Campaign 2012

$71,600 to be With Obama

Mark Noonan7 Comments

From Newsmax:

The parties just keep coming for birthday-boy Barack Obama. After a Chicago fund-raiser the night before he turned 50 and a White House party on the big ay, a third event is now planned for New York.This time it is high-powered movie mogul Harvey Weinstein who will host the
president at his Big Apple home, reports the New York Post.

And despite being described as “a small dinner and discussion” on the invitation, it will raise $2 million for the president’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee. According to the NYP, the cost per couple to chow down is $71,600…

Yeah, that is real “man of the people” stuff, huh?  Glad that Obama understands what we’re going through… I mean, what says “average American” more than plunking down 71 grand on dinner?  Don’t we all do that ever day?  Well, I guess we might if Bernanke goes on another printing spree and our currency completely collapses…

This man Obama is so entirely out of touch with the American people.  He doesn’t even need to raise this much money…everyone knows who he is; its not like he has to introduce himself to the American people.  But, when you’re in the Ruling Class, I guess you need these sorts of affairs…makes you feel special.  Connected.  In charge.  Able to blow money like no tomorrow…

Nader: There Will be an Obama Primary Challenger

Mark Noonan39 Comments

From The Daily Caller:

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

Nader now says that a primary challenge is a near certainty.

“What [Obama] did this week is just going to energize that effort,” Nader promised in an interview with The Daily Caller. “I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent.”

The only question, he said, is the stature of that opponent and whether it will be either “an ex-senator or an ex-governor” or “an intellectual leader or an environmental leader.”…

While one must never forget the way Nader helped fasten upon the American people the greedy and corrupt tribe of trial lawyers, you do have to hand it to him on his convictions:  he’s a pinko right down to the ground, and Obama hasn’t been commie enough for him.  Which, once again, does make you wonder just how ultra-leftist Obama would have to be to please people like Nader.  At all events, it appears that anger over Obama’s failures on the left side are starting to bite.

While there was some lip service on the left about Afghanistan being a “good” war, the reality is that the left dislikes any use of American power…so, the fact that we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan and have also launched a war in Libya has to be causing problems.  In addition to this, Obama has kept in place almost all of the Bush anti-terrorism policies…this is simple common sense on the part of Obama, but our leftists talked themselves in to really believing that Gitmo was a horror and that the Patriot Act was undermining American liberty.  To keep the American Gulag open has to be a shock to the left…and a source of anger the longer it stays open (here’s a clue for you liberals…it will remain open at least until after election day…Obama simply will not risk releasing one of the terrorists there for fear that someone will be killed by the former inmate…in your liberal mind those men might be innocents cruelly arrested and tortured by Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler, but the realty is that they are killers who want to kill again).  Add in things like the failure to terminate the Bush tax cuts, failure to raise taxes on “the rich” some more, failure to get a single-payer health plan and it all adds up to a grand disappointment to the left.

And so a possible primary challenger…if Nader can dredge one up.  Given Nader’s statement, he’s likely to find someone…but unless he finds someone with real stature, it will just be a joke candidacy, easily crushed by the Democrat machine.  Nader will have to find someone who is both willing to ship out with the craziest denizens of the liberal nuthouse while also being someone with a credible political record.  This will not be easy to do.  But always fun to watch…stay tuned.

Capitalism or Socialism?

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Donald Byrne over at Catholic Journal has an excellent look at both our horrid fiscal situation (yes, we really are going bankrupt) and points out that that in our most-desired goals (prosperity and equity), free market capitalism does much better than State socialism.  Essentially, the imposition of socialistic policies in the United States have exacerbated wealth disparities – if Obama’s goal was really to “spread the wealth around”, he’d be reading Hayek and changing course.  Byrne concludes:

…The goals that competitive free market capitalism brings society toward are efficiency and equity on the microeconomic level and high employment and a reasonable degree of price level stability as well as a consensus driven rate of economic growth.  The decisions of the many, NOT the few, dictate what an economy will produce in the way of goods and services, in what manner those goods will be produced and in distribution of income (the reward of the goods and services produced) with maximum freedom to the people as consumers and productive resources.  It is an economic system that is based on the principle of subsidiarity, again, where the decision-making is driven down to the lowest level possible…after all, who knows/understands better than the individual (in most cases) what is best for them?

And there’s that word I keep using – “subsidiarity”.  Remember, in the end all our fights are to secure for us “subsidiarity” – the right of individuals and localities to decide for themselves the best means of living their lives.  It is at the core of American political morality – it is why our Declaration asserts that government’s must rule by consent, and why the 9th and 10th amendments were added to the Constitution.  It is doubtful that many of the Founders had read deeply in to Catholic social teaching, but in this case they didn’t have to….anyone with a bit of wisdom will swiftly understand his inability to dictate to others, and others far away from his own community.

Obama’s crime against Americanism (because that is what is amounts to) is to suppose that he and those in power with him can determine what is best for everyone.  That they can justly “spread the wealth around” and come to a superior outcome than the individuals, themselves, could achieve.  Not only is this wrong philosophically, it is also wrong in strictly practical terms.  The erosion of the middle class, the destruction of America’s ability to make, mine and grow things, the bankrupting of our nation and the moral decline of the populace are directly traceable to socialistic attempts to decree an outcome, rather than allow things two work themselves out through the interplay of free people.

The only quibble I have with Byrne is over the use of the word “capitalism”.  We should more emphasize the term “free market” than the word “capitalism” because capitalism has come to mean in the public mind a collection of Ivy League educated board room trolls, and the government-subsidized crony-capitalist.  Our fight is not to make the world safe for GE; not to make smooth the path of Government Motors…but to free up the market so that average men and women can enter it, using their own means of production, to create wealth for themselves, their families and their communities.

In practical, political terms I think we’d do much better this way.  What we have growing in the United States is a populist revolt against the Ruling Class.  Sickened by the corruption of politics and the economy, the people are demanding that those who have ruined things be tossed out, while those who are willing to work obtain the greatest reward.  We’ll go further – obtain more power to reform, that is – if we hitch ourselves to this popular revolt, and we can best do that by clearly identifying ourselves in complete opposition to what is currently wrong.

As we enter the Great Debate of 2012, we’ll have Obama telling everyone that a victory for free markets means granny being thrown over the cliff.  Allied with Obama will be those crony capitalists who will warn that failure to support “too big to fail” corporations will be a disaster.  We must expose these lies – we must present a vision of America free and prosperous, and explain that all socialist plans (regardless of what label they are given) will lead to poverty, dependence and a divided, dysfunctional America sliding towards tyranny.  Our question must be – who do you trust:  Obama or yourself?  Make that the issue of 2012 and we’ll win so big a victory that liberalism will not trouble us again for 20 years.

Poll: “Generic Republican” Bests Obama by Five

Mark Noonan162 Comments

From Rasmussen:

…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows the generic Republican with 47% of the vote, while the president picks up 42% support. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided…

Not the poll numbers of a man who just won a political battle.  Obama is severely damaged political goods.

He can (and likely, will) bounce back from this – and 2012 will be the hardest fought campaign in American history (possibly in world history).  Obama and the liberalism he leads and personifies will not go out without a fight.  No matter how bad things get, they will go after us with all they’ve got.  They will ask and give no quarter.

But, still, anyone who is worried that a robust, conservative message can’t win against Obama is nuts…any coherent alternative can beat him.  Better if its conservative, but the main thing for the 2012 GOP candidate is to not be Obama, just as for the Democrats the prime thing was to not be Bush.

We can beat him and his Democrats – and not just beat them, but crush them down so low that for 20 years they won’t be able to trouble us.  We can win the power necessary to restore American liberty and greatness…all we have to do is fight it out and never quit.

Obama Just Isn’t Liberal, Enough

Mark Noonan21 Comments

From The New Yorker:

…Of course, invoking the Fourteenth Amendment has always been a long shot, a last refuge. But Obama’s seeming refusal to hold it in reserve (“like the fire axe on the wall,” in Garrett Epps’s words) is emblematic of his all too civilized, all too accommodating negotiating strategy—indeed, of his whole approach to the nation’s larger economic dilemma, the most disappointing aspect of his Presidency. His stimulus package asked for too little and got less. He has allowed deficits and debt to supersede mass unemployment as the emergency of the moment. He has too readily accepted Republican terms of debate, such as likening the country to a household that must “live within its means.” (For even the most prudent householders, living within one’s means can include going into debt, as in taking out a car loan so that one can get to one’s job.) He has done too little to educate the public to the wisdom of post-Herbert Hoover economics: fiscal balance is achieved over time, not in a single year; in flush times a government should run a surplus, but when the economy falters deficits are part of the remedy; when the immediate problem is what it is now—a lack of demand, not a shortage of capital—higher spending is generally more efficacious than lower taxes, especially lower taxes on the rich…

And now the Carterization of Obama is complete…well, except that he hasn’t had his Killer Rabbit attack.  You see, I remember this – back in 1980 when I was gleefully reading over the liberal angst about Carter’s defeat, there were liberal opinions that Carter’s failure was that he wasn’t liberal enough.  Had he spent more, taxed more, cut defense more, negotiated with our enemies more…had he just gone full blown in to the most extreme liberalism possible, it all would have worked out.  There is a bizarre disconnect from reality in our “reality-based community”…the unwillingness to ever admit that liberalism can get it wrong, or even be unpopular.

One does have to wonder – that was written by Hendrik Hertzberg.  He’s a well-educated man:  at least, his credentials say so.  But does he really believe that there was in what FDR did a stark contrast to what Hoover did?  Does he further believe that what FDR did worked?  Hoover spent bags of money trying to fix the economy (little remembered is how in 1932 FDR ran on a balanced budget platform).  FDR just spent bags and bags and bags.  Hoover didn’t fix the depression, neither did FDR.  Yet here we are in 2011 and here is Mr. Hertzberg, certain that the lesson of the past is that you have to go flat out in spending…don’t do what Hoover did!  And Obama, in Hertzberg’s view, is being too Hooverish and not channeling his inner-FDR.  But Hoover did what FDR did and both FDR and Hoover failed utterly.  How do you get that ignorant about history and yet graduate from the Ivy League and become a commentator for The New Yorker?

Furthermore, a little blogger like me is supposed to stand in awe of all this…that I don’t have an Ivy League diploma and don’t have an editor to carefully review what I’ve written, and so I should accept as from on high such pronouncements.  But that is absurd – I can see what is plain as a pikestaff, Hertzberg, by the evidence in his article, would have difficulty finding the balls on a bull.  There is making a mistake – I’ve done that; I’ll do it again and again, too…but there is a huge difference between “mistake” and “obtuse”.

Never mind.  As long as liberals really think that it is a lack of liberalism which makes for liberal failure, it works out mostly to our advantage.  True, it came back to bite us in 2008 – never imagined someone as leftist as Obama could even get nominated, let alone elected…but everything, I guess, really is possible.  It is highly likely that we will correct 2008’s error in 2012…and Hertzberg and other liberals will then proclaim not a shift to the right to regain America’s trust, but a further shift to the left because those darn morons, the voters, just don’t know what’s good for them.  We should be able to keep the Democrats out of the White House for 20 years on that.

HAT TIP:  Commentary

The Tea Parties, the Future of Liberty and Liberal Intentional Slander

tiredoflibbs90 Comments

After Barak Obama (the obAMATEUR to realists) became president in January 2009, he signed the infamous “stimulus package”, worth $787 billion, of liberal dream spending with virtually no Republican support (and rightfully so).  As it was rammed through with little reading or debate, we were told that it was “necessary”, “to keep unemployment under 8%”.  Practically overnight as one of its highest priorities, the federal government became the “Home Depot” by weatherizing government buildings and housing projects (excuse me “housing developments”).  Streets and highways with little or no need of repair would be broken up and repaved.  The DOT and other government agencies would spend millions on signs advertising the supposed benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  I saw one of those signs first hand in Washington DC.  It stated that the park on Roosevelt Island would be receiving a generous “grant” to facilitate the involvement of local youth in the removal of “non-indigenous plants”.  To put it simply, local kids would be weeding the island.  This was going to save the economy and the country??

Then there were several “projects” and “studies” also financed by the ARRA.  One project, numbered 1R01AA01658001, titled “Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent or Separate Use”.  This grant of $400,000 to a professor at New York State at Buffalo has the following official abstract: “We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults’ use of malt liquor, other alcoholic beverages, and Marijuana, all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences including addiction.”  Wow, $400,000 to study something we already knew???  Other such “grants” followed, to ACORN, to the study of porn, to the study of fish migrations and mating habits of certain animals, etc. etc.

The cost of the stimulus was later revised to $862 billion (an underestimate of 10%).  If a private business made such a blunder in outgoing funds it would most likely go out of business.  But I digress…..  As a result of this boondoggle of liberal spending, the TEA Party was born.  It was by accident really that this organization was founded.  Thanks to Rick Santelli on CNBC and his rant against the stimulus package and a particular proposal to for it to also subsidize what he called the “losers mortgages”.  He proposed a ceremonial dumping of  of derivative securities into Lake Michigan.  A few hours later a website popped up with a call for a “Chicago Tea Party” and Santelli’s video rant. The video became viral across the nation.  Average Americans were furious about the massive new spending and the revelations about previous spending on those “studies” and “grants”.  This alone was not the sustaining factor in keeping the TEA Party movement alive but the fact that: Under President Obama, federal spending has been growing at an unprecedented pace.  We are adding $4.8 billion to the national debt everyday.  The long-term viability of Medicare and Social Security isn’t merely uncertain – as so many analysts would have us believe.  In fact their failure is is a sure thing without structural changes.  By adding massive new entitlements with the health care bill we are simply going to go broke faster.

The TEA party gained so much momentum so fast, it was a threat to the liberal establishment.  Immediately pundits, the obAMATEUR friendly media, the Democrats went into full gear with their baseless and usual smear tactics and attacks.

Susan Roesgen of CNN (once an anchor in New Orleans) was going after TEA Party enthusiasts at a Chicago rally, suggesting they were stupid and irrational (no objective reporting there).

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: “The danger of political violence in this country comes overwheminly from one direction – the right, not the left.  The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day – and, quite regurlarly, at TEA Party rallies – is calibrated not to inform but to incite.”

MSNBC’s Ed Shutlz (I KNOW NOTHING!!!): “I believe that the TEA Partiers are misguided.  I think they are racist, for the most part.  I think that they are clinging to their guns and their religion.  And I think in many respects, they are what’s wrong with America.”

Actress Janeane Garofalo: “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.  There are nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging readnecks.”

Comedian Bill Maher: “the teabaggers, they’re not a movement, they’re a cult.”

Democratic strategist Stece McMahon: “The reason people walk into schools and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and because of attitudes like this.  The reason people walk onto military bases and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and attitudes like this.  Really, what they’re doing is not that much different that what Osama bin Laden is doing in recruiting people and encouraging them to hate America.”

Chris Mathews claimed that the TEA Partiers are all “monochromatic” and “all white”.  A quick look and amateur and profession videos at rallies quickly proved this talking point wrong.

However, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 14% of voters say the TEA Party is “most in synch” with their values; 20% say TEA Partiers are “most in tune with economic problems Americans are now facing”.

A most interesting poll came from TargetPoint Consulting which interviewed 500 attendees at the April 15, 2010 Tax Rally in DC Here are some of the results:

The TEA Partiers are united on the issues of debt, the growth of government, and health care reform

They are socially conservative on the one hand and libertarian on the other, split roughly down the middle.

They are older, more educated, and more conservative that average voters and they are “distinctly not Democrat”.

This brings us to the present day.  The President’s approval ratings are low and getting lower and Congressional Democrats are the lowest and getting worse.  Members of his party are running away from him (as seen in the November elections with declines of his speaking at their rallies).  Now with the debate on the debt limit, Americans are seeing that the Republicans have presented plans while the Democrats and the President have presented NONE.  The only thing liberal Democrats and their drones can do is continue to attack the GOP and the TEA party candidates who won in November who are doing what their constituents want – lower spending and reduce the size of the budget with has grown over 25% in just two years.  There is no way you can convince anyone that there a no room for cuts.  The liberal drones continue with their attacks of racism.  Andrew Brietbart has offered anyone who can prove racism at a TEA party rally with a cash reward.  With all the amateur and professional videos out there NOT A SINGLE ONE has captured anything close to the looney left’s claims (of course, the left now claims criticizing the Presidents failed policies is racism).

The Democrats are out of new ideas.  They continue to tout the same old ones that have failed time and again – more spending and more taxes.  When the President says we must live within our means he is not talking of cutting spending to match revenues, but raising taxes in hopes of raising revenues to match spending.  His mishandling of this debt limit and lack of leadership is showing among his Twitter followers (losing 30,000) and elsewhere, his support continues to dwindle.

When President Obama spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, he declared that a world order that elevates one country or group of countries over others is bound to fail.  So he’s changing the order.  If his domestic policy priority is the redistribution of wealth, his foreign policy seems to be the redistribution of power.  The TEA Party has members of every race and creed is continuing to gain momentum and returning the conversation to limited government in scope and power.

Youth Vote Abandons Obama

Mark Noonan6 Comments

From Michael Barone over at the Washington Examiner:

…there has been big movement among whites. In 2008 they were 51 to 40 percent Republican. In the first half of 2011 they were 56 to 35 percent Republican — more Republican than Southern whites were three years ago.

The most noteworthy movement among whites has been among voters under 30, the so-called Millennial generation. Millennials voted 66 to 32 percent for Barack Obama in 2008 and identified as Democrats rather than Republicans by a 60 to 32 percent margin.

But white Millennials have been moving away from the Democrats. The Democratic edge in party identification among white Millennials dropped from 7 points in 2008 to 3 points in 2009 to a 1-point Republican edge in 2010 and an 11-point Republican lead in 2011…

The Obama kool aid just isn’t cutting it, any longer.  The kids were wowed in 2008, but now they’ve got years of experience with Obama’s reality…and being stuck in mom’s basement with a stack of unpaid student loans isn’t helping matters.

No, 2012 will not go like 2008.  Obama can still win if the GOP nominates a weak candidate, but the glory days of Obama are over.  He’s damaged goods – just another hack politician trying to sell people a line.

Will Someone “Primary” Obama?

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Certainly the Hillary supporters can say that – though if Hillary had won, then Obama supporters would be all “I told you so”, because Hillary is just as much a liberal as Obama and would have pursued the same economic policies…though she might have done better on the whole health care issue, given her past lessons-learned.

But can it happen?  Can there be a serious, Democrat challenger to President Obama?  Andrew Malcolm over at the Los Angeles Times points out some salient facts:

…Strong support among liberal Democrats for Obama’s jobs record has plummeted 22 points from 53% down below a third. African Americans who believe the president’s measures helped the economy have plunged from 77% to barely half.

Obama’s overall job approval on the economy has slid below 40% for the first time, with 57% disapproving. And strong disapprovers outnumber approvers by better than two-to-one.

Those are the sort of numbers which indicate a primary challenger is coming – and as Malcolm points out, Vermont’s socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, has called for just that.  Trouble is, it just can’t happen.  Even if you are a super-liberal Democrat who is upset that Obama hasn’t been sufficiently leftist (given how socialist he’s been, we conservatives now wonder just how commie a Democrat would have to be to please the Democrat base), you just have to know that (a) you can’t take the nomination away from Obama (the Democrat party is firmly under Obama’s control and even if someone started to do well with the voters, the Democrat leadership would ensure that Obama got the nomination, no matter what) and (b) even if you did by some miracle beat Obama for the nomination you’d go down to crushing defeat in November as Obama supporters (especially among African-Americans) took revenge for you knocking off their guy.  And not only would you not win the Presidency, but the fact that you divided the party would mean a crushing GOP victory all the way down the ballot.

So, no, there won’t be a Democrat primary challenger for Obama – not unless it is entirely a fringe candidate who won’t even get to 10% of the vote.  There will be no replay of Ted Kennedy’s 1980 challenge to Jimmy Carter.  The Democrats are stuck with Obama – they know that in the end it is better to lose with him at the top, if it comes to that, than to divide the party in a quixotic attempt to oust him…they’ll still lose, but lose even worse.

This is the wages of foisting a lie upon the American people.  As I pointed out on September 22nd,  2008:

…Obama is the “Un-Named Democrat” – the stealth candidate who can be all things to all men without being anything concrete to anyone. You want someone who will heal racial divisions? Obama. Re-unite the people of the United States? Obama. End the campaign in Iraq? Obama. Reverse global warming? Obama. Make foreigners love us? Obama. If there’s something about the past 8 years which has gotten on your nerves, Obama is the guy to fix it…not that he’s told you how he’ll fix it…

And he never did tell us how he’d fix it.  He just kept speaking in broad, uplifting generalities while a host of minions (including the MSM) went forth to tell the people that Obama was The One…that his “narrative” was so good, that he was so good looking, that he was so well-spoken…and he’ll fix it all.  Don’t vote for tired, old, white McCain…vote for energetic, young, black Obama.  Come one, just do it – it’ll be great.

But it was all a lie.  Obama wasn’t a post-racial healer; he belonged for 20 years to a racist “church” headed up by a mountebank of the worst order.  Obama didn’t want to re-unite us; he was pledged to “spreading the wealth around” which implies setting one group against another.  Obama couldn’t make foreigners love us; they didn’t hate us because of who was in charge, but because of what the United States is.  On and on – each bit of the Obama narrative false from start to finish.  And now Obama has been in office for two and a half years and people can see that it was a false narrative…but now Democrats can’t get rid of him.  They are lashed to the mast of the SS Obama and if he goes down, they go down with them.

And it serves them right – nothing better in the world than the operation of justice.  Lies brought the Democrats victory in 2008, and those lies will bring them defeat in 2012.

Poll: Obama Enjoys Modest Lead Over Perry, Bachmann

Mark Noonan53 Comments

From Rasmussen:

…A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that President Obama would enjoy a modest 44% to 39% lead over Texas Governor Rick Perry. Given that choice, 10% would opt for a third-party candidate and eight percent (8%) are not sure.

A separate survey shows that if Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is the nominee, Obama holds a 46% to 39% advantage. In that case, seven percent (7%) would choose a third candidate and eight percent (8%) are not sure…

Any of you Democrats out there can be happy that Obama is in the lead, but anyone out there who knows politics understands that this is deadly news…outside of us news and politics junkies, probably not half the American people know who Perry or Bachmann is while Obama has 100% name recognition.  Also, any incumbent who is polling under 50% is always in danger – for Obama to feel safe about 2012, he’d have to poll 52% or so against the best known GOPer…and that is Romney, who bests Obama in this poll, 43% to 42%.

The usual caveats – it is way early and just about everything can change over the next 16 months.  Of course, they can also change for the worse as far as Obama is concerned.  The key here is for every last person in the United States to cease thinking of Obama as unbeatable…someone we’d better tailor our candidate to in order to have a ghost of a chance of beating him.  He’s beatable – by anyone.  He could also win against anyone, so don’t look for some sort of perfect candidate either on ideological or marketing grounds.  Look for the person you think will make the best campaigner and the best President…that is whom we must find and nominate.  And then get out there and fight like mad.

After that, it is all in God’s hands and it will be as it will be.