Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Class Warfare Within GOP

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Mitt Romney won a big victory and that win should propel him to the nomination sometime by June, given the vagaries of the proportional delegate system put in place by the Republican National Committee.

But Romney shouldn’t feel that comfortable with his position in the party or with the state of his party at the moment. Sarah Palin can be dismissed as a goofball and an idiot for continuing to embrace Newt Gingrich, despite the former Speaker’s trouncing in the Sunshine State. But she speaks for many of the goofballs and idiots who make up a fairly large chunk of the Republican/Tea Party base.

And those goofballs/idiots could make up the critical difference between winning and losing in next November. Continue reading →

Obama Presidency Sum of Its Parts

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The Obama Presidency is a wonder to watch.  Barack Obama is making changes, which taken together—the sum of their parts—are transforming government and politics in disturbing ways it will take years and maybe decades to reverse.

His presidency is the triangulation of three distinct characteristics of politics and government.

First, the Obama Presidency is an Imperial Presidency, accumulating and concentrating power in the Executive like few Presidents have done before.

Second, it is a campaign Presidency, intensely focused on winning a second term, at the expense of public policy and cooperation with Congress.

Finally, it is an Administration, a collection of Cabinet departments and federal agencies which he is using to move the government and the country in a starkly different direction than in any time certainly since Reagan, and maybe Roosevelt.

The Imperial Presidency, historically, is a label applied to administrations that have taken unilateral military actions or engaged in aggressive foreign policies: James K. Polk’s intervention in Mexico; Theodore Roosevelt’s internationalism; and in more modern times, Lyndon Johnson’s expansion of our role in Vietnam or Ronald Reagan’s aid to Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Continue reading →

American Politics and the Perpetual Campaign

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

One of the failings of our system of governance, former Republican Leader Bob Michel once observed, is that you can no longer tell where the campaigns end and governing begins.

That trend has defined American politics for sometime. The differences between campaigning and governing have gotten less and less apparent. And this year, they seemed to have disappeared all together, after a brief flurry of off-again, on-again, off again, bipartisan, bicameral, bi-branch exchanges that showed promise, but no permanency.

The combatants in American politics, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, have dropped any pretense of governing. It is all campaigning, all the time. And no one did it in more grandly than the President.

Oregon Rep. Greg Walden said the other day that he has never seen a President step away from governing the way President Barack Obama has. Previous presidents who served in divided government where Republicans controlled one part and Democrats the other chose not to cut and run in the face of serious challenges. Ronald Reagan didn’t. Nor did George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton. When the country’s challenges demanded it, they stepped up, not away. They found common ground, sorted through the politics and partisanship, made decisions and resolved contentious issues like taxes, Social Security, budgets and welfare reform.

When President Obama was asked on 60 Minutes:  “Isn’t it your job as president to find solutions to these problems, to get results, to figure out a way to get it done?”’ the response was pretty much no. The President said it was his job to present the country with a vision, presumably so others could govern. Continue reading →

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

The Popular Press is swooning over what they consider to be the new-found potency in President Barack Obama’s demands that the Congress pass his Jobs Bill.

For reasons which I cannot understand, the President decided to make his case for his bill by leading with who was going to pay for it, notwithstanding we have no idea how the first job will be created by the jillions of dollars of new taxes he is proposing.

You want people who make millions of dollars a year to pay more in taxes? Ok. I don’t have an answer to that.

But somehow, in the translation, anyone with a family income north of about $250,000 (husband and wife each making a little over $10 k per month) becomes the equal of Warren Buffett’s income and needs to be penalized for the family’s success. Continue reading →

Perry Gallops Out of the Gate

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

Rick Perry has been in this race for about 12 minutes and has been deemed the frontrunner; the man who has the best chance of knocking Mitt Romney out of his frontrunner status; the guy who will knock / has knocked Michelle Bachmann out of second place; the man who will force (pick one) Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, or Hopalong Cassidy to reconsider their previous decisions not to get into this race.

Continue reading →

Drill, Don’t Drill, Drill

Revisiting Humphrey Hawkins

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feehery.theory.com

On the eve of St. Patrick’s Day in 1978, the New York Times reported that the House approved by legislation, which established the official policy of the United States that the unemployment rate should be 4%. “The bill authorizes the use of fiscal and monetary policy, public service jobs, job training and counseling and all other means to achieve full employment…The legislation was supported by a coalition of labor, civil right, liberal, religious and women’s groups and was backed by President Carter.” Amendments offered by Republicans to require a balanced budget and achieve an inflation goal of 3% were rejected, and most GOPers voted against final passage of the bill, calling it an empty promise.

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No October Surprise A Surprise

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

This summer I was convinced that in September, the Democrats would launch an election-year counter-offensive, an October surprise that would plug the drain of Democratic polling numbers and slow the slide of a lot of Democratic candidates.

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Dems on the Run

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from townhall.com and Mullings

While everything else has been going on, two senior Democratic Members of Congress, Maxine Waters (DEMOCRAT-Calif) and Charles Rangel (DEMOCRAT- New York ) have been, essentially, indicted by the House Ethics Committee for violation of House rules.

Both of those findings came well in advance of the House resuming its back-breaking schedule of a two-week work period between the August-September recess and the October-November pre-election recess.

When the Ethics Committee reported its findings, the expectation was that both Waters and Rangel would have their hearings/trials prior to the pre-election break.

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You Say You Want A Devolution

BY GARY ANDRES

From the Weekly Standard

Public opinion about the appropriate role of the federal government moves like the moon cycle, causing tidal shifts in citizen attitudes and election outcomes. After watching Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress over the past year and a half, attitudes about Washington are changing again, possibly giving those who advocate devolving power to the states a political advantage in the midterm elections.

Political scientist James A. Stimson nailed the ocean metaphor in his insightful book, Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics. Stimson demonstrates that the overall public mood about government starts to run counter to victorious political parties soon after they win.  For example, voters typically elect  Democrats when a more liberal, pro-activist federal government sentiment hits an apex.  But for the big government crowd, Election Day is about as good as it gets.  Going forward, sentiment soon starts to shift in a more conservative direction.
Continue reading →