Tag: government

gist: the idiots (Gingrich, Perry, and the leaders of the Republican party) have and are given legitimacy to O’s feeble reelection campaign by the use of their strategies to defeat Romney. As I mentioned easily six months ago, O was going to make this election about class warfare. The Rep. party is adopting his message as a way to defeat Romney.

2 cents: Gingrich is bad for our nation, if not the world. His personal and political lives of the past show him to be void of ethics, morals and esteem-able values. What you have in him is some of the baser qualities of Bill Clinton. He lacks his looks, height and fitness. Think about it for ten seconds and you will know I am spot-on.

The GOP’s suicide march

by Charles Krauthammer 1/19/12

It’s the campaign line of the year, and while the author won’t be carrying it into the general election, the eventual nominee will.

The charge is straightforward: President Obama’s reckless spending has dangerously increased the national debt while leaving unemployment high and the economy stagnant. Concurrently, he has vastly increased the scope and reach of government with new entitlements and oppressive regulation, with higher taxes to come (to offset the unprecedented spending).

In 2010, that narrative carried the Republicans to historic electoral success. Through most of 2011, it dominated Washington discourse. The air was filled with debt talk: ceilings, supercommittees, Simpson-Bowles.

What’s the incumbent to do? He admits current conditions are bad. He knows that his major legislative initiatives — Obamacare, the near-trillion-dollar stimulus, (the rejected) cap-and-trade — are unpopular. If you can’t run on stewardship or policy, how do you win reelection?

Create an entirely new narrative. Push an entirely new issue. Change the subject from your record and your ideology, from massive debt and overreaching government, to fairness and inequality. Make the election a referendum on which party really cares about you, which party will stand up to the greedy rich who have pillaged the 99 percent and robbed the middle class of hope.

This charge, too, is straightforward: The Republicans serve as the protectors and enablers of the plutocrats, the exploiters who have profited while America suffers. They put party over nation, fat cat donors over people, political power over everything.

It’s all rather uncomplicated, capturing nicely the Manichaean core of the Occupy movement — blame the rich, then soak them. But the real beauty of this strategy is its adaptability. While its first target was the do-nothing, protect-the-rich Congress, it is perfectly tailored to fit the liabilities of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney — plutocrat, capitalist, 1 percenter.

Obama rolled out this class-war counter-narrative in his Dec. 6 “Teddy Roosevelt” speech and hasn’t governed a day since. Every action, every proposal, every “we can’t wait” circumvention of the Constitution — such as recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess — is designed to fit this reelection narrative.

Hence: Where does Obama ostentatiously introduce the recess-appointed head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? At a rally in swing-state Ohio, a stage prop for the president to declare himself tribune of the little guy, scourge of the big banks and their soulless Republican guardians.

For the first few weeks, the class-envy gambit had some effect, bumping Obama’s numbers slightly. But the story was still lagging, suffering in part from its association with an Occupy rabble that had widely worn out its welcome.

Then came the twist. Then came the most remarkable political surprise since the 2010 midterm: The struggling Democratic class-war narrative is suddenly given life and legitimacy by . . . Republicans! Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry make the case that private equity as practiced by Romney’s Bain Capital is nothing more than vulture capitalism looting companies and sucking them dry while casually destroying the lives of workers.

Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO nods approvingly. Michael Moore wonders aloud whether Gingrich has stolen his staff. The assault on Bain/Romney instantly turns Obama’s class-war campaign from partisan attack into universal complaint.

Suddenly Romney’s wealth, practices and taxes take center stage. And why not? If leading Republicans are denouncing rapacious capitalism that enriches the 1 percent while impoverishing everyone else, should this not be the paramount issue in a campaign occurring at a time of economic distress?

Now, economic inequality is an important issue, but the idea that it is the cause of America’s current economic troubles is absurd. Yet, in a stroke, the Republicans have succeeded in turning a Democratic talking point — a last-ditch attempt to salvage reelection by distracting from their record — into a central focus of the nation’s political discourse.

How quickly has the zeitgeist changed? Wednesday, the Republican House reconvened to reject Obama’s planned $1.2 trillion debt-ceiling increase. (Lacking Senate concurrence, the debt ceiling will be raised nonetheless.) Barely noticed. All eyes are on South Carolina and Romney’s taxes.

This is no mainstream media conspiracy. This is the GOP maneuvering itself right onto Obama terrain.

The president is a very smart man. But if he wins in November, that won’t be the reason. It will be luck. He could not have chosen more self-destructive adversaries.

His story link

I know you’re all familiar with that name. Hoover lives in infamy in
U.S. history for having been on duty when the Great Depression happened.
You’re all courting a similar fate. Your collective behavior is setting
all of you up to be known as our generation’s Herbert Hoovers — the
leaders who were on duty when we entered our second great economic
meltdown.

None of this is easy and the economy will not be fixed overnight; it
will take years. But there is every chance it will get healed if our two
parties construct the Grand Bargain we need.But the more I read the papers the more I’m convinced that “we the
people” are having an economic crisis and “you the politicians” are
having an election — and there is frighteningly little overlap between
the two.

We desperately need that for two reasons: We need to do our part in
leading the world out of this crisis by stabilizing our own economy. And
we need to show that we can still act collectively. The toxic paralysis
in Washington is, in and of itself, slowing growth. It is keeping a
black cloud over the center of the country and creating a sour mood
wherein people just want to hold on to what they have. As one banker in
Dallas put it to me: “Today, you only hire someone when you absolutely
have to.”

full article here

2 cents:
I don’t usually agree with Friedman but these comments in his article “Help Wanted – Leadership” are accurate. I wrote about the vaccuum of leadership in our government last week.

I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that the foundation of the economy and – much scarier – the SOCIETY in our country is based on is a flawed perversion of the original intent of the so called founding fathers. It is true that politics is and always has been a bloody vicious business but what is not true is that the members of Congress were “lifers” or at least 20-30 year jobs. This approach and reality has weakened the foundations of our government, economy and society because the focus of the member of Congress is keeping their job not improving and protecting the way of life in our country. It is “they are wrong” and everything a stage for positioning and posing. That is NOT what the job was supposed to be. Yes the economy is screwed up – and it needs to be fixed. I argue that the foundation needs to be fixed so it doesn’t perpetuate. Set modest, realistic terms of service for members of Congress. Second will be an adjustment of the compensation and benefits that they are paid.