Tag Archives: politics

The October Surprise? Not!

Posted on by

If Obama should lose this election, many will say it was because the economy was weak and because the president is black. Actually, it will be because he fought it as a failed progressive rather than a successful centrist.

[snip]

Every voter who chose Obama in 2008 still wants him to succeed. But not all are convinced he can, and that’s partly because he has stopped trying to be the president he said he’d be. The need to fix Washington, the need for a bridge-building, post-partisan presidency was uppermost in centrist voters’ minds when they elected Obama, and he’d made that the core of his campaign. Washington is still broken – more so than before – and Obama is no longer even trying to mend it… The president’s error wasn’t that he refused to compromise. It was that he compromised so reluctantly, denying himself ownership of his own policies and making every accomplishment seem like a defeat.

Clive Crook Obama’s Blunder Was in Ceding Political Center to Romney

I’ll take that understatement and raise you one fact: Obama never tried to be the president he said he’d be.

Fact-Check: Arming Syrian Rebels

Posted on by

Mr. Obama said that the administration was mobilizing support for the opposition there but that it wanted to make sure that “we’re not putting arms in the hands” of people who could eventually turn them against the United States or its allies in the region.

Fact-Check: Arming Syrian Rebels

Good. Glad to see Fast And Furious wasn’t completely lost on the current administration.

Fact-Check: Romney’s Bipartisan Success

Posted on by

Earlier in the debate, Mr. Romney said that bipartisan cooperation with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature allowed him as Massachusetts governor to balance the state’s budget for four straight years and propel the state’s schools to first in the nation on standardized tests. Many experts, however, say those claims are less than fully credible.
Mr. Romney’s assertion that he and the legislature came together to balance Massachusetts’s budget omits the fact that the state constitution requires a balanced budget.

Fact-Check: Romney’s Bipartisan Success

If the Massachusetts legislature had chosen to ignore the constitution, leaving the state budget unresolved as our U. S. Senate has done since 2009, would Mitt Romney have let them slide?

Independents Play A Major Role In 2012

Posted on by

To give a bigger sense of why this is such an important number for Romney, consider this: In 2008 Obama won the national popular vote by 7.2 percent overall. If you assume equal turnout in 2012 as 2008 (39 percent Democrats, 32 percent Republicans, and 29 percent independents) but take Obama’s 8 percent win with independents and give it Romney, that 7.2 percent 2008 margin drops to 2.6 percent. If Romney can get Obama’s lead down to 2.6 percent before they even chip away at the giant turnout advantage Democrats had in 2008 (or win over some Democrats to Romney), it is going to be almost impossible for Obama to win.

Josh Jordan Obama’s Independent Problem

Really?

Posted on by

We have seen that it’s possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction; that it’s possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems.

Barack Obama after winning the North Carolina primary May 2008

The Truth About GM

Posted on by

For months, I’ve been wondering why no one wants to challenge how the politicians spin it. During the Vice Presidential Debate, Biden said:

“Romney said, ‘No, let Detroit go bankrupt.’”

According to the Washington Post:

This statement is drawn from a headline — “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” — on an opinion article written by Romney for The New York Times. But he did not say that in the article. (He repeated the line, however,on television.)

Although “bankrupt” often conjures up images of liquidation, Romney called for a “managed bankruptcy.” This is a process in which the company uses the bankruptcy code to discharge its debts, but emerges from the process a leaner, less leveraged company.

Ultimately, along with getting nearly $80 billion in loans and other assistance from the Bush and Obama administrations, GM and Chrysler did go through a managed bankruptcy. But many independent analysts have concluded that taking the approach recommended by Romney would not have worked in 2008, simply because the credit markets were so frozen that a bankruptcy was not a viable option at the time.

Biden also overstated the Obama administration’s role in saving the auto industry, glossing over the fact that the outgoing George W. Bush administration first bailed out General Motors and Chrysler.

There you have it. See Wikipedia for all the gory details.

Faith & Politics

Posted on by

This was a country of faith before the first settlers arrived. Atheists are welcome to stay… but if you think you’re going to eliminate faith from American life, you’re more than welcome to move to a country that’s more in line with your way of thinking.

History has lessons to be learned. If only we were still teachable.

Posted on by

From Peter Wehner’s The Role of Sympathy and Trust in American Politics:

This is admittedly a complicated area, as some of our greatest presidents pursued policies that caused deep divisions. President Lincoln is a particularly fascinating case study. He presided over a Civil War that led to the death of around 620,000 people in a nation of roughly 30 million. And yet, as the Lincoln biographer Ronald C. White, Jr. has said, his second inaugural address called the whole nation to account and offered a moral framework for peace and reconciliation. When passions were at their highest and the North was at its strongest, Lincoln held out a path for reunification instead of revenge.

Town Hall With Kelly Ayotte in Bow, NH

Posted on by

It was a little reminiscent of the 1992 Presidential election where Ross Perot would take the stage and whip out his charts and graphs. All in all, it was a good, informative event. It’s a shame the turnout was a little light, though. There are a lot of people who would have benefited from having the big, government analysis broken down into terms that every one can understand.

There was definitely an audible reaction in the room when Senator Ayotte compared the U.S. deficit, debt and spending to a person who makes $60K a year, borrows another $40K a year and spends in excess of $117K a year. I think some people were actually frightened by it. I’m becoming more convinced that we all need a good dose of fear from time to time.