Mitt Romney

Citizens Pay Taxes

Mark Noonan77 Comments

And if you don’t pay taxes then you are honestly not fully a citizen.  This Fox News poll indicates that a massive majority of people instinctively grasp this fact:

A large majority of likely voters believes all Americans should pay some federal income tax — even if it is as little as one percent of what they make.

Seventy-nine percent say everyone should pay something, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday.  That includes 85 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats.

According to the IRS, last year approximately 41 percent of tax filers did not pay federal income tax.  The Tax Policy Center estimates that will increase to 46 percent this year…

It is just being part of a self-governing nation – every adult who is physically capable of contributing should contribute, even if its only in a tiny, symbolic manner.  The fact that tens of millions of people pay no federal income tax is a scandal – unless you starved to death last year, you had some sort of income and you should have paid some part of it in to the common fund.  Citizenship is only secondarily about the exercise of rights – it is primarily about the exercise of responsibilities.  And this, indeed, is what scares people about it – especially liberals:  that every man shall be a king (and every woman a queen).  It is frightening to think that you are personally responsible for yourself and even more frightening to think if yourself as responsible for everyone else.  And so it has always been easy for frightened people to prefer a tyrant who will take responsibility for the group and the individual.

I’m heartened by this poll – I had thought that only about 60% of Americans still got what it means to be a citizen.  This poll indicates that nearly 80% still do.

UPDATE:  Off topic here but since you liberals are considering polls to be holy writ:

Rasmussen polled voters to find out which candidate is trusted more to handle the US economy. Mitt Romney leads Obama by seven points, 51-44.

Bloomberg polled the question of which candidate do Americans trust more on terrorism. The Obama administration is rapidly becoming engulfed in charges that it has attempted a cover-up after the terrorist attacks in Libya and Egypt left four Americans dead. President Obama had expected, prior to the attacks, that authorizing the mission that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden would allow him a cushion on foreign policy and especially on terrorism. Bloomberg found that there is no such cushion. In fact, Mitt Romney leads Obama on trust on terrorism by six points, 48-42.

Romney At Clinton’s Global Initiative

Cluster145 Comments

This morning Romney spoke at Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative, and not only received a standing ovation from a room full of Democrats, but clearly demonstrated his understanding of the need for “effective” government/private sector partnerships in developing and improving third world countries. Romney’s successful experience in the private sector and government are the perfect blend for what is needed to take this great country over, and restore what America was, and can be. We don’t need to “fundamentally transform” this country, as the current occupant is doing, and plans to accelerate in the next four years. What we need to do, is restore what made this country the envy of the world, ie; our compassion, our innovation and our freedom to not only strive to reach our own individual potential, but to extend American Exceptionalism to everyone, and in order to do that, one needs to fully understand and believe in American Exceptionalism. Romney does. Obama never has.

The entire video is 20 minutes long and well worth the time, or the transcript is in the link as well. I have grown tired of bashing Obama, because quite honestly, the material is endless and too easy. What I will strive to do from this point forward, is to make the case for Romney, and that too, shouldn’t be too difficult. He is a man of incredible integrity, knowledge, compassion, and wisdom, and he truly believes that our best days are ahead of us. As the 20th century was America’s century, so to will be the 21st century, and it will start with a Romney Presidency.

 

Excellent Polling Analysis

Mark Noonan53 Comments

Geraghty quoting GOP pollster McLaughlin over at NRO:

…How campaigns try to sway polling results: “In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign’s lobbying the networks’ exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout.” (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) “In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis.”

On what a realistic partisan breakdown would look like: “The 2004 national exit polls showed an even partisan turnout and Bush won 51–48. Had it been the +4 Democratic edge of 2000, John Kerry would have been president. 2008 was a Democratic wave that gave them a +7 partisan advantage. 2010 was a Republican edge. There’s no wave right now. There are about a dozen swing states where in total millions of voters who voted in 2008 for Obama are gone or have not voted since. There are also hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and others who voted from rural, exurban or suburban areas in 2004 for Bush who did not vote in 2008, because they were not excited by McCain or thought he would lose. They are currently planning to vote mainly as a vote against President Obama.”

What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models…

Given that our venal MSM is entirely in the tank for Obama it wouldn’t take much lobbying or pressure to get an MSM poll – or a poll done independently for an MSM outfit – to skew their polling to advantage Obama.  Good to remind everyone at this time that back before the primaries were even over I was saying that the polling will show Obama in good shape right through election day no matter who we nominated.  First off this is because polling – for a variety of reasons – almost invariably over-states Democrat strength.  Secondly because the MSM believes it is their moral duty to have our first African-American President re-elected.  Their whole worldview is at stake here – if Obama loses, then they will feel it as a bitter, personal loss.  They also must know, by now, that they are destroying their credibility with all non-liberal Americans and they clearly don’t care…saving Obama trumps all for 90% of the MSMers (which includes, by the way, a very large number – perhaps a majority – of those who work at Fox News; maybe not the on-camera talent, but the people who select and write the stories).

Continue reading →

Don’t Buy the Lies

Mark Noonan80 Comments

Just in case any of you out there are getting skittish – a few words to the wise.  First off,  here’s a headline from September, 1980:

“Campaign Kickoff; Has Reagan Dropped the Ball?” – U.S. News and World Report, 9/9/1980

In what shapes up as a tight contest for the White House, even associates of Ronald Reagan conceded that the Republican nominee got off to a sputtering start in his attempt to replace President Jimmy Carter…

Reagan, of course, went on to win by 10.

Coming out of the convention what Obama wants – and thus the MSM will do – is play up every negative aspect for the GOP and every positive aspect for Obama (even if they have to make up things to fit both narratives).  Remember, 90% of the MSM is in the tank for Obama – always has been, always will be.  They will not tell the truth.  Now, readers here know that I’ve been confident of a Romney victory:  I remain confident.  Can Obama win?  Sure he can.  Lots of things can happen in an election – maybe the American people in a majority will want to continue Obama’s destructive rule.  So be it.

But I don’t think it will happen – if it does happen it just means that we’ve allowed socialism to go too far and it will have to get massively worse before a majority are fully awake to the necessary revolution.  Fortunately – if I may use that word – the re-election of Obama will make things rapidly get massively worse so we’ll have a good shot of winning in 2016 if not in 2012.  But I don’t believe a majority of my fellow Americans are that far gone – at least 40% of them are (and thus that is the ultimate floor for the Obama vote – when he shouldn’t get more than 10%, representing the people who really profit of our corrupt system) – but not a majority.  November 6th will either prove or disprove my view – but my view of where the majority is doesn’t depend on polls (hasn’t at all this election cycle) because the polls are simply over-sampling Democrats.  My view is based upon cold, hard, facts on the ground – and all of those (such as, for instance, Romney’s 22 campaign offices in Michigan – a State Obama won by more than 16 percentage points) show, at a minimum, that Romney is even with Obama, and I think he’s actually ahead.

UPDATE:  Hot Air reports on a new poll showing Obama up by 7 over Romney in New Jersey.  Yes, New Jersey.  The State Obama won by 15 points in 2008.

Does it stand to reason that Obama can lose that much support in heavily blue New Jersey and yet not lose it in purple Ohio and Florida?  I’m telling ya – any State that Obama won by less than 5 is gone, any State won by less than 10 is “tossup”.

What is Wrong With America? We Don’t Like “Dirty” Jobs

Mark Noonan192 Comments

This could be Part 1 of a 10,000 part series, but one of the problems I’m always yammering on about it is our failure to understand that prosperity only comes when you make, mine or grow things.  Keep in mind that I consider my own work pretty much useless as compared to what any plumber, auto mechanic, doctor or drywall installer does in the course of the day.  There is some point in what I do, but I don’t kid myself in to thinking that the world would be worse off, fundamentally, if my entire job title was scrubbed from the books.  The trouble we have is that people who are government bureaucrats, college gender studies professors, lawyers, think tank employees, etc believing they are doing something as important (or even more important) than those people who grow our food and make our clothes.

As we look for ways to fix our nation, one of the most important tasks will be to re-invigorate the concept that work – real work – is honorable.  That the man or woman getting dirty day by day to ensure we have the necessities is doing something 2nd in importantce only to raising children (the fact that we don’t consider raising children to be that important – as we can see in the liberal attitudes towards stay-at-home-mom Mrs. Romney – is an article for another day).  As it turns out, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame from television has written a letter to Romney on this very subject.  To quote:

…I shared my theory that most of these “problems” were in fact symptoms of something more fundamental – a change in the way Americans viewed hard work and skilled labor. That’s the essence of what I’ve heard from the hundreds of men and women I’ve worked with on Dirty Jobs.Pig farmers, electricians, plumbers, bridge painters, jam makers, blacksmiths, brewers, coal miners, carpenters, crab fisherman, oil drillers…they all tell me the same thing over and over, again and again – our country has become emotionally disconnected from an essential part of our workforce.  We are no longer impressed with cheap electricity, paved roads, and indoor plumbing. We take our infrastructure for granted, and the people who build it.

Today, we can see the consequences of this disconnect in any number of areas, but none is more obvious than the growing skills gap. Even as unemployment remains sky high, a whole category of vital occupations has fallen out of favor, and companies struggle to find workers with the necessary skills. The causes seem clear. We have embraced a ridiculously narrow view of education. Any kind of training or study that does not come with a four-year degree is now deemed “alternative.” Many viable careers once aspired to are now seen as “vocational consolation prizes,” and many of the jobs this current administration has tried to “create” over the last four years are the same jobs that parents and teachers actively discourage kids from pursuing. (I always thought there something ill-fated about the promise of three million “shovel ready jobs” made to a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a shovel.)…

Precisely – now, what does Mr. Rowe want?  He continues…

…Certainly, we need more jobs, and you were clear about that in Tampa. But the Skills Gap proves that we need something else too.  We need people who see opportunity where opportunity exists. We need enthusiasm for careers that have been overlooked and underappreciated by society at large. We need to have a really big national conversation about what we value in the workforce, and if I can be of help to you in that regard, I am at your service – assuming of course, you find yourself in a new address early next year…

Rowe goes on to note that he wrote Obama the same sort of letter four years ago and never heard back…but it appears that Romney has now read the letter.  Romney is unlikely as a man to lead us on a revolution – but curiously enough he is more likely than Obama (for all the “fundamental transformation of America” that Obama is on about, all he’s really doing is consolidating something that Chesterton predicted more than 100 years ago – that the Ruling Class would call itself “socialist”, put us all in property-less economic straightjackets and, straight faced, tell us they care about the little guy).  I hope that Romney really ponders the letter and starts to talk about he issues raised.  Cutting taxes and spending; very important.  Reforming our regulatory system; vital.  But unless we become an America of working people doing the dirty job of building civilization brick by brick and girder by girder, then we’re ultimately doomed.

A Romney Presidency

Cluster53 Comments

Provided the lies and distortions of the Obama regime and the liberal media don’t win out as they did in 2008,  we can all look forward to an actual adult administration and a Romney Presidency. So what can we expect? Well to begin with, we can expect a return to decency, where success is applauded, America is not apologized for, and people are once again judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. We can expect a return to work for welfare, allowing states to enforce the federal immigration law, and a repeal of the presidential “dream act” decree. And speaking of repeal, I think we can expect a repeal of Obamacare provided that conservatives win the Senate, which is crucial.  I hope we can also expect a reform of medicare and serious conversation about, if not a reform of the antiquated tax code, which is desperately needed to lower the tax burden on the middle class and eliminate the tax shelters and loop holes for those in the upper income brackets, all of which originate from lobbyists and special interests. Keep the tax code simple and easy to enforce. I think, or at least hope that we can also expect a lower corporate tax rate which will encourage corporations to come back to America and once again employ with the confidence that the tax and regulatory environment will not be too burdensome. And lastly I hope that Romney will allow those corporations to repatriate their off shore funds with a one time tax holiday, which should inject nearly $2 trillion into the economy and would be the best stimulus ever.

Add to this a concerted effort to develop our natural energy resources, and we can expect much lower annual deficits, if not a balanced budget within a few years. Consumer confidence would explode and government dependency would decrease as people found gainful employment and the dignity of providing for themselves. America would once again be that shining city in the hill.

RNC Open Thread

Mark Noonan41 Comments

I was very much impressed by Mrs. Romney’s speech – didn’t know that they had started that far down the economic totem poll.  Which, by the way, just shows the decency of Mitt Romney:  his life is not a talking point.  This is in stark contrast to Obama who has scripted himself to obtain maximum personal advantage from whatever situation he’s in.

Christie’s speech was also very good – a challenge to America to hear the truth and act upon it.  As a theme for the campaign, it is right on the money.  I do believe that the broad majority is done with the old politics and is ready for the revolution.  That Mitt might lead it is weird, but no stranger than the fact that we elected an exactly unqualified man as President in 2008.

What do you think of it all?

UPDATE:  “Mr. President, I’m here to tell you that the American people are awake, and we’re not buying what you’re selling in 2012.”  See the Mia Love video – if she wins her House seat, then she’s the next TEA Party political rock star.

UPDATE II:  Forgive me if I’m wrong, but methinks that was Rice’s “I’m going to run for governor of California in 2014” speech…

UPDATE III:  A Democracy Corps poll with a D+6 advantage shows Romney up by 15 points among Independents. Hot Air has the story.

UPDATE IV:  With all the GOPalooza going on  if you feel the need for some quality, Obama Time, then Suitably Flip has the torture implement ready.