Author: Coelho
No, It’s Not Okay if Obama Wins
In an era filled with professional political pundits who at times seem more interested in 1-upping each other rather than genuinely addressing the realities of the day, Matt Lewis has officially taken the cake. In his column today for the Daily Caller, Lewis explains to us all that it really wouldn’t be that bad to lose in November. Quite the contrary: he tells us that it could actually be the best thing to ever happen to conservatism to sit back and wait four more years.
Lewis’ columns are often quite interesting and thoughtful, but his release today is so utterly illogical and counter-intuitive that it can best be explained as the case of a man simply outsmarting himself. This would be innocuous enough were it not for the dangers such a silly contention could pose if taken seriously. By setting up a rhetorical forest of straw-man arguments, Lewis’ column tries to make people disbelieve their own eyes and ears about the state of America today.
Reading his column, then wanting those minutes of my life back compelled me to write a rebuttal of sorts. For the truth is far simpler than Lewis’ strained presentation: an Obama victory would be bad for America, thus bad for American conservatism.
Now Lewis does try to provide rationales for his contention, but at every stage he tries far too hard to make himself and others buy in to the conjecture. The most laughable of these are the mental gymnastics he endeavors in to diminish the importance of Supreme Court appointments.
Lewis readily concedes that the next Presidential term could include 2 or 3 appointments, and that an Obama administration would ensure these picks tilt the Court to a liberal majority. But the explanation he gives for why this doesn’t matter is solely that Republicans’ track record on appointments is not perfect. Seriously, that’s the entire basis of his dismissing this issue: that Mitt might not go 3 for 3 making selections.
As with so many other parts of his column, here Lewis tries to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Of course Lewis instantly seems to dismiss here the possibility a Romney administration would get it right, that the man who has already brought on the legendary Robert Bork as a legal adviser might avoid the mistakes past Republicans made. But even if Lewis’ fears came true, if 1 of Romney’s picks turned out a mistake, he seems to find no discernible difference between Mitt potentially going 2 for 3 and Obama calculating going 3 for 3 making far-left selections. These are clearly different realities, but Lewis either cannot or does not see this.
On foreign policy, Lewis has evidently concluded that the alpha and omega of our international relations boils down to drone strikes and that Obama’s aggression in this 1 area makes their total views relatively similar. Here even Lewis must concede differences, but in an effort to salvage his argument he concedes them only on secondary issues (Russia) before declaring these irrelevant too. What you won’t find mentioned anywhere in Lewis’ column are numerous areas posing major challenges to American foreign policy: Iran, China, the European fiscal crisis, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, the UN and its potential gun grab, and more. But to read Lewis, one would conclude that similar views on drone strikes makes all else irrelevant.
Now there is mention of Israeli policy, but only long enough for Lewis to try and make the laughable claim that Romney and Obama don’t differ there. Here again, he bases a logic-defying conclusion on a single piece of evidence: a 1-sentence quote by the Israeli Defense Minister that Obama’s done a good job in regard to Israeli security
Time to Panic in Chicago
For weeks now, Obama 2012 has been throwing everything in sight at Mitt Romney in the desperate hope that these efforts could effectively destroy Romney’s viability. From debunked pro-Obama media charges of rampant outsourcing, to invented outrage over tax returns, and even baseless and reckless cries of ‘Felon!’, the Chicago smear machine has been working in overdrive.
Perhaps most telling of all are the numbers of how people view the candidates personally. This has always been a strength for Obama: even as his job approval numbers sank, many still seemed to like him personally. This is no longer the case. Obama’s personal favorable rating is now 12 points negative, 36% favorable to 48% unfavorable. Those numbers plummet even further to 28%-52% among independents. Romney’s numbers here are not great (32% favorable, 36% unfavorable), but he’s running stronger than Obama, particularly with independent voters (32-31). Plus nearly 1/3 of voters (31%) still do not have a firm opinion of Romney on this issue, despite all the mud hurled his way by the left. All the Obama distortions seem to have done is make him less popular with voters.
Liberal AstroTurf Hecklers
For over 3 years now, the Obama administration and its allies have attempted to boast about the number of “saved or created” jobs they are responsible for. Today, some evidence of a Team Obama program that actually stimulates job growth came to light courtesy of BuzzFeed. In this story, McKay Coppins highlights how Obama’s campaign and their union boss allies are paying people to protest at Romney events.
The labor front group “Good Jobs Now” sent about 15 “volunteers” out to heckle a Romney event in Michigan today. Traveling on a chartered bus, they were a small gang of self-described “concerned citizens”. But the only thing they seemed to be concerned with was making some easy money.
“two protesters said they were getting paid to stand outside of the rally, though their wage is unclear: one said she was getting $7.25 per hour, while another man said they were being paid $17 per hour.”
As usual, the liberal “grassroots” effort was AstroTurf purchased in a classified ad. But this effort raises a couple of questions about the hiring practices of the big labor unions.
Democrats love to talk about the need for a “living wage” for everyone, guiding by the illogical notion that dramatically raising the minimum wage can occur without resulting in fewer jobs and/or high inflation. It’s even the “featured post” on Good Jobs Now’s website. Yet the first protester said she was making $7.25 an hour for her time. Not only is that not a ‘living wage’, it’s 15 cents less than Michigan’s current minimum wage.
But maybe the root of that problem is something far more insidious, something liberals have been warning us about for years. Only the female protester was being paid $7.25 per hour. When Coppins went to one of the male protesters, he was told that the pay was $17 per hour.
The so-called gender wage gap has always been a disputed issue, but now there can be no question. With the female protester making 43 cents on the dollar of her male counterpart for the same work in Michigan today, the discrimination at hand is clear. It is time for women everywhere to be protected from the misogynistic wage scale of union-backed ‘Good Jobs Now’, and I call on the organization to institute equal pay for equal work!
With the words of today’s hecklers as evidence, it seems quite likely that some or all of these other groups of “concerned citizens” demonstrating against Mitt Romney are nothing more than paid stooges for Obama and labor union’s cause. So if you happen to see them at any events in the next few months just ignore them and let them carry on. After all, no one likes being disturbed when they’re at work.
Romney HQ Opens in Columbus
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People congregate outside of Romney HQ in Columbus, waiting to enter. |
Several speakers addressed the crowd gathered inside, including Congressman Steve Stivers, State Auditor Dave Yost, and Franklin County Auditor Clarence Mingo, in the lead up to the remarks of the day’s featured speaker, Senator Rob Portman.
Team Romney’s Newest Surrogate, Bill Clinton
Kentucky, Arkansas Dems won’t commit to Obama
A couple weeks ago, we told you about President Obama’s problems convincing West Virginia Democrats to vote for him over federal inmate Keith Judd. Last night the states of Kentucky and Arkansas held Presidential primaries for both parties, and Pres. Obama faced similarly formidable competition. While Governor Romney was winning more than 2/3rds of the GOP vote with Paul, Santorum, and Gingrich’s names still on the ballot as options, over 40% of Democrats in both states rejected President Obama.
Obama was the only human being on the Democratic primary ballot in Kentucky. His only opponent was the ‘uncommitted’ line found on both party’s ballots in the state. Faced with a fierce challenge from this inanimate word, Obama mustered only 57.9 percent of his party’s vote. Uncommitted won more counties than the President, and the state was almost dead even outside of the city of Louisville. As recently as 1996, the Bluegrass State was blue in support of President Clinton’s re-election bid.
Arkansas featured an actual human being standing in for the uncommitted juggernaut, a man named John Wolfe, Jr.. Mr. Wolfe has been a perennial candidate for office in his home state of Tennessee, running six times over the last 15 years to be a member Congress, Mayor of Chattanooga, and a State Senator. He was unsuccessful on each occasion. He is currently prohibited from running for state or local office in Tennessee due to an unpaid campaign fine for failing to file a campaign finance report from 2007. Needless to say, Mr. Wolfe isn’t exactly Ted Kennedy challenging President Carter.
Despite this, Wolfe won 41.6 percent of Arkansas Democrats’ votes. Wolfe claimed nearly half the state’s counties, including Craighead County in the northeastern corner of the state. Craighead is home to the Arkansas’ 5th largest city of Jonesboro, which is a college town home to Arkansas State University (part of the young voter block that’s supposed to be a strength of the President’s).
When Pat Buchanan won 37% of the NH vote against President George H.W. Bush, the media wasted no time declaring it to be a massive upset for the incumbent and a clear sign of a divided party. Obama has lost over 40% of his party’s vote in 3 consecutive states, yet the gloom and doom predictions seen in the past are largely absent.
While it is true that Kentucky and Arkansas are states all but assured to be in the Republican column in November, the huge segment of Democrats in these states who will not support the President’s re-election is a serious red flag for team Obama. The rural, blue collar Democrats who rejected him in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas are found in SE Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, states critical to deciding the election. Just as the Reagan Democrats who abandoned Jimmy Carter turned the election of 1980 into a landslide, these voters disenchanted with Obama’s far left agenda could soon be known as the Romney Democrats of 2012.
SC Union Boss Celebrates Retirement by Whacking Nikki Haley Pinata
With the Obama campaign focused on their phony “war on women” narrative, the image of a female governor being hit in effigy by one of the GOP’s key bases of support would be a tremendous boon to their efforts. As luck would have it, just such an event took place recently in South Carolina. Unfortunately for the Democrats, it was Republican Governor Nikki Haley turned into a pinata for AFL-CIO boss Donna Dewitt’s retirement ceremony.
Dewitt is no run of the mill union member either, as she is the outgoing state president of the union. Calling the pinata effigy a “tough old bird”, Dewitt hits it repeatedly to cheers of “hit her again” and “that one’s for me” from the union members gathered.
Imagine for just a minute the reaction from the left if the roles were reversed: if this had been an NRA event in Washington state, and the governor on that pinata was Democrat Christine Gregoire. There would be media outrage, howls from liberals about the misogyny on display, and a White House address to speak on this “teachable moment”.
But because the governor in question is a rising Republican star, the media reaction has been muted. Governor Haley herself has made just one public comment about this, a post on Twitter questioning whether this was the message the AFL-CIO really wanted to have displayed. The RNC has also condemned the display in a statement from Co-Chairman Sharon Day today, yet still the reaction of many media outlets has been indifference.
As Governor Haley stands up for her state’s pro-growth policies, big union forces in the state can only resort to belittling and demonizing in response. In South Carolina and throughout the nation, the new generation of Republican leaders fighting to restore proper restraint to government are forced to endure ugly and juvenile attacks like this one from liberal stalwarts unable to win the battle of ideas.
The Presumptive Nominee’s Problem With the Base
After months of hotly-contested primary contests for the Republican nomination, it is now clear that the election in the fall will be between President Obama and Governor Romney. But one of the lingering questions that remains from the primaries is how satisfied party members are with their nominee. There are countless stories being written daily over how one candidate must find a way to unite his party.
Tonight is not the first example of the President’s problem with voters of his own party. On Super Tuesday, Obama lost 15 counties in Oklahoma to top-tier opponents like Randall Terry and Jim Rogers. A couple weeks later, 3 Louisiana parishes chose John Wolfe Jr. (a man currently prohibited from running for state office in Tennessee for failure to file a campaign financial statement in 2007) over the President. After each contest, the DNC exploited various rules to try & deny these candidates the delegates they would otherwise have earned (a strategy that will almost certainly be used for Keith Judd as well).