U.S. 2012 Election

[a_majoor]

A look at some possible election memes:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-2012-presidential-race-on-your-mark-get-set-go/

The 2012 Presidential Race: On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

Posted By Jennifer Rubin On September 27, 2009 @ 12:02 am In Opinion, Politics, US News | 118 Comments

The Republican 2012 contenders are keeping their powder dry — sort of. The public doesn’t seem anxious to endure another presidential campaign stretching over multiple years. And we learned that spending millions and jumping out to a lead in polls a year or more before the first primary vote is no guarantee of success. Still, there is a fair amount of political throat-clearing and jostling as the contenders vie to stay in the public view and establish their standing as credible challengers to the president.

Last week, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney appeared at the Foreign Policy Initiative conference [1] to lay out their case against the president’s approach to foreign policy and align themselves with a forward-leaning, free-trading, and American values-based foreign policy vision. Tim Pawlenty [2] has been throwing some shots at Romney over his Massachusetts health care plan (Romney hasn’t bothered to respond) and Mike Huckabee is everywhere — in Israel and on Fox News most visibly. Sarah Palin pushed “death panels” into the public debate, both horrifying her opponents and cementing the attachment of her fans. And in Hong Kong she too talked foreign policy [3] last week, taking issue with the president’s defense cuts and emphasizing the importance of free trade and human rights as part of America’s international agenda.

It is far from clear who will actually jump into the 2012 race, but we are getting a sense of the opening lines of the campaign. There are four of them already in circulation.

First: “It turns out experience matters.” Obama ran with inexperience as a badge of honor and “change” as his message. The result is a mound of debt, a confused and erratic foreign policy, and a campaign-obsessed and governance-challenged president. Maybe it is time, the contenders will argue, for someone who has done something, built something, or run something before getting to the White House. Competency matters and executive leadership skills which go beyond speechifying make all the difference between failure and success.

Second: “The American people were had.” Conservatives early on sniffed out Obama as an ultra-liberal with a big government agenda, but it took an entire campaign and the better part of a year in office for most Americans to figure it out. It may not be an effective ploy to run through the list of broken campaign pledges — candidates are expected by many cynical voters to lie about what they will do. But they aren’t expected to lie about their political identity and overarching vision for governance. Obama isn’t moderate, doesn’t like the free market, and isn’t interested in waging a robust war on Islamic fundamentalists. The 2012 contenders will no doubt argue that he is not simply a far-left liberal, but was a dishonest one.

Third: “It’s Barack Obama’s economy — and debt.” By 2012, if we haven’t hit the second dip in a double-dip recession, we are likely to be seeing some positive GDP. But job growth remains another story. Some estimate we aren’t going to see meaningful reduction in unemployment until 2014 [4]. That’s a problem, as John Judis of the New Republic [5] recently argued by looking at the historic relationship between unemployment and election results:

For both Roosevelt and Reagan, what mattered was not the actual state of the economy, but whether things were getting better or worse. The unemployment rate was still incredibly high when FDR won reelection in 1936, and Reagan didn’t actually lower unemployment between the time he took office and the time he was reelected–he only managed to get it back to where it had been at the start of his term. But, in both 1936 and 1984, the trajectory of unemployment was downward, and that was the key.Moreover, history suggests that it is not enough for the economy to be headed in the right direction; it has to be headed in the right direction in tangible ways that voters can see. Economists pronounced the recession of the early 1990s over in March 1991. But, when unemployment continued to rise through 1991 and most of 1992 and real wages stagnated, the public perceived the economy to still be declining — and it punished George H.W. Bush accordingly.

Meanwhile, the projected deficit is headed to $9 trillion [6] over the next decade according to the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office. If Republican John McCain carried the burden of the Bush economic record in the 2008 campaign, Republicans will certainly try to make sure Obama gets full “credit” for unemployment and the mounds of debt he will have accumulated.

Fourth: “No bleeping way is America in decline.” That’s actually not an invented line — it’s a paraphrase of a real one uttered by Romney at the FPI confab which got him his biggest laugh and round of applause. It’s a sentiment others will certainly pick up on. As Romney explained, Obama and his foreign policy clique seem to be enamored of the idea that America’s day has passed and it can no longer assert its military, economic, and moral might in a “multipolar” world — or something like that. None of the Republican contenders buy into that and each in his or her own way will sound Reagan-esque themes as Palin did in her Hong Kong speech [3]: restore America’s defense budget (which Obama is determined to take down to 3% of GDP), go forward with full funding for missile defense, counter Russian aggression, and defend human rights and democracy against despots. Obama thinks American exceptionalism is cringe-inducing chauvinism; Republicans know it to be the foundation of a successful foreign policy.

Don’t expect any candidate to announce for 2012 until well after the 2010 congressional races are over. But if you listen carefully you can already hear the campaign underway. The lines and the themes really all boil down to a simple idea: it wasn’t the “change” we had in mind. It seems with each passing day more Americans may be susceptible to that message.


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Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-2012-presidential-race-on-your-mark-get-set-go/

URLs in this post:

[1] Foreign Policy Initiative conference: http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/node/93

[2] Tim Pawlenty: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/eye-on-2012/pawlenty-vs-romney-on-health-c.html

[3] foreign policy: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDQzYjFlYTEwODRlMGNmNWE2ZmMzYWQ0OTk3NzcwM2U=

[4] 2014: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/87951

[5] New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/article/job-one?page=0,1

[6] $9 trillion: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125119686015756517.html

 

[ModlrMike]

Competency matters and executive leadership skills which go beyond speechifying make all the difference between failure and success.

She could have been talking about Ignatieff here as well!

 

[a_majoor]

More memes that will dhape the 2010 and 2012 elections:

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/change-and-hope/

Change and Hope

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On October 2, 2009 @ 6:54 pm In Uncategorized | 143 Comments

The Olympic Fiasco

I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago. As I wrote on NRO’s corner, I know I was. But Rio had a really convincing hope and change/ multicultural/new guy on the block case. And consider: given the recent bad windy city publicity (You Tube beatings, state and city corruption, Blagoism, Daley ward mobsterism, rumors of pre-Olympic wheeling and dealing on land angles, administration Chicago hard-ball Rahm Emanuel/David Axelrod politics, etc.), Chicago, Illinois ,was seen abroad as less competitive, far less competitive, than the other cities. I think almost any fair-minded neutral judge could grasp how those realities were going to play out. (Do not forget that Euros love to be gratuitously fickle and so in the first round trashed the reset-button, fawning American who wants to wow them through obsequiousness. And the more I watched Barack/Michelle do the “I grew up in the neighborhood” thing, the more I noticed the Euro-audience wincing (not smart bragging about your childhood Chicago “right hook” to an audience that has just watched horrific fighting in the streets of Chicago).

But even without the self-centered story-telling it was a hard sell anyway.  How can a post-national, I’m sorry Obama, trapped in a sort of we are the world paradox, be seen in nationalistic and near tribal fashion stumping for his own home town?  Again, it did not help that he appeared in campaign mode, tossing out the usual personal, somewhat hokey (and all but narcissistic) stories about himself and his family, that I know don’t resonate, much less make effective arguments, in the less therapeutic world of hardball politics abroad. In short, the community organizer was out organized by the multicultural ascendant Rio.

Almost all of Michelle’s statements were heartfelt and well meant. But they too proved in a global context counterproductive—and almost embarrassing in their now accustomed egocentricity. So the mystery remains, why did Obama think he should risk presidential and national capital in such ambiguous circumstances? Ego? Sloppy prep work? Payback to pals? Hubris?—e.g., I can fly in, do the hope and change cadence, fly out, and leave them hypnotized.

Sarkozy Drew Blood

Sarkozy really hurt Obama internationally, since his sarcastic ‘beam back down Barack’-like statement cut to the bone on the issue of such fluffy talk versus little substance: utopianism sermonizing on non-proliferation is great, but what about the spinning centrifuges? What does the Left do when the French are now to our Right? How can a weaker power sound braver than the stronger? And more principled? Europe is becoming worried, in the “be careful what you wish for” fashion about the Obama era, since the old bad cop/good cop game is up. It is now Europe good cop/US nicer cop. Much irony in this again…

The Challenge Ahead

Here is the problem for our President: the Iranian negotiation is an IED that will blow up in our faces. The theocrats want, need a bomb for a variety of reasons (why would a country that burns natural gas off at the oil well head need “peaceful” nuclear power?). Bombs have been a win/win situation for both Pakistan and North Korea. If Iran wins, we are off to the races—Saudi Arabia next, Egypt? Syria? Venezuela?

I hope the President is up to encouraging madcap drilling in the Alaska, Gulf, California, and the Dakotas to get these new finds into production, since if or when the Israelis strike, all hell is going to let loose in the Gulf. Cannot someone tell Obama that the moral, the peaceful, the only realistic thing now is to get tough with Iran through ostracism, sanctions, boycotts, even, heaven forbid, a blockade if need be, to prevent the far more terrible scenarios that lie ahead?

So What’s Ahead for Us?

Health care reform is stalled. Our Afghan generals are exasperated with the administration’s politicking of the war.  Cap-and-trade as written is unworkable and will implode. Most think we wasted the stimulus, not need more of it. Higher taxes haven’t hit, but they are going to sting his elite supporters. Promises will be broken as all sorts of additional taxes will fall on the middle class to stop the $2 trillion deficits before the Big Inflation comes, and it is coming. Immigration reform will be a disaster since it will be framed as quasi-open borders in political concessions to La Raza identity groups. Yet these are all unpopular issues that would require a President with 60% approval ratings to push them through. But when health care reform crashes, and it will as envisioned, then the rest of the agenda will line up as falling dominoes.

Where is Dick Morris?

Obama needs a Morris to mentor him in the arts of triangulating: distancing himself from Reid and Pelosi (rather than outsourcing to them the 1000 page health care bill); talking tough about deficits; balancing budgets; pro-American themes abroad; symbolic personal responsibility issues; the whole nine yards of Clinton reinvention. But I assume he will go instead the Carter cardigan sweater, pound the table  in “you are not up to my moral standards” sanctimonious mode.

So I’m Worried

I am not a fan of the Obama agenda. But I am don’t want an impotent Commander in Chief abroad for three very dangerous years to come. So I am worried that the U.S. will be crippled with a weak, unpopular executive, as happened to Bush (35% approvals) in 2007-8. Our currency is tanking. Our debts are climbing. Our energy needs are breaking us. Our borrowing is out of control. The country is divided in a 1859/1968 mode. And the world is smiling as Obama, now hesitant and without the old messianic confidence, presides over our accepted inevitable decline. The country needs to buck up and meet these challenges head on, since the world smells blood, whether in Iran, Russia, the Mideast, North Korea, or South America, and in a mere 9 months of the reset button.

We Should Vote for Anyone . . .

Who offers a coherent systematic agenda of reform. What do most want? Not necessarily a Republican or Democrat, or at this 11th hour to be mired in messy issues like gay marriage (I’m opposed to it), but rather fundamental matters of finance, investment, and defense. Here are ten random suggestions; dozens more could be adduced.

1)  Fiscal sanity that leads to federal spending freezes and a balanced budget that in turn soon allows a paying down of the debt.

2)  An oil/nuclear/coal/natural gas rapid development effort (again, to exploit especially new fields in Alaska, California, the Gulf, and North Dakota) to tide us over until alternate energy and new conservation lessen dependence. The alternative is to dream on about “green jobs” while we go broke trying to pay for scarcer imported oil, and lose our autonomy in the next price hike or Mideast crisis, even as we suffer amoral rants from oil-rich unhinged thugs like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Gaddafi, and Putin.

3)  A new national consensus on security to decide that when and if we go to war, to see the effort through, on the principle that whatever the mistakes we commit in battle are far outweighed by the cost of defeat.

4)  A bad/worse choice gut check reform on entitlements, especially concerning those unsustainable like Social Security and Medicare, that calibrates payouts in terms of incoming capital—whether by raising age eligibilities or curbing automatic cost of living hikes.

5)  Clear, demarcated, and enforced national borders, and an end to illegal immigration through greater enforcement, employer sanction, border fortification, and a change in national attitudes about unlawful entry.

6)  Zero tolerance on government corruption. There is no reason why someone like a Charles Rangel is still the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

7)  Tort reform, including limits on personal injury settlements and loser-pays law suit reform.

8)  A renewed commitment to national and regional missile defense, on the expectation that the next two decades are going to be terribly dangerous, as lunatic regimes may well threaten to hold an American city or ally as nuclear hostage.

9)  Federal investment in hard infrastructure projects, not redistributive entitlements or Murtha-like earmarks, such as freeways, dams, water projects, electrical grids, ports, rail, etc., with regional needs adjudicated by national bipartisan boards.

10)      A move to lower taxes, preferably by alternatives to the present income tax system, whether by a consumption tax or flat taxes, calibrated to commensurate spending cuts.

Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/change-and-hope/

 

[CougarKing]

I wonder what T6 thinks of this?

"Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new Rasmussen poll released today is a departure from previous polls showing a close three-way race for the Republican nomination to challenge pro-abortion President Barack Obama in 2012. The survey shows pro-life former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with a clear lead."

http://www.lifenews.com/nat5573.html

 

[GAP]

Mike Huckabee is way out there.....I wouldn't put too much credibility to him becoming president....

 

[tomahawk6]

Romney wont be a very attractive candidate because Romneycare is an expensive flop,a small version of what awaits the nation when Obamacare is enacted. National healthcare is a disaster,the only good thing is that the taxes kick in immediately but the healthcare wont start until 2013,so if the republicans or some third party can win both houses of Congress and the presidency then Obamacare can be killed.

Huckaby would be the candidate of choice for the democrats as they could pound him for being a religious nutcase. After this radical administration I think the public will want a conservative. The republican party is stuck on moderation which is socialism lite IMO. The conservatives will have to do a thorough house cleaning to gain control.

Palin definitely can get people out to a rally but I am not sure that she can win. I like Texas Governor Rick Perry,but 2012 is a long way off. I will say that if the republicans want to elect their own candidate they need to close their primary to everyone but republicans.Otherwise you will have democrats and independents voting which isnt the purpose of the primary.

 

[GAP]

Unless there is something sublimely in the background the Republicans are not going to do diddly in 2012...Palin or any others are not going to be enough to overcome Obama for a second term....he's a lot of things, stupid is not one of them.

 

[tomahawk6]

2010 will be an indication of the trouble Obama will be in. Already the democrats are looking to lose 2 special elections, the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey. Healthcrae is a huge hot button issue and the democrats are going to push it through despite what the public wants. There are stiff taxes tied to this measure and the kicker is that healthcare coverage wont start for 4 years after passage. This is just the beginning. If cap and trade kick in energy costs for the end user will increase.Throw in a VAT to make up for the loss in revenue from income tax [people not working] and a jobless recovery [or depression] and you will have alot of voter discontent.The voters vote their pocketbooks and its not looking good for the democrats. Nor has the trillions in spending done anything positive for the economy. The dollar is decreasing in value just look at gold prices [buy gold its the best hedge right now]. Inflation has to kick in with all the money thats being printed and that acts like another tax. Better take off those rose tinted glasses Gap.

 

[GAP]

2010 will be an indication of the trouble Obama will be in. Already the democrats are looking to lose 2 special elections, the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey. Healthcrae is a huge hot button issue and the democrats are going to push it through despite what the public wants. There are stiff taxes tied to this measure and the kicker is that healthcare coverage wont start for 4 years after passage. This is just the beginning. If cap and trade kick in energy costs for the end user will increase.Throw in a VAT to make up for the loss in revenue from income tax [people not working] and a jobless recovery [or depression] and you will have alot of voter discontent.The voters vote their pocketbooks and its not looking good for the democrats. Nor has the trillions in spending done anything positive for the economy. The dollar is decreasing in value just look at gold prices [buy gold its the best hedge right now]. Inflation has to kick in with all the money thats being printed and that acts like another tax. Better take off those rose tinted glasses Gap.

Actually I'm in perfect agreement with your points, I just can't for the life of me see any credible Republican accomplishing much in 2012 to overcome Obamamania (and contrary to talking points, it's alive and well). The Republicans are going to need a personality that can divert the voters' attention....right now there's nobody...

 

[Kirkhill]

Is Obamamaia really alive and well?  Or is the disconnect between the antipathy to his policies and the apparent lack of antipathy to the man due to the reluctance of "liberal-minded" individuals to admit to pollsters that they don't really like the man for fear of being thought racist?

I wouldn't want to be betting the farm on Obama polls these days.

A Fox poll (cue the chuckling) asked if people would vote for Obama again if they had a do-over on last year's elections.  43% would vote for Obama again.

 

[GAP]

People voted for their dream....they won't let go easily...

 

[Kirkhill]

People voted for their dream....they won't let go easily...

That's an absolute truth....and a source of worry.  If Obama's core support ends up lacking enough moderate support to take the next election, what will be their reaction?

As you say, they voted their dream and they won't let go easily....but the key to a successful democracy is a population that accepts the peaceful transition from "us" to "them".

On the other hand, I do agree with you regarding the Republicans.  There's nobody jumping out of the woodwork yet and the "Republicans" themselves are still having difficulty figuring out what their message should be.  Huckabee, Romney and Palin would all be bad choices.

For my money I think they might do well with someone that DOESN"T have a personality, DOESN'T have a plan, but just promises Good Governance.... but maybe that's the Canadian in me. ;D

 

[CougarKing]

"A collection of essays about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, titled Going Rouge, will be released the same day as Palin's own much-awaited book, Going Rogue.

The essays, collected by The Nation senior editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed and written by Max Blumenthal, Katha Pollitt, Matt Taibbi and several others, will examine "the nightmarish prospect of her continuing to dominate the nation's political scene." "

Imagine the confusion when her fans buy the wrong book. 

 

[tomahawk6]

I enjoy reading Sowell's articles as they are well thought out and thought provoking.

Dismantling America
By Thomas Sowell

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.

Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

 

[a_majoor]

The Democrats will have to sweep all 57 states to overcome this movement!

http://www.nowhampshire.com/2009/11/20/bosse-enters-race-for-gop-nod-in-new-hampshire%E2%80%99s-satirical-00th-district/

Bosse enters race for GOP nod in New Hampshire’s satirical 00th district

November 20, 2009 by Patrick 
Filed under News & Politics

23 Comments

Republican activist and free market think-tanker Grant Bosse formally declared his candidacy today in New Hampshire’s 00th Congressional District after news that the Obama administration has attributed a majority of the state’s stimulus jobs to that non-existent district.

New Hampshire has only two congressional districts, neither of which are numbered “00.”

“Even a fake district needs real leadership,” said Bosse while appearing on WGIR’s Charlie Sherman show on Friday morning.

“The people overseeing the stimulus actually found more fake congressional districts than there are real congressional districts. So if we run in all 440 phantom congressional seats we can take over Congress,” Bosse said as the radio host chuckled along.

“I can’t do this alone,” Bosse said at his press conference. “This needs to be a nationwide effort. We need to find candidates as fantastic and unbelievable as the stimulus numbers the Obama administration has given us.”

Bosse really was a candidate for Congress during the 2008 Republican primary in the real district of NH-02, which covers the Western part of the state. He lost to Jennifer Horn, who sources tell NowHampshire.com will endorsed Bosse’s fake candidacy today.

Former New Hampshire Attorney General and Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Kelly Ayotte endosed Bosse’s fake candidacy.

“The massive spending in Washington that Paul Hodes continues to support with the 787 billion dollar ’stimulus’ and now the trillion dollar government takeover of health care clearly needs to be reined in by someone who understands the importance of fiscal prudence. There is currently an absurd lack of transparency and accountability for Granite Staters’ hard earned tax dollars,” said Brooks Kochvar, campaign manager for former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, in the campaign’s endorsement announcement.

“If Paul Hodes and the professional politicians in Washington would read the legislation before they vote for it, both the federal budget and New Hampshire’s families’ budgets would be better off.”

Bossee will talk about his fake candidacy on Fox News Channel with Neal Cavuto on Friday afternoon.

Bosse’s fake candidacy to win a fake congressional district is a protest of sorts. This week several news reports pointed out that President Barack Obama’s Recovery.gov, the site developed by the White House to provide “transparent” information about the stimulus, is riddled with errors, including 700 congressional districts that don’t actually exist.

Many conservatives are furious that the federal government has apparently lost track of where a significant portion of the $787 billion stimulus money has gone.

While serious in intent, I think he has found the fatal weakness of the O-Bots, Dems and Progressives in general: they have no sense of humor and have no defense against people laughing at them.....

 

[a_majoor]

Yet another election meme:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/business/23rates.html?_r=1&ref=instapundit&pagewanted=all

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

by EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: November 22, 2009
WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter. The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.” WILLIAM H. GROSS

Articles in this series will examine the consequences of, and attempts to deal with, growing public and private debts.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.

The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.

The government’s average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.’s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent.

“All of the auction results have been solid,” said Matthew Rutherford, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of finance operations. “Investor demand has been very broad, and it’s been increasing in the last couple of years.”

The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter,” said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. “The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”

The current low rates on the country’s debt were caused by temporary factors that are already beginning to fade. One factor was the economic crisis itself, which caused panicked investors around the world to plow their money into the comparative safety of Treasury bills and notes. Even though the United States was the epicenter of the global crisis, investors viewed Treasury securities as the least dangerous place to park their money.

On top of that, the Fed used almost every tool in its arsenal to push interest rates down even further. It cut the overnight federal funds rate, the rate at which banks lend reserves to one another, to almost zero. And to reduce longer-term rates, it bought more than $1.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and government-guaranteed securities linked to mortgages.

Those conditions are already beginning to change. Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China.

The Fed, meanwhile, is already halting its efforts at tamping down long-term interest rates. Fed officials ended their $300 billion program to buy up Treasury bonds last month, and they have announced plans to stop buying mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March.

Eventually, though probably not until at least mid-2010, the Fed will also start raising its benchmark interest rate back to more historically normal levels.

The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates.

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead.

To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt.

Adding to the pressure, the Fed is set to begin reversing some of the policies it has been using to prop up the economy. Wall Street firms advising the Treasury recently estimated that the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities pushed down long-term interest rates by about one-half of a percentage point. Removing that support could in itself add $40 billion to the government’s annual tab for debt service.

This month, the Treasury Department’s private-sector advisory committee on debt management warned of the risks ahead.

“Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4.

“Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 24, 2009
An article on Monday about ballooning debt payments for the federal government misspelled, in some copies, the surname of an economist who noted that the bill for debt service would be even higher were it not for current low interest rates. He is Alan Levenson, not Levinson. And a chart with the continuation of the article misstated, in some editions, the size of debt payments due within a year that are currently paying no more than 1 percent in interest. It is $1.9 trillion, not $2.5 trillion.

More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on November 23, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

 

[CougarKing]

The man dubbed by our own Mr. Campbell as the leader of the "lunatic fringe" has returned.  ;D

Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs — whose abrupt departure from the struggling cable network stunned his fans — is mulling a run for the White House in 2012 and has even reached out to Latino groups to see if he can mend fences.
“It’s one of the discussions that we’re having,” Dobbs said in an interview on WTOP radio in Washington.

DOBBS' STAFF MUST REAPPLY FOR JOBS

“For the first time, I’m actually listening to some people about politics.”

Dobbs — whose outspoken views on the need to curtail illegal immigration earned him the ire of many minority groups — admitted he might not be cut out for politics.

I don’t think I’ve got the nature for it,” the blustery former anchor told the radio station.

But Dobbs — who dropped out of the Republican party in 2006 and to become an Independent — said he was interested in doing something positive for the country. “We’ve got to do something in this country and I think that being in the public arena means you’ve got to be part of the solution.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/former_cnn_anchor_says_he_mulling_kwX2W7xg6qmFgrOxIFvTSN
Belated news from earlier this week.

 

 

[a_majoor]

Anyone running anywhere needs to appeal to this demographic:

Bedford Falls, USA
By Salena Zito

INDIANA, Pa. - Turn the corner onto Philadelphia Street in this small Western Pennsylvania town, and you might be on the main street of Bedford Falls, the mythical town in Frank Capra's Christmas classic film, It's a Wonderful Life.

"This is a town where you hear people tell each other 'Merry Christmas' without ever considering if it is politically correct," said Chris Carter of Dayton, Ohio, here for the day on business.

Carter thinks places like Indiana or his hometown of Dayton are overlooked by the White House and Congress, but "that is okay with me. We thrive in spite of government's lack of attention to our concerns, not fail."

His sentiment was said without attending a "Tea Party" or railing against an elected official at a town hall - the media's usual caricature of people who vent against Washington.

Main Street America has entered an era of populism that embraces neither party. People are tired of government bailouts, spending and unchecked corruption, as well as the media's perceived lack of curiosity or investigation into all three.

They are really tired of being told their values and way of life are not politically correct.

"It has now become a cliché to say that the Washington elite do not understand people that live outside of their bubble, but clichés are not created in a vacuum," says Michael Scott, who owns a photography studio near the high school here.

"Politicians used to be known as statesmen," he explains. "They owned businesses in their hometowns and made about the same amount of money that the average voter did, keeping them in touch with who they represented."

"Today, well, not so much," says Jamey Snyder, one of the proprietors of The Coney Island, a legendary local college bar. Snyder grew up in Elmira, N.Y.; when he married his wife, Dee Dee, he became part of the celebrated McQuaide bar family.

As on many small-town main streets, Philadelphia Street is strung light pole-to-light pole with twinkling Christmas lights and dangling snowflakes. Pedestrians are treated to Jimmy Stewart's folksy voice at crosswalks, guiding them across intersections.

"We are an hour from everywhere," says Scott Cramer, 33, a loan officer who came here to attend college and never left. "But we may as well be a million miles from Washington."

"Elites like President Obama see government as a force for protecting the little guy," explains University of Arkansas political scientist Robert Maranto. "But regular folks on Main Street see government as incomprehensible and unpredictable."

Even with the best of intentions, government almost always does more harm than good.

When President Obama orders corporate bailouts, a stimulus plan that costs a quarter-million-dollars a job, or talks more about expanding government than reducing unemployment, folks are naturally skeptical, Maranto says.

Most Americans are Jeffersonians: They want limited government - totally at odds with Obama, who wants government without limits.

Much of the nation can buy a nice house for $150,000, live in a safe neighborhood with good schools and in general have peace of mind - and do it on one income.

For folks in places like Indiana, Pa., the economic insecurity of Chicago or both coasts - where people may work two jobs to live in a safe neighborhood - is totally foreign. So the president is pitching his economic policies to people who may care less about money and more about values.

While Indiana County's voter registration shows Democrats still outnumber Republicans, it is independent voters who have grown lately.

"These are the people that might not attend a Tea Party, but they find them aligned with their concerns," says pollster G. Terry Madonna. "They are less and less happy with government ... so they end up unaligned."

This week the president kicks off his first "listening tour" on another Pennsylvania main street.

It may be an effort to turn his slumping popularity - but it might be more effective if he embraced some policies favored by the Jeffersonian middle rather then staged another brilliant speech to pre-selected supporters with pre-screened questions.

Salena Zito is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial page columnist. E-mail her at szito@tribweb.com
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/29/bedford_falls_usa_99328.html at November 29, 2009 - 02:41:46 PM CST

 

[a_majoor]

The consent of the governed:

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/11/29/the-consent-of-the-governed/

The Consent of the Governed
posted at 2:21 am on November 29, 2009 by Doctor Zero

Jonah Goldberg of National Review recently wrote about the high-stakes political battle over health care reform:

Some moderate Democrats are making a side bet that they can vote for it out of solidarity and then run back to the center come the 2010 elections.

Well, I say let it ride. And just to make it more interesting, Republicans should promise to repeal “ObamaCare” if they get a congressional majority in 2010. As National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru argues, that way moderate Democrats won’t be able to run away from their votes come 2010. They’ll be on notice that this will be the campaign issue of the election. And moderate Republicans will be on notice to resist the temptation to tinker with Obamacare rather than defenestrate it once it’s passed.

Sure, I’d rather see this health-care proposal die stillborn (and that’s still quite possible). But if it passes, the upside is that Americans will finally be given a stark philosophical choice on a fundamental issue. That’s much rarer than you might think (recall that the Iraq War and the bailouts were bipartisan affairs).

Earlier in the article, Goldberg complains that “the quest for the middle ground usually rewards the worst kinds of politicians — those devoid of any core convictions and only concerned with feathering their own nests — and yields the worst kinds of policies.” The health-care debate presents the kind of sharp ideological contrast that makes it hard for unprincipled politicians to seek shelter in the mushy bog of the middle ground. Over the weekend, the libertarian Cato Institute calculated that the true cost of ObamaCare would exceed $6 trillion, after the various deceits used to make it seem close to revenue-neutral are stripped away. How much does real estate in the “middle ground” of such outrageous spending cost? Three trillion? When a radical program of such massive size is proposed, anything less than determined opposition is equivalent to submission.

I appreciate Goldberg’s point about the kind of muddled, confusing, and ultimately ineffective legislation produced by the quest for the middle ground. However, I wonder how truly desirable these uncompromising contests between capitalism and socialism are. Aren’t elected officials, especially Congress and the President, supposed to represent all of their constituents? Wouldn’t that mean listening to the concerns of both liberals and conservatives, and trying to craft legislation that satisfies both sides to some degree? Are the members of a winning political coalition supposed to have absolute power to do whatever they want, even if they won with only about half the popular vote, while the other side sits in obedient silence until their next chance at the ballot box?

In the course of endorsing a Dick Cheney run for the Presidency in 2012, Jon Meacham of Newsweek writes:
One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction.
I don’t think most Americans are under the impression they’re voting for a dictator every four years. Bill Clinton won the Presidency with a mere 43% of the popular vote. What sort of “mandate” did that give him to “take the country in a given direction?”

Of course, we cannot parcel out presidential powers based on the scale of the candidate’s electoral victory. The proper functioning of our government, and the harmony of our democracy, demand that we acknowledge the full legitimacy of the man or woman who sits in the Oval Office. The Left did their country no favors by bitterly dragging the 2000 elections out until 2008. The complementary aspect of this principle is that strong electoral victories cannot logically yield enhanced “mandates” to take the country in various radical directions. If close elections don’t produce miniature Presidents who just keep the seat warm until the next election, then landslide victories don’t produce super-Presidents with turbocharged authority. A President who carries 49 states, and wins 70% of the popular vote, is not entitled to stuff the opposing 30% of the electorate in the trunk and take America out for a joy ride.

The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The American understanding of democracy does not envision voters as slaves who enjoy the privilege of voting for a new master every few years. When the Declaration speaks of the right – and, later the duty – of the people to abolish tyrannical governments, it renders the notion of “mandates” to impose radical change on unwilling citizens absurd.

The vital role of consent in the structure of a just government is one of the most powerful ideas ever advanced by the human race. On the other hand, the belief that consent can be manufactured by democratic majorities is one of the most cherished illusions of activist government. The dissent of a minority is not rendered irrelevant by victory in a popular vote… but the health-care debate in the Senate proceeds on the assumption that victory in a parliamentary struggle between a hundred elected officials will compel the consent of the millions of citizens – now a sizable majority of the population, based on the latest polls – who strenuously object to ObamaCare. If Senate Democrats win this debate, huge amounts of your liberty will be destroyed, and vast sums of money will be seized from taxpayers… and you will not be allowed to object. Any attempt to withhold your consent from this economy-shattering, life-changing radical legislation will end with you sitting in a prison cell.

The consent of the governed cannot be expressed solely through a semi-annual vote for elected representatives. It can only be respected by placing strict limits on what those representatives can vote for. Some would argue that requiring the consent of the entire population to authorize massive government programs would effectively render those programs impossible, because 100% agreement is virtually impossible to achieve. Exactly. The entire apparatus of socialist government is a Constitutional violation that would never receive the total support of those who are controlled by its regulations, or compelled to pay for its agenda. For this reason, its agenda should never even reach the serious discussion stage, never mind legislative implementation.

Americans concerned about the size of their government should not be forced into a permanent defensive posture against an endless series of aggressive initiatives. If the needs and desires of some can transcend the liberty of others, then liberty itself is a meaningless concept. Freedom is not what you have left after everyone else is finished making demands of you. The need for your consent is not respected when your only hope of withholding it lies in historic midterm electoral victories and the rapid construction of huge Congressional majorities. The patriots who declared their independence from England perceived an essential truth about the nature of just government, which we have become almost afraid to contemplate.

 

[a_majoor]

A deeper look at Governor Palin's political history and philosophy. Something to consider before either accepting or rejecting the idea Governor Palin will either be a candidate or kingmaker in the 2012 election.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/11/sarah-palins-governing-philosophy-emerges-in-going-rogue.html

Monday, November 30, 2009
Sarah Palin's Governing Philosophy Emerges In "Going Rogue"

Based upon an Op-Ed in the Appeal-Democrat, it's suggested that, far from a political neophyte, Sarah Palin possesses a critical instinct for a governing style consistent with limited, cost-effective governing - and that she's resistant to being drawn in to the type of conventional wisdom that often moves politicians to the Left post-election.

You can't help but notice that just about everyone who is part of the political establishment detests Sarah Palin. And you can't help but notice that Palin couldn't care less.

Early in the second chapter of "Going Rogue," a chapter titled "Kitchen-Table Politics," you learn everything you need to know to understand why. This is the way Palin has been wired for a very long time. During her two terms on the Wasilla City Council, followed by two terms as the city's mayor, she consistently demonstrated a refreshing immunity to the insider mentality that tends to afflict people who serve in government at any level.

Palin is said to have resisted the type of influence peddling to which many politicians succumb, even when it meant going against her early political mentors. While the governing mentality first demonstrated itself in Wasilla, it's claimed it stayed with her right to the Governor's office in Juneau.

In one of the first tests of her independence, Palin opposed a proposal touted by Carney, her political patron, to force residents to pay for neighborhood trash pickup rather than hauling their garbage to the dump themselves, as most did, and as Palin says she still does. Why was this so important to Carney? Because he owned the local garbage truck company.

The portrait of Palin that emerges is not someone who is anti-government, but someone who is focused on making government provide critical services and programs, while trimming out the fat.

During her terms on the council, she consistently opposed heavy-handed community planning initiatives and burdensome taxes. But she was not anti-government, as she explains: As a council member, I focused on what I believed to be the key functions of government: infrastructure development, fiscal responsibility and simply being on the side of the people.

Several of the controversies that ensnared her early on are said to be the result of that mentality, as opposed to Palin being someone who didn't know what she was about, or enjoyed making enemies just for spite. Fans of Sarah Palin are likely to find the op-ed a refreshing read for its take on the former Governor.

The chief of police flat-out refused to even look for budget savings, beginning a chilly relationship that ultimately resulted in Palin firing him and — get this — being sued by him for sex discrimination. (It took three years, but Palin was vindicated — another harbinger of things to come.)

Among Palin-haters, one of the most popular canards is that she is an airhead, and clearly not capable of dealing with the intricacies of government. As this chapter demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth.

Palin not only has a keen grasp of the details of governing and budgeting, she also understands the political difficulties inherent in making government responsive. Many of her antagonists at the national level scoffed at the notion that her experience in Wasilla was of any value. Quite the contrary, local government is where a public official's decisions have the most direct impact on the electorate. It's where you really have to understand the ins and outs of what you're doing.