Well, the votes have been counted and the voters have made their decision -- another four years of Barack Obama.
Needless to say, my predictions regarding the presidential race and the Senate races were very wrong. Instead of Romney winning the popular vote by a couple of points nationwide, Obama ended up winning by two or three points. I predicted six states wrong in the presidential race -- some of them very wrong like Wisconsin -- and four Senate races incorrectly. Both were simply bloodbaths for Republicans. I missed badly because I was not expecting a Democratic wave that swept nearly every close Senate race and Electoral College state into the Democratic column. I was especially surprised to see Obama win Florida and to see GOP Senate candidates lose in North Dakota and Wisconsin. I didn't do too badly in the House races. Out of 435, it looks like I incorrectly called about 12 races for the GOP that ended up going for the Democrats and about 2 races for the Democrats that ended up going for the GOP (I say "about" because there are still a few races that haven't been officially called yet). I was quite disappointed to see that conservative firebrand Allen West lost in Florida. Referenda didn't go well either. Maryland approved in-state tuition benefits for illegal aliens. Unions won a couple of important state-wide votes in California. Pro-lifers were on the losing end of a ballot issue in Florida. Gay marriage passed in all four states in which it was on the ballot.
When you look at the composition of the electorate and how it voted, it's easy to see why Romney lost. National exit polling showed that self-identified Democrats outnumbered self-identified Republicans by 6 percentage points, a nearly identical margin to 2008. Overall turnout was down significantly compared to 2008, but was very high among Obama's core supporters. Whites made up only about 72% of the electorate, which was down significantly from 2008 which was in itself a year of record turnout for minorities. Jay Cost estimates that as many as 10 million white voters sat out this election. Hispanics gave Obama nearly 70% of their vote, which is even more than he got against McCain in 2008. Women also voted heavily for Obama. The percentage of self-identified conservatives was only 35% compared to self-identified liberals who were 24% of the electorate -- a much smaller gap than typically seen in presidential elections. The bottom line is that a very Democratic, liberal, minority-heavy, female-heavy group of voters turned out to the polls and produced an unexpected Democratic wave.
The bottom line is that these results are unbelievably depressing for conservatives -- far worse even than 2008. Obama won by a landslide in 2008, but at least the decision of voters was understandable, given the unpopularity of Bush, weariness with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the financial meltdown. Voters were looking for a change, and Obama was an appealing figure who appeared to rise above partisanship and offered grand rhetoric about bringing the country together along racial lines as well as political ones. This year is totally different. The country has had four years to see what Obama is really like. He has openly governed from the far left and campaigned for president on an openly liberal platform. His election strategy was based on dividing the country and using wedge issues to try to turn out his base (amnesty executive order, gay marriage, nationalization of student loans, war on women, union bailouts, etc.). Despite his slogan "Forward," he presented no positive vision for the country and focused his entire campaign on tearing down Romney. I got to see many of Obama's ads airing in the Washington, DC media market, and they were relentlessly and almost uniformly negative. By any reasonable measure, Obama's presidency has been a failure. Economic growth is extremely weak, unemployment is just as high as when he took office (and higher when you factor in the huge number of people who have left the workforce), real household income has decrease significantly, deficits and debt are at record levels, his health care bill remains unpopular and has already resulted in higher insurance premiums, gas prices are nearly double what they were when he took office, and the housing market remains weak in most areas of the country. His presidency has been marked by partisan gridlock, with no effort made to work with the other side and to find bipartisan solutions to our debt crisis or to reform entitlements. And of course, there are the scandals -- the waste of taxpayer money on companies like Solyndra, the racialism and corruption of the Justice Department, and the incompetence, indifference, and lies regarding the Benghazi embassy attack.
Obama and the Democrats will undoubtedly be emboldened by this election. Their bogus war on women meme and their class warfare shtick apparently were embraced by the public, so we will see much more of that in the coming years. Obama has already governed and won reelection by being open about his left-wing views; he will not move to the center now. He will double down on his fiscal and cultural agenda. He will continue to circumvent the Constitution when needed to enact his agenda. His left-wing appointments will leave an indelible mark on the Supreme Court and lower courts.
I don't think there is much of a silver lining coming out of this election for conservatives. There will be no undoing the damage of four more years of Obama, but that is not even the worst. The worst is that Obama is apparently a reflection of a majority of the voting public. They voted to reelect him because they idolize him and believe that he reflects their values. This election opened my eyes to realize how much this country has changed. A majority of the public embraces values and beliefs that are completely the opposite of mine. They will vote for the candidate who supports abortion on demand, regardless of how bad the economy gets or how many lies are told about terrorist attacks on our embassy. They will vote for the candidate that offers them the most free stuff or panders most effectively to them, regardless of how much it drives up our debt and jeopardizes our children's future. There is no doubt that the media is deeply corrupt and that its bias throughout the campaign greatly aided Obama. But ultimately, it is the American people who choose to accept the spin fed to them instead of thinking for themselves and seeking out the truth. We voted for four more years, so we will get four more years just like the last four years. Our country will get the leadership we deserve.
UPDATE: I wanted to add a link to a typically outstanding Impromptus column by Jay Nordlinger with his thoughts on the election. I agree almost entirely with everything he says.
Showing posts with label 2012 election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012 election. Show all posts
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Why I Believe Mitt Romney Will Win Today
First, here is my prediction:
Final popular vote prediction: Romney 50.5%, Obama 48.5%
Final Electoral College prediction: Romney 291, Obama 247
I believe there are only 8 true tossup states that will decide this election. Here is my prediction for each of them:
1. Virginia - 51% Romney, 48% Obama
2. Ohio - 50.5% Romney, 48.5% Obama
3. Colorado - 50.5% Romney, 48.5% Obama
4. Iowa - 50% Romney, 49% Obama
5. Wisconsin - 50% Romney, 49% Obama
6. New Hampshire - 50% Obama, 49% Romney
7. Pennsylvania - 50.5% Obama, 48.5% Romney
8. Nevada - 51% Obama, 47.5% Romney
The one I am least sure about is Wisconsin -- changed it at the very last minute from Democrat to Republican.
In addition, I have 2 states classified as Leans Republican:
1. Florida - 52% Romney, 47% Obama
2. North Carolina - 53% Romney, 46% Obama
And 4 states classified as Leans Democrat:
1. Minnesota - 51.5% Obama, 47% Romney
2. Michigan - 52% Obama, 47% Romney
3. New Mexico - 53% Obama, 46% Romney
4. Oregon - 53% Obama, 45% Romney
All other states I believe are safely in one camp or the other and will go for either Obama or Romney by double digits.
The next question is why I am picking Mitt Romney to win when conventional wisdom clearly seems to favor Barack Obama. The primary reason for why Obama is favored, of course, is due to very favorable polling for him at the state level. The Real Clear Politics average of polls is showing Obama ahead in all the swing states, with the exception of Florida (and North Carolina if you count that as a swing state). Also, while Mitt had a clear lead in the national poll average for most of October, Obama gained significantly in the past week in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and now leads slightly in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls as well. So why would I pick Romney to win, when a clear majority of the polls seem to indicate that he will lose, possibly badly?
The first thing to understand is that this year is not 2008 anymore. The political landscape has shifted dramatically. Perhaps the most dramatic indication of this is the massive survey of national party identification that Rasmussen does each election year. In calculating this party identification, Rasmussen surveys 15,000 likely voters nationwide, so it is a truly massive poll (more than 10 times bigger than even the largest national head-to-head election polls). In 2008, Rasmussen found a 7 point advantage for Democrats, which ended up being very close to the final margin of victory for Obama. In 2004 and 2010 they actually found small advantages for Democrats (+3 for Democrats in 2010), even though Republicans ended up performing extremely well in both elections. This October, they found a 5.8% advantage for the Republicans, which a stunning turnaround for the GOP and an extremely favorable indication for the election. And Rasmussen is not alone. Gallup did a similar survey of national party identification and also found a 1 point Republican advantage (and 3 points when you factor in voters who lean toward one party or the other). This data is especially extraordinary when you factor in that there has never been a presidential election in the modern era in which the Republicans have had a party identification advantage on Election Day. The closest they have ever come was in 2004, when the party identification was even between Republicans and Democrats.
Of course, we have many other proofs that this year will be dramatically different from 2008. The enthusiasm for the Republicans is off the charts and significantly higher than the enthusiasm for the Democrats. Polls have picked this up by showing the Republicans have a higher interest in the election and are more certain about voting. Polls have also showed that those who strongly disapprove of Obama's job performance significantly outnumber those who strongly approve of his performance. This difference in enthusiasm is also evidenced by much larger and more enthusiastic crowds for Romney compared to Obama. This all feels like 2008 in reverse. Peggy Noonan commented on the Republican passion bubbling under the surface in this election in her excellent column here. Concern about Democratic turnout is doubtless what has led Obama to campaign in Democratic strongholds like Madison, WI and Boulder, CO in the final week of the campaign.
And, there is the evidence of the demeanor of the candidates and the campaigns. Romney has seemed relaxed and confident and stayed largely positive in his campaign message, while Obama has seemed angry and his campaign ads have been overwhelmingly negative. He was even caught telling his supporters at a recent Ohio rally to vote for revenge, while Romney countered by urging supporters to vote for love of country. In the last presidential debate, the difference in demeanor between the two candidates clearly showed that Romney believed he was ahead and Obama believed he was behind. Some of the Obama campaign's tactics, such as that creepy Lena Dunham "My First Time" ad, seem to be the actions of a desperate campaign, not a confident one.
And then, of course, there is the early voting data. We can't know for sure who people are voting for, of course, but we can discern trends relating to partisan turnout. And the data in all the swing states indicates a huge improvement for the GOP compared to 2008. In Ohio, there has been a more than 260,000 vote swing away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans in early voting turnout. There has been a percentage swing toward the GOP in early voting in Florida and North Carolina that looks likely to overwhelm Obama's narrow win margin in both states from 2008. Democrats lead big in early voting in Iowa, as they always do, but the percentage advantage for the Democrats is actually slightly less than it was in 2004 when Bush carried the state. Early voting turnout is down significantly in key Democratic strongholds in Virginia this year compared with 2008. Republicans have about a 2 point lead in early voting in Colorado this year, compared with a Democratic lead four years ago. There is not early voting in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, but absentee balloting has looked very favorable to the GOP. Even in Nevada, the GOP has improved significantly since 2008, even though it looks like Obama will still carry the state. Most surprisingly, a recent poll from Gallup showed Republicans actually leading the early vote nationally by 6 points, which is incredible when you consider that most of Obama's national margin in 2008 came from early voting.
Even when you look at current national polling, Gallup and Rasmussen both show a one point lead for Romney, with Obama at 48%. Not a good place for an incumbent to be. The latest CNN poll oversampled Democrats by 11 points, but still showed the race a tie with a 22 point advantage for Romney with independents. The latest ABC/Washington Post poll had Obama up three, but its poll oversampled Democrats by 6. I think a fair reading of these national polls indicates a Romney advantage and slight momentum back in his direction (after a week of Obama gains). Remember that Romney had a steady and significant 3-6 point lead in both Gallup and Rasmussen for the week or two before the hurricane, with sizable advantages with independents. The hurricane gave Obama a clear bounce, but I don't think it fundamentally changed the race. Will independents, who have been negative about Obama for three years, suddenly reverse themselves and vote for Obama simply due his looking presidential for a couple of days in a hurricane a few days before the election? I find it hard to believe, but I guess I can't completely rule it out.
What about the state polls? Well, some of them are very questionable in my mind -- either online polls or polls done by Democratic agenda pollsters like Public Policy Polling. Zogby has been largely discredited as a pollster, and Gravis came out of nowhere this year and has no track record. Most of these state pollsters are assuming the electorate will be very similar to 2008, with large oversamplings of Democrats. Some of these state polls have shown Obama with larger leads in Ohio and Florida than his 2008 margin! Marist and Quinnipiac have been especially guilty of this -- the Marist pollster said straight up in an interview that he is assuming a 2008 electorate. I think many of these polls are a case of garbage in, garbage out. Their results are inaccurate because they are making inaccurate assumptions about the electorate.
I won't deny that this election looks to be quite close and that either Obama or Romney could easily win. But I keep coming back to the fundamentals of this election. Fundamentally, most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Overwhelmingly voters consider the economy to be the most important issue in this election, and every poll shows that voters favor Romney over Obama on this issue. No matter how many ads about abortion and contraception Obama runs, the election is not going to be about those issues for most voters. I think, in the end, the big issues do not favor Obama and that will cause late-deciding voters to either break for Romney or sit out the election. And I am encouraged that much smarter political gurus like Michael Barone, Karl Rove, and Jay Cost largely agree with my view of this election.
In short, I'm putting my faith in the American electorate to make the rational decision. Maybe I'm letting my political biases get in the way of objectivity. We'll all know in less than 24 hours (hopefully)....
Final popular vote prediction: Romney 50.5%, Obama 48.5%
Final Electoral College prediction: Romney 291, Obama 247
I believe there are only 8 true tossup states that will decide this election. Here is my prediction for each of them:
1. Virginia - 51% Romney, 48% Obama
2. Ohio - 50.5% Romney, 48.5% Obama
3. Colorado - 50.5% Romney, 48.5% Obama
4. Iowa - 50% Romney, 49% Obama
5. Wisconsin - 50% Romney, 49% Obama
6. New Hampshire - 50% Obama, 49% Romney
7. Pennsylvania - 50.5% Obama, 48.5% Romney
8. Nevada - 51% Obama, 47.5% Romney
The one I am least sure about is Wisconsin -- changed it at the very last minute from Democrat to Republican.
In addition, I have 2 states classified as Leans Republican:
1. Florida - 52% Romney, 47% Obama
2. North Carolina - 53% Romney, 46% Obama
And 4 states classified as Leans Democrat:
1. Minnesota - 51.5% Obama, 47% Romney
2. Michigan - 52% Obama, 47% Romney
3. New Mexico - 53% Obama, 46% Romney
4. Oregon - 53% Obama, 45% Romney
All other states I believe are safely in one camp or the other and will go for either Obama or Romney by double digits.
The next question is why I am picking Mitt Romney to win when conventional wisdom clearly seems to favor Barack Obama. The primary reason for why Obama is favored, of course, is due to very favorable polling for him at the state level. The Real Clear Politics average of polls is showing Obama ahead in all the swing states, with the exception of Florida (and North Carolina if you count that as a swing state). Also, while Mitt had a clear lead in the national poll average for most of October, Obama gained significantly in the past week in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and now leads slightly in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls as well. So why would I pick Romney to win, when a clear majority of the polls seem to indicate that he will lose, possibly badly?
The first thing to understand is that this year is not 2008 anymore. The political landscape has shifted dramatically. Perhaps the most dramatic indication of this is the massive survey of national party identification that Rasmussen does each election year. In calculating this party identification, Rasmussen surveys 15,000 likely voters nationwide, so it is a truly massive poll (more than 10 times bigger than even the largest national head-to-head election polls). In 2008, Rasmussen found a 7 point advantage for Democrats, which ended up being very close to the final margin of victory for Obama. In 2004 and 2010 they actually found small advantages for Democrats (+3 for Democrats in 2010), even though Republicans ended up performing extremely well in both elections. This October, they found a 5.8% advantage for the Republicans, which a stunning turnaround for the GOP and an extremely favorable indication for the election. And Rasmussen is not alone. Gallup did a similar survey of national party identification and also found a 1 point Republican advantage (and 3 points when you factor in voters who lean toward one party or the other). This data is especially extraordinary when you factor in that there has never been a presidential election in the modern era in which the Republicans have had a party identification advantage on Election Day. The closest they have ever come was in 2004, when the party identification was even between Republicans and Democrats.
Of course, we have many other proofs that this year will be dramatically different from 2008. The enthusiasm for the Republicans is off the charts and significantly higher than the enthusiasm for the Democrats. Polls have picked this up by showing the Republicans have a higher interest in the election and are more certain about voting. Polls have also showed that those who strongly disapprove of Obama's job performance significantly outnumber those who strongly approve of his performance. This difference in enthusiasm is also evidenced by much larger and more enthusiastic crowds for Romney compared to Obama. This all feels like 2008 in reverse. Peggy Noonan commented on the Republican passion bubbling under the surface in this election in her excellent column here. Concern about Democratic turnout is doubtless what has led Obama to campaign in Democratic strongholds like Madison, WI and Boulder, CO in the final week of the campaign.
And, there is the evidence of the demeanor of the candidates and the campaigns. Romney has seemed relaxed and confident and stayed largely positive in his campaign message, while Obama has seemed angry and his campaign ads have been overwhelmingly negative. He was even caught telling his supporters at a recent Ohio rally to vote for revenge, while Romney countered by urging supporters to vote for love of country. In the last presidential debate, the difference in demeanor between the two candidates clearly showed that Romney believed he was ahead and Obama believed he was behind. Some of the Obama campaign's tactics, such as that creepy Lena Dunham "My First Time" ad, seem to be the actions of a desperate campaign, not a confident one.
And then, of course, there is the early voting data. We can't know for sure who people are voting for, of course, but we can discern trends relating to partisan turnout. And the data in all the swing states indicates a huge improvement for the GOP compared to 2008. In Ohio, there has been a more than 260,000 vote swing away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans in early voting turnout. There has been a percentage swing toward the GOP in early voting in Florida and North Carolina that looks likely to overwhelm Obama's narrow win margin in both states from 2008. Democrats lead big in early voting in Iowa, as they always do, but the percentage advantage for the Democrats is actually slightly less than it was in 2004 when Bush carried the state. Early voting turnout is down significantly in key Democratic strongholds in Virginia this year compared with 2008. Republicans have about a 2 point lead in early voting in Colorado this year, compared with a Democratic lead four years ago. There is not early voting in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, but absentee balloting has looked very favorable to the GOP. Even in Nevada, the GOP has improved significantly since 2008, even though it looks like Obama will still carry the state. Most surprisingly, a recent poll from Gallup showed Republicans actually leading the early vote nationally by 6 points, which is incredible when you consider that most of Obama's national margin in 2008 came from early voting.
Even when you look at current national polling, Gallup and Rasmussen both show a one point lead for Romney, with Obama at 48%. Not a good place for an incumbent to be. The latest CNN poll oversampled Democrats by 11 points, but still showed the race a tie with a 22 point advantage for Romney with independents. The latest ABC/Washington Post poll had Obama up three, but its poll oversampled Democrats by 6. I think a fair reading of these national polls indicates a Romney advantage and slight momentum back in his direction (after a week of Obama gains). Remember that Romney had a steady and significant 3-6 point lead in both Gallup and Rasmussen for the week or two before the hurricane, with sizable advantages with independents. The hurricane gave Obama a clear bounce, but I don't think it fundamentally changed the race. Will independents, who have been negative about Obama for three years, suddenly reverse themselves and vote for Obama simply due his looking presidential for a couple of days in a hurricane a few days before the election? I find it hard to believe, but I guess I can't completely rule it out.
What about the state polls? Well, some of them are very questionable in my mind -- either online polls or polls done by Democratic agenda pollsters like Public Policy Polling. Zogby has been largely discredited as a pollster, and Gravis came out of nowhere this year and has no track record. Most of these state pollsters are assuming the electorate will be very similar to 2008, with large oversamplings of Democrats. Some of these state polls have shown Obama with larger leads in Ohio and Florida than his 2008 margin! Marist and Quinnipiac have been especially guilty of this -- the Marist pollster said straight up in an interview that he is assuming a 2008 electorate. I think many of these polls are a case of garbage in, garbage out. Their results are inaccurate because they are making inaccurate assumptions about the electorate.
I won't deny that this election looks to be quite close and that either Obama or Romney could easily win. But I keep coming back to the fundamentals of this election. Fundamentally, most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Overwhelmingly voters consider the economy to be the most important issue in this election, and every poll shows that voters favor Romney over Obama on this issue. No matter how many ads about abortion and contraception Obama runs, the election is not going to be about those issues for most voters. I think, in the end, the big issues do not favor Obama and that will cause late-deciding voters to either break for Romney or sit out the election. And I am encouraged that much smarter political gurus like Michael Barone, Karl Rove, and Jay Cost largely agree with my view of this election.
In short, I'm putting my faith in the American electorate to make the rational decision. Maybe I'm letting my political biases get in the way of objectivity. We'll all know in less than 24 hours (hopefully)....
Final Presidential & Senate Predictions
I have updated my Senate & Electoral College maps with my final election predictions. You can click on the updated links on the left side of the blog to see the maps.
For the U.S. Senate, I am predicting a net pickup of 2 seats for the GOP, which brings them to 49 seats. Democrats will also have 49 seats plus 2 liberal leaning independents who will likely caucus with their party (I am considering those two independents as Democrats for purposes of this analysis). This is a disappointing prediction for me, since for much of the year the Republicans seemed to be in a good position to take control of the Senate. There are a number of tossup states that I have currently leaning toward the Democrats that the GOP could conceivably win if they have an unexpectedly strong Election Day, however, so control of the Senate is not completely out of reach at this point.
At this point, the GOP seems likely to lose two seats in the Northeast. One, the open seat in Maine, was almost a foregone conclusion when Republican incumbent Olympia Snowe announced her retirement and popular former governor and liberal Independent Angus King jumped into the race. King is expected to easily defeat both Republican and Democratic opponents. The other Republican seat in jeopardy is in Massachusetts, where Scott Brown seems to be slightly behind Democrat Elizabeth Warren. Brown is surprisingly well-liked in liberal Massachusetts and has positioned himself as a moderate, but I fear that the large Democratic turnout for Obama this year will be too much for him to overcome. This race is still a tossup though, which means it could go either way.
These two losses will be offset (in my view) by four Republican pickups of Democratic seats in the rest of the country. The easiest pickup will be in conservative Nebraska, where Deb Fischer should easily defeat former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey to replace retiring Senator Ben Nelson. Despite Kerrey's previous successes, he is far too liberal for the state. A second pickup should come in North Dakota, where Democrat Kent Conrad is retiring. Democrat Heidi Heitkamp has run a surprisingly strong race and has stayed close in the polls, but Republican Rick Berg, who currently represents the entire state in the House of Representatives, now seems likely to win (although he will run behind Romney in the state). A third pickup is the open seat race in Wisconsin, where former GOP Governor Tommy Thompson and Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin are vying to replace retiring Democrat Herb Kohl. This is a close race, and Baldwin was leading in the polls for a few weeks after Thompson won a contentious four-way primary, but Thompson now seems to be consolidating a lead. Baldwin is one of the most left-wing members of the House and out of step with the state. The fourth pickup for the GOP should come in Montana, where I predict that Republican Denny Rehberg will defeat sitting Democratic senator Jon Tester. Polls show a close race, but Rehberg has already won statewide several times and will be aided by a strong performance by Romney at the top of the ticket in the state.
I also believe the Republicans will hold onto three competitive seats of their own in Indiana, Nevada, and Arizona. Indiana is the one I am least sure about. Republican Richard Mourdock, who defeated incumbent Senator Richard Lugar in the GOP primary earlier this year, was widely expected to defeat Democrat Joe Donnelly until he made an alleged gaffe regarding abortion in the case of rape during a debate. Since then, a couple of polls have shown Donnelly ahead, although still well under 50% with a large number of undecideds. I suspect that many of those undecided voters are conservatives who will come back to Mourdock in the end, especially with Romney and GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence winning the state by wide margins. In Nevada, Republican Dean Heller, an appointed incumbent, is leading in the polls over scandal-tarnished Democrat Shelley Berkley and should hang on to win despite the state's increasingly Democratic leanings. And in Arizona, conservative congressman Jeff Flake should win by a few points over Democrat Richard Carmona to replace retiring GOP Senator Jon Kyl. This is a race that has probably never been as close as some of the pundits have seemed to think.
I am also predicting that the Democrats will hold on to 9 of their own vulnerable seats, including 5 incumbents and 4 open seats. The most disappointing of all of these races is the one in Missouri, where it looks like deeply unpopular Senator Claire McCaskill will hold on to her seat due to a mindnumbingly stupid statement by her GOP challenger Todd Akin regarding pregnancies resulting from rape. Akin still seems to be closer in the polls than I would have expected, but the libertarian candidate in the race is polling between 5 and 10% in some polls and I would guess McCaskill will survive with less than 50% of the vote. Democrat Sherrod Brown is another far-left senator who is out of step with his conservative leaning state of Ohio, but he appears to have a slight edge over GOP candidate Josh Mandel. If massive Republican turnout propels Romney to a strong win there, Mandel might have a chance. In Pennsylvania, freshman Democratic Senator Bob Casey, Jr. was thought to be safe for most of this election cycle, but Republican self-funder Tom Smith has unexpectedly surged in the polls and made things interesting. The state has also gotten some last minute attention from Romney in the last couple of weeks, but given Pennsylvania's Democratic leanings both Romney and Smith are underdogs at this point. In Florida, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, once thought to be in serious trouble, now looks clearly favored to win a 3rd term over Republican Connie Mack IV, who has run a disappointing campaign. Even more likely to win is Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow, who is polling strongly against Republican Pete Hoekstra.
Of the Democrats' four vulnerable open seats, by the far the toughest one is in Virginia, where former governors Tim Kaine and George Allen have been in a neck-and-neck battle to capture the seat of retiring Democrat Jim Webb, who defeated Allen in 2006. Most polls have been showing Allen running at least two or three points behind Romney in Virginia, and my best guess is that Kaine squeaks this race out. Democrats look to be in much better shape in their other three competitive open seats, all of which are being fought on friendly turf. In Connecticut, Linda McMahon has spent tens of millions of her own money but appears likely to lose to Democrat Chris Murphy, who stated in a debate that he believes that human life begins at birth. Moderate Republicans Heather Wilson of New Mexico and Linda Lingle of Hawaii were both thought to be top-tier candidates but have not been able to overcome the Democratic tilt of their states.
Tomorrow morning, I hope to provide my rationale for picking Mitt Romney to win the presidential race.
For the U.S. Senate, I am predicting a net pickup of 2 seats for the GOP, which brings them to 49 seats. Democrats will also have 49 seats plus 2 liberal leaning independents who will likely caucus with their party (I am considering those two independents as Democrats for purposes of this analysis). This is a disappointing prediction for me, since for much of the year the Republicans seemed to be in a good position to take control of the Senate. There are a number of tossup states that I have currently leaning toward the Democrats that the GOP could conceivably win if they have an unexpectedly strong Election Day, however, so control of the Senate is not completely out of reach at this point.
At this point, the GOP seems likely to lose two seats in the Northeast. One, the open seat in Maine, was almost a foregone conclusion when Republican incumbent Olympia Snowe announced her retirement and popular former governor and liberal Independent Angus King jumped into the race. King is expected to easily defeat both Republican and Democratic opponents. The other Republican seat in jeopardy is in Massachusetts, where Scott Brown seems to be slightly behind Democrat Elizabeth Warren. Brown is surprisingly well-liked in liberal Massachusetts and has positioned himself as a moderate, but I fear that the large Democratic turnout for Obama this year will be too much for him to overcome. This race is still a tossup though, which means it could go either way.
These two losses will be offset (in my view) by four Republican pickups of Democratic seats in the rest of the country. The easiest pickup will be in conservative Nebraska, where Deb Fischer should easily defeat former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey to replace retiring Senator Ben Nelson. Despite Kerrey's previous successes, he is far too liberal for the state. A second pickup should come in North Dakota, where Democrat Kent Conrad is retiring. Democrat Heidi Heitkamp has run a surprisingly strong race and has stayed close in the polls, but Republican Rick Berg, who currently represents the entire state in the House of Representatives, now seems likely to win (although he will run behind Romney in the state). A third pickup is the open seat race in Wisconsin, where former GOP Governor Tommy Thompson and Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin are vying to replace retiring Democrat Herb Kohl. This is a close race, and Baldwin was leading in the polls for a few weeks after Thompson won a contentious four-way primary, but Thompson now seems to be consolidating a lead. Baldwin is one of the most left-wing members of the House and out of step with the state. The fourth pickup for the GOP should come in Montana, where I predict that Republican Denny Rehberg will defeat sitting Democratic senator Jon Tester. Polls show a close race, but Rehberg has already won statewide several times and will be aided by a strong performance by Romney at the top of the ticket in the state.
I also believe the Republicans will hold onto three competitive seats of their own in Indiana, Nevada, and Arizona. Indiana is the one I am least sure about. Republican Richard Mourdock, who defeated incumbent Senator Richard Lugar in the GOP primary earlier this year, was widely expected to defeat Democrat Joe Donnelly until he made an alleged gaffe regarding abortion in the case of rape during a debate. Since then, a couple of polls have shown Donnelly ahead, although still well under 50% with a large number of undecideds. I suspect that many of those undecided voters are conservatives who will come back to Mourdock in the end, especially with Romney and GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence winning the state by wide margins. In Nevada, Republican Dean Heller, an appointed incumbent, is leading in the polls over scandal-tarnished Democrat Shelley Berkley and should hang on to win despite the state's increasingly Democratic leanings. And in Arizona, conservative congressman Jeff Flake should win by a few points over Democrat Richard Carmona to replace retiring GOP Senator Jon Kyl. This is a race that has probably never been as close as some of the pundits have seemed to think.
I am also predicting that the Democrats will hold on to 9 of their own vulnerable seats, including 5 incumbents and 4 open seats. The most disappointing of all of these races is the one in Missouri, where it looks like deeply unpopular Senator Claire McCaskill will hold on to her seat due to a mindnumbingly stupid statement by her GOP challenger Todd Akin regarding pregnancies resulting from rape. Akin still seems to be closer in the polls than I would have expected, but the libertarian candidate in the race is polling between 5 and 10% in some polls and I would guess McCaskill will survive with less than 50% of the vote. Democrat Sherrod Brown is another far-left senator who is out of step with his conservative leaning state of Ohio, but he appears to have a slight edge over GOP candidate Josh Mandel. If massive Republican turnout propels Romney to a strong win there, Mandel might have a chance. In Pennsylvania, freshman Democratic Senator Bob Casey, Jr. was thought to be safe for most of this election cycle, but Republican self-funder Tom Smith has unexpectedly surged in the polls and made things interesting. The state has also gotten some last minute attention from Romney in the last couple of weeks, but given Pennsylvania's Democratic leanings both Romney and Smith are underdogs at this point. In Florida, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, once thought to be in serious trouble, now looks clearly favored to win a 3rd term over Republican Connie Mack IV, who has run a disappointing campaign. Even more likely to win is Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow, who is polling strongly against Republican Pete Hoekstra.
Of the Democrats' four vulnerable open seats, by the far the toughest one is in Virginia, where former governors Tim Kaine and George Allen have been in a neck-and-neck battle to capture the seat of retiring Democrat Jim Webb, who defeated Allen in 2006. Most polls have been showing Allen running at least two or three points behind Romney in Virginia, and my best guess is that Kaine squeaks this race out. Democrats look to be in much better shape in their other three competitive open seats, all of which are being fought on friendly turf. In Connecticut, Linda McMahon has spent tens of millions of her own money but appears likely to lose to Democrat Chris Murphy, who stated in a debate that he believes that human life begins at birth. Moderate Republicans Heather Wilson of New Mexico and Linda Lingle of Hawaii were both thought to be top-tier candidates but have not been able to overcome the Democratic tilt of their states.
Tomorrow morning, I hope to provide my rationale for picking Mitt Romney to win the presidential race.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Excellent article for the night before the election
Amit Ghate has an outstanding article at Forbes titled "We Must Stop Treating the President As Our Savior." Thanks to the Foundations of Econ blog for directing me to this article.
"A growing tendency to treat the president as savior has resulted in a dangerous expansion of executive power and a simultaneous debarring of responsible candidates. Accordingly, the question in today’s presidential election shouldn’t be “who can save America?” but “who will do it the least damage?”
Longer term — if our Republic is to survive — we must return the role of president to its proper place by reasserting our individual sovereignty and self-responsibility."
As we all wonder what will happen tomorrow, it's comforting to remember that God is still sovereign and is working everything according to His plan.
"A growing tendency to treat the president as savior has resulted in a dangerous expansion of executive power and a simultaneous debarring of responsible candidates. Accordingly, the question in today’s presidential election shouldn’t be “who can save America?” but “who will do it the least damage?”
Longer term — if our Republic is to survive — we must return the role of president to its proper place by reasserting our individual sovereignty and self-responsibility."
As we all wonder what will happen tomorrow, it's comforting to remember that God is still sovereign and is working everything according to His plan.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
My U.S. House Predictions
Time to begin making predictions for the 2012 elections! My prediction for the U.S. House is for the Republicans, surprisingly, to gain 4 seats. My predicted partisan breakdown for the 2013-2015 House of Representatives is 245 Republicans and 190 Democrats.
Here are the details of my prediction. If a district is "safe" or "likely," that means I am certain or fairly certain that it will go to a particular party, probably by a comfortable margin. If a district "leans" toward a particular party, that means I believe that it is competitive but favors one party or the other. "Tossup" districts feature highly competitive races which could go to either party on election night.
Safe or Likely Republican: 215 seats
Includes 6 currently held Democratic seats - Democratic incumbent Larry Kissell of North Carolina, 1 Democratic open seat in Arkansas, 1 Democratic open seat in Indiana, 2 Democratic open seats in North Carolina, and 1 Democratic open seat in Oklahoma.
Leans Republican: 15 seats
Includes one currently held GOP seat - that of Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett.
The good news is that, regardless of whether or not Barack Obama is reelected, the Republicans are virtually certain to retain a big majority in the House of Representatives. This means that if they have enough backbone to do so, they should be able to limit the amount of damage that Obama does to the country over the next four years in the event that he is reelected (which I am not predicting by the way).
Senate and Electoral College predictions to follow soon....
Here are the details of my prediction. If a district is "safe" or "likely," that means I am certain or fairly certain that it will go to a particular party, probably by a comfortable margin. If a district "leans" toward a particular party, that means I believe that it is competitive but favors one party or the other. "Tossup" districts feature highly competitive races which could go to either party on election night.
Safe or Likely Republican: 215 seats
Includes 6 currently held Democratic seats - Democratic incumbent Larry Kissell of North Carolina, 1 Democratic open seat in Arkansas, 1 Democratic open seat in Indiana, 2 Democratic open seats in North Carolina, and 1 Democratic open seat in Oklahoma.
Leans Republican: 15 seats
- Colorado 3 - GOP incumbent Scott Tipton reelected
- Florida 10 - GOP incumbent Daniel Webster reelected
- Florida 18 - GOP incumbent Allen West reelected
- Iowa 3 - Combined district; GOP incumbent Tom Latham defeats Dem incumbent Leonard Boswell
- Iowa 4 - GOP incumbent Steve King reelected
- Massachusetts 6 - Democratic incumbent John Tierney loses to Republican Richard Tisei
- Michigan 11 - GOP open seat; Republican Kerry Bentivolio wins
- Minnesota 6 - GOP incumbent Michele Bachmann reelected
- Nevada 3 - GOP incumbent Joe Heck reelected
- New York 18 - GOP incumbent Nan Hayworth reelected
- New York 19 - GOP incumbent Chris Gibson reelected
- New York 27 - Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul loses to Republican Chris Collins
- Ohio 6 - GOP incumbent Bill Johnson reelected
- Utah 4 - Democratic incumbent Jim Matheson loses to Republican Mia Love
- Wisconsin 7 - GOP incumbent Sean Duffy reelected
- Arizona 1 - GOP open seat; Republican Jonathan Paton wins
- California 7 - GOP incumbent Dan Lungren reelected
- California 10 - GOP incumbent Jeff Dunham reelected
- California 36 - GOP incumbent Mary Bono Mack reelected
- California 52 - GOP incumbent Brian Bilbray reelected
- Colorado 6 - GOP incumbent Mike Coffman reelected
- Illinois 10 - GOP incumbent Bob Dold reelected
- Illinois 13 - GOP open seat; Republican Rodney Davis wins
- Michigan 1 - GOP incumbent Dan Benishek reelected
- New Hampshire 1 - GOP incumbent Frank Guinta reelected
- Nevada 4 - New district; Republican Danny Tarkanian wins
- Ohio 16 - Combined district; GOP incumbent Jim Renacci defeats Dem incumbent Betty Sutton
- Pennsylvania 12 - Democratic incumbent Mark Critz loses to Republican Keith Rothfus
- Tennessee 4 - GOP incumbent Scott DesJarlais reelected
- Texas 23 - GOP incumbent Quico Canseco reelected
- California 9 - Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney reelected
- California 24 - Democratic incumbent Lois Capps reelected
- California 26 - GOP open seat; Democrat Julia Brownley wins
- Connecticut 5 - Democratic open seat; Democrat Elizabeth Esty wins
- Georgia 12 - Democratic incumbent John Barrow reelected
- Illinois 11 - GOP incumbent Judy Biggert loses to Democrat Bill Foster
- Illinois 12 - Democratic open seat; Democrat Bill Enyart wins
- Illinois 17 - GOP incumbent Bobby Schilling loses to Democrat Cheri Bustos
- Kentucky 6 - Democratic incumbent Ben Chandler reelected
- Minnesota 8 - GOP incumbent Chip Cravaack loses to Democrat Rick Nolan
- New Hampshire 2 - GOP incumbent Charles Bass loses to Democrat Ann McLane Kuster
- New York 1 - Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop reelected
- New York 21 - Democratic incumbent Bill Owens reelected
- New York 24 - GOP incumbent Ann Marie Buerkle loses to Democrat Dan Maffei
- North Carolina 7 - Democratic incumbent Mike McIntyre reelected
- Rhode Island 1 - Democratic incumbent David Cicilline reelected
- Arizona 2 - Democratic incumbent Ron Barber reelected
- Arizona 9 - New district; Democrat Kyrsten Sinema wins
- California 41 - New district; Democrat Mark Takano wins
- Florida 26 - GOP incumbent David Rivera loses to Democrat Joe Garcia
- Illinois 8 - GOP incumbent Joe Walsh loses to Democrat Tammy Duckworth
- New York 25 - Democratic incumbent Louise Slaughter reelected
Includes one currently held GOP seat - that of Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett.
The good news is that, regardless of whether or not Barack Obama is reelected, the Republicans are virtually certain to retain a big majority in the House of Representatives. This means that if they have enough backbone to do so, they should be able to limit the amount of damage that Obama does to the country over the next four years in the event that he is reelected (which I am not predicting by the way).
Senate and Electoral College predictions to follow soon....
How I'm Voting on Tuesday
Just in case anyone is interested, here is how I'm filling out my Montgomery County, MD ballot on Tuesday:
President: Mitt Romney (R), for reasons that anyone who reads this blog already knows. I have a list of 100 reasons why I'm voting against Obama (and therefore for Romney).
U.S. Senator: Daniel John Bongino (R) - I was excited about Bongino when I voted for him in the primary, but I have been disappointed that I haven't seen or heard a single TV or radio ad for him this entire election season. I guess he hasn't had enough money to advertise. I have seen and heard a lot of ads for the independent candidate, Rob Sobhani, but he doesn't seem to have much substantive to say other than that he is neither a Republican or a Democrat. I know Bongino, a Tea Party guy, would be a far better senator than Democratic incumbent Ben Cardin, who is a leftist hack, but I have no doubt that Cardin will be reelected with Bongino and Sobhani splitting the challenger vote.
U.S. Representative: Roscoe Bartlett (R) - Bartlett has long represented the 6th district in Western Maryland and has been a reliably conservative vote. Unfortunately, the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature did a ridiculous gerrymander of the state's congressional districts to ensure that 7 out of the state's 8 districts would be controlled by Democrats. My district now favors the Democrats, and Bartlett's age (he is about 87 I think) certainly makes the race even more difficult for him. Sadly, I expect Bartlett to lose to Democrat John Delaney, leaving Andy Harris of the Eastern Shore as the only Republican in the state's U.S. congressional delegation.
Board of Education: Morris Panner - I always find it difficult to get information that helps me to differentiate between the Montgomery Co. BoE candidates, so I generally find out which candidates are endorsed by the county teachers' union (per the "apple ballot") and vote the opposite. I dislike teachers' unions because they are essentially an arm of the Democratic Party and stand in the way of real educational reform. Unfortunately, they have the money and influence to ensure that their preferred candidates almost always get elected. I am voting for Morris Panner for the BoE At Large position, who is the only candidate running for BoE this year who impressed me much and who is running against apple ballot candidate Phil Kauffman. I am not overly impressed with non-apple ballot candidates Rebecca Smondrowski and Annita Seckinger in Districts 2 and 4, but may still vote for them over their apple ballot opponents.
Question 4 - AGAINST the petition - Question 4 is a statewide referendum petition that makes illegal immigrants living in the state eligible to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges. I am against this petition because I don't believe it is right that my tax dollars should go to subsidize the education of people who are in this country and this state illegally. Unfortunately, many people in my state and my county seem to believe that our country's immigration laws should be simply ignored. I expect this petition to pass, possibly by a wide margin.
Question 5 - AGAINST the petition - Question 5 is a statewide referendum petition to approve the currently drawn boundaries for the state's U.S. congressional districts. As mentioned above, these districts are gerrymandered in a ridiculous way to ensure maximum Democratic representation. This National Journal article lists 2 of Maryland's districts as among the 10 most contorted districts in the entire country and includes a map of the two bizarrely shaped districts. By voting no on this question, we can hopefully force our legislature to come up with a more sensible congressional district map.
Question 6 - AGAINST the petition - Question 6 is a statewide referendum petition to approve same-sex marriage. I believe that marriage is a crucial building block of our society and that redefining it could have far-reaching negative effects. Earlier this year, I wrote an extensive essay (and a couple of follow-up articles) arguing the case for marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Among the points I made were the fact that marriage has been universally recognized as between a man and a woman across all societies and throughout history due to certain universal features of human nature, that marriage provides numerous benefits for children and for society, that the traditional definition of marriage is not discriminatory against anyone including gays, that same-sex marriage fundamentally changes the institution of marriage and makes it weaker rather than stronger, and that same-sex marriage threatens free speech and religious liberty. Maryland is one of four liberal-leaning states this year in which same-sex marriage is on the ballot; it will be interesting to see whether any of those states will be the first to approve it by popular vote.
Question 7 - AGAINST the petition - Question 7 is a statewide referendum to expand commercial gambling in the state. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent in advertising on both sides of this issue, all coming from casinos which either stand to gain or lose financially from the new gambling facilities. While I have become more open to the idea of legalized gambling in recent years simply based on the idea of individual freedom, I really do not want my taxpayer dollars going to finance gambling activities which I believe tend to have a negative impact on society and hurt the poor. The more I have read about this issue, the greater the sense I have that the whole process is a corrupt partnership between sleazy politicians and casino interests designed to benefit themselves at the expense of taxpayers. Governor O'Malley, who apparently has presidential aspirations, could benefit immensely from casino donations as a result of a loophole in this deal, and while O'Malley has raised taxes on the rest of us he has made sure that the casinos get huge tax breaks that other businesses don't get. This referendum does not guarantee that even a single penny of additional money will be spent on education. Some of the previous attempts by Maryland to finance gambling have been poor investments financially, and there is evidence that this gambling expansion could simply take business from other casinos already in existence in the state. Also, from what I have read, many of the jobs that this referendum creates are construction jobs from union contractors out-of-state. I'm voting no because I think this deal is more about benefiting the casino industry and the politicians with ties to that industry than benefiting the state as a whole and investing our tax dollars wisely.
Question B - FOR the referendum - Question B is a referendum on a law passed by the Montgomery County Council to limit the scope of collective bargaining for police employees. Essentially, the county has had rules in place that force the county police chief to engage in collective bargaining with the police officers' union over even the most minor of management decisions. This law has given the police union in our county more power than that of any other police union in the state and has resulted in inefficiency and unresponsiveness to community needs. This referendum would limit the power of the union by restricting collective bargaining to certain major areas such as officer salaries and benefits. I support Question B because I think it would save taxpayer dollars and would improve public safety.
Question C - FOR the referendum - Question C is a local referendum that would permit restaurants and hotels in my town of Damascus to sell wine and beer for consumption on the premises. Currently, Damascus is a "dry town" which prohibits the sale of any alcohol within its boundaries. I support this question because I believe it will attract better quality restaurants to the area which would benefit the town as a whole.
There are some other ballot questions as well, but these are the only ones that I consider to be important.
In the next day or two, I will be posting my final predictions for the presidential, Senate, and House of Representatives races. So stay tuned!
President: Mitt Romney (R), for reasons that anyone who reads this blog already knows. I have a list of 100 reasons why I'm voting against Obama (and therefore for Romney).
U.S. Senator: Daniel John Bongino (R) - I was excited about Bongino when I voted for him in the primary, but I have been disappointed that I haven't seen or heard a single TV or radio ad for him this entire election season. I guess he hasn't had enough money to advertise. I have seen and heard a lot of ads for the independent candidate, Rob Sobhani, but he doesn't seem to have much substantive to say other than that he is neither a Republican or a Democrat. I know Bongino, a Tea Party guy, would be a far better senator than Democratic incumbent Ben Cardin, who is a leftist hack, but I have no doubt that Cardin will be reelected with Bongino and Sobhani splitting the challenger vote.
U.S. Representative: Roscoe Bartlett (R) - Bartlett has long represented the 6th district in Western Maryland and has been a reliably conservative vote. Unfortunately, the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature did a ridiculous gerrymander of the state's congressional districts to ensure that 7 out of the state's 8 districts would be controlled by Democrats. My district now favors the Democrats, and Bartlett's age (he is about 87 I think) certainly makes the race even more difficult for him. Sadly, I expect Bartlett to lose to Democrat John Delaney, leaving Andy Harris of the Eastern Shore as the only Republican in the state's U.S. congressional delegation.
Board of Education: Morris Panner - I always find it difficult to get information that helps me to differentiate between the Montgomery Co. BoE candidates, so I generally find out which candidates are endorsed by the county teachers' union (per the "apple ballot") and vote the opposite. I dislike teachers' unions because they are essentially an arm of the Democratic Party and stand in the way of real educational reform. Unfortunately, they have the money and influence to ensure that their preferred candidates almost always get elected. I am voting for Morris Panner for the BoE At Large position, who is the only candidate running for BoE this year who impressed me much and who is running against apple ballot candidate Phil Kauffman. I am not overly impressed with non-apple ballot candidates Rebecca Smondrowski and Annita Seckinger in Districts 2 and 4, but may still vote for them over their apple ballot opponents.
Question 4 - AGAINST the petition - Question 4 is a statewide referendum petition that makes illegal immigrants living in the state eligible to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges. I am against this petition because I don't believe it is right that my tax dollars should go to subsidize the education of people who are in this country and this state illegally. Unfortunately, many people in my state and my county seem to believe that our country's immigration laws should be simply ignored. I expect this petition to pass, possibly by a wide margin.
Question 5 - AGAINST the petition - Question 5 is a statewide referendum petition to approve the currently drawn boundaries for the state's U.S. congressional districts. As mentioned above, these districts are gerrymandered in a ridiculous way to ensure maximum Democratic representation. This National Journal article lists 2 of Maryland's districts as among the 10 most contorted districts in the entire country and includes a map of the two bizarrely shaped districts. By voting no on this question, we can hopefully force our legislature to come up with a more sensible congressional district map.
Question 6 - AGAINST the petition - Question 6 is a statewide referendum petition to approve same-sex marriage. I believe that marriage is a crucial building block of our society and that redefining it could have far-reaching negative effects. Earlier this year, I wrote an extensive essay (and a couple of follow-up articles) arguing the case for marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Among the points I made were the fact that marriage has been universally recognized as between a man and a woman across all societies and throughout history due to certain universal features of human nature, that marriage provides numerous benefits for children and for society, that the traditional definition of marriage is not discriminatory against anyone including gays, that same-sex marriage fundamentally changes the institution of marriage and makes it weaker rather than stronger, and that same-sex marriage threatens free speech and religious liberty. Maryland is one of four liberal-leaning states this year in which same-sex marriage is on the ballot; it will be interesting to see whether any of those states will be the first to approve it by popular vote.
Question 7 - AGAINST the petition - Question 7 is a statewide referendum to expand commercial gambling in the state. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent in advertising on both sides of this issue, all coming from casinos which either stand to gain or lose financially from the new gambling facilities. While I have become more open to the idea of legalized gambling in recent years simply based on the idea of individual freedom, I really do not want my taxpayer dollars going to finance gambling activities which I believe tend to have a negative impact on society and hurt the poor. The more I have read about this issue, the greater the sense I have that the whole process is a corrupt partnership between sleazy politicians and casino interests designed to benefit themselves at the expense of taxpayers. Governor O'Malley, who apparently has presidential aspirations, could benefit immensely from casino donations as a result of a loophole in this deal, and while O'Malley has raised taxes on the rest of us he has made sure that the casinos get huge tax breaks that other businesses don't get. This referendum does not guarantee that even a single penny of additional money will be spent on education. Some of the previous attempts by Maryland to finance gambling have been poor investments financially, and there is evidence that this gambling expansion could simply take business from other casinos already in existence in the state. Also, from what I have read, many of the jobs that this referendum creates are construction jobs from union contractors out-of-state. I'm voting no because I think this deal is more about benefiting the casino industry and the politicians with ties to that industry than benefiting the state as a whole and investing our tax dollars wisely.
Question B - FOR the referendum - Question B is a referendum on a law passed by the Montgomery County Council to limit the scope of collective bargaining for police employees. Essentially, the county has had rules in place that force the county police chief to engage in collective bargaining with the police officers' union over even the most minor of management decisions. This law has given the police union in our county more power than that of any other police union in the state and has resulted in inefficiency and unresponsiveness to community needs. This referendum would limit the power of the union by restricting collective bargaining to certain major areas such as officer salaries and benefits. I support Question B because I think it would save taxpayer dollars and would improve public safety.
Question C - FOR the referendum - Question C is a local referendum that would permit restaurants and hotels in my town of Damascus to sell wine and beer for consumption on the premises. Currently, Damascus is a "dry town" which prohibits the sale of any alcohol within its boundaries. I support this question because I believe it will attract better quality restaurants to the area which would benefit the town as a whole.
There are some other ballot questions as well, but these are the only ones that I consider to be important.
In the next day or two, I will be posting my final predictions for the presidential, Senate, and House of Representatives races. So stay tuned!
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Some Random Thoughts on the Election
I just wanted to jot down some random thoughts about this upcoming election.
Much media attention has been focused on Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's recent debate comment that pregnancies resulting from rape are God's will. Mourdock's statement was certainly foolish and ill-advised -- I think Republican candidates should completely avoid the topic of abortion resulting from rape and I'm not sure why it's so hard for them to do that. Abortions resulting from rape are less than 1% of all abortions performed nationwide and it is the one area of abortion policy in which public opinion is strongly against the pro-life position. Nevertheless, I think Mourdock was very clumsily expressing the belief, held by most Christians, that all human life is the creation and gift of God, which I don't think is an extreme or fringe belief at all. Perhaps he was also expressing the Calvinistic Christian belief that all things that happen, even bad things, are part of God's will.
By contrast, another Senate candidate, Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, recently expressed the opinion that human life begins at birth. In my opinion, this is a far more extreme opinion than the one expressed by Mourdock and is aggressively anti-science. The notion that a baby does not become human or alive until it comes through the birth canal is laughable. Yet, I'm sure most or all of my readers have never heard of this story, largely because the overwhelmingly pro-choice media buried it. Republicans are not the only ones who make stupid statements, but they are the only ones who are unable to get away with those stupid statements.
Even though I live in a state where there are no competitive statewide elections, I have been seeing and hearing a lot of Washington media market TV and radio campaign ads targeting Virginia voters in the president and Senate races. It is not an exaggeration to say that a clear majority of the Democratic ads I have heard are focused on abortion. Of course, they never mention the word "abortion," preferring to use euphemisms like "women's health care" and "women's rights to make their own choices about their bodies," but it is clear what they are really talking about. The same focus was clearly on display at the Democratic National Convention this year. With all the challenges our country faces domestically and on the world stage, the primary topic of conversation for the Democrats appears to be a celebration of abortion. I know -- or at least know of -- evangelical Christians who are planning to vote for Obama, and it is beyond me how they can rationalize voting for a candidate whose identity is completely wrapped up in abortion.
One of the things that frustrates me as well is that Republicans are such incredible wusses when it comes to the topic of abortion. There is no reason this issue should work to the Democrats' advantage, given the fact that more Americans actually identify as pro-life than as pro-choice and studies of past presidential elections have shown that a majority of single-issue abortion voters vote pro-life rather than pro-choice. I understand that Romney and congressional Republican candidates don't want to make abortion the centerpiece of their campaigns, given the preeminence of the economy in most voters' minds, but I don't think they should be afraid to fight back on the issue when they are attacked. For example, Obama attacked Romney for being against women because of his opposition to taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood several times in the second debate, and I think Romney should have responded to it at least once instead of letting the claim stand that he was against women. If Obama is going to hammer Romney on abortion, why shouldn't Romney respond with an ad pointing out how extreme Obama is on abortion, or at least asking why Obama is obsessed with the issue with unemployment at around 8%? If Obama is going to demand that Romney disassociate himself from Mourdock's comments, why shouldn't Romney demand that Obama disassociate himself from Murphy's comments about human life beginning at birth? I think the GOP is unwise to entirely cede this issue to the Democrats.
So, where does the presidential race stand? I think it's not looking so bad for Romney right now. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post encouraging conservatives to keep their chin up despite disappointing poll numbers. Since then, we have had three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate, all of which I think have worked to the advantage of the Romney/Ryan ticket. The first debate was most critical of course. The 65 million Americans across the country who were watching got to see Romney debate Obama on the issues directly without the media spin and realized that Romney was a smart, capable man with a deep understanding of the issues and an economic plan for the country. The Romney they saw on stage at the first debate in Denver, and in the other two subsequent debates, was nothing like the caricature of Romney that had been beaten into people's heads from months of vicious non-stop Obama attacks on Romney's character, background, and policies. Romney's debate performances demonstrated to independent and undecided voters that he is a legitimate alternative to Obama and managed to improve his personal likability as well.
I find the claims of some pundits, such as Nate Silver of the New York Times, that Obama is a 65% to 70% favorite to win reelection to be highly implausible and even ridiculous. Right now, Romney is four points ahead in the Gallup tracking poll and three points ahead in the Rasmussen tracking poll, and at or above 50% in both polls. Few if any recent national polls have shown Obama above 48%. Under normal circumstances, voters who are still undecided in the final week or two of the campaign generally break for the challenger, and incumbents rarely end up getting a larger share of the vote than their final poll number. The rationale for insisting that Obama is a clear favorite for reelection seems to be that poll numbers in several key swing states, especially Ohio, look more favorable to Obama and the electoral college rather than the popular vote will determine the election winner. However, the electoral college almost always lines up with the popular vote except in cases where the difference between the two candidates' popular vote is 1% or less. Furthermore, polling in swing states like Ohio has been less frequent, has used smaller samples, and has tended in many cases to significantly oversample Democrats. For example, in 2008 Democrats had an 8% advantage in turnout, and some recent Ohio polls have shown a 9% advantage in turnout. This is actually assuming an electorate that is more Democratic than 2008, which is an extremely unrealistic assumption and is belied by early voting statistics and trends.
I am far from certain that Romney will win, but I give him slightly better odds than Obama at this point. Obama has little time left to change the narrative, absent a major "October surprise" or gaffe on Romney's part. Overall, I feel like those of us who want to see Obama defeated have the best opportunity we could have asked for to do that. Romney is a candidate who appeals to the middle and is difficult to paint as an extreme "right-winger." His moral character appears to be blameless and his background and experience show him to be more than qualified to be president. He is an eloquent speaker and an excellent debater -- far better than most other recent Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates. He has had plenty of money to get his message out. And voters have every reason to reject Obama. He has clearly shown himself to be an extreme liberal over the course of his first term. He has utterly failed to solve the biggest problems facing our country, such as an awful economy, high unemployment, a ballooning national debt, a looming entitlement crisis, runaway federal spending, and soaring health care costs. He has offered no positive future vision for the country and run an extremely nasty and negative campaign. I don't know how the choice could be clearer for voters or how there could be any greater incentive for non-liberal voters to reject Obama. If we lose this election, it will be the clearest proof yet (to me at least) that our country is utterly beyond reason and beyond hope.
For those who are political junkies like me and are interested in reading political analysis from a conservative perspective, I recommend this website: http://battlegroundwatch.com/. In less than two weeks, this long campaign will be all over!
Much media attention has been focused on Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's recent debate comment that pregnancies resulting from rape are God's will. Mourdock's statement was certainly foolish and ill-advised -- I think Republican candidates should completely avoid the topic of abortion resulting from rape and I'm not sure why it's so hard for them to do that. Abortions resulting from rape are less than 1% of all abortions performed nationwide and it is the one area of abortion policy in which public opinion is strongly against the pro-life position. Nevertheless, I think Mourdock was very clumsily expressing the belief, held by most Christians, that all human life is the creation and gift of God, which I don't think is an extreme or fringe belief at all. Perhaps he was also expressing the Calvinistic Christian belief that all things that happen, even bad things, are part of God's will.
By contrast, another Senate candidate, Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, recently expressed the opinion that human life begins at birth. In my opinion, this is a far more extreme opinion than the one expressed by Mourdock and is aggressively anti-science. The notion that a baby does not become human or alive until it comes through the birth canal is laughable. Yet, I'm sure most or all of my readers have never heard of this story, largely because the overwhelmingly pro-choice media buried it. Republicans are not the only ones who make stupid statements, but they are the only ones who are unable to get away with those stupid statements.
Even though I live in a state where there are no competitive statewide elections, I have been seeing and hearing a lot of Washington media market TV and radio campaign ads targeting Virginia voters in the president and Senate races. It is not an exaggeration to say that a clear majority of the Democratic ads I have heard are focused on abortion. Of course, they never mention the word "abortion," preferring to use euphemisms like "women's health care" and "women's rights to make their own choices about their bodies," but it is clear what they are really talking about. The same focus was clearly on display at the Democratic National Convention this year. With all the challenges our country faces domestically and on the world stage, the primary topic of conversation for the Democrats appears to be a celebration of abortion. I know -- or at least know of -- evangelical Christians who are planning to vote for Obama, and it is beyond me how they can rationalize voting for a candidate whose identity is completely wrapped up in abortion.
One of the things that frustrates me as well is that Republicans are such incredible wusses when it comes to the topic of abortion. There is no reason this issue should work to the Democrats' advantage, given the fact that more Americans actually identify as pro-life than as pro-choice and studies of past presidential elections have shown that a majority of single-issue abortion voters vote pro-life rather than pro-choice. I understand that Romney and congressional Republican candidates don't want to make abortion the centerpiece of their campaigns, given the preeminence of the economy in most voters' minds, but I don't think they should be afraid to fight back on the issue when they are attacked. For example, Obama attacked Romney for being against women because of his opposition to taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood several times in the second debate, and I think Romney should have responded to it at least once instead of letting the claim stand that he was against women. If Obama is going to hammer Romney on abortion, why shouldn't Romney respond with an ad pointing out how extreme Obama is on abortion, or at least asking why Obama is obsessed with the issue with unemployment at around 8%? If Obama is going to demand that Romney disassociate himself from Mourdock's comments, why shouldn't Romney demand that Obama disassociate himself from Murphy's comments about human life beginning at birth? I think the GOP is unwise to entirely cede this issue to the Democrats.
So, where does the presidential race stand? I think it's not looking so bad for Romney right now. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post encouraging conservatives to keep their chin up despite disappointing poll numbers. Since then, we have had three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate, all of which I think have worked to the advantage of the Romney/Ryan ticket. The first debate was most critical of course. The 65 million Americans across the country who were watching got to see Romney debate Obama on the issues directly without the media spin and realized that Romney was a smart, capable man with a deep understanding of the issues and an economic plan for the country. The Romney they saw on stage at the first debate in Denver, and in the other two subsequent debates, was nothing like the caricature of Romney that had been beaten into people's heads from months of vicious non-stop Obama attacks on Romney's character, background, and policies. Romney's debate performances demonstrated to independent and undecided voters that he is a legitimate alternative to Obama and managed to improve his personal likability as well.
I find the claims of some pundits, such as Nate Silver of the New York Times, that Obama is a 65% to 70% favorite to win reelection to be highly implausible and even ridiculous. Right now, Romney is four points ahead in the Gallup tracking poll and three points ahead in the Rasmussen tracking poll, and at or above 50% in both polls. Few if any recent national polls have shown Obama above 48%. Under normal circumstances, voters who are still undecided in the final week or two of the campaign generally break for the challenger, and incumbents rarely end up getting a larger share of the vote than their final poll number. The rationale for insisting that Obama is a clear favorite for reelection seems to be that poll numbers in several key swing states, especially Ohio, look more favorable to Obama and the electoral college rather than the popular vote will determine the election winner. However, the electoral college almost always lines up with the popular vote except in cases where the difference between the two candidates' popular vote is 1% or less. Furthermore, polling in swing states like Ohio has been less frequent, has used smaller samples, and has tended in many cases to significantly oversample Democrats. For example, in 2008 Democrats had an 8% advantage in turnout, and some recent Ohio polls have shown a 9% advantage in turnout. This is actually assuming an electorate that is more Democratic than 2008, which is an extremely unrealistic assumption and is belied by early voting statistics and trends.
I am far from certain that Romney will win, but I give him slightly better odds than Obama at this point. Obama has little time left to change the narrative, absent a major "October surprise" or gaffe on Romney's part. Overall, I feel like those of us who want to see Obama defeated have the best opportunity we could have asked for to do that. Romney is a candidate who appeals to the middle and is difficult to paint as an extreme "right-winger." His moral character appears to be blameless and his background and experience show him to be more than qualified to be president. He is an eloquent speaker and an excellent debater -- far better than most other recent Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates. He has had plenty of money to get his message out. And voters have every reason to reject Obama. He has clearly shown himself to be an extreme liberal over the course of his first term. He has utterly failed to solve the biggest problems facing our country, such as an awful economy, high unemployment, a ballooning national debt, a looming entitlement crisis, runaway federal spending, and soaring health care costs. He has offered no positive future vision for the country and run an extremely nasty and negative campaign. I don't know how the choice could be clearer for voters or how there could be any greater incentive for non-liberal voters to reject Obama. If we lose this election, it will be the clearest proof yet (to me at least) that our country is utterly beyond reason and beyond hope.
For those who are political junkies like me and are interested in reading political analysis from a conservative perspective, I recommend this website: http://battlegroundwatch.com/. In less than two weeks, this long campaign will be all over!
Friday, October 19, 2012
A Few Laughs for This Friday Morning
Last night Obama and Romney spoke at a black tie Catholic charity event called the Al Smith Dinner. Here are some lines from that event:
Host Al Smith IV to Obama: "We recognize that you have some challenges this year. It’s never good when your opponent has produced more sons than you have jobs.”
Obama: “I had a lot more energy in the second debate. I was well rested after the nice long nap I had during the first debate.”
Romney: "Speaking of Sesame Street, tonight’s dinner was brought to you by the letter ‘O’ and the number 16 trillion."
Romney: "But the press and I have different jobs. My job is to tell the American people my plans for the country, the press’ job is to make sure no one hears about it."
UPDATE: Here's the video of Romney's entire speech at the dinner. I thought it was great and had me laughing out loud at several points.
Host Al Smith IV to Obama: "We recognize that you have some challenges this year. It’s never good when your opponent has produced more sons than you have jobs.”
Obama: “I had a lot more energy in the second debate. I was well rested after the nice long nap I had during the first debate.”
Romney: "Speaking of Sesame Street, tonight’s dinner was brought to you by the letter ‘O’ and the number 16 trillion."
Romney: "But the press and I have different jobs. My job is to tell the American people my plans for the country, the press’ job is to make sure no one hears about it."
UPDATE: Here's the video of Romney's entire speech at the dinner. I thought it was great and had me laughing out loud at several points.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
100 Reasons to Vote Against Obama
1. Unemployment - Under Obama's economic leadership, the U.S. economy has suffered through 43 straight months with unemployment higher than 8% - the worst unemployment slump since the Great Depression. When you factor in the record number of people who have given up looking for a job and exited the labor force, real unemployment is well into double digits. Even though the official unemployment dropped to 7.8% in September 2012, the economy created only 114,000 new jobs, which is less than half of the number of monthly jobs that should be created in a normal recovery. Real median household income is more than $3,000 less than it was when the recession officially ended in June 2009. Nearly 23 million people are out of work or underemployed -- about 20% of the U.S. workforce. This graph showing the employment percentage of the working-age population over the past six years perfectly sums up the Obama "recovery":
2. Lack of economic growth - Economic growth throughout Obama's presidency has been extremely disappointing, with the gross domestic product only averaging about 1.5% growth per year since 2009 compared to the U.S. post-World War II average of 3.3%. Average growth was 2.4% in 2011 and has been 1.7% so far in 2012, which means that the economic situation is actually getting worse. By comparison, Reagan inherited a similarly awful economy, but his pro-growth policies turned the economy around so dramatically that by his third and fourth years in office GDP was growing at 4.5% and 7.2%, respectively. Obama's policies on everything from taxes to regulations to health care mandates to debt to energy have stifled rather than encouraged economic growth, and the results are painfully clear.
3. Deficits & Debt - When he first took office in 2009, Obama promised to cut the deficit in half to about $500 billion by the end of his first term in office (and reiterated that promise in 2010 and 2011). Obama spectacularly failed to keep that promise, and instead the government has run deficits exceeding $1 trillion for all four years of his presidency (with the 2013 deficit under his plan projected to be more of the same). The reasons for this are policies that have stifled economic growth and unprecedented levels of federal spending. As a result of these record deficits, Obama has dramatically increased our national debt from $11 trillion to more than $16 trillion in less than four years. For the first time in our nation's history, our debt exceeds our GDP, which threatens our long-term stability. Once debt reaches a certain level, it starts to slow economic growth, and this can trigger a dangerous cycle of decreased revenues, increasing debt, and ballooning interest payments. The European debt crisis is an example of what can happen.
4. Entitlement reform - Our country is facing a looming fiscal crisis due to our rapidly expanding national debt, and the primary cause of our increasing debt is the runaway growth of government entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Medicare, in particular, threatens our country's future solvency. The percentage of our economy spent on Medicare is five times larger than it was 40 years ago, and by 2035 Medicare spending is projected to be double the share of the economy that it is today. If this program is not reformed in a sensible way -- and soon -- then our government will either be forced to drastically cut benefits to seniors or sink into bankruptcy under its massive load of debt. And yet, Obama has done absolutely nothing to address the issue of entitlements, other than exacerbate the fiscal crisis by creating a massive new health care entitlement. While demagoguing Republican budget plans that make an honest attempt to address the entitlement problem under Paul Ryan's leadership, Obama has offered no ideas and proposed no meaningful reforms of Social Security or Medicare. His only strategy seems to be to run out the clock and leave the problem for someone else to deal with. This is the opposite of leadership.
5. Passage of ObamaCare - Obama and his allies forced their landmark health care bill through in a very corrupt and partisan fashion. During the 2008 campaign Obama promised all health care negotiations would be televised on C-Span, but he broke that promise and kept Democratic negotiations behind closed doors. In the process of making the bill law, Obama and his allies bought off wavering members of Congress and health care industry lobbying groups with sweetheart deals; excluded Republican ideas from the bill; dramatically limited debate and amendments; forced votes in the middle of the night and on Christmas Eve; resorted to all sorts of parliamentary tricks such as "deem and pass," circumvention of the committee process, secret amendments, and reconciliation; and in the end passed an overhaul of our entire health care system, on a purely partisan vote, that was nearly 3,000 pages long and was not read by many members who voted for it.
6. Irresponsible long-term budget plan - Obama's 2013 budget plan calls for additional short-term stimulus spending that is expected to increase economic growth in the next year or two. However, due to high levels of federal spending, debt, and taxes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's plan will reduce economic growth by anywhere from 0.5% to 2.2% after five years. According to the CBO, these reduced levels of economic growth could also contribute to deficit increases of as much as $4 trillion over the next decade. Obama's plan irresponsibly projects deficits as far as the eye can see and never balances the federal budget, which stands in sharp contrast to Romney's plan which calls for a balanced budget by 2020.
7. $800 billion stimulus bill - The massive emergency economic stimulus bill that Obama engineered at the start of his presidency proved to be a colossal waste of taxpayer money. The bill was filled with corruption, with key political allies of the president receiving sizable chunks of money for their businesses in the form of grants and loans. Several billion went to foreign-owned companies. Only about 3% of the total spending in the bill went to fund infrastructure and highway projects, which were supposed to be the point of the bill. Even though it was rammed through as an emergency measure, six months after it was passed less than 20% of the money had been spent. The government website tracking how the stimulus money was spent showed jobs created or saved in 440 non-existent congressional districts! One scholarly study found that the stimulus money created or saved about 450,000 state and local government jobs but destroyed or forestalled about 1,000,000 private sector jobs, and another economist estimated that each job created by the stimulus cost an average of $650,000. Despite its size, Obama's stimulus bill, like previous attempts by Japan in the 1990's and by the U.S. under the New Deal, proved to be completely ineffective at jumpstarting the economy.
8. Job-killing regulations on business - The Obama Administration's EPA has proposed many new regulations that harm businesses and kill jobs. Among them are new standards for utility plants that could shut down hundreds of fossil fuel powered facilities and increase electricity costs for Americans by up to 24%, stricter emissions standards for boilers that will add $10-$20 billion in additional costs to businesses and could cost 60,000 to 200,000 jobs, stringent new cost-prohibitive rules for the cement industry that have already led to construction layoffs and could push many American jobs overseas, and the first ever national restrictions on coal ash which are forecasted to close many coal plants and cost up to 100,000 jobs. These are just a few tangible examples of how Obama's policies are harming employment and hindering our country's economic recovery. A Heritage Foundation study found that the costs of government regulations to business were five times higher under the first three years of the Obama Administration than under the first three years of the Bush Administration.
9. Federal spending - Despite the claims of some experts to the contrary, Obama has presided over an explosion of federal spending. There have been only two other times since World War II in which spending as a percentage of GDP has been as high as it has been for all four years of the Obama Adminstration. Spending as a percentage of the U.S. economy shot up from 20.8% in 2008 (Bush's last year in office) to 25.2% in 2009 (Obama's first year in office) and has remained above 24% through 2012 -- and that does not even take into account that Obama's budget consistently proposed higher spending than the amount actually approved by Congress. However, despite this binge in domestic spending, Obama has proposed potentially devastating cuts to our military. His budget announced in January 2012 called for $500 billion in defense cuts, which are coupled with an additional $500 billion in automatic "sequestration" cuts scheduled to take place in January of next year. The cuts would reduce the size of our Army and Marine Corp by 10-15% and take away our ability to be involved in two military conflicts simultaneously. Obama is perfectly willing to spend wildly, except when the security of the United States (the most important task of the federal government) is at stake.
10. Poverty & food stamps - Throughout his presidency, Obama has criticized the wealthy for not paying their fair share and emphasized the importance of not leaving anyone behind. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that Obama's presidency has failed miserably in helping people out of poverty. Over the past two years, more than 46 million people (15% of the U.S. population) have been living below the poverty line -- the highest number in more than 50 years. Median household income has also been declining over the past two years while the gap between rich and poor has increased. This has coincided with an increase in government dependency, as more Americans are now on food stamps (nearly 47 million people) than ever before in our history and food stamp spending has doubled since Obama took office. Based on these facts, it is difficult to argue that Obama's anti-growth, government-centered policies have done much to help the neediest among us.
2. Lack of economic growth - Economic growth throughout Obama's presidency has been extremely disappointing, with the gross domestic product only averaging about 1.5% growth per year since 2009 compared to the U.S. post-World War II average of 3.3%. Average growth was 2.4% in 2011 and has been 1.7% so far in 2012, which means that the economic situation is actually getting worse. By comparison, Reagan inherited a similarly awful economy, but his pro-growth policies turned the economy around so dramatically that by his third and fourth years in office GDP was growing at 4.5% and 7.2%, respectively. Obama's policies on everything from taxes to regulations to health care mandates to debt to energy have stifled rather than encouraged economic growth, and the results are painfully clear.
3. Deficits & Debt - When he first took office in 2009, Obama promised to cut the deficit in half to about $500 billion by the end of his first term in office (and reiterated that promise in 2010 and 2011). Obama spectacularly failed to keep that promise, and instead the government has run deficits exceeding $1 trillion for all four years of his presidency (with the 2013 deficit under his plan projected to be more of the same). The reasons for this are policies that have stifled economic growth and unprecedented levels of federal spending. As a result of these record deficits, Obama has dramatically increased our national debt from $11 trillion to more than $16 trillion in less than four years. For the first time in our nation's history, our debt exceeds our GDP, which threatens our long-term stability. Once debt reaches a certain level, it starts to slow economic growth, and this can trigger a dangerous cycle of decreased revenues, increasing debt, and ballooning interest payments. The European debt crisis is an example of what can happen.
4. Entitlement reform - Our country is facing a looming fiscal crisis due to our rapidly expanding national debt, and the primary cause of our increasing debt is the runaway growth of government entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Medicare, in particular, threatens our country's future solvency. The percentage of our economy spent on Medicare is five times larger than it was 40 years ago, and by 2035 Medicare spending is projected to be double the share of the economy that it is today. If this program is not reformed in a sensible way -- and soon -- then our government will either be forced to drastically cut benefits to seniors or sink into bankruptcy under its massive load of debt. And yet, Obama has done absolutely nothing to address the issue of entitlements, other than exacerbate the fiscal crisis by creating a massive new health care entitlement. While demagoguing Republican budget plans that make an honest attempt to address the entitlement problem under Paul Ryan's leadership, Obama has offered no ideas and proposed no meaningful reforms of Social Security or Medicare. His only strategy seems to be to run out the clock and leave the problem for someone else to deal with. This is the opposite of leadership.
5. Passage of ObamaCare - Obama and his allies forced their landmark health care bill through in a very corrupt and partisan fashion. During the 2008 campaign Obama promised all health care negotiations would be televised on C-Span, but he broke that promise and kept Democratic negotiations behind closed doors. In the process of making the bill law, Obama and his allies bought off wavering members of Congress and health care industry lobbying groups with sweetheart deals; excluded Republican ideas from the bill; dramatically limited debate and amendments; forced votes in the middle of the night and on Christmas Eve; resorted to all sorts of parliamentary tricks such as "deem and pass," circumvention of the committee process, secret amendments, and reconciliation; and in the end passed an overhaul of our entire health care system, on a purely partisan vote, that was nearly 3,000 pages long and was not read by many members who voted for it.
6. Irresponsible long-term budget plan - Obama's 2013 budget plan calls for additional short-term stimulus spending that is expected to increase economic growth in the next year or two. However, due to high levels of federal spending, debt, and taxes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's plan will reduce economic growth by anywhere from 0.5% to 2.2% after five years. According to the CBO, these reduced levels of economic growth could also contribute to deficit increases of as much as $4 trillion over the next decade. Obama's plan irresponsibly projects deficits as far as the eye can see and never balances the federal budget, which stands in sharp contrast to Romney's plan which calls for a balanced budget by 2020.
7. $800 billion stimulus bill - The massive emergency economic stimulus bill that Obama engineered at the start of his presidency proved to be a colossal waste of taxpayer money. The bill was filled with corruption, with key political allies of the president receiving sizable chunks of money for their businesses in the form of grants and loans. Several billion went to foreign-owned companies. Only about 3% of the total spending in the bill went to fund infrastructure and highway projects, which were supposed to be the point of the bill. Even though it was rammed through as an emergency measure, six months after it was passed less than 20% of the money had been spent. The government website tracking how the stimulus money was spent showed jobs created or saved in 440 non-existent congressional districts! One scholarly study found that the stimulus money created or saved about 450,000 state and local government jobs but destroyed or forestalled about 1,000,000 private sector jobs, and another economist estimated that each job created by the stimulus cost an average of $650,000. Despite its size, Obama's stimulus bill, like previous attempts by Japan in the 1990's and by the U.S. under the New Deal, proved to be completely ineffective at jumpstarting the economy.
8. Job-killing regulations on business - The Obama Administration's EPA has proposed many new regulations that harm businesses and kill jobs. Among them are new standards for utility plants that could shut down hundreds of fossil fuel powered facilities and increase electricity costs for Americans by up to 24%, stricter emissions standards for boilers that will add $10-$20 billion in additional costs to businesses and could cost 60,000 to 200,000 jobs, stringent new cost-prohibitive rules for the cement industry that have already led to construction layoffs and could push many American jobs overseas, and the first ever national restrictions on coal ash which are forecasted to close many coal plants and cost up to 100,000 jobs. These are just a few tangible examples of how Obama's policies are harming employment and hindering our country's economic recovery. A Heritage Foundation study found that the costs of government regulations to business were five times higher under the first three years of the Obama Administration than under the first three years of the Bush Administration.
9. Federal spending - Despite the claims of some experts to the contrary, Obama has presided over an explosion of federal spending. There have been only two other times since World War II in which spending as a percentage of GDP has been as high as it has been for all four years of the Obama Adminstration. Spending as a percentage of the U.S. economy shot up from 20.8% in 2008 (Bush's last year in office) to 25.2% in 2009 (Obama's first year in office) and has remained above 24% through 2012 -- and that does not even take into account that Obama's budget consistently proposed higher spending than the amount actually approved by Congress. However, despite this binge in domestic spending, Obama has proposed potentially devastating cuts to our military. His budget announced in January 2012 called for $500 billion in defense cuts, which are coupled with an additional $500 billion in automatic "sequestration" cuts scheduled to take place in January of next year. The cuts would reduce the size of our Army and Marine Corp by 10-15% and take away our ability to be involved in two military conflicts simultaneously. Obama is perfectly willing to spend wildly, except when the security of the United States (the most important task of the federal government) is at stake.
10. Poverty & food stamps - Throughout his presidency, Obama has criticized the wealthy for not paying their fair share and emphasized the importance of not leaving anyone behind. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that Obama's presidency has failed miserably in helping people out of poverty. Over the past two years, more than 46 million people (15% of the U.S. population) have been living below the poverty line -- the highest number in more than 50 years. Median household income has also been declining over the past two years while the gap between rich and poor has increased. This has coincided with an increase in government dependency, as more Americans are now on food stamps (nearly 47 million people) than ever before in our history and food stamp spending has doubled since Obama took office. Based on these facts, it is difficult to argue that Obama's anti-growth, government-centered policies have done much to help the neediest among us.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Keep Your Chin Up!
Just wanted to comment that my posting has been rather light over the past few weeks of this election season, and part of the reason is that I have been working feverishly on a comprehensive post (complete with supporting links) entitled "100 Reasons to Vote Against Obama." I hope to have it completed in about a week or so.
I want to encourage any readers who might be feeling discouraged about this election to keep their chin up. There have been a lot of national and state polls lately that have looked bad for Romney, and the media has been spinning that Obama is the heavy favorite. And of course the media and the Democrats have had a field day with those unfortunate Romney comments about the 47%. (By the way, Romney was correct that nearly half of Americans pay no income taxes. And he is correct that a solid 45% of Americans will vote for Obama no matter. He is also correct that a substantial and growing percentage of Americans are dependent on government now, although I don't think it is anywhere near 50% yet. The problem was that Romney falsely assumed that all three of these groups are equal and fully overlapping. They are most certainly not.)
Keep in mind a few things. First, most of these polls that show sizable Obama leads are badly oversampling Democrats. In some cases, they are assuming an electorate significantly more Democratic than 2008, which was one of the most favorable Democratic elections in the modern era! Second, in many of these polls Obama's job approval and head-to-head numbers are below 50%. There are exceptions, but generally undecided voters break toward the challenger and it is rare for an incumbent president to get a share of the vote that is higher than his job approval number. Obama's job approval is very low with undecided voters. Third, there are still four key presidential and vice-presidential debates which could have a big impact on this race. The first of those is tonight. Fourth, most pollsters have found that GOP enthusiasm to vote is higher this year than Democratic enthusiasm, despite a Democratic convention that threw a lot of red meat to the base. No matter what excuses Democrats may make for Obama's performance with regard to the economy, it's hard for the more honest ones to feel too much excitement about voting for another four years of the same when unemployment stubbornly remains above 8%.
I still believe the fundamentals of this race favor Romney, despite increasingly blatant attempts by the media to swing the election toward Obama. For now, I give Romney about a 50/50 chance to win, but he needs to perform strongly in the upcoming debates to close the sale with undecided voters.
I want to encourage any readers who might be feeling discouraged about this election to keep their chin up. There have been a lot of national and state polls lately that have looked bad for Romney, and the media has been spinning that Obama is the heavy favorite. And of course the media and the Democrats have had a field day with those unfortunate Romney comments about the 47%. (By the way, Romney was correct that nearly half of Americans pay no income taxes. And he is correct that a solid 45% of Americans will vote for Obama no matter. He is also correct that a substantial and growing percentage of Americans are dependent on government now, although I don't think it is anywhere near 50% yet. The problem was that Romney falsely assumed that all three of these groups are equal and fully overlapping. They are most certainly not.)
Keep in mind a few things. First, most of these polls that show sizable Obama leads are badly oversampling Democrats. In some cases, they are assuming an electorate significantly more Democratic than 2008, which was one of the most favorable Democratic elections in the modern era! Second, in many of these polls Obama's job approval and head-to-head numbers are below 50%. There are exceptions, but generally undecided voters break toward the challenger and it is rare for an incumbent president to get a share of the vote that is higher than his job approval number. Obama's job approval is very low with undecided voters. Third, there are still four key presidential and vice-presidential debates which could have a big impact on this race. The first of those is tonight. Fourth, most pollsters have found that GOP enthusiasm to vote is higher this year than Democratic enthusiasm, despite a Democratic convention that threw a lot of red meat to the base. No matter what excuses Democrats may make for Obama's performance with regard to the economy, it's hard for the more honest ones to feel too much excitement about voting for another four years of the same when unemployment stubbornly remains above 8%.
I still believe the fundamentals of this race favor Romney, despite increasingly blatant attempts by the media to swing the election toward Obama. For now, I give Romney about a 50/50 chance to win, but he needs to perform strongly in the upcoming debates to close the sale with undecided voters.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Overheard at the Democratic Convention
I don't think I've ever watched more than 5 minutes or so of any Democratic Convention prior to this year. But I decided to make a conscious effort to watch at least some of the speeches this time, because I wanted to be able to comment intelligently on the convention and I didn't think I could do that fairly without watching at least some of it. And I honestly wanted to be able to compare the two conventions without depending solely on the opinions of others. It was tough but I managed it. I watched more than an hour of speeches each of the first two nights of the convention, although I missed both Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton. They were both speaking quite late, and I knew I would read and hear plenty about their speeches the next day. I was more interested in hearing the speeches outside of the 10:00 hour anyway, because those are the ones that often slip under the public radar and give a more honest impression of what is really going on at the convention. I found much of what I saw to be disgusting, even sickening. The thought that close to half of Americans identify themselves with this political party leads me to the inevitable conclusion that we are doomed as a country.
2. "War on Women" Theme
There was a huge emphasis on appealing to women at the Democratic convention, at least the portions of it that I watched. I admit I saw a little of this at the GOP convention as well, especially from Mitt and Ann Romney. But the Democrats were trying to develop this major theme that Republicans are waging a war on women and want to take away all their rights. Bizarrely, actress Kerry Washington claimed that Republicans were trying to take away women's rights to vote, to get an education, to access health care, and to receive equal pay (and was wildly applauded for it too). Ironically, a video clip of an Obama speech shown early in the convention warned that women "are not an interest group." Yet, throughout the entire convention, women were treated like an interest group. They were assumed to be a monolithic group whose chief concerns are abortion on demand and free contraception guaranteed by the government. Karol Markowicz has a great piece in the New York Post in which she notes the condescension in all of this "painful pandering." Yet, the Party of Women did a lengthy tribute video showcasing the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who drunkenly drove a woman into the bay and then left her to drown. And they chose noted respecter-of-women Bill Clinton to give the keynote address for the second evening of the convention. Do they think women don't care about this kind of behavior from their politicians as long as those politicians hold the right position on abortion?
3. Class Warfare
And then there was a heaping dose of class warfare. I heard repeated attacks on Mitt Romney's personal wealth from several different speakers. One of the worst offenders was former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who claimed that Romney was unpatriotic for earning overseas profits and having overseas investments and who made nasty and completely unfounded accusations about what Romney was hiding in his unreleased tax returns. He also lied by claiming that Romney's tax plan would eliminate capital gains taxes on Romney's own income. Michelle Obama spoke later that evening and assured everyone that she and her husband have never resented wealth. OKKKK...she must have missed the rest of the convention. On the second night, three former Bain Capital employees spoke and talked about how cruel and heartless Romney was for taking over their companies and then laying them off. (Fact-checkers discovered that one of the three was a union negotiator who never even worked for Bain.) Ironically, they kept saying that they understood that in the real world there are winners and losers and that sometimes it is inevitable that unprofitable companies must shut down, but they turned around and attacked Romney in the next breath for participating in such capitalist activities. and "fiscal responsibility." Throughout the convention there were allusions to "fairness" and Republican attacks on the "working class" (by such luminaries as the presidents of the UAW and the AFL-CIO) and claims that the "system was rigged" against those working class people (Elizabeth Warren). It was grievance politics at its finest.
4. Controversy Over God and Jerusalem
One thing that deservedly got a lot of attention was the brouhaha at the convention over changes to the party platform. It came out on the first day of the convention that Democrats had removed the only remaining reference to God in the party platform (it was a reference to people realizing their "God-given potential" and they took out the word "God-given") and had also removed language in the platform that recognized Jerusalem as the legitimate capital of Israel, called for the increasing isolation of terrorist group Hamas, and acknowledged the right of Israel to exist as a nation. The platform also inserted wording that said the Democrats support legal and taxpayer-funded third-trimester abortion. The removal of God and Jerusalem from the platform, in particular, garnered a lot of attention. Senator Richard Durbin flipped out when asked about these changes on Fox News and started ranting about how people were trying to claim the Democratic Party was "godless." Realizing that these changes made their party look extreme, the Democratic leadership decided to call for a voice vote to reinsert the God and Jerusalem references into the platform. The vote required a two-thirds majority vote of "yes" for the motion to pass, but the delegates on the convention floor appeared to be equally divided between yes and no. The presiding officer seemed startled and unsure of what to do so he tried the vote again two more times, with the exact same results. After the third time, he summarily announced that two-thirds of the delegates had voted yes and claimed the motion had passed, and the crowd booed loudly in response. This resulted in the headline "Democrats boo God, Jerusalem." Of course, it's one of the worst-kept secrets in politics that many liberal activists are hostile toward the state of Israel. Hadley Arkes pointed out on National Review Online that "God-given" rights are a key component of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most fundamental beliefs underlying the American republic. If we give ourselves rights or if those rights are granted to us by leaders or governments, they can just as easily be taken away. The reason our rights are unalienable and permanent is that they are given to us by our Creator God. Once we lose that notion of human dignity and worth due to the image of God, our rights are in grave danger.
Here is a video of the floor vote and reaction of the delegates:
5. Sandra Fluke
1. Celebration of Abortion & Homosexuality
One of the complaints often leveled against conservatives is that they are obsessed with abortion and homosexuality. Well. I watched most of the speeches at the Republican Convention -- and not just the 10:00 prime time speeches either -- and I barely heard anything about either abortion or homosexuality the entire time. The ONLY speakers I heard who made more than a passing mention of either topic were Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. (Actually, they didn't say anything about homosexuality, but did defend traditional marriage and the family.) By the way, I am not criticizing them for this -- I was truly glad to hear at least a couple of speakers willing to defend the party's positions on these issues! But I hardly see how Republicans can be accused of being obsessed with these topics. However, I did find out this week that there is one political party that is obsessed with abortion and homosexuality -- the Democratic Party. As one pundit quipped, the Democrats only moved the venue for their Dead Baby Fiesta out of the Planned Parenthood clinic up the street because it wasn't big enough to accommodate the crowds. Of course, they use clever euphemisms for abortion like "women's rights to control their own bodies" and "reproductive choice" and make veiled references to same-sex marriage with phrases like "being free to love whomever you choose." Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America gave a strident speech entirely about abortion. She said every woman should be able to abort her child "with dignity," noted that pro-abortion Obama "cares deeply about the next generation of women" (the irony of that statement is entirely lost on her I'm sure), and ended up with "a rousing encouragement to talk to strangers about reproductive rights. That should go smoothly" (thanks, Daniel Foster of NRO!).
Same-sex marriage (couched in language like "being free to love whomever you choose") was also front and center, led by gay Representative Jared Polis who spoke repeatedly of the son he and his partner are raising. In fact, every speech and major video presentation I watched over an hour and 15 minute period on the first night, with one or two exceptions, included a prominent mention or discussion of both abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as most of the later speeches that I did not watch. (The moral preening by the Democrats on the same-sex marriage issue is especially amusing, given the fact that Obama only switched his position on this issue a few short months ago.) Abortion and contraception remained a big focus of the convention on the second night, which featured the president of Planned Parenthood, Sandra Fluke (more on her later), and the "women of the Senate."
One of the complaints often leveled against conservatives is that they are obsessed with abortion and homosexuality. Well. I watched most of the speeches at the Republican Convention -- and not just the 10:00 prime time speeches either -- and I barely heard anything about either abortion or homosexuality the entire time. The ONLY speakers I heard who made more than a passing mention of either topic were Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. (Actually, they didn't say anything about homosexuality, but did defend traditional marriage and the family.) By the way, I am not criticizing them for this -- I was truly glad to hear at least a couple of speakers willing to defend the party's positions on these issues! But I hardly see how Republicans can be accused of being obsessed with these topics. However, I did find out this week that there is one political party that is obsessed with abortion and homosexuality -- the Democratic Party. As one pundit quipped, the Democrats only moved the venue for their Dead Baby Fiesta out of the Planned Parenthood clinic up the street because it wasn't big enough to accommodate the crowds. Of course, they use clever euphemisms for abortion like "women's rights to control their own bodies" and "reproductive choice" and make veiled references to same-sex marriage with phrases like "being free to love whomever you choose." Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America gave a strident speech entirely about abortion. She said every woman should be able to abort her child "with dignity," noted that pro-abortion Obama "cares deeply about the next generation of women" (the irony of that statement is entirely lost on her I'm sure), and ended up with "a rousing encouragement to talk to strangers about reproductive rights. That should go smoothly" (thanks, Daniel Foster of NRO!).
Same-sex marriage (couched in language like "being free to love whomever you choose") was also front and center, led by gay Representative Jared Polis who spoke repeatedly of the son he and his partner are raising. In fact, every speech and major video presentation I watched over an hour and 15 minute period on the first night, with one or two exceptions, included a prominent mention or discussion of both abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as most of the later speeches that I did not watch. (The moral preening by the Democrats on the same-sex marriage issue is especially amusing, given the fact that Obama only switched his position on this issue a few short months ago.) Abortion and contraception remained a big focus of the convention on the second night, which featured the president of Planned Parenthood, Sandra Fluke (more on her later), and the "women of the Senate."
Something that especially stood out to me from the convention is that when Democrats refer to "individual freedom/choice" or "getting the government out of people's lives" they are talking about abortion and gay marriage -- exclusively. Keenan was introduced by one Maria Ciano ("a stay-at-home mom and former Republican voter"!) who wailed that Romney & Ryan don't believe in small government because they "want the government to have a say in [her] family planning" and "want to deny [her] the power to make the most personal decisions about [her] life." Former Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island gave a speech saying Obama is the right choice for "conservatives" (apparently he delusionally imagines himself to be one) because he believes in individual freedom. You guessed it -- his two individual freedom examples consisted of abortion on demand and same-sex marriage. Choice, freedom, and small government apparently do not extend to health care or education or conscience protections for religious employers or union membership or taxation or energy policy or regulations on small business or nanny state regulations on junk food. Conservatives, on the other hand, want choice and freedom in all these areas and many more. We just do not think choice and personal freedom justify killing a human life or redefining an ancient social institution critical to the wellbeing of our children. Reason TV has a great video demonstrating the extent to which Democratic Convention delegates actually believe in "choice":
2. "War on Women" Theme
There was a huge emphasis on appealing to women at the Democratic convention, at least the portions of it that I watched. I admit I saw a little of this at the GOP convention as well, especially from Mitt and Ann Romney. But the Democrats were trying to develop this major theme that Republicans are waging a war on women and want to take away all their rights. Bizarrely, actress Kerry Washington claimed that Republicans were trying to take away women's rights to vote, to get an education, to access health care, and to receive equal pay (and was wildly applauded for it too). Ironically, a video clip of an Obama speech shown early in the convention warned that women "are not an interest group." Yet, throughout the entire convention, women were treated like an interest group. They were assumed to be a monolithic group whose chief concerns are abortion on demand and free contraception guaranteed by the government. Karol Markowicz has a great piece in the New York Post in which she notes the condescension in all of this "painful pandering." Yet, the Party of Women did a lengthy tribute video showcasing the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who drunkenly drove a woman into the bay and then left her to drown. And they chose noted respecter-of-women Bill Clinton to give the keynote address for the second evening of the convention. Do they think women don't care about this kind of behavior from their politicians as long as those politicians hold the right position on abortion?
3. Class Warfare
And then there was a heaping dose of class warfare. I heard repeated attacks on Mitt Romney's personal wealth from several different speakers. One of the worst offenders was former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who claimed that Romney was unpatriotic for earning overseas profits and having overseas investments and who made nasty and completely unfounded accusations about what Romney was hiding in his unreleased tax returns. He also lied by claiming that Romney's tax plan would eliminate capital gains taxes on Romney's own income. Michelle Obama spoke later that evening and assured everyone that she and her husband have never resented wealth. OKKKK...she must have missed the rest of the convention. On the second night, three former Bain Capital employees spoke and talked about how cruel and heartless Romney was for taking over their companies and then laying them off. (Fact-checkers discovered that one of the three was a union negotiator who never even worked for Bain.) Ironically, they kept saying that they understood that in the real world there are winners and losers and that sometimes it is inevitable that unprofitable companies must shut down, but they turned around and attacked Romney in the next breath for participating in such capitalist activities. and "fiscal responsibility." Throughout the convention there were allusions to "fairness" and Republican attacks on the "working class" (by such luminaries as the presidents of the UAW and the AFL-CIO) and claims that the "system was rigged" against those working class people (Elizabeth Warren). It was grievance politics at its finest.
4. Controversy Over God and Jerusalem
One thing that deservedly got a lot of attention was the brouhaha at the convention over changes to the party platform. It came out on the first day of the convention that Democrats had removed the only remaining reference to God in the party platform (it was a reference to people realizing their "God-given potential" and they took out the word "God-given") and had also removed language in the platform that recognized Jerusalem as the legitimate capital of Israel, called for the increasing isolation of terrorist group Hamas, and acknowledged the right of Israel to exist as a nation. The platform also inserted wording that said the Democrats support legal and taxpayer-funded third-trimester abortion. The removal of God and Jerusalem from the platform, in particular, garnered a lot of attention. Senator Richard Durbin flipped out when asked about these changes on Fox News and started ranting about how people were trying to claim the Democratic Party was "godless." Realizing that these changes made their party look extreme, the Democratic leadership decided to call for a voice vote to reinsert the God and Jerusalem references into the platform. The vote required a two-thirds majority vote of "yes" for the motion to pass, but the delegates on the convention floor appeared to be equally divided between yes and no. The presiding officer seemed startled and unsure of what to do so he tried the vote again two more times, with the exact same results. After the third time, he summarily announced that two-thirds of the delegates had voted yes and claimed the motion had passed, and the crowd booed loudly in response. This resulted in the headline "Democrats boo God, Jerusalem." Of course, it's one of the worst-kept secrets in politics that many liberal activists are hostile toward the state of Israel. Hadley Arkes pointed out on National Review Online that "God-given" rights are a key component of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most fundamental beliefs underlying the American republic. If we give ourselves rights or if those rights are granted to us by leaders or governments, they can just as easily be taken away. The reason our rights are unalienable and permanent is that they are given to us by our Creator God. Once we lose that notion of human dignity and worth due to the image of God, our rights are in grave danger.
Here is a video of the floor vote and reaction of the delegates:
I watched Sandra Fluke's speech on the second night of the convention. I was stunned that this woman was given not just a speaking slot, but a coveted prime-time speaking slot during the 10:00 hour, just a few minutes before keynoter Bill Clinton. What is her qualification for being a prime-time speaker? She's a 30-year-old graduate student and "activist" with no major accomplishments or life experiences other than law school. She's only famous because she gave laughable testimony before a few Democratic congressmen about the financial hardships she and her rich friends faced because the health insurance provided for them by their Catholic law school did not cover their birth control, and she was turned into a sympathetic victim because Rush Limbaugh insulted her. All this happened months ago, and the Democratic Party is still trying to use her as a tool in their "war on women" meme. Her speech seemed angry to me and she continued to milk her victim status, complaining about how she was "verbally attacked" and attacking Romney for not defending her. The whole spectacle sickened me to my stomach...it all seemed so silly and childish and unserious. I was glad to see I was not the only one who felt this way about her speech. Jay Nordlinger expressed so many of my feelings in his excellent NRO post about her. And I was surprised to read these strong words from usually mild-mannered Peggy Noonan:
What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool. And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.
6. Other Observations
Lincoln Chafee, former Republican, said he left the GOP and now supports Obama because he believes in "fiscal responsibility"! I'm really curious about what his definition of "fiscal responsibility is . . . . The DNC showed a video the first night of the convention that had this priceless line: "Government is the only thing we all belong to." Who knew we were all owned by the government? . . . . Several speakers, including first night keynote speaker Julian Castro, claimed that Americans are better off now than they were four years ago. I can't believe they think this is a winning message . . . . The sheer nastiness and pettiness of the repeated and sometimes personal attacks on Romney really struck me and stood in sharp contrast to the Republican Convention last week. Several of the GOP speakers went out of their way to say that Obama was not a bad person and all attacks on Obama stayed focused on his record. By contrast, Democratic speakers accused Romney and the Republicans of all sorts of ridiculous things. They even used their tribute video of Ted Kennedy to make fun of Romney. And even Obama in his acceptance speech took cheap shots against Romney such as attacking a relatively minor gaffe he made during a trip to London. Democrats clearly demonstrated they have no class . . . . Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the DNC, managed to demonstrate once again her extreme dishonesty and lack of class. During the convention, she claimed in an interview that the Israeli ambassador had told her that Republican attitudes toward Israel were dangerous. When the Israeli ambassador angrily denied ever saying such a thing, Wasserman Schultz subsequently denied ever saying that he had - until an audio tape of her initial claim surfaced. When confronted with her two blatant lies, she refused to apologize . . . . And then there were all the extreme comments made by top delegates. The Palm Beach County Democratic Party Chairman said that fundamentalist Christians want Jews to die. The South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman compared the state's GOP governor Nikki Haley to Hitler's mistress Eva Braun. The chairman of the California delegation compared Paul Ryan to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
I was struck by the crowd at the convention. They seemed so easily manipulated, wildly cheering even the most extreme statements made by the speakers (such as the Republicans wanting to take away women's right to vote). When Nancy Keenan gave a strident, sharp-toned, and flatly prosaic and unemotional speech on abortion, the cameras showed women in the audience crying. I couldn't help but ask myself what was wrong with these people. Daniel Foster of NRO summed up my thoughts this way: "Republicans don’t love Mitt Romney the way Democrats love Barack Obama. And thank God. Interacting with the delegates in Charlotte and watching them on the floor was scary. Not in a I’m-going-to-be-jumped way — they seem like good and decent folks — but in a holy-crap-these-people-worship-this-guy way. I’m pretty Hamiltonian, but I’m constitutionally incapable of revering a politician the way some of these folks revere Obama."
I was struck by the crowd at the convention. They seemed so easily manipulated, wildly cheering even the most extreme statements made by the speakers (such as the Republicans wanting to take away women's right to vote). When Nancy Keenan gave a strident, sharp-toned, and flatly prosaic and unemotional speech on abortion, the cameras showed women in the audience crying. I couldn't help but ask myself what was wrong with these people. Daniel Foster of NRO summed up my thoughts this way: "Republicans don’t love Mitt Romney the way Democrats love Barack Obama. And thank God. Interacting with the delegates in Charlotte and watching them on the floor was scary. Not in a I’m-going-to-be-jumped way — they seem like good and decent folks — but in a holy-crap-these-people-worship-this-guy way. I’m pretty Hamiltonian, but I’m constitutionally incapable of revering a politician the way some of these folks revere Obama."
Bottom line: this was a stridently left-wing convention that reflects the extreme beliefs of the leadership and the base of the Democratic Party. On everything from abortion to health care to illegal immigration to welfare to taxes to same-sex marriage to our free market capitalistic economic system to the power of unions to the role of government to welfare, the party doubled down on left-wing ideology. David Harsanyi summed up the convention pretty well in his column in the New Hampshire Union-Leader. I also liked Peggy Noonan's description of "the Democrats' soft extremism" in her Wall Street Journal column. I will never for the life of me understand how anyone with Christian values or traditional American values would want to be associated with the Democratic Party I saw on display this week in Charlotte.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Republican Convention - Days 2 & 3
I also got to watch the better part of the last two evenings of the Republican convention last week. With the exception of Rand Paul's rousing speech early in the evening in which gave a surprisingly strong endorsement of Romney, the only speeches of the second evening that stood out to me were the final three -- Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan. I was only half paying attention at the beginning of Rice's speech, but started listening more closely when I realized that she was giving a very eloquent speech that was dazzling the crowd. She spoke more about domestic policy, including energy and education policy, than I expected. She spoke movingly of the incredible story of her life, rising from her childhood in segregated Mississippi to become Secretary of State of the United States. Among her best lines were these:
I also watched most of the final night of the convention, which mostly featured a series of tributes from individuals who know Romney personally or who have worked with him professionally. While I do not accept Mormonism as a legitimate form of Christianity, I couldn't help but be impressed by several individuals from Romney's church who movingly described the kindness, compassion, and love which Romney displayed in helping them through some incredibly tragic circumstances. Those testimonies convinced me that Romney is not just a successful businessman, but also a deeply caring person who has spent his life helping others. I was more familiar with Romney's experience founding and growing Bain Capital, turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics, and governing Massachusetts, but still found myself more impressed than I expected with the full weight of Romney's experiences and accomplishments throughout his life. There is no doubt that Romney is a man who is eminently qualified to be president.
In between these tributes and Romney's acceptance speech were wedged two very different speakers: Clint Eastwood (!) and Senator Marco Rubio. Eastwood's "speech" was actually more of an unscripted comedic routine which seemed a bit confused at times but got in some very effective shots at Obama. Eastwood dared to do what no one else at the convention would or could: make fun of Obama (and Biden of course). Despite a couple of crude allusions, I enjoyed the routine and would guess it played much better outside of the beltway than it did with professional pundits. Rubio's speech was somewhat overshadowed by Eastwood but completely met my high expectations. Among the most effective moments of his speech were his comment that "Obama was not a bad person, just a bad president" and his list of Obama's tax-and-spend, socialistic policies followed by the statement that "these are tired and old big government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from." (This last was especially effective coming from the son of Cuban immigrants.)
There was nothing really wrong with Romney's acceptance speech, but I can't say that it excited me very much. Many pundits seemed genuinely impressed with Romney's delivery and even stated that it was the best speech of his career. I guess I have mostly heard Romney speak in debate forums rather than straight speeches, but I didn't find his delivery very impressive. He seemed stiff and out-of-sync with the audience for at least the first half of the speech. He seemed like he was rushing through the speech too much and failing to articulate his words clearly and pause appropriately, although he seemed to relax and did much better in the second half of his remarks. Also, the speech was clearly designed to soften and humanize Romney, which may have appealed to independent and undecided voters but wasn't really what I was looking for. The first half to two-thirds of the speech was pretty non-ideological, but he did finally get more into specifics about his beliefs and policies toward the end of the speech. It was all from 30,000 feet, of course, but you generally don't get too specific in a convention speech anyway. Anyway, I did think Romney drew some effective contrasts between himself and Obama, especially when he contrasted Obama's grandiose promises from 2008 about slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet with his simple, workman-like promises to "help you and your family" by getting the economy moving again.
Although Romney's speech wasn't overly exciting to a staunch partisan like myself, I expect it helped Romney quite a bit with those all-important independent and undecided voters. (He's already convinced me to vote for him.) I don't know how anyone who is not already a hardened partisan could watch the tributes to Romney from people who have known and worked with him and then the speech from Romney himself and conclude that he is anything other than a decent, compassionate, hard-working, trustworthy, and successful man. Certainly it would be hard to conclude he was anything close to that monstrous caricature the Obama campaign has been pushing of a cold, ruthless businessman who destroyed businesses and individuals for the fun of it at Bain Capital while committing felonies and murdering people. If the bar is whether this guy is a reasonable alternative to Obama, he more than crossed that hurdle. If people are looking for someone who is likable and trustworthy, someone they can feel comfortable with on a personal level, I think Romney helped himself significantly with the last night of his convention.
I plan to watch at least a little bit of the Democratic convention this week -- or at least as much of it as I can stomach. I want to try to compare the themes and emphases of the two conventions, as well as the speakers themselves. I already know what I think of the Democratic Party, but I'm interested to see whether they are going to provide any kind of positive case for Obama whatsoever and also how much of an effort they are going to make to appeal to the center. I certainly have seen little of either a positive case or a centrist appeal from this president's campaign so far.
Ours has never been a narrative of grievance and entitlement. We have not believed that I am doing poorly because you are doing well. We have not been envious of one another and jealous of each other’s success. Ours has been a belief in opportunity and a constant battle — long and hard — to extend the benefits of the American dream to all — without regard to circumstances of birth.Susana Martinez, governor of New Mexico and the first female Hispanic governor in the U.S., spoke next and had the crowd and me cracking up with this story:
Before I ran for District Attorney, two Republicans invited my husband and me to lunch. And I knew a party-switch was exactly what they wanted.
So, I told Chuck, we'll be polite, enjoy a free lunch and then say goodbye.
But we talked about issues-they never used the words Republican, or Democrat, conservative or liberal.
We talked about many issues, like welfare - is it a way of life, or a hand-up?
Talked about the size of government -- how much should it tax families and small businesses?
And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, "I'll be damned, we're Republicans!"But I thought the best speech, not just of the night, but of the entire convention, was Paul Ryan's acceptance speech for nomination for Vice President. It was a brilliantly written and substantive speech and was delivered masterfully. It was one of the most devastating critiques of Obama's first term that I have ever heard -- certainly the most effective attack on Obama's record that I heard during the entire convention. Ryan cut through all the noise and explained simply and clearly why Obama has been a failure. And he did so without coming across as nasty or angry. He also managed to sound optimistic about our future and sincere about seeking to address the big problems we face, and he managed to weave in some very personal moments about his family and background as well as some lines that had me laughing out loud. After so many years of having lackluster speakers on the Republican presidential and vice-presidential tickets, it is so refreshing to have someone on the 2012 ticket who can communicate conservative ideas effectively! If you have not had the opportunity to watch Ryan's acceptance speech yet, I highly recommend watching it below:
One sign of the effectiveness of Ryan's speech was the fact that Obama and the media immediately began attacking Ryan for the supposed lies in his speech. A sample media hit job on Ryan is this Yahoo article. Not surprisingly, Yahoo was wrong and Ryan was right. On every one of these points:
- Ryan claimed ObamaCare took $716 billion out of Medicare. That is TRUE. Of course the cuts "do not affect Medicare recipients directly," if by directly you mean that ObamaCare doesn’t literally pull cash out of people’s wallets. ObamaCare takes money away from the Medicare program, which means lower payments to insurance plans and health providers, which means seniors’ health coverage will be directly affected. This is an actual cut to Medicare. The budget endorsed by the Romney-Ryan ticket eliminates those cuts to Medicare. So this cut by Obama would be reversed by Romney.
- Ryan claimed that that the stimulus was political patronage and cronyism that did nothing to get the economy going. That is TRUE. Even Obama was forced to admit those "shovel ready" jobs weren’t so shovel ready after all. Ryan opposed the stimulus bill and voted against it. AFTER IT WAS ALREADY PASSED, he tried to make sure his district wasn’t left out. That doesn’t disprove what Ryan said about the stimulus. It just means that if the stimulus money was going to be spent anyway, he didn’t want his district to be left out. But he didn’t want it to be passed in the first place.
- That plant in Janesville, WI that Ryan mentioned was partially shut down in December 2008, before Obama took office, but it continued production on a much smaller scale until April 2009, when it was permanently and fully closed. Obama made campaign promises about saving the plant, but it was shut down on his watch and never re-opened. Obama made promises he couldn’t keep. What Ryan said was accurate.
- What Ryan said about Obama doing nothing with regard to the debt commissions is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. Ryan voted no on the final findings of the debt commission – that is also true. That was because the commission kept ObamaCare, and Ryan is opposed to ObamaCare. However, Ryan did work with the commission on various ideas and he did propose an alternate budget that incorporated many elements of the Simpson-Bowles commission. His alternate solution was actually praised by Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the commission. Obama, by contrast, completely ignored his own debt commission and proposed another completely unserious budget that did nothing about the debt at all. It got zero votes in both the House and the Senate. While Ryan disagreed with the debt commission’s conclusion, he worked hard to come up with alternate solutions even though he is only one out of 435 House members. Obama is the president with more responsibility than anyone else, and yet did nothing to come up with any serious solutions. Ryan’s attack was not only true, it was also completely fair.
I also watched most of the final night of the convention, which mostly featured a series of tributes from individuals who know Romney personally or who have worked with him professionally. While I do not accept Mormonism as a legitimate form of Christianity, I couldn't help but be impressed by several individuals from Romney's church who movingly described the kindness, compassion, and love which Romney displayed in helping them through some incredibly tragic circumstances. Those testimonies convinced me that Romney is not just a successful businessman, but also a deeply caring person who has spent his life helping others. I was more familiar with Romney's experience founding and growing Bain Capital, turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics, and governing Massachusetts, but still found myself more impressed than I expected with the full weight of Romney's experiences and accomplishments throughout his life. There is no doubt that Romney is a man who is eminently qualified to be president.
In between these tributes and Romney's acceptance speech were wedged two very different speakers: Clint Eastwood (!) and Senator Marco Rubio. Eastwood's "speech" was actually more of an unscripted comedic routine which seemed a bit confused at times but got in some very effective shots at Obama. Eastwood dared to do what no one else at the convention would or could: make fun of Obama (and Biden of course). Despite a couple of crude allusions, I enjoyed the routine and would guess it played much better outside of the beltway than it did with professional pundits. Rubio's speech was somewhat overshadowed by Eastwood but completely met my high expectations. Among the most effective moments of his speech were his comment that "Obama was not a bad person, just a bad president" and his list of Obama's tax-and-spend, socialistic policies followed by the statement that "these are tired and old big government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from." (This last was especially effective coming from the son of Cuban immigrants.)
There was nothing really wrong with Romney's acceptance speech, but I can't say that it excited me very much. Many pundits seemed genuinely impressed with Romney's delivery and even stated that it was the best speech of his career. I guess I have mostly heard Romney speak in debate forums rather than straight speeches, but I didn't find his delivery very impressive. He seemed stiff and out-of-sync with the audience for at least the first half of the speech. He seemed like he was rushing through the speech too much and failing to articulate his words clearly and pause appropriately, although he seemed to relax and did much better in the second half of his remarks. Also, the speech was clearly designed to soften and humanize Romney, which may have appealed to independent and undecided voters but wasn't really what I was looking for. The first half to two-thirds of the speech was pretty non-ideological, but he did finally get more into specifics about his beliefs and policies toward the end of the speech. It was all from 30,000 feet, of course, but you generally don't get too specific in a convention speech anyway. Anyway, I did think Romney drew some effective contrasts between himself and Obama, especially when he contrasted Obama's grandiose promises from 2008 about slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet with his simple, workman-like promises to "help you and your family" by getting the economy moving again.
Although Romney's speech wasn't overly exciting to a staunch partisan like myself, I expect it helped Romney quite a bit with those all-important independent and undecided voters. (He's already convinced me to vote for him.) I don't know how anyone who is not already a hardened partisan could watch the tributes to Romney from people who have known and worked with him and then the speech from Romney himself and conclude that he is anything other than a decent, compassionate, hard-working, trustworthy, and successful man. Certainly it would be hard to conclude he was anything close to that monstrous caricature the Obama campaign has been pushing of a cold, ruthless businessman who destroyed businesses and individuals for the fun of it at Bain Capital while committing felonies and murdering people. If the bar is whether this guy is a reasonable alternative to Obama, he more than crossed that hurdle. If people are looking for someone who is likable and trustworthy, someone they can feel comfortable with on a personal level, I think Romney helped himself significantly with the last night of his convention.
I plan to watch at least a little bit of the Democratic convention this week -- or at least as much of it as I can stomach. I want to try to compare the themes and emphases of the two conventions, as well as the speakers themselves. I already know what I think of the Democratic Party, but I'm interested to see whether they are going to provide any kind of positive case for Obama whatsoever and also how much of an effort they are going to make to appeal to the center. I certainly have seen little of either a positive case or a centrist appeal from this president's campaign so far.
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