Polimerican

A Rebuttal to A LONG List of President Obama’s Accomplishments

Jim — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:59:24 +0000

A friend pointed me to this blog post claiming that President Obama has a long list of accomplishments.

It was so riddled with inaccuracies, inanities and just generally incredible claims that I felt compelled to respond with a Fisking.

CLAIM: “Despite the characterizations of some, Obama’s success rate in winning congressional votes on issues was an unprecedented 96.7% for his first year in office. Though he is often cited as superior to Obama, President Lyndon Johnson’s success rate in 1965 was only 93%.”

REBUTTAL: This is actually true. The problem for Obama is that he’s claiming the exact opposite. He has claimed over and over again that the reason the economy hasn’t fully recovered is that he hasn’t been able to get anything done because of a “do-nothing Congress.” The facts prove that he was given practically everything he wanted, and this is the end result. So I’ll give the author this one, but it doesn’t exactly bolster the author’s case that Obama isn’t a “disappointment.”

CLAIM: “Within days after taking office, he signed an Executive Order ordering an audit of government contracts, and combating waste and abuse.”

REBUTTAL: Again, this is true. However, where are the results? What has the audit produced? The interesting thing about an audit is that it isn’t anything more than a report. You have actually have to DO something with it for an audit to mean anything. The lack of action speaks for itself.

CLAIM: “Created the post of Chief Performance Officer, whose job it is to make operations more efficient to save the federal government money.”

REBUTTAL: So he created yet another high-paying govenment position, with attendant staff and funding of course. But has anyone ever seen anything produced by said CPO? Where are all the results of yet another wasteful bureaucracy? So, the author wants to claim credit for Obama creating yet another tax-dollar blackhole which is unaccountable and unproductive. OK. I’ll give credit where credit is due. Obama does seem to have a talent for doing this after all.

CLAIM: “On his first full day, he froze White House salaries.”

REBUTTAL: Not really. He froze the salaries of “senior members of the White House staff.” That’s different than “White House salaries” which is a staff of hundreds. So that amounts to freezing the pay of what, 10 people at most? Not a pay cut, mind you. A freeze. Which just means that his ridiculously highly paid cronies aren’t going to be any more ridiculously highly paid than they already are. THIS is the grand gesture for which he deserves re-election?

CLAIM: “He appointed the first Federal Chief Information Officer to oversee federal IT spending.”

REBUTTAL: Again. The creation of yet another highly-paid senior bureaucratic position, with even more staffers. To do what? So we have even more people on the federal dole to what end? What have they actually accomplished? Has anyone actually heard of a single initiative which has been successfully spearheaded by said CIO? The author has, once again, confused the appearance of doing something with the actual accomplishment of something. And this “appearance” is costing taxpayers money every day. And this is something to be proud of?

CLAIM: “He committed to phasing out unnecessary and outdated weapons systems, and also signed the Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act to stop waste, fraud and abuse in the defense procurement and contracting system.”

REBUTTAL: So he signed a bill that he theoretically could have vetoed. A bill that was so overwhelmingly popular that it passed the Senate on a roll call vote: there was literally NO ONE who voted against it. So I guess some congratulations is due for not vetoing a bill that would have easily overridden any veto because of its broad bipartisan support. That’s true bravery in action for you. But for Barack Obama signing the bill, it would have taken another 24 hours for Congress to override his veto and for the bill to become law over his objection any way. That’s got to count as an accomplishment for him, right?

CLAIM: “Through an executive order, he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.”

REBUTTAL: This one is an absolute knee-slapper. Yes. He did create Simpson-Bowles. And then promptly refused to enact even a single recomendation. In fact, the budget that Obama produced afterward was so stupendously irresponsible and wrong-headed, that he couldn’t find a single Democrat to vote for it. The author has to be really desperate to include an extremely high-profile waste taxpayer time and money creating a report that he completely ignored as an “accomplishment.”

That’s just two of fourteen sections. If I have time, I’ll continue on with the other twelve. But this gives you a taste of how ludicrous the list is. Lots of claims of “accomplishments” are nothing more than counting giving a speech, creating yet another useless bureaucracy, or completely ignoring the negative outcome, as “accomplishments.”

The list was so ludicrously overweighted with nonsense that I was honestly looking for “successfully managed to tie his shoes every day of his term” on the list. The sheer length of the list is impressive. The contents of the list, however, clearly are not.

And that’s where the author makes the same mistake as Barack Obama: results matter a lot more than appearance. And this list is a lot like this presidency: just a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, and in the end, we don’t have anything positive to show for it.

Palinizing Perry

Jim — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:04:12 +0000

Palinize Rick Perry

Rick Perry is the latest outside-the-Beltway Republican star, and the playbook from both the Left and Establishment Republicans is clear: Palinize him.

Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene to great acclaim when she was selected as the running mate for GOP nominee John McCain. Immediately thereafter, she was subject to perhaps the greatest coordinated attack on a Republican by the media and Democrats (with the eager assistance of members of her own party) ever seen on the national stage. This outrageous onslaught gave rise to the new phrase: to “Palinize” your opponent.

We’ve already covered the first wave of opposition research which has been unleashed on Rick Perry. But this is far from your run-of-the-mill vetting of a national candidate:

With exactly that mission in mind, an editor of a major newspaper told me: “We plan to declare war on Rick Perry and do all in our power to crush him.”

But that’s pretty much to be expected from a media deeply in the tank for Barack Obama. At least Perry will be able to count on the backing of Establishment Republicans if he manages to win the nomination, right?

Erick Erickson, in an excellent horse race summation in Red State, nails the answer:
“So you have these guys … trying to settle every score they can with Perry and his consultant, Dave Carney. … Because so much of the consultant class will be shut out of the White House should Rick Perry win, their livelihoods depend on Rick Perry losing either now or in November.
And frankly, for a few in the GOP consultant class, they’ll gladly see Perry lose in November just to ensure they are not shut out of a Republican White House. For all the talk of Perry being an establishment guy, the establishment hates his guts as much as the left does . . .”

The parallels to the attacks on Palin are unmistakable. The Obama campaign has already begun reaching beyond the standard digging into an opponent’s record and well into desperation territory by trying to solicit attacks on Perry from anyone willing to say anything bad about him. The New Republic, former home of the world’s most famous amateur obstretician, has already headlined their opening anti-Perry salvo “Rick Perry: The God-Fearing, Know-Nothing, Pistol-Packing Embodiment of Liberals’ Worst Nightmares.” Chris Matthews made fun of the way he looks and dresses. A Ron Paul supporter has taken out a full-page ad looking for prostitutes and others – both men and women – who have any information about sexual misconduct by Perry. And Perry’s campaign is still only two weeks old.

But Rick Perry may be able to succeed where Palin could not. Here’s why:

Rick Perry isn’t Sarah Palin. The sad truth is that female candidates for higher office face a double standard:
A woman can either be a prude or promiscuous. Too pretty or too masculine. A shrew or a doormat. As women try to tip-toe somewhere in the middle, we find that one small move can send us plunging straight into one of the extremes.
It’s not fair, but men in public life are given far more latitude than women are. Statements, behaviors or policy positions that would immediately end a woman’s political future can often be survived by a man who said, did or believed the same things.
Rick Perry isn’t John McCain. From the beginning, it was clear that McCain was more interested in garnering post-election headlines like this than he was about conducting the kind of serious, hard-hitting campaign designed to expose his opponent’s weaknesses – of which there were (and are) legion from which to choose. Only when Palin entered the race was there any attempt to do so. For her efforts to bring attention to those obvious weaknesses, she was rewarded with contempt from McCain’s staff and an accusation that she was “going rogue.” Even one of Perry’s most vociferous critics and himself the champion of the cheap shot) acknowledges that Perry “has the most important quality of all: the willingness to do whatever it takes.”

Look For the Union Label

Jim — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:16:52 +0000

Unions Democrats

While the race for the GOP presidential race heats up, Democrats are facing a potentially devastating loss as unions look to strike out on their own.

Over the last twenty years, unions have given more than $600 million to the Democratic Party and their candidates. But even more importantly than that, they have provided the manpower for the bulk of the Democratic Party’s GOTV (Get Out the Vote) efforts in every election. That help has arguably been worth far more than even the half-billion dollars they have put directly into the party’s coffers as those efforts often provided the margin of victory in close elections around the nation.

So when Barack Obama got elected with union help, Democrats expanded their control over the House of Representatives with union help, and Democrats obtained a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate with union help; unions were understandably elated. At long last, they were going to possess the Holy Grail of unions: Card Check. The Employee Free Choice Act, an Orwellian name if ever there was one, would have eliminated secret ballots in union elections, forced government-run arbitration, and imposed harsh penalties on businesses that ran afoul of its terms. After all that unions had done over the decades, the $68 million they gave in 2008 alone, and all the GOTV boots they put on the ground, that was the least that Democrats could do for unions and to ensure their own political power. Right?

Wrong. Democrats never even brought it up for a vote. To make matters worse, Democrats strung unions along throughout 2010 by telling them that they would bring it up during the lame duck session after the November elections in order to ensure that union members would turn out to help Democrats during that election. Surprise, surprise. It never even came up for a vote, even after unions spent another $61 million for Democrats during the 2010 elections.

After the 2010 elections swept record numbers of Republicans into office, public sector unions began taking a beating. In Wisconsin, their collective bargaining privileges were stripped away in the “budget repair” bill passed by Republicans. In Ohio, Republicans limited collective bargaining privileges too. In Indiana, several laws were passed which placed some restrictions on prevailing wage contracts which favor unionized contractors as well as expanding school vouchers which allow students to attend schools typically staffed by non-union teachers. In Michigan, Republicans passed a series of laws designed to limit the power of unions in the name of fiscal savings as well. Democratic legislators in Wisconsin and Indiana fled the state to delay passage of these laws, but they ultimately returned while both Barack Obama and national Democrats largely remained silent throughout.

To be sure, it’s not like the unions got nothing in return for their support. The 2009 Stimulus sent billions of dollars to states to keep public sector union employees from being laid off. But the Stimulus failed to live up to the promises made to justify passing it, and when the money was spent, many of them wound up losing their jobs anyway.

Obama stuffed the NLRB with union activists, and it has since sued Boeing on behalf of unions in Washington state and instituted new rules forcing employers to notify workers of their rights to form a collective bargaining unit.

While those are far from minor accomplishments, they are not nearly on the scale of support that unions expected from Democrats. That has left union leaders feeling like they’re not getting the best bang for their multi-millions of bucks.

“Let’s assume we spent $100 in the last election,” [AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka] said, explaining the union’s position.
“The day after election day, we were no stronger than we were the day before,” said Trumka. “If we had spent that [$100] on creating a structure for working people that would be there year round, then we are stronger.”

Much like the TEA Partiers who have formed outside groups not controlled by the Republican party, unions now appear to be exploring similar options in order to operate more independently from the Democratic Party.

Trumka’s remarks follow the news that the AFL-CIO will set up a so-called Super PAC, allowing the nation’s largest labor federation to spend unlimited amounts of money on political activity for next year’s elections and beyond. Trunka confirmed Thursday that the union was moving forward with plans to create the PAC.

In years past, unions supported individual candidates but they also gave large amounts of money to the Democratic Party which the party was then free to spread around in support of candidates which may or may not have been strong supporters of unions. This is especially true in swing and Republican-leaning districts where supporting card check or other union initiatives would hurt those candidates.

How Does Mitt Romney Turn It Around?

Jim — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:37:10 +0000

Mitt Romney Underdog

In just two short weeks, Mitt Romney has gone from frontrunner to underdog in the race for the GOP nomination. How does he turn it around?

Two polls out today are spelling serious trouble for Mitt Romney. The first, from Gallup, shows Perry leading him by 12 points at 29-17. The other, from PPP, shows a 13 point difference at 33-20. That gap isn’t insurmountable by any means, especially this early in the contest. However, a deeper look inside the numbers shows a bigger potential problem for Romney than that 12-13 point deficit.

Both polls include the second-, third- and fourth-tier like Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman. While that certainly makes for good polling methodology at this stage, it’s not really reflective of reality. While none of them have indicated any likelihood of dropping out any time soon, their continued failure to seriously contest either Perry or Romney for frontrunner status will quickly begin taking a serious toll on their ability to continue to raise funds, attract endorsements or convince voters to continue supporting them. Whether it’s tomorrow, next month or six months from now these candidates will inevitably drop out of the race. The voters who are currently backing them will then have to choose between Perry, Romney or simply sitting out the GOP primaries. How those voters break will determine whether Romney can catch up with Perry to capture the nomination or if Perry simply walks away with it in a cakewalk. And that’s where things get tricky for Romney.

PPP asked some additional questions about head-to-head polling between Perry and Romney. They found that Perry currently beats Romney 52-36 with only 12% undecided. Even in the almost impossible event that Romney gets every single one of those undecideds, he would still lose 52-48. Gallup’s numbers are slightly different; however, their top line results for all candidates are pretty much within the margin of error of those found by PPP. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that they fairly represent the current state of the race.

For better or for worse, Republican voters are already familiar with Mitt Romney. With 86% name recognition, he has very little upside with those who don’t know him yet. To one degree or another, the entire field is running on a platform of lower taxes, reducing regulations, reforming entitlements, repealing ObamaCare and a smaller federal government. Therefore, Perry and Romney are going to be virtually indistinguishable from one another on the broad outlines of their programs.

So there remain a few paths for Mitt Romney to turn it around:

Hope that Rick Perry implodes on his own. Perry’s comments about Bernanke considering a possible QE3 purely for political purposes as “almost treasonous” were widely regarded as a gaffe (though he was also regarded as correct on the substance). Similarly, he has been widely misreported as having suggested that Texas should secede, but he never did. Though he has clearly been mistreated in the press because of these statements, much like Sarah Palin the accumulation of misreporting and mischaracterizing his statements could make him unelectable. This would leave Mitt Romney as the “last man standing” in the contest.
Go negative against Rick Perry, or let Obama do it for him. The opposition research on Rick Perry is being dumped as quickly as bloggers and the media can write columns about it. How much of it is coming from Barack Obama and the Democrats and how much is being fed by Romney and other Republican candidates is unclear. But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. The question is how successful it will be. The good and bad news for Perry is that, unlike Palin, the public has more than just two short months at the height of election season in which to digest and fully contextualize all of the information. It’s unknown whether Republican voters, or the moderate Democrats and Independents necessary to win the general election, will ultimately dismiss the opposition research or Perry himself.

Bachmann Is Finished

Jim — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:17:24 +0000

Michele Bachmann Finished

PPP has a new Iowa poll out showing what is becoming more and more obvious: Michele Bachmann is finished.

Ten days ago Michele Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. However, as we said at the time, it was a hollow and largely illusory victory. The top two candidates in the field – Romney and Perry – weren’t competing, so this was never going to be more than a battle for third place anyway. Beyond that, her victory was largely the result of free concerts by Randy Travis and other popular singers rather than a true test of electoral strength.

Rick Perry’s announcement in South Carolina made it clear that he was planning to run strongly in that state. The primaries were shaping up as follows: Michele Bachmann wins Iowa due to the amount of time and money she had spent campaigning there as well as having the “home field” advantage, Mitt Romney wins New Hampshire as the former governor of a neighboring state, Rick Perry wins South Carolina due to his across-the-board conservative appeal and executive experience, and then it’s a race to the finish. Romney and Perry were always going to have an advantage in subsequent primaries, but Bachmann could have laid some claim to future votes based on a victory in Iowa.

But Bachmann’s fade was already noticeable in the polling CNN released before the Iowa debate. Perry had yet to announce, and he had already replaced her as the main rival to Mitt Romney. Immediately after announcing, he had already taken over the lead from Romney, but Bachmann’s campaign still held onto the slender reed of their Ames’ victory.

Now comes a PPP poll which likely puts the nail in the coffin of her candidacy.

Bachmann’s hope of taking Iowa appears, for all intents and purposes, to be over. She comes in third, behind both Perry and Romney. Perry is at 22%, Romney is at 19% and Bachmann is at 18% while Ron Paul brings up the rear at 16%. Nobody else is polling in double digits. Even if every other candidate drops out by the time of the Iowa caucus and it’s just a three-person race at that point, she still loses 34-28-24 to Perry and Romney respectively with 14% undecided.

Coming on the heels of the Gallup polling in which she performs worst head-to-head against Obama, this is absolutely devastating for Bachmann and effectively puts an end to the rationale for her candidacy. If she can’t do better than third in Iowa, then where could she possibly claim to run competitively anywhere that would matter? Realistically? Nowhere.

The fuel upon which campaigns run before votes start being counted is their fundraising. Each campaign approaches deep-pocketed donors to present its case for why they should open their wallets to support the candidate. That sales pitch is usually predicated on two things: 1) how strongly the candidate will advocate for policies which the donor supports, and 2) how the candidate can and will win the election. Getting over the first hurdle is usually not terribly difficult for a candidate who is generally campaigning within the Overton Window for the political party in question. But the biggest hurdle is always the second one: how they can win.

This is a question that is going to be nearly impossible for Bachmann’s supporters to answer going forward. Is is theoretically possible for her to win the nomination? Yes. The PPP poll does show that if she is in a straight-up head-to-head contest against Mitt Romney, she is leading 44-42 in Iowa. But that would require not only Perry, but every other candidate in the field, to drop out as well. That’s simply not going to happen. What if Romney dropped out instead? Then she gets demolished by Perry in a 51-27 romp. And this is in Iowa which was supposed to be her strongest state.

We’ve been saying for more than a month now that this is a two-man race. It’s going to take some time for Bachmann to burn through what is sure to be a rapidly dwindling supply of campaign donations. Our best guess right now is that the bulk of it will be gone by the end of September, though how long will she continue to tilt at this windmill remains anybody’s guess. She may stay in the saddle all the way through the Iowa caucus, but it’s clear that it’s only a matter of when – not if – she will drop out of the race completely.

2012 Will Be A Fight Over 6%

Jim — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:58:39 +0000

Undecided Voters

The latest polls all point to the same thing: that the 2012 elections will be fought almost entirely over approximately 6% of American voters.

Almost two weeks ago, the Washington Post put out a poll which showed that 46% of registered voters will definitely not vote for Barack Obama in 2012. Today’s Gallup poll bears that out.

Gallup asked registered voters about potential Obama match-ups against Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul. If we use that 46% as a baseline of support for Republican candidates, we can see that Romney outperforms by 2% and Perry by 1% while Paul underperforms by 1% and Bachmann by 2%. That is pretty much reflective of the current state of polling within the GOP field with Romney and Perry leading the pack while Paul and Bachmann are a distant third and fourth.

On the flip side of that equation, Obama can’t get above 48% against even the weakest Republican candidate and garners only 46% against the strongest. Given that neither Bachmann nor Paul have realistic shots at the nomination and both are underperforming the “Anybody But Obama” vote, we can safely toss those last two results and focus strictly on the Romney and Perry match-ups. There, Obama is either at 46% against a fairly well-known Republican candidate or 47% against a candidate who announced his candidacy all of eight days ago and isn’t particularly well known.

So what we’re looking at is that the current polling for president is Obama at 46-47 and Republicans at 47-48. And that’s a poll of “registered voters,” not “likely voters.” As we’ve discussed before, that poll filter favors Democrats by a net of 4%, so the reality is that - if an election were held today – Obama would probably lose by either 4 or 5% depending on who the opposing candidate was.

[Note that the difference between "National Adults" in the Gallup poll and "Registered Voters" is a net Democratic preference of 3-4%. This is precisely what we had previously explained should be expected when applying the two different filters.]

In both match-ups, there are only 6% of voters who are undecided. That’s where this election is going to be fought. Who are these 6%?

Are they disaffected liberals still looking for a reason to “come home”? If so, then if Obama can convince almost all of them to do so, then he can potentially eke out a slim margin of victory.

Are they conservatives not yet sold on a candidate? If so, then we’re looking at the possibility of a blowout win by the Republican candidate if they break heavily for the Republican candidate.

Or are they the “squishy middle” who tend to “go with the flow” and tend to break fairly evenly on Election Day? If so, then Obama likely loses in a relatively close election.

We don’t have enough information from either the Gallup or Washington Post polls to know who those undecideds are. But one thing is certain: those 6% are the ones who ultimately will make the difference in 2012.

2012 Like Deja Vu All Over Again For Rick Perry

Jim — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:28:39 +0000

Rick Perry Deja Vu

In 2012 Rick Perry is facing Republican opponents to his left and right then stiff Democratic opposition even if he survives to the general. Just like 2010.

Going into 2010, the conventional wisdom was that Rick Perry was a goner no matter how you looked at. In the Republican primary, he faced two main opponents: Kay Bailey Hutchison, the establishment favorite who was backed by the likes of Dick Cheney and even former President George H.W. Bush, and Debra Medina, the Tea Party candidate. Hutchison was beating the pants off Perry, 56-31, in a head-to-head race in August 2009. By the fall, Perry was leading Hutchison in polls, but Hutchison was still beating Perry in hypothetical match-ups against potential Democratic candidates. Perry was also being challenged on the right by Tea Party candidate, Debra Medina, and her candidacy was picking up steam through February of 2010.

Bill White, the ex-mayor of Houston and former Deputy Secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton, was the “[the Democratic Party's] best hope in years at winning the chief executive post” after winning the primary with 76% of the vote. While the Democrats were practically united, the Republicans had just experienced

…a bout between Perry and Hutchison in a clash unlike any GOP primary the state has seen since Republicans began taking over state government in the 1990s with the help of George W. Bush.

Just for good measure, in November 2009:

Texas voters aren’t well pleased with their elected leaders, particularly with the U.S. Congress: 71 percent said they “somewhat” or “strongly” disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and only 14 percent registered approval. A measly 2 percent approve strongly of the job Congress is doing.
The Texas Legislature fares somewhat better, getting good marks from 31 percent and bad marks from 36 percent. If you’re grading on the curve, that’s not too bad.
President Barack Obama’s performance gets approval from 41 percent of Texans, disapproval from 52 percent.
The locals? Perry’s favorables are lower than his unfavorables, 36 to 44 percent. Hutchison’s numbers are better, at 39 percent favorable and 27 percent unfavorable.

Is any of this starting to sound familiar? Obama’s current Gallup approval is at 42-51, and only 13% approve of Congress.

To Perry’s left in the Republican primary, Mitt Romney is Perry’s chief rival for the Republican nomination and leading Perry in hypothetical match-ups against Barack Obama. Karl Rove, former political advisor to President George W. Bush, is reportedly doing everything he can to scuttle Perry’s bid. Even also-ran Jon Huntsman has gotten into the game by going after Perry. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann is trailing both men but she is battling Perry for TEA Party voters, and Rick Santorum has compared Perry to John Conyers – the corrupt Democratic congressman.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is waiting in the wings while his staff is essentially telling Perry to “bring it on.”

So it’s not like Rick Perry hasn’t been here before, and how did things turn out in 2010?

For starters, Perry whalloped both Hutchison and Medina in the Republican primary. But the questions immediately began. The race between Perry and White was rated a toss-up, and Democrats were convinced that Perry was mortally wounded by the divise primary process – unable to attract either the most conservative or moderate Republicans, let alone independents and Democrats. But come November, Perry spanked White in the general election by a wider margin than the one by which Obama beat McCain in 2008.

Not too shabby. But running for president is different than running for governor, and Perry has never competed outside of Texas. It remains to be seen how well Perry’s particular brand of conservatism will play with the national electorate, but this battle is remarkably like the one he’s just been through. Can he win it again?

Investigating Rick Perry

Jim — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:11:26 +0000

Rick Perry Issues

After the initial rush of Rick Perry announcing his candidacy, now comes the initial rush of opposition research attempting to torpedo it.

We’ve previously covered the first wave of background information on Rick Perry as well as a tour of his most well-known speeches and policy positions. So if you’ve been reading along, then you’ve probably gotten a fairly good idea of the positive arguments for his candidacy. But what about the negative arguments that his opponents will use against him both in the primaries and in the general election?

Luckily for us, a couple of bloggers have done the hard work of both summing up the arguments presented to date as well as looking into the substance behind them.

The strongest argument for Rick Perry is the relatively strong job creation numbers in Texas during his tenure as governor. Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, immediately attacked:

“There’s a specific reason that Texas has done so well, and that’s because the oil industry has done so well in the last few years, and the military has grown because of the challenges that we’ve had overseas. And so he’s been the beneficiary of things that he had very little to do with. Governor Perry also is a beneficiary of $17 billion of money from the Recovery Act, though he’s been quite critical of it. That’s helped him balance his budgets.”

Obama’s allies have also been deriding the quality of the jobs created in Texas:

“If you want a bad job, go to Texas,” state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, told The Huffington Post, a liberal-leaning news website.
HuffPo’s Jason Cherkis took a shot at Texas’ so-called economic miracle: “The miracle is that anyone would call minimum-wage jobs a miracle.”
In The New York Times, five writers debated the Texas job juggernaut, and one headline captured this theme: “Texas or the Third World?”

So which is it? Are the Texas jobs really just an illusion made up of nothing but oil jobs and minimum wage work? Matthias Shapiro took a long look at the various claims being made about Texas jobs. Here’s a sample of what he found:

As you can see, Texas isn’t just the fastest growing… it’s growing over twice as fast as the second fastest state and three times as fast as the third. Given that Texas is (to borrow a technical term) [expletive] huge, this growth is incredible.

Since the recession started hourly wages in Texas have increased at a 6th fastest pace in the nation.

…take the energy sector completely out of the equation and Texas is still growing faster than any other state. This indicates to us that the energy sector is not a single sector saving Texas from the same economic fate as the rest of the states. It’s not hurting, but Texas would still be growing like a weed without it.

Counting from the beginning of the recession (December 2007) the Texas public sector has grown 3.8%, or a little under 70,000 employees. This is faster than normal employment, but it’s not off the charts. Given that the Texas economy has grown so much and private sector jobs have grown so much, that doesn’t strike me as an unsustainable growth in the public sector.

My advice to anti-Perry advocates is this: Give up talking about Texas jobs. Texas is an incredible outlier among the states when it comes to jobs. Not only are they creating them, they’re creating ones with higher wages.
One can argue that Perry had very little to do with the job situation in Texas, but such a person should be probably prepare themselves for the consequences of that line of reasoning. If Rick Perry had nothing to do with creating jobs in Texas, than why does Obama have something to do with creating jobs anywhere? And why would someone advocate any sort of “job creating” policies if policies don’t seem to matter when it comes to the decade long governor of Texas? In short, it seems to me that this line of reasoning, in addition to sounding desperate and partisan, hogties its adherents into a position where they are simultaneously saying that government doesn’t create jobs while arguing for a set of policies where government will create jobs.

The Undeniable Appeal of Conservative Women

Jim — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:58:59 +0000

Conservative Women

Elle magazine is finally recognizing something that most of us have known for a long time: conservative women are hot.

Few things are as disappointing to a man as seeing a beautiful woman who instantly turns ugly the moment she opens her mouth to speak. Fortunately for those of us who have chosen wisely, that’s not a disappointment we have to deal with on a daily basis. Unlike the metrosexual crowd who prefers their better halves more milquetoast, as Tina over at HotAir says:

Yes, it’s cool that conservative gals are comfortable with their index finger on a trigger, that they finish their meal when a date orders them an expensive steak and that they’re open to the all-American pastimes of football, baseball and NASCAR. But none of that is essential to conservatism — standing for the right to enjoy all of that (along with more traditionally “feminine” pursuits) is.

By Tina’s reckoning, the article is “fair” to conservative women, but as she says,

We’ve come a long way when the adjective “fair” means merely “an absence of unnecessarily cheap shots.”

Tina points out the various digs at conservative women taken in the Elle article, e.g., referring to conservative women as “baby Palins.” But, if we can compound Elle’s unfairness with our own, then let us add: we’re perfectly fine with that.

Why on earth would we be okay with this sort of commentary? Because, like everything else that the people safely ensconced in the corner offices throughout Manhattan do, they are unintentionally helping conservatives by being so dismissive.

Sun Tzu was perhaps the greatest military strategist in history. Miltary commanders ranging from Napoleon to Norman Schwarzkopf have been influenced by his book, The Art of War. So what does he have to tell us about being dismissive of your opponent?

“He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.”

To them, conservative women are mere curiosities. To us, they are the backbone of a strong and growing groundswell of opposition to a free-spending, overreaching government. To them, conservative women are the “ungrateful” daughters of true feminism. To us, they are the epitome of it: truly equal partners who command the same respect as a man – not because they burned a bra or held a protest sign – but because they earned it the hard way.

While they obsess over Sarah Palin’s Double Dare Naughty Monkey red high heels, we marvel at the way she is able to impact public debate from a simple Facebook page. While they obsess over the sex appeal of conservative women, we are attracted to the appeal of their strength and ideas.

The liberal intelligentsia is still nibbling around the edges of what makes these women so attractive. They see the world through the lens of their looks-obsessed popular culture which celebrates the likes of Lindsay Lohan while making light of her criminal behavior and Megan Fox while ignoring the ugliness of her soul solely because they are physically attractive. So they can’t help but project their viewpoints on to conservatives and assume that women like Sarah Palin only enjoy support because they are physically attractive as well.

Meanwhile, conservative women march at the vanguard of the TEA Party movement which had its genesis in a concern over the debt-laden country being inherited by the children they have birthed, nursed and raised. They refuse to surrender the future for the political convenience of the present, and we can only stand in awe of their unwavering strength in the face of such withering assaults from those who stand across the political aisle. They are fighting the battles of today while simultaneously raising the next generation of conservative women who will stand on their shoulders and achieve even greater heights tomorrow.

As the husband of a strong and intelligent conservative woman, I can only say: Keep obsessing about the color of her shoes and the height of her heels while she steps on your plans to tax and regulate every aspect of our lives. Continue thinking that we fall in love with conservative women solely because of what is below the neckline and not because of every bit of what is above it as well.

Underestimate her and others like her at your own peril. They know full well what they’re up against. You clearly don’t.

Forget the Anti-Romney, Who’s the Anti-Perry?

Jim — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:52:51 +0000

Paul Ryan - Chris Christie

For weeks the question has been: who will be the anti-Romney? But today’s polling shows that the better question may be: who will be the anti-Perry?

Rasmussen has a poll out today showing Rick Perry jumping out to a 29%-18% lead over Mitt Romney. The poll is the first taken by any of the major pollsters since Perry announced his candidacy on Saturday afternoon. If this poll can be verified by additional polling, then the conventional narrative of the GOP race has just been turned completely on its head.

Mitt Romney has been the leading GOP candidate from the beginning. At various times, a number of people have taken turns as the consensus alternative to Mitt Romney in the GOP field. Whether it’s been Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, Rudy Giuliani, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Chris Christie or Paul Ryan; pundits have – at one time or another – annointed each of them as the obvious “other candidate” who will be the last person standing in the way of Mitt Romney gaining the nomination.

But that all pre-supposed that Mitt Romney would be the candidate from whom dissatisfied Republicans would be looking for an alternative. What if that candidate turns out to be Rick Perry instead? That changes the calculus considerably.

So long as Mitt Romney was the undisputed frontrunner, there was plenty of room to run as a more socially conservative or more TEA Party-friendly alternative. But if Perry emerges from the immediate rush of his announcement as the undisputed frontrunner, then there is likely to be little appetite for another candidate in that mold. The only remaining potential “gap” then is someone who can credibly replace Romney as the “less threatening” alternative to Perry.

Romney would certainly fit the bill as an “anti-Perry,” but after years – not weeks or months, but years – of campaigning he has yet to crack 25% support with Republican voters even before Perry entered the race. His polling against Obama is relatively strong, so there does seem to be at least a decent appetite for a “non-threatening” candidate. However, Romney has yet to close the sale for Republicans as being that person, and it remains to be seen how Perry will poll as the public gets to know him. Is Romney’s polling against Obama merely an artifice of being the best known Republican candidate, or will Perry’s polling pull even with Romney and thereby diminish the “electability” rationale for his candidacy?

Which brings us to the speculation today that other candidates such as Paul Ryan and Chris Christie may still be considering or being willing to be drafted into the race. Both have previously denied any interest, but Ryan has reportedly been exploring a run behind the scenes.

Is there still room ideologically for another entrant? With two powerful fundraisers already in the race, is there enough money still waiting for someone else to make a run even feasible? Are there enough quality staffers left on the market to put together the kind of top-notch campaign that would be needed? Is there enough time left to put it all together?

If there’s an opening in the field, it’s highly doubtful that there’s room for more than one additional candidate. After all, it’s one thing to market yourself as the alternative to the frontrunner; but how do you expect to gain significant traction as the alternative to the alternative?

It’s also highly unrealistic to believe that other candidates can afford to wait much longer. Yes, the absolute deadline for filing isn’t until November 1st, and it’s theoretically possible to raise large amounts of grassroots money quickly; however, high quality staffers aren’t going to sit on the sidelines waiting that long. They needs jobs just like everyone else, and they’re already being courted by the current crop of candidates. Let’s also not forget that grassroots money is no substitute for big money donors over the long haul, and both Perry and Romney are already working every day to lock them up.

No doubt, there are Republican operatives working the phones and huddling in offices around the country trying to figure out if there’s a realistic path to both the nomination and victory in the general election for yet another candidate. But there’s also no doubt that today’s polling results have changed those conversations considerably.