Attacking Paul Ryan, But Not the National Debt

By Alan Caruba

The White House and Democrats have been attacking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, for having the audacity to put forth budget plans, something the Democrats in the Senate have failed to pass for well over a thousand days at this point.

The first words out of Rep. Steve Israel’s mouth, a Democrat from New York, were the pathetic blather about “billionaires.” Most Americans aren’t billionaires or even millionaires and are more concerned about the rising costs of gasoline, food, and everything else than whether the rich pay more taxes. In point of fact, the rich pay the vast bulk of the income taxes and some forty percent of workers pay none at all. If you earn more than $250,000 a year, Democrats think you’re rich.



Harry Reid

 Never mind that most of us are trying to live within our own budget, the Democrats have resisted passing any kind of a budget to address a looming fiscal crisis of their making. That was why voters in 2010 returned control of the House, where all appropriations are authorized, to Republicans. If they had done the same for the Senate, we might actually have had some budgets, but Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, has ensured that every effort to address the fiscal mess fails.

The White House and the Senate, despite the Simpson-Bowles Commission, despite the so-called “super committee”, and despite the plans put forth by Ryan, have utterly failed to do anything but spend, spend, and spend. To do so, they must borrow, borrow, and borrow.

In February, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that annual spending over the Obama era had climbed to a projected $3.6 trillion this fiscal year from $2.98 trillion in fiscal 2008; more than 20%. It added up to an increase of about $5 trillion in just four years. This year will mark the highest deficit—the difference between government revenues and government spending—since 1946!

Robotically and moronically, the Democrats keep calling for higher taxes and even the CBO has concluded that the 2012 tax hike (ending the Bush tax cuts) on capital gains, dividends, estates and small businesses would impede economic growth, reducing it 1% the next year and raising the specter of unemployment rising from 8.5% to 9.1%--increasing the jobless to 750,000.

As The Wall Street Journal put it, “the CBO’s facts plainly show that Mr. Obama has the worst fiscal record of any President in modern times. No one else is even close.”

In addition to the tired rhetoric about billionaires and millionaires, the Democrats are also lying about Ryan’s plan as it relates to Medicare, claiming it wants to deprive older Americans of its benefits, but as Ryan points out, “Our budget’s Medicare reforms make no changes for those in or near retirement.” Without reform, Medicare will go broke as will Social Security.

Ryan’s plan “spurs economic growth with bold tax reform—eliminating complexity for individuals and families and boosting competitiveness for American job creators. Led by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, our budget consolidates the current six income tax brackets into just two brackets of 10% and 25%”, the latter for corporations in order to permit them to be more competitive with nations that tax their corporations at a far lower rate than ours”, currently near the highest in the world.

“We reject calls to raise taxes,” says Ryan, preferring to close tax loopholes.

In brief, the Ryan budget would produce savings in federal spending of $5.3 trillion over ten years and reduce the deficit by $3.3 trillion. It proposes a 10% reduction of the federal work force over three years through attrition and it offers reforms to Medicaid, among others to pull the nation back from the brink of catastrophic collapse and default.

You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to know what is wrong with the way Obama and his Democrat trolls are running the government, despite Republican efforts to apply the brakes. They have increased spending to $3.8 trillion despite the fact that the government only takes in about $2.1 in revenue.

In just one term, Obama is on pace to borrow $6.2 trillion. The debt rises by $4.2 billion every day, $175 million per hour, nearly $3 million per minute.

Without a Republican in the White House and Republican control of both the House and Senate, the United States of America—you and I—are headed off a cliff. All the lies Obama tells between now and November 6, 2012 will not change that.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Why Obama Will Lose in November

By Alan Caruba

I received a campaign letter from Michelle Obama the other day. This is especially surprising because I am a registered Republican; hardly a likely prospect to contribute to her husband’s reelection efforts.

“Every day I learn about the challenges and the struggles—the doctor bills they can’t pay or the mortgage they can no longer afford,” said the text. The “fairness” theme, a socialist meme, was expressed. “American prospers when we are all in this together, when hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded, when everyone—from Main Street to Wall Street—does their fair share and plays by the same rules.”

The fact is, however, America has not been prospering for the last four years during which Barack Obama has been President. And everyone knows it. The U.S. sovereign debt rating was downgraded for the first time while he occupied the Oval Office. Federal spending (25% of GDP) is the highest since World War Two. Federal debt (67% of GDP) is the highest since just after the end of World War Two, and the nation has experienced, not only the longest recession, but the highest unemployment since the 1930s.

In the first nineteen months of his time in office, Obama added more federal debt than was amassed by all U.S. Presidents from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.

I have two theories about the November 6 election. (1) That it will be an overwhelming defeat for Obama or (2) that it will be so close we could see a situation comparable to the Bush-Kerry election in 2004. Had Kerry won, the vice president would have been John Edwards who was carrying on an affair during that campaign and who currently faces jail for misuse of campaign funds.

Obama’s Achilles’ heel is, of course, Obamacare. As Robert Bluey of The Heritage Foundation notes, recent polls indicate that 53% of Americans favor repeal and more than half (57%) say that the Supreme Court should strike it down as unconstitutional. Fully 60% of physicians believe the law will have a negative impact on overall patient care.

The Congressional Budget Office revisited Obamacare this past week and concluded that 20 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored health benefits and 49 million more Americans could become dependent on government-sponsored health care. Projecting through 2022, Obamacare could cost as much as $2.134 billion and the employer-mandate penalties could hit $221 billion.

There’s another reason why Michelle Obama was writing to me last week. As Karl Rove noted in a Wall Street Journal March 14 commentary, “Many of Mr. Obama’s 2008 donors are reluctant to give again” to his campaign. “As the Obama campaign itself reported, fewer than 7% of 2008 donors renewed their support in the first quarter of his re-election campaign, well below the typical renewal rate.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee are burning through current donations so fast that the White House has told this year’s congressional candidates that they will not receive any funding support for their campaigns because Obama needs all the money.

While Obama’s 2012 campaign is already showing signs of stress, other issues will impose great pressure. Unemployment affects most American families either directly or because some member of the family or a friend is unemployed. Even the unemployed vote!

The price of gasoline continues to rise and there is nothing the White House can do to reduce it. Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that exists for use only in an emergency will not do it and Americans are well aware that this administration has opposed or thwarted every effort to drill for more oil on federal lands. The failures of “green energy” companies that have cost Americans billions in loan guarantees are well known. A President who hypes “algae” as an energy solution will be seen as a fool and/or a complete charlatan.

Recent polls indicate how close the 2012 election may be. Obama has lost ground among female voters. In a head-to-head match-up with Mitt Romney, women voters back Obama 49%, but that is seven points lower than 2008. A Rasmussen poll found that 59% of likely voters asked whether Obama is more liberal or more conservative than they are answered that he was more liberal. Of these likely voters, 65% who are also union members thought Obama was more liberal than themselves.

Polling firms have been asking Americans to self identify themselves as conservative or liberal for decades. In February 2012, Gallup polling revealed “that in every single state with the exception of Massachusetts” conservatives outnumbered liberals. The Battleground Poll conducted by George Washington University in collaboration with Democrat and Republican polling organizations found that 58% of Americans described themselves as “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative”, while only 37% described themselves as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.”

A conservative campaign message will win in 2012 and this explains why the Republican primaries are all about candidates striving to describe themselves as a “true conservative.”

Even the mainstream media show indications of less Obama support. When even The Washington Post rejects Obama’s lies about U.S. oil reserves, as it did on March 15th, it suggests there may be a growing, wider level of disenchantment with the man they embraced in 2008.

Obama will lose in November. It may be a very close election or it may be an overwhelming rejection, but the polling numbers and the state of the economy will be the deciding factors.

Memo to Michelle Obama: The “fairness” message is not working. The appalling failures—“stimulus” anyone?—of Obama’s first term will ensure that there will be no second term.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Primary Marathon

By Alan Caruba

I have a suspicion that most people have lost interest in the Republican primaries beyond getting a quick update of who won, who came in second, third, and the usual question of why Ron Paul is running at all.

The primaries are a marathon that requires the men who want to be president to endure physical and emotional challenges that would likely kill anyone who lacked the will power and stamina to travel from state to state, give the essentially same speech over and over again, and be interviewed from early morning to late evening, responding to the same questions ad infinitum.

Running a primary campaign is a major business enterprise and, at this point, the only man with experience in the world of business and finance appears to be winning the delegate count needed to challenge the President.

If you’re sick of hearing about the outcome of primary elections, here’s what lies ahead:

March 17 – Missouri
March 18 – Puerto Rico
March 20 – Illinois
March 24 – Louisiana

April 3 – Washington, D.C., Maryland, Wisconsin
April 24 – Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island

May 8 – Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia
May 15 – Nebraska, Oregon
May 22 – Arkansas, Kentucky
May 29 – Texas

June 5 – California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota
June 26 – Utah

And then! There’s the Republican National Convention August 27-30 in Tampa, Florida.

All this provides employment to everyone involved in the campaigns, everyone in the media who provides news coverage, and scores of vendors who will produce all the paraphernalia we associate with elections.

At the center of the vortex will be the candidates and surrounding them will be the endless questions of who’s ahead and who may drop out, et cetera, et cetera.

I do not know why we select our candidates in this fashion. I assume the process has evolved over the many years of the republic. No one seems to have come up with a better way of doing it, but in the end we are selecting a man to lead the nation (and the world) who will wield more power—for good or ill—than can be imagined.

It is a cliché to say that this will be the most important election of our lifetimes, but it is true.

If Barack Obama remains in office the financial destruction of the nation will be completed, the reduction of our military power will continue, the government takeover of critical elements of our economy will continue, and the America that lives in our hearts and imagination will cease to be.

There is no mystery to ending the recession we entered after the 2008 financial crisis; the longest since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Any economist will tell you how to do it. Anyone who runs a business, large or small, will tell you.

There is no mystery to reducing the flow of regulations that throttle innovation and expansion. Entire government departments and agencies need to be eliminated and Congress must be “encouraged” to stop passing massive bills it has not read! Show them the door!

There is no mystery to getting Barack Obama reelected. Republicans and independent voters just need to stay home.

The primary elections are a test of the resolve of American voters to get the real change they need and want.

It is a political IQ test.

They are the marathon we all must run if we are to reclaim and renew the America we love.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Thoughts on Super Tuesday

By Alan Caruba

As The Music Man’s Professor Harold Hill will tell you, pool is a game that will “Help you cultivate horse sense, a cool head, and a keen eye”, particularly if you want to run the table—to shoot all the numbered balls into the pockets. As someone who once owned his own pool table, I have to agree with Prof. Hill.

I am not a political pundit and, indeed, I write about politics with a general sense of reluctance. That’s hard to avoid in the year of a general election and, currently, the madness generated by multiple primaries and caucuses.

That said, I think Mitt Romney is going to “run the table” on March 6th, known as Super Tuesday, for its many primaries, because he ran the table last week in Michigan and Arizona. He came out on top in the Wyoming caucuses as well.

While I watch the polls like others, my seat-of-the-pants judgment is that a majority of Republican voters are slowly, but surely concluding that Mitt Romney can and will defeat Barack Obama while his opponents cannot.

Much has been made of Romney’s personal wealth—some might call it success—but Americans have never been reluctant to elect men of considerable wealth to the presidency. Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes to mind. His was inherited because, Lord knows, he would have starved as a lawyer. His uncle, Teddy, was wealthy by the standards of his day.

Let’s not forget John F. Kennedy whose daddy made a small fortune as a bootlegger and later in Hollywood. Lyndon Johnson rose from modest means to acquire wealth during his years in the Senate. And, yes, the Bush family had wealth too. Bush41 made his in a classic American fashion, oil!

The argument going on in the Republican ranks has been about electing a genuine conservative. People tend to forget that during his political career even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when necessary and took stands that were surely not conservative by a purist’s standard. Bush43 foisted “No Child Left Behind” on us; one of the worst pieces of liberal legislation in modern times.

So, no, there is no perfect conservative candidate in realistic, political terms. There are men, however, who got elected as conservatives and did some good conservative things in office.

As the contrast between Rick Santorum and Romney became clear, people are being asked to make a choice between Santorum’s shoot-from-the-hip, holier than thou style and the Romney model that demonstrated a Republican could be elected in a Democrat State. Even I have criticized Romney for being a bit “robotic”, but he did was what any good politician would do; he stayed on message.

President Obama does not want to run against Mitt Romney because it will be next to impossible to smear him in the same fashion he could with Gingrich or Santorum. Ron Paul is not a serious candidate except for his mission to acquire enough delegates to force the convention platform to include his favorite cause, eliminating the Federal Reserve.

Tuesday will be full of the usual drama associated with politics, but I believe that Republican voters have turned a corner as regards Mitt Romney.

As one Wall Street Journal pundit pointed out recently, President Obama lives in “a mythical America”, one where it’s smart to spend $8.2 billion on “clean energy” companies while decrying the tax incentives to oil companies that represent half the money wasted on producers of biofuels, solar panels and wind turbines. And let’s not forget Obama’s new favorite source of energy, algae, otherwise known as pond scum.

If I am wrong, so be it, but I think Super Tuesday is going to demonstrate that Republicans are determined to avoid four more years of Obama. I even suspect that a surprising number of Democrats feel that way as well.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

It's the Economy, Stupid!

By Alan Caruba

It is interesting to see how intently foreigners are watching the run-up to the 2012 national elections, particularly as regards whether President Obama could be reelected. Hardly a day goes by that I do not receive inquiries from places like South Africa, Israel, or England. Some offer comments on my Facebook page, but the concern is the same, can Obama be defeated?

To borrow a phrase from Bill Clinton’s 1992 race, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That will be the deciding factor as Democrats , Republicans, and independents go to the polls in November. The news for Obama is bad. Unfortunately, the news for millions of out-of-work Americans it is even worse.

On February 28, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and a coalition of business groups were in the D.C. Court of Appeals to argue their challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules regarding greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that there is no correlation between such gases—mainly carbon dioxide—and a non-existent global warming probably won’t even be discussed. A spokesperson for the NFIB said, “For the small business community, the constant churn of costly and carelessly promulgated regulations has become too great a burden to bear.” Guess who all those small business owners will be voting against in November?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) keeps doing something that is unexpected from most government agencies; it keeps telling the truth. In mid-February it issued a report which said that, after three years of Obamanomics, the nation has seen the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Trust a Democrat President to repeat all the errors of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who prolonged the Depression for ten years while he held office.

The “official” unemployment rate has hovered around or exceeded 8 percent and this is expected to continue through 2014. The CBO noted that the level of long-term unemployment—those looking for work for more than six months—is over 40 percent! That is the highest since 1948 when the data was first collected.

Hans Bader, Counsel for Special Projects with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, recently noted that “The official unemployment rate is going down, but that’s partly because many long-term unemployed people went into Social Security Disability, citing ailments such as depression. Now they have a monthly government check, they are never, ever going back to work, and they are no longer treated by the government as unemployed.” This is governmental slight-of-hand to lower the rate of unemployment while contributing to it.

Writing in OpenMarket.org in February, Bader noted that a good part of the unemployment problem in the nation is a severe shortage of skilled factory workers. “In recent years, government officials have depicted white-collar jobs for college graduates as the way to go,” said Bader who noted that, while seeking to increase spending on colleges, the administration has been “slashing spending on more useful vocational education that could lead to work in manufacturing.”

An indication of how poorly the government solution to the need for skilled manufacturing employees has been is the fact that the private sector has stepped up to solve the problem. The National Association of Manufacturers has endorsed a National Manufacturers Skills Certification System to fill the gap. In partnership with community colleges and trade schools, the program offers “a relatively inexpensive path to meeting the human capital demands of U.S. advanced manufacturers.”

It has not gone unnoticed that Obama’s stimulus billions did not produce any “shovel ready” jobs and wasted public funds on a range of “green” industries, many of whom, like Solyndra, have gone belly up. Overall, the “green” industries involving solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars have proven to be sinkholes of money that generate few jobs compared to the rest of the nation’s manufacturing sector.

Finally, after three years of the most anti-energy administration since Jimmy Carter, the rising price of gas is going to have a devastating affect for Democrats and Obama on public perceptions on Election Day.

To those foreign correspondents asking whether Obama will be reelected, I keep saying that the present economy with its slow “recovery” and the high rate of unemployed, combined with the government’s crushing load of irrelevant and odious regulations, is as good an indicator as any regarding the outcome of the November general elections.

If foreigners are as much concerned with U.S. elections as Americans, all the debates, daily silliness of political news coverage, and largely irrelevant social issues suggest that November will represent, like the 2010 elections, a massive voter movement away from “hope and change” to a Republican candidate that offers an alternative economic policy to four more years of the disaster called Barack Hussein Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Clinton Years

By Alan Caruba

PBS recently aired a two-part television documentary on Bill Clinton, his life, and his two terms in office from 1993 to 2001.

Following the years of economic growth and optimism from the Reagan-Bush41 era, it may have just been inevitable that the voters wanted to put a younger man in the White House. At the time, few of us realized how seriously demented, Al Gore, Clinton’s choice for his vice president, would turn out to be.

Mostly, though, I think of how deeply flawed Clinton was and how the presidency seemed to exaggerate and exacerbate those flaws of character and judgment. The worst part of it was that, even before he was elected, the voters knew he was a womanizer. The Gennifer Flowers affair erupted during the first campaign and, with Hillary by his side, he just brushed it aside and so did the voters.

A man who will cheat on his wife, will cheat on his partners in business, and just about everyone else. Bill Clinton demonstrated that and yet the voters either ignored or forgave him the long trail of women he exploited with or without their consent including a sordid relationship with a very young White House intern.

What the PBS documentary demonstrated was that Clinton was bitten by the presidential bug early in life, possibly when he met John F. Kennedy as part of a group of boys tagged as having potential for public service. That brief moment seemed to say that he knew he was going to be President one day, no matter what it took.

Clinton was blessed with a high level of intelligence. There is, however, often a disconnection between intellectual skills and moral judgment. We see this repeated and reported day after day when men who have achieved status and wealth just throw it away. In the private sector it is a private tragedy affecting its victims, but in the public sector, it puts everyone’s welfare and future at risk.

Clinton, like Barack Obama, arrived in the White House without any experience in the military. Not only that, he didn’t like or trust the men who protect our liberties and take an oath to protect the Constitution and to obey the Commander-in-Chief. Clinton almost immediately tried to eliminate the ban on homosexuals in the military, having to finally settle for “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell.” Obama eliminated even that.

Clinton was fortunate enough to have had no big or small wars on his watch, but there was massive slaughter in Rwanda he later regretted he did nothing to deter or stop, but neither did the United Nations.

What I recall of the 1990s was that it was so different from the previous Reagan years. Ronald Reagan believed Americans could achieve anything if the government would just get out of the way.

Clinton was an old style, liberal Democrat who thought government exists to get involved in everyone’s life in every way possible. Americans used to hate that, but from the 1930s through the 1960s, first Social Security and later Medicare got them used to being on the government dole. Comparable programs exist in every department of the government.

In the 1980s, there were many missed cues as to what was coming on 9/11. The first attack on the Twin Towers in New York in 1993 was treated as a criminal case and not something perpetrated by a shadowy group calling itself al Qaeda. By 1996, however, its leader, Osama bin Laden, had issued a declaration of war against America. In 1998 al Qaeda blew up U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

With the 1979 advent of the Iranian Islamic revolution, anyone paying any attention had to know that a new, very dangerous force had been unleashed in the world. The former Soviet Union discovered that in Afghanistan when al Qaeda and local mujahideen forced them out in 1989 with the covert assistance of the U.S.

My memory of those eight years was that, throughout it all, the Clinton administration seemed to be stepping in post holes, stumbling from one misadventure to another.

When Bill turned the revision of the U.S. healthcare system over to Hillary, the two of them ran into a buzz-saw of popular resistance. Later, Obama would encounter the same response with Obamacare and it spawned the Tea Party movement after it was forced through a Democrat Congress.

What is it about liberals that they cannot learn any lessons from history and remain determined to expand government where it was never intended to go? Education. Healthcare. Energy. The Environment. Try finding any of those words in the Constitution. (Yes, Republican presidents have done this too.)

Bill Clinton became only the second President in U.S. history to be impeached. He had lied to a grand jury and a federal judge, demeaned the office of President with a sex scandal, and he got away with it! Congress voted against impeachment.

By virtue of a 1994 Republican victory that reclaimed power in Congress after some forty years, Clinton would later lay claim to the biggest budget surplus in a very long time.

The parallels between the Clinton and Obama administrations are those of inexperience, arrogance, and poor judgment. Clinton, however, loved his nation while it is doubtful one can say that of Obama.

What the documentary also demonstrated was that Democrats have a very different moral system than Republicans. The fact that so many people of faith find a home in the Republican Party suggests the difference is very real.

They are the people President Obama derides as those “who cling to their guns and their religion.”

Looking back at the Clinton years and waiting for the Obama years to end, that’s probably a good thing.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Grand Funk GOP

By Alan Caruba

“In negotiation, ‘yes’ is the worst word. It just betrays a fear of failure and a fear of losing this deal, and it primes you to please the other side, to rush ahead, to compromise early and often to come to a deal, any deal. ‘No’ is the best word. It’s what you want to be prepared to say and to hear. ‘No’ will liberate you and protect you.”

The above is the opening paragraph of the introduction to a book by my friend, Jim Camp, “No, The Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home” and, for the forthcoming election, Americans or at least a majority of the voters have to say “no” to four more years of Barack Obama.

Camp, the creator of the Camp Negotiation Institute, has more than twenty years of experience and these days is coaching people from America to Brazil, China to Italy, Argentina to England, France to Russia, Sweden to Iraq; all of whom are seeking to become certified negotiators using his system.

Camp emphasizes the role of emotion in negotiations and what I am witnessing these days is a totally dispirited and depressed Republican and conservative voter community when, in fact, it should be energized by the dreadful prospect of a reelected Obama.

Regarding the conduct of negotiation Camp says, “’No’ will liberate you and protect you.”

Part of it the Grand Funk GOP that is occurring is unquestionably tied to the lengthy primary process, the fluctuations between the rising and falling fortunes of the candidates, and the horse race coverage by the mainstream media.

Camp emphasizes that “’No’ requires a solid, ironclad mission and purpose.” Can there be a single purpose greater than ridding the nation of the worst President in its history?

And isn’t every election a negotiation between the candidate and the voter?

Last week’s results of the polling by the Rasmussen organization found the following:

# 60% say that the U.S. economy is in Recession.

# 52% favor candidates who would raise taxes on the rich.

#46% say it’s possible for any American to find a job.

#46% say America’s best days are in the past.

In short, Republicans and other voters are all over the place trying to figure out what is happening and what may happen in the future. They are bouncing back and forth between emotions that are either pessimistic or unrealistic.

“Before you make a decision,” says Camp, “your emotions rage all over the place. Then when you make a decision, you set about rationalizing it.” This is a perfect description of what I hear from people trying to make up their minds about who the Republican nominee should be to lead the party.

The fear in the hearts of too many Republicans is driving them to seek the perfect candidate, something that never was and never will be. All politicians seeking the nomination arrive with all manner of baggage from their years in office. Some are conservative and some are too conservative.

After what was arguably the best President of the modern era, Ronald Reagan, Republicans failed to support George H.W. Bush, allowing him to be defeated by Bill Clinton. In 1996, they supported a lackluster Bob Dole and Clinton won again. Then George W. Bush came along and Republicans had their man in the Oval Office for eight years.

By any rational standard, a completely unknown candidate should not have defeated John McCain, but Barack Obama offered not policies, but pure emotion based on “hope and change.” In the midst of a financial crisis, it worked.

The same fear that drove the 2008 campaign is now driving the 2012 campaign, but Obama has little to campaign upon. Rationally, we know he has mired the nation in debt that threatens an economic collapse.

We know his “stimulus” program and its promise of higher employment has been a total failure. We know that millions are still unemployed. Millions are on food stamps.

We know that Obamacare is now less popular than when it was passed against much vocal opposition; the first time that has ever happened to a piece of social legislation.

So why are Republicans in such disarray, in such a great funk over the process by which we pick nominees? EMOTION.

Republicans need to ask themselves who will say “no” to Obama and “no” to the nation-crushing changes he and his administration have imposed on us. Republicans, independents, and all conservatives have to get over their funk and get into the fight to save America.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Political Absurdities

By Alan Caruba

At various points in any election year, the campaigns achieve moments of total absurdity that are passed off as news, usually with a straight face.

When certain Republicans begin to refer to “vulture capitalism” you know such a moment has arrived because, if Republicans are not all about capitalism, there is not much else for them to discuss. By capitalism I mean the state of the economy, workplace and trade issues, taxes, and everything else involved with paying one’s bills and becoming filthy rich if possible.

Republicans read The Wall Street Journal. Democrats read The New York Times. I rest my case.

The other recent absurdity was President Barack Obama telling NBC’s Matt Laurer that he deserved a second term. As if driving the U.S. debt up to $15 trillion wasn’t enough, apparently Obama wants to stick around so he can cancel another project that could create 20,000 jobs like the Keystone XL pipeline.

It is patently absurd for Obama to claim that his administration has “created” new jobs, but that is his campaign message these days. How many are unemployed? Have given up looking for a job? The only jobs government creates are government jobs and those have exploded in Obama’s first term. The rest of the time government is usually a huge obstacle to the private sector when it wants to do the same thing.

The greatest absurdity of all of the 2008 campaigns was that a totally unknown Senator from Illinois, there for barely two of a six year term, should emerge as the “messiah” of the masses to save America.

From what? Answer: the dreadful financial mess based on the idiotic notion that government should be in the housing and mortgage business.

This genius then proceeded to spend the first two years of his presidency telling everyone that it was all George Bush’s fault, thus ignoring the many times Bush warned Congress against the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac implosion. Sadly, Rasmussen Reports says 40% of Americans do think it is Bush’s fault.

Obama’s “solution” to the mess was a multi-billion-dollar “stimulus” that, by now, everyone agrees was a political slush fund and a failure. Then he borrowed more money than any president in U.S. history—including FDR who had to fund World War Two. It’s a long list of blunders, but the bottom line is massive stagnant unemployment and a housing market that’s still in the tank.

Why does every national election always seem to produce at least one candidate who uses the process to advocate ideas that most voters regard as absurd and, of course, I refer to Ron Paul’s view that we should pull back all our military from their foreign missions. While I agree we should stop getting into wars without Congressional consent—something the Constitution requires—that rule has been ignored since World War Two.
Since then the U.S. has engaged in wars of every description while the members of Congress could be found whistling in the hallways of the Capital in the hope people wouldn’t notice. The United Nations has offered cover some of the time, but we went into Vietnam, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq with only the flimsiest pretense that they were not military actions.

Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich opined that the U.S. should put a colony on the Moon. This was so absurd that even Saturday Night Live lampooned it. What is absurd, however, is the way Obama has ended the U.S. space program to the point we have to hitch a ride with the Russians. Worse, however, was Rick Santorum’s recent assertion that Mitt Romney “rigged” the outcome of the CPAC straw vote. The last candidate who ran on moral issues was Jimmy Carter. Consider yourself warned.

I personally regard the term “flip-flopper” an absurdity because I have never known of any politician who has not changed his mind and, frankly, would not want to vote for one so inflexible he or she could not change with the times.

What’s really absurd have been the directions various presidents have taken the nation in the recent times. Lyndon B. Johnson not only expanded the war in Vietnam, but he threw in the War on Poverty for good measure. In retrospect, it was a total failure. Richard Nixon ended his presidency with the Watergate scandal. Jimmy Carter drove the oil industry out of the U.S., reduced our military strength, and was such a dismal failure he only lasted one term.

I’m thinking that Obama will follow in Carter’s footsteps and we shall look back on “cash for clunkers”, Solyndra, and, of course, Obamacare, and ask ourselves, what were we thinking? The answer is that a majority of the voters were not thinking!

Neither Carter, nor Obama are aberrations. They were the result of the hardcore twenty-five to thirty percent of the voters who are irredeemably liberal, vote Democrat, and for whom reality and facts are of no importance.

Then there are another percentile who identify themselves as Democrats without realizing that our current financial crisis was created by Democrats! Republicans will reliably vote for their party’s candidate and that means a thin sliver of self-identified independents will decide the November elections.

All elections bring out the absurd in everyone, candidates and voters alike. We fall in love with one, experience the rapture of supporting them, and then wake up the day after the election and spend the next four years feeling like a recovering junky.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Man Up, Republicans!

By Alan Caruba

“I’m beginning to think Obama will be reelected”, writes a friend, a conservative and a Republican who is having grave thoughts about the narrowing GOP field of candidates. He is not alone as I hear similar thoughts from others.

As he put it, “Approximately 45% of the people think this idiot is doing a good job.”

There is a solid 30% of voters (and those who do not bother to vote) who are hardcore liberals, immune to facts and the reality of the destruction of both the Constitution and the economy being perpetrated by Barack Obama.

Republicans appear to have lost the fire in their political belly, the willingness to go to war over political principles of limited government, lower taxes, national security, and greater opportunity for the upward mobility that has always marked our society.

A case in point was the selection of John McCain as the party’s candidate in 2008. Famous for reaching across the aisle to seek accommodation and agreement with Democrats, McCain—whose personal courage cannot be impugned—waged a tepid campaign against a virtually unknown Illinois Senator offering a vague promise of “hope and change” combined with the “redistribution of wealth.”

My friend is wise to worry about the reelection of Obama. A recent Rasmussen poll found that “voter confidence in President Obama’s handling of the economy is at its highest level in a year’s time. Forty percent (40%) of likely U.S. voters now rate the President’s performance in the economic area as good or excellent.”

This President presided over the first historic downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, has driven the national debt to more than $15 trillion, has seen millions of jobs disappear during his term, and squandered billions on failed “stimulus” programs and failed green energy companies all rapidly going bankrupt. And some people still think he’s doing a dandy job.

Wall Street Journal columnist, Peggy Noonan, has pointed to the low turnout of Republican voters in the Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri primary caucuses and races that gave Rick Santorum a boost when he had been all but written off, along with the bloviating Newt Gingrich.

Casting around for reason, Noonan wondered “maybe it’s the increasing negativity of the campaign, maybe it’s the widespread dissatisfaction with the field. Maybe it’s that, and more.” Perhaps she is thinking of the way the mainstream media continues to cover-up and spin Obama’s blunders starting with Obamacare, a widely unpopular bill being challenged soon in the Supreme Court.

Noonan also noted the falloff of interest in the President, citing his State of the Union speeches that, “in February 2009, drew 52 million viewers. A year later the State of the Union had an understandable falloff to about 48 million. In 2011, another fall; 43 million watched. A few weeks ago his 2012 State of the Union drew just 38 million.”

“Maybe the story is that people are tuning out altogether. Maybe they’re bored with politics, and most especially with politicians. Maybe they think our government can’t solve anything.” We're in a Depression. It's normal to be depressed!

To those who do not think Obama can and will be defeated, I would remind you that, by November, Americans will have been paying $4, maybe $5 a gallon for gasoline and much more for everything they purchase at the supermarket and everywhere else. They will be tired of talk about “fairness” and tired of his endless lies about how the economy is improving and unemployment is decreasing. They will be worried about his attack on the nation’s health care system, on freedom of religion, and his shredding of the Constitution. .

Here’s what I worry about. Not if, but when Israel launches an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, an intervention on its side by the United States would be widely applauded by the American public and it would put Obama in the position of being a President during a shooting war; an event in which voters would be reluctant to “change horses in midstream.” Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, even predicted when the conflict would occur—sometime this spring.

Obama won the 2008 election in part because of the timing of a too-convenient financial crisis that he blamed on President Bush, banks, and everyone other than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A war just prior to the November elections would be equally helpful.

Many Republicans have concluded that Mitt Romney will be the party’s nominee, but are unenthusiastic about him. Noonan lamented that he brings little passion to his campaign. He brings “maturity, serenity and a jolly spirit” but he is also being criticized for waging a strong campaign against his primary opponents. What is Romney expected to do when Rick Santorum suggests that he “rigged” the CPAC straw vote and while Newt Gingrich attacks him for “vulture capitalism” and fellow Republicans for “right-wing social engineering”?

Republicans paying attention to their party’s races are beginning to fear an Obama reelection and right now many are running scared at the prospect. Most modern elections have been won with narrow margins. All Republicans have to do is to turn out and vote!

In the Gallup and Battleline polls, for years, Americans have self-identified themselves overwhelmingly as “conservative.” They are yearning for a strong conservative voice from a strong conservative leader. Romney’s primary victories, though slim, reflect the judgment by Republicans that he can defeat Obama.

On the facts alone, Obama can and should be soundly defeated.

Republicans will field a ticket that puts an end to the regime’s reign of terror. For now, however, their spirits are flagging. The long primary process is daunting. Only the Tea Party movement and serious-minded conservatives seem to understand what is at stake.

What Republicans need now is a lot more courage and a readiness to go to war with a President who is destroying America and the future for our children.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Stupid Voters

By Alan Caruba

It’s a comment I hear all the time these days. “The voters are stupid.”

I am not sure that those saying it mean literally that the voters have a low level of intellect or academic achievement, but rather that they mean voters seem prone to making their choices based more on emotion than on a serious examination of the candidate’s qualifications and character.

The best example of this was the 2008 campaign in which a candidate was presented in much the same way companies seek to “brand” their product or service, repeating the same message (Obama’s was hope and change) until it becomes part of the consumers’ decision-making process. It’s why we buy a particular brand of cereal or car. We have come to associate values with it that go beyond the taste or the look.

Barack Obama had served barely two years in the U.S. Senate before he made an unprecedented leap from there to the White House. He was, for all intents and purposes, an unknown quantity with a legislative record—if anyone bothered to check—that was a straight Democratic Party line vote.

In his earlier incarnation as an Illinois legislator, he had voted “present” so many times it was clear he was avoiding taking any position he regarded as politically dangerous; a vote that would come back to haunt him and very few did. The media cooperated in this, avoiding calling attention to anything that might be deemed controversial.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton, whether you liked her or not, was a candidate with a full cart of baggage from her years as the former governor’s and president’s wife, and her years as a U.S. Senator who served, not from Arkansas where she first came to notice, but from New York where liberals thrive. The process of campaigning wore her out and, being the first women to seriously contend to be president, she had even more of a challenge to overcome. Her raw ambition tended to make people afraid of her.

What elected Obama had nothing to do with the slim qualifications he put forth. Few candidates had less to offer. He had never met a payroll. All information regarding his academic records was sealed from view. The press made no effort to ask what passport he had traveled on to Pakistan at one time and did not raise any question about his Social Security number, issued in Connecticut where he had never lived or worked. Famously, he released a “birth certificate” that anyone in Hawaii could attain for the asking, not the “long form” which is deemed credible.

The voters have paid a fearful price for electing Obama; increased unemployment, a huge national debt, a hollowed-out military, billions wasted on “Green” energy, unprotected borders, a Congress in near total gridlock, and a world beyond our shores that perceives an America made weaker by Obama’s three years in office.

I have worked as a public relations counselor for most of my life with earlier years spent as a journalist. I know something about how a product, a service, or an individual is “packaged” to present a positive “image.” What we have all learned since 2008 was that Obama was superbly “packaged” and that the image of an articulate, highly intelligent, well informed candidate was without substance. His inability to speak publicly without a TelePrompter swiftly became a joke.

So, to say that those who voted for him were “stupid” is to misread the new era of politics, one that has more to do with “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” than with the serious selection of the leader of the nation and the free world.

As they say in advertising, voters bought the sizzle, not the steak.

We are seeing this process continue as the Republican candidates vie for votes. The Gingrich “surge” in South Carolina came after he had two successful debates. It is true that Gingrich is a good debater, but the real question is whether he would be a good president. Questions about his character remain.

Gingrich has been comfortable sharing a couch with Nancy Pelosi to advocate the bogus global warming “theory” or taking money from Freddie Mac.. Now he is trying to appear to be a “real” conservative as opposed to Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the quixotic Ron Paul.

While his judgment on issues has been called into question, Romney’s character never has. There has never been a hint of scandal in his life. In terms of policy, he was the Governor of one of the most liberal states and he did support Romneycare there. Politics is rarely pretty and even New Jersey’s fire-breathing Governor, Chris Christie, has taken some extraordinarily liberal positions and made some questionable appointments.

There might have been a time when Gingrich was, indeed, a bona fide conservative, but his long years in Washington, D.C., have taught him that “to get along you have to go along” In the end, even his colleagues in the House, for reasons of policy and personality, could no longer support him as Speaker.

From the days of Bush41 until the 2010 elections the Republican Party looked so much like the Democratic Party, voters had an increasingly hard time telling them apart. The Tea Party movement changed that. They and the “independents” are going to decide the 2012 elections that are currently making history with endless debates.

The debates are proving to be a succession of sound bites and vitriol between the candidates. They increasingly demonstrate how the mainstream media, the debate sponsors, are visibly seeking to influence the outcome of the election and they demonstrate that many voters are easily swayed by matters that have little to do with actual policies and issues.

There has been less and less substance with each debate.

I fear that too many Republican voters are having too many mood swings, relying on a moment or two from the most recent debate than on a serious examination—I repeat myself—of the candidate’s qualifications and character. Romney is carefully scripted and a tad robotic, but Gingrich could become the GOP nominee simply because he is entertaining.

Without doubt, President Obama and the Democrats are enjoying the Republican free-for-all and, without doubt, they have concluded that the voters are stupid.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Election Year Reality and Insanity

By Alan Caruba

There is something about an election year that seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people. Having settled on a candidate, they defame the opponents and the motives of those that support them. This is greatly aided by the charges that fly backward and forward among the primary candidates themselves. It’s not pretty, but it is the way a democracy works.

A conspiracy theory I keep hearing and reading is that Obama will create “an emergency” and declare martial law, putting himself in complete charge. I keep telling people that the nation is filled with millions of people who have taken an oath to protect and preserve the Constitution and they run the gamut from everyone who ever served in the military to law enforcement personnel, to members of the Secret Service. The likelihood that all would stand aside and let Obama have his way is, to my mind, very small.

All this is testimony to the growing fears about Barack Hussein Obama and there is ample evidence for concern as he seems to have very little regard for the Constitution and a decidedly Leftist approach to politics and governance.

By contrast, I have seen so much factual information; hard cold data, to suggest Obama not only won’t get elected, but will likely suffer a historic defeat. To keep the insanity at bay, it would be a good idea to get familiar with some of it.

Over at Big Government.com, Wynton Hall authored “It’s the Math, Stupid! Devastating Facts About 2012."  With a great big hat tip to him, here they are:

1. Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.

2. The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.

3. Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.

4. College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.

5, Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.

6. The ravages of the Obama economy now mean that more Americans live under the federal poverty line than at any time in U.S. history since records have been kept.

7. Under President Barack Obama, every fifth child in America now lives in poverty.

No one gets reelected with that level of misery extent in the nation. The days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt are long gone. This is the age of Fox News and the Internet.

Karl Rove, whom George W. Bush called “the architect” for his political acumen, took note of Obama’s inclination to link himself to FDR and to Truman. “In many ways,” Rove wrote in December, “his situation is significantly different than that of his Democrat predecessors. For one thing, a year out from the 1948 election, Gallup measured Mr. Truman’s job approval rating at 54%, whereas Mr. Obama’s is 43%--substantially lower than any president who has won re-election.”

Let me repeat that. “Substantially lower than any president who has won re-election.”

Obama may run against a “do-nothing Congress” as Truman did, but today’s House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans, has been active enough to produce 29 bills intended to spur economic growth. Of those pieces of legislation, 21 remain stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate

Indeed, voters may well wish that Obama had done a lot less. After comparing himself to Johnson, FDR and Lincoln in a “Sixty Minutes” interview, even a casual look at his stimulus package has falling flat with voters, 62% of whom, according to an Ipsos/Reuters November poll, believe that they did little more than create more debt. Obamacare is even less popular.

Blue-collar Americans took notice when Obama delayed the XL Keystone pipeline that would have generated 20,000 construction jobs and an estimated 118,000 spin-off jobs.

Kimberly A. Stossel who writes Potomac Watch for The Wall Street Journal, noted in November that, mostly due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts, “the Obama administration has done more to kill working-class industries than any modern predecessor, adding that “Among the reasons the GOP regained control of the House in 2010 was the fact that “the white working class surged to give the GOP a record 63% of their vote.”

As Rove noted, “America is not a nation of amnesiacs.” And neither should you be. Keep the facts cited in mind.

Remain calm and come together behind whoever the GOP selects as its candidate.

No desertions.

No faint hearts.

No conspiracy theories.

No third parties.

Just the defeat of Barack Hussein Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Republicans! Stop Looking for a Messiah!

By Alan Caruba

In 2008 the voters gave the Oval Office to a man who Rush Limbaugh and others mockingly called “the messiah” for his grandiose rhetoric and promises of change. If the first two primaries are any indication, Republican Party voters seem to be looking for their own messiah, a perfect candidate, and no such person exists.

Republicans have to stop seeking their own “messiah” in 2012. Most importantly, the six percent that Rasmussen Reports says are ready to vote for a third party candidate, if one emerges, have got to get their heads screwed on tighter because that’s a margin that could keep Obama in office for four more years. Additionally, Rasmussen reports that 53% believe Mitt Romney is the GOP candidate to defeat Obama.

In recent Wall Street Journal commentary, “Romney Wins but Takes a Beating”, columnist Peggy Noonan wrote “The Iowa results almost perfectly reflect the Republican Party, which, roughly speaking, is split into three parts—libertarians, social conservatives and moderate conservatives,” adding, “there’s no denying the Republicans are in a brawl, and it is becoming ferocious.”

I put the ugly tone of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries squarely at the feet of Newt Gingrich. Angry, resentful, and eager for revenge over his loss in Iowa, Gingrich was still smarting from the attack ads aimed at him. He revealed an aspect of his personality well known from his days as Speaker of the House in the 1990s.

Rick Santorum did well in Iowa, but he brings a holier-than-thou approach to the campaign with his religion-based approach to various social issues. It’s not so much that I disagree with his positions, but there are a lot of independents who do not necessary go to church every Sunday.

Michele Bachmann’s strident tone didn’t help her much and Rick Perry’s punch-drunk approach to campaigning didn’t either. I worry that Ron Paul will try the third party route. At present, he will never get the nomination and his base is a bunch of boys and girls barely out of their adolescence. No Republican grownup takes Paul’s views seriously, nor should they. Jon Huntsman is a spoiled rich kid, a fellow Mormon, who seems to have a personal grudge against Romney.

Talking about Mormons, I am old enough to recall all the talk about John F. Kennedy having been a Catholic and how that would hurt him. It didn’t. What’s really amazing is that Barack Obama’s long association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a black liberation preacher and one who outspokenly condemned the U.S.A., barely put a dent in his run for the presidency.

As for Mormons, many have served honorably in high office since the days of President Eisenhower. It’s time to get off that hobby horse. If anything, I am greatly relieved that for all the talk of flip-flopping, there has not been a whisper of personal scandal regarding Romney. Compare that, please, to Bill Clinton.

At some point, likely after the South Carolina and Florida primaries, Republicans of all descriptions are going to conclude they have a good candidate in Mitt Romney. The party which has generally been run by white shoe, East Coast elites and a healthy mixture of Texas oilmen, has got to get serious about tearing Barack Obama to bits.

This election is not about finding “another” messiah to lead the nation. It’s about electing—frankly—anyone other than Obama and, hopefully, someone who has demonstrated real executive competence in public office and private enterprise.

In Congress the Republican leadership is elaborately polite in their discourse, but the election will not be won in the Capitol Building. It will be won in 50 States whose population has been taking a beating in a terrible economy made worse by the profligate spending and borrowing of the worst President this nation has ever known. By the time November rolls around, I want them to be mad as hell and it will be the party’s job to make sure that happens.

© Alan Caruba 2012

Pundits, Primaries and Polls

By Alan Caruba

In the event you did not read about it at the time, the Prohibition Party met in June 2011 and nominated Jack Fellure as their presidential candidate. The Socialist Party USA held their convention in October, nominating Stewart Alexander. The Constitution Party will meet in April and the Libertarian party will gather in May 2012. The Green National convention will not be held until July.

You are likely to hear a lot about the 2012 Republican national convention at the end of August in Tampa, Florida and the Democratic national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina in early September.

To save you any anxiety involved with the latter, Barack Hussein Obama will be the Democratic nominee unless someone checks the U.S. Constitution which specifically states that only a “natural born” (both parents must be citizens) American can run for or be President.

The nominees of the two major parties will be determined by state primaries and the one receiving the most attention at this point is Iowa’s on January 3, 2012. Why anyone takes this primary seriously defies the imagination. Iowa caucuses have selected the widely known choice of both major parties with few exceptions. It did surprise folks when Mike Huckabee won in 2008, but his run quickly faded. You have to go back to 1972 for the George McGovern choice that surprised voters.

As this is being written, there is an orgy of news coverage of various polls in which the candidates for nomination rise and fall like the tides. There is little substance to these polls that are the subject of intense news coverage.

It is naïve to think that the liberal mainstream media does not try to influence the outcome with its selective coverage. Recall that just a few weeks ago, Herman Cain was the choice and now they’re claiming Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul will run away with the Iowa vote.

President Obama’s poll numbers regarding his performance in office are so low that his prospects of reelection even at this date are doubtful. The economy, as always, will be the deciding factor and it will not significantly improve by Election Day.

Political operatives will pay far more attention to the New Hampshire primary on January 10, followed by the January 21 primary in South Carolina, and January 31 primary in Florida. Despite several dozen other state primaries, the party convention nominations will have largely been determined by the January primaries.

Politics in America is a blood sport. So much money depends on their outcomes that literally millions are spent to secure victory. The federal government has become a giant spigot of income redistribution. It is so over-leveraged that it must borrow forty cents of every dollar it spends. This year’s outlay of campaign dollars will no doubt top a billion dollars.

Self-interest will be the driving factor among the donors with ideology a close second. Despite being castigated by President Obama, Wall Street will predictably be a major donor to the Democratic Party. Rent-seeking corporations such as General Electric will not be far behind.

I would recommend that you not get caught up in the journalistic frenzy over the entire primary process. Obama will be the Democratic Party nominee and Mitt Romney is likely to be the Republican Party’s choice. It is a cliché, but true nonetheless, that in times of economic crisis, people vote their wallet

Suffice to say I will not be voting for the Prohibition, Green or Socialist Party candidates.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

What We Have Here is a Failure to Negotiate

By Alan Caruba

In the movie, “Cool Hand Luke” the warden of a prison camp utters the now famous line, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” The decision of the Democratic members of the Congressional Super Committee to refuse further discussion of revenue issues is a failure to negotiate.

I have a friend, Jim Camp, who is one of the world’s authorities on negotiation, a coach to international corporations and others that engage in multi-million dollar deals requiring major negotiation skills. When the news was reported on Wednesday that the Democratic members had walked away from the negotiation table, I picked up the phone to ask for his reaction.

“We live in an era when the conventional wisdom is that compromise is the goal,” said Camp. “The real goal is a valid mission and purpose. What’s missing is that the committee as a whole is not focused on the real mission which is the best result for the American people and the nation. Instead, their goal is political gamesmanship, a massive over-reach by both parties to the negotiation.”

Based on more than twenty years of coaching negotiations, Camp said "Tactics do nothing more than create conflict." The news media reports on tactics, but Camp said “Neither party is negotiating to the benefit of the American people.”

What is at stake? It’s not whether Democrats or Republicans “win” the Super Committee negotiation.

Created under the Budget act of 2011, the law was passed the first two days of August when the nation’s $14.294 trillion debt ceiling was raised to avoid a potential national default. It was the fourth increase of the mandatory borrowing cap during President Obama’s first term; one that saw the first down-grade of the nation’s top credit rating in its history.

Consisting of six members each from the House and Senate, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, the official name for the Super Committee is the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. The amount of debt is comparable to the annual Gross Domestic Product, meaning that every dollar the economy earns is equal to the amount of debt that exists.

In the basic terms, Democrats want to raise revenue through taxation to address the debt and permit for more spending. Republicans have committed themselves to avoid such an increase during a period of recession.

The decision to walk away from the negotiation reflects one of Camp’s major warnings. “To act according to how you think the other side will react to you and your actions creates great conflict. To think you know what someone is going to do or say based on how you impact them is to attempt suicide.”

It would be naive to think that the Democrat and Republican members of the Super Committee are not negotiating with an eye on the 2012 elections. As a November 10 Wall Street Journal editorial notes, Republicans have offered a plan "to raise revenues by $500 billion over 10 years as part of a tax reform that would lock in lower rates in return for giving up deductions. Democrats have rejected it, which is puzzling since it would achieve so many of their stated goals."

Refusing to negotiate makes sense only if Democrats are positioning themselves to blame the Republicans for the failure to avoid another potential down-grade of the nation's credit rating. It's not the truth, but the truth is often a rare commodity in politics.

“What we are witnessing,” said Camp, “is a textbook definition of incompetence.”

All negotiation, says Camp, is based on emotion. When both sides share a vision of the end result of the negotiation it can move forward. When emotions blind one or both sides, it is doomed.

As a recent Los Angeles Times editorial noted, in order to slash federal borrowing by at least $1.2 trillion over the coming decade, “members will have to bridge a deep partisan divide over taxes, spending programs, and the effect of government spending on the economy.”

That is the mission, the purpose of the Super Committee, and the editorial warned that “If they have any doubts about the need to cut a deal, however, they should turn their attention to what’s happening on the other side of the Atlantic.”

The turmoil in Europe, based on decades of excessive borrowing and spending by several nation-states, is a reflection of how critical it is for the Super Committee to achieve its mission.

Automatic cuts, not guided by the need, for example, of maintaining our military strength could have disastrous consequences if the U.S. was perceived as weakened and vulnerable by its enemies. Diminishing our military capabilities at this time is not an option.

The Super Committee is an admission of the failure of the U.S. Congress to fulfill its responsibility to conduct the nation’s borrowing and spending in a prudent fashion and it’s been a failure in which both Parties have participated for a very long time.

The deadline for the Super Committee to reach agreement is November 23, the day before Thanksgiving and one side has walked away from the table.

I wish the Super Committee could bring Jim Camp in to help resolve the impasse. Simply stated, failure is not an option.

Editor’s note: Jim Camp is the founder of the Camp Negotiation Institute and the author of “Start with No” and “No, the Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home” which has been translated into twelve languages.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Herman Cain Flunks Foreign Policy

By Alan Caruba

It can be argued that domestic affairs are a president’s top priority, but the Constitution expressly puts the chief executive in charge of setting and conducting foreign affairs. It is therefore essential to know if the candidate who wants to be president has a reasonable knowledge of events around the world.

On Tuesday evening I watched an edition of Fox News Bret Beir’s Special Report where Herman Cain was “center chair” as the usual members of the panel got a chance to quiz him and, after he attempted to dispose of the charges of sexual harassment unleashed against him, syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer asked a question that dealt with foreign policy.

What would Cain do if Iran was going to unleash an attack on the U.S.? Cain gave a rambling, unspecific answer except to say he’d order an Aegis destroyer into the Persian Gulf to let Iran know he was serious, mentioning something about the use by Iran of missiles. It was distressingly clear that Cain had no more idea what he would do than he had regarding other potential foreign policy questions.

Foreign affairs are Herman Cain’s Achilles’ heel and it has not gone unnoticed by the political press and others. In the October 17 Washington Post, Chris Cillizza took note of Cain’s appearance on “Meet the Press” where he was asked “whether Iran’s involvement in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. amounted to an act of war.”

Cain replied, “After I looked at all of the information provided by the intelligence community, the military, than I could make that decision.” That is what is known as a lawyerly response. “If, if it’s an act of war, and the evidence suggests that, than I am going to consult with my advisors and say, ‘What are our options”’”

If Barack Obama’s extremely muted response is any indication, there aren’t that many overt options, though one might hope that there are a host of covert ones in the works.

During a PBS interview with Judy Woodruff, Cain was asked about China as a potential military threat to the U.S. At one point Cain said, “They’ve indicated that they’re trying they’re trying to develop nuclear capability…” China conducted its first text of a nuclear device on October 16, 1964. It is estimated to have some 400 nuclear weapons. They are not “developing” a nuclear threat. They are a nuclear threat in the same way as other nations with nuclear weapons. This is why Iran is hell-bent on acquiring its own nuclear weapons.

A man no one could accuse of being anything but conservative, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, had Cain on his program and, in a segment with Dennis Miller, the show’s comic relief, O’Reilly said, “Look, I like Herman Cain. I like his spirit. I think he presents himself very well. But when he came on The Factor a few weeks ago, he had no clue about foreign affairs.”

Cain lacks a good poker face. When asked questions for which he is unprepared, his eyes begin to blink like a deranged traffic light. He responds with some programmed answer that is often unrelated to the question. He is the proverbial deer in the headlights.

During a recent speech to a Republican audience, he said that so far as he’s concerned, America is Israel’s ally and vice versa. That got the predictable applause. Cain visited Israel in August on a fact-finding tour. He met with a deputy prime minister and the Mayor of Jerusalem.

However, when he was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, he was asked about the Palestinian demand of “right of return”, a major divide between Israelis and Palestinians, and Cain had no idea what it was. “That’s something that should be negotiated,” said Cain, grasping for an answer that sounded sensible, but the issue is not negotiable so far as the Israelis are concerned and with good reason. Someone even casually aware of the issues affecting Israel would know that.

Stephen Yates, president of the DC Advisory and former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, might not be expected to criticize a GOP candidate, but when asked he said of Cain, “These are the kind of questions a leading candidate cannot simply pass to advisors. To date, Cain has not projected command of these presidential imperatives.”

A pizza company executive or one leading a restaurant trade association probably doesn’t need to know much about foreign affairs, but a candidate for President of the United States needs to know more than some hasty daily briefings by his campaign staffers.

Cain dismissed the fact he had no idea where Uzbekistan is or its strategic importance to U.S. foreign affairs. “When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?” Even Obama knows that a stable relationship with Uzbekistan is regarded as of vital importance to the war in Afghanistan for its airport and as a transit corridor to reduce dependence on Pakistan.

Cain thinks foreign affairs questions are “gotcha” questions, but they may well be the most critical questions a potential president has to understand and answer. It is testimony to the difficulty of these issues that Barack Obama has essentially carried out most of the policies put in place by George W. Bush when it comes to foreign affairs.

Right now Herman Cain is the candidate-de-jour in the polls, but so was Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry when he got into the race. I like the fact that Cain is a bona fide conservative. I don’t like the obvious fact that he couldn’t find Uzbekistan on the map and probably doesn’t know much else about the world.

On that count alone, I would not vote for him. Republicans have to get over their current love affair with Herman Cain and select a candidate more qualified to lead the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Cain Phenomenon

By Alan Caruba

Gov. Chris Christie has dropped out of contention as a GOP presidential candidate. So has Sarah Palin. Fading swiftly is Michelle Bachmann and the others, leaving Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and to the astonishment of a lot of people, Herman Cain.

What would astonish everyone would be a 2012 presidential race between a mulatto, Barack Obama who identifies with his African-American ancestry and ignores his white mother, and Herman Cain who rarely even refers to being a black American because it is increasingly irrelevant as people pay more and more attention to his message.

Cain would crush Obama. One gets the feeling that he got into the presidential race for that purpose.

Obama’s appalling performance in the highest office has seen his polling numbers decline. Obama is likely to be identified as the “American Idol” candidate who went from the Illinois legislature to the U.S. Senate to the presidency in four years. He is a political aberration, the result of media manipulation, and very bad mistake.

Terence P. Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com, reported on Thursday, October 6, that “The Obama administration passed another fiscal milestone this week, according to new data released by the Treasury Department. As of the close of business on Oct. 3, the total national debt was $14,837,009,271,196.71—up about $44.8 billion from Sept. 30.”

“That means that in the less-than-three-years Obama has been in office, the federal debt has increased by $.212 trillion accumulated by all 41 U.S. presidents from George Washington through G.H.W. Bush combined.”

Herman Cain is all about fiscal sanity. Herman Cain is about capitalism. Barack Obama is a Marxist.

Cain’s message is beginning to resonate in Republican circles, especially among those who identify with the Tea Party movement.

This is not to say we can rule out Mitt Romney’s candidacy, though it is increasing clear that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is beginning to sound warning bells in the minds of many Republicans as his charm and bravado begins to thin in the wake of his poor debate performances and his unsteady responses to questions reporters pose.

Daniel Henninger, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, writing on September 29th, gave a brief précis of Cain’s resume in the world of business, asking “Does a resume like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I’m rewriting my presidential-election software.”

Henninger concluded that “Herman Can is a credible candidate. Whether he deserves to be president is something voters will decide. But he deserves a serious look.”

It is a long time between now and November 6, 2012, but I think Republican and, should he get the nomination, American voters, are going to giving Herman Cain a very serious look.

If Cain is elected, it will mean that a nation that fought a Civil War over slavery and waited another hundred years to finally confer full Constitutional rights to African-Americans will confound themselves and the entire world by putting Cain in the Oval Office.

I am not counting out Mitt Romney at this early point. He has become a very good campaigner. He’s refined his message, he is charming, and he “looks” like the Hollywood version of a president. He’s also a RINO, a very moderate candidate at a point in current history when the nation needs and wants radical change if it is to avert the deliberate destruction imposed on it by Barack Obama.

Herman Cain’s website offers his “999 Plan” and it is worth reading because it represents all the steps that must be taken to take American back from the brink of bankruptcy, from massive unemployment, and a thorough understanding of how to achieve that.

The primaries that lie ahead—Florida would vote next week if it could, followed by all the other states—will be the final determination of who will be the GOP’s presidential candidate. There’s plenty of time left for the fortunes of candidates to shift, but like Daniel Henninger, I am giving Herman Cain a serious look.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Gov. Christie Should Not Get in the GOP Race

By Alan Caruba

Does anybody recall the frenzy surrounding the question of whether Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and Fox News host of his own show, would toss his hat in the ring and seek the GOP nomination?

That same frenzy is occurring now regarding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and, as a lifelong citizen of the Garden State, I would bet a bushel basket of its excellent tomatoes that he will not.

Why? Because he says he will not and I believe him.

There are, however, a lot of other very good reasons why he won’t plunge into the political maelstrom that is our system of selecting a presidential candidate.

If Gov. Christie were to announce as a candidate for the GOP nomination his brief record while Governor would come under intense examination and it would reveal that he is not the conservative savior that many perceive.

Putting aside his great rhetorical gifts, his no-nonsense approach to answering questions in town hall meetings and interviews, his saving sense of humor, and other attributes that have generated the appeals from some party insiders and members of the public, Christie is conservative-light.

Candidate Herman Cain, speaking on Fox News Sunday, has done his homework. According to an October 3 article in the Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest circulation daily newspaper, Cain noted that “Christie is far too liberal on gun control, climate change, same-sex unions, and immigration to satisfy Republican voters.”

Nor has his record as Governor gone unnoticed on the left. “Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland blasted Christie’s stewardship of New Jersey’s economy. He cited the state’s unemployment rate, among the highest in the country at 9.4 percent, and a series of downgrades to New Jersey’s bond ratings this year from the top credit rating agencies.”

None of these economic factors, unfairly attributed to Gov. Christie or not, bodes well for a run for the presidential candidate nomination. When one adds in the lateness of such an effort and the difficulties of raising huge sums of money for the campaign it suggests that such a move would not turn out well for him.

There is no question that Gov. Christie, a former U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey, has earned the gratitude of the state’s citizens for taking on the civil service unions that have bled it dry with cushy contracts featuring handsome pension and healthcare plans. Beyond that, however, many Garden State conservatives have winced to see his decisions in other areas of concern.

Many applauded his decision to withdraw the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that would have required that a percentage of energy serving New Jerseyeans come from “renewable” sources, wind and solar power. However, in August Gov. Christie signed an act that would facilitate offshore wind power for use in the state. Had he signed an act to permit offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, the state and the nation would have been far better served. Wind power would only increase the cost of electricity.

Moreover, Gov. Christie is on record saying that climate change is “impacting our state.” This is a position that is 180 degrees from a town hall meeting the previous year when he declared himself skeptical that climate change is the result of human activity. He was right then, but has been getting very bad advice from his science advisors since then.

As a former U.S. District Attorney, it should come as no surprise that he supports a ban on assault weapons. Despite opposing a law that limits the purchase of hand guns to one per month, his newly appointed state Attorney General took an aggressive legal position to defend the former governor’s law. Gov. Christie favors gun control, a position that will not find favor among lawful gun owners and sportsmen.

Gov. Christie is squishy on the issue of illegal immigration, hewing to the liberal line that those who enter the nation illegally are simply “undocumented.” He regards state-by-state laws regarding illegal immigrants to be “a federal problem” that needs a “federal fix…I am not really comfortable with state enforcement having a big role.” Suffice to say that New Jersey, like other states, has a big illegal immigrant population.

If the Governor were to hit the campaign trail with a record like this, the other candidates would have a field day and many conservative voters would have second thoughts.

In sum, he needs to review and reinforce his conservative credentials and the 2012 race is far too soon to do that. Selfishly, I want him to remain the Governor and to serve a second term. Realistically, I think he would be torn to shreds if he got in now.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Editor's Note: On Oct 4, Gov. Christie announced he will not get in the race.