Views on the News
January 16, 2010
Views
on the News*
Less
than a year in, Americans have already lost faith in President Obama and most
had already lost faith in Congressional Democrats, and before that,
Congressional Republicans. The essential insincerity of Obama's former
good-government purism is on display with: 1) the pledge to take public funds
in the general election (abandoned when the vista of mounds of private dollars
beckoned), 2) the pledge of post-partisanship (abandoned when it might
constrain his ambitions), and 3) the promise of open negotiations (abandoned on
first contact with reality). Barack Obama, was insincere to the point of cynicism, especially
about the process issues that were so central to his new-politics appeal. The point of promising to put it on
C-Span was to prevent precisely the dirty backroom deals that have now
insolently been stuffed into the legislation.
Since this would afford
Republicans further opportunities to highlight embarrassments and to delay,
Democrats have decided on a more hurried, informal process for the most complex
and significant legislation to pass Congress in decades. He lied to voters to make them believe he
represented a new way of doing business, before immediately embracing the old
practices on behalf of a very old agenda of state aggrandizement. This truth has consequences: We cannot trust our new President
or our new Democrat Congress.
The public's dawning
awareness of this lack of trust explains the Democrats' race against time to
pass the unpopular health care reform and other major leftist initiatives.
(“Obama’s Transparent Insincerity” by Rich
Lowry dated January 9, 2010 published by Real Clear Politics at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/01/09/obamacare_transparent_insincerity_99827.html
“Not another party” by Paul Jacobs dated
January 10, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulJacob/2010/01/10/not_another_party
)
Obama
has given so many speeches that, his oratory which was considered as his
greatest political strength, but now seems a serious weakness since audiences’
first reaction is to question how much of his words are true and how much does
Obama really believe? Obama's
speeches to Congress and the American people have
generally been explanatory rather than inspirational. Even Obama's well-constructed lectures are
marred by a transparent rhetorical ploy.
In Obama's running seminar, a flawed thesis and a flawed antithesis are
always resolved by the synthesis of Obama himself -- the speaker as Hegelian
culmination of history. In this way,
Obama manages to be both academic and arrogant.
Instead of exploring the genuinely historic nature of his time, he veers
toward “messianism.” Obama's largest rhetorical failure has come
at times of crisis, when a President's words matter most, and the time to craft
them is most limited. His reactions to
the Fort Hood murders and the Christmas Day attack were oddly disconnected from
the emotions of the country he represents.
His speech at Fort Hood was strong on paper but delivered with all the
passion of remarks to the Chamber of Commerce.
His recent White House speech on the terrorist threat was bureaucratic
and bloodless. Obama's model, instead,
is the coolness of Coolidge, but it appears old-fashioned. It may even be admirable, but it is hard to
call it effective. Meanwhile Obama has
not held a full news press conference since July 22nd, avoiding
reporters and their pesky questions. With every speech, a realization grows: A President lacking
in drama may also be lacking in inspiration.
(“Obama’s Speeches Become a Weak Point” by
Michael Gerson dated January 13, 2010 published by
Real Clear Politics at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/01/13/no_inspiration_obama_99870.html
“Obama Gives Speeches, Interviews But Few
Press Conferences” by Karen Travers dated January 14, 2010 published by ABC
at http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-barack-obama-helda-press-conference-months/story?id=9549859
)
During
the campaign Obama's team earned a reputation for skill and discipline in
dominating the communications wars with opponents, but once in office virtually
the same team has struggled, spending much of the past year defending the
administration's actions on the two biggest domestic issues: the economy and
health care. The White House has
sought to sell health-care reform as a way to make coverage affordable and
accessible to middle-class families. The
White House also presented at various times as a cost-containment measure, a
restraint on greedy insurance companies, a moral
imperative to cover the uninsured and, to Democratic lawmakers, as a "can't fail" enterprise. The President and his aides sent mixed
signals on the "public option" as well, voicing support for a
government-run plan while signaling their willingness to see it die to get a
bill passed. On the economy,
administration officials put themselves at a disadvantage with faulty
projections of the jobless rate and an overly rosy prediction of how many jobs
the stimulus package would create or save.
Once they had put in place policies to deal with the worst of the crises
Obama inherited, they moved on to health care and later to Afghanistan. The result was a perceived loss of focus in
addressing public unrest about unemployment that has prompted a shift back to
the economy recently. Obama's advisers
have learned what previous White House teams came to realize when they arrived
in Washington, which is the vast difference between campaigning and
governing. Double-digit unemployment
colors public opinion, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the continuing
threat of terrorism frame the challenging foreign policy environment. But other factors also affect the White
House's message management. Governing
lacks the singular focus of a campaign.
A White House must manage multiple issues on any given day, can rarely
pick and choose its battles, and must speak to many audiences at the same
time. Successful campaigns maintain
control of their message most of the time.
Even the best of White House operations struggle to maintain a semblance
of control in the face of competition from allies on Capitol Hill, the
bureaucracy and the opposition party.
Obama's major speeches on health care are complex and forced to deal on
a number of fronts, but public support for the overall initiative declined
through the year. White House officials
question whether anyone else could have delivered a more effective message
about the administration's economic policies, given the steps they decided were
necessary to combat the deepest recession since the Depression. As much as they try, White House officials
cannot ignore events, as campaigns often do.
When you're president of the United States, you have a responsibility to
deal with the problems as they come.
Critics of the administration say Obama has taken on so much that his
message lacks a singular focus. White House
officials acknowledge that internal assessments have led them to conclude they
have been too reactive and too tactical.
The White House is planning on the antidote to all the criticisms and to
declining poll numbers will be a genuine turnaround in the economy. It is sad that the
primary reason the Democrats have for passing the very unpopular health care
reform bill is to have some “accomplishment”
to hype in Obama’s State of the Union address, before his political window of
opportunity slams shut.
(“For Obama, a tough year to get the message
out” by Dan Balz dated January 10, 2010 published
by The Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/09/AR2010010902198.html?hpid=topnews
)
Obama is asking Americans to “trust me” as justification to pass his leftist programs, when the
Democrat party track record on social transformation legislation is littered
with unsuccessful, inefficient, and ineffective programs. All of these programs were put forth by liberals, now calling themselves
"progressives," initiated
by Democrat administrations to advance "social justice:"
·
Social Security, a
cornerstone of FDR's administration, was established in 1935. After 74 years it
is on the brink of insolvency because Congress gave itself access to its funds.
·
Fannie Mae was
established in 1938 to facilitate home ownership. It has been around for 71
years. Congress has had to seize control of it and of Freddie
Mac, established in 1970. Together, they presently own or guarantee
about half of the United States' $12 trillion mortgage market.
·
The War on Poverty started in 1964. One trillion dollars
has been transferred to "the poor"
and it has just institutionalized being poor.
·
The Department of Energy was established in 1977 to lessen
dependence on the import of foreign oil. With 16,000 employees and an annual
budget of $24 billion, the United States has imported more oil with every
passing year while denying U.S. oil companies access to vast national reserves
in ANWR and off our continental shelf. It is an abysmal failure.
·
The
Obama administration is hell-bent on "health care reform" that will put one-sixth
of the U.S. economy under the control of the federal government whose
interventions in the free market have been the cause of the previous
recessions.
The common thread in all these programs is that the “progressives” embrace failed ideas of
the past (“regressive”) and assert
that today’s leaders know better and have learned from mistakes of the past. About a year ago Obama said: "The first job of my administration is to put
people back to work and get our economy moving again. That's why I've moved
quickly to work with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an
'American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan' that will immediately jump-start job
creation and long-term growth." Notice he said "immediately," because a year later unemployment is stuck at
10% after Obama promised it wouldn't exceed 8%. Instead of apologizing for his failed program,
he wants a second “stimulus,” on top of his nationally bankrupting
health care and cap-and-trade plans. Obama
has the audacity to demand $75 billion more to stimulate construction jobs. Obama's top economic advisers also said at the
time that his stimulus package would create mostly private-sector jobs, but we
now know how that turned out: just the opposite. There is no reason to
believe that any new Obama programs will be any more successful than the “regressive” ideas of the past.
(“The Lies about Green Jobs” by Alan Caruba dated January 12, 2010 published by Intellectual
Conservative at http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/01/12/the-lies-about-green-jobs/
“Obama Must Know His Spending Yields
Bankruptcy, Not Growth” by David Limbaugh dated January 12, 2010 published
by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2010/01/12/obama_must_know_his_spending_yields_bankruptcy,_not_growth
)
After
12 straight months of being “surprised”
about the unemployment numbers, what sort of hallucinogenic drug is Obama
taking to now assert the economy has “saved
or created” over 2 million jobs as a result of the failed “stimulus” spending? Proponents
of President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus bill continue to insist that
the massive government bailout played a decisive role in moving the economy out
of the recession. The Keynesian idea
that increased deficit spending can cure recessions has been tested repeatedly,
and it has failed repeatedly. Yet
assuming no destructive government actions, the economy's self-correction
mechanism was widely expected to move the economy out of recession in 2009
anyway. However American
employers eliminated 4.2 million jobs in 2009 and sent unemployment soaring
into double digits for the first time in more than a quarter century, with the
unofficial rate (taking in the severely underemployed and those who have given
up looking) over 17%. Employment in the
U.S. is now down from the peak of 146.5 million reached back in November 2007
which translates into a loss of 8.5 million jobs in two years. In
contrast the Bush recession of 2001-02 only 2 million jobs were lost, a mere
scratch compared to the gaping wound in jobless Obama America. Analysts had predicted that December layoffs
would number around 8,000, but instead, the figure was more than ten times
higher: 85,000. Unemployment held steady
at 10% – not because the job market is stabilizing but because tens of
thousands of Americans gave up looking for work and are no longer counted among
the unemployed. The Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) has calculated jobs that are “saved or created” by the Recovery Act through non-existent
congressional districts, phantom ZIP codes, and questionable accounting practices. The American people don’t experience
government statistics; they experience the reality of not working. The sharp drop in the labor force is not
merely an indicator of the real unemployment rate, but it is a confirmation of
the mounting hopelessness in vast stretches of the United States, particularly
in California, southern New England and the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes
States, where communities are being devastated by a federal auto-industry
"bailout" that continues to
encourage carmakers to shutter factories in U.S. cities and to relocate
production to Mexico and China. The new
unemployment numbers are devastating, and they should send up red flares in
Washington, a city where officials have so far has been absurdly neglectful of
the most serious social, economic and political crisis facing the country. The Obama administration and Democratic
leaders in Congress are pouring a great deal of energy into trying to salvage
something acceptable from the health-care reform debacle and, in the aftermath
of the Christmas Day flight scare, they are increasingly focused on "war-on-terror" issues. The stimulus has been such a grand failure
that the OMB has stooped to unabashedly cooking the books, but moving the goal
posts and tinkering with math formulas won't put the country back to work. They may even be starting to recognize the
extent to which the White House bungled things by spending a fall focused on
Afghanistan when potential threats were elsewhere. There is no question that health-care policy
and homeland security are serious matters, but the most serious matter facing
this White House and this Congress is mounting unemployment. President Obama and the Democrats in Congress
face the prospect of serious setbacks in 2010 congressional and state races if
they do not recognize that there is a disconnect between their focus and that
of the American people who will decide the political direction of the country
in November. Unemployment is a
devastating social reality for those experiencing it, and unemployment is a
frightening economic reality for those who still have jobs but who wonder
whether their jobs are threatened – and who constrain their spending and
lifestyle choices accordingly. We will see in 2010, as Obama's increasingly desperate attempts
to jump-start the economy intersect with the impatience of the voters, just how
badly the President has failed the American people by favoring liberal pet
projects over the basic needs of the American people.
(“The 2010 Political Timebomb
is Unemployment” by John Nichols dated January 9, 2010 published by The
Nation at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/514394/the_2010_political_timebomb_is_unemployment
“Obama’s Job Hole” by Christopher Chantrill dated January 12, 2010 published by American
Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/obamas_jobs_hole.html
“OMB’s Fuzzy Math” by Jillian Bandes dated January 13, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2010/01/13/ombs_fuzzy_math
“Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate
Economic Growth: Answering the Critics” by Brian M. Riedl
dated January 8, 2010 published by The Heritage Foundation at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/bg2354.cfm
)
An
expansion of the U.S. economy will certainly continue into 2010, supported for
now by the Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rate and a major swelling of
the federal government. This
should be enough to get us through the many debt restructurings that will be
needed in 2010, and to survive the derailment risks relative to the
public-sector expansion and the continued fiscal chaos. Historically speaking, after a deep
recession, inventories rebuild, pent-up demand appears, and output partially
catches up to the previous trend line, all of which propel above-average
growth. So far, inventories have
declined and sales have recovered to the point that the inventory-to-sales
ratio has dropped toward historical lows. The still-low level of auto sales, and even
lower level of domestic auto production, means there is a good potential for sharp
gains in this important category. Passage
of a bad health care bill (one that forces pronounced federal intrusiveness)
could set a precedent for an anti-growth tax hike in 2010; the financial and
regulatory reforms now being discussed in Congress are unattractive from an
economic-growth standpoint; the tenuous U.S. debt position looms large, with
Congress having extended the debt ceiling only through February 2010; and some
risk of retroactive tax increases persists.
Meanwhile, at the state and local levels (just like the federal level),
the path of least resistance
for the moment is toward higher tax rates. Uncertainty about
future tax rates will impact growth for the next year but real economic growth
around 3% for 2010, along with higher-than-necessary unemployment, seems a
realistic bet.
(“Somewhere Short of a V” by David Malpass dated January 11, 2010 published by National Review
Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmQ0NDNkYWI0NTBjMmU5NmY1ODZkMTdjMmI0Mzk0Njc= )
Barack
Obama's health care plan ensures spiraling costs and will convert health insurance
companies into cost-plus health reimbursement utilities, or else bankrupt them
completely, and health insurance as we know it (think home/auto/life) will no
longer exist. A key insurance
concept is the need for a large, diversified pool
of policyholders so that the insurance company can predict the pool's
catastrophic events, and so that such events will be rare. Any concentration of risk in the insurance
pool will increase premiums, given the negative impact of those excess payouts
on the insurance company's bottom line. Obama
and Reid have produced a bill that turns this insurance concept on its head by
preventing underwriting based on medical risk and requiring citizens (and
employers) to purchase insurance or pay a fee. This combination guarantees an adverse
selection problem whereby healthy people will pay the cheaper fee until sick
and in need of insurance, whereupon they will enroll for non-deniable
insurance. Risk
pools will become sick pools, and insurance will become a pass-through
vehicle for the cost of sick policyholders. The benefit of healthy participants, formerly
shared by all policyholders, will be eliminated. Risk-sharing
is another key insurance concept. The
policyholder and the insurer share risks and costs, but in exchange, the
policyholder is mostly or fully protected against catastrophic economic loss (a
home burning down, death, or expensive illness). When the policyholder retains non-catastrophic
but more frequent expenses, the cost of the insurance (the premium) is reduced
because the insurance company need charge less to make the same shareholder
return. Obama and Reid have produced a
bill that must raise policyholder premiums because it increases insurance
company expenses by 1) taxing drugs, devices, and policies; 2) eliminating
"unreasonable" annual or lifetime limits on insurance company
payouts; and 3) establishing maximum out-of-pocket limits for policyholders. Obama and Reid reassure us that profits will
be regulated through state exchanges, cost incurrence mandated, and minimum
policy standards established. In other
words, health insurance pricing, profits, and products will be governmentally
determined. That's a regulated public
utility, a framework typically used to address monopolistic situations (not the
case with health insurers and potentially unconstitutional). There is
little difference between numerous companies whose pricing, profits, and
products are determined by the government and one government-run company. Public utilities have historically raised
prices through "rate cases," wherein the utility presents
evidence that operating costs have risen, resulting in unacceptably low
shareholder returns and thus the need for higher rates. This bill's expensive adverse-selection
problems and cost increases must result in an escalation of premiums if
insurance companies are to remain in business and earn utility-type
returns. Obama's and Reid's plan not
only increases costs as described above, but also by requiring coverage of
numerous non-catastrophic items such as abortion, prescription drugs, lab
services, wellness and preventative services, oral care, and vision care. For all these reasons, the bill will
dramatically increase insurance company costs with one of only two possible
conclusions -- premiums will increase commensurate with costs through the
utility model (government-controlled health care), or government-imposed price
controls will drive private sector players out of business (government-owned
health care). Obama and friends have
created a moral, social, and economic abomination that is a lie and a violation
of their duty to the electorate and the unborn. The Senate bill
eliminates insurance as we know it, guarantees escalating costs for many
reasons, inserts the government into private health care, funds costs on the
backs of the elderly, and sends us to work to pay for someone to abort their
child (opposed 3 to1 in recent surveys).
(“The End of Insurance” by Keith Riler dated January 10, 2010 published by American Thinker
at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/the_end_of_insurance.html
)
Over
the past several years, the president has repeatedly vowed to make the United
States less dependent on foreign sources of oil, but the actions of Interior
Department Secretary Ken Salazar make it seem that the main mission is to
reduce domestic energy production. Salazar
recently announced that his department intends to slow the permitting process
for energy projects on federal lands. The
"fast-track" procedures
approved by Congress in 2005, lauded by consumers as a way to increase
production and reduce costs, are now to be replaced by the requirement of more
paperwork, inspection, and layering of bureaucratic approval. As our economy recovers, we are going to need
cheap and reliable sources of energy. Almost
providentially, at the very moment in our nation's history when this supply is
most in need, a solution has presented itself: vast new discoveries of shale gas,
and the development of the technology to release it. With the discovery of enormous fields of
natural gas in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and New York, as well as in
other states and offshore, America is now the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. If the administration truly wished to reduce
the nation's dependence on foreign energy, the only requirement would be for
government to step aside and allow the free market to develop these remarkable
reserves. Unfortunately, this is the
last thing we can expect from the Obama administration, which has been busy
from day one tightening restrictions on domestic production of oil and gas. Just as he has done with health care
suppliers, Obama is putting the squeeze on domestic energy producers by
tightening regulation and raising taxes and royalty fees. The intent of this shakedown is two-fold. first, by threat and intimidation, Obama hopes to stifle
political opposition from a powerful industry group; and second, by
confiscating profits, government will increase revenue with which to expand its
client base of voters. The Chicago
shakedown is crude but effective: intimidate those who are productive, force
them to hand over a portion of their earnings, and redistribute those funds to
those who are not productive but who nonetheless vote. Energy and health care are key targets of
Democratic "reform" -- not
because they need reforming, but because they present an opportunity for
extortion on an unprecedented scale. This
is why Obama has declared the need for "comprehensive" health care reform and "a comprehensive energy plan." Once the revenues of these companies are under
the control of government, they can be exploited for political purposes. For Obama and his Chicago cronies, shakedown
is business as usual. Under the pretext
of reform, the Democrat Party is attempting to take over every major sector of
the economy and to manipulate it for political gain. The cost of health
care, energy and other basic needs are to be increased for one simple reason:
to seize the profits of private businesses and redistribute funds to political
supporters.
(“Shake
and Take” by Jeffrey Folks dated January 13, 2010 published by American
Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/shake_and_take.html
)
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said President Obama
does not consider the fight against terrorism to be war since he has done
virtually nothing so far in his Presidency other than give speeches and extend
empty offers of peace. However Cheney can be forgiven for demanding
better proof of Obama's seriousness about combating terrorism than a speech he
once gave. The Obama administration response
is to attack the criticism as symptomatic of "the inflammatory rhetoric, hyperbole and intellectual narrowness"
that supposedly characterized the Bush administration. Obama has quietly adopted many of his
predecessor's responses to terrorism, such as authorizing intercepts, wiretaps
and Predator attacks. Unfortunately in
crucial respects the Obama administration's actions are inconsistent with the
idea that the United States truly is at war with terrorism and the militant
Islamists who engage in it. Foremost
among them is its treatment of captured terrorists such as the Obama
administration placing the Christmas Day bomber Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab in the criminal justice system,
rather than treating him as an enemy combatant and detaining him at a military
facility for intensive interrogation. Obama's
policy with respect to releasing existing detainees has also been inconsistent
with the view that we are at war with terrorism. Obama's eagerness to negotiate with regimes
that are key participants in the "network
of violence and hatred" also undercuts his claim that he is at war
with those forces. Being at war with
terrorism does not necessarily require a shooting war with sponsors of
terrorism, since it may even be possible to be at war with terrorism while
negotiating with its sponsors. Obama's
effort to sweet-talk Iran into negotiations with no preconditions, coupled with
his tepid support for those who would overthrow the regime that sponsors so
much terrorism, demonstrates an undue and even craven desire to accommodate
that regime. This is inconsistent with
being at war against the "network of
violence and hatred." Finally,
even in Afghanistan, where Obama has stepped up the shooting war, his
seriousness is questionable. At the same
time he announced the long-awaited troop surge, he informed the American
public, as well as the enemy, that we will begin withdrawing troops by July
2011. Throughout 2009, whether the issue
was interrogating and sidelining terrorists, fighting them on the battlefield,
or dealing with the states that support them, Obama acted without the urgency
and seriousness that characterizes a President at war. It is no accident that, until the Christmas
near-catastrophe and for an uncomfortable period thereafter, the Obama
administration was reluctant to speak of being at war, either with terrorism or
with the militant Islamists who engage in it. We can only hope that,
having narrowly avoided disaster, Obama will step up tangible and visible
actions to engage in all aspects of the “Global
War on Terror” in 2010.
(“Why it’s time to return to war against
terrorism” by Paul Mirengoff dated January 10,
2010 published by The Washington Examiner at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Why-it_s-time-to-return-to-war-against-terrorism-8738496-81015022.html
)
Al-Qaeda's newfound vitality is the product of a fresh strategy that plays to its networking strength and compensates for its numerical weakness. Al-Qaeda last month launched two separate attacks less than a week apart, one failed and one successful, triggering the most extensive review of U.S. national security policies since 2001. In contrast to its plan on Sept. 11, which was to deliver a knock-out blow to the United States, al-Qaeda's leadership has now adopted a "death by a thousand cuts" approach. There are five core elements to this strategy:
o First, al-Qaeda is increasingly focused on overwhelming, distracting and exhausting us. To this end, it seeks to flood our already information-overloaded national intelligence systems with myriad threats and background noise.
o Second, in the wake of the global financial crisis, al-Qaeda has stepped up a strategy of economic warfare. Over the past year, the group has issued statements, videos, audio messages and letters online trumpeting its actions against Western financial systems, even taking credit for the economic crisis.
o Third, al-Qaeda is still trying to create divisions within the global alliance arrayed against it by targeting key coalition partners. During the past two years, serious terrorist plots orchestrated by al-Qaeda's allies in Pakistan, meant to punish Spain and the Netherlands for participating in the war on terrorism, were thwarted in Barcelona and Amsterdam. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, suicide bombers and roadside explosives target contingents from countries such as Britain, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, where popular support for deployments has waned, in hopes of hastening their withdrawal from the NATO-led coalition.
o Fourth, al-Qaeda is aggressively seeking out, destabilizing and exploiting failed states and other areas of lawlessness. The terrorist network sees failing states as providing opportunities to extend its reach, and it conducts local campaigns of subversion to hasten their decline in places such as Pakistan, Algeria, the Sahel, Somalia and Yemen.
o Fifth, al-Qaeda is covetously seeking recruits from non-Muslim countries who can be easily deployed for attacks in the West. The group's leaders see people like these -- especially converts to Islam whose appearances and names would not arouse the same scrutiny that persons from Islamic countries might as the ultimate fifth column. Al-Qaeda has become increasingly adept at using the Internet to locate these would-be terrorists and to feed them propaganda.
In adopting and refining these
tactics, al-Qaeda is shrewdly opportunistic. It constantly monitors our defenses in an effort
to identify new gaps and opportunities that can be exploited. The "systemic
failure" of intelligence analysis and airport security that Obama
recently described was not just the product of a compartmentalized bureaucracy
or analytical inattention, but a failure to recognize al-Qaeda's new strategy. The U.S. national
security architecture built in the aftermath of September 11th addresses
yesterday's threats, but not today's and certainly not tomorrow's.
(“Al-Qaeda has a new
strategy, Obama needs one, too” by Bruce Hoffman dated January 10, 2010
published by The Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/08/AR2010010803555_pf.html
)
If the GOP wants to take back the House and perhaps the
Senate in 2010, not just do well, will require winning back voter trust lost
between 2000 and 2008. A party platform
must be crafted based on three clear, focused, and memorable objectives: 1)
shrink the role of government; 2) defeat Islamic fundamentalism; and 3)
recapture the traditional American culture. Here are the top 10 specific actions
the GOP must do to win in 2010:
·
Face up to why
the party lost in 2006 and 2008. Defined by attitudes rather than demographics, voter problem wasn't
with Iraq, as the media imagined, but with the increase in federal domestic
spending and deficits.
·
Don't lose sight
of why support for Democrats is tanking. What
spending-sensitive voters didn't anticipate were trillion dollar bank and auto
bailouts, trillion dollar deficits, a trillion dollar health-care overhaul, and
a trillion dollar stimulus bill.
·
Face the fact
that many swing voters who want Democrats out of power don't particularly want
Republicans in. Whatever their declared party affiliation,
these voters are anti-establishment and party is secondary to them. They are
not yet convinced that, if returned to power, the GOP will deliver the cheaper,
more limited government it has long promised.
·
Fight for
spending cuts now. The GOP’s nearly united front against the
stimulus bill and complete unity against the health-care overhaul were good
initial steps. The GOP should resist increases in domestic spending on every
parliamentary front, and more importantly should renounce earmarks, leaving
Democrats alone to defend this symbol of Congress' degeneracy.
·
For the midterm
election, unite around a clear agenda of repeal. The party should give its candidates a list of programs and spending
that will be up for cancellation the hour a Republican Congress is sworn in. At
the top of the list should be the Troubled Asset Relief Program, unspent
stimulus funds, and the health-care overhaul.
·
Add in an agenda
of market-freeing reforms in health care, energy, environmental and education
policy. Scholarly centers such as the Hoover
Institution, the Pacific Research Institute, and the Manhattan Institute have
developed market-freeing solutions to health inflation, energy dependence, real
and immediate environmental challenges, and education quality.
·
Add to that a
serious plan for moving to a surplus and reducing federal debt. Critics noted that the government can't fix the budget my focusing on
minutia, so a definite plan is needed.
·
Start talking
about the need to reform Social Security and Medicare. Swing voters know these programs could devastate federal finances. Politicians
must assure voters that they are committed to fixing them. Talk of reforming
these programs is no longer the third rail of politics.
·
Tax cuts must be
part of the answer. The surpluses of the late '90s were a
product of the growth in revenues that came after the capital gains tax was
cut. Campaign for immediate renewal of the 2003 cuts as the first step, with a
path to an eventual flat tax as the next step.
·
Take a lesson
from Ronald Reagan and emphasize that your programs are based on consistent
principles leading to a hopeful future for all Americans. Reclaim the party's franchise for economic growth, entrepreneurship,
personal liberty, and spending restraint.
These actions are
is the route to a big victory in November—and a true service to the nation. The GOP needs to
demonstrate that they can learn from their past mistakes and can reassert
national leadership based on core conservative principles and policies.
(“10 Tips for the GOP in 2010” by Clark S.
Judge dated January 10, 2010 published by The Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704842604574642440064128138.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
“A Flight of Fantasy: What Conservatives
Should Do When They Regain Power” by Ron Lipsman
dated January 14, 2010 published by Intellectual Conservative at http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/01/14/a-flight-of-fantasy-what-conservatives-should-do-when-they-regain-power/
)
* There is so much published each week that unless you search for it, you will miss important breaking news. I try to package the best of this information into my “Views on the News” each Saturday morning. Individual issue updates this week include:
· Civil Rights at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/civilrights.php
· Energy at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/energy.php
· Taxes at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/taxes.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY