Under the Senate plan, the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants would not earn green cards until the border is deemed secure. Administration officials said Obama does not favor linking legal status to border security, arguing that undocumented immigrants should not be kept in a state of limbo.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/29/obama-to-oppose-senate-bills-border-enforcement-requirement-in-immigration-speech-today/

Never mind the fact that such a trigger would be a fig-leaf or a joke (because it would be ‘verified’ by an administration that would treat is as such), the President’s opposition tells us point blank that any immigration amnesty bill will NOT have the borders secured.  While Senator McCain, unable to contain his inner RINO, praised the speech, Senator Flake and Senator Rubio pointed out:

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) was less enthusiastic, saying Obama’s plan is fundamentally flawed because it does not include a guest worker program or make citizenship for undocumented immigrants dependent on border security.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/01/29/mccain-offers-general-praise-for-obamas-immigration-speech/

Mr. Rubio said that without such triggers in place, enforcement might fail and “we will be back in just a few years dealing with millions of new undocumented people in our country.” …. “The president’s speech left the impression that he believes reforming immigration quickly is more important than reforming immigration right,” Mr. Rubio said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/us/politics/obama-in-speech-leaves-room-for-a-tough-fallback.html

Now, President Obama did stick to broad outlines rather than specific legislation. This is similar to how President Bush tried and failed on immigration reform and social security reform.  He may not insist on this position in a final bill. But since the President has already staked out a position that is contrary to those principles, and since it requires trusting his administration to live up to enforcing provisions in laws his administration already flouted last years with their amnesty-by-fiat, that  tells us right now that border security will not happen, we know RIGHT NOW any final big bill will not meet the minimum requirements of the Republicans in the Gang of Eight – even if there is a figleaf to pretend otherwise.

So why go down that primrose path?  The ‘border is secure’ stamp of approval is a joke. The ‘Guest Worker’ is something the Democrats, eager to create voters not workers, will subvert. Obama wants Republicans to pass a liberal Democrat bill. This is what HIS base is demanding:

Hector E. Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a coalition of 30 of the country’s largest Hispanic groups, called the meeting “a beautiful celebration.” But he said Latinos would be demonstrating in the streets and watching the debate closely. “For us, the priority is citizenship,” he said. “We don’t want a path that is extremely long and painful. Our community has already suffered enough.”

The Republicans really have two choices, if they dont want to cave to liberal special interests and divide and destroy the party: Do nothing(*) or do a SMALL bill, perhaps even a series of small bills. There are areas where bipartisan work can be done, such as the Startup Visa, making more employment-based immigration, and a Guest Worker Visa that will reduce the incentives for illegal immigration.   The “do a bill that will do it all” is a path to blowing up immigration reform, especially with the grenade of amnesty for 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the mix. It would be folly to try to negotiate on any big bill, any promises made on the border will be broken, just as enforcement promises were broken in 1986.

One-step-at-a-time might be to implement all the enforcement and border security aspects along with modernizing legal immigration and might forge a compromise by giving a limited DREAM Act, and wait 2 years to see the results before any broader program is done.  While Senator McCain will sellout on this issue to anyone, Senator Rubio has kept some shred of common sense, and might be persuaded to jump into the ‘One Step At a Time’ and “Enforcement first or no bill” camp.

The do-nothing path may be simply to have Republicans insist on enforcement first or no bill and have Obama take it or leave it. Let the House mark up and vote on a Republican bill, with no intention to bring it up in the House if there is nothing for Republicans in the conference committee.  Obama’s speech and approach indicates that – just as Obama has done nothing in 4 years to get a bill done – he’d rather have nothing done legislatively unless and until he gets a liberal bill.

Should immigration reform fail, we can look back on Obama’s  deliberately pushing the envelope as the trigger. What he wants is too extreme, and while he calls for ‘common-sense’ his opposition to border security triggers lacks in common sense.

Now, pro-amnesty and anti-amnesty activists are gearing up. A comment:

I just got back from Cruz’s Houston office with a few other NumbersUSA people and the phone was ringing off the hook. We could barely talk to the staffer because he was putting people on hold and having to get back to them. You could even hear some people yelling through the phone. I told him that the grassroots in Texas has his (Cruz) back and to draw a line in the sand. I also heard Laura Ingraham say that opposition is starting to mount. This whole “enforcement” sham is being exposed for what it is.

Do NOT assume immigration reform is a ‘done deal’ or Republicans will roll over on this. Democrats are demanding things that are far difference and anathema to Republicans. It’s time to insist on limited, thoughtful solutions that dont repeat the errors of the 1986 amnesty or no bill at all.

Well, what happened? We fell into traps laid by Obama and Reid is what happened. Well, good news … a day late and trillion dollars short, but Speaker Boehner has figured out that being the patsy for the Obama-Reid Big-spender/even-bigger-spender routine didn’t really cut it. Boehner got quite candid about his fiscal cliff mistakes in a recent talk: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/279413-boehner-full-of-regret-over-fiscal-cliff-moves#ixzz2J7cYEeNk

“Looking back, what I should have done the day after the election was to make it clear the House has passed a bill to extend all of the current tax rates, the House has passed a bill to replace the sequester with cuts in mandatory spending, and the Senate ought to do its work,” Boehner said. “We’re ready, able and willing to work with the Senate as soon as they produce a bill. It should have been what I said. You know, again, hindsight is 20-20.”

Boehner now believes that effort was a mistake, and he has vowed to Republicans in the House that he will not negotiate one-on-one with Obama going forward. He is instead recommitting to a “regular order” process, whereby the House and Senate pass legislation independently that can then be reconciled with amendments or with conference committees.

“1,350”

– The number of days since the Senate last passed a budget, April 29, 2009.

It’s bad enough when your government is borrowing more than $1 trillion a year – more than one third of its total outlays. It’s way worse when the green-eyeshade team at the Congressional Budget Office go to work on long-term expenditures.

Medicare, Social Security, Defense and government pension legacy costs look boggling in real time. On a 10-year curve they become dispiriting on both sides of the aisle.

To deal with this gloom, the Obama Democrats have opted to simply ignore it. They have the Senate just sit on the budget ball. The president, as required, proposes a budget, but does so confident in the knowledge that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not ever bring it forward for a vote.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/08/budget-say/

It’s about time we highlighted our budgetary problem lies in the Senate. A failure to grapple with Senate fiscal irresponsibility is a big part of why we aren’t cutting spending and why we are at a political disadvantage.  The Senate’s approach is the real reason we got skunked in deals (Reid writes the ‘deals’), the real reason we cannot get fiscal responsibility (they wont pass a budget or control any spending), and the real roadblock (Obama hides behind Senate inaction so HE’S not faced with the choice of ‘pass or veto/shutdown’).

The dysfunctional Senate is policy disaster and politically convenient for the Democrats, because what we have seen is the Republicans actually bear the brunt of the political price of dysfunction – namely, Republicans get blamed for the ‘legislation by crisis’ THAT IS A CREATION OF HARRY REID’S DELIBERATE POLITICAL STRATEGY TO AVOID FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.

Democrats in the Senate have all the votes they need to pass a real budget and show the American people their plan for today and the future. But they refuse, because they don’t want to be held accountable. They would rather cut backroom deals that hide the details of their plans, and then take political pot shots at Republicans who have had the courage to produce and vote for a serious budget.

Democrats claim that last year’s Budget Control Act is an adequate substitute for a real budget because it “deems” spending caps. Obviously, it is not. It is only half the equation. It includes no plan for saving Social Security or Medicare, for reforming taxes, or for ever living within our means. But it does prove that Washington is certainly good at making sure spending continues.

- Senator Ron Johnson

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/29/opinion/johnson-budget/index.html

The dysfunction of the Senate was highlighted by Sen Rand Paul and others IN the Senate. As of right now, their failure to pass budgets, Senator Reid’s refusal to limit spending, and the Senator John Cornyn released PR asking three basic simple questions of the President:“When will the President formally submit his request for an increase in the debt ceiling to Congress?“How much of an increase in the debt ceiling does the President want?“The White House has indicated this year’s budget request will not be submitted on time – when can Congress expect to receive it?”

These questions beg a few more questions, such as: Why didnt the press hammer the President in these points? And what is the Senate, in particular Senator Reid, going to do?

Since the Republican attempt to lead had failed, and attempt to negotiate is refused, we are left with simply getting the onus back on the Senate. Multiple times, we have seen the same game played out:

1. Fiscal conservatives demand “Action!” to fix things; The Senate does nothing
2. The House makes an attempt to walk the tightrope between what conservatives want and what is a ‘practical compromise’, it is rebuffed by Obama; the Senate does nothing
3.  The crisis deepens as we get closer to a deadline and so Republicans start caving or coming up with more and “plan B” alternatives to attempt to get to a solution; The Senate does nothing!! Meanwhile, Obama digs in while attacking Republicans for refusing to negotiate.
4.  At the last minute, Senator Harry Reid swoops him, writes his magic bill and in relief or disgust the Republicans walk the plank for the sorry piece of ‘compromise’ legislation.

If we want to avoid this charade again, we have to get to the twin roots of the problem: #1 – President Obama is the wrong person to negotiate with, and #2 – The Senate does nothing.

Which does beg the question: Where’s the budget out of the Senate? Where’s the debt ceiling increase out of the Senate? The Republican House should pass a modest debt ceiling increase (of $200 billion or less) and with that some modest spending reductions (e.g. rebaseline next years spending down by $50 billion, saving $500 billion over 10 years). Then challenge the Senate to pass that or  something else.

What Obama is attempting is the trifecta of winning on policy, winning on politics, AND dividing the Republicans, causing a long-term setback for Republicans. He is doing it on the favorable terrain for him of higher tax rates for the top income levels aka ‘end the tax cuts for the rich’, the result of ten years of demagoguery by Democrats.

We are seeing two really bad ideas percolate – “Go over the cliff” and “Give them what they want”.

On the first, go over the cliff, treats all Americans as children that need punishment for re-electing Obama “That’ll show them” but why would Republicans want to allow a $4 trillion tax increase to happen? To create leverage somehow that doesn’t exist right now to force Obama to … do what exactly? Go to a compromise that would somehow be better than what we might get now?  Or insist on taxing all Americans more? All or nothing plays right into the Democrat stereotypes, and if Republicans are handmaidens in punishing Americans, surely that will return back to them in the next election. This is doubtful.

The second path to losing double is “Give them everything they want.” That throws away political power and gives the Democrats a monopoly, a disgrace to all who Republicans and anyone who cares about our country. Caving totally will haunt the Republicans, and likely lead to the very divisions that Obama seeks.

There is a third way, that threads the needle and makes Obama pay for overreach – the Pyrric Victory way. The President will get his victory. He has to. The President and the Democrat Senate plus the media mean that they can set certain terms and win the PR war.So the GOP will in the end have to give something and show Obama ‘won’ on the top tax rates. Let him have his top rates on the rich, but for a price. Protect the maximum number of taxpayers and cut the most spending possible. That’s the goal.

The tax cliff is precisely the event that set Republicans back, and the best way forward is simple: Get over it! Protect the taxpayers to the greatest extent possible while cutting spending by as much as possible, do NOT raise the debt ceiling or lock in future spending, and make as much of the Bush tax cuts permanent. This is the key thing: Making Bush tax rates permanent for 99% of Americans on a bipartisan basis is actually a huge win for protecting taxpayers and recovery from the fact that all the Bush tax rates have been ‘temporary’ for 10 years and is at risk. Its an affirmation not of Obama – but of Bush and Republican tax policy.

The way to get there: Unify; acknowledge we won’t get our way, so stop punishing Republicans for daring to pursue the best compromise; extract the most political and policy leverage at this point by limiting the tax increases.

Making even the rates under $250,000 permanent is a win for lower taxes, but we can do better. Plan B was an attempt to do so at $1 million income level; since Obama had previously offered $400k income, any compromise would be in this range or above, raising tax rates on those above that level while leaving rates alone below it. GOP Senators indicated $500k may be the level. Should these Bush tax rates be made permanent, that is $3 trillion in lower taxes than we’d get with expiration of all Bush tax cuts.  We might expect a ‘final cliff deal’ that raises rates above $600,000 income or so. This would raise about $700 billion over 10 years, and the ‘price’ of this should be at least two times that in spending cuts.  If a deal raises taxes on above $500k income only, and cuts spending by $2 trillion, its a deal that works fine. But we won’t get that much spending cuts. A problem? Well, the smaller the deal the better for the GOP, because the more the ‘cut’ (fake or real, mostly fake) the more the tax hikes.

We’ll also need AMT fixed, and the Democrats will want unemployment, maybe payroll tax cut for yet one more year. Congress will do its usual Christmas tree thing.

We need to stop blaming Republicans for failing to do the impossible. We can’t ‘win’. Obama is President and Democrat Senator Reid runs the Senate, and they want their ‘higher rates at the top’ scalp or no deal. No deal means a tax hike that nobody wants and which Rpeublicans are set to be the scapegoat for.  Boehner’s Plan B was the framework for the kind of compromise that Republicans should support: Gives Obama his top rate while minimizing taxpayers that get hurt, and does NOT raise debt ceiling, leaving the leverage on spending available for another day.

The lessons we should have learned by now is: Big deals are bad deals; small deals where the devil is in details that Obama cant campaign on, are deals that help us win on policy. Policy changes that expose the contradictions in Obama’s failed economic program will be the chickens that come home to roost. We need to bit by bit erode Obama’s advantage.

Locking down and making Bush tax rates law for 99% of Americans or more is not a loss, it’s a win for lower taxes. What it further does – and few people notice this – is that once these are locked in, Obama is stuck. He can’t go back to the ‘we need more taxes’ well again, not anytime soon. He’s “won” after all! The only path forward on taxes and spending and deficits is spending reductions and real tax reform.

The real cause of our massive deficits is the large increase in spending, the increase in spending from 2007 to 2011 was $1.3 trillion, leading to our $3.8 trillion budget and over $1.2 trillion deficit. We all know that $70 billion in more revenue barely is 10% of that gap. After a ‘fiscal cliff’ deal is done, this fact will be manifest, plain and evident to all – and there won’t be the ‘tax cuts are to blame’ excuse to hang on them. Why? Obama’s signed them, he got his increases, its his tax levels. He agreed! The debate will then shift to where it ought to shift: Cut the spending. we could easily cut $5 trillion or more from Obama’s spending plans and cut, cap and balance did just that.

Clinton won the PR way in the 1995/1996 budget battle, but GOP won on substance. The GOP needs to learn to win via ‘death by thousand cuts’ always demanding small advantages for each thing Obama wants.

It’s time for Republicans to Win by Losing in Obama’s second term, and it will start with a ‘small deal’ compromise that makes the Bush tax rates permanent for over 99% of taxpayers, limits the tax increase, and removes Obama’s #1 political hammer he uses against Republicans. If we do this right, it will in retrospect be Obama’s high water mark.

The greatest danger the GOP faces at the large and strategic level is the danger of a splintering of the center-right.  With the failure of Plan B, that fracturing that Obama and the left so desire is at hand.

I had hoped that Plan B, though flawed, at least represented a defensible position that mitigated the tax destruction for most Americans, and kept the caucus together. Speaker Boehner certainly hoped it would be a path to greater leverage in a difficult situation, where the President was insisting on the House basically adopting a Democrat tax more and spend more plan. However, the criticism was that a vote for something already panned by Reid and Obama was in effect conceding a negotiation, and doing it in a way that violated some principles. Plan B would have made a nice compromise, but its a bad GOP position to hold when the other side is holding out for a lot more.

We risk now losing worse than that : What we lost in the failure to have a vote is several things. The credibility of having a solution to the tax cliff; a willingness to bend a little to accommodate the other side’s position. Boehner is now stuck. The “extend taxes for all Americans” is a fine position, but a non-starter with the Democrats and Obama. Boehner already negotiated to a position further than he’s got the votes to deliver from his own caucus. So now what?

The ugly conclusion one gets from this is that there is not a unified Republican position that can hold. Obama and Reid will in fact ‘win’ in their goal of splintering the Republican caucus and ironically the conservative movement will be handmaidens in that, encouraging that to happen.  If the cliff happens, action will take place in January when the Congress is LESS Republican, and a bipartisan vote is required. Bipartisan will mean the Democrats will write most of it. They will pass something much closer to what Obama wants. Republicans will not be a party to it for the most part, but the governing coalition in Congress will be constituted in a way to completely leave the conservatives out in the cold. This is the opposite of what the conservatives want, but its a consequence of not being part of a majority coalition position.

There needs to be a “Plan C” – A plan for conservatives to salvage their reputation, their pragmatism and their relevance. The liberals and Democrats are eager to destroy that relevance and using fights like this to do it.

OK, brilliant armchair Generals … What is it? Now what?

Dear Conservatives Bedwetters:

You know who you are, talking about how Republicans need to get hip with tax increases, amnesty, gay marriage and abortion-on-demand. You are shell-shocked and babbling about Obamacare as the law of the land. If only we could be more like the Democrats, you lament. You want to throw in the towel: Give them everything they want, let them stew in it.  I never recalled the Democrats or liberals ever throwing in the towel on their precious ideology, or deciding to become Republican lite, when THEY were thumped in any election.

We thought that 4 years would be enough Obama economic failures to prove to voters that big government tax, borrow and spend doesnt work. We were out-sold by charlatans that preached that Obama needed more time.

Well, he’s got more time now. And now the stock market sold off, realizing that Obama’s win only means more tough economic sledding. I am also reading of how growth estimates for next quarter are a miniscule 1.5%. The Obama economic malaise and depression continues and his political victory now will only make his policy failures more evident.

The pain of loss you feel now, and the economic pain we all will feel in the next few years will be a hard lesson, but the lesson will deepen the learning. We dont yet know if America is ‘too far gone’ or what we can salvage, but I suggest you urge your 30 Republican Governors, your Republican Speaker and his House majority, and all the other Republicans in office to Hold The Line, and to continue to stand for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, economic freedom, and the Constitution … BECAUSE THEIR SERVICES WILL BE NEEDED IN THE NEAR-TERM FUTURE AND WE WILL NEED AMERICA TO STILL BE ONE PIECE WHEN THEY ARE AGAIN CALLED TO LEAD.

The useless and counterproductive  post-election “shut up you stupid conservatives” calls from some quarters, are calling us to respond to false perceptions and not to true realities. I would urge the bedwetters to take a deep, deep breath, and let the ugly reality of the Pyrrhic Obama victory sink in.

The reality is that Obama’s next 4 years will be about paying the piper for his failed Keynesian schemes that have added $6 trillion in debt and will add $8 trillion more by the end of the decade. We added debt to fix the economy – it didnt work and now we have a bigger mess, a weak economy AND a huge and growing debt. The ratings agencies are already itching for further downgrades, and the negative impact on the economy from the Obamacare tax hikes and other tax increases is about to hit home.

People voted for 4 more years of the economic mis-management and malaise that Obama has presided over so far. They voted for a status quo government that in August 2011 couldnt even craft a budget deal without kicking the can further – to now, where we face a so-called ‘fiscal cliff’. They voted to re-elect a guy with the worst jobs record in a generation, who pulled  his 2nd term agenda out 2 weeks before the election – it was 20 pages of pictures and bromides.There is no leadership and there is no way out of our $1 trillion deficits without the kind of hard choices obama refuses to make. Funny, but we just had an election and 3 debates and hardly AND of the debate, discussion was about the simple question: “What would you do to balance the budget?”  As if all those hard choices are dis-connected from the voter’s choice of a few days ago.

The stock market has fallen 5% since Obama won re-election precisely because he  offers no real solutions to the budget problems, his tax increases in Obamacare hit Jan 1 and now wont be repealed and he insists on raising taxes on investors and small business owners next year. So will the EPA regs he held back for political reasons.  These will hurt our economy to the point where a 2013 recession is now possible.  Good luck with that. The Obama voters have made their bed and unfortunately we all have to sleep in it.

What this all means is economic malaise akin to the 1970s or even worse. It means the Obama Depression continues. We may see average growth in 2013 and 2014 be no better than 2%, putting Obama’s 6 years in office down in the basement of economic performance.

Yet we hear a different story from the bedwetters – they forget that this election we wanted to be about the economy. They focus on the bright shiny object of “social issues”, forgetting the simple blunt fact that – if indeed we lost this year on social issues, it was because we ran away from it rather than making a coherent stand. In 2004, abortion was about “partial birth abortion”, which 2/3rds of Americans think is horrific and should be outlawed. In 2012, Obama kept up the drumbeat on birth control, creating a strawman that Republicans failed to rebut; and they used the ‘rape’ comments to make an anchor of the also unpopular position of outlawing abortion in cases of rape.

Another Redstate Diary put it this way: “debt and deficit are critical issues, but do not resonate for most Americans they way social issues do.”

That’s like saying a month before Pearl Harbor “The wars in Europe and the Pacific dont resonate the way the latest Frank Sinatra song does.”  If they dont resonate, its because nobody has connected the dots between our economic misery and our fiscal mismanagement. A decade of lost growth under Obama might be enough to do that, but it would certainly behoove Republicans to point out Obama’s economic failures and propose a better way to avoid the coming pain.

That diary and other post-election analysis keys off of trying to chase perceptions derived from reading exit poll tea leaves.  “Many Americans perceive …” … a lot of things. Some of those perceptions are wrong. Obama’s campaign in particular took advantage to cultivate incorrect perceptions about Romney, Republicans and the state of our nation. He won a narrow victory in an ugly negative campaign on that basis. It will behoove us to correct those incorrect perceptions, both by arguing against the currently dominant paradigm and fighting to win hearts and minds to it. it will behoove us also not to throw away the principles we stand for just because we only won 48% of the vote this time instead of 51%.

So even though abortion kills a human being,  we are told to put that crazy pro-life Aunt back in the attic, that barbaric practice is now something the left has ‘won’.  Team Obama ‘won’ nothing but a perception war by ignoring what abortion is and because some of our guys said some stupid things that were taken out of context.

Here’s lousy advice:  Give up on all the Republican agenda items, embrace the Democrat ploy of pandering, graft and “how to get credit for what government gives them” and the Obama voters will like us more. Reality check: Given the choice between two Democrats, voters pick the real ones every time.

If there are some voters out there more concerns about free birth control than about our $16 trillion debt, then its their failure to understand and our failure to educate and communicate. If the Republicans do continue to fail to communicate, reality has a way of biting people in the butt sooner or later.

The danger with Obama’s big government ways has always been that under Obama we would go the way of the economically-weak Euro-socialist states, with permanently large Welfare spending, statism, high taxes and economic weakness, but unable to fix the economic weakness because the statism is locked in by the political patronage system. Mark Steyn has opined as much, and many of us fear that Obamacare is the tipping point.  Claims that Obama won from only the ‘moocher’ vote are false; that’s a part of his coalition but the greater part was ordinary folks who do work but got sold a bill of goods about who cares for them more; or bought some lie about ‘war on women’ or other slander. Slander and Pander Show.

We don’t know if we are past that point of no return. So don’t act like this is the end.  We do know this: There’s  NOTHING to lose when you stand for what you believe in, fight the good fight, and remember why you are doing what you are doing. We believe in universal principles that worked yesterday, work now, and will be ready to work in the future when the people are ready to turn to them. That’s why I repeat this advice for you to tell your Republican office-holders:

  … tell all the other Republicans in office to Hold The Line, and to continue to stand for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, economic freedom, and the Constitution … BECAUSE THEIR SERVICES WILL BE NEEDED IN THE NEAR-TERM FUTURE AND WE WILL NEED AMERICA TO STILL BE ONE PIECE WHEN THEY ARE AGAIN CALLED TO LEAD.

What the Democrats did to get there is instructive. They were not compromising in 2005. Bush wanted to use his political capital on Social Security reform, and the Democrats, rather than propose their own bill or agree on entitlment reform, simply attacked the proposal mercilessly. They refused to compromise at all, or even propose any serious alternative on it. They were the party of “No”. When supreme court nominees came up, the talk of filibuster came up as well, and though we got Roberts and Alito through, it was evident that Democrats would not let a number of other qualified judges through.

The good news for conservatives is that 2008 election was our nadir. 2010 was the Tea Party comeback that put us back in a position to stop further left-liberal legislation.2012 leaves the President with the strength of re-election but a still-split Congress.

For all the lamenting about 2012, and the sad fact that a President with a poor economic record got re-elected, we need to consider that in fact the Romney campaign, while putting in a good effort, was no better a campaign than Kerry in 2004. Or worse. Romney failed to respond to the attacks on Romney’s character, his Bain past, and he made it worse with 47% comment.

This bad news is good news politically for Republicans, and this is where we have to see a few steps ahead and think like Wayne Gretzky:

“Go to where the puck is going.”

What are the issues that will bog Obama down? Clearly, the debt and the deficit are major ones. Its not too hard to see how the $1 trillion deficit that Obama is running is his very own Iraq, a quagmire of economic indigestion. President Downgrade now has two ratings agencies looking to review the US credit rating in 2013 and it isn’t looking pretty.  When Obama was elected, the debt was $10 trillion, now its $16 trillion, and without serious budget cuts, we are looking at $18 trillion by 2014.  Obamacare tax increases are hitting and unless we extend the Bush tax rates, it will be another tax hit. Too much in the way of tax increases and we will be in another recession next year.

Will our economy improve to the point where the economy is not the main issue? Unlikely.  Growth estimates have been falling not rising, to under 2% in H1 2013, and there will be some fiscal cliff to slow things down.  Unemployment by 2014 may still be in the 7-8% range, while our deficit still rages and the economy putters on weakly. What is more likely then is that the three issues most favorable to the Republicans will be the driving issues – taxes, budget, and economy.

Some have argued for throwing in the towel on the ‘fiscal cliff’, letting tax increases happen, but that would only put the Republicans in the spot of being ‘for’ taxes increase.  Far better would be to have a clear agenda and stand by it,  willing to compromise but only in ways that maintains the principles – keep tax rates low and cut the spending to lower the deficit. We should hammer the point day in and day out with better alternatives, including the repeal of the unaffordable Obamacare. Repeal of parts of Obamacare taxes and Obamacare spending, and use that as a negotiation strategy to get some of what you want. In the end, though, beyond the need for budget compromise, the best outcome for Republicans in the next Congress is gridlock. We WILL bounce back in 2014, so Republicans need to use this time to lay the groundwork and turn that hope into reality.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott says no to health care law

Speaking on the New College of Florida campus following a meeting of the state’s university governing board, Scott said it will cost taxpayers and business owners too much to expand Medicaid and set up health insurance exchanges as called for under the law.

“No one has been able to show me that that health care exchange is going to do anything rather than raise taxes, raise the cost of our companies to do business,” Scott said, adding that expanding Medicaid would also require tax increases.

Governor Rick Scott has taken a lead position  and one hopes that 30 Governors will follow, and that Speaker Boehner will retract his fallacious comment about the unpopular Obamacare law and get back to representing the people who voted for the Republican House majority, and not pre-cave to our political opponents on this bad law. Speaker Boehner failed to mention that The Supreme Court undercut the guts of the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare and that it will need to be removed or scaled back or it will explode the Federal deficit. In short, Speaker Boehner needs to listen to those who are exercising the power to say “No” and learn to use that power.

It’s the main power we will have in the next 2 years. It’s wrong to act defeated, because if our name isn’t Mitt Romney, we were NOT defeated. Only Mitt Romney (and the other candidates who lost) were defeated. Our ideals remain sound, our agenda remains correct. The imperfect salesmen on our side were defeated, and the imperfect and often wrong President was given 4 more years – not to be dictator, but merely President.

But wait, what are those achievements? Trillion dollar deficits? That is one that will live in infamy, not on Rushmore. Obamacare? Well, Obamacare is just as unaffordable, broken and fallacious as it was on Monday. It will take years of fixing, tweaking, cutting back and it will bedevil the political class unless and until its repealed. Those of us hoping for an end to Obamacare have been feeling let-down after our hopes (Scott Brown win! 2010! Supreme Court!) … now what?

In response to bedwetters and drama queens who are now saying “Oh, give the Democrats what they want! that’ll show them!” Actually, it will give them a permanent majority to throw in the towel. Democrats didnt even with the House! We have a status quo in House, Senate and in most states. Some pullback from 2010 gains, but hardly a Democrat wave, just a huge disappointment at the lack of GOP wave following 2010.  Even economic misery will help the Democrats by locking in more government dependency. We have no choice: Our political survival and the best interests of the nation require that we stand our ground, give no recognition of the superiority of Obama’s agenda, because it isn’t. We should be open to compromise on agenda items but never open to compromising our principles or caving out of political fear or cravenness. Stand for what is right. Our position is OUR agenda:

1. NO amnesty.

2. NO tax increases, in particular keep the Bush tax rates and repeal Obamacare tax increases.

3. CUT SPENDING. CUT SPENDING. CUT SPENDING.

4. Cut the deficits and reform entitlements NOT by growing Government.

5. Repeal Obamacare. Repeal Obamacare taxes, repeal Obamacare mandates, repeal Obamacare spending, repeal over-regulations.

Now here is the shocker: The GOP Congress could get a lot of these done. It simply requires being willing to put it on the table, find solid ground to stand on, and be willing to shut down the Government in order to force the issue on taxes and budget. If we take the position of: Preserve the Bush tax rates by cutting a fiscal cliff deal to preserve them all AND repeal the Obamacare tax hikes AND cap spending at the sequester levels, what do you think Obama will do? If he demands some tax hikes, respond “extend the tax rates for a year, cap the spending, and lets talk in 2013″. Then come back again with the same postion, WHILE cutting the spending in the budget.

We have one power – THE POWER TO SAY “NO”. Let me finish by recycling Repair-man-Jack’s quote from a Roman historian:

“The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so”

http://www.redstate.com/2012/11/09/not-what-if-what-next-part-ii-what-would-the-cunctator-do/

We are not defeated – yet. We are defeated when we die or when we give up. Until then, and until we have the opportunity in another election to win a majority, we have the power – to say “NO”. Make our leaders use it.

Well, lets consider: The incumbent, faced with an opponent from Massachusetts who wrapped up his nomination around April, went to work fairly quickly in defining him; he did some swing-state pandering to give him an edge in particular in Ohio, the crucial battleground. He knew it would be a close race, so he determined that he would have to win by getting his base out, and worked hard to do that with GOTV and with ‘retail’ appeals to specific subgroups. GOTV was key, as was telling his base what they wanted to hear so they would be excited to vote for him; war on terror successes as well as social and economic issues. His opponent never escaped the definition the incumbent gave him, and although the challenger made valid critiques of his record, somehow the people trusted that he was doing well enough to deserve more time. The incumbent won, even though he lost the independent vote.

That’s what happened … in 2004. Obama just won the election using the Bush 2004 playbook. Change Massachusetts to New York and you get the Truman 1948 playbook. Same playbook: Work your base, paint your opponent, retail politics to pick off enough supporters for a winning coalition. (And no, Virginia, Obama’s coalition is NOT permanent, and we are NOT going fullbore socialist as Obama didnt even run on that, despite the fact that the next 4 years may make us look like the next Spain or Greece.

We now know how incumbents with shaky popularity can win.  Despite Obama’s media advantage, money advantage (oh, you didnt know that? Romney had a lot of SuperPAC money on his side but it didnt really help him much, did it? campaign fund head to head had Obama with more. Obama spent almost a billion dollars to win the race, hence his year long fundraising marathon.), and the power of the White House to shell out money and create media attention, he had a sour economy wrapped around his neck like an anchor. That’s why he was losing this spring to ‘generic Republican’. Obama knew this and so his team knew they had to run the Truman/Bush style incumbent race, a scrappy, tough,  base-driven campaign.

But that’s not my question: Why did Mitt Romney lose?Why didnt  Romney see that it was this type of race and respond accordingly. Romney needed to (a) not let Obama define him; (b) defeat Obama’s panders by calling them out, rebutting them or deflating them;  (c) win over the disillusioned voters in the middle; and (d) win the base turnout competition.   Romney failed to (a) in the summer, but he made up for it in the debate #1; Romney did (b) in his campaign and he also focussed on winning over the independents; it worked. Romney’s biggest failure was (d).

One interesting change in 2012 has been the rise in the ethnic minority share of the vote:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/08/the_case_of_the_missing_white_voters_116106.html

For Republicans, that despair now comes from an electorate that seems to have undergone a sea change. In the 2008 final exit polls (unavailable online), the electorate was 75 percent white, 12.2 percent African-American, 8.4 percent Latino, with 4.5 percent distributed to other ethnicities. We’ll have to wait for this year’s absolute final exit polls to come in to know the exact estimate of the composition this time, but right now it appears to be pegged at about 72 percent white, 13 percent black, 10 percent Latino and 5 percent “other.”

With this base line, and armed with the exit-poll data, we can get a pretty good estimate of how many whites, blacks, and Latinos cast ballots in both 2008 and 2012. Assuming the 72/13/10/5 percentage split described above for 2012, that would equate to about 91.6 million votes cast by whites, 16.6 million by blacks, 12.7 million by Latinos, with the balance of 6.3 million votes spread among other groups.

Compare this with 2008, when the numbers were 98.6 million whites, 16.3 million blacks, 11 million Latinos, and 5.9 million from other groups.

In other words, if our underlying assumption — that there are 7 million votes outstanding — is correct, then the African-American vote only increased by about 300,000 votes, or 0.2 percent, from 2008 to 2012. The Latino vote increased by a healthier 1.7 million votes, while the “other” category increased by about 470,000 votes.

This is nothing to sneeze at, but in terms of the effect on the electorate, it is dwarfed by the decline in the number of whites. Again, if our assumption about the total number of votes cast is correct, almost 7 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008.

Now – why did white American voters stay home? Now, one possibility is that white Obama voters stayed home in droves. A fly in the ointment to that – look at this, the union voters stuck with Obama:

On Tuesday’s election, labor unions, as usual, played a crucial role in electing Democratic candidates. Union members voted for Barack Obama at a rate of 65% to 33%, according to AFL-CIO polling; according to official exit polls, Obama’s support in union households was 58%, which is 1 percentage point less than 2008 and pretty much par for the course for recent Democratic presidential candidates.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_11/organized_labor_delivered_for041056.php

Consider this: 62 million people voted for George W Bush in 2004, Kerry 59 million. (that same year, 59 million voted for Kerry.) In Ohio, Bush got 2,858,727 votes.  In 2008, the electorate expanded, Obama winning 69 million to McCain’s 59 million. All the way back in 1984, Ronald Reagan won 54 million votes in his landslide win. Bush won 50 million votes in 2000.

The result for 2012 – Obama 61 million, Romney 58 million:

What do all these numbers tell us? First, the telling point – Romney had fewer votes not only than McCain but Bush in 2004 as well. How did we lose those voters? 

Obama dropped from 69 million to 61 million. 88% of his 2008 support showed up. Romney had a 2% dropoff. In a race where the incumbent lost 12% of his support in a race,  Romney not only failed to capture those voters but lost ground. This was a failure to win more votes than the previous candidate.

We believed wrongly that 2008 was the anomaly … BIG MISTAKE. The 2012 electorate included enough 2008 and not-2010 voters who came back because they like and want Obama re-elected. Not all of Obama’s voters but enough of the black/urban/young/liberal base to make it like 2008, or at least 2004. Indeed, Obama’s vote tally and Romney’s vote tally are both just below the Bush / Kerry tallies as well. A Bizarro 2004 election indeed! 

Now looking at raw numbers, THE MINORITY TURNOUT WAS AS GOOD IN 2012 AS 2008. The white vote went way down. Why? Nobody has yet to crack open why Mitt Romney had a million fewer votes than McCain … but there is something you always need to do to win an election. Now, Sandy might be a factor:

The biggest plunge by far, according to the American University analysis, came in Eastern Seaboard states still reeling from the devastation from Superstorm Sandy, which wiped out power for millions and disrupted usual voting routines.

But that doesnt explain Texas:

In Texas, turnout for the presidential race dropped almost 11 percent from 2008. Vermont and South Carolina saw declines that were almost as large. The drop-off was more than 7 percent in Maryland, where voters approved a ballot measure allowing gay marriage.

Now, going back to the prior analysis that Obama lost 12% of his voters. If this was purely a Democrat dropoff issue, then we would see about 6 percent drop, and a corresponding gain in the Republican polls of 6% reduced margin. In Maryland, it went from Obama / McCain =1.6m 62% / 959K 36.5%:

To Obama/Romney in 2012:

Now there is one more ‘tell’ – Romney won the largest share of the white vote for Republicans … ever. This ‘tell’ tells me that it may well be that (a) minority voters stuck with Obama but white voters abandoned him but did NOT vote for Romney. Back to Sean Trende and his “The case of the missing white voter” where he looks a this extensively:

So instead, I looked at my current home state of Ohio, which has counted almost all of its votes (absentees are counted first here). The following map shows how turnout presently stands relative to 2008. The brightest red counties met or exceeded 2008 turnout. Each gradation of lighter red represents a 1 percent drop in the percentage of votes cast from 2008. Blue counties are at less than 90 percent of the 2008 vote.

We can see that the counties clustered around Columbus in the center of the state turned out in full force, as did the suburban counties near Cincinnati in the southwest. These heavily Republican counties are the growing areas of the state, filled with white-collar workers.

Where things drop off are in the rural portions of Ohio, especially in the southeast. These represent areas still hard-hit by the recession. Unemployment is high there, and the area has seen almost no growth in recent years.

My sense is these voters were unhappy with Obama. But his negative ad campaign relentlessly emphasizing Romney’s wealth and tenure at Bain Capital may have turned them off to the Republican nominee as well. The Romney campaign exacerbated this through the challenger’s failure to articulate a clear, positive agenda to address these voters’ fears, and self-inflicted wounds like the “47 percent” gaffe. Given a choice between two unpalatable options, these voters simply stayed home.

This may tell us two or three things: First, defining Romney as out-of-touch rich capitalist helped Obama; negative campaigning sometimes works by creating stay-at-home voters. This was intentional by Obama. Romney should have known this and been defeating it with GOTV effort.

Second:  Romney, in failing to reach out and actually convert the disappointed Obama voters, ended up losing. And he failed to have the GOTV to get those who were willing to support him to actually got out and vote.

The last ‘tell’ on what happened however has been the turnout models. 2008 was a D +7 election; 2010 was an R +1 Had this been a case of just Democrats staying home, we would have had a repeat of 2010. As we saw before, union voters supported Obama; minority voters DID turn out (so it may well be that minority voters came to support Obama, but might have stayed home had it been another election).

Conservatives argued with polls because we assumed the turnout models would match the 2010 result. But now if we calibrate for the fact that the 13% black, 10% latino and asian vote did not stay home, and a good portion (9 million) of the white vote DID stay home.  Then it begs the question, what percentage of the dropoff was D and what was R?  Then what percentage of the voters would be D or R?

Here is another tell: White women supported Romney 56% to 42%!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-c-wilson/the-elephant-in-the-exit_b_2094354.html

But the money quote is this:

Across the board, among women, young voters and even Catholics, the pro-Obama advantage was due to higher turnout among, and support from, racial minority groups. These very basic points call into question what the 2012 election was really about: Was it about the economy, or was it really about the “type” of leadership desired by a new coalition of American voters largely consisting of progressive but not necessarily “liberal” thinking and acting racial minorities?

So here is what happened. Obama kept the minority vote because they were attached to him through thick and thin. This was not going to be a matter of whether they voted Romney or not, it would be a matter of whether personal disappointment would keep them home. On the flipside, the personal disappointment for white voters meant they were not voting for Obama. But could Romney gain some support?

In some cases yes on a percentage basis – see the Washington Post exit poll:

Women chose President Obama over Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s election, 55-44 percent. That’s a slightly wider gap than the 56-43 margin Obama had with over Sen. John McCain with women in 2008.

But white women favored the Republican candidate in even bigger numbers this year (56-42 for Romney) than they did in 2008 (53-45 for McCain).

[Note: Romney also won the married women's vote by 53% to 46% but lost the single women's vote nearly 2 to 1.]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/11/08/exit-polls-the-gender-gap/

The WashPost exit poll has a few other gems, like the fact that Asian vote shifted more against Romney vs McCain than any other group.  Romney actually gained 5% vs McCain on the 18-30 YO, but only stayed even on 30-44 group.

And Romney won the independent voters by 5 points, 50-45.

So what went wrong?  The Washington Post exit poll had a D +6 result.

Here’s how the GOTV and turnout would relate – effective GOTV would increase your party’s share of the total number of voters:

D +0 / R+1: If GOP had great turnout and Dems did not.
D +3: If GOP and Dems had equally good turnout.
D +6: If GOP had lesser turnout and Dems did a great job.

CONCLUSION: Democrats had a great GOTV Operation and the GOP did not!

He failed to close the deal. Romney campaign had a lot of enthusiasm at rallies but they failed to do the GOTV and do the real ground game that would have made this an R+1 election and a victory for our side.

Update: Now, after the fact, we are learning more about the problems in the Romney campaign that caused GOTV to be weak. One was the disaster known as Orca:

So, the end result was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc. We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity’s sake.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/334783.php

Lots of post-mortems on this system that are quite disheartening and explain in part

Conservatives have been liberated in this last election. Had Mitt Romney won, the weight of responsibility for cleaning up the fiscal mess we are in would be on him and us. Now,  I’d rather we had the power and responsibility, but since it’s up to Obama now, it’s on him, and we are liberated to speak our minds and set the record straight on what is going on. As such, we have a golden opportunity to right the wrongs that cost us the election.

How do we win? First, we win the argument. Then we win the election. Then we win the policy.  We are literally back to square one:  winning the argument. We failed in this election because we didnt win the argument – we didn’t make the case that Obama is responsible for our economic misery. I was concerned enough about this in September that I wrote a few diaries explaining what Romney needed to say – and then was thrilled when he actually said them in the first debate. Alas, the message wasnt reinforced in the rest of the campaign.

to get back in the game, and to make headway in a ‘prevent defense’ that stops Obama’s tax hikes, fiscal cliff,  we are goign to have to go to the mat on correcting the record. We can still win the argument. We need to make clear a few basic things. Newt Gingrich speaks of 70% issues, issues where 70% of Americans would agree. Do you think 70% of Americans would be on one side of this question:

Should Americans be required to pay for products that they dont want?

We have to be making the case for repealing mandates. Here’s an atempt to do so, first written on another blog. A Liberal wrote:

“Women who have health insurance should not have their employers dictating to them what coverage they can or can’t have.”

Not a single employer in America has that power. Anyone at anytime can go get whatever their healthcare they want on their own time and own dime. No employer is dictating anything. YOU are dictating the terms and conditions and the govt doesnt have the right to force you, me or anyone to buy products against our will and against our moral codes. It’s sad that so many like you dont understand how freedom really works. Sad.

“They can’t get their own Catholic church members to follow their ban on contraception, so they try to force it on ALL of the American people by law?”

Nobody wants to ban contraception, a nonissue for almost 100 years; they just are objecting to having the Federal govt forcing them to pay for something morally objectionable, specifically abortificant-type contraception. And BTW, condoms aint healthcare so it should never even be in a discussion about health insurance. Contraception never needs to be in health insurance. This is like forcing people to buy ‘car accidence insurance’ that includes oil changes..

“These medications are used for many other things besides contraception”

Red herring. There is no objection for other uses and conditions that are medically necessarily. Another one of those strawmen used.The objection is for voluntary birth control uses.

“It is not “religious freedom” for an employer to micro-manage your health-care coverage.”

Strawman. Again, no employer has EVER stopped an employee from getting medical attention on their own time & dime. NEVER. Millions of Americans have gaps in coverage some far more serious than the silly non-issue of condoms. Having been through multiple employers and health insurance plans, not a single one was “micro-managing” anything, simply because it had different coverage levels. Claiming this is absurd and puts things upside down.

What you are really saying is pretty Orwellian. You are claiming that a free-market exchange of money and benefits for labor isnt really ‘voluntary’ – wrong, it is, and if your employer is doing something not satisfactory wrt benefits, there is a simple solution: Negotiate for what you want or quit. Then you turn around and claim that your personal choice REQUIRES THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO DICTATE COVERAGE FOR EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN.

Huh, never mind that this is a blatant intrusion on employer-employee negotiated decisions, the real insult here is that all women who DONT want this benefit, whether because of age or choice, will now be subsidizing those who do. Heck, why not throw breast enhancement and plastic surgery on the pile, since some women want that too?

“it is a personal issue, and should stay a personal issue.”

I agree – a personal issue to decided in a voluntary way by those making the purchasing decisions … WHICH IS WHY GOVT NEEDS TO BUTT OUT OF MANDATES ON HEALTH INSURANCE! Jeez, dont you get it? Your position is ANTI-CHOICE. You want to take away MY PERSONAL CHOICE to have health insurance that doesnt cover this and take away the personal choice of not just catholic institutions with their own moral objections but millions of others who simply object to paying up for something they do not want or need and isnt really healthcare. You want to take away my rights, my freedoms, and have a govt bureaucrat intrude on my personal healthcare decisions.

Keep your mandates off my prostates!

The Republicans can and must hold the line on taxes in the lame duck session, and in fact Democrats will go along. Simple reason: The Democrats know that Obamacare tax hikes are on track in Jan 2013, that will be bad enough for the economy that is still weak. Also, the Democrats will have a larger contingent in both House and Senate next year,  and will want more members and more time to both get what they want and get a more careful compromise done.

So here should be the lame duck deal: 1 for 1 spending cuts to avoid sequestration (cut military and domestic spending), AND a 1-year extension of Bush tax cuts, AND FY 2013-14 spending limits, ie, 2 yr spending cap agreement that cuts at least $200 billion from spending trajectory over next 2 years, AND a 1-yr debt ceiling increase.

Republicans should NOT balk at letting the military sequestration happen, so long as they have a balanced spending cut alternative. Pass their version, and if Obama wants it different, its on him. Squealing about DoD spending undercuts the rest of the position and is precisely why Democrats chose it. Dont fall in the trap.

The Republicans are in a weak position in terms of forcing their preferred approach. They could for example put Simpson-Bowles style “lower rates for loophole closures” – the plan Romney touted; they SHOULD go back and dust off “Cut, Cap and Balance” and push that. WE need to have $100 billion cut in FY2013.  But getting any of that signed is problematic.

Their main leverage is saying NO. The Republicans need to be prepared to simply say”NO” to any  higher taxes at this time, and “NO” to any “Grand Bargain” tax hikes that go beyond loop closures.  So, what the Republican House needs to be doing is putting their approach in the hopper and pushing as far as they can to cut spending.

The Grand Bargain has to include a large-scale scaling-back of Obamacare. It should be dismantled in parts. Repeal tax increases. Reduce all aspects of its spending. Defer and delay all implementations, mandates and other rules. Get them all in the budget so they all become negotiating points. Stuff the tree so to speak, so you give up 3 items to get 1 through.

Much of the above may be wishful thinking, based on perceived vs actual leverage. My own motivation is for a deal that cuts the debt, deficits and spending, but the main motivation for members of Congress is self-preservation. They scatter when it gets politically painful. For that reason, The Republicans need to get a clear agenda and principles of where they stand, articulate and defend it well, and stand our ground.

We will find out soon enough exactly where things fall, but as of right now, with Ohio called for Obama, President Obama is set to win his second term;  Romney continues leading the popular vote but is losing most of the swing states. From hope to disappointment in a few short hours.

Watching the Virginia results come down to wire, similar to other states like Florida  on a knife edge, is a reminder our nation, as it was in 2000 and 2004, a sharply divided country.   Obama will win a 1949-type squeaker, if the popular vote trends hold up.   The Republican party will retain the House, the Democrats, running the table on a few races, is maintaining the Senate and knocked off a remaining moderate northeastern Senator, Scott Brown. This is not good news, as ideological leftists win swing states (Sherrod Brown) while conservatives in red states (Mourdock) fall short.

The sad aspect of this campaign is how large the division is between the parties, and yet how small the election was in many ways: ‘war on women’ disgraced political discourse with a huge strawman attack; Romney spoke of China as a threat, but not enough of how our own Government is responsible through its taxation and regulation for offshoring and outsourcing; Obama decided, 2 weeks short of the election, that, hey, he needed a 2nd term agenda.

Alas, we know what to expect: More of the same. The same political configuration that brought us gridlock and a budget ‘deal’ that was a ‘kick the can’ deluxe is up for next year. Democrats will be emboldened to counterattack and treat the House as a red-headed stepchild whose only role is to do the bidding of The President. Here’s a hint to GOP Congress: You got elected too! Hold your ground!

And that of course is the irony. We have 48% of Americans on one side, 48% on the other side and a few percent in the middle.  In 1992, 1996, 2000, the winner won with less than 50%. In 2008 and 1988 it was a bigger spread of 7% or so, one an affirmation of Reagan’s economic policy, one a rejection of the economy under Bush in 2008.

Obama in my mind has been a failed President who manifestly deserved to be fired. I hoped and expected him to be fired. But millions of voters were convinced somehow that the weakest recovery in 60 years was ‘progress’, and Obama escaped eviction partly because Obama managed to blame weaknesses in our current economy – 4 years under Obama -on his predecessor. It was a mistake for Republicans do not respond to the many misdirections of Obama and deconstruct their false narrative about the economy, but the bigger concern is the future – entitlements, spending, taxes and the intrusion of Government that is hurting the economy.

What we can expect for the economy in coming years is the greatest concern. It is doubtful that Obama will properly deal with the deficit, we will have more Democrats in the Senate that will be no better than they were last term at addressing spending. The spectre of Obamacare tax hikes and the fiscal cliff of Bush tax hikes being repealed looms.

What we needed to have an effective turnaround was a stunning Romney win and enough Republicans to get in there and repeal Obamacare. Now, despite the unpopularity of Obamacare, those who passed in won the Senate and White House.

The silver lining in all of this is that with a Republican House, the era of Democrat policy-making run riot is over, and according to analysts, Republicans will be in good shape to retain the House for a while. With Bold leadership in the House, Republicans can stand firm and not cave to Democrat demands for ‘go along’ cave-ins, and force real compromise.

It is bad for a nation to be divided about big things. In America’s “Era of Good Feelings” and in other eras of more placid political discourse, like the 1950s, it appeared that two party’s shared enough common goals and ideals that disagreements were over small things. In an election that was about small things, it showed that we Americans are close to 50/50 divided about Big Things – like the size and scope of Government.

What gives me that confidence?
1) Enthusiaism: Republicans around the country are like me, more than eager to end the four year mistake of Obama’s election. I do not see across the blogosphere, twitterverse or internet a corresponding enthusiasm for Obama. I see plenty of Obama supporters, but their energy is negative; its not the fever pitch of enthusiasm, but the kool-aid drinking of liberals fearful of another Republican. Obama won on hope in 2008 but he can’t win on fear in 2012. Why? Romney has defanged fear with his excellent debate and campaign performances.

2) Polls: Not just the Gallup poll, or the RCP average with Romney ahead, despite clear Dem bias in some polls in that average. The very poll that had Obama ahead in Ohio by 3 was a D +9 poll. Yes, there are polls showing Obama ahead, but invariably the poll internals spill the real beans – Romney is leading big among independents, he’s not as far down among women as Obama wants him to be. Ras has Romney up 4 in the swing state poll, an 8 point shift or more from 2008. The more you dig into polls, the more you realize it doesnt add up for Obama.

3) Campaigns: Obama flails in desperation to latch on to a reason for Romney to be disqualified – Big Bird, binders, etc. Whatever happened to the $5 trillion tax cut? Wheeled away, a victim of getting exposed to the light of truth. Yet Romney’s ‘he has no second term agenda” cuts to the real bone. Obama didnt run the ‘morning in America’ ad because he CANT. His campaign reeks of desperation, and has since debate #1.

4) Barack Hoover Obama: His economic record is a failure. This is the reality that Obama cant change and is driving the other 3 factors. There is no debate quip or sudden October surprise that can fix the economy, and weak quarterly earnings and continued slow growth indicates no shocker will change that in the next 3 weeks. His record is baked in: High unemployment, low growth, $16 trillion in debt, and no plans to fix any of that from Obama.

This is a response to the rather silly and superficial diary “Obama has the electoral college. Romney might lose this after all.” We need to stop the silliness that the EV and popular vote can be far out of whack; yes, it can theoretically happen and in a close race (Gore v Bush type) it could mean the popular vote getter might not get 270 EVs. But that is not this case.
Romney is on track to win CO, VA, NC and FL. Romney will win the electoral college if he wins those plus Ohio. Obama at 46% in a D=42% sample is a sign of Obama weakness. Romney has other avenues to win 270 EVs, but the way it will go down is that if Romney DOES win WI or PA or MI, he’ll have Ohio too – those other states will be gravy.

Well, Romney is on track to win by 4 to 6 points. (Clip and save to see how right I end up being). He’s on track to make 2012 be another 2010 like election, with moderates and independents swinging to the GOP. That’s enough to clear above 300 EVs.

Nothing is written in stone, so continue to make every effort because without our efforts for victory, it wont happen. Donate your time, talent and treasure to the candidates and causes you most support. I block-walked for 3 hours for a state rep candidate. I also donated to Romney’s campaign. Do your part and the victory we all desire WILL happen.

But this debate will not matter. Results matter. This election is about the economy. “Equal pay” means nothing if you are equally unemployed; student loans don’t help but hurt a graduate who can’t find a job. Talking about the middle class means little if the middle class is crushed by lower incomes, rising prices, and fewer opportunities. Illegal immigration is down? Yeah, a jobless phony ‘recovery’ will send even illegal aliens into self-deportation mode.

In 3 minutes during this debate, Romney laid out exactly what was wrong with the Obama record and why he doesn’t deserve re-election. He asked the better question than “Are you better off?”. Romney said that “You know better … the last four years haven’t been good”. He gave the one useful and important takeaway from this debate:

“This election is … about who can get the middle class to a bright and prosperous future”.

This is the election in a nutshell.

http://news.investors.com/spec…

Romney’s lead widened to 5 points from 2 points on Tuesday, as he continues to chip away at key Obama support.
Romney’s edge among independents widened to 20 points from 18 just a day before.
Obama’s lead among women narrowed from 10 points to 8 points.
Romney also continues to make inroads among middle-class voters, moving from a 6-point lead against Obama with this group to a 10-point lead.

One consistent pattern is Romney’s lead among independents that in many polls is double digits. If Romney keeps that and keeps the total electorate to close to even R and D voters, he wins.  Obama is …

There were doubters about the impact of the first debate. It has vaulted Romney from slightly behind to slightly (yet solidly) ahead, so there can be no doubt it impacted the race. But some doubt the size and permanence of the shift.

I am writing this diary to address those doubters, to emphasize that the debate will likely go down as an historically important debate that has permanently altered the campaign trajectory.   As I said in my prior diary “Why Obama Choked”:

  … this debate was a serious, substantive blow to Obama at a strategic level, and that may be why the left went absolutely bonkers.

Romney pointed out the Obama record and put his own agenda forward, and he rebutted numerous of Obama’s false charges. He not just solidified his support, he undermined much of Obama’s campaign. This fact still does not seem to have sunk in with the Obama campaign. They are insisting their own polling hasn’t shifted. They are insisting on a template that Obama had a ‘bad night’ that he can recover, and that Romney had a ‘bounce’ that will fade.  They have not change their failed messaging, but doubled down on a widely mocked superficial ad about big Bird.

The polling data that shows that Romney gained an average of  about 5 points in polls from pre-debate levels, and seeing it persist through today, at least refutes any 1 or 2 day type ‘bounce’. It could even be feeding on itself.

What makes it more difficult for Obama is that even if he has a ‘good night’, e.g. if he has more ‘zingers’ or more content – it won’t change the fact that Romney showed himself to be Presidential, substantive and on target. Unless Romney himself is rattled, contradictory, or gaffe-prone, he will not be out-matched by Obama in future debates. Worse for Obama, the Libya scandal – of how Obama’s administration botched keeping embassies and ambassadors safe prior to the 9/11 attack, and lied about the cause of the attacks after – is blowing up just in time for the debate about foreign policy.

There is no narrative, story or one-liner that can fix a four year record of  doubling deficits, unacceptably high unemployment and unacceptably low economic growth; nor is there any honest critique of Romney’s plans that will be any more cutting then that “$5 trillion” and the ‘middle-class tax hike’ charges, that were already rebutted. Like Admiral Stockdale, Obama is “Out of ammo”.

While only time will tell how the polls shake out beyond the remaining debates, Obama cannot retake the lead without a corresponding shakeup in the race.  Any view of the race as of now other than “Romney leads” and is on track to win the election is untenable. Anyone on the left who is not in total emo meltdown over this should be. The One Has Blown It.  Godspeed to Ryan and Romney in the remaining weeks and the remaining debates.

When I saw the debate, I was quite thrilled with how well Romney was doing. Live-blogging it on Redstate, I found myself writing “home run” and “Romney nails it” several times, and noting Romney’s machine-gun rapid-fire of facts and figures. I marked four of the debate questions “ADVANTAGE ROMNEY”, where he clearly dominated the discussion or had a clearly better response. I was so thrilled with how Romney out-performed that I didn’t really think about how poorly Obama was doing until later.

One factor may have been that I saw it on PBS, and they didnt have the split-screen other stations did, a split-screen that had Obama peeved, looking down, smirking or with some sour expression, and never looking at Romney, whereas Romney was alert, good-natured, and in a more agreeable frame. But that style just is the cover on the substance of what happened. On reflection, this debate was a serious, substantive blow to Obama at a strategic level, and that may be why the left went absolutely bonkers.

Obama believed that the strawman of Mitt that the MSM had  created was real, or at least expected to be able to make his strawman attacks without rebuttal. Obama expected a fictional character to appear at the debate. When the real Mitt Romney appeared, Obama was totally confused.  Obama claimed Romney was for the $5 trillion tax cut. Romney rebutted. Not just gainsaying, but walking through how cutting tax rates and closing deductions would work, clarifying how he was NOT going to reduce the share paid by the top 1%. Obama tried the ‘middle class tax hike’ dodge. Didnt work. Obama tried the ‘they are against regulation and want to relive the crisis’. Romney rebutted. Obama had a left hook, and Romney just persistently returned and rebutted.

The same with the ‘middle class tax increase’ lie. Obama lobbed it, Romney returned it, in perhaps the best way possible. I frankly wanted Romney to be LESS polite than he was “may I call it Obamacare?” calling assertions “not factual” rather than “lies” etc. and going out of his way to say “I agree with …”. But the effect of rebutting was devastating to Obama.

Finally in the debate Obama’s  lies caught up with him. Obama can lie about Romney when he’s not around, but to his face? Romney called Obama out on Obama’s lies and schooled him on it. This left Obama unprepared and unarmed.

What else did Obama have, if not the 1-2 punch of “things are going well enough and we are making progress” and “Romney is a dangerous plutocrat”?  Obama dared not ‘rebut’ Romney’s factually correct litany of lousy economic data – the 23 million unemployed or underemployed, the drop in household income, the double digit minority unemployment rate, etc. These are real, and it would be callous and out-of-touch to deny them.

Romney didn’t just disarm Obama’s key points, he built up, through his specificity, both a powerful argument for his candidacy and a rebuttal to the bogus Obama claim that Romney wasn’t specific enough. Obama tried that line in the debate, but it was feeble and hollow coming from a vague President up against Bullet-point-man with the Five Point Plan. Now we ALL know of Romney’s 5 point plan, the 5 reasons he will repeal Obamacare, what he wants fixed in Dodd-Frank, and ten times the details on Romney’s tax reform than we got on Obamacare during the 2008 campaign. Romney gave a lesson in Massachusetts bipartisanship so strong that Obama’s best retort was about them teaching that on Capitol Hill; huh, you mean Leader Obama can do that? Above his pay grade? Romney gave good reasons *why* Obama’s insistence on niggling details of which specific tax provisions might stay or go is a complete Red Herring. (Let’s be clear what Team Obama really wants: they have been egging their media partners on the hunt for ‘specifics’ so they can cut 30 second attack ads to say “Romney wants to raise your taxes by taking away X” neglecting the fact that such loss of deductions would be to pay down a rate reduction making the tax reform a wash for most taxpayers.)

“This isn’t the real Mitt Romney”, Obama would say later. “The real Mitt Romney  wants to raise taxes and give it all to the top 1%. I didn’t debate the real Mitt Romney.” It’s an odd projection of an upside-down President. Obama is reduced to running against the strawman that only exists in 30 second attack ads.  He’s going around promoting a version of Mitt that never existed, a caricature. Since the REAL Romney whipped him in the debate, Obama returns to the cocoon of running against his own Myth Romney.

Obama must have sensed during the debate itself that the caricature wasn’t playing by his rules, and the debate was spinning out of his control. Perhaps it was when Romney mentioned his own sons or when Romney said “you’re not entitled to your own facts”. Romney was crisp, clear, cogent, on target. Obama had his strawman arguments and once they were blown apart by Romney’s logic, he just ran in circles repeating the kind of pap that only liberals can adore. He was out of ammo, just like Admiral Stockdale.

Hence the peevishness. And hence the forgettable performance in the last 30 or more minutes. I was telling myself “wow, this Obama  guy is boring, he’s just saying nothing” especially when he was talking bout Abe Lincoln, in the philosophy of government question; not something Obama never thought about.  Why did he get vague and mushy? Deep down Obama is an out and out leftist but he just COULDNT go full Redistributionist and give America the speech he gave at Hampton Roads, he couldn’t make the mistake of repeating the ‘you didnt build it’ sentiment, or talk like he was chilling with the New Black Panther Party in Chicago. So he was left with repeating forgettable vacuous pap and the strawman “Republicans hate education” – which Romney *again* batted away like a slow-pitch. And used it as an opening to Hit It Out Of The Park.

Independents in focus groups pointed to that answer – where Romney spoke of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence to inform our understanding of the role of Government – as one where Romney did particularly well. Romney did well because he articulated conservative and Constitutional principles in a cogent common-sense way.

I was so focussed on how well Romney was doing, I hadn’t considered how poorly Obama was doing – until the closing. Egads, he was looking down. Why? Obama was tied in knots. Obama’s punches didn’t land anymore, and he was like a punch-drunk fighter, swinging punches in the wind to no effect.  Obama talked more than Romney, but said less in 53% of the time than Romney did in 47% of it, and what he did say was not useful to him or to the viewers.

Obama  couldn’t tell more lies about Romney and couldn’t tell the truth about himself. That is why Obama choked. Obama off-teleprompter can be ‘interesting’ when he’s not holding back. He held back.

That is why this debate is a fundamental and strategic loss for Obama and his campaign. The debate didn’t just show up the President on a bad day. IT SHOWED UP OBAMA AS RUNNING A DISHONEST AND FLAWED CAMPAIGN, one based on lies that Romney exposed and debunked. One based on a lack of a real record to run on, and a further lack of a serious future agenda that is compelling beyond his hardcore base.  The Obama campaign cannot really back down from their lies about Romney without in effect throwing away $100 million in attacks, so they will just bully on through with more attacks (“War on Women”, “Middle Class tax hike”, “ending Medicare” etc.)  But if they do, they embarrass themselves more in the debates as their lies wear thin. Obama has nowhere left to go; he will go down ugly.

After Romney eviscerates the Obamacare bill, by pointing out the many flaws in it:  – its expensive – it cuts Medicare – it puts in place an unelected board – small business will cuts jobs and benefits … This was a total evisceration.  And Obama’s response: He was reduced to pointing out how the 2,000 page Obamacare bill had a resemblance to the bipartisan passed Massachusetts 80 page Romneycare. “We have seen this model work well … in Massachusetts.”

People will then wonder if Romney aint that vulture capitalist raider who will outsource healthcare to China after all, and is actually the moderate Mitt from Massachusetts who will go full wonk and actually solve the problems we face: Our jobs, trade, fiscal and economic deficits. Romney retorted  well: “Facing an economic crisis … and spend his energy and passion on this.  IT HAS KILLED JOBS.”

This is what I have wanted to hear. Actually, I’ve been trying to make the case that Romney needs to drive a clear, strong message and posted it here on Redstate:  Four dishonest pillars of Obama’s re-election, where I challenged Romney to dispute the Obama narrative, which last night he did; I questioned “Why isn’t Obamacare a bigger issue?”, but Romney, when given the healthcare issue, hit the ball out of the park and now Obamacare definitely is a big issue, and now a big liability for President Obama.

But the biggest deal is that Romney in this debate has made this election about the key points he needs to make to win.  Our economic situation is unacceptable and Romney has a better plan. Romney went for the human impact of our poor economy …

Ann yesterday was at a rally in Denver, and a woman came up to her with a baby in her arms, and said, “Ann, my husband has had four jobs in three years, part-time jobs. He’s lost his most recent job. And we’ve now just lost our home. Can you help us?” And the answer is, yes, we can help, but it’s going to take a different path, not the one we’ve been on, not the one the president describes as a top-down, cut taxes for the rich. That’s not what I’m going to do…..

Then he tied it to his 5 point plan. At the end, he tied together Obama’s record to the choices we face:

And it’s not just looking to our words that you have to take in evidence of where they go. You can look at the record.

There’s no question in my mind that if the president were to be reelected you’ll continue to see a middle-class squeeze with incomes going down and prices going up.  I’ll get incomes up again.

You’ll see chronic unemployment. We’ve had 43 straight months with unemployment above 8 percent.

If I’m president I will create — help create 12 million new jobs in this country with rising incomes.

If the president’s reelected, Obamacare will be fully installed. In my view that’s going to mean a whole different way of life for people who counted on the insurance plan they had in the past. Many will lose it. You’re going to see health premiums go up by some $2,500 per family.

If I’m elected we won’t have Obamacare. We’ll put in place the kind of principles that I put in place in my own state and allow each state to craft their own programs to get people insured and we’ll focus on getting the cost of health care down.

If the president were to be reelected you’re going to see a $716 billion cut to Medicare. You’ll have 4 million people who will lose Medicare Advantage. You’ll have hospital and providers that’ll no longer accept Medicare patients. I’ll restore that $716 billion to Medicare.

And finally, military. The president’s reelected you’ll see dramatic cuts to our military. The secretary of defense has said these would be even devastating.

I will not cut our commitment to our military. I will keep America strong and get America’s middle class working again.

The entire debate has turned the campaign upside down and puts Romney forward because the narrative is on the real choice and the real Obama record. For the past 6 weeks, the Obama team has ‘owned the ball’ on the campaign narrative. First, it was Clinton’s ‘get out of jail free’ card,Obama’s lousy economic record as just simply a reflection of him starting in a big hole. Problem is, he has only made the whole bigger. Then, the “47%” remark gave the Obama campaign the opening to paint Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat.  In 90 minutes, all of that was blown away.

This is a dynamic big choice election, an election that is to be decided by the election questions voters ask to make their decisions. While live-blogging I wrote: ANOTHER ADVANTAGE ROMNEY. Obama babbled and attempted to be innocuous and Romney made solid points about governing.  That pretty much sums up the debate.  If that sums up the rest of the campaign, Romney wins.

The only real bumper-sticker zinger was Romney: “Trickle-Down Government doesn’t work” a loverly retort to years of anti-Reaganism from the left. Romney would give his rebuttals in point-by-point specifics, and the President was reduced to whining about Romney’s lack of specifics and making claims that Romney rebutted and refused to accept.

Postscript to the debate. Romney camp is on the ball on twitter, with the ‘morning after’ slice-and-dice of Obama’s errors and mis-statements:

• @BarackObama Debate Lie #2: Obama claimed he would return America to Clinton-era tax rates.http://t.co/HpUsRRis #CantAfford4More.
• @BarackObama Debate Lie #8: Obama says he made adjustments to Simpson-Bowles for his own plan.http://t.co/WMRpQqgP #CantAfford4More
• @BarackObama Debate Lie #7: Obama says his plan is balanced in the manner of Simpson-Bowles.http://t.co/WMRpQqgP #CantAfford4More
• @BarackObama Debate Lie #6: Obama says Gov. Romney’s plan is a $5 trillion tax cut. http://t.co/XWPeULxQ
• @BarackObama Debate Lie #5: Obama says health care premiums are becoming more affordable.http://t.co/WMRpQqgP #CantAfford4More
• @BarackObama Debate Lie #4: Obama says Romney’s plan would raise taxes on middle class families http://t.co/WMRpQqgP #CantAfford4More

• .@BarackObama Debate Lie #3: Obama says Romney’s Medicare plan would cost seniors $6,000 a year.http://t.co/HpUsRRis #CantAfford4More
• .@BarackObama Debate Lie #12: Obama says Social Security is “structurally sound.” http://t.co/XWPeULxQ
• .@BarackObama Debate Lie #11: Obama makes false accusations about Gov. Romney’s economic plan.http://t.co/WMRpQqgP #CantAfford4More
• @BarackObama Debate Lie #10: Obama says he has created 5 million private sector jobs. http://t.co/XWPeULxQ
• @BarackObama Debate Lie #9: Obama repeats the war savings “fiscal fiction.” http://t.co/XWPeULxQ

Here’s how. These are 6 key points, and if all 6 are put in the minds of the voters, it will debunk, refute and diminish the Obama ‘excuse’ narrative that goes this way: “Romney is just another Bush; Bush is the cause of all the economy’s problems; those problems were so large that all the bad economic performance of the last 4 years is really just because of Bush.”   The key to turning this around is to make voters ponder – what will cause the next economic crisis? The answer is simple: The cause will be the combination of low economic growth and a large and growing debt. That is exactly what Spain and Greece face now. USA will face that crisis too if we dont fix our economy and federal deficit.

1) Bush record was actually better than Obama’s

“Under Bush, the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent, labor-productivity gains averaged 2.5 percent annually, and real
after-tax income per capita increased by more than 11 percent. And our economy grew by more than 17 percent from 2000 to 2007.”
http://www.commentarymagazine….

2) The 2008 crisis was caused by policies from both parties

“This Bush record outshines the record of President Obama’s, even if tarnished by the financial crisis that hit at the end of his term. That last crisis by the way WAS CAUSED BY FACTORS BEYOND ONE PRESIDENT, including DEMOCRATIC SUPPORTED HOUSING POLICIES, easy money from the Fed, CLINTON-PASSED LAWS and lack of oversight from both parties.”

3) We are in a Big Government Bubble and our Federal debt will cause the next economic crisis

“It’s superficial and wrong to claim that simply lowering taxes will incite the next financial crisis. We know the ingredients for the next crisis, we see it in Europe. Too much Government debt and too little growth leads to countries unravelling as they go bankrupt, unable to pay our debts. We see it in the US now. We had an internet bubble, a housing bubble, both of which burst and caused recessions. Now we have a Big Government bubble, over a trillion dollar deficits each year, funded for now by easy Fed money that is keeping interest rates low. Meanwhile, under Obama, growth has been pathetic. Carry on this way, and our debts will balloon while our ability to pay for it withers. We will become Greece if we don’t change course.”

4) Obama has no plan to fix this problem

“President Obama has no plan to get our budget even close to balance; after added $6 trillion in debt over the last 4 years, his budget plans adds almost $10 trillion to our debt in 10 years. He has no plan to improve economic growth, no plan to streamline our tax code, not a single new idea to create jobs other than recycling old ones that already failed.

Obama can’t promise that he will fix this. He has had four years and already failed. He failed to cut the deficit, he failed to create enough jobs, he failed to get the economy growing. Now we are stuck with a Federal debt bigger than our GDP and an economy stuck in a ditch spinning its wheels, with our last quarter’s growth at 1.3% about a third the growth we would have in a healthy economy.”

5) This election is about who can fix our broken economy and put us on a footing to avoid that next crisis

“This election is about who can navigate the treacherous economy over the next four years.  It’s about who can fix our broken economy, creating too few jobs and too much government debt.  Obama’s economic performance is sufficient failure to tell us that he is not up to the task of changing course and fixing our problems. In the next four years of Obama, his tax increases will hold the economy down, while his increased government spending will make our debt shoot the moon. Obama’s policies will make the next crisis and next recession more likely, more imminent, more dangerous.”

6) My plan will put America on a better economic path

“I will change course from our path of too much debt and joblessness and not enough growth and job creation. I will reverse the Obama policies that are holding the economy back and shackling innovation and investment. We will streamline the tax code, stop trying to kill the coal industry,  we will repeal Obamacare and review the thousands of pages of new federal regulations. We will be tough but fair with trading partners and open new markets for American producers. We will help small business succeed. I won’t fail. I will succeed because for me, growing the economy and creating jobs won’t be just one check box on my agenda – it will be JOB ONE for me from DAY ONE. My one promise to you is to help you and your family succeed as we turn American around and rebuild our prosperity and the promise of the American dream for all our citizens.”

That’s what Mitt Romney should say. If he can get voters to understand and concentrate in their minds the danger that a second Obama term can be – the sequel is never as good as the first movie – he can win big.

Perhaps the elephant in the room on Obamacare is the fact that Romney is our nominee. And yet that cannot be quite right as Romney was willing to point out the Medicare cost-shifting in Obamacare.   There is one big opportunity and the number one reason for people to not only be opposed to Obamacare, but vehemently motivated to fight for repeal:  Obama lied when he said that ‘you will get to keep the coverage you have’ .

Already HHS regulations are forcing millions of employees off prior plans, and more to come. CBO study estimates 3 to 5 million will be kicked off their plans by 2020, but that is the tip of the iceberg. Read more at

 http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/09/27/how-obamacare-could-harm-47/#ixzz285Ezjse3
“One-third of businesses say they may drop insurance, causing families with good coverage today to lose it. McKinsey and Co. estimates that as many as 80 million people could lose the coverage they have now and be forced to get other policies that conform with ObamaCare rules. The Obama administration’s own estimates say that 51 to 80% of those with coverage could be forced to switch plans to comply with the law’s new mandates.”

The gutting of Medicare Advantage and the undermining of Health Savings Accounts is another area where people are losing coverage. But the Medicare cost shift is even more severe.Obamacare will drive doctors off Medicare:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/08/20/how-obamacares-716-billion-in-cuts-will-drive-doctors-out-of-medicare/

Another way people lose coverage is by losing jobs. Taxes will drive businesses to cut jobs and cut benefits:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/07/05/five-major-obamacare-taxes-that-will-hit-your-wallet-in-2013/

The end result that many liberals want is “Single Payer healthcare”. But consider what this means: Every single person in America on private insurance will lose the private insurance they enjoy today, and be forced into a system run by a central Government that lacks external accountability and  affords no choice. This is the last way that Obamacare will make millions of Americans lose the coverage they used to have. As insurance costs skyrocket and the system implodes, the clamor to ‘fix’ the system broken by Obamacare will be to just throw everyone on the Government system. Presto, single payer!

The end result of Obamacare is a poorer America with fewer jobs and worse healthcare. Obama’s broken promise SHOULD be a bigger issue than it is.

1. Passing the buck: Obama excuses his failures by blaming Republicans,e.g. $1 trillion deficits? Not mine, theirs, he says. Never mind the  $2 trillion in extra funding in his first 100 days -  Obama added S-CHIP, $800b Stimulus bill and a $500 billion FY09 discretionary funding add-on and TARP II – yet the Democrats claim that this FY09 spending, written by Democrats, passed and signed by Obama, is “Bush’s deficit”. Mind boggling.  Obama  blames Republicans for lack of action ‘if only they would pass my bills’ he says. But in fact, his agenda WAS passed (stimulus, stimulus II, Frank-Dodd, Obamacare), and didn’t work, and now Republicans in the House have a dozen jobs bills waiting on the doorstep of the Democrat Senate.

2. “Nobody could have done it better” – the ‘its such a big hole I couldn’t fill it’ excuse. Problem: we have the worst recovery since WWII, in
fact nobody could have done worse. Fewer jobs than when Obama was  elected, lowest growth rate of a ‘recovery’ worst record on deficits and debt addition EVER. Clinton is a good liar, and he sold a lemon selling the ‘nobody could have done better’ lie to America last month. In 1984, economic growth was 4 times faster than the 1.25% pace of Q2 2012. We forget how good the American economy can be when unleashed.

Consider just some of the economic statistics we are suffering under: 23 million unemployed; 43 straight months of 8+% unemployment; 45 million on food stamps; Black poverty at record highs; The middle class has lost 40% of its net worth under Obama; Black youth unemployment over 50%; Hispanic unemployment at 10.3%; worst job creation record since 1945 (BLS). Median household income $4,300 declines under Obama, while costs go up -  Food prices up 15% under Obama; Gas prices doubled under Obama; Average family health insurance up $1,500 under Obama.  Obama has added $6 trillion to our debt, more than all presidents combined, and presided over only US credit downgrade as ratings agencies see no credible plan to turn our deficits around.  Despite this river of money from the Government, or perhaps because or it, this Obama ‘recovery” is  the worst recovery in 75 years.  This horrendous record has led to more government dependency, with over 100 million people on some form of means tested welfare. Is it credible that this is as good as it gets?

3. Recycling broken promises. Obama broke major promises in 2008, like cut the deficit in half” oops. In 2012, he has nothing new, but is simply recycling the broken promises from 2008 – amnesty for illegal aliens remains a ‘dream’. Who falls for a  lying politician the SECOND time? Gullible voters or do they don’t care?

4. Smears against Romney. We have seen the litany, from Senator Reid’s phony “he didnt pay taxes for 10 year” (oh yes he did), to the false accusations of Romney’s middle class ‘tax hike’ – a fabrication:

“Romney actually proposes cutting income tax rates across the board for everyone by 20%. “

The only thing more shocking than this factoid is the fact that it is so poorly known. The reality is that Obama already passed a middle
class tax hike, in Obamacare, and wants more taxes, and Romney proposes a middle class tax rate reduction.

If Obama  gets away with selling the American people on the above 4 lies – he  wins. If Obama gets caught, debunked, outflanked, and his lies are  exposed, he loses.

We have already been hurt politically by our failure to challenge the dominant narratives that help Obama. For example, Republicans haven’t challenge the false “knowledge” that Bush is solely to blame for 2008 financial crisis. that and ‘deregulation’. Poppycock. Sure he shares blame, but so do Democrat majority leader Reid, Democrat Speaker Pelosi, Fannie and Freddie protecters Frank and Dodd, people who used and abused the CRA, like Obama when he sued banks to force them to lend to people who later wouldnt/couldnt pay it back. Not to mention govt regulations and the moral hazard of underwriting fannie and freddie cheap loans while the Fed blew bubbles of easy money. None of that was deregulation nor Bush, but because it’s an unchallenged meme a false narrative is now “knowledge”.

To those of us who are informed enough to see through Obama’s lies, it is frustrating to see him winning by convincing people of a pack of lies. Romney’s campaign has to pierce the Obama-media veil and show that, not only is the economy doing poorly, but also Obama’s
Obamacare and other policies have made it that way, and Romney has a better plan. The election may well be decided by how well and how much these four arguments hold up or are debunked.

If Obama wins, it will be via a mass delusion of millions of voters “knowing” something that isn’t true.

There is one more thing, though - where’s the (anti-Obamacare) outrage?