| August 16, 2012 Four years ago President Barack Hussein Obama ran on "Hope" and "Change." These are not policies and hardly qualify as slogans. When Obama was asked to flesh out the Change aspect of his campaign he provided the explanation, "Change you can believe in."
In other words, Obama ran on pure charisma and won. If the economy had turned around, or if Obamacare were a popular program, Obama could run on his record. But the economy is still in the toilet and Obamacare is not popular with the majority of the American people.
It is such a radical program that Obama had a huge problem getting it through the Senate even though he didn't need a single Republican vote.
And his new word, "Forward," just doesn't seem to be resonating with the American people.
Obama's record of Change led to the Tea Party. And in the election of 2010 the Republicans beat the Democrats over the head with Obamacare, and the stimulus package with its shovel-ready sites. The results were a disaster for the Democratic Party. The Republicans won control of the House and came close in the Senate, which was a huge turnaround from the Hope and Change election of 2008, when Obama won a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
Obama also managed to do something that no politician of either party had been able to do for 140 years. Obama's policies resulted in the Republicans winning control of the North Carolina state House and state Senate.
Obama can't run on his record, which is a dismal failure, so he has to go negative, and he has certainly done that. The ad where Mitt Romney is implicated in the death of a woman because her husband lost his job and his health care is over the top; but it's going to get worse. That, of course, is not technically a campaign ad, but the campaign knew about it and it went forward.
It is incredible, but many of those who support Obama don't seem to understand business any better than he does. If you are buying companies in distress and hoping to turn them around, sometimes it isn't going to work. Bain Capital had some huge successes, which is why Romney is worth a couple hundred million dollars; but they also had failures.
If every company was a guaranteed winner, we would all be buying companies and making money hand over fist. There is a lot of risk involved. Sometimes a company's assets are worth more than the company itself. In that case you split it up and sell off the pieces. The reason some companies are not making money is that they have too many employees. In his successful ventures Romney created a lot of jobs, look at all the people that Staples employs, just to name one company. But companies also fail and people lose their jobs. That is business.
Obama, evidently having virtually no business experience, thinks that business is like government. Once you get hired, you have a job for life, even if you never do anything useful. As long as you don't get caught using drugs at work or assaulting a fellow employee you have a job until you finally accept the unbelievably lucrative retirement that is being offered. The private sector just isn't like that.
, , ,
The mainstream media are their usual silly selves in dealing with the announcement that Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan is Romney's choice for his vice presidential running mate. The mainstream media is continually reporting that the Obama campaign and the Democrats say that this was a horrible choice and dooms the campaign. Really, does that statement have any value?
This is a presidential race. The Democrats are going to criticize everything Romney does, from the way he ties his shoes to the way that he parts his hair. The proof of that is that they have already gone after his hair. However, if anyone were to be critical of Obama's hair, they would be branded a racist.
And that's coming. Soon any criticism of Obama is going to be branded as racist by the Obama campaign and its adjunct campaign staff in the mainstream media.
, , ,
Everyone with any sense agrees that the Social Security and Medicare system is broken. There is no way that fewer and fewer workers can support more and more people who are retired. The Social Security lockbox doesn't exist; that money has been spent on providing benefits to people who have already retired. The system is, according to its own trustees, going to go bankrupt. Congressman Paul Ryan has a responsible plan to repair it. Some people don't like the plan but the country needs a plan. The country needs to be honest about the problem. It isn't going to magically go away. To criticize the plan itself because it creates too much change too soon or not enough is sensible. To criticize Ryan for having a plan denies reality.
, , ,
Romney is a serious guy. It's one of the reasons he didn't do better in the Republican primary debates. The pick of Ryan as his vice presidential running mate is a serious one. By choosing Ryan, Romney is saying he believes this race is about the economic future of the country. It's the last thing Obama wanted to hear because the one area where he is weakest is in the area of the economy – unless you consider his disastrous foreign policy, or perhaps his health care plan that even hard-core Democrats don't like. What about Obama's plan for Afghanistan? It's the war he said we should be fighting. How is that going?
Well, of all the areas in which Obama is weak, the economy is one of them.
Ryan has thick skin, has a lot of experience articulating his ideas and, according to a colleague in the House, knows more about the budget than the congressional staffers whose only job is to know the budget.
Even Erskine Bowles, who was President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton's White House chief of staff, had nothing but wonderful things to say about Ryan before he became the vice presidential nominee. Of course, Bowles can't be too pleased with Obama right now. Bowles took the job of developing a long-range budget plan, did the job he was asked to do and Obama has ignored it.
For Obama to attack Ryan, Obama has to talk about the budget, about Obamacare, about the Obama plan to cut $700 billion from Medicare. Ryan is going to be running all over the country giving articulate speeches that people can understand about what he believes needs to be done to get us out of the economy we are in and what to do long term to solve the budget crisis. The country cannot borrow money endlessly.
Obama can't talk about Romney's income taxes forever, or maybe he can.
, , ,
By comparison Vice President Joe Biden is completely out of control. To speak to a largely black group in the South and say, "They're going to put y'all back in chains," is just out of control. The Obama campaign stands behind that remark.
It is not known if the Obama campaign stands behind the remark that Biden made in the same speech given in Danville, Virginia, where he said, "That with you, and I mean this ladies and gentleman, with you, we can win North Carolina again. And if we do, we win the election, if we win you."
The amazing thing is that the Democrats applauded. Maybe they expect utter nonsense to come out of Biden's mouth.
There are many possibilities. One is that Biden has a drug or alcohol problem. Another is that he has no sense, or he may have some mental problems. Biden hardly goes a week without saying something incredibly offensive, dumb or incomprehensible. The Obama campaign has to stand behind the really stupid stuff that he says because otherwise Obama has to admit that his vice president is completely out of control and he can't even be trusted to go to big state funerals because nobody knows what he might say.
It's hard to imagine Biden as president.
, , ,
I heard Obama speaking about all the jobs that he has created while president. I guess small business owners who paid employees out of their own pockets to get through the rough spots of this so-called recovery didn't create those jobs, the government did.
But jobs have been created during Obama's term in the White House. Obama can claim any number he wants because the answer to the question how many jobs is, "not nearly enough." The 8.3 percent nationwide who are unemployed and still looking for work know that not enough jobs were created. Here in North Carolina the 9.4 percent who are unemployed and still looking for work know that Obama has not created enough jobs.
The problem is that given four more years, or 24 more years, Obama is not going to be able to create enough jobs. It takes entrepreneurs to create jobs, and those guys who put everything they have on the line for an idea deserve to be rewarded. Some entrepreneurs lose money for years, and if Obama gets his way when they start making money it will get taxed to the point where there isn't much reason to make money.
Obama doesn't understand that. He doesn't understand that some small business owners make a lot of money one year – they may make well over $250,000 – but they also may not have made any money for the previous five years, or made far below minimum wage. Obama has no idea how business works. He thinks the government creates businesses.
But it's not Obama's fault. How would he know anything about business? He has no experience. He has been a community organizer, a US senator and now president. There just isn't much business experience there.
, , ,
The New York Times from cover to cover is in elect-Obama mode. Look at the so-called articles, actually editorials in sheep's clothing, about the economy. Between now and the election the business section of The New York Times is evidently charged with finding the good news in every economic announcement or indicator. I liked this one: "A Hopeful Sign: Job Openings Rise." Of course unemployment is up, not down. But The New York Times is going to be looking past the horse manure all over the place and desperately trying to find the pony in this economy.
It is reminiscent of the 1992 presidential race between George Herbert Walker Bush, who was the sitting president, and that upstart from Arkansas, Clinton. The recession actually ended in the spring, months before the election, but it didn't get reported in the mainstream media until November, after the election.
The news media is extremely powerful, and with the notable exception of Fox and a few conservative newspapers, it is going to be an all out push for Obama.
It is another area in which Ryan helps Romney. Ryan is just a much better communicator and he has the ability to go past the mainstream media. He can do it with local stations and the morning talk shows. Ryan has no problem handling a room full of rabid journalists out to get his throat. In fact, it appears he enjoys it, which is not a surprise because it also appears he comes out on the winning end of those debates.
|
Print
Email Link
Feedback
Share
Advanced Search