year in the household and couldn’t. What exactly is the purpose of this?
Obamacare Tax on Indoor Tanning Services (Tax hike of $2.7 billion/took effect July 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons. Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,397-2,399
Ok. Now here’s the question on this one. Why? What does indoor tanning have to do with healthcare? Is there a lobbyist group for the sun that sponsored this?
Obamacare Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike (Tax hike of $0.4 bil/took effect Jan. 1 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services. Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,004
Let’s single out one company and put a tax on them. That’s nice.
Obamacare Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals (Min$/took effect immediately): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new “community health assessment needs,” “financial assistance,” and “billing and collection” rules set by HHS. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,961-1,971
So let me get this straight. We’ll take hospitals that provide charity and harass them with burdensome regulations and fines.
Obamacare Tax on Innovator Drug Companies (Tax hike of $22.2 bil/took effect Jan. 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,971-1,980
Once again, let me get this straight. We’ll take drug companies that actually innovate and produce cures and we’ll tax them through the roof. Excellent.
In summary, I hope we keep hearing from the folks running to win the nomination of the Republican Party that Obamacare is huge anvil tied around the neck of the American economy and needs to be repealed immediately upon ascendency to the office.
-R. Patrick Sullivan