Quod gratis assertitur gratis negatur
Is it me, or does it feel the campaign for President might never end? Especially when I see things like this:
For heaven’s sake, the 2012 campaign just ended. Can we at least wait until 2013 to start thinking about 2016? (Silly me, I know)
If you watched the VP debate on Thursday night, you saw a contentious and heated, policy heavy discussion. It was, for all intents and purposes, a draw, with neither candidate successfully walking away with the win, and by next week’s presidential debate, it will have already been forgotten.
When we look back, though, I think two things will stick out:
ainst the more experienced Biden, managed to work in a few zingers and bring more laughs from the audience, his performance will be more notable for the vision he presented to America, especially as encapsulated in his closing statement.The choice is clear: a stagnant economy that promotes more government dependency or a dynamic, growing economy that promotes opportunity and jobs. Mitt Romney and I will not duck the tough issues, and we will not blame others for the next four years. We will take responsibility. And we will not try to replace our founding principles. We will reapply our founding principles.
The choice is clear, and the choice rests with you. And we ask you for your vote. Thank you.
Delivered while looking directly into the camera and in the calm, measured voice–in contrast to the often sarcastic, rude, and condescending tone adopted by Biden throughout the night–Ryan’s invitation to vote for the Romney/Ryan vision spoke of hope, not just as a campaign slogan, but with measurable effect, and it captured what elections are about: the future. In contrast, Biden’s combative nature only revealed the Democratic campaign to be mired in negative attacks, not a vision of the future that Americans can trust.
At the end of the day, the debate won’t have a significant impact on the race. Ryan reassured voters, provided vision, and demonstrated command of the issues. Biden provided the image of a fighter for his running mate and for his party. Neither moved a lot of votes, but neither did any harm, either. When you’re the VP, whose sole constitutional responsibility is to replace the President if, heaven forbid, he should die in office, that’s about the best you can expect.
Random observation. CNN shows a meter on the screen as the candidates are speaking that shows how a test group of undecided voters are responding to what is happening at the moment. Almost every time Ryan started to speak, the line representing women spiked, regardless of the topic. The next day, the “hey, girl” meme adopted Paul Ryan, making Ryan, essentially, the “new Ryan Gosling.”
Next week, the Republican National Convention will gather in Tampa Bay to formally nominate Mitt Romney for President and Paul Ryan as Vice President. In spite of hurricane Isaac, I’ll be there with KSL News Radio as their “Star Correspondent” for the week. We’ll be there to report back to Utah on the convention, to make sure you hear about what is happening, even if it doesn’t make the prime time broadcast.
You can follow the convention here, on KSL.com, and on my Twitter feed @publiusdb . We’ll post as it happens.
Here’s just a brief list of a few of the things I’ll be looking for at the convention:
Paul Ryan, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Our next Vice President. When Doug Wright asked me on his show who I most wanted to meet at the Republican Convention, I didn’t hesitate: Paul Ryan, and this before he was selected as Mitt’s running mate. I suspect he’ll be a little harder to approach to get a photo, but he’s still the top of my list, for obvious reasons. America, though, doesn’t know as much about him, and we’ll want to find out why Romney thought he would complete the ticket.
What do you want to see come out of the Republican National Convention? Are you going?
This is a bird’s eye view of the race for the White House in the week before the Republican convention. First off, polling:
Today’s update matches the president’s lowest level of support since May. Yesterday was the lowest level of support for Romney since March. On a combined basis, today shows the lowest level of combined support for the two major party candidates since January 27.
In other words, enthusiasm might be dragging, and people are a little weary of the negative campaign ads running in swing states, and polling in swing states (Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, etc) is going to matter more than nationwide polling (which the Rasmussen poll is). With conventions coming next week for the GOP and the week there after for the Dems, both are hoping for a bump (though perhaps more to Romney than Obama).
In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.
What’s striking is not so much that Ferguson (who was a McCain adviser four years ago) is making the call, but that the article is in Newsweek. Four years ago, Newsweek was squarely in favor of the hope and change that Obama was selling.
This year, the cover is clear: the GOP is America’s Obi Wan Kanobi:
[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/Newsweek/statuses/237343836936994817"]
Don’t miss the reply comments to that posting. They’re priceless (and oh, so articulate). (Also, don’t miss my review of Ferguson’s book “Civilization: The West and the Rest.”)
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Noonan said, “If it had been a Republican vice presidential candidate who had made those gaffes…the subject today of the panel would be how stupid is this person, can this person possibly govern?”
Apparently, no party has the corner on idiots and dumb comments. However, I’d take Paul Ryan as VP over Joe Biden every day. Biden’s White House would be an exercise in keeping the President away from an open mic or anyone with a Twitter account.
Also, in case you were wondering, the Romney camp condemned Akin’s comments soundly.
The president’s accusations largely refer to Ryan’s 2011 plan, ignoring the fact that the House Budget Committee chairman rolled out a different version in 2012 — taking into account Democratic critiques. Though the 2012 plan is more moderate, Obama and his surrogates have all but ignored the newer version as they amp up their accusations against the Romney-Ryan ticket.
Obama’s trash-talking competitiveness, a trait that has defined him since his days on the court as a basketball-obsessed teenager in Hawaii, was on display one night last February, when the president spotted a woman he knew was close to Sen. Marco Rubio in a Florida hotel lobby. “Is your boy going to go for [vice president]?” the president asked her. Maybe, she replied.
“Well,” he said, chuckling, according to a person who witnessed the encounter. “Tell your boy to watch it. He might get his ass kicked.”
Obama really doesn’t like, admire or even grudgingly respect Romney. It’s a level of contempt, say aides, he doesn’t even feel for the conservative, combative House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Hill Republican he disliked the most. “There was a baseline of respect for John McCain. The president always thought he was an honorable man and a war hero,” a longtime Obama adviser said. “That doesn’t hold true for Romney. He was no goddamned war hero.”
Time and again Obama has told the people around him that Romney stood for “nothing.” The word he would use to describe Romney was “weak,” too weak to stand up to his own moneymen, too weak to defend his own moderate record as the man who signed into law the first health insurance mandate as Massachusetts governor in 2006, too weak to admit Obama had done a single thing right as president.
During secret Sunday Roosevelt Room meetings with his top political and White House advisers, Obama has expressed concerns that the enthusiasm gap between his 2008 and 2012 support could cost him the election. He often peppers participants with pointed questions about campaign metrics — he’s especially interested in gauges of base enthusiasm, including the latest reports on volunteer enrollment in swing states and college campuses.
“Like a fire is burning…” Meanwhile, keep your eyes open for further review of Romney’s Mormon faith in the coming weeks. The New York Times is reporting that a Mormon will give the invocation at the Republican Convention next week and McKay Coppins, a Mormon himself, went to church with Romney as part of the rotating press pool. He gives an account of what sounds like, at least to other Mormons, a pretty average and routine Sunday service, complete with fidgeting kids and a desperate choir director trying to wrest members of the congregation into singing with the choir. Also, is that J. Willard Marriott walking in with Romney?Sandy Catalano had a very different experience, however. A former Roman Catholic, she converted to Mormonism in the early 1980s, but her husband Ron viewed her new faith as a cult and the strain almost destroyed their marriage. Then she fell ill, and as Mr Catalano struggled to care for their two children, Mr Romney took time off work and arranged for Church members to help the couple.
“Ronnie started to realise that the Church was full of kind people, although he was still sceptical about some of the tenets,” she said.
“Then he lost his photography business and Mitt came up with maintenance jobs for him do around the church. He went out of his way to help Ronnie find work and maintain his integrity.”
What’s your take on the race this week? Is there a story you think should have been posted here?
[Politico][Rasmussen][Washington Examiner][News Busters][The Hill][Fox News][The Daily Beast][Buzzfeed][The Telegraph]
What would you say if I told you that the Obama Administration is proposing a budget that cuts spending in an amount about the equivalent to coupon for a penny off of your Wendy’s value meal?
Let’s be clear: for an administration that has had to deal with the worst economy in decades, the Obama Administration has proven an uncanny ability to live in La-la Land when it comes time to make a budget. Each year it submits a dreamily out of reality budget, and each year, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress vote it down.
I don’t say this to attack the Obama Administration on its handling of the economy…at least not directly. Rather, I point it out because the federal budget is how the executive branch sets its priorities for the coming year. As yet, over the course of his tenure in the White House, the President has not had a budget survive Congress, even when his party controlled both the Senate and House. This is unprecedented in American history.
It is widely accepted by economists that once national debt exceeds 90% of GDP (gross domestic product or the value of everything a country produces in a year), ”annual economic growth tends to be about one percentage point lower.” As of this writing, the current GDP for the US is about $14.58 Trillion. Our national debt? $15.087 Trillion, or about 103.45% of GDP.
That’s right. We’re in the territory where the debt starts to slow economic growth.
Just how much money is $15 Trillion, anyway? That’s the equivalent of one person spending almost $20 Million a day since Jesus was born.
Where has all that money even gone to? How did we get so deep in the hole without building every American a palatial home complete with a Rolls Royce and driver?
But I digress. The budget.
So, without having yet passed a budget during his Presidential career, a weak economy, national debt higher than the market value of everything Americans will create this year, and his reelection campaign all on the docket for 2012, what does the President propose in his 2012 budget?
Does he tact to the right to find a middle place where the Republicans can compromise? Does he propose solutions that can strengthen the economy?
NOPE. Senator Sessions of Alabama and budget hawk Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recently said that
Although it claims to include $4 trillion in deficit reduction, the president’s budget actually contains virtually no credible deficit reduction at all. Under his plan, the government is projected to borrow $11.2 trillion over the next 10 years. This is roughly the same amount of debt we are expected to incur under realistic projections of current policy. The budget does not change our debt trajectory.
In other words, the President is doing a lot of talking, but not a lot of walking. He’s promising a fiscally responsible budget from the the lectern, but hoping no one will notice that the budget he submitted to Congress actually adds to the national debt.
But Senator Sessions and Congressman Ryan are just Republicans doing what Republicans do when the guy in the White House is a Democrat, right? They’re just the party in opposition.
They aren’t alone in their analysis.
Enter the Wall Street Journal which said that the President’s budgeting skills earned him a “fiscal record [that] is the worst in modern American history[]” and that he is pointing to a “mirage” when setting projections for growth. Want more gory details?
PS. None of that debt includes what current tax payers will have to pay out to current and future retirees for Social Security.
How does the Obama Administration think this budget is possible? How can they A) raise spending and B) cut the deficit?
Easy. Raise taxes on anyone making more than $200,000 (see my analysis of the so-called “Buffett Rule” here) and economic growth at 17.8% of GDP. Tax rates will increase, in some cases very dramatically. “[C]apital gains to 30% from 15% today; dividends to 30% from 15%; the estate tax to 45% from 35%.” Even the payroll tax cut, which is probably the only thing going for employers, is only slated to last another 10 months, at which point President Obama wants it to end.
According to Michael Tanner at CATO, that’s not going to help the economy, not by a long shot:
Instead, what the budget does contain is a renewed call for tax increases on people and small businesses making as little as $200,000 per year. In addition, there’s the usual panoply of tax hikes on energy products, businesses, investment, and pretty much anything else the president can think of. The budget also helpfully points out that 2013 is the year in which most of the new taxes under Obamacare will take effect. Overall, the president would increase tax revenue to 20.1 percent of GDP. That’s a huge increase from the current 15.4 percent, and higher than the post–World War II average of 18.0 percent. Tax increases of that magnitude cannot help but slow economic growth and job creation.
Furthermore, ”even if the President were to get every penny of the tax hikes he wants, his budget would never balance. The closest he would ever come would be in 2018, when the deficit would be only $575 billion. After that, deficits begin rising again, reaching $704 billion by 2022.” (Deficits are the difference between what we raise in tax revenues and what we spend beyond that. Think of it like credit card debt you incur when you spend more in a given month than you earn. Pretty much, we’ve spent more than we earn for so long that we owe more than we are will earn in any given year…and that’s not taking account that we need to pay it all back).
Democrats denounced George W. Bush for allowing so much red ink, but his deficits averaged only 3.5% of GDP if you don’t count 2001 but do include the 10.1% of 2009. Mr. Obama’s deficits have averaged 9.1% of GDP if you count 2009, as you should because his $800 billion stimulus passed that February.
Let me sum it up: budget = President’s plans, and President’s plans = status quo. Because, as one friend put it, “why pass a budget that causes you to compromise when you can pass a bunch of continuing resolutions that keep the Republican controlled House out of the picture?”
That’s playing politics, not good policy, and its bad government policy, bad for our economy, and bad for America. With the national debt proving to be a giant drag on the economy, the Obama Administration is living in a dream where taxes are high and the economy grows at rates it hasn’t seen–ever.
APROPOS: Did I say that the President was planning on paying for his budget increase with taxes on the rich through the Buffett Rule? Oops. My mistake. Just kidding. Turns out, according to this guy, he doesn’t even put the Buffett Rule into the budget, despite devoting substantial space to it in his State of the Union speech. Grandstanding, much?
[The Washington Post] [Wall Street Journal] [CATO]
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
The reality is that Medicare “as we know it” will change because it must. The issue is how it will change, and, leaving aside this or that detail, the only alternatives are Mr. Ryan’s proposal to introduce market competition or Mr. Obama‘s plan for ever-tightening government controls on prices and care. Republicans who think they can dodge this choice are only guaranteeing that Mr. Obama will prevail.
via Review & Outlook: Republicans and Mediscare – WSJ.com.
Also, “Why Gingrich has no chance to win the nomination for the White House.”
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Rep. Paul Ryan is thinking about running for the soon to be vacated US Senate seat in his state.
I think he could do better. And so could America. We could draft him for the Presidency.
In truth, a presidential run makes a lot more sense for Ryan than does a Senate race. Ryan is already the de facto leader of the Republican Party on the most critical issues of the day. If he’s concerned about spending time with his family, what better way and better time (when they are little and not distressed teenagers thrown into the national spotlight) to bond with them than a family adventure seeing America followed by a job where dad could work from home? While there are many potential candidates for the Wisconsin Senate seat, who among the current presidential contenders is really up to winning and then governing? A new poll shows a plurality of GOP voters don’t think any of them is. (“Some 45 percent now say they’re dissatisfied with the GOP candidates who have declared or are thought to be serious about running, up from 33 percent two months ago, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. Just 41 percent are satisfied with the likely Republican field, down from 52 percent.”)
Further,
One Senate seat is not vital to the republic, but Ryan himself has made the case how critical it is to address our looming debt crisis now. Without the White House and without someone exceptionally capable to advocate for it, it’s hard to see how the “The Path to Prosperity” is ever going to be enacted. I’m at a loss to think of another Republican who can bring together Tea Partyers, wonks, social conservatives, hawks, libertarians, Wall Street and Main Street Republicans and connect with a new generation of Republicans.
In a very practical sense, the question for Ryan is: Why not give his party and the country six months (September 2011 to February 2012)? By then he’ll either have failed to catch fire or he’ll have a clear path to the presidential nomination. Six months. Twenty-four weeks. For a politician constantly at work in Congress, in town halls and in media appearances, that doesn’t sound like that much. (In fact, I would venture that his schedule is more rigorous now than the average presidential contender’s.)
You see, there is no good reason for Ryan to avoid a presidential run. Sometimes, if you don’t see the opening and seize it, a better one never comes along. Bill Clinton understood this in 1992.
via If Paul Ryan can run for Senate, why not for the presidency? – Right Turn – The Washington Post.
Take the opening, Representative. Take it.
For an earlier post where I have looked at Rep. Ryan’s work on the budget, check here.
