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Obama should lose on both competency and philosophy

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by bigtexxx, Aug 12, 2012.

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  1. bigtexxx

    bigtexxx Contributing Member

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    The case against reelection

    There are two ways to run against Barack Obama: stewardship or ideology. You can run against his record or you can run against his ideas.

    The stewardship case is pretty straightforward: the worst recovery in U.S. history, 42 consecutive months of 8-plus percent unemployment, declining economic growth — all achieved at a price of an additional $5 trillion of accumulated debt.

    The ideological case is also simple. Just play in toto (and therefore in context) Obama’s Roanoke riff telling small-business owners: “You didn’t build that.” Real credit for your success belongs not to you — you think you did well because of your smarts and sweat? he asked mockingly — but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.

    Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want for this nation?

    Mitt Romney’s preferred argument, however, is stewardship. Are you better off today than you were $5 trillion ago? Look at the wreckage around you. This presidency is a failure. I’m a successful businessman. I know how to fix things. Elect me, etc. etc.

    Easy peasy, but highly risky. If you run against Obama’s performance in contrast to your own competence, you stake your case on persona. Is that how you want to compete against an opponent who is not just more likable and immeasurably cooler but spending millions to paint you as an unfeeling, out-of-touch, job-killing, private-equity plutocrat?

    The ideological case, on the other hand, is not just appealing to a center-right country with twice as many conservatives as liberals, it is also explanatory. It underpins the stewardship argument. Obama’s ideology — and the program that followed — explains the failure of these four years.

    What program? Obama laid it out boldly in a series of major addresses during the first months of his presidency. The roots of the nation’s crisis, he declared, were systemic. Fundamental change was required. He had come to deliver it. Hence his signature legislation:

    First, the $831 billion stimulus that was going to “reinvest” in America and bring unemployment below 6 percent. We know about the unemployment. And the investment? Obama loves to cite great federal projects such as the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system. Fine. Name one thing of any note created by Obama’s Niagara of borrowed money. A modernized electric grid? Ports dredged to receive the larger ships soon to traverse a widened Panama Canal? Nothing of the sort. Solyndra, anyone?

    Second, radical reform of health care that would reduce its ruinously accelerating cost: “Put simply,” he said, “our health-care problem is our deficit problem” — a financial hemorrhage drowning us in debt.

    Except that Obamacare adds to spending. The Congressional Budget Office reports that Obamacare will incur $1.68 trillion of new expenditures in its first decade. To say nothing of the price of the uncertainty introduced by an impossibly complex remaking of one-sixth of the economy — discouraging hiring and expansion as trillions of investable private-sector dollars remain sidelined.

    The third part of Obama’s promised transformation was energy. His cap-and-trade federal takeover was rejected by his own Democratic Senate. So the war on fossil fuels has been conducted unilaterally by bureaucratic fiat. Regulations that will kill coal. A no-brainer pipeline (Keystone) rejected lest Canadian oil sands be burned. (China will burn them instead.) A drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico that a federal judge severely criticized as illegal.

    That was the program — now so unpopular that Obama barely mentions it. Obamacare got exactly two lines in this year’s State of the Union address. Seen any ads touting the stimulus? The drilling moratorium? Keystone?

    Ideas matter. The 2010 election, the most ideological since 1980, saw the voters resoundingly reject a Democratic Party that was relentlessly expanding the power, spending, scope and reach of government.

    It’s worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business, a corner restaurant, a medical practice won’t take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.

    In 1988, Michael Dukakis famously said, “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.” He lost. If Republicans want to win, Obama’s deeply revealing, teleprompter-free you-didn’t-build-that confession of faith needs to be hung around his neck until Election Day. The third consecutive summer-of-recovery-that-never-came is attributable not just to Obama being in over his head but, even more important, to what’s in his head: a government-centered vision of the economy and society, and the policies that flow from it.

    Four years of that and this is what you get.

    Make the case and you win the White House.

    letters@charleskrauthammer.com

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...4ce76c-e250-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html
     
    #1 bigtexxx, Aug 12, 2012
  2. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    Interesting.

    How does Romney propose to fix Wall Street when he is in bed with them? There have been no significant statements by Romney on Wall Street reform---unless one talks about his dinner with Barclays representatives.

    I can't help but note that the large majority of that $5 trillion damage was done by private bankers go mad.

    http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCABRE8781LA20120810

    Where is the accountability? Give the Obama Admin. this; they tried (maybe half-heartily), but they advanced it. How will Mitt Romney fare?

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/25/barclays-fundraising-mitt-romney

    That looks promising. Crooks paying their way in.

    The character and policy positions of Mitt Romney are very questionable indeed. While the first may just be fodder for internet memes, the second is what, if the average American were informed, would make him unelectable.
     
    #2 Northside Storm, Aug 12, 2012
  3. El_Conquistador

    El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking
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    Great article from Krauthammer -- the leading intellectual in journalism today.

    The_Conquistador boils this race down to the simplest comparisons of what the candidates offer:


    FREEDOM (Romney)

    or

    FREE STUFF (Obama)
     
    #3 El_Conquistador, Aug 12, 2012
  4. ROXTXIA

    ROXTXIA Contributing Member

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    Fixed.

    Amazing you guys believe this.
     
    #4 ROXTXIA, Aug 12, 2012
  5. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    Is Romney's freedom the BRAVEHEART FREEEEEDOOOM?

    or like corporatist freedom?

    Or better yet, paid-off Wall Street freedom?

    i dunno. you gotta specify terms.
     
    #5 Northside Storm, Aug 12, 2012
  6. vlaurelio

    vlaurelio Contributing Member

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    freedom from paying taxes
     
    #6 vlaurelio, Aug 12, 2012
    1 person likes this.
  7. Depressio

    Depressio Contributing Member

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    Aaaaand respect for argument gone. If one of your main arguments against Obama is a quote that was taken out of context and taken in a way that clearly wasn't the meaning, then you're in a sad state of affairs.

    That would be like Obama's main attack against Romney being the "I like firing people" quote.
     
    #7 Depressio, Aug 12, 2012
  8. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    They don't. Ergo: please quit quoting them. TIA.
     
    #8 B-Bob, Aug 12, 2012
  9. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    But what of freedom from rigged financial markets and players?

    Or freedom to pursue personal choices, under the equal protection of the laws? Freedom over one's body, freedom over one's spousal choice, freedom from the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on what one can smoke or do?

    What of the freedom afforded to those of us fortunate enough to benefit from a clean environment? By having strong and healthy bodies? What of the notion of leaving a future generation with a well-stewarded world; such that they may have the same freedoms we enjoy today?

    What of the freedom of hope, and the crushing prison of poverty? What of the positive freedom of allowing people to choose between prosperous and respected jobs, rather than relegating them to nothingness?

    Freedom isn't as simple as lobbying catchphrases, and empty slogans. Freedom isn't irresponsibility, and shirking your duty to your fellow man and country. Freedom is not the domain of one party, even if the party in question so desperately wants it to be.
     
    #9 Northside Storm, Aug 12, 2012
  10. glynch

    glynch Contributing Member

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    What do you expect from a climate change denier?
     
    #10 glynch, Aug 12, 2012
  11. Nook

    Nook Member

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    Your complete lack of enthusiasm is more obvious based on your half hearted posts.
     
    #11 Nook, Aug 13, 2012
  12. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    i so enjoy seeing the right wing crack pots squirm like worms under a magnifying glass
     
    #12 Sweet Lou 4 2, Aug 13, 2012
  13. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    Kind of sad Krautmonger couldn't stray from toeing the party line.

    Parsing "You didn't build that" -check
    Solyndra -check
    Claiming the stimulus failed without following the money -check
    teleprompter reference -check
    Halting a transnational pipeline that benefits the canuckastan business -check
    Solyndra bad, offshore oil disaster and the revelations of decades regulatory capture that it exposed not even mentioned- check

    I assumed selectively parsing CBO data was more his game, but that seemed like a personal garnish for an op/ed someone else ghostwrited.

    I'm just disappointed that this is the narrative the Republicans built in the last 4 years. It's like they want even more time to sit on their ass and disrupt Congress for the Presidency will fall on their lap. Time's up. **** or get off the pot.

    It could work better if their picks weren't elitist emotionless assholes that sound like the bankers who foreclosed Jim-Bob's home after denying a re-fi.
     
    #13 Invisible Fan, Aug 13, 2012
  14. Damion Laverne

    Damion Laverne Member

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    TL;DR
     
    #14 Damion Laverne, Aug 13, 2012
  15. pippendagimp

    pippendagimp Member

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    he should lose simply based on the fact he didn't "change" anything at all......'change you can believe in'....rriiiight.....bankers, lobbyists, corporate 'persons' have made him their go-to b**** who never fails to deliver the country at their feet..
     
    #15 pippendagimp, Aug 13, 2012
    1 person likes this.
  16. Mathloom

    Mathloom Shameless Optimist
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    Fixed
     
    #16 Mathloom, Aug 13, 2012
  17. Raven

    Raven Member

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    Romney isn't in bed with Wall Street. He is Wall Street.
     
    #17 Raven, Aug 13, 2012
  18. bigtexxx

    bigtexxx Contributing Member

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    you can try to make excuses for Obama, but if you listen to the speech in toto it's obvious what his intention was. The entire speech was based upon it!
     
    #18 bigtexxx, Aug 13, 2012
  19. GladiatoRowdy

    GladiatoRowdy Contributing Member

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    Yes, the entire speech was about how individual effort, intelligence, and tenacity is complemented by the infrastructure our society puts into place to create the most wonderful entrepreneurial engine the world has ever seen.

    Claiming anything else is simply another lie.
     
    #19 GladiatoRowdy, Aug 13, 2012
  20. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Contributing Member

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    [​IMG]

    Ladies and Gentlemen, the leading intellectual in journalism today.

    :grin:
     
    #20 RocketMan Tex, Aug 13, 2012
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