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Old 09-28-2011, 03:48 PM  
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The GOP race and the power of irrational thinking

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The GOP race and the power of irrational thinking - 2012 Elections - Salon.com

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The fact that Rick Perry has been enduring a bad-to-terrible few weeks means that Mitt Romney has been enjoying a good-to-great few weeks. When Perry burst into the race last month and immediately surged to the head of the GOP pack, there was a strong sense in the political world that Mitt's jig might finally be up. But now conventional wisdom is rapidly swinging back Romney's way. A new poll from Iowa even shows Romney back in first place -- and Perry running in third, a point behind Michele Bachmann.

Romney's durability is prompting some understandable confusion. For more than a year now, we've heard that his Massachusetts healthcare law -- which included an individual mandate and which served as the blueprint for "ObamaCare," and for which Romney refuses to apologize -- makes him absolute poison to the Obama-era GOP. And it's not like healthcare is his only sin; Ever since he started running for president five years ago, Romney's awkward attempts to shuck off the cultural liberalism he embraced in Massachusetts have made him ideologically suspect to the right. What Romney represents and where the Republican Party of 2011/2012 seems like the very definition of a bad match.

And yet he's surviving -- and it really shouldn't be all that surprising. Romney's endurance serves as a fine illustration of how fundamentally illogical public opinion really is, and to the backward-working way that most people actually form their opinions.

I wrote about this back in the spring, when Romney's healthcare "problem" forced him to deliver a major address on his Massachusetts law. The result was pure gobbledygook, with Romney simultaneously defending his law while decrying Obama's as a jobs-and-freedom-killing that would bankrupt the country if it wasn't immediately repealed -- a nonsensical argument, given how similar the two laws are. Conventional wisdom held that Republicans, who had elevated ObamaCare to the top of their list of grievances with the president, would see right through this and turn away from Romney in droves. But months later, they still haven't.

Logically, this shouldn't be the case, but that's just the point: Logic really has little to do with the right's ferocious opposition to Obama's presidency. Take healthcare. Sure, some intellectual conservatives scrutinized Obama's plan and came up with detailed, specific objections to it, but the bulk of Republican leaders, activists and voters opposed it for one simple reason: It had Barack Obama's name on it -- and the GOP was committed from the moment Obama was elected to regard every major presidential proposal as an assault on capitalism, freedom and the American way. That this was the GOP's posture was hardly a surprise; it's just how conservatives react to Democratic presidents in our modern era of ideologically cohesive political parties.

This meant that the right decided immediately to oppose Obama's healthcare push, then worked backward to find reasons why (with rank-and-file Republicans taking their cues from opinion-shaping elected officials, activists, and media personalities). The result was that Republicans ended up decrying a policy idea, the individual mandate, with deep conservative roots -- one that had once been more popular on the right than on the left. And beyond the mandate, the details of ObamaCare (like the fact that it was structured to strengthen private insurers and to reduce the deficit) really didn't matter to them: They wanted it to be a massive, job-destroying, socialistic takeover of one-sixth of the economy, so that's how they treated it.
Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor.
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Old 09-28-2011, 04:00 PM  
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But what if we were to stay with Obama? Is more debt rational or irrational? Does either party have a solution that will work? Obama seems to be concerned only about paying for his jobs bill, not about debt reduction. Peter Suderman offers some thoughts and CBO projections, this from: Notes from the Budgepocalypse - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine
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The Congressional Budget Office opens its latest attempt to conjure up America?s budgetary future with a grim declaration. ?The United States is facing profound budgetary and economic challenges.? It doesn?t get any more pleasant from there.

As usual, the budget-watchers? report is not heated. But it is worrying all the same. The 2011 budget deficit is projected to come in around $1.3 trillion?slightly less than previously projected, but still the third largest deficit chasm in the last six and a half decades, topped only by the two previous years. Employment is expected to expand, but only very slowly, remaining above eight percent through 2014, and that's without factoring in some very recent bad news. By 2013, public debt will equal roughly three quarters of the country?s total annual economic output, and, under the most likely scenario, continue upwards from there.

A positive note remarking that ?if tax and spending policies unfold as specific in current law, deficits will drop markedly as a share of GDP? in coming years turns out to be not-so-good news after all: Those are the baseline assumptions that assume that current law remains frozen in place, preserved like Captain America after World War II. Perhaps in some parallel Earth, then, America?s budget is on a somewhat less disastrous trajectory. But in this corner of the multiverse, that?s not going to happen.

And so the CBO warns that the ?baseline projections understate the budgetary challenges facing the federal government in the coming years.? This is not, contra President Obama, a ?manageable? problem. Major changes will be necessary; in order to ?prevent debt from becoming unsupportable? policymakers must choose: Either ?substantially restrain the growth of spending? or raise ?revenues significantly above their historical share of GDP.? Without major spending restraint, in other words, historically high tax rates are the only other option simply to make the math work. I think we know where this leads.
It may be time to bring out the "how to catch wild pigs" parable again, the gate seems to be swinging shut so the pigs have only one source for survival.
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Old 09-29-2011, 04:19 PM  
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Originally Posted by Eddie_T View Post
But what if we were to stay with Obama? Is more debt rational or irrational? Does either party have a solution that will work? Obama seems to be concerned only about paying for his jobs bill, not about debt reduction. Peter Suderman offers some thoughts and CBO projections, this from: Notes from the Budgepocalypse - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine It may be time to bring out the "how to catch wild pigs" parable again, the gate seems to be swinging shut so the pigs have only one source for survival.
Most economists agree that Obama's plan WILL help keep the economy afloat and create jobs, and the CBO also agrees that giving money to the average worker stimulates the economy at about twice the rate of giving it to the people at the top
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Old 09-30-2011, 06:08 PM  
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Originally Posted by RedJeepXJ View Post
Most economists agree that Obama's plan WILL help keep the economy afloat and create jobs, and the CBO also agrees that giving money to the average worker stimulates the economy at about twice the rate of giving it to the people at the top
Left wing thinking at its prime, the government should not be giving money to anyone.

And, especially ventures that are doomed from the start such as the Candid Conservative comments on;
Quote:
In his book, The Vision of the Anointed, American economist Thomas Sowell warned of the tyrannical impulses of the left. More specifically, he cautioned that their arrogance leads to ends justifies the means thinking ? the license to do pretty much anything you want to because you believe your mission is special. Despots and demagogues have practiced this harmful denial throughout time. It?s amazing what you can do when the rules no longer matter. The PBO administration?s embrace of Solyndra solar technologies serves as a striking example. They?ve invested a half billion dollars in this boondoggle ? in spite of repeated warnings from their own budget office. The anointed run on emotion, not reason, and believe faith will win. Even out of business, Solyndra?s web site still states their ?power solutions offer strong return on investment and make great business sense.? Big government?s follies continue to make America another day older and deeper in debt.
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Old 10-01-2011, 07:08 AM  
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Originally Posted by Eddie_T View Post
Left wing thinking at its prime, the government should not be giving money to anyone.
What's the difference between handing someone a check and forgiving them a debt?

Both the left and the right have been fighting for benefits to be given to certain groups. The left have been asking for relief to go directly to struggling people; the right have been asking for benefits for the the most affluent.
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Old 10-01-2011, 09:54 AM  
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Originally Posted by rivalarrival View Post
What's the difference between handing someone a check and forgiving them a debt?

Both the left and the right have been fighting for benefits to be given to certain groups. The left have been asking for relief to go directly to struggling people; the right have been asking for benefits for the the most affluent.
And this was very evident on fox news, the same commentators decrying excessive pay for school teachers in cities making around 60k a year as being absurdly high, but then when it came to the wall street bonuses for bailed out banks decried half a million dollar salaries as just getting by and used the examples of needs such as private school/nannies/housekeepers as if the "upper class" were entitled to these things...... and we shouldn't take them away just because the government had to step in and keep them from losing their jobs....
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Old 10-01-2011, 10:31 AM  
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..................

Quote:
The left have been asking for relief to go directly to struggling people;
the right have been asking for benefits for the the most affluent.

most affluent

Are you rich? Filthy Rich? A MILLIONAIRE?, BILLIONAIRE?, Mega Multi-Billionaire?

No?

Then you're either a duped lemming, clinically brain dead or you have an unhealthy obsession with Coulter.

"I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second and don't you ever forget it." : Ann Coulter
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Old 10-01-2011, 02:27 PM  
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those nice Canadians get ugly and force conservative provocateur Ann Coulter to cancel an appearance

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Old 10-01-2011, 03:55 PM  
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Originally Posted by RedJeepXJ View Post
Most economists agree that Obama's plan WILL help keep the economy afloat and create jobs, and the CBO also agrees that giving money to the average worker stimulates the economy at about twice the rate of giving it to the people at the top
Whose economy, ours or the chinnese, cause we ain't got no money. Whose jobs, cause there ain't no new ones coming soon.

Wait...I know, it's Bush's fault, oops I forgot.
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Old 10-01-2011, 03:59 PM  
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Oh, since you mentioned Ann Coulter, you don't like her because she's a conservative that resorts to liberal tactics. Just another conservative female that freaks the libs out.

Do i like her, not really, do I like to see her freak the libs out? Absolutely!
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