My newest post at Conservative Home is not 2012-focused, but I thought Race42012 readers might enjoy it since I go after Paul Krugman.
As a peruser of news I force myself to read every column Paul Krugman writes in The New York Times. It’s painful, but it provides me a look into how the left views various policies and political goings-on. One constant irritant is the claim by Krugman (recycled in this blog post in late February) that massive inflation is not only not happening in America but is not a risk in the near future.
I doubt that Krugman responds to most of his critics (he has too many to count) or even pays attention to what those critics say. However, I think it would be of great benefit to his readers if Krugman would respond to the following facts impacting the American economy, and why he thinks they are not factors to be considered when talking about inflationary possibilities:
- Gas prices are up $.80 since this time last year.
- Corn and other food prices are up, in some cases substantially, since last year.
- One of the men in charge of the recovery, New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley, showed he is absolutely clueless when it comes to how prices impact poor and middle-income Americans. But who are you going to believe- Dudley and Krugman or your own lying grocery bill?
- Related, at the latter link, energy prices have jumped nearly 10% in a year, and food has jumped over 2%. The Federal Reserve ignores this because its preferred Consumer Price Index (CPI) excludes energy and food costs.
- Quantitative Easing, Part 2 (QE2) was begun in November 2010 in order to increase inflation, according to the Federal Reserve and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
As I noted above, Krugman has many, many critics. I am certainly not at the top of that list in either status or fame. However, given he has been proven dead wrong before (for example, James Agresti of JustFacts.com slammed him on claims regarding government spending), it would be nice if he would respond to the five critical points raised above. Otherwise Krugman will continue to prove to most readers to the right of Howard Dean that he is simply a demagogue, not an objective analyst of economic data and economic reality.
CNN has the story:
Mike Huckabee won a 2012 presidential straw poll conducted in a key South Carolina county Saturday.
The informal vote was the first of many upcoming straw polls taking place this month at grassroots GOP gatherings across South Carolina, one of the four crucial early voting states in the presidential nominating process.
Huckabee’s win Saturday occurred at the York County Republican Party convention. The former Arkansas governor won York County in the state’s 2008 presidential primary despite losing the overall contest to Sen. John McCain. York encompasses parts of the Charlotte, North Carolina suburbs and is one of the most populous counties in South Carolina.
The full results are:
Read the rest here.
The New Hampshire chapter of Americans for Prosperity has announced that Mitt Romney has accepted the fourth open slot to speak at their “Summit on Spending and Job Creation” at the end of this month. There are only five slots available:
Americans for Prosperity Foundation is pleased to announce that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is joining the line-up of participants in the organization’s “Summit on Spending and Job Creation” on April 29 at The Executive Court in Manchester. Confirmed attendees also include former MN Governor Tim Pawlenty, former US Senator Rick Santorum and businessman Herman Cain.
“We are honored to welcome businessman and former MA Governor Mitt Romney to speak at the first major summit to discuss spending and job creation as we approach the 2012 election cycle,” said AFP Foundation President Tim Phillips. “The American people are eager to hear how Governor Romney and other speakers might plan to change the ‘spend now, pay later’ culture in Washington,” continued Phillips
Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain have all accepted invitations to speak. They have also invited Haley Barbour, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee to fill the last slot. If any of those guys wish to speak at the forum, they had better get a move on.
First come, first served.
Mitt Romney was the first GOP 2012 hopeful to respond to Obama’s reelection announcement. He replied on Twitter:
“@barackobama I look forward to hearing details on your jobs plan, as are 14m unemployed Americans”
How often does Mitt Romney claim first blood? That’s usually Sarah Palin’s bailiwick. Tim Pawlenty gets credit for the first video response, but Mitt did score first.
The game has begun.
Tim Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota, treated a crowd of mostly seasoned citizens, from Jasper County, Iowa, to a free lunch at the Pizza Ranch in Newton, a now regular spot for upstart candidates for President. Pawlenty, who recently announced the establishment of a 2012 Presidential Exploratory Committee, spoke for about twenty minutes. Pawlenty had the crowd mostly in his corner, weaving stories about his upbringing in South St Paul with examples of policy differences with President Obama.
Pawlenty tipped his hand to one possible strategy in Iowa by finishing his speech with a jab at his leading Republican opponents, though he claimed Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment mantle during the question and answer session. Pawlenty said “if you look at the conservative coalition: that is economic conservatives, and social conservatives, and Tea Party slash Libertarian conservatives, and national defense/security conservatives. You don’t have to hyphenate all those for me because I’m the conservative that’s all of those things and I admire and respect all the other people who may be running in this race but most, particularly the ones who will be the serious contenders that are gonna appeal mostly to one or maybe one-and-a-half of those categories, but I have the ability to appeal to the whole continuum”
After the speech, Governor Pawlenty answered questions for another thirty minutes. Highlights:
On Energy Policy, Two Words: “More American Energy” Natural gas is the most important source of energy for the near future. Pawlenty is also willing to pursue drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), Alaska, and in off-shore locations, if the neighboring states approved.
On Entitlement Reform: New or newer entrants to the Social Security program will have their age of retirement raised. He also supports means testing of SS to limit cost-of-living adjustments for the really wealthy. He is the only governor (correction: only governor running for president) to get an “A” rating from the CATO Institute. Not in favor of reducing defense spending. He wants a modern payment system in Medicare based on medical outcomes, rather than historical costs.
On abolishing the Department of Education: Refused to commit to that, though he appears to agree in substance when he says education falls under the 10th Amendment referring to state’s rights, and that as much as possible, these choices should be made by states and parents.
On requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions: “I think having some limitations on not allowing insurance companies to discriminate against people who have been previously sick is appropriate….We don’t want people to be able to say well I’m uninsured and now I got sick and now I want insurance; but if you have been previously sick, I think you have to have the ability to get insurance, I don’t think you should be penalized because you have been sick before in your life.”
When pressed later, on the likely necessary trade-off of forcing insurers to cover previous conditions by mandating everyone to have insurance, he suggested that it would be paid for by shifting the cost to everyone else, and he did not address how you stop people from demanding insurance after they find out they are sick. In private, he finally said that he would not have the federal government mandate coverage of pre-existing conditions. I think politicians open themselves up to criticism when they don’t confine themselves to addressing what they think the federal role is on these issues or at least make the distinction of roles clearer.
On the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP): “I don’t support it”. (There is some dispute on whether this is a flip from an earlier position where Pawlenty used the “too-big-to-fail” argument defending the bailouts during a National Press Club appearance in 2008).
On Taxes: Believes that every member of Congress should have to fill out his or her own tax returns in order to understand the complexity of the bills they pass.
Here it is… Barack Obama’s first 2012 campaign ad, a full 19 months before the election:
My take, the gist seems to be “help Obama get reelected or the Republicans are back in power.” There is nothing in the ad about his accomplishments whatsoever. Not exactly a compelling rational for re-electing the sitting President of the United States.
Wes Enos was Mike Huckabee’s political director in Iowa and a “key aide” during the 2008 campaign. This morning, he announced he was leaving the Huckabee camp to work for Michele Bachmann.
As Ben Smith notes at Politico, “the cost of a late decision is becoming pretty clear… the key players in Huckabee’s always sparse infrastructure are now mostly gone, and his late dive into Iowa that much harder to see.”
I don’t know about the “mostly gone” part of that statement, but one thing is becoming abundantly clear: if Mike Huckabee decides to run for President in 2012, he will have to do so without the talent and “organization” he used in 2008. While the top talent is scooped up by other campaigns, his team will be a cut-rate one if assembled this summer.
Perhaps the silver lining in all of this for Huckabee is that he never really had an organization in 2008 to begin with, so maybe losing it doesn’t hurt him as much as the talking heads think it will.
Full disclosure: In the past month, or so, I’ve become more optimistic about the impending Romney 2012 campaign, believing that he has a legitimate chance to formulate and communicate a detailed pro-growth agenda, make the United States fundamentally more welcoming to business, and reposition the Republican Party as friendlier to the urban and suburban areas it will need for long-term electoral success. However, I think Dave Gaultier hit upon an excellent point in his recent missive on what he has dubbed “Pawlenty-nomics“: while T-Paw’s economic proposals may not markedly stand apart from the rest of the Republican pack, his upbringing could make all the difference. Dave’s money quote:
But when someone on the Left like Tom Friedman, or on the Right like Larry Kudlow tries to explain this to America, they are unable to do so convincingly, largely because they seem culturally foreign to Joe Sixpack. But when Bill Clinton slapped union workers on the back and told them that free trade was inevitable, they wanted to hug the guy. The messenger is often as important as the message, and Tim Pawlenty, like Bill Clinton, brings with him a blue collar background and a regular guy vibe that lets other regular guys, and gals, know that he feels their pain.
I couldn’t agree more. To the average voter seeing their wages declining year after year in real terms, seeing someone like Romney argue for additional free trade agreements may elicit a response along the lines of, “Easy for him to say. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have to scrimp and scratch for every dollar he has,” similar to how President Obama’s calls for the black community to expect more from themselves came across more convincingly than if, say, John Kerry made them.
Now, as Dave rightly noted, these considerations shouldn’t matter, but they do.
With that in mind, I tried to dig up some more details regarding Pawlenty’s prospective economic platform. The following interview with Larry Kudlow provides quite a few nuggets:
Similar to Gov. Romney, T-Paw doesn’t believe the political will for an immediate move to a full-blown flat tax exists, but he supports steps to move the ball in that direction. He also sounded the right notes on encouraging businesses to deploy capital held in both domestic and foreign reserves in productive initiatives to increase growth and employment in the U.S. He highlighted the crucial imperative of improving the business climate in America, as well.
Interestingly, he did surprise in a few other aspects. First and foremost, he came out in full support of a Federal Reserve audit, questioned the merits of fiat currency, and even suggested that we should peg the dollar to a basket of commodities. These statements, if carried through to his campaign platform, may make him the de-facto “hard money” choice among the mainstream Republican candidates in 2012 and go a long way toward enticing libertarians (while he’ll never challenge the Pauls or Gary Johnson on these issues, it may at least comfort libertarians to see a candidate with a very real shot at winning voicing some of their key concerns). Along those lines, at the end of the following clip from the Hannity show, Pawlenty makes the case that he has the best chance of appealing to the many wings of the GOP:
Also of note in the Kudlow interview, the Governor trumpeted the possibility of a Pawlenty administration introducing the federal government to the concept of Six Sigma, a proposal that has garnered coverage by Politico. For those unfamiliar with the concept, “Six Sigma” refers to a framework for developing and implementing improvements to increase efficiencies and reduce costs in processes. Many individuals have aired skepticism about the viability of Six Sigma in an organization as opaque, stubborn, and expansive as the federal government. Still, it remains an interesting and unique idea that supplements T-Paw’s already impressive record of cutting government spending and may help to further differentiate himself from his competitors.
All in all, while Pawlenty, like any candidate with a lengthy public record, has drawbacks and weaknesses, such as his not-so-secret past with anti-global warming crusades, he does have a real opportunity to articulate a compelling pro-growth economic agenda in a manner that will resonate more with the average voter than if it came from another Republican.
Rep. Paul Ryan was the lead-off guest on Fox News Sunday this morning.
He was then followed by Senator Marco Rubio.
Both Ryan and Rubio demonstrated excellent command of their subject with first-rate presentation skills. Folks, I have been around this business for 35 years and I can say it doesn’t get much better than this. If these two guys had been the poster boys for the GOP 5, 10, 15 years ago we would not be struggling to find 270 electoral votes in the next presidential election, nor would we have lost two generations of voters along with most of the “creative class.”
Return of the Seventies
According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 18% of respondents think we’ll soon be facing a depression similar to the 1930s.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 18% now say it’s Very Likely that there will be a 1930’s-like depression in the next few years. Another 31% say such an outcome is Somewhat Likely. The data also shows that 34% say a new Depression is Not Very Likely while 8% say it’s Not At All Likely.
Though I’m not optimistic about our financial future, given the apparent unwillingness of most Americans to take any serious steps to change course, I have for a while believed that the stagflation of the seventies is a more likely model for what we’ll face than the deflationary thirties.
Supporting that view, we have the CEO of Walmart advising us to anticipate sharp price inflation:
… inflation is “going to be serious,” Wal-Mart U.S. CEO Bill Simon said during a meeting with USA TODAY’s editorial board. “We’re seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate.” […]
Along with steep increases in raw material costs, John Long, a retail strategist at Kurt Salmon, says labor costs in China and fuel costs for transportation are weighing heavily on retailers. He predicts prices will start increasing at all retailers in June.
“Every single retailer has and is paying more for the items they sell, and retailers will be passing some of these costs along,” Long says. “Except for fuel costs, U.S. consumers haven’t seen much in the way of inflation for almost a decade, so a broad-based increase in prices will be unprecedented in recent memory.”
As just two examples, in case you haven’t noticed it at the supermarket yet, here’s Hershey announcing price increases, and a report on cotton prices. And as for fuel, gasoline prices are up 100% during Obama’s reign, though I’m sure it’s Bush’s fault.
Consumer price index (CPI) figures from February show an unadjusted 12 month gasoline inflation rate of 19.2%, but in the last month alone prices jumped 6.8%, probably because of oil price increases due to instabilities in the Middle East. If the trend continues, gas prices would double again within a year. 100% gasoline price inflation is nothing to brag about, but imagine Mr. Obama going into the 2012 election having to explain why gas costs $7.00 a gallon.
Meanwhile, Gallup reports that unemployment, though down slightly in March, remains at 10%. Obama’s BLS continues to put out much lower numbers.
Rube Report
Like many others fascinated by a train wreck, I’ve read a few of the recent reports about Charlie Sheen. His show last night in Detroit was apparently an all-out disaster, with attendees walking out and demanding refunds.
Linda Fugate, who paid $150 for two seats, left the theater and walked up the street, yelling, “I want my money back!”
It’s hard to work up much sympathy for Linda, or anybody dumb enough to pay a hundred fifty bucks to see Charlie Sheen. What the heck did she expect? It rather reminds me of the people who are now expressing disappointment in Barack Obama.
Why would anybody expect a guy who had never run anything bigger than a committee to exhibit executive competence? Why would anybody expect a guy who had built his career on voting ‘present’ to suddenly exhibit forceful decisiveness? Why would anybody expect a Chicago Machine hack to be anything other than what he is?
Culture
Since we’re already on culture, if such can describe Charlie Sheen, I thought I’d mention that Disney is going to remake Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple movies – except that Miss Marple is now going to be a good-looking younger woman. Huh?
Useless Idiot of the Week
Dianne Feinstein suggests that if bombing doesn’t work, The World Court should arrest Muammar Gaddafi. Don’t believe me? Ask her.
(Click the pic to go to YouTube, since I ca
Quickly Noted
Jennifer Rubin interviews Jonathan Gruber, who advised both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama on their respective health care bills. Gruber, of course, emphasizes the similarities. Rubin summarizes thus:
In short, Gruber is the most powerful voice (and the most dangerous one for the Romney campaign) for three fundamental points: 1) Romney championed the individual mandate, overriding concerns about personal freedom; 2) the plan today is pretty much the same as what Romney signed into law; and 3) without it in all likelihood we wouldn’t have ObamaCare today. That might sound like a reason for Democrats to vote for him, but in a Republican presidential primary all of that may be the death knell of the Romney candidacy.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have returned to Indiana (is that kind of like the swallows returning to Capistrano — that happens in March too), getting some concessions on the school-choice law.
The Indiana House on Wednesday passed what would be the nation’s broadest use of school vouchers, allowing even middle-class families to use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools. The bill passed the house 56-42.
In an effort to lure House Democrats back from a five-week, self-imposed exile in Illinois, Republicans agreed to reduce the number of vouchers, with a limit of 7,500 the first year and 15,000 the second …
Still, unlike other systems that are limited to lower-income households, children with special needs or those in failing schools, this one would be open to a much larger pool of students, including those whose parents earn up to $60,000 a year.
While I’m excited about this law, as a long-time advocate of school choice, I’m also pleased that this may increase the chances of Mitch Daniels running. There had been a concern (which he voiced himself) that if he were forced to call a special session after the planned late April adjournment, it would kill any chance of his running.
Add your own topic in the comments.
I spent a good deal of time this weekend at the bookstore reading through Gov. Pawlenty’s new book, Courage to Stand. While I feel that T-Paw is trying a bit too hard with his newfound folksy colloquialisms to prove that he’s a man of the people, I found Pawlenty’s ideas and packaging of the issues, especially on economics, to be just what the Republican Party needs in order to win in 2012. Pawlenty may end up being the first politician since Bill Clinton with the ability to sell a pro-free trade, pro-globalization economic platform to regular folks on Main Street, and to chronically unemployed blue collar Americans.
Gov. Pawlenty’s economic message wasn’t much different from that of most pro-growth conservatives, and many market liberals. He views the economy in global terms, and sees protectionism as an attempt to put the horse back in the barn, something that just can’t be done. Pawlenty’s answer to restoring America’s economic prowess against the backdrop of globalization focuses on making America the best place in the world for businesses to do business, thus leading to the job growth and private sector investment that America will need in order to get back on a path that involves growth, instead of one of decline.
One of Pawlenty’s metaphors in the book, which reminded me of a similar Fred Thompson analogy from his address to the Republican National Convention in 2008, involved his criticism of the Left’s attempts to tax and regulate the private sector out of existence. Pawlenty explained that one cannot be pro-jobs and anti-business. That would be like being, as Pawlenty put it, anti-chicken but pro-egg. This was similar to Thompson’s description of taxing businesses, but not individuals, as having the same logic as taking water out of only one side of a bucket. It’s the sort of mildly amusing imagery that hits home with, I think, regular people.
The governor went on to describe some of the actions that he took in Minnesota in order to yield greater economic growth. One tack that Pawlenty took was to give a tax holiday to businesses that set up shop in parts of the state that were especially economically depressed. This led to job creation that otherwise would’ve taken place elsewhere. As governor, Pawlenty also convinced an India-based company to bring many of its manufacturing jobs here to the States, and, more specifically, to an area of Minnesota that had once been a hub for that type of work. In so doing, Pawlenty demonstrated that globalization works both ways, provided that America is acting as a tough-as-nails negotiator with the rest of the world, and not simply letting every other country run circles around us.
The reality is that Pawlenty is in many ways simply stating the obvious. Even Barack Obama, who ascended to the presidency as the most liberal U.S. senator, hasn’t tried to turn back the clock on globalization. Pretty much every viable presidential candidate in both parties understands that. But selling that message to the American people is often daunting. There was a time in this country where the average person was able to get a job right out of high school, would keep that job until retirement, would get full health and retirement benefits from that employer, and would live in the same community as both his boss and the head of his union. Now, the average American starts his career later in life, changes jobs every few years, moves across the country a few times throughout his life, marries late, reproduces even later, and has never met his boss, because his boss lives in Mumbai.
This is the new normal. It’s not going away. But when someone on the Left like Tom Friedman, or on the Right like Larry Kudlow tries to explain this to America, they are unable to do so convincingly, largely because they seem culturally foreign to Joe Sixpack. But when Bill Clinton slapped union workers on the back and told them that free trade was inevitable, they wanted to hug the guy. The messenger is often as important as the message, and Tim Pawlenty, like Bill Clinton, brings with him a blue collar background and a regular guy vibe that lets other regular guys, and gals, know that he feels their pain. This shouldn’t be important. But it will be.
“Those who fail to learn the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them”. This quote, aside from being every history teacher’s favorite, is certainly applicable when it comes to politics and presidential politics in particular. This post is a sort of reminder to us and our field about the lessons we learned from 1996. I chose 1996 for two reasons; one, there was a large Republican field and two; it was the last time we nominated a candidate to challenge an incumbent President. For the record, I was only eight in 1996 so most of my knowledge of the primary comes from reading about it and watching the very good archives from C-SPAN. So, with that in mind, here are seven lessons from seven contenders in 1996.
Bob Dole: Winning by default is no win at all: Senator Dole essentially won the nomination in 1996 by default. Yet, what did that do for Dole? Dole emerged from the primaries broke, battered and weakened. More importantly, Dole won without ever really telling Republican voters why he should be the nominee or President other than “it was his turn”. That sort of win is no way to enter into the fall campaign.
Pat Buchanan: The need to appeal to the whole GOP: Pat Buchanan’s campaign was quite remarkable in its success. Without having ever been elected to office, Pitchfork Pat beat some pretty impressive candidates and outright won Louisiana and the New Hampshire Primary. However, Buchanan’s main problem was that he never got more than 30% of the vote. Buchanan had three issues that were his bread-and-butter: protectionism, social issues and essentially isolationism. While the second issue had quite a bit of appeal in the GOP, the other two did not. Buchanan could win, but only in a divided field. One on one, Buchanan couldn’t win primaries because he couldn’t appeal to enough Republicans to win.
Steve Forbes: Being Mr. Nasty will sink you too: While nowadays Steve Forbes is most known for championing his flat tax, what I saw was something different. Steve Forbes ran perhaps the nastiest campaign I’ve ever seen. He bashed and attacked every other candidate in the race, and the contempt they held for him was clear. Forbes ended up alienating everyone else in the GOP, which hampered Dole’s attempts to unify the Party at the end of the process.
Lamar Alexander: Coming close isn’t enough: Lamar Alexander went from an asterisk in Iowa and New Hampshire to claiming (to use the Romney phrase) two bronze medals in those states. His campaign was generally positive (certainly less negative than some of the others). However, after the first two states, Alexander’s campaign withered on the vine. Governor Alexander couldn’t make the case that he, not Pat Buchanan, was the main challenger to Bob Dole going forward. If he had placed 2nd or won in either Iowa or New Hampshire, then the story of 1996 could have been very different.
Phil Gramm: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: Senator Phil Gramm was, for most of 1995, regarded as Bob Dole’s main challenger. He actually tied Dole at the Ames Straw Poll and came in the top two in most every straw poll. However, Gramm’s campaign was fatally wounded because of the state of Louisiana. Gramm and his forces had arranged for Louisiana to go before Iowa and New Hampshire, assuming that the Texan Gramm would win easily. That blew up in his face when Pat Buchanan rallied his Buchanan Brigades to defeat Gramm in Louisiana. This shocking loss just collapsed the Gramm campaign and he was not a factor going into Iowa, a state where he had built a strong organization.
Dick Lugar: Charisma counts for something: Dick Lugar’s campaign, when looking at some of his ideas, was really interesting. Did you know his big issue was confronting terrorism and Bin Laden? How about that he wanted to scrap the tax code and replace it with an early version of the Fair Tax? Stagnant wages, Lugar talked about that too. With all these great (or at least worth looking at) ideas why did Lugar do so poorly? Simply put, he was about as exciting as a tree stump. Lugar couldn’t give a fire-breathing speech to save his life. He had some interesting ideas, but was simply abysmal at delivering them.
Arlen Specter: Ticking off your own base won’t get you many votes: Did you know Arlen Specter ran for President? Even more interesting, did you know Rick Santorum was one of his (few) supporters? Well, Snarlin’ Arlen did indeed run for President as a pro-choice Republican. Not like Rudy Giuliani in 08, who was relatively mum on the issue (or tried to be), but as a full-throated pro-choicer. Specter denounced the Religious Right at almost every opportunity and declared he would take the Human Life Amendment out of the Republican platform. Unsurprisingly, he lasted about 7 months, getting nowhere in the polls. Who would have thought that bashing 1/3rd of your own Party was a bad idea?
So there are a couple of lessons that should help the GOP moving forward. 2012 won’t be like 1996, but these lessons are timeless. Our candidates and their advisers should look at the mistakes made in 1996 and other years, learn from them, and try not to make them. If they do, we might just have a chance to beat President Obama.
Barack Obama will, of course, be running for reelection. No matter how terrible of a President he is, Obama is too arrogant and the average Democratic insider is too cowardly to primary him. That is, except for Howard Dean who has never been afraid to take on the President.
When Obamacare was being discussed in the US Senate what did Howard Dean say on the matter? He ripped it apart from the left. You can read his editorial here. Here’s an excerpt:
If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries — in the range of $20 million a year — and on return on equity for the company’s shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.
Historically he’s been anti-war – his opposition to the Iraqi war was very well known. He was the anti-war candidate in 2004. So far, he’s been supportive of President Obama on Libya – but I could see that position rapidly shifting as the mission begins to fail, which could happen.
Dean in 2012 would have more credibility than Dean in 2004. Why? First, he still has actual experience as a chief executive, a mildly successful one at that. He has vast liberal credential – being the most vocal opponent of the Iraqi War, Obamacare from the left, and his early support for gay rights on a state level. With Obama continuing to abandon the base that elected him, Dean could use that to his advantage in the primary. In addition, he’s a) already run for President before and b) in his tenure as party chair learned more about the inner workings of the party. He wouldn’t be coming as an outsider who did not understand how the party works – he was the party for a while, he comes with that experience and can leverage that to a win.
And apparently, I’m not the only one who sees the opportunity for Howard Dean. Roger Simon of Politico wrote on it in late 2010 right after the 2010 election. Here’s an excerpt:
Dean is different. He has run for president before — albeit briefly — which is not essential but can be very helpful. He is still a hero to many young people for his pioneering use of the Internet as a political tool. Most important, he appeals to liberals for his dramatic challenge to Democrats to stop being wimps and rolling over for George W. Bush. In 2003, Dean said he represented “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” a call that might sound appealing now to liberals who fear Obama will compromise even further with Republicans. And Dean, a doctor, was a champion of the health care public option, which Obama abandoned.
But the big issue is compromise. Obama actually wants to get things done. Which means he has to compromise with Republicans and has to risk angering and losing his liberal base. That makes him vulnerable to attack from the left, which is where Dean now stands…And Dean has no reason to like the Obama White House. He was denied a Cabinet position he felt he deserved. Republicans got seats in the Obama Cabinet, but the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee did not.
When I spoke to Dean Wednesday morning, he said he had foreseen the loss of the House but had kept his mouth shut because he “didn’t want to make headlines.” But the loss of the House is, he said, “to some extent a referendum on Obama.”
Would Dean challenge Obama in 2012? “Nobody is going to beat him [for the nomination] in 2012,” Dean said. “All that would do is weaken the president.”
But, Dean added, “if you want to reform Washington, you can’t have a staff that’s all from Washington.” And what’s more, he said, “there has to be a fundamental change in the way business is done in Washington. We have to do that if we want independent and even some Republican support.”
Will he run? I don’t know, but if he did – he’d be a formidable challenger.
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-Matt Newman is a conservative blogger from Maryland who blogs at Old Line Elephant and Tweets far too often.
Look at these numbers just released by Rasmussen. They are the monthly totals for Barack Obama reaching back to the earliest days of his administration:
Notice how his ratings have been pretty much rock-solid at the same level for over a year, since December 2009 to be precise. Sure they blip up every once in a while, but they always fall back down.
Last January was the last example of this. The American people liked hearing him talking about bipartisanship and learning the lessons of last November’s “shellacking”. But as time wore on, he proved he didn’t mean a word of it. So his numbers slipped right back down to where they were previously.
And so it’s been with all of his momentary blips for the past seventeen months. He has found his permanent level, and it’s below water.
If he continues to have such steadily low numbers, it is going to leave a big opening for the Republicans to take back the White House in 2012.
In my last post, I broached the possibility that, contrary to a bit of conventional wisdom, the eventual 2012 Republican nominee might, in fact, NOT come out of nowhere or upset predictions. Today, I’d like to continue the discussion, by highlighting some objective evidence I’ve come across.
The research comes from the inimitable Nate Silver. Say what you want about his ideological leanings, but he has arguably become the go-to source for data-oriented political analysis. A couple days ago, he wrote an article about the reliability of primary polling in predicting eventual nominees. For the sake of not stealing from Mr. Silver’s work, I won’t re-post the charts he included in his missive (you can read his piece for that – something I recommend doing, anyway). Rather, I’ll stick to his analysis:
I’m simply going to look at what the polls said about the respective fields for each competitive primary campaign going back to 1972, which is generally taken to be the beginning of the modern primary era (before about 1972, many states did not hold primaries at all, or they were beauty contests).
…Specifically, I’m going to consider what the polls said at a comparable point in time to the one we find ourselves in now — early in the year before the primaries began. So, for instance, to evaluate the contenders for 1980, we’d look at what the polls said in the first six months (January through June) of 1979. The polls were gathered by Micah Cohen and me from a number of resources, primarily Lexis-Nexis for the earlier years.
After proceeding through the years, Silver arrives at the following conclusion:
This [2008] is, in fact, the only time in the modern era that the Republican who led in the early polls failed win the nomination — and Mr. McCain was running a reasonably strong second place. Granted, some of these years, like 1992, were only nominally competitive — but overall that’s a pretty darned good track record, and not one consistent with the hypothesis that early polls are meaningless.
Although I’ve discounted the notion in the past, Silver’s work lends more credence to the “next-in-line” theory; while certain candidates, such as Mike Huckabee in 2008, may come out of nowhere and shake up things, the actual recipients of the nomination appear to fall rather well in line with early primary polling results.
This obviously bodes well for Mitt Romney, as he, more than anyone, has nominal frontrunner status, along with considerable organizational and fundraising advantages (in fact, Silver also recently penned a piece on Romney’s strengths as a candidate). Of course, one may argue that the current political climate looks very little or nothing like the years Silver’s article considered. Regardless, recent history suggests that those hoping for a candidate to catch lightning in a bottle and rocket to the nomination may find themselves sorely disappointed come next year.
The Colorado Republicans had a fund-raising dinner last week on the eve of their annual leadership meeting. The delegates present were given a blank piece of paper and asked to write down whom they thought was the strongest Republican for President. Here are the vote tallies for the top ten vote-getters:
| 1 | Romney | 76 |
| 2 | Bachmann | 38 |
| 3 | Pawlenty | 34 |
| 4 | Daniels | 27 |
| 5 | Christie | 26 |
| 6 | Trump | 26 |
| 7 | Palin | 20 |
| 8 | Gingrich | 19 |
| 9 | Cain | 14 |
| 10 | Huckabee | 12 |
Remember, this is only a straw poll so take it with a healthy grain of salt. If you’ve any doubts about that, consider this quote from the article:
“Who’s even running?” asked one Republican as ballot-collectors neared.
…
It’s a safe bet not everyone voting in the straw poll took their votes entirely seriously, as several Colorado Republicans — including U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, Denver Republican Party Secretary Brett Moore and four of the five state party chair candidates — received at least one vote.
So we really shouldn’t take it too seriously, either. It is an interesting result, however.
I’m telling you, don’t bet against this actually going down:
Representative Gabrielle Giffords is still in the hospital, but some of her most ardent backers are so enamored of the idea of her running for the Senate that they describe the inevitable campaign commercials: the deep-voiced narrator recounting what happened to her, the images of her wounded, then recovering and speaking into the camera alongside her astronaut husband to call on Arizonans to unite.
…
“I’m in but only if she’s not,” said one prospective Democratic candidate, who spoke of his deliberations but insisted that he not be named given the fluid nature of the race. “A Democrat running against her would be doomed.”
I continue to maintain that if Gabrielle Giffords recovers to the point that she is capable of public service, she will be very difficult to defeat in the general election for the open Senate seat in Arizona. She was already a strong candidate for the Dems in Goldwater Country, and the attempt on her life simply turns this race into a tar baby for Republicans. Every campaign ad would have to be proofed in order to ensure that none of the words or imagery have any violent connotation. For example, in a normal race, a politician or party might claim that they’re going to “take our opponent down.” Such language rolls off the tongue in politics and would be toxic in a race involving Giffords, for obvious reasons. And the instant anyone, anywhere slips up, MSNBC will be covering the story 24/7 for the final 90 days of the campaign, hoping to hurt the GOP nationally as well. Like I said, tar baby.
But forget Giffords for Senate. What about Gabby Giffords for president? Again, a lot of this is dependent on the extent of her recovery, but if Giffords does manage to snag a Senate seat in 2012, she becomes the insta-frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2016, especially if Obama loses. She checks all the right boxes. She’s from the New West, the newly purple, increasingly secular region filled with non-Caucasians and creative class voters, all groups that Republicans can’t seem to figure out how to win. She’s Jewish, a bonus given that Obama is currently gutting the coalition between Democrats and American Jews that the Clintons so carefully cultivated. And she’s generally a center-left type who would seem more like the Clintons than Obama. I can just see the campaign ads now: “Gabby Giffords will finish the job that Hillary started. She’ll break through that glass ceiling once and for all!”
It’s not outside the realm of possibility to envision Democrats searching for a Western candidate for 2016 after losing next year due to defections by states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. If Obama holds the trio of Colorado/Nevada/New Mexico but loses the White House because of the Rust Belt, Dems will absolutely be in search of someone who hails from west of the Rockies, someone who flips an Arizona or a Montana and makes Texas close enough that the GOP will have to spend money there. If you think the Democratic Party wouldn’t fast track a first-term U.S. senator to the presidential nomination, you haven’t been paying attention for the past few election cycles.
A lot of folks may be skeptical that Democrats would be willing to run such a cynical game going forward. But what the last dozen years have proven is that Democrats are decidedly amoral when it comes to attaining political power. This has been apparent at the local level in places like Chicago for decades, but only recently has the craven nature of the Dems surfaced at the national level, giving us a full-blown attempt to steal a presidential election in 2000, a half-hearted attempt to do the same in 2004, and other less unethical, but equally tasteless acts, such as the Wellstone memorial pep rally in 2002 in Minnesota.
One has to understand the psychology of a leftist in order to understand their approach to politics. To leftists, the absence of a strong state is the equivalent of anarchy. Throughout history, leftists have seen the choice as one between the law of the jungle, and an omnipresent state working towards utopia. The democratic process is just a facade in order to facilitate the acquisition of power by the Left, and when it fails to do so, breaking the rules or throwing out the rulebook is most certainly in order. Indeed, I remember sitting in a movie theater several years ago in one of the “silk stocking” blue suburbs of Northern Virginia watching the movie, Gangs of New York. One scene in the movie involves the protagonists engaging in all sorts of voter fraud, such as pulling people off the street to vote multiple times, in order to get their associates elected to office. During this scene, the audience literally began to applaud and cheer, probably due to the memories of the 2000 election being only a couple of years in the past. But what I found so interesting was that this audience filled with “blue” voters was cheering voter fraud. Such is the approach to politics by Democrats.
Bottom line: if Giffords opts to re-enter the world of national politics, all bets are off.
Romney is visiting Nevada for the first time this year. He is meeting privately with a number of his Southern Nevada supporters. He spent yesterday afternoon touring a Las Vegas neighborhood devastated by foreclosures.
The Tyler’s neighborhood — rows of neat, long-slung houses with Spanish tile roofs, many of which sit vacant or have squatters living behind broken garage doors — sits on the edge of the desert, next to a new outdoor shopping plaza where a grocery store and a Kentucky Fried Chicken are the only two tenants amid a sea of “for lease” signs.
The Tylers’ house has dropped more than $200,000 in value since the recession hit — putting them under water and leaving the house worth less than that.
Romney and Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki — a longtime Romney backer — met with the Tylers at their home before Romney took a walking tour of the neighborhood to take stock of the economic devastation that has left one in every five North Vegas homes under water.
“This is a national crisis,” Romney told the handful of reporters gathered outside a foreclosed home on North Diazo St. “The tragedy of unemployment statistics, it’s not just a number. It’s real lives, real people.
“The impact of unemployment is really far greater than just the 14 million people who are out of work,” he added. “It’s really a tragedy.”
Romney accused President Barack Obama of failing to take sufficient action to stem the economic recession, and said his policies on health care and the economic stimulus have made the country’s economic problems worse. He also hit the administration for celebrating Friday’s economic reports that showed the unemployment rate dropping from 8.9 percent to 8.8 percent.
“I”m afraid some people are becoming conditioned to unemployment rates about 8 percent,” Romney said. “The idea that we celebrate 8.8 percent — I mean my gosh. I’m happy for the good news but recognize we have a long way to go.”
He will finish up today by speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Winter Leadership Meeting.
Three observations:
Conclusion: It is all but official. Willard Mitt Romney is running for President of the United States.
Michele Bachmann, Tea Party Caucus and Republican Liberty Caucus member, outraised Mitt Romney this past quarter, $2.2 million to $1.9 million. To her congressional committee went $1.7 million, while her leadership PAC received $500,000.
Flexing her fundraising muscle, she–like fellow libertarian-leaning Republican Ron Paul–has shown she is able to out-raise traditional, big-check, establishment fundraisers by inspiring large numbers of individuals to donate small amounts.
Update: Ron Paul’s numbers are in, and he has topped both Bachmann and Romney in fundraising this past quarter, raking in $3 million: $1 million to his federal PAC and $2 million to his 501(c)4 Campaign For Liberty.
In early March, there was some talk that Mitt Romney was ‘collapsing’. I decided to look into the idea, and came up with this post (Is Romney Collapsing? No More Than Others). The numbers were based on rolling averages (most recent five polls) going back to late 2009.
I’ve updated the chart with March polls, with the following results:
The March polls confirm what we saw four weeks ago: After their long slides throughout 2010 (in part caused by the inclusion of additional candidates), Mike Huckabee and Romney have stabilized their numbers over the past several months, with Huckabee usually a point or two ahead.
Sarah Palin, though, who stabilized earlier than the other two, staying at 17% from July 2010 into January 2011, has gone into another slide since. While her fans like to blame all her problems on the media, blaming this decline on the MSM implies that she was being treated kindly for the seven prior months.
Newt Gingrich’s numbers are as erratic as the man himself. Though he slid badly, at one point dropping into single digits, he has recently staged a mini-revival and almost caught up to Palin. But it certainly appears that Tier 1 has bifurcated into 1a and 1b.
The four combine for 62.6% — not much more than Richard Nixon had by himself at this point in the 1960 race. The Republican Party has never had a field like this, with no candidate able to get much over twenty percent. Does that mean that it can’t continue, and if not, will it be resolved by one of these breaking away or by the electorate rejecting the bunch and choosing someone else? My biases lead me to think (hope?) that it will be the latter, but it could well be that 2012 dawns with a field as muddled as it is today.
St. Anselm College Republicans had an straw poll at a Presidential forum at the school. The only Presidential contender in attendance was openly gay Republican activist Fred Karger. The straw poll results of the 322 attendees?
Now, Karger was in attendance at the event, but it’s interesting to note. It seems that his message resonates, at least with these College Republicans. Will it be enough to overcome the odds? Doubtful, but interesting nonetheless.
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-Matt Newman is a conservative blogger from Maryland who blogs at Old Line Elephant and Tweets far too often.
Politico is reporting, as of five minutes ago, that former Governor Mike Huckabee has scheduled a press conference for 6 PM tonight, in which he is set to endorse Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s nascent Presidential bid. The news, released to politico via a close Huckabee aid, is bound to shock the world. It is reported that Huckabee will refer to Romney as “a stand-up guy” “my close personal friend”, and defend Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan from it’s critics. Huckabee, reportedly, will refer to Romney as “the one man who can beat Barack Obama” and offer him “my full, unqualified support on the road ahead”. The effect of this on the Presidential race is uncertain, but rumor has it that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, former PA senator Rick Santorum, ex-house speaker Newt Gingrich and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty are all considering throwing their weight behind ex Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer in response. Reports of an emerging Herman Kaine, Michelle Bachman, Roy Moore, Fred Karger, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson and Donald Trump axis can not be confirmed at this time.
Happy April the First, ladies and gents.
This will not be a long post. It’s about simply doing what the voters were promised.
The 2010 national and state elections turned on economic anxieties, problems, and opportunities. It was not only the continued economic recession, chronic high unemployment, record deficits, but was also a national rejection of the recently-enacted Obamacare legislation which produced this vote. It was also a new broadly based concern about the cost of government and, in many states, the role of the public employment union contracts in pushing government costs and public pension liabilities way beyond what was acceptable.
After the 2010 elections, it was suggested by some cynics on both the left and the right that new members of Congress, new governors and new members of the state
legislatures would mostly revert to establishment form, and fail to enact the reforms they promised voters. Refreshingly, so far, we see many new conservative governors
following through with the legislatures they control.
In states where each party controls only one house, or the governorship or not, reform has understandably gone much more slowly. Nevertheless, many states require balanced budgets, and deadlines are approaching, even as stalemates persist.
In the U.S. congress, Democrats control the senate narrowly and the White House, while Republicans are in firm control in the house of representatives. A budget showdown approaches. A government shutdown looms. Remembering 1994-95, Republican leaders are wary of the latter. But much has changed in a decade and a half. Mr. Boehner has an historic responsibility at this moment. He understandably and rightfully wants to have some kind of agreement with the Democrats if possible. However, it may not be possible.
The voters were not unanimous. That doesn’t happen. Liberals are still liberal, and conservatives are still conservative. But 2010 brought out a massive shift in the
political center, including unaffiliated voters. They are almost always the decisive segment of the electorate, and they determine true mandates.
At another time, in other circumstances the mandate can and will be different. Today, however, the majority of Americans has spoken for cutting spending, reining in government, balanced budgets, and no new taxes. Many Americans do not share that view, and it is their right to do so, but the election indicated that more voters feel otherwise.
This is no moment for conservative leaders to hesitate or shrink from the reforms they promised. Outstanding governors and legislative leaders can work out the specific details in their own states, or they can face voter rejection in 2012 and beyond. As for the U.S Congress, the hard necessities of the times, and the perilous state of the national economy, means that Mr. Boehner and his colleagues have to insist on their program for recovery and reform.
It’s one of those curious moments in U.S. political history when traditional ambiguity is reduced to clarity of necessary action. Let the political chips fall where they may.
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-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.
ConservativeHome.com released a new poll of grass roots conservatives this morning concerning their views on how to reduce the deficit and what they are looking for in a 2012 GOP candidate. According to this survey only 6% identify entitlement reform as the top priority when it comes to correcting and reducing the structural deficit. Assuming this survey is a reasonably accurate reflection of grass roots opinion, a big time public education project directed at our own “base” is a high priority if reform efforts are to be initiated and effectively sustained.
While the implications of this survey are disturbing, they are really not surprising considering where many, if not most, grass roots conservatives get their political news and opinion-shaping information. Structural reform of entitlement programs and the necessity of such if the federal budget is to be brought under control are not the topics du jour on Fox News or with the talk show impresarios or with popular conservative publications these days, apparently because they cannot be easily morphed into culture war talk which still seems to dominate these outlets. Ask yourself how many times you have seen or heard Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, Pat Toomey, or any of the contemporary conservative economists on Fox or on talk radio. How many times have you ever heard these topics seriously discussed? This causes me to reflect back on the ’70s when Bill Buckley frequently hosted Nobel economist Milton Friedman on his Firing Line TV program to discuss important political-economic topics of that time and when they were seriously discussed in National Review.
Conservative activists have some educating to do or we’re not going to win what has become The Battle of our time.
Mitt Romney published his latest op-ed in USA Today:
Sometimes truth arrives from the most unexpected sources. Christina Romer, President Obama’s former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, said last week that she was dismayed at Washington’s lack of focus on jobs. “I frankly don’t understand why policymakers aren’t more worried about the suffering of real families,” Romer said. “We need to realize that there is still a lot of devastation out there.” She called the 8.9% unemployment rate “an absolute crisis.”
How bad is it? Last week, in the blue-collar community of Taunton, Mass., the annual jobs fair was canceled because not enough companies came forward to offer jobs.
Defining Deviancy Down was the title of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s seminal account of how American society came to condone previously stigmatized conditions and behavior. Moynihan focused on the growing acceptance of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the expansion of single-parent families and the violence in inner cities. To his examples, we can now add joblessness.
Last year, unemployment averaged a shocking 9.6%. The previous year, at 9.3%, was only marginally better. So far in 2011, it has fallen to 8.9%. A consensus has emerged among some economists and politicians that we must accept historically high levels of unemployment over the next several years. Best case forecasts see a range between 7.5% and 8%.
…
President Obama didn’t cause the recession, but he made it worse and caused it to last longer. From the outset, he inaugurated the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs policies we have seen since Jimmy Carter. Further, the White House has still not crafted any discernible plan to put Americans back to work.
Romney lists five things we need in order to “[c]reate good, lasting jobs”:
•A tax policy that rewards savings, investment, entrepreneurial risk-taking and exports.
•Free, open and fair access to foreign markets, with a focus on constructive trade reform with China.
•Elimination of the federal bureaucratic and regulatory stranglehold on business.
•A market-driven energy policy that encourages investment in America and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.
•A commitment to fiscal responsibility through budget restraints and entitlement reform
He then takes aim at a favorite tactic of Big Government types, the fiscal stimulus:
Another stimulus is not the answer: like putting a cup of gasoline on a fire, it produces heat only for a very short time. A stimulus doesn’t lead entrepreneurs and businesses to make the long-term investments in people and capital that will help the unemployed get the good jobs they deserve.
Finally he closes with the following:
One of our greatest strengths as a nation is our dynamism. When we mobilize to solve a problem, we solve it. It might be a cliché to say that leadership is required, but it also happens to be true.
We don’t have that leadership now. Instead, we have passive acquiescence. Yet, if there was an ever an issue on which all Americans should agree, it is that when it comes to unemployment, the time to define deviancy upward is overdue.
There is more. Be sure and read the whole thing.
Several things came to mind as I read it. (You will pardon me if I focus more on its construction than its content. One, I am an engineer. Two, I doubt very many of our regular readers will disagree with much of what he said.):
Loose lips have sunk far more things than just ships. Lack of message discipline is usually a sign of lack of discipline elsewhere and is often a harbinger of upcoming defeat at the polls. So it is comforting to see at least one of our top candidates for the Presidency with that important trait.
The RNC has lined out its early primary calendar, and it included included only four states going in February with the rest going on March 6 or later.
The Florida GOP began insisting their primary would be held on January 31, 2011.
After pressure from the RNC, Florida officials blinked and offered a compromise: they would move behind Iowa and New Hampshire (but before Nevada and South Carolina). Better, but still not March 6 – and not making South Carolina happy.
Yesterday, the Iowa GOP Chairman and the South Carolina GOP Chairwoman went public calling for the 2012 Republican National Convention be moved out of Florida if the state refused to play by the rules like everyone else.
Florida GOP Chairman Dave Bitner has responded to those two by offering another compromise: Florida will move their primary behind the first four states if Florida could still go in February.
This is an interesting offer from the Florida GOP. It would require the early calendar to be shaken up a little bit (South Carolina is currently scheduled to hold their primary on February 28, so everything would have to be moved up), but I wonder if the RNC is tempted to take this latest offer and end the stand off. Nobody really believes the convention would be moved out of Florida, and if the RNC doesn’t accept one of these compromises Florida will simply hold their primary on January 31 and blow up the whole thing. About the only bargaining chip the RNC holds is not allowing the Florida delegates on the floor of the convention, but in such a massively important swing state the GOP isn’t going to follow through with that threat, either.
What do you think? Should Florida be allowed to be the fifth early state? Should the RNC hold out in hopes the Florida GOP comes to their senses and moves back to March 6? What would you recommend to both groups in this staring contest?
