Monday, August 1, 2011

Kicking The Economy When It's Downspiraling

Kicking an economy when it’s teetering on the edge of recession is stupid. And there is no doubt that our economy is on the edge: 9% unemployment, real inflation around 12%, and less than 1% growth make that obvious. So why are the Democrats so intent on doing so much economic harm? Consider these recent events.

1. The Debt Ceiling Debacle: Let’s start with the 900 pound Eledonkey in the room. If the US gets downgraded, that could be very bad. If it defaults, that would be a disaster. Here are the likely consequences of a default:

1. The obvious problems: Soldiers, retirees, and government workers won’t get paid. Good luck paying your mortgages. Government contractors won’t get paid. Here come the layoffs. Doctors won’t get paid for providing medical services under Medicare. No more health care for you! (say in Soup Nazi voice) No regulatory permits will be issued and no inspections performed, grinding a lot of our economy to a halt.

2. The dollar will collapse. This may not sound like a big deal until you realize this will cause the price of gas and food to rise. New mortgage rates will shoot up, as will ARM mortgages. This will kill the struggling housing market and cause more defaults. Credit card interest will go up too as will the rate on car loans. Think of all this as a likely $200-$300 a month tax hike on your average consumer.

3. The stock market lost 5% of its value last week. A real default would be much worse. Part of the problem is that if US debt is downgraded, then many pension funds (which actually hold most US debt) will need to dump those bonds because they are required by their charters to hold investments with certain ratings. Essentially, you would see a panic in the market as pension funds all dumped their bonds in a panic. This would cripple private sector pensions. A downgrade will also raise the cost of borrowing for the government, making our debt problems much worse.
The fact that the Democrats and Republicans were even playing with this over something as gimmicky as a balanced budget amendment is just infuriating. And yeah, I think the BBA is a gimmick. First, it has zero chance of becoming law because there are enough liberal states to block it. . . they might as well have argued over banning the letter Z from our language. Secondly, even if it somehow forbade taxes (which it can’t), it can be cheated by just playing with the numbers. . . “oh, we’re expecting 14% growth this year!” This was all for show, and yet the Democrats and Republicans played chicken over it. And since the Democrats knew it was a meaningless provision, they played chicken over something of no value -- that's called "spite."

What’s more, the Democrats initially held up this deal because they wanted to impose a trillion dollars in new taxes on the economy. W.T.F.? What do you think the effect of a trillion dollar tax hike would be on the economy? Idiots.

Fortunately, it looks less likely that we will default (he wrote optimistically the night before the vote), though considerable damage has already been done. Yet, there is still a high likelihood of a downgrade because not only were the idiots playing chicken with the default, but neither side even bothered to come up with a plan that is likely to stave off a downgrade. A downgrade won’t be as bad as a default, but it could still lead to numbers 2 and 3 above to various degrees. So if you find yourself paying $6 a gallon for gas, if your house continues to lose value, or if your retirement fund loses 1/3 of its value, that’s why.

2. CAFE Standards: In the middle of this insanity, Obama is moving to raise car fuel efficiency standards. Oh heck yeah! That’s just what I would have done. . . if I was an idiot. While we're busy raising the price of cars, maybe we can also impose a “you’re not dead yet?” tax on our car companies!

3. Medical Device Taxes: The new medical device tax in ObamaCare won’t kick in until 2013, but it’s got its first job casualty. Interestingly, when this thing was passed, the “experts” assured us that no one in the industry would ever try to avoid this tax. After all, it’s only a 2.3% tax. No one would try to avoid that, right?

Last week, GE announced that it’s moving its X-ray business headquarters to China. GE, you might recall, is run by Obama’s jobs czar Jeffrey Immelt, and has a track record of (1) shipping American jobs to China, (2) paying NO tax despite record profits, and (3) getting waivers from Obama for regulations GE itself lobbied for. Well, they agreed to this device tax and now they are moving their X-ray HQ. But don’t worry, they tell us, this has nothing to do with the tax and they aren’t killing any jobs here. No siree. . . but they are investing $2 billion in China including $500 million in research centers, including an X-ray R&D center. So while it’s true they aren’t killing any jobs here yet, they are instead making new ones in China instead of here. And you can be sure that avoiding the new tax was part of the equation.

As an interesting aside, GE makes a very cheap portable X-ray machine for the third world. However, they don’t sell those in the US. . . because it would hurt their more expensive products. Boycott GE.

4. The War With Amazon: Finally, I’ll talk more about this later in the week, but various states are at war with online retails. They desperately want to tax them. Now Senate Democrats are looking to impose national sales taxes on those retailers as a protectionist measure to help local retailers. They apparently think now is a great time to tax consumers.

Do you see a pattern here?

Keep this in mind the next time the Democrats talk about creating jobs or protecting the middle class.

51 comments:

Tennessee Jed said...

This post highlights the fundamental difference between liberals and fiscal conservatives A while ago, I reviewed a book by William Voegeli entitled "Never Enough." That sums up the tax and spend crowd. Max Sawicky, a liberal economist stated stated "rehabilitate the reputation of the welfare state by proposing well founded expansions. That . . . is the mission of the Democratic Party; otherwise it has no purpose."

There it is, as if we didn't already know it.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"What’s more, the Democrats initially held up this deal because they wanted to impose a trillion dollars in new taxes on the economy. W.T.F.?"

That means winning the future, right? LOL!

Of course, the only way the democrats can win the future is to fudge it up, but hey, futures are overrated.
Besides we already know what'll happen: by the time the future gets here we'll all be living in Star Trek! Yay!

The problem is, the democrats are like tribbles, only worse.
All they do is consume (while they complain about others consuming) while encouraging still others to consume on our dime (or trillion dollar platinum coins, ha ha!).

You see, the core element of the donk philosophy is to have equal outcomes for all.
Unfortunately, this equal outcome for all equals misery.

Except the democrats will then want a misery waiver since they are democrats and they deserve not to live in misery because they are the ones that saved us all from unequal outcomnes.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you the W. T. F. party.

Unlike the democrats we actually know what the F. stands for.

rlaWTX said...

read the short version of the debt ceiling deal in the local paper this morning - however was up WAY too early to take g'pa to hospital for procedure... (why does one have to be there at 6am for a procedure to be done at 8:30 - and then dr moves it back an hour???!!! at work to check in on things before back to hosp.)

OK - rambling - deal any good???

StanH said...

There was never a doubt these statist bastards would acquiesce, and deliver a steaming hot platter of $hit, and tell us it’s good…now eat. We are several elections away from busting the cabal, that is statist Washington. There is s reason that not one Tea Party representatives made it into leadership, we mustn’t upset the applecart (graft). As far as Jeffery Immelt is concerned, you have to hand it to that jerk, he’s protecting his bottom line, over our dead body. I agree, boycott GE.

BevfromNYC said...

And to add to the fun, the Obama Admin and HHS Sebelius just mandated that ALL insurance companies must cover birth control pill to all women with no copay. Well, except those insurance companies with religious issues. (I forsee many insurance companies "finding religion" in the coming year)

Who is going to be paying the manufacturers for said birth control pills? Oh yeah, we will 'cause they will raise the premiums to cover the cost.

Unknown said...

Andrew: It will be interesting (and scary) to see if this latest deal passes. There's still a chance that we'll avoid default, but with the smoke and mirrors approach to lessening the debt, we may end up with a credit downgrade even if it does pass. The deal as it's currently proposed leaves $1.5 trillion yet to be cut, and leaves us with another crisis to resolve right at Christmastime. Ho, ho, ho.

California is one of the states attempting to solve its debt mess by imposing internet taxes on Amazon, et al. All the politicians are doing is giving the debt monster a little trim when it needs to be completely shaved.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

The GE thing about selling a portable x-ray machine to third world and not at home is like IBM and Apple selling it's PC to third world and selling the huge computers here back in the 80's.

Another way of putting it, we would not have been able to converse on the internet like we do now. Which a good portion of the Computer industry wish never had happened. If you change Computer industry to liberal elites, the sentence works just as well.

There are various reasons why portable x-ray machines aren't marketed here. It would upset too many medical markets here in the US. Like LensCrafters did to the eyeglass markets.

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, That's why the two sides have been unable to reach a real deal. The Democrats have simply been intolerant of even 1 penny of cuts. They only cuts they have been willing to offer have been in military spending -- they won't even offer future non-growth as a cut.

They are like crack addicts addicted to government spending. They need to be removed from Washington.

AndrewPrice said...

Ben, They are indeed the WTF party! And I think your analogy to tribbles is a good one. They consume and consume and consume and they grow in numbers.... but they offer nothing productive.

And their leadership bizarrely doesn't understand the consequences of this. They assume that the productive people will keep right on producing to feed the tribbles, when the reality is that those same productive people will soon be looking for a Klingon engine room where they can send the tribbles to meet their fate. You can't keep robbing people forever without a backlash and it's starting now.

It really makes you wonder if a guy like Harry Reid is just evil or delusional? There doesn't seem to be a third alternative.

AndrewPrice said...

rlaWTX, That's a tough question. On the one hand, the deal isn't bad because we don't lose anything by it. It only pays the bills we already incurred (it doesn't allow new spending) and it does make some small cuts.

It also could lead to some actual cuts and reforms later in the year.

Beyond that, the deal doesn't really give anybody much. All the fighting has been little more than political theater.

So basically, the deal is a missed opportunity that does no harm, but does little good. At least, by preventing default, it should help us win the Senate and White House in 2013 and that will give us a chance to put in place real reforms and cuts.

AndrewPrice said...

Stan, Immelt is shameless, but very good at being corrupt. So he is a talent piece of crap is probably the best way to describe him.

In terms of the budget, it was always going to take another election or two to get serious.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I hadn't heard that, but I'm not surprised. This is what happens when you give power to people like Obama. It's obscene that they can just tell an insurance company, "oh, from now on you need to give ___ for free." Why not make them hand out cars next?

They are starting to turn insurers into quasi-government welfare agencies, forcing them to pay for things the Feds can't afford and then getting them to spread their costs across the population at large.

I hope they all suddenly "find religion."

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, Ho ho ho is right! It's going to be a fun Christmas. We'll see if this thing passes. It would have been wiser for them to pass it last night before the arm chair warrior of talk radio get started today because it's in their interests to show "their courage" compared to those "unprincipled cowards" in Washington. . . harrumph.

I think it will pass, but it might now on the first vote. That will depend on how many Democrats they agree to deliver in the House.

It still might lead to a downgrade too. In fact, that almost seems inevitable. The question will be how far and will be each of the agencies or just one or two of them?

Yep, California is the latest. I'm going to talk about that tomorrow or Wednesday depending on the news.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, That's absolutely right. GE uses the excuse that it would be too costly to get them cleared by the FDA. To a degree that may be true. But the bigger, more obvious reason is that they just don't want to compete with their much more profitable products.

And I think your analogy about the computer markets if a good and instructive one. Even with laptops, a couple years back they were making stripped down laptops for $100 for third world markets while selling more powerful versions here for $2500. But that was a genuinely competitive market and they eventually had to cut costs for face people importing them back here. Now you can get laptops for a couple hundred dollars here.

But GE is in an oligopoly market using the FDA as a gatekeeper. It's another perfect example of crony capitalism at work.

Ed said...

Andrew, Excellent article. I don't know if this will pass or not, but I just want it to be over now. This has been handled wrong by all parties from the beginning and is now just a mess. It's time to declare victory and try again in 2013.

BevfromNYC said...

Actually, Ed, I don't believe it has been handled badly. In fact, I think the Republicans come out pretty well. Whatever this turns out to be, they held the line...again and forced Obama and the Dems to NOT get what they wanted and would have been disasterous which was tax increases. And Obama just looked completely incompetent and this whole process has shown him to be exactly what he is - an agitator not a leader.

Ed said...

Bev, I don't think anyone looks good. The Republicans looked like they were fighting a civil war and now the Tea Party people are going to be more interested in tearing apart the party than winning the next election. The Republican leadership looks like it has no leadership ability and no support. The Democrats look like they don't care about the country, just politics. And Obama looks like a total petulant jerk.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

If portable x-ray machines were marketed here, how much longer will Hospitals and hospital groups stay in power? I would say about a year. This is a stretch, but bear with me.

Part of the reason hospitals are large is the need for people to get x-rays. Doctors need them for diagnosis. Hospitals have them because they can afford the technicians and the equipment. Doctors have to send their patients to the hospital to get them. Also Doctors need tests. (If you knew what was involved in creating a medical lab to do tests you would scream foul.) Frequently, as part of the cost of access to x-rays, the doctor has to use the hospital's lab. If the doctor needs an operating room with nurses, the hospital can supply it but the doctor has to have a reciprocal agreement with the hospital.....basically a doctor, in order to get services that ONLY a hospital has, x-ray equipment, surgical rooms, labs and beds has to work with his local hospital.

If on the other hand, if the doctor didn't need to send his patients to the hospital for x-rays, he could easily cut out some of the services he requires. Like labs. How many times does a patient really need an extended hospital stay for tests if the doctor could take the tests right in his office and send it to an in-clinic lab or one next door? If you knew the answer, you would scream foul.

If on the other hand, you could get tests, x-rays and small procedures that don't require super-clean surgical rooms, nor extended stays for physical rehab, would you go there?

Here is one more item. Hospitals have surgical rooms. How hard is it to create a small group of rooms in a small town that is only used by doctors for various procedures that require a super clean area? And then shut it down after the operation? Not hard at all. MASH units do it all the time.

The real kicker is the requirement for all hospitals to take in indigent people. The only way around that is showing that you don't have the extra beds to do it. Big hospitals do have the extra beds. They need the doctors to refer patients to get the added revenue to pay for the x-rays and lab tests which in turn subsidizes the poor.

Would you put up with inundating your doctor with patients who couldn't pay if he is part of your community? Of course not, you would not be able to get an appointment for that painful corn to be removed. So that mandate about taking in poor people would have been fought tooth and nail and never would have been passed.

By the way, any doctor worth his salt could set up a medical lab to do the tests he needs. He had to do those various tests while learning to be a doctor. He can't set up a small x-ray room because of the costs and space required now.

Since, it has been demonstrated, by the TSA how easy it is to set up an x-ray machine, maybe in the future this will change.

CrispyRice said...

Now is not the time to raise taxes, if there ever is a good time.

I have a friend who is a gov't contractor and he is really worried about his job. Now, he does do something that I think it probably actually useful and necessary. But the thought of him (and all his brethren) losing their jobs raises this question to me -- don't they all just go on unemployment then and get 99+ weeks of pay for doing nothing out of us then?

AndrewPrice said...

Ed, Thanks. I think this is all best described as a lost opportunity. We had a great opportunity to get tax reform and entitlement reform and our side blew that up by freaking out the moment they heard the word tax. So now we get minor cuts and we wait until 2013 to fix whatever damage this deal does and to get a better one.

AndrewPrice said...

Crispy, The amount of the paychecks is not the same. It's around 1/2 of what you were making and it's smaller than that for higher income people. The exact number depends on the state.

And no, there is no good time for tax hikes, but now is a particularly bad time.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev and Ed, I tend to side with Ed that no one looks good in this.

I think the Tea Party played into the stereotype that they are irresponsible... they won no friends and probably pushed moderates further away.

The Republicans come across looking like the same old Republicans even though they pretty much won this because their own allies are screaming that they caved in to the Democrats.

The Democratic left is FURIOUS with the Democratic leadership. Obama looks weak and irrelevant, plus childish.

I just don't see a winner here, except talk radio who all got to re-up their "conservative credentials" by showing that they had more courage and purity than the cowards in Washington. It's the most irresponsible bullshit I've ever heard coming out of these idiot's mouths... but it will sell well.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"What’s more, the Democrats initially held up this deal because they wanted to impose a trillion dollars in new taxes on the economy. W.T.F.? What do you think the effect of a trillion dollar tax hike would be on the economy? Idiots."

The power of Heist compels them.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, I think that's right actually. Hospitals are run on the 1950s "BIG COMPANY" model. They have all the big stuff, grouped together and they charge people a huge amount of money because of overhead and capital costs. It's central planning gone wild.

I suspect the hospital model will begin to change to be more of a joint venture of various smaller groups -- radiology, lab work, rehab, surgical units. Indeed, I've seen this change in some places already where the hospitals are particularly old.

The introduction of cheap and compact medical equipment will push this further along.

BUT there is a catch to all of this. The industry is so heavily regulated that any changes move so slowly that it may take decades for even a single new idea to take hold. That's one reason I favor letting doctors set up their practices however they like.

I've seen small doctors groups who have set up their own labs and gotten their own imaging equipment (short of an MRI of course). And they are basically a small hospital without the bed facilities.

I think letting doctors use their cleverness to arrange their businesses will bring more of that and will eventually make medicine better and cheaper. But once again, it is the government that is standing in the way and it is the big players who are happy to exploit that.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, By the way, how goes the trial?

AndrewPrice said...

Ben, You have a real way with movie quotes and matching them to the lunacy of modern politics! Nice quote! :-)

How about this one: Momma always said the Congress is like a collection of idiots.

AndrewPrice said...

Wow, the Democratic left flank is furious!


"If I were a Republican, this is a night to party," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, told MSNBC Sunday night.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, "This deal trades people's livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it."


"This can only be described as a cave by the White House, even if they view it as a necessary one," said a top congressional Democrat who requested anonymity because he deals directly with the West Wing. "The only way they sell it to the base is by telling them they aren't as bad as the Republicans. This is another example of the White House hamstringing Democrats in Congress because everyone knows they will cave in the end."


Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) was irate after the Biden meeting, but he still wouldn’t say how he was voting. “I have a lot of concerns, a lot of concerns,” Harkin said. “Who would be happy about this deal? I think that conservative Republicans and the tea party people and Grover Norquist, they’re very happy.”


CBS' White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell: "You gave them everything they wanted and we got nothing!"

(Interesting use of the word "we" by Norah O'Donnell... and here I thought journalists were unbiased?)


Moveon.org and some other progressive groups are now saying they won't support the deal or anyone who votes for it. Some are calling it "a gun aimed at the middle class."

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

It really is the regulations that are stifling us now. Not taxes. Taxes have not really been the issue. It is the regulations that have had the worst effect. People will always avoid and be able to avoid onerous taxes. Remember the underground economy? It was in full swing the last year of Carter's administration.

The light bulb ban is an example of regulations gone wild. The mandate that all sick people be taken in hospitals regardless of the ability to pay. The refusal to enforce immigration laws that overwhelms schools as well as hospitals. The requirement that cars meet impossible CAFE standards. The requirement that all businesses over a certain size give medical insurance to their employees. The individual medical insurance mandate. The various requirements by environmental regulations that constrain people's use of their own land. The incredible belief that government should regulate everything.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, Regulations really have become the problem. And the reason for that is that there are two groups pushing for regulation: leftists and big business.

So on the one hand you get all this leftist crap that just makes it impossible to do business. On the other hand, you get all these protectionist regulations that protect companies like GE and make it impossible for competitors to develop.

As a result, consumers and small business are getting crushed. Health care costs can't be brought down. Gas is too expensive. Etc.

Part of our economy are as regulated as they were under the Soviets -- K-12 education, health care, energy.

Cutting taxes would be great, but it won't be enough. We need to get rid of all the regulations that are anti-competitive.

T-Rav said...

Thanks Andrew. You just made my headache worse. Grrr...

AndrewPrice said...

Any time T-Rav! :-)

I thought you were trippin' this week?

AndrewPrice said...

I sounds like Mike Lee of Utah is planning to filibuster the deal. But there are also 33 or 34 Republicans in the Senate who have signed on to the bill, so his filibuster should fail.

The House is proving to be interesting with the Democrats not being able or willing to send much support at the moment. This is going to be close.

T-Rav said...

No, not for a day or two just yet. Which leaves me plenty of time to get stuff done and also tear my hair out at this economic/debt crap.

AndrewPrice said...

Well, fortunately for you "bald is in." :-)

But seriously, I know what you mean. This has tortured my stocks and my brains.

I was going to write a wrap up for tomorrow night, but I'm honestly not sure I can bring myself to do that right now.

Koshcat said...

I say let them default and really show everyone just how bad it has become. The credit rating system is rediculously stupid to begin with. Rather than a system that floats truely with the risk, it gives false hope right up until things crash. The democrats have been completely unserious about this issue for months. Granted these bills have to start in the House, but the Senate has had plenty of time to develop a counter-proposal (I mean one on paper that can be read, debated, and voted on). The President has also been worse than absent pretending to care but playing games. The federal government does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.

I am tired of people, especially on the left, having complete hissy fits anytime someone even tries to talk about trying to change social security or Medicare. Imagine if a company tried to do what the government is doing. Telling their investors things are fine, we just need to borrow a little more and everything would be ok. Keep investing. Don't sell.

See Enron.

Shut 'em down. Let the House "renegotiate" the contracts and then re-open. During this process, you can prioritize spending and only spend what comes in. Interest first. Border security. Shoreline security. Anything left is split up between social security and healthcare.

Post office - nope
airconditioning in capital - nope
Airforce One - nope
State dinners - nope
Oversea wars - pay enough for fuel to bring home.

It is a little fantasy and would cause chaos but would also finally get people's attention. We are so bad that debates over the financial health of our country are now seen as boring. And August is supposed to be a politically dead month.

AndrewPrice said...

Koshkat, I can't disagree with the sentiments.

Truthfully, I think the majority of Americans get this by now. The only ones who don't are the leftist parasites -- and they will never get it because they think they're entitled to be parasites.

I would like to see a total remake of our government, stripped to its essentials. Get it out of the business of doing anything more than providing for the protection of the country. I don't mind it providing things like unemployment, but again, those can't be allowed to become a lifestyle. And it needs to get out of micromanaging people's lives. We can't get a new government body every time some idiot stubs their toe.

The problem with going cold turkey though is that its going to lead to a lot of destruction -- the kind of destruction you can't fix easily or quickly. And since the Democrats control so much of the government, I would be concerned that this would be the kind of chaos to leads to an FDR II scheme. People get pretty stupid when they get panicky and the Democrats are very good at offering easy (read: bad) solutions.

By the way, someone sent me an e-mail with something Warren Buffet supposedly told CNBC:

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election."

That is actually a really good idea.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

I like that law, the problem is it would be challenged constitutionally. :-)

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, I know. Sadly, it would require a constitutional amendment. But could you see how things would change if it was passed! I would completely turn the system on its head!

Joel Farnham said...

Actually Andrew,

If you called that the Balanced Budget Amendment and asked Warren Buffet to run around the country touting it......Maybe call it the Warren Amendment......

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, I don't know if it would pass or not, but the more I think about it, the more I really like the idea. This is the kind of idea that could be a game changer!

AndrewPrice said...

UPDATE:

The House just passed the debt deal!!!

T-Rav said...

269-161. Approximately 175 Republicans and 94 Democrats (including AZ's Gabrielle Giffords, who arrived to a standing ovation) voted yes, but it appears that nearly every Democrat waited until the GOP was finished so as not to take them off the hook. Thanks for that.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Thanks Andrew!

It's a blessing...and a curse.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, I'm still surprised they got that big of a margin.

In any event, I'm glad this is behind us and we need to start thinking about how to improve this sucker in 2013.


I also saw that BRAVE Mitt Romney just announced that he opposes it.

AndrewPrice said...

Ben, I agree. This was necessary, but now it's time to start looking at the future and how we make this thing better

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Andrew:

Ha ha! Actually, I meant the movie quote thing (Monk reference) but it works when applied to the debt dealio.

BTW, nice Forrest Gump quote! :^)

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Ben! It's a Monk reference? I took it as an Exorcist reference.

And it definitely applies to the Debt Dealio -- which should be it's official name. ;-)

T-Rav said...

Andrew, you know you've got a serious problem when JON HUNTSMAN criticizes you for not being decisive about something.

This is just more proof why Romney should not be our nominee, and why this tripe that he's somehow "the most electable" is full of crap. If the other candidates want to get ahead, they need to start calling him out on this, RomneyCare and a ton of other stuff, and ask how it is that he, of all people, presents a clear alternative to Obama. Hit him with that, and I guarantee he'll start hemorraging support.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, I agree 100%. He's a paper pussy-cat and any amount of pressure is likely to topple him. So why is no one pushing on him? I just don't get it. They should be hammering him.

I especially don't know why Pawlenty and McCotter aren't out there pounding him? Pawlenty can't win unless he gets tougher. Romney is a soft target and Pawlenty should be able to make mincemeat of him.... but he won't try.

McCotter needs name recognition, so he should be out there just slugging Romney every day until the Press starts to see him as the go-to guy for a Romney blast.

I just don't know why no one is willing to punch the guy? It's like watching a boxing match turn into a ballroom dance. What the heck?

DCAlleyKat said...

Does Jeffey Immelt have a corporate jet? Um, just sayin....

There's a 'RINO' reason the GOP is pushing Romney. The same old playbook for fools that ran 'that old guy' against Bill Clinton. That ran McCain against Barack Hussein Obama.

If only a small percentage of voters are Republican or Democrat, and the largest voting block are Independents, what percentage of Independents are conservative?

AndrewPrice said...

DCAlleykat, Romney is a mistake, but we seem to be headed in that direction at full speed. I wish one of the conservatives would stand up and start throwing punches at the guy.

I'm sure Immelt has a corporate jet. . . or two. He's not going to give up his perks just because his boss wants everyone else to give up theirs.

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