Three things are apparent about the President of the United States after tonight’s State of the Union. He has JFK’s optimism. He has Bill Clinton’s penchant for going center-left and small-bore after losing a midterm election. And he has the spine of Jimmy Carter.
The president delivered a relatively subdued, Clintonian speech, filled with targeted policies to achieve specific ends, instead of seismic ideas that aim to remake the world. Obama’s economic plan going forward sounds as if it could have been devised by center-left, “New Economy” types like Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria. There was lots of talk about education, infrastructure, and expanding trade in a way that benefits the United States and increases our exports. On health care, the president is open to reforming his signature domestic achievement, and on foreign policy, Obama put forth a broad, generic blueprint that pretty much everyone could agree with (stay engaged in the world while cutting waste at the Pentagon; finish the job in the Middle East while also getting out of the Middle East in a timely manner).
But the area of the speech that really stood out, largely because it drew attention to the president’s weaknesses, was the manner in which he addressed the long-term debt issue. We’re going to “strengthen” Social Security. We’re going to hold costs down when it comes to Medicare. We’re going to cut spending where we can, so we are told. Of course, in order to do any of this, benefits are going to have to be reduced, programs are going to have to be eliminated, and Americans are going to find themselves with more skin in the game. But instead of giving Americans a bit of, dare I say, straight talk on this issue, the president addressed these issues as if he were asking the neighborhood bully to return his softball.
Over the course of the past two years, the president’s political capital has been waning among swing voters due to his apparent leftism. Tonight, the president corrected that problem, while adding another, equally damaging problem to his political brand. It was wise of Obama to back away from the Huffington Post Kool-Aid and adopt a more Clintonian tenor. But he also seems to have lost his mojo. Only the most ardent Obama supporters would be able to suggest with a straight face that this president demonstrated the courage to make the hard choices that the next president is going to have to make, especially given his refusal to even enumerate what those hard choices are going to be when addressing the subject. The Obama that the nation saw tonight was one who would gleefully sign legislation expanding funding for “clean energy,” but who would never have the fortitude to sign a bill raising the Social Security retirement age. Given the looming debt crisis, swing voters who were just beginning to once again warm up to the president may find themselves contemplating the Republican alternative.
At 9:00 PM EST, the President of the United States will be giving his annual State of the Union Address.
Consider this an open thread on the address, the Republican response, and Michele Bachmann’s “Tea Party” response.
PPP (D) North Carolina 2012 Presidential Survey
- Barack Obama 47% [46%] (44%)
- Mitt Romney 44% [43%] (44%)
- Barack Obama 49% [45%] (44%)
- Mike Huckabee 45% [46%] (48%)
- Barack Obama 50% [48%] (46%)
- Newt Gingrich 44% [42%] (45%)
- Barack Obama 50% [52%] (48%)
- Sarah Palin 41% [38%] (43%)
Strategic National 2012 Iowa Republican Caucuses Poll
- Mike Huckabee 27.56%
- Mitt Romney 18.54%
- Undecided 17.56%
- Sarah Palin 12.44%
- Newt Gingrich 12.20%
- Tim Pawlenty 4.39%
- Michele Bachmann 3.66%
- John Thune 1.95%
- Rick Santorum 0.98%
- Other/Undecided 0.49%
- Haley Barbour 0.24%
Strategic National surveyed a random sample of typical Iowa caucus goers. The statewide, automated poll had a total of 410 respondents, 52% female and 48% male. It was conducted on January 18, 2010, and has a margin of error of +/- 4.8%.
Strategic National 2012 New Hampshire Republican Primary Poll
- Mitt Romney 33.51%
- Mike Huckabee 13.83%
- Sarah Palin 12.77%
- Newt Gingrich 8.62%
- Tim Pawlenty 5.21%
- Mitch Daniels 1.60%
- Rick Santorum 1.28%
- Haley Barbour 0.96%
- John Thune 0.21%
- Other/Undecided 22.02%
Strategic National surveyed a random sample of New Hampshire Republican primary voters. The statewide, automated poll had a total of 940 respondents, 52% female and 48% male. It was conducted on January 19, 2010, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.2%
Remainders:
-Did I miss an article? Broken Link? If so, please email me at kavon_w_nikrad@yahoo.com.
Justin Bieber enters the presidential race sort of:
Mark DeMoss, a well-connected figure in the evangelical community and Mitt Romney supporter, sent a memo last week to Christian conservatives urging them to consider “a new litmus test” beyond traditional cultural issues
“A candidate for president of the United States should be capable of becoming president, and then competent to be the president,” DeMoss wrote in a five-page missive sent to about 200 top pastors, donors, intellectuals and leaders on the Christian right.
DeMoss, a public relations executive who also backed Romney in 2008, offered an impassioned case for the former Massachusetts governor but also took some barely-veiled swipes at Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.
“Those who would suggest I am placing values on the back burner will be misreading me and wrong,” he wrote. “I am only saying that a candidate’s values alone are not enough to get my vote. For example, my pastor shares my values, but I don’t want him to be my president. (By the way, ‘energizing a crowd’ is also not enough; Justin Bieber can do that—but I don’t want him to be president either.)”
DeMoss, who represents such leading evangelists as Franklin Graham, argued that most all of the likely Republican presidential candidates meet a values test so Christian conservatives should ask three other questions:
1. Who is most capable of winning the Republican nomination?
2. Who is most capable of mounting the kind of campaign (raising money, recruiting staff and volunteers, presenting a clear message) necessary to upset a sitting president?
3. Who is most capable of actually being the president of the United States—governing and serving as the CEO of the largest enterprises on the planet?
Romney, argued DeMoss, was well-positioned financially and in the polls to meet the electability standard and, because of his background in business, is up for the job.
DeMoss is not without a point, however it’s a bit off the mark. First of all, there’s nothing new about social conservatives looking at electability. That’s why George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain actually won the South Carolina Primary.
There are very few social conservatives that are going to commit to a totally hopeless cause. (Take note: Rick Santorum Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann.) However, Romney’s top competition is not any of these people, nor is it Justin Bieber or his pastor. It’s Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. With DeMoss obviously meaning to compare Palin to Bieber and Huckabee to his lovable pastor (assuming his pastor also served 10 1/2 years as governor of a state.)
There are several big problems, the last of which is that DeMoss assumes the answers to all of his questions are self-evident:
1) The 13 Keys prediction system I’ve written about Alan Lichtman’s system multiple times, so I’m not going to rehas it in details. What Professor Lichtman’s theory posits, in short, is that if things are going well in the country, the incumbent party will be re-elected, if things aren’t going well, the incumbent party loses. At least six of Lichtman’s thirteen keys must be against the incumbent party for there to be defeat, and of all 13, exactly one has anything to do with who the challenging party chooses for President, and that key has to do with the challenging party nominating a charismatic candidate or a national hero, neither of which would help Romney.
2) Forgetting the failures of Romney ’08: DeMoss seems to forget that Romney’s 2008 campaign where $100 million was spent and Romney only won three primaries: Utah, Massachusetts, and Michigan. Each state had a Romney connection. The only advantage that Romney was able to effectively take of his money is to win smaller caucus states like North Dakota where other lesser-funded campaigns couldn’t put out as expansive a network. As to clarity of message, that wasn’t a strong point in 2008 either, which is why he won a lot of silver medals and bronzes, and no golds.
3) Despite the attempt the President nothing more than a CEO, the comparison between the two jobs is hardly apt. A CEO has far more power within his company than the President has to make changes within the Country. The fiscal reality are radically different. The purposes of the “enterprise” are entirely different. Being a CEO shows you have experience running something of some significance. And even there, while running Bain and Company was a great accomplishment for Romney, you have to question how prep much for the presidency it is to run a company with 5,000 employees worldwide. For comparison, the federal payroll is 2.5 million people, around 3,000 of which are appointed directly by the President.
I would also add that if met to buck up and encourage Romney-supporting Evangelicals, the message is mildly effective. If anyone on his list isn’t already leaning towards Romney, it’s hard to see how comparing someone’s preferred candidate to Justin Bieber will do anything but turn them off.
Public Policy Polling is doing a poll on their website about where to vote next week (click here to vote on where PPP should poll).
I personally think a poll from South Carolina would be the most interesting, since there will be an important early primary there in 2012 as I’m sure everyone who visits this site already knows.
The last SC poll was done in May 2010. That poll showed Gingrich first, Huckabee fourth.
Has things changed? Was that just an outlier or does Huckabee really have trouble in SC?
Huckabee supported Bauer for the Republican nomination, does that hurt him? Palin was a vocal supporter of Haley, will she get a boost? Gingrich support seems to have melt away and he most likely won’t lead in this poll; but does this mean his voters return to Romney (whom we have assumed Gingrich is taking his votes from), or do they seek an entirely new home? How about Pawlenty, is there any love for him in the Palmetto state?
Many questions as you can see. Please vote SC and we’ll find out the answers.
I was doing some research into Republican primaries and I discovered an interesting footnote, dating back to at least 1988 and going up to 2000. This trend is that in each of these primaries, at least one major contender for the nomination was an unelected, unelectable outsider. From Pat Robertson through Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, Morry Taylor, and Alan Keyes, these folks are invited to the debates, have media attention, and perform respectably in the polls. In 2012, it looks like at least Herman Cain is seeking to tap into this particular niche. Even before the primaries this happened once before to a non-war hero. In 1940, well before the importance of primaries, after 6 ballots, the GOP nominated Indiana Utility Executive Wendell Willkie to challenge FDR. What’s more interesting is that aside from the notable exception of Jesse Jackson, this is an exclusively Republican phenomenon. These candidates can’t win, everyone acknowledges they can’t win, yet they still show surprising strength in the primaries. Heck, sometimes these candidates do win states and primaries. The high point was 1996, when Pat Buchanan won caucuses and primaries in Louisiana, Alaska and most famously New Hampshire. That same year, Steve Forbes won the Delaware and Arizona primaries. Why do these guys do so well?
Well, there are a variety of reasons. Most basically, I think that typical Republican primary voter, as part of their conservative distrust of government, is a distrust of standard politicians. If government can’t be trusted, than why should the people in government be anymore trusted? Dissatisfaction with the traditional candidates opens the void for other candidates filling the gap.
Secondly, these outsiders seem split into essentially two factions: the so-con leader or the successful businessman. Obviously they appeal to two different, very important factions of the Republican base. If the mainstream candidates don’t appeal to these groups, they may turn to other, less conventional candidates. For example, economic protectionists found themselves increasingly isolated in a party of free-trade. They still had a champion, Pat Buchanan and all economic protectionists rallied to his candidacy.
Thirdly, these candidates often tap into a particular sentiment or feeling that the other candidates are not addressing. For Pat Buchanan, the issue was trade and putting “America First”, and Steve Forbes championed the flat tax. Going along with that, these candidates, who have never held public office, often promise things what candidates who have spent time in government know can’t be realistically achieved. Saying “no” to abolishing this or that is not nearly as sexy as saying “on day one I’ll get in there and tear apart this, that, and the other thing.”
In a way, these outsider candidates are like 3rd parties. They can’t win, but they do shape the debate and alter what is going on in politics. After Steve Forbes ran, other candidates started talking about the Flat Tax. Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes kept pushing the issue of a pro-life running mate.
Now, I’m not saying that Herman Cain is going to be a top-tier candidate in 2012, but the possibility is there. The unelected outsider is an unusual Republican phenomenon, one that will likely have some strong appeal in this age of the Tea Party. If a person like Mike Pence, Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin fills the role, then the Herman Cain’s of the race will continue as nonentities. If they don’t, then maybe there will be another unelected outsider who we call “top-tier.”
If you think that Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is sometimes overly critical of the Federal Reserve, or if you think that the Federal Reserve is some grand sugar daddy with endless pockets, then take careful note of this item reported by CNBC last Friday:
Concerns that the Federal Reserve could suffer losses on its massive bond holdings may have driven the central bank to adopt a little-noticed accounting change with huge implications: it makes insolvency much less likely. The significant shift was tucked quietly into the Fed’s weekly report on its balance sheet and phrased in such technical terms that it was not even reported by financial media when originally announced on Jan. 6. But the new rules have slowly begun to catch the attention of market analysts. Many are at once surprised that the Fed can set its own guidelines, and also relieved that the remote but dangerous possibility that the world’s most powerful central bank might need to ask the U.S. Treasury or its member banks for money is now more likely to be averted.
“Could the Fed go broke? The answer to this question was ‘Yes,’ but is now ‘No,’” said Raymond Stone, managing director at Stone & McCarthy in Princeton, New Jersey. “An accounting methodology change at the central bank will allow the Fed to incur losses, even substantial losses, without eroding its capital.” The change essentially allows the Fed to denote losses by the various regional reserve banks that make up the Fed system as a liability to the Treasury rather than a hit to its capital. It would then simply direct future profits from Fed operations toward that liability. This enhances transparency by providing clearer, more frequent, snapshots of the central bank’s finances, analysts say. The bonus: the number can now turn negative without affecting the central bank’s underlying financial condition.
“Any future losses the Fed may incur will now show up as a negative liability as opposed to a reduction in Fed capital, thereby making a negative capital situation technically impossible,” said Brian Smedley, a rates strategist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and a former New York Fed staffer.
“The timing of the change is not coincidental, as politicians and market participants alike have expressed concerns since the announcement (of a second round of asset buys) about the possibility of Fed ‘insolvency’ in a scenario where interest rates rise significantly,” Smedley and his colleague Priya Misra wrote in a research note.
So, if the Federal Reserve should become insolvent as a result of an adverse upward move in interest rates, they can borrow from the US Treasury—go it. By the way, some are suggesting that if certain States nearing bankruptcy become unable to meet their debt and pension obligations, they can be bailed out by the Federal Reserve if Congress refuses a check from Uncle Sam.
The link to the CNBC article is at www.cnbc.com/id/41198789
In yet another bout of political cluelessness, the president has declined a golden opportunity to triangulate and will not be pushing entitlement reform in his State of the Union address tomorrow night. This is akin to finding a winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk and tossing it into the garbage. By advocating real, even if left-of-center, entitlement reform, President Obama would have been able to recast himself as a Clinton-style fiscal moderate at a time when his approval rating is on the uptick, and during a post-tragedy era, when Americans want to like their president again.
The reasons that a presidential call for entitlement reform would have been pitch perfect tomorrow night are legion. First, even though the economy is no longer in recession, unemployment remains high, and the average voter, while not an economist, intuits that there are major, structural problems with the American economy that need to be solved. Unfortunately, solving problems often costs money, especially when liberals are the ones coming up with the solutions. The reality is that many of our economic problems are due to irrational economic actions that are the result of public policies that disincentivize rational behavior.
Take higher education. The fact that the vast majority of college students now pay for college via a third party — usually in the form of federal student loans — means that students are dissuaded from making smart decisions regarding their field of study and choice of career. Means-testing students for eligibility for federal aid would limit aid to those students who need it the most, those who otherwise wouldn’t go to college, thus ensuring social mobility and tapping into resevoirs of talent in poorer urban and rural communities that may otherwise go undiscovered. Once federal student loans become the exception and not the rule when it comes to the manner in which the middle class pays for college, not only will the cost of college plummet, making access that much easier, but the sticker price will become very real at the outset, and not simply a theoretical debt that will have to be repaid down the road. This will lead to students, who would have some skin in the game, choosing science and engineering over philosophy and art history.
A leftist president, of course, will never support such a rational policy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be a leftist to begin with. Instead, what we should expect from Obama, in terms of keeping America competitive going forward, is a set of policies that will encourage rational behavior, which will be heaped on top of all of the present policies that discourage rational behavior. So we may hear something about student loan forgiveness for students who choose to study the sciences or engineering. We’ll hear about new regulations that make existing regulations less onerous for business and industry (even though it would make more sense to repeal the existing regulations and be done with the issue). And we’ll hear about the need to invest in research and development and rebuild the infrastructure. In other words, we’ll get the sort of targeted, center-left set of programs that we’d expect from a Clinton Democrat.
The thing is, the next two years won’t exist in a vacuum. Even if the economy is getting better, and even if Obama’s targeted programs seem somewhat helpful, if needlessly complex, the reality is that everyone knows that we’re about go over the fiscal precipice, and proposing new spending, no matter how targeted or necessary, just seems insane after the great debt awakening that Americans have experienced over the past two years.
That’s why entitlement reform would have solved Obama’s many woes. First of all, the savings that would be generated from a major overhaul of Social Security and Medicare would far outweigh any new spending that Obama will likely propose tomorrow night. Secondly, entitlements are the primary cause of the long-term debt issue. And third, entitlement reform, particulary of the sort that means-tests entitlements and cuts the benefits of affluent seniors, would largely impact a voting bloc that Obama has already lost anyway, and would bait Republicans into doubling down on their “early bird special” strategy that they seem to be intent on embracing, where the GOP targets older, white voters, who are a lagging, not leading, indicator of where the nation is headed.
The president wouldn’t even have to embrace the GOP’s preferred entitlement reform plans in order to accomplish this triangulation. He could simply require a sliding scale to determine how Social Security benefits are indexed, and how much of one’s own funds must be contributed to health care costs under Medicare, with well-off folks getting less and paying more. There could also be an option for later retirement, which would become class-based in effect, as it would appeal to white collar workers who could simply hang around the office a few more years, as opposed to blue collar workers who may not be physically able to work until age 70. What this would amount to is a benefit cut for upper and upper middle class Americans when it comes to entitlements.
But wouldn’t the president pay a price for coming out with such a plan? I don’t think so. First, this plan would appeal to lots of demographics who gave Obama his first presidential victory. Suburban swing voters go gaga over deficit hawks who advocate Clintonian domestic policies, and working class voters would see their benefits protected. The voters that would be least happy with Obama — upper income seniors and upper middle class, middle aged voters — have already abandoned the president anyway, and probably aren’t coming back. Democrats lost these voters in 2010 and just barely lost key races in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, while winning key races in Colorado and Nevada. With a fully functioning Democratic base, which wasn’t present in 2010, Obama could probably lose the same older, white population that he did in 2010 and still squeak by in the states that matter.
By passing up this opportunity to make the case for entitlement reform, the president may be about to give away his newfound majority support in the polls. Americans are going to hear lots of new spending proposed by the president tomorrow night, but no way to pay for that spending, and no way to prevent the looming fiscal crisis. Suburban independents, who tend to be Concord Coalition types who hate deficits and debt, may find themselves torn between a president that they want to like, and policies that they know simply don’t add up. That will open the door a tad for the GOP in 2012, a door that had been closing over the past couple of months.
PPP and Rasmussen, two of our more reputable pollsters, recently came up with radically different polls on the state of the GOP 2012 Presidential nominee race. Radically different, that is, on the top three entries. The rest didn’t move all that much.
Here are the results for both polls and their differences:
| Ras | PPP | dif | |
| Mitt Romney | 24 | 14 | 10 |
| Sarah Palin | 19 | 14 | 5 |
| Mike Huckabee | 17 | 24 | -7 |
| Newt Gingrich | 11 | 11 | 0 |
| Tim Pawlenty | 6 | 8 | -2 |
| Ron Paul | 4 | 7 | -3 |
| Mitch Daniels | 3 | 4 | -1 |
| John Thune | N/A | 1 | – |
| Other | 6 | 16 | 0 |
| Undecided | 10 | – | – |
Romney shot up 10 points from the PPP poll to the Rasmussen One. Palin rose five points, and Huckabee dropped seven points. Romney went from ten points down and a tie for second to a five point lead. Huckabee dropped from a ten point lead to a third place finish trailing the leader by seven points. Wow! That’s a seventeen point swing in less than a week.
Both pollsters are reputable. Both take pains to get it right. So what happened?
I suspect the answer lies in the details. PPP polled “515 usual national Republican primary voters“. Rasmussen polled “1,000 Likely GOP Primary Voters …[which] include both Republicans and unaffiliated voters likely to vote in a GOP Primary”.
So right off the bat, PPP’s sample was only half that of Rasmussen’s. Second, they only polled “usual” Republican primary voters. If you didn’t vote in the 2008 GOP primary, could you be called a “usual” Republican primary voter? No, not really.
Think back to 2008. The Democrats had a barn-burner of a primary season. Hillary and Barack fought it out to almost the last state. Add in the fact that the Democrats were on the ascendancy that year, and it is safe to say that a goodly number of the politically active Independents voted in the Democrat primary.
That is not the case this cycle. The battle for the Republican nomination is where the action is, not the Democrat one. If you are an Independent who likes to be politically active, there is little reason to participate in the Democratic primary. What would be the point? Your vote would be totally meaningless. The only contest worth engaging in will be the Republican one. So that is where you will likely cast vote this time around, not where you would “usually” cast your ballot.
So when you add up the smaller sample size, the large numbers that will vote in the Republican primary this time who “usually” would vote elsewhere, and throw in the fact that few people are really paying much attention to the race just yet; one has little problem accounting for the disparity between the two polls.
Gov. Romney has issued the following statement on today’s March for Life in Washington D.C.:
“In great number, men and women from across our country are gathered today on the Mall in Washington in the cause of defending the rights of the unborn. All of them are marching today in the spirit of compassion and mercy, and I share their commitment to laws that protect the innocent and uphold a culture of life.”
President Obama will now go through the ritual of the State of The Union address (SOTU) to Congress. Only since FDR has the president delivered this message, required by the U.S. constitution, routinely to both assembled houses in person. Today, this custom has become primarily a media event to enhance the incumbent president’s public standing. Unlike the most recent occasion by President Obama, the Republicans now control the U.S. house, and have cloture power over the U.S. senate.
Administration strategists came up with the ploy to have Democrats and Republicans sit together this year, and some will do it. The purpose of this ploy was to reduce the negative image of the president not being applauded by large numbers in attendance (traditionally, each party sits in one section). Nice try. Some GOP members have agreed, but many others have not.
So far, Mr. Obama has attempted to achieve the gloss of bipartisanship on the cheap, including this ploy, but the GOP troops, especially the new recruits, are restless and eager to make their mark, fulfilling their campaign promises.
At some point in the near future, but after the SOTU address, the two sides will clash. This is inevitable because there are two very different policy principles in play, and neither side has truly yet tested the will of the other side. So far, it has all been manipulative rhetoric.
Each side has cards to play. The Republicans clearly won the 2010 election, and it was clearly a reaction to the Obama-Pelosi-Reid legislative agenda. But the Democrats still have a small majority in the U.S. senate, and the president holds veto power. (Overriding an Obama veto seems very unlikely at this point.)
So for the short term, there needs to be some kind of arrangement between the two sides, or when the debt ceiling issue comes up, there will a major conflict. Unlike 1994-95, this may not lead to a victory for the Democratic president. That is because the political/journalistic environment has changed so much. But both sides may decide to postpone their greatest conflicts to later. Ultimately, these issues will be decided in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.
Lacking much real leverage, the Democratic leadership has resorted so far to gamesmanship and gimmickry. There is no evidence that they intend to truly make “compromises.” They understandably will test the will of the Republican to force concessions, and it is that defining moment which lies immediately ahead.
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-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.
Rasmussen has Mitt Romney with an MoE lead in a national poll out today:
Rasmussen Reports 2012 Republican National Primary Poll
- Mitt Romney 24%
- Sarah Palin 19%
- Mike Huckabee 17%
- Newt Gingrich 11%
- Tim Pawlenty 6%
- Ron Paul 4%
- Mitch Daniels 3%
- Other 6%
- Undecided 10%
Poll of 1000 voters likely to vote in Republican primaries, conducted 1/18/11, The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
A few notes from Rasmussen’s write-up:
There’s little difference of opinion now between male and female primary voters.
Palin leads among Tea Party members with 28% support. Romney’s the favorite among non-members with 32% of the vote.
Romney, Palin and Huckabee are essentially in a three-way tie among voters who describe themselves as very conservative. Those who characterize themselves as somewhat conservative and moderate/liberal have a clear preference for Romney.
Romney holds the lead among married and unmarried primary voters, but Palin is slightly ahead among those who have children living with them.
Palin and Huckabee are neck-and-neck among evangelical Christians. Other Protestants, Catholics and those of other religions like Romney better.
CPAC is one of the largest, conservative political action conferences. It’s straw poll has been an important gauge for Presidential ground-game and support among grass-roots voters. This year, a number of groups including the American Family Association and the Heritage Foundation are boycotting the event. Why? GOProud will be there this year. Here’s the summary from GOProud about their agenda:
GOProud represents gay conservatives and their allies. GOProud is committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy. GOProud promotes our traditional conservative agenda by influencing politics and policy at the federal level.
In effect, GOProud is similar to the Log Cabin Republicans only, recently, they’ve become much more prominent especially with Andrew Brietbart joining their Advisory Board. Due to their involvement, the aforementioned conservative groups have decided to boycott CPAC this year. Conservative US Senator Jim DeMint, who was supposed to be speaking at the event, has also decided to boycott the event. His spokesman said, “With leading conservatives organizations not participating this year, Senator DeMint will not be attending. He hopes to attend a unified CPAC next year.” As with the leading conservative organizations, GOProud’s involvement appears to be the reason behind his lack of attendance.
What’s interesting, however, is that with all this boycotting – certain conservative potential 2012 contenders are still attending and giving keynote addresses. SarahPAC is co-sponsoring one of the receptions at CPAC. Herman Cain will be speaking and Michele Bachmann will be providing the opening keynote speech to the event. Now all this begs the question – what does one have to gain from boycotting CPAC this year? You will gain the attention of the media, perhaps. You’ll also gain the attention of those who are staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage and support Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, but polling is showing that DADT is a losing issue. In the end, attending can only help those who potentially are running for President in 2012 as it shows the average American, who support DADT repeal and are pretty evenly divided on same-sex marriage, that you’re more closely aligned with the middle on this particular issue.
My thoughts? It only hurts a potential 2012 candidate to avoid this conference. The who’s who of insiders will be there and a lot of feet on the ground conservatives will also be in attendance. In addition to that, the reason of “boycotting CPAC on account of GOProud” makes a person come across as petty. Just because a group you don’t support is in attendance, doesn’t mean you can’t be there as well. Seriously – Santorum is still attending and he is one of the most staunchly anti-same-sex marriage candidates I’ve seen. Without working with GOProud and other groups with heterodox views on specific issues, conservatives could alienate voters and, in the end, diminish their chances in 2012. Only if working together can we progress forward and do that which we all want to see happen – Obama defeated and the GOP recapture more seats in the US Senate. Just some thoughts.
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-Matt Newman is a conservative blogger from Maryland who blogs Old Line Elephant and Tweets far too often.
Gov. Mitch Daniels is the overwhelming choice of columnists and opinion makers for the 2012 Republican nomination; says Jonathan Martin:
If pundits and columnists represented the GOP base, Mitch Daniels would be the odds-on favorite for the presidential nomination in 2012.
The Indiana governor has been showered with favorable coverage from political thinkers and analysts in recent months, most of which heaped praise on his thoughtful and principled approach to governing while celebrating his serious yet down-to-earth mien.
“Of all the Republicans talking about the deficit these days, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, has arguably the most credibility,” claimed The New York Times’ David Leonhardt in an Indianapolis-datelined economics column recently.
Bruce Babbitt, Paul Tsongas, Ross Perot, John Anderson, Lamar Alexander and John McCain in 2000 all won plaudits from elites for their willingness to speak hard truths about the real problems facing the country rather than just pandering to the partisan rabble.
Usually, as it is now, much of the admiration is rooted in the truth-teller’s focus on the looming fiscal iceberg and willingness to tell audiences what they don’t want to hear. Better yet, the candidate pushes aside the divisive social issues that are thought to be non-negotiable with the party bases.
Daniels voiced such an idea fairly explicitly in a much-buzzed-about Weekly Standard profile last summer, calling for a “truce” in the culture wars so the political class can get down to the business of repairing the country’s finances.
But it’s not just his policy outlook that titillates the elites. The diminutive Hoosier has nurtured a profile as a mature politician whose outlook extends beyond the next news cycle and whose demeanor exudes seriousness.
Be sure to read the whole piece here.
Flip-flops are an always popular subject – in particular in the sense that it is popular to accuse other than one’s own favorite candidate of flip-flopping.
This goes in particular for Romney supporters whom often like to point out that other candidates have changed their positions as well. Romney has – whether he deserves it or not – a reputation for being a constant flip-flopper, in particular in social issues.
Supporters of Gov. Romney wants to make it clear that other candidates have changed their views as well – Mike Huckabee raised the taxes in Arkansas and Sarah Palin went Robin Hood on the oil companies (oh, and let’s not forget her previous support of TARP).
I, however, would argue that there are many differences between social and fiscal flip-flops.
First, there is not one single fiscal policy that would fit the whole country, all the time. As circumstances change, so does the required economic policy. What is good for New Hampshire might not be good for Montana, and what is good for Montana might not be good for Oregon – and so on. This is because economies have different structures – some economies depend largely on tourism (Florida), other depend on agriculture (Iowa). Some have a huge service sector (New York), while others still rely on manufacturing (Michigan). While certain general principles can be applied to any state (balancing the budget, for example), the means may vary.
It is a myth that tax cuts are always good for the economy, and that they will always end up paying for themselves. I explained this a while ago at ROS, so let me just repeat myself shortly: The key is elasticity. Every time you raise the taxes, you end up losing some of your tax base (taxpayers/corporations etc). How many you lose depend on where your taxes are and where the other countries tax rates are. If you raise taxes by 1 %, and you lose 2 % of your tax base, you have obviously made a loss. If the US where to cut the federal income tax, that would probably not lead to an increase in revenue, because the income tax is already really low compared to most other countries (also, if that were to happen, several states would probably raise their state taxes, leaving the total tax burden unchanged). On the other hand, the corporate tax is higher than even most countries in Europe, and so if that tax were to be cut, revenue probably would increase as the US got more competitive (the tax base would increase by more than the taxes were cut).
Having said that, it may have been good for Arkansas to raise the taxes – we don’t know. And just because you as a governor of Arkansas thinks that your state needs to raise its taxes to balance the budget, or to improve the roads or whatever, doesn’t necessarily mean you think that would work for the US as a whole.
Secondly, economics is a constantly developing science. It is a new science (macroeconomics in particular is very new), and there is a lot left to be discovered. Things change constantly. An economist in the 1960′s held different views than most economists today, because there were so much information not available in the 1960′s that we have now. Politicians had a harder time designing good economic policies back in time, because they had much less information than we have today.
That is not the case with social issues.
We have been able to scientifically prove that fetuses constitute humans. It’s not news that humans have unique DNA since conception, it has been known for ages. Also, you can’t really say that “fetuses are humans in 49 of the United States, but not in the state where I am governor” (yes, I know Romney never said that). Life either starts at conception everywhere, or nowhere. Marriage is sacred everywhere, or nowhere. There is no inbetween, unlike tax rates which may have to change over time and be different in different places. It is not like someone can claim that they didn’t have the information (about fetuses, what happens at conception etc) available to them; it has been known for so long and it will never change. That’s the difference between a hard science like biology and a soft science like economics; biologists can actually prove something once and for all. That’s a lot harder in economics.
This is why I, and I am both a fiscal and a social conservative, find it much more troubling that Romney flip-flopped on abortion than that Huckabee raised taxes. The value issues are about, well, basic values. They are not supposed to change, and you should at least be clear about which values you have before you enter politics.
Isn’t taxes about values too? You know, couldn’t your tax policy indicate how much you believe in individual liberty and property rights? Of course it could. Still, individual liberty isn’t helped by budget deficits which enslaves the government and its people at the same time, and neither are property rights enhanced by deficits. How you deal with them is a separate issue, and as I stated above, the best way changes over time and can be different in different places. If anyone can outline a serious proposal for how Arkansas should have balanced its budget and improved its roads without raising taxes, then please post your plan in the comments section.
I understand there are several people on this site who does not consider social issues to be as important as I do. The purpose of this post was simply to explain why I, and probably many others as well, have an easier time accepting why someone would want a different fiscal policy in the US than the one they had in their home state, while a different social policy than the one they supported in their own states is much harder to justify.
Just my thoughts on the issue. Please leave a comment.
With predictions about the election in 2012, the economy and everything else running wild, I figured we needed a thread where we could post our favorite failed predictions from the past.
I’ll start with this: “Why Fred Thompson Will Win” by Peter Mulhern; or “There is no housing bubble“, by Ben Bernanke (2005).
Please post the most absurd failed predictions people have made in the past (include links) about politics, the economy and related stuff.
It’s good to remind ourselves that the pundits and analysts aren’t always right.
I’m watching Real Time with Bill Maher so that you don’t have to, and this past week’s episode was a perfect example of the present-day division in the conservative movement between the “reality-based conservatives,” or the folks who want to apply conservative principles to the climate of any given age, and the “right-wing populists,” or those who see the world as one in which the embattled majority at the grassroots is forever under attack from specific, static adversaries, those that existed in the 1980s, that are somehow never vanquished. While Maher usually has at least one conservative on his panel, usually a selection that he knows will be steamrolled by his liberal guests, his most recent episode featured fully two serious, substantive right-of-center guests with very different views on the current climate. What was interesting was that instead of these two Republicans ganging up on Maher, they often opted to fight it out on the issues amongst themselves.
In one corner was Club for Growth founder Steve Moore. In the other, former Reagan OMB Director Dave Stockman. The two did agree on a few issues. Both agreed that ObamaCare was horrible policy, but for different reasons, and both, interestingly, wanted to legalize marijuana. But the similarities ended there. To Moore, nothing had changed much since 1980. Taxes still needed to be cut, China had replaced the USSR as our superpower foe that required us to increase military spending, and all of our problems could be solved by chasing lower-income freeloaders from the government teat and by repealing ObamaCare and going back to the pristine system that we enjoyed prior to its passage. There was no talk of entitlement reform, as the middle class can do no wrong, and Morning in America is always just around the next corner.
Stockman couldn’t have disagreed more. In his view, defense spending has to be cut, along with entitlements, which are the main source of our fiscal woes. He laughed at the notion of China as a threat, suggesting that China is not about to blow up its best customers. Stockman pointed out that much of the spending on the lowest-income Americans is actually in line with Milton Friedman’s notion of a negative income tax, and believes that ObamaCare should be repealed, and replaced with something that emulates Friedman-omics, so that we can get third party payers out of the system, and so that people are paying for as much of their own health care as possible. He went on to don full Ron Paul jacket and discuss how the federal government is now essentially in cahoots with our nation’s major industries and large interests, and how the resulting corporatism is screwing things up for the citizens and preventing a truly free market. And he opined that the biggest failure of the Reagan Administration was its inability to cut spending, and by spending, he meant middle class entitlements.
What’s interesting about these two approaches is the role that the middle class plays in each. In Moore’s world-view, the middle class is being told that it’s the victim — a victim of a hostile foreign empire aiming missiles at our nation, of welfare queens taking its hard-earned tax dollars, and of anyone who tells the middle class that it can’t deduct all of its expenses from its taxes and still get roads, schools, first-dollar health care for life, three decades of full retirement benefits, a military that can fight two wars simultaneously, and free Internet at the local library.
In Stockman’s world-view, the middle class is told to eat its damned vegetables. On health care, ObamaCare is most certainly not the solution, but third parties paying for routine care is a problem. The government is going bankrupt, not because of welfare queens, but because of middle class entitlements that Americans expect to receive and refuse to pay for. And while the days of “The Good Republic v. The Evil Empire” were sexier, today’s international politics is much more about the intracacies of Sino-American trade policies.
It doesn’t take a political genius to realize why Moore’s world-view is more popular than Stockman’s. The sort of “Back to the Future” Republicanism that Moore presents is sexy. It’s all about being strong, about seismic global conflicts, and about everyone else being responsible for the plight of the American middle class. If you’re a middle class American unhappy with the way things are proceeding in the nation or in the world, this is the message you want to hear. This is the message that sells books, that garners a talk radio audience, and that fuels major cable news networks.
The message that the middle class doesn’t want to hear is that it’s part of the problem. Or that spending only a third of one’s life in the workforce, that era between grad school and early retirement, may not be a sustainable economic model. And eyes glaze over when the discussion transitions to economic relations with Southeast Asia. That message doesn’t sell. This one does: our taxes are too high, it’s someone else’s fault, and by the way, a big, powerful country that hates us has got “the bomb.”
Do I expect right-wing populism to make way for a more reality-based conservatism anytime soon? No. This year’s John the Baptist of reality-based conservatism, Mitch Daniels, is still polling at a hearty 1% in most states. And yet Daniels has developed a cult following largely because he is the lone voice of reality-based conservatism, crying out in the wilderness. As Rich Lowry pointed out, Daniels is a conservative not mired in “1980′s nostalgia.” But telling the Republican grassroots to give up 1980′s nostalgia is like wresting away Linus’ security blanket. Still, it’s possible that going forward, someone like Paul Ryan may be able to dress the veggies of reality-based conservatism in enough melted cheese that the right-wing populists won’t even realize they’re eating broccoli. His economic roadmap is still popular on the Right, even though it’s a lot closer to Stockman than Moore, as it means-tests entitlements and nixes most middle class tax deductions. The purists who will reject it on those grounds aren’t doing themselves any favors. The alternative to reality-based conservatism isn’t perpetually living in 1980. It’s coming upon our own Greece-style meltdown, and watching the American middle class, that the right-wing populists lionize, sign away the Constitution to a silver-tongued autocrat who promises strength and security forevermore.
This past week, Aaron Blake, of the Washington Post, penned an excellent analysis of President Obama’s rising approval numbers. The money shots:
But a closer look at the numbers shows that voters don’t necessarily see much change around them and don’t necessarily believe Obama has the right answers on the issues of the day.
What they do believe is that things will get better — and that optimism is fueling Obama’s resurgence at the moment.
Take a new Quinnipiac poll released this week. It showed 54 percent of people think the economy is beginning to recover, versus 43 percent who think it isn’t.
In that same poll, though, just 36 percent of voters said they thought the economy was getting better.
What explains the difference between the 54 percent who say the economy is “beginning to recover” and the 36 percent who think the economy is “getting better?” Hope. And optimism.
Here’s another way to look at it: Just 38 percent of people in the Q poll think Obama has helped the economy, but 46 percent think Obama will help the economy. And just 19 percent think Obama has helped their personal financial situation, but 29 percent think he will help them.
…All of these numbers suggest that the American public, which has spent the last two years in the economic doldrums, appears to be seeing some “green shoots” of optimism of late.
If — and it’s a big “if” — that positive perception takes root amid signs of an economic recovery, Obama’s personal favorability ratings suggest he is likely to reap the electoral rewards.
So, in short, Obama is riding a nice bump based on his well-received response to the Giffords shooting, the apparent productivity of the divided powers we now have in Washington (most notably, the tax deal), and positive economic news since the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing.
However, he had better hope that the sugar high caused by the Fed’s flooding of dollars into the economy persists into the 2012 election season. If so, voters may rediscover the hope he inspired in them during the 2008 campaign and grant him re-election. If, on the other hand, the laws of economics awaken from their slumber, the American public may not feel so generous…
Pennsylvania abortion faces eight counts of murder, state complicity alleged.
Doubling down: President Obama to push for more spending as country hangs on brink of fiscal disaster.
Republicans introduce real spending cuts.
Cosby joins drive for school choice.
NEA gave $13 million to left wing groups.
Wal-mart to provide healthier food.
Bob Barr, Libertarian Presidential candidate represents former Haitian dictator.
Chick-fil-A attacked by homosexual activists.
Christian Hotel owners to lose their home due to gay discrimination lawsuit. (Hat Tip: Political Correctness Watch.)
Therapist facing discipline for helping homosexual patient who came to her asking for help to change. (Hat Tip: Right Mind.)
Surprise! Surprise! Emmanuel admits EO that got Stupak support doesn’t have the force of law.
18-29 year olds more pro-life.
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In the youtube video above I talk about why and how the world would have been better without TARP. Sorry if I’m talking a bit too fast sometimes. Please leave a comment.
Here are the results from the WMUR, ABC News, NH GOP 2012 Straw Poll that was conducted today at the NH GOP annual meeting:
Mitt Romney 35%
Ron Paul 11%
Tim Pawlenty 8%
Sarah Palin 7%
Michele Bachmann 5%
Jim DeMint 5%
Herman Cain 34%
Chris Christie 3%
Rick Santorum 3%
Mitch Daniels 3%
Newt Gingrich 3%
Mike Huckabee 3%
Mike Pence 3%
Rudy Giuliani 2%
Judd Gregg 2%
Gary Johnson 2%
Other 2%
Donald Trump 1%
Haley Barbour 1%
Jon Huntsman 0%
John Thune 0%
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Steve blogs regularly at my lyceum
Heritage Foundation has this video of Mitch Daniels talking about why Obamacare is so bad, in which he touches on ways in which the Healthy Indiana Plan, a voluntary subsidized HSA for low-income people, is better.
One of the things I was thinking about after I watched this is that Daniels could use the talking points in this video very effectively in the primary campaign, without it being in any way negative campaigning (Daniels takes pride in never having run a negative ad in his campaigns — we’ll see if that continues).
If Daniels runs ads and makes speeches about how HIP is better than Obamacare because it is predicated on reducing the costs of medical care by empowering people to make thrifty healthcare choices (as he does in this video) rather than to encourage thoughtless spending as any third-party payer program does, and if he talks about encouraging consumer choices, perhaps dropping the word ‘mandate’ into it somewhere, it could be a good ad against Obamacare and for Daniels as an effective leader who came up with a better solution for the healthcare mess — one that, unlike Obamacare, actually merits the term ‘healthcare reform’.
And if, when they hear HIP contrasted with Obamacare, voters note that the same contrasts could be made with some other healthcare programs — well, that would just be something they arrived at themselves, not anything Mitch said.
-Did I miss an article? Broken Link? If so, please email me at kavon_w_nikrad@yahoo.com.
Countdown with Keith Olberamnn is coming to an end, airing it’s final broadcast tonight. The announcement comes as telecommunications giant Comcast closes its deal to acquire control of MSNBC parent NBC Universal from General Electric.
Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we’re free of Olbermann at last!
