To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children...
to leave the world a better place...
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sizing Up the 2012 GOP Field to Face Obama
A recent Fox News poll show that all the potential name Republican candidates (i.e., Romney, Huckabee, Palin, and Gingrich) losing to Obama, with the closest, Romney, losing by 7. Palin and Gingrich face a tough road in that Obama polls better than 50% against them. Gingrich has all but declared his candidacy. Looking at the previous Fox News poll, it didn't look like Romney lost any support, but Obama picked up some undecided voters; this may reflect the post-election bounce based on the lame duck session and the aftermath to the Giffords assassination attempt. I don't think that Romney, who lacks a lack of name recognition among many independents and moderates outside the Northeast, is in trouble; in fact, a recent Rasmussen poll has him two points up over Obama and leading the crowded GOP field by 5 points. Except for certain polarizing potential candidates (e.g., Palin, Gingrich, and Bachmann), I don't think that Obama will retain the huge turnout and significant percentages of independents and moderates whom boosted him to 53% of the popular vote.
Right now the risk-reward ratio for Obama over the next 20 months is too high. Say, for example, we run into a double-dip recession, pushing up official unemployment over 10%--or the Fed finally decides to boost interest rates to combat inflation and it cripples growth and jobs--or people with marginal increases in compensation find themselves with a budget-busting $5/gallon gas (or, God forbid, a significant terrorist event), Obama is likely to find himself in Jimmy Carter reelection territory. But here's the core statistic that I think any GOP challenger should bash him with until the election: the nation is still down 7 million jobs since December 2007, the start of the recession. And that's without considering over 1 million new workers added each year (e.g., graduating students). I know that Obama refuses to accept responsibility for the jobs lost between December 2007 and January 2009, but just to get the economy back to December 2007, Obama would need to average nearly 370,000 job growth a month--and last month's increase was roughly a tenth of that. Consider the following chart of the labor participation rate based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It shows under Obama, a continuing drop in the labor force participation rate (i.e., people who drop out of the labor force because they are discouraged over the inability to find work):
What the Republicans need to do is address a pro-growth strategy of limited, simplified, globally competitive business taxes and regulations and revenue more balanced in favor of savings and investment versus consumption. There are a couple of things they'll need to keep in mind in the upcoming Obama debates: first, they need to point out that Obama and the Congressional Democrats have not only competed against business for investment dollars, but they have been playing politics with timely, necessary entitlement reforms to accommodate the retiring baby boomers, our largest retirement group, thus putting an unsustainable burden on a shrinking workforce. Moreover, at a time when a growing global economy competes against us for maturing supply of available international oil exports, Obama and his fellow Democrats have stonewalled development of new domestic supplies, gambling with our economic future. A final point in terms of the upcoming 2012 campaign: a successful candidate will need to run a less predictable Reaganesque campaign against Obama and will need to counter Obama's recurring pattern of co-opting GOP themes.
Other expected or potential GOP contenders include Pawlenty, Santorum, Barbour, Huntsman, Daniels, and Bachmann; two other GOP marquee names, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, have ruled out candidacies.
I have to say my two favored candidates at this point are Mitt Romney and Mitch Daniels. Mitt Romney has certainly paid his dues during the 2008 campaign; he doesn't have the baggage of a Washington insider, he has the most striking background as a businessman and job creator, and he has proved that he can attract voters in a blue/purple state. It looks as though his strategy since 2008 has been to shore up his national defense and foreign policy credentials and address concerns of social conservatives.
But his biggest challenge will be defending "RomneyCare", Massachusetts health care reform, largely inspired by the efforts of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, whom also played a key role in the subsequent design of ObamaCare. Since ObamaCare is radioactive among GOP activists, Romney will be hard-pressed to respond to Gruber's claim that ObamaCare is an improvement on RomneyCare, i.e., enrollment in ObamaCare has to occur during open enrollment periods (whereas people can wait until they are sick to enroll in RomneyCare). Romney's response has been to stress the dissimilar bipartisan nature of RomneyCare and to attack ObamaCare as based on fraudulent accounting, federal empire-building and counterproductive interference with the free market (e.g., price caps), and, of course, the corrupt process and crony capitalism.
Mitch Daniels won easy reelection as Indiana governor at the same time Obama was winning the state in 2008. With experience as President George Bush's OMB Director and a gubernatorial record on low property taxes, privatization of toll roads, budget cuts, and widely admired administrative competence, Daniels, who infuriated social conservatives by advocating a more low-key approach by putting cultural issues on the back burner while advocating a big-tent philosophy, recently wrote a widely-read Wall Street Journal op-ed on ObamaCare and the states and delivered a well-received speech yesterday at CPAC, advocating an inclusive, empowering agenda for America's future.
An Embittered Mubarak Lashes Out at US
In the closing days of his presidency, Hosni Mubarak lashed out at a clueless US administration, echoing the same arguments being made by some conservatives: American advocacy of democratic reforms has resulted in terrorist-supporting regimes in Iran and Gaza, and the same result will likely spread not only to Egypt, but in fact mushroom across the Middle East. I will simply point out here that Mubarak's statement is self-serving, and Mubarak, who has maintained emergency rule for decades and repeatedly ignored American warnings to pursue more democratic reforms, is largely responsible for his own downfall.
The Obama Administration has, of course, ineptly handled the crisis; the kerfuffle created by Director of National
Political Humor
"Russian astronomers say an asteroid is heading toward our planet and will hit us in 2036. You have to keep in mind that Russian astronomers use empty vodka bottles for telescopes." –Craig Ferguson
[Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pointed this hypothesis out in explaining why we don't need to worry about the social security reserve running empty by 2037.]
A few originals:
- VP Joe Biden announced an Obama Administration proposal for a $53 billion train system. Or, at the new GOP-controlled House leadership refers to it, the trains-going-nowhere act.
- Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has a personal fortune estimated by the CIA at between one to 5 billion dollars. When asked about it, Mubarak explained as a teenager he won the Egyptian edition of Dick Clark's "The One Billion Dollar Pyramid".
The Bee Gees/Yvonne Elliman, "If I Can't Have You". The Bee Gees wrote a songs initially charted by other artists: e.g., most prominently their little brother Andy Gibbs, Dionne Warwick, Barbra Streisand, Tavares, and Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton. (These songs may be featured in future segments.) My favorite of these songwriter tracks is this one, which Yvonne made her own in her magnificent style (in a prior post, I featured a brilliant track from 'Jesus Christ Superstar'). How do you top an outstanding performance? I find that I actually prefer the frenetic, driving percussion arrangement of the Bee Gees' own version...
