25 September, 2010

Why Democrats Are Losing in 2010

Yesterday, I began a four part series examining recent elections, and what can be learned from them that might help understand the current and future ones. Yesterday’s post was about why the Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008.

Today’s post is about today and the Democrats. The reasons for the Democrats losing are much simpler.

They totally misunderstood the results of the 2006 and 2008 elections.

That’s it.

Ok, it deserves a more in depth explanation, but that’s the real reason.

What Democrats took from their decisive victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections was this:

The people have finally come our way and embraced progressivism (liberalism). This is our chance to turn this country into the place we’ve always dreamed it could be.

In fact, the message that Democrats should have gotten is this:

This is the worst possible time to enact our sweeping changes to America, and try to move the country dramatically towards European socialism. The public elected us because of their fears of expansive and intrusive government. This is our time to tread carefully.

If they had taken that message, James Carville’s 40 more years would not be ending 38 years early. All that stuff you heard in early 2009 about the Republicans being a dead or regional party was close to true. It was slightly an exaggeration, but not by much. The Democrats have only themselves to blame for the resurgence of the Republican party. If they had governed smartly, they’d all be cruising towards re-election right now.

Instead, they gave us failed Keynesian economics, a bloated awful health care bill that they didn’t read, a bloated awful financial reform bill that they didn’t read, and promised us more and more of the same. All of this follows the expansive and intrusive government path that got the Republicans in trouble. The only difference is the Republicans were taking the scenic route down a two lane country road, and the Democrats have us on an 8 lane interstate highway with no speed limit.

In the next post in this series, I plan on looking at the Tea Party, before winding up with a look at the 2012 and 2014 elections.

The Democrats Losing Message

I’ve decided on giving an election message every day starting at 40 days out. We’re now down to 38 days, and here’s my thoughts for today.

I saw this post on NewsBusters yesterday, and it mirrors a post that had been running around in my head for about a week. The NewsBusters post is directed specifically at Paul Krugman, but my remarks are for all voters and politicians.

Democrats keep saying that the reason we should vote for them is because the Republicans have no new ideas, and voting for them is just a vote for those “same policies that failed us”.

Uh huh.

While I have numerous gripes with the Republicans and their failed policies, let’s look at the record, shall we?

  • In January 2007 before the Democrats took over Congress, unemployment was 4.6 percent; now it's 9.6 percent.
  • In January 2007 there were 7.1 million unemployed people in America; now there are 14.9 million.
  • In January 2007 the median home price was $210,600; today it's $179,300.
  • In January 2007 the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 12,500; today it's at 10,840.
  • In January 2007 the gross federal debt was $9 trillion; today it's $13.5 trillion.
  • The poverty rate in 2006 was 12.3 percent; now it's 14.3 percent
  • In the final budget created by a GOP-controlled Congress, the deficit was $160 billion; now it's $1.6 trillion.

Add it all up and: there were half as many people out of work then; houses were worth 17 percent more; stocks were 16 percent higher; the federal debt was 33 percent lower; poverty was 14 percent lower, and; the deficit was 90 percent lower!

So, Dems, are you sure you want to remind me of the past when I’m headed to the voting booth?

24 September, 2010

Why Republicans Lost in 2006 and 2008

This is the first part, in what I think will be a four part series. The series will be about the recent elections and what they portend for the current one and for the future.

There were several obvious reasons why the Republicans lost in 2006, and 2008.

  • An unpopular war in Iraq
  • Endless hammering by the MSM on how “awful” things were (quick question, if it was “awful” in 2006, what word describes now, MSM?)
  • Democrat angst over the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections, especially the Presidential ones.
  • And frankly, the Democrats were better organized.

But there’s another reason, one that Democrats and Republicans of the time both misunderstood, and one that has significant bearing on this election and likely the elections in 2012 and 2014, if not beyond.

Republicans lost their base and conservative independents. But not because they moved too far to the right. Because they moved too far to the left. 2006 gave us the first indication that conservatives had lost faith in the Republican party. The Republican establishment tried to ram “comprehensive immigration reform” down our throats and we screamed in one voice, “NO!” While nothing further of significance would happen for almost three years, it was at this moment that the Tea Party was conceived.

The left likes to demonize George W. Bush (R-USA), but the real reasons they hate him boil down to four things:

  1. The way he talks. The left thinks that the President should be smarter than you and me and sound like it. Obviously, Bush doesn’t sound like it. Whether or not he actually is, is immaterial.
  2. The Iraq war. The left hates it. Nevermind that every prominent member of the Democrat establishment supported it when it was begun. Nevermind that an overwhelming majority of Americans supported it when it started. None of that matters. What matters is that it wasn’t over fast enough and clean enough and no “significant stockpiles of WMD’s” were found.
  3. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito
  4. Katrina. Personally, I think local and state government owns more responsibility for the failures here, and those were controlled by Democrats, but there’s no escaping the fact that the federal government screwed up. There’s also no escaping the fact that the MSM completely invented stories about what was going on that made Bush look bad.

So, they hate him for the way he talks, two events, and Supreme Court picks. They like to pretend they hate everything about him, but his politics on the whole were at worst centrist, and often left-of-center. He gave us No Child Left Behind, prescription drugs for Medicare, huge government growth, and tried to give us amnesty for illegal aliens. One of his biggest allies in this was Senator John McCain (R-AZ). The “moderate” wing of the Republican party flexed its muscles from about 2002 to 2008.

In doing so, they lost the small government conservatives and independents. A lot of us didn’t vote in 2006. In 2008, I voted for John McCain for President (holding my nose), and then left the rest of my ballot blank. Like many other conservatives, I had essentially given up on the Republican party.

In the next post, I’ll detail how the Democrats completely misunderstood the 2006 and 2008 elections and show why that has put them in so much trouble in 2010.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

The flood is coming. 39 Days.

h/t: RedState

20 September, 2010

The Best News I’ve Read All Month

Tea Party primary wins give boost to 'fair tax' plan to kill federal income taxes.

Only one problem with the article. This quote here:

The levy received little attention during the 2005 tax reform debate under President George W. Bush because experts warned it raised less revenue than the current system and would force drastic cuts in the size of the federal government.

First, the Fair Tax is designed to be revenue neutral. It won’t force drastic cuts in the size of the federal government. It does make such things easier to implement, and makes increasing the size harder, but these are side effects.

Second, the “experts” that issued these warnings about the Fair Tax did no such thing. They warned about issues with a tax plan that’s similar, yet not identical, to the fair tax. Why does this matter? Because, every issue that they brought up, isn’t an issue with the actual Fair Tax Plan.

One common criticism that they brought up is that the 23% number was way too low, that it would be more like 40% once exclusions were added for food, etc. But the Fair Tax deliberately does not have these exclusions. That’s what makes it fair. It covers every B2C transaction that occurs in the United States, no matter what the product is, no matter who the ‘B’ is and no matter who the ‘C’ is. There are no exceptions. Period.

It is likely given the enormous growth of government that we’ve witnessed the last 4 years, that the 23% number is, in fact, now too low.

However, if you really want to get out of this recession, and get the economy moving again, giving us internet boom type of growth rates or even larger, then the Fair Tax is the way to go. As I’ve said before.

P.S. I know my page loads slow. The problem appears to be zoomclouds. I’m looking into changing my cloud.