It’s a good thing Tim Pawlenty believes in a miracles because he needs one to win the nomination. As always, he has some flashy ads.
It’s been a busy couple of days so I haven’t had time to write much; however, I did get chance to watch the President’s press conference on Wednesday. How bad was it? Well, when the senior political analyst for Time calls you a dick just imagine what conservatives thought. Obama’s straw man argument about sacrificing food safety because of tax breaks for corporate jets is beyond ludicrous. This week’s best quote comes from Charles Krauthammer.
He himself, as we just heard, said you can’t reduce the deficit to the levels we need without raising revenues. Then he talks about the [tax break for] corporate jets, which he mentioned not once but six times.
I did the math on this. If you collect the corporate jet tax every year for the next 5,000 years, you will cover one year of the debt that Obama has run up. One year.
To put it another way, if you started collecting that tax at the time of John the Baptist and you collected it every year — first in shekels and now in dollars — you wouldn’t be halfway to covering one year of the amount of debt that Obama has run up.
As for the other one, he mentions again and again, the oil depreciation tax break — if you collect that one for 700 years, you won’t cover a year of Obama deficits.
And then here’s my favorite. I worked it out in the car on the way here. If you collect the corporate jets and the oil tax together — get all the bad guys and the fat cats at once — and you collect it for 100 years, it covers the amount of debt Obama added… in February!
And he pretends that he’s the serious adult at the table.
I used to think that Obama had a clue, but with every passing day I’m convinced that he’s just winging it up there. The White House applied their Keynesian 101 philosophy towards the economy and it didn’t work. President Obama doesn’t have back up plan. He’s going to lie, deceive, obfuscate, a make it to the next election.
We’re all about equal time here at The Daily Plunge, but even I can hardly motivate myself to write about former Utah governor and ambassador to China Jon Huntsman. Any time I read “Democrats fear” a candidate you can rest assured they want to run against said candidate. Even Harry Reid likes the guy.
Huntsman should challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination if they like him so much. Can anyone give a reason why he’s in the race?
Will he or won't he?
If you want to seriously run for President, time is running out. Last night CNN held a presidential debate in New Hampshire. There are about a million things more entertaining than watching a faux debate 17 months before election day. Read Club Soda’s post and check out Hot Air’s winners and losers for a recap.
I won’t go into a candidate analysis until the field is set. However, things are getting closer to having a complete field. It’s possible that someone could jump in late, but it’s not likely to change the race. The campaign infrastructure is being built right now. Plus, the Romney, Pawlenty and Bachmann campaigns will be raising money over the next six months to gear up for Iowa and New Hampshire. That’s a difficult head start to overcome.
There are four top tier candidates who could declare right now: Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and Paul Ryan. I don’t think Palin will run this time around; however, she might have a tremendous influence on who gets the nomination if she chooses to endorse a candidate. Paul Ryan and Chris Christie are adamant that they’re not running and it doesn’t appear that they will change their minds. Ryan could still potentially be a great running mate for the eventually nominee. That leaves Texas governor Rick Perry.
Supposedly Rick Perry is “thinking” about running for president. Great, so am I. So is Donald Trump. If Perry is serious he’ll have to make a decision soon for all the reasons I listed above. Perry isn’t a friend of the GOP establishment. Normally that would be a huge problem, but this would likely a huge plus for his potential candidacy. People don’t want Bush 3.0. The fact that Karl Rove and George Bush aren’t on board the Perry Train is a plus. However, Perry can’t wait three months to get in the race.
The country is need of real leadership. A half-hearted attempt at running for president isn’t going to cut it.
Here are a few deranged tweets about Rick Perry. Enjoy!
There you have it. Rick Perry is “pure evil.” Is it really surprising that the Associated Press is still floating this picture around? Kathryn Scags’ Twitter profile says that she’s an Atheist, and a recovering Catholic. Apparently Atheists are experts on what is evil. Who knew?
This picture got me thinking. How many babies will Romney have to see over the next 16 months?
The only thing more annoying than a politician announcing the formation of an exploratory committee is the inevitable announcement they’re running for president. Today Mitt Romney declared his candidacy for presidency. If you’re anything like me you didn’t know he wasn’t already running. He’s been running since he endorsed McCain in 2008.
Romney’s biggest challenge to secure the GOP nomination is RomneyCare. ObamaCare is toxic and Romney’s greatest legislative achievement while he was governor of Massachusetts was a healthcare overhaul suspiciously like ObamaCare, and almost as crappy.
RomneyCare isn’t working and Romney won’t distance himself from it. I’m not sure how Romney runs a successful race with this albatross. The one thing Romney has going for him is that he’s the safe choice. If no other candidate comes forward that captures the imagination of GOP voters Romney suddenly becomes the John Kerry candidate.
Being the next John Kerry isn’t much to get excited about, but if the economy continues to drag on into next year Obama faces a very difficult reelection. If the economy gets worse Obama could be facing an electoral disaster. Simply securing the GOP nomination may be enough to get in the White House. It will be interesting to see if this week’s bad economic data forces some potential candidates to rethink their 2012 strategy.
Mitt Romney is the candidate no one really loves, but the candidate everyone might settle for if there’s no other choice.
If Democrats wish to lie, demagogue, and drag Paul Ryan through the mud over the next two years as an election tactic it’s time for him to run for president. The United States has almost reached the point of no return when it comes to our fiscal situation. Right now there’s no one with the courage to address the problem. Our outdated entitlements are unsustainable. If they’re not reformed the nation will go bankrupt, inflation will spiral out of control, and most of the nation will be impoverished.
The Democrats don’t have a plan. Their only strategy is to tear down any idea that involves reform. Just a few weeks ago President Obama delivered his disgraceful remarks about Paul’s plan for reforming entitlements. Politicians are cowards. The most important thing to the Republican and Democratic parties is to strengthen their voting base. If the President was truly concerned about our current fiscal problems he would have offered a plan by now. Obama has been president for three years and he hasn’t outlined anything specific. The only person in Washington talking like an adult is Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan is also the only politician in the GOP who is capable of effectively communicating what’s in his plan and the problem we’re facing. Currently, the only thing Americans know about the Path to Prosperity are lies propagated by the press, the White House, and the Democratic party. That’s not to say that Ryan’s plan is perfect, but right now there’s nothing else. Ryan’s plan doesn’t balance the budget until after 2060. This is what passes for an extreme plan? It could be argued that Ryan’s plan isn’t aggressive enough. What’s the liberal alternative? If 2060 is extreme are Democrats trying to balance the budget by 2160?
If Paul Ryan doesn’t run for the White House Democrats will effectively campaign against Ryan no matter who the GOP candidate ends up being in 2012. There is only one issue that matters in 2012. It’s reducing our debt and the only way to do it is addressing our entitlement problems. The nation needs a leader who is able to be honest and communicate effectively. Ultimately if the Congress ever gets serious about this issue the Executive Branch has to lead. President Obama is incapable of addressing this problem. He may get reelected, but it will only mean four more wasted years. I’m not sure the nation has much more time to fix this problem.
Paul Ryan needs to run for the good of the country. Not because of his own ambition, not because he has the best chance to win, but because he’s the only one serious about the biggest problem facing the country. If the nation goes bankrupt the American dream may die with it.
This really isn’t a shock, but Newt Gingrich is running for president. There are a lot of things that I think are great about Gingrich. He has an excellent understanding of history and he has a lot of great ideas. He’s always been a big idea, think outside of the box type of guy; however, he’s also been thin skinned in the past.
Ultimately Gingrich’s biggest weakness is the fact he doesn’t have executive experience. This wasn’t a barrier to entry for President Obama, but it should have been. Almost everything the President has done has be an unorganized mess. If the country decided to elect another president in 2012 I expect someone with more executive experience will win.
The New Face of Climate Change: It’s been a tough time for the most ardent climate change alarmist. Last year Climategate cast doubt on the integrity of climate science. Plus, on the list of Real Problems an unproven theory pushed by an army of overzealous alarmists isn’t really that frightening in a world full of war and in a nation with a bad economy. Have no fear (or be full of fear), there’s a new voice for alarmists.
‘Everyone’s God and if we don’t wake up to that there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we’re doing bad things to the atmosphere.
‘If we don’t change that as rapidly as I’m speaking to you now, if we don’t put the green back on the planet and put the trees back that we’ve butchered, if we don’t go to war against the problem…’
Who is this you ask? Al Gore? Matt Damon? Some random Hipster Dufus? It’s none other than Charles Manson. Not only is he a psychotic serial killer (Tom Harkin), he’s also a climate change alarmist. That sounds just about right.
Economics 101: It looks like Jesse Jackson Jr. has solved the problem behind the nation’s unemployment issues. It’s technological progress. More specifically, Apple’s iPad is probably responsible for the loss of thousands of American jobs. Unfortunately, Jackson hasn’t lost his job since the iPad debuted last year.
Hypocrisy Thy Name is Obama: There’s not much doubt that it’s been three years of amateurism from the White House. The President lacks the leadership and experience to be President of the United States. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says Obama never said he was opposed to signing statements in all cases. Of course this is a fabrication. Just add it to the list of things the left doesn’t care about anymore.
Here is a quote by President Obama from January 10, 2010:
“We’re not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterize whatever proposals are put out there as, ‘Well, you know, that’s — the other party’s being irresponsible. The other party is trying to hurt our senior citizens. That the other party is doing X, Y, Z.”
And, here is a quote from President Obama’s speech yesterday:
“One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates…This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.”
It’s quite apparent that by almost any conceivable measure President Obama has increased the partisanship in Washington. His 2008 election promises were a deception and his speech yesterday was a disgrace to the office.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie quite astutely pointed out a few weeks ago what is so readily apparent about today’s politician in Washington.
“The old playbook says lie, deceive, obfuscate, make it to the next election … What game is being played down here is irresponsible and dangerous.”
Instead of looking at our financial problems in an honest way the President has decided to lie. He doesn’t have a logical plan to offer. It’s obvious that the Democrats don’t have any idea what to do other than raise taxes and cut defense. Doing both will not solve the problem. At this point the Democrats are the problem
I haven’t analyzed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s political positions enough to formulate an opinion. However, the GOP field for 2012 is weak on enthusiasm and there’s a huge buzz about Christie right now. The biggest part of the appeal is that Christie is speaking frankly about the problems the nation is facing. What sets Christie apart is that he is not tiptoeing around our problems.
If Christie decided to run it will likely take a groundswell of support. He’s been adamant that he is not going to run. I admire the fact that he wants to finish the job, but the call of the White House may end up being too much.
Bill Palatucci, often described as Christie’s “political godfather,” said that not forming such a fundraising committee would be “leaving money on the table.”
The comments came in an interview with the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill, N.J., published Sunday. Palatucci, Christie’s former law partner, made the remarks even as he tried throwing cold water on the notion that the governor — who’s gotten acclaim from national Republicans — is taking steps designed toward a presidential run.
“If reporters would look for a second below the surface, they’d see I’ve never been to Iowa,” Palatucci said, adding that another adviser, Mike DuHaime, “has not been to New Hampshire. There have been no lawyers hired to advise or investigate a presidential run.”
This will be a bigger story as we approach the end of the year. Christie will ultimately have to make a decision by October/November if he wants to make a serious run. Typically that would be too late, but there’s no consensus favorite going into the nomination process. This race is wide open.
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