U.S. 2012 Election

[Kirkhill]

If he can curb his tongue a bit he might even get some traction running up the middle.  A "Neutral" President in a divided and partisan legislature.....He has stature that Perot never had. 

Be interesting to see if it would sell.

 

[tomahawk6]

Bloomberg if he were a republican would be termed a RINO. RINO why vote for a RINO when you could have a real socialist just by voting for a democrat ?

 

[Edward Campbell]

Bloomberg if he were a republican would be termed a RINO. RINO why vote for a RINO when you could have a real socialist just by voting for a democrat ?

By that definition both Eisenhower and Nixon, certainly, and, arguably, Reagan and Bush Sr. were RINOs.

A Republican Party based on values that exclude Eisenhower and Bloomberg guarantees decades of Democratic primacy* followed by the emergence of a new party that espouses sensible, fiscally responsible, neo-liberal policies.


__________
* My guess is that most Tea Partiers will fail in the 2011/12 Congress; the few survivors will either be absorbed into the establishment Republicans or will, with the failures, form a neo-conservative rump. The Democrats may, likely will, be able exploit Tea Party failures to regain control of the House of Representatives in 2012.

Tea Party failures in the Congress will be felt most keenly by the most ardent Tea Party supporters who will be dismayed that their elected favourites cannot or, more likely will not, take necessary, hard decisions.

 

[a_majoor]

While the TEA party movement may be pleased with the results of this election, other people are not. Watch this MSNBC piece where the guest actually calls for an armed revolution against the TEA party movement and the officials they elected. (Given what we know about American culture, gun ownership and so on, I suspect this is exactly the wrong way of going about it):


http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2010/11/09/racist-cartoonist-ted-rall-calls-for-violent-revolt-against-right-msnbc-not-opposed-to-idea/

Edward is correct that the new crop of Republican Congressmen and Senators will have an exceptionally difficult time, but I would not be inclined to write them off quite so easily. Some procedural manoeuvres (such as ensuring there are no appropriations released for Obamacare or regulatory agencies which are trying to legislate by fiat) will allow them to reach some of their goals of smaller government, less regulation, lower taxation. Will this be enough to satisfy their base? Will the TEA party movement remained organized and cohesive enough to monitor their new representatives and prepare for the 2012 elections?

Many questions to answer. We will live in interestig times.

 

[GAP]

But ER might be more right than wrong.....was there not a move to have Independents elected when the Ross Peru fever was on....that died pretty quick.....

 

[a_majoor]

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) talks to two TEA Party movement activists about the future of the TEA party here.

Interesting conversation, the question now is will they retain their focus and motivation until 2012 (2014, 2016 etc.), and will they remain flexible and adaptable enough to both remain relevant and to fend off attacks byn opposition politicians, the Legacy media and so on?

 

[muskrat89]

I serve on the executive committee of a local Tea Party. My group chose not to endorse any candidate, as did many groups.  I think the media (and much of the public) are crediting the "Tea Party" with too much structure, and too much concentrated effort. The Tea Party is not a party, and frankly, never wants to be one. It is a movement born of frustration with both parties. Generally speaking, "Tea Partiers" are new to politics, conservative, for smaller government, accountability of elected representatives regardless of party. We are tired of the "same old thing". For the most part, we believe the closer we stick to the Constitution, the better. I have seen or heard no racist utterances at a Tea Party meeting. It may surprise some that the person who usually sits next to my wife adn I every week is an African-American, lady Democrat . She's there for the same reasons as I am - she's working through her own party to achieve the same goals. Anyone who thinks "Tea Party" candidates are going to have an easy time of it are mistaken. The newest round of elected candidates will be scrutinized more than their predecessors, Republican or not. We're not all Beck disciples or Rushbaugh or Savage.  Rather, we may read Thomas Sowell, or Ayn Rand or F. A Hayek. I've rambled a bit and probably didn't make much of a point, so I'll try one more. There is a tendency in  the media and by pundits to lump the Tea Party into a united force. I don't think it's that simple, and in regards to what I read in the mainstream media - I have seen virtually none of it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

If TEA party movement people form a "rump", it is much more likely to be a proper conservative (classical liberal) one than a neo-conservative one.  There isn't much crossover between TP enthusiasts and neo-cons.

The TP failures get plenty of airtime compared to the successes, so as soon as the most egregious mistakes end it should not be surprising if the movement appears to fade away.  Ultimately The TP and established wings of the Republican party have to work together if they don't want to risk the much less appealing route of splitting the vote.  It will suit Democrats and establishment Republicans alike to herald the demise of the TP movement, but the objective measure of success will be whether the collective political stance shifts slightly rightward or not.

 

[Edward Campbell]

... the objective measure of success will be whether the collective political stance shifts slightly rightward or not.

The data I have seen over the past few years suggests, to me anyway, that:

1. Traditionally, America is a relatively 'right of centre' society - respecting, even celebrating individual achievement. Property rights have taken a beating since 1865, but, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Singapore) that has been a global problem; and

2. America, from Ronald Reagan onwards, has shifted, slowly but steadily, to the right. Even Clinton ran as a "new Democrat," a codeword for the "Boll Weevils" of the 1980s who, during Clinton's administration, became the modern "Blue Dog Democrats." 

 

[muskrat89]

The TP and established wings of the Republican party have to work together

One of the strategies of Tea Party groups is to become more active in their party of choice. The Precinct Committeman has been called the most powerful elected office in the country. Many allotted PC spots are empty, and it is fairly easy to become a Precinct Committeeman. Once active at the local level as a PC, members can influence which candidates go to state and national conventions, and can work towards having more conservative candidates elected. I can tell you this effort has been felt by the "Old Guard" of the parties.

http://www.eagleforum.org/misc/brochures/precinct-committman.shtml

 

[Brad Sallows]

Creating a presence in an established party is the only sensible route.  The alternative is the vote-splitting hell conservatives in Canada created.  Since there is only one party remotely close to TP principles, the choice seems obvious.  The low-level work lays the foundation, but doesn't draw much media attention.  As long as one or two shit magnets can be thrown up as sacrifice candidates each electoral cycle to draw all the media and commentary fire, the TP should be quietly successful.

 

[a_majoor]

Conservatives may have created their own problems after Kim Campbell's PC party was wiped off the map, but now vote splitting is done on the political Left. I sometimes wonder why the NDP, as the largest and most organized socialist party doesn't split the "orange" Liberal rump and work to absorb the BQ and Green parties. "The Socialist Alliance Party" would probably have enough seats (based on the current parliament) to be a minority government and draw enough of the voting population (@ 66% of Canadians vote for "left wing" parties) to become Canada's "Natural Ruling Party"

While this scenario is pretty frightening (imagine a political party/machine which could actually pass legislation like the "Green Shift", universal daycare and send the Armed Forces to Darfur, while simultaniously shutting down Alberta's energy economy), this seems to be what 66% of the voting public actually wants. Good thing my wife has family in Texas.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Conservatives may have created their own problems after Kim Campbell's PC party was wiped off the map, but now vote splitting is done on the political Left. I sometimes wonder why the NDP, as the largest and most organized socialist party doesn't split the "orange" Liberal rump and work to absorb the BQ and Green parties. "The Socialist Alliance Party" would probably have enough seats (based on the current parliament) to be a minority government and draw enough of the voting population (@ 66% of Canadians vote for "left wing" parties) to become Canada's "Natural Ruling Party"

While this scenario is pretty frightening (imagine a political party/machine which could actually pass legislation like the "Green Shift", universal daycare and send the Armed Forces to Darfur, while simultaniously shutting down Alberta's energy economy), this seems to be what 66% of the voting public actually wants. Good thing my wife has family in Texas.

First off, the BQ is there only to protect Quebec's interests;' allowing itself to be absorbed into an English national party would be political suicide. As for "66% of Canadians voting for left wing" parties," I suspect a lot of people who vote socialist (e.g. NDP) do so as a protest vote. If there actually was a Socialist Alliance Party that had a chance of winning the vote they would likely vote for someone else or stay home.

 

[a_majoor]

The NDP is a "Social Democratic" party while then BQ is a National Socialist party; they have some common interests, so the NDP is the most logical choice for BQ supporters looking to move up.

As well, demographic changes are moving more and more Canadians west, it is projected the 2014 apportition will create enough new seats in the West to make it possible to win a majority government without carrying Quebec. Once the BQ is no longer able to play the spoiler role, there will be some pressure to move to a national party in order to keep a seat at the table. Once again, moving from a National Socialist party to a Social democratic party is the easiest transition.

Moving the discussion back to the American political arena, creating "Big Tents" has always been the American way, once the tent got too small, the party collapsed and vanished (like the Federalists and the Whigs), or never grew to critical mass (Ross Perot).

 

[Nemo888]

Who ever is President when gdp growth is over 3% gets a second term. When it is below they always lose. Obama is toast. As is the US economy.

 

[GAP]

And why not.....as former First Lady, Senator, Diplomat, etc. she is at the stage in life where she can stop accumulating a nest egg, do the rubber chicken circuit at $40,000 a hit, with none of the hokey rules.....

Hillary Clinton plans to leave public service
Article Link
The Daily Telegraph December 4, 2010

Hillary Clinton said on Friday that her current job as U.S. Secretary of State would be her last in public office, appearing to draw a curtain on her long-held ambition to emulate her husband by serving in the nation's highest post.

She said that after travelling the globe as America's top diplomat, she foresaw a return to her roots as an advocate for women's and children's issues.

In recent weeks Clinton has repeatedly laughed off questions about her presidential ambitions, which have become the subject of gossip in Washington given the Democratic Party's heavy defeat in the recent midterm polls and President Obama's struggling performance.

But this was the first time Clinton had spoken so directly about leaving public service, where she has been a dominant figure in Democratic circles for two decades.

"I think I'll serve as secretary of state as my last public position, and then probably go back to advocacy work, particularly on behalf of women and children," she told a student audience in Bahrain.
end

 

[a_majoor]

It seems the congress and Administration is refusing to abide by the will of the people or accept the results of the midterm elections:

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/07/morning-bell-freeze-taxes-freeze-spending-and-go-home/

Morning Bell: Freeze Taxes, Freeze Spending, and Go Home
Posted December 7th, 2010 at 9:37am in Entitlements 12  Print This Post

Last night, President Barack Obama emerged from negotiations with Congressional Republicans and told the American people: “For the past few weeks there’s been a lot of talk around Washington about taxes and there’s been a lot of political positioning between the two parties. But around kitchen tables, Americans are asking just one question: Are we going to allow their taxes to go up on January 1st, or will we meet our responsibilities to resolve our differences and do what’s necessary to speed up the recovery and get people back to work?”

President Obama spoke because he had come to an agreement on extending current tax rates for two more years, rather than impose a job-killing tax hike, falling short of a permanent extension needed for economic certainty. The President defended this compromise by finally stating the obvious: ”Make no mistake: Allowing taxes to go up on all Americans would have raised taxes by $3,000 for a typical American family. And that could cost our economy well over a million jobs.” It’s great that a leader of the progressive movement is willing to recognize the link between higher taxes and lost jobs.

But, as the President also said: “I have no doubt that everyone will find something in this compromise that they don’t like.” Specifically, in exchange for extending the current income tax rates, Republicans agreed to reinstate the death tax (at 35% with a $5 million threshold), 13 more months of non-offset unemployment benefits, and a temporary 2 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax to replace the failed “Make-Work-Pay” stimulus tax policy.

These are bad policies. Heritage has long opposed any return of the death tax, which is bad for small business and wrong on principle. The unemployment benefits are not only bad for job growth but increase spending at a time when we need to be reducing it, and, as economists have long recognized, perpetuate long-term unemployment. As for temporary tax holidays, they have proven to be completely ineffective.

To truly freeze taxes, Congress should completely abolish the death tax instead of raising taxes. And to truly freeze spending, Congress would need to offset the spending increases for unemployment benefits.

While the Republicans were busy negotiating with the President at the White House, Congressional Democrats were busy plotting a last-gasp massive spending surge back on Capitol Hill. Written by the Senate Democratic majority in backrooms, a draft omnibus spending is circulating that will fund all federal government agencies not just through fiscal year (FY) 2011 but into 2012 as well. Heritage Foundation Distinguished Fellow Ernest Istook details the spending spree:

Handcuffs the ability of newly elected Representatives and Senators to de-fund Obamacare
Restricts the new Congress’s leverage to rescind unused “stimulus” and TARP spending
Has the outgoing Congress dictate spending for more than the usual one year
Bypasses the normal appropriations process of public committee votes, floor debates, and the ability to offer amendments on the floor of the House and Senate.
Since the FY 2010 budget expired on September 30th, the federal government has been operating on a series of continuing resolutions (CR) with just the most recent one expiring December 18th. A responsible Congress would have passed a budget resolution and all the necessary appropriations bills months ago. But this 111th Congress is anything but responsible. For the first time in the history of the budget process this Congress failed to even vote on a budget for next year.

Now, after they have been thoroughly rejected by the American people at the polls, they want not only a second chance at setting spending level for next year … but the year after as well. Now that’s audacious. Conservatives should hold firm and reject any omnibus spending bill. This Congress has forfeited their right to spend. The next Congress should be as free as possible to set spending priorities. The 111th must pass something to keep the government running, but it should do so with as short-term a CR is possible.

Then after the 111th lame duck has frozen taxes and frozen spending, they should just go home. They have done enough damage already. Yesterday, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed for cloture on a brand new DREAM Act, the fifth version of amnesty introduced this year. This bill has not gone through committee or been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is demanding votes on over 100 environmental bills. And, thanks to Constitutional violations, Congress has to take up their expansion of the Food and Drug Administration again. The American people have no appetite for another round of progressive social legislation.

And then there is New START. Over the past two weeks we have learned that: 1) contrary to past statements, Russia moved tactical nukes closer to our NATO allies; and 2) contrary to past statements, the Obama administration did kill missile defense in Poland to appease Moscow. There is no good reason to rush New START through a lame duck session. If it is a good treaty (one that does not limit our missile defense, provides adequate verification, and does not limit conventional global strike capabilities) then the White House should be confident they can make the case to the next Senate.

 

[a_majoor]

New ideas and out of the box thinking. Rep Ryan's plan is worth discussing:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703766704576009322838245628.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Why I Support the Ryan Roadmap
Let's not settle for the big-government status quo, which is what the president's deficit commission offers.

By SARAH PALIN

The publication of the findings of the president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform was indeed, as the report was titled, "A Moment of Truth." The report shows we're much closer to the budgetary breaking point than previously assumed. The Medicare Trust Fund will be insolvent by 2017. As early as 2025, federal revenue will barely be enough to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on our national debt. With spending structurally outpacing revenue, something clearly needs to be done to avert national bankruptcy.

Among the few areas of spending it does single out for cuts is defense—the one area where we shouldn't be cutting corners at a time of war. Worst of all, the commission's proposals institutionalize the current administration's new big spending commitments, including ObamaCare. Not only does it leave ObamaCare intact, but its proposals would lead to a public option being introduced by the backdoor, with the chairmen's report suggesting a second look at a government-run health-care program if costs continue to soar.

It also implicitly endorses the use of "death panel"-like rationing by way of the new Independent Payments Advisory Board—making bureaucrats, not medical professionals, the ultimate arbiters of what types of treatment will (and especially will not) be reimbursed under Medicare.

The commission's recommendations are a disappointment. That doesn't mean, though, that the commission's work was a wasted effort. For one thing, it has exposed the large and unsustainable deficits that the Obama administration has created through its reckless "spend now, tax later" policies. It also establishes a clear bipartisan consensus on the need to fundamentally reform our entitlement programs. We need a better plan to build on these conclusions with common-sense reforms to tackle our long-term funding crisis in a sustainable way.

In my view, a better plan is the Roadmap for America's Future produced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.). The Roadmap offers a reliable path to long-term solvency for our entitlement programs, and it does so by encouraging personal responsibility and independence.

On health care, it would replace ObamaCare with a new system in which people are given greater control over their own health-care spending. It achieves this partly through creating medical savings accounts and a new health-care tax credit—the only tax credit that would be left in a radically simplified new income tax system that people can opt into if they wish.

The Roadmap would also replace our high and anticompetitive corporate income tax with a business consumption tax of just 8.5%. The overall tax burden would be limited to 19% of GDP (compared to 21% under the deficit commission's proposals). Beyond that, Rep. Ryan proposes fundamental reform of Medicare for those under 55 by turning the current benefit into a voucher with which people can purchase their own care.

On Social Security, as with Medicare, the Roadmap honors our commitments to those who are already receiving benefits by guaranteeing all existing rights to people over the age of 55. Those below that age are offered a choice: They can remain in the traditional government-run system or direct a portion of their payroll taxes to personal accounts, owned by them, managed by the Social Security Administration and guaranteed by the federal government. Under the Roadmap's proposals, they can pass these savings onto their heirs. The current Medicaid system, the majority of which is paid for by the federal government but administered by the states, would be replaced by a block-grant system that would reward economizing states.

Together these reforms help to secure our entitlement programs for the 21st century. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Roadmap would lead to lower deficits and a much lower federal debt. The CBO estimates that under current spending plans, our federal debt would rise to 87% of GDP by 2020, to 223% by 2040, and to 433% by 2060. Under Rep. Ryan's Roadmap, the CBO estimates that debt would rise much more slowly, peaking at 99% in 2040 and then dropping back to 77% by 2060.

Put simply: Our country is on the path toward bankruptcy. We must turn around before it's too late, and the Roadmap offers a clear plan for doing so. But it does more than just fend off disaster. CBO calculations show that the Roadmap would also help create a "much more favorable macroeconomic outlook" for the next half-century. The CBO estimates that under the Roadmap, by 2058 per-person GDP would be around 70% higher than the current trend.

Is Rep. Ryan's Roadmap perfect? Of course not—no government plan ever is. But it's the best plan on the table at a time when doing nothing is no longer an option.

Let's not settle for the big-government status quo, which is what the president's commission offers. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to make these tough decisions so that they might inherit a prosperous and strong America like the one we were given.

Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the 2008 Republican Party vice presidential nominee, is a Fox News contributor.

 

[a_majoor]

The TEA party begins to exert influence in Washington D.C.:

http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/255554/few-words-praise-fear

KEVIN WILLIAMSON ON THE VALUE OF FEAR:

    Something has got into the Republican leadership, and that something is: fear. Wonderful, salubrious fear. For this we can thank the Tea Party movement, for several reasons. The first is that, while our European cousins are out rioting in the street for more and more government spending, the one significant, genuinely popular movement afoot in American politics is demanding the opposite. No Washington poobah wants to get yelled at by rowdy constituents at a town-hall meeting back in the district. They really hate that.

    Funny what catches the notice of politicians. I was a newspaper editor for years, and I’ve had at least a dozen politicians tell me: “We don’t really give a damn what you write about us in the editorials. We don’t even really read them. But if we start seeing letters to the editor, we notice. Any time one constituent is ticked-off enough to take the time to write a letter, that’s significant. One guy writing a letter means that there are 500 more who agree but don’t take the time to write.” One guy writing a letter represents a few hundred people in the mind of Joe Congressman. Those Tea Party rallies, too, loom a lot larger than the raw numbers would suggest, impressive as those raw numbers have been. Joe Congressman does not want to see that crowd camped out on his doorstep.

    The second reason used to dabble in witchcraft. Say what you like about Christine O’Donnell and her incompetent nut-cluster of a campaign, she showed the Republican establishment that the Tea Party, and the fiscally discontent at large, are willing to run a kamikaze candidate against any RINO target of opportunity.

Yes, that was the best argument for Christine O’Donnell. She scared the right people. Plus this:

    The third fear factor is: reality. In Washington and in statehouses around the country, the reality of the pending Fiscal Armageddon is starting to seep into the thick skulls of the elected class. Jerry Brown pronounced himself “shocked” once he got a good peek at California’s balance sheet. Off the record, politicians of both parties are starting to concede that a lot of the old ideological disputes at now moot, because there simply isn’t any money. It’s not a question of whether there are going to be deep cuts and fundamental restructuring, but when and how much.

Those politicians who recognize and embrace point three will do well over the next several election cycles. Don't forget, the latest projections show Medicare and Social Security going into net deficit as early as 2016 and 2025 respectively, not a generation from now but within the life of the next administration. Fear really does focus the mind.

 

[a_majoor]

The TEA perty movement might start concentrating on the abuse of regulatory powers as a major campaign theme (and the new Congress should also be working to end regulatory abuse, possibly by denying funding to these programs. Readers should note the courts have already ruled the FCC has no powers to regulate the Internet, yet the Administration ignored the courts and passed the regulations).

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/shellacked-obama-readies-his-regulatory-runarounds/?singlepage=true

Shellacked Obama Readies His Regulatory Runarounds
Posted By Bryan Preston On December 22, 2010 @ 10:31 am In Uncategorized | 28 Comments

The big media question after the mid-term shellacking wasn’t so much whether President Obama would move to the middle, but how far to the middle he would move (for the record, I never thought [1] he would moderate at all and still don’t).  The answer is now becoming clear.  On high profile issues where the people’s representatives actually get a vote and the press spills lots of pixels, he’ll move as far to the middle as he must to maintain a veneer of bipartisanship and reasonable compromise.  But on lower profile issues where the people’s representatives don’t get a direct vote, he will stay over on the hard left and dare anyone to challenge him.  If his actions survive a Congress or two, they’ll live on long after his presidency ends.

That is precisely what the president has done on two fronts this week.  In the first, his appointees to the Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines to insert itself as a regulator of the Internet.  The rules they adopted were only delivered to commissioners late the night before the vote, which also seems to be a strategy that the Democrats under Obama have mastered: Delay disclosure so that hardly anyone knows what they’re actually voting on.  They did this with ObamaCare, they did it with omnipork, they did it with the DREAM Act, and they did it with the net neutrality rules. So much for transparency.

As John Fund notes [2], there has been no public outcry to get the government involved in Internet regulation, but various voices on the left have been pushing for “net neutrality” for years, and now they have nearly all that they wanted.  Net neutrality’s roots are anything but neutral.

The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney’s agenda? “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”


A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that “any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.” Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been “taken out of context.” He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.”

So Obama’s FCC has taken action that began with agitation from the far, far left, and over the objections of both the courts and a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, 300 of whom have gone on the record against net neutrality.  The most likely impacts of net neutrality include chilling of innovation and empowering of centralized government bureaucratic authority, and rising costs due to compliance with whatever the FCC ends up dictating to ISPs.  Regulatory regimes tend to grow, and hardly ever shrink, over time, so now that the FCC has inserted itself on the net, expect its tentacles to slither about and keep growing and growing and growing.  Unless either the Republican House or the courts put a stop to it, anyway.

On another front, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is getting set to target your light switch [3] on January 2.  The EPA is gearing up to impose regulations that Congress hasn’t approved or even discussed much, other than to attempt to halt the EPA from doing any such thing.

The Obama administration is expected to roll out a major greenhouse gas policy for power plants and refineries as soon as Wednesday, signaling it won’t back off its push to fight climate change in the face of mounting opposition on Capitol Hill.

The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to a schedule for setting greenhouse gas emission limits, known as “performance standards,” for the nation’s two biggest carbon-emitting industries, POLITICO has learned.

…Starting Jan. 2, EPA will begin regulating large stationary sources of the heat-trapping emissions, but those requirements only apply to new and upgraded facilities and will be determined on a case-by-case basis, so it’s unclear how deeply they will slash emissions. The forthcoming standards would set industry-specific standards and could require some of the oldest, dirtiest facilities to clamp down on carbon dioxide.

Even Democrats like Sen. Jay Rockefeller have tried to stop this, but it fulfills another of Obama’s far left visions of imposing onerous regulations on business in the name of dubious environmental effects by whatever means necessary.  Congress failed to implement his insane cap and trade scheme, so he’ll use the EPA to impose as much of it as possible anyway, and dare Congress to stop him.  The EPA’s move all but guarantees more court battles with energy exporting states like Texas, which won’t help the already reeling Texas Democrats, and more importantly won’t help the national economy anywhere.  In fact, it’s not out of bounds to view the EPA gambit as a direct economic attack on the energy producing states.

Watching the patterns that have developed over the two years since Obama became POTUS, it’s clear that he is every bit the devious far left ideologue that some of his most vocal critics claim, and the mid-terms haven’t changed that a bit.  The same holds true for the Democrats as a party.  The shellacking only changed his tactics, not his goals.  He’ll bow on the Bush tax cuts fight, knowing that being seen as willing to compromise will buy him a little goodwill and a bump in the polls, while the Senate Democrats pushed that last-minute omnipork and the DREAM Act and the START treaty and DADT to flood the zone, while Obama uses his appointees within the executive branch to jack up taxes and grow the leviathan state in other ways anyway.  Obama’s Democrats haven’t moderated at all, and they’re still on the warpath for more government power and against economic growth.

The incoming House Republicans will find themselves facing war with the administration on several fronts, which also seems to be by design.  They’re already pledged to de-fund ObamaCare, and now will be squaring off against the FCC and the EPA.  None of these stands by Obama enjoy mainstream support, but the evidence says that he doesn’t care.  If he wanted broad support, he would use the bully pulpit to seek it.  He hasn’t.  He will do what he believes he can get away with, forcing the Republicans to fight him in ways that will allow him to cast them as either fighting for dirty air and water or for big business.  In other words, the “post-partisan” president is setting up 2012 to be every bit as partisan and nasty as the first two years of his presidency have already been.

Oh, and while some of Obama’s appointees show that if nothing else they’re shrewd and effective bureaucratic fighters, Obama’s top national security officials remain national embarrassments [4].  That tells us which tasks President Obama sees as more important: He put his most talented troops to work growing the regulatory state, while handing the unimportant task of keeping the nation safe to his cronies and hacks.

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/shellacked-obama-readies-his-regulatory-runarounds/

URLs in this post:

[1] never thought: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-a-major-obama-administration-shake-up-coming/2/
[2] notes: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703886904576031512110086694.html
[3] target your light switch: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46697.html
[4] national embarrassments: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/22/clapper.terror.arrests.interview/?hpt=T2