Romney's Biggest Mistake

By 10 pm on November 6, 2012 it was becoming painfully obvious to conservatives that the election was, for all intents and purposes, over and Barack Obama would be serving a second term as President of the United States.  Everyone playing Monday morning quarterback will tell you that Mitt Romney made mistakes.  What these mistakes were is already a heated topic of discussion by people on both sides of the aisle.  Some will say Mitt went too soft, while others will say he just could not make that connection with the lower and middle classes.  As all the election data comes together, it is obvious that Mitt Romney did make one huge mistake that far overshadows any other.  That mistake was believing in the American people.

Mitt Romney believed the American people were smart.  He honestly believed that the American people were smart enough to realize that a president that has had his way for four years was still somehow campaigning on what he would do if given the chance.  He believed that the American people were smart enough to realize that the slight upticks in the economy were not because of Obama's regulations and fiscal policies but in spite of them.  He didn’t feel that he had to present this to the American people in a harsh, mud slinging, negative way.  Instead his approach was based more on presenting a better alternative, a better America.  He did this in a no-nonsense and yet never condescending way.  Polls consistently show that people overwhelmingly disdain negative attack ads when asked face to face.  Romney took them at their word, and unfortunately the actual results of many a political race have proved negative ads have quite a different effect when a person is behind the voting curtain.  This race was no different.

Romney also believed that the American people, as a whole, are not satisfied being subsidized by the government.  He believed that 16 million more people on food stamps is a horrible statistic that should outrage Americans.  He never believed in stripping away the helping hand but instead instituting a plan where people would get themselves back to work.  He believed that Americans would jump at the opportunity to have a life where the sky is the limit, not one where you are capped by a welfare check.  A nation where people are constantly striving to improve their lot in life so that next year has the possibility of being better than the last, not because the government gives you a slightly larger handout, but because the government no longer impedes or punishes your success.

Mitt Romney truly believed in the American people.  Today it is obvious he was mistaken.

Calvin Parker
@murph_clp on Twitter

Inconvenient Logic...

Who's the Maximalist Here, Jay?

Last week, when asked if the president would embrace Senator McConnell’s invitation to Capitol Hill to discuss the budget impasse, White House spokesman Jay Carney was direct in giving his opinion of the Senator’s offer. “What the Senator invited the President to do was to hear Senate Republicans restate their maximalist position. We know what that position is. And he also invited him to hear… what would not pass. That's not a conversation worth having. What we need to have is a conversation about what will pass. ”

His use of the word “maximalist” immediately creates a glaring “pot and kettle” moment for the White House spokesman. Three more times during this interview, Carney applied the term “maximalist” to describe Republican opposition to the president. The suggestion of this redundant reminder, of course, is that while the president is willing to make concessions and compromise, Republicans are bullheadedly “drawing lines in the sand.” Yet what is our gracious president actually offering his opposition? He demands that Republicans defy their constituents and be willing to embrace tax hikes and trillions of dollars in new debt over the coming decade- and if they do not, he won’t even talk to them. He’ll just plug his ears, and run off to Pennsylvania to attend a fundraiser like he did last week.

It's hard to think of a more "maximalist" position than that. So the implication that the president’s position is conducive to compromise while Republicans are just stubborn as mules must be the result of a deceptive political campaign to vilify opposition.

And as we’ve come to expect of the Obama administration, that’s exactly what it is.

William Sullivan

As The World Burns...

The Middle East is in a state of unprecedented upheaval that could plunge the world into war. Europe is in chaos due to vast budget shortfalls. Oil prices are poised to breach the ceiling previously known. The dollar is primed for collapse, and several currencies are being touted as a possible new trading standard.

Meanwhile, in America, public sector unions are fighting for their life to retain the influence they hold in deciding how public money will be spent. And their supporters are pulling out all the stops. Pro-union lawmakers are going AWOL and shirking the civic responsibility they have sworn to uphold. Our pro-union president is seeking to apply his federal influence in the fray, though he has no Constitutional right to do so. And pro-union lawmakers call for blood in the streets to get what they want.

But aside from unscrupulous union supporters, what is being done in Wisconsin is exactly how our government was meant to work. The state's budget shortfall has been directly linked to the collective bargaining rights of the unions in that state: strong-arming unions manipulated politicians to promise more in deferred benefits than it is possible to pay now that the bill is due. To reconcile this, officials have been elected by the people to plug the fiscal hole that the unions have created. To do this, Governor Walker of Wisconsin has suggested that public servants begin contributing 5.8% to their own pension funds, and that they pay for 12% of their healthcare premiums. Oh yeah, and the unions have to give up the collective bargaining rights that led to this mess in the first place.

This is all to be voted upon by elected officials, and it is constitutionally sound. Consider this to be our republic's way of giving shareholders, i.e., taxpayers, a say in how the business they have invested in is run.

Democrats are crying foul in this instance because Republican leaning police and firefighters in Wisconsin were not asked to make any such adjustments. It is as if they believe that unions and the entire public sector of Wisconsin should all be subject to equal accountability for the collective public pension problems, regardless of which segment caused the problems or which segments have performed better than others. (Need more proof that Democrats today are socialists?) But the fact is, it is entirely possible that the state funded teachers' pension is collapsing while that may not be the case for firefighters and cops who rely on city or county pensions.

The municipal troubles in our nation are incredibly different everywhere you look, so the problems in Wisconsin do not necessarily translate to problems in California, while problems in California don't necessarily translate to problems in Texas. And beyond that, Texas' problems don't necessarily translate to Dallas or Houston's problems. And even further beyond that, Houston firefighters' problems don't necessarily translate to Houston police officers' problems.

The issue certainly isn't black and white. So we need to be reasonable, and allow each city and state to take their own approach to handle the problems with public sector pay and benefits based on the type and severity of each problem. However, we also need to be steadfast in addressing these problems, because is clear that most municipalities, if not all, do have problems that endanger taxpayers.

If there is one universal flaw in public compensation, it is the very notion of the defined benefit. There can be no question that defined benefits cannot exist with birth rates and life expentancies as they are* without perpetually increasing tax liabilty. In my opinion, they must be amended across the board in favor of defined contribution plans. How quickly that transition must take place will depend upon the solvency, or lack thereof, of each municipality.

But we who would seek to amend troubled defined benefit programs are not calling for blood in the streets like the pro-union Democratic legislators that are so quick to decry the "hate speech" on talk radio while implicitly suggesting pure violence in the name of their cause. As much as we in the private sector would like to end public sector unions' noxious existence, we instead choose to elect politicians that would fulfill our wishes constitutionally, and right each ship, respectively.

And Walker is just doing what he was elected by the people to do; right the fiscal ship of Wisconsin. Of course, given that there are idiots among the protesting teachers holding signs that say "Egypt supports Wisconsin workers," maybe the proper action for Walker should be to just fire them all and hire from among the millions of unemployed to take their place. If teachers there think that protesting against a ~5% contribution to the retirement fund they will eventually collect is anything like revolting against a Middle Eastern Islamic dictatorship, the replacements could not possibly be any dumber than the teachers they already employ.

William Sullivan

* William G. Shipman, a leading global expert regarding Social Security, is one of many voices heralding the unsustainable nature of defined benefit plans, and is currently working with legislators to reform Social Security for the private sector. You will find incredible evidence of the flawed nature of defined benefits in today's world here.

Republic in Reverse

When broken down into its most basic form, the United States’ system of government is a simple one. The founding fathers formed what is known as a federal constitutional republic. By definition this is a nation where the head of state and other officials are elected as representatives of the people, and must govern according to existing constitutional law which limits the government's power over citizens. The fact that the elected officials’ decisions are subject to judicial review makes this form of government a republic. The key principle here is that the elected officials are supposed to be representatives of the people. This is a corner stone that appears to have been ignored, not only by the Obama administration, but also by the Democratic members in both the House and the Senate.

Although poll numbers are not always completely reliable, and can sometimes have a tendency to be skewed due to how the questions are worded, when multiple polls tend to show similar results one can generally believe the information to be accurate. When polling of Americans show the majority are opposed or in favor of legislation, according to the United States system of representative government, logic would follow that the congressional voting on the issue would closely mirror these numbers. After all, a representative’s only job is to vote how the majority of their district or state would vote if every single eligible voter were to cast a ballot on any given issue. Unfortunately this has not been the case with the Obama administration or with the majority of Democrats in Congress, in fact just the opposite has occurred with no foreseeable change in tactics in sight.

The first glaring example of this disturbing trend was evident with the new health care laws. Although many different kinds of questions were thrown out by pollsters, the general consensus was that a majority of Americans disapproved of the actual bill that was passed. The fact that the Democrats had to use reconciliation to pass the bill, which had never been used on any major legislation before, speaks volumes about the laws popularity with citizens.

Now Arizona has passed an immigration enforcement law which closely resembles the existing federal immigration enforcement mandate. This new law is supported by the majority of not only Arizona citizens, but the majority of Americans as well, and yet many Democrats and Obama himself have come out and said that the Arizona state legislature‘s efforts are “misguided“. Misguided? Actually the Arizona legislature is a prime example of how the our government is supposed to work. Politicians are supposed to pass laws that the people want, not pass laws in which they are against. Its truly mind blowing how the overall simplicity of the process seems to escape the liberal powers that be.

With legislation on issues such as “cap and trade” and immigration reform forthcoming, it is imperative to not only recognize but also demand that our “representatives” be just that, representatives. George Washington urged against the forming of political parties. He simply saw no need for them. If every elected official was to vote in a manner consistent with the beliefs of their constituency on every issue, then the whole party system would, in turn, be unnecessary. In his farewell speech in 1789 he stated, “they (political parties) are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

Sound familiar?

Calvin Parker

To Democrats, dissent is no longer patriotism

America witnessed a tremor in the political landscape in 2009. We know it as the Tea Party movement, a grassroots response to resist massive federal expansion.

As federal oversight in the banking, insurance, auto, energy, and healthcare industries have all been flagship issues for this administration and its supporters, it comes as no surprise that the Tea Party movement has encountered fierce resistance. Since its inception one year ago, "tea partiers" have been razed by the news media. Liberal pundits across the networks ignored the substance and reasoning for the widespread protests, and rather made sophomoric jokes about “tea-bagging.” They made accusations of political lobbies "astroturfing," and stoked racial sensitivity by perpetuating a lack of minority participation to discredit the movement as a "whites-only" club. (1)

Even elected representatives showed contempt for the apparent disapproval of these constituents. Nancy Pelosi also called the movement “astroturf,” and reduced the protest attendees to little more than Neo-Nazi racists. (2)

With many loyal media outlets by their side, Democrats just plugged their ears, kept chanting their mantra, and hoped their negative slights against the tea partiers would drown out the loud voices of dissent. They could not have been more wrong.

In fact, the attacks may have helped the Tea Party's cause. Perhaps people noticed the movement more because, deep down, Americans knew that there was something incongruous about the Democrats’ blistering attacks upon the tea partiers. After all, the liberal establishment had spent the latter half of the Bush years peddling the slogan, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Then, in the very moment that this administration encountered opposition to its own proposed policy, dissent had lost its “patriotism” and had become the destructive plot of racists, insurance lobbyists, and ordinary people that are just too stupid to know what’s good for them.

Also ironic is that when prominent liberal Democrats like John Kerry and Ted Kennedy found themselves quoting this maxim with regularity, it was falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson with equal regularity. (3) They apparently felt that if the phrase could invoke the spirit of the founding fathers, it would legitimize their resistance to the Iraq War.

But the thing is, if the Democrats truly believed that the ideals of the founding fathers are the litmus test for legitimate dissent, they could not find the tea partiers’ cause more reasonable. Their argument today is remarkably similar to that of the American colonials in 1776. Largely comprised of taxpayers, today's tea partiers feel that they are facing the inevitable prospect of increased tax burdens, and that they lack the representation to avoid such intolerable mandates. But rather than seeing their dissent as patriotism, Democrats feel that the the Tea Party movement should be the subject of ridicule and scorn.

It seems that Democrats want to selectively choose when citizens should adhere to the doctrine of patriotic objection, and are willing to reshape the terms when convenient. One can’t help but draw a parallel to Orwell’s iconic interpretation of elitism and tyranny. In Animal Farm, we see a ruling party amend the principle “All animals are equal” to become “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” (4) It seems that upon encountering the inconvenient objections of the Tea Party, this Democratic administration also felt the need to amend its ideology, and “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” has become “Objecting to George W. Bush was the highest form of patriotism, but in 2010, we should all just agree with hope and change."

William Sullivan

(1) http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2010/20100216095241.aspx

(2)http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/08/05/pelosi_town_hall_protesters_are_carrying_swastikas.html
(3)http://volokh.com/posts/1146554363.shtml
(4)http://www.george-orwell.org/Animal_Farm/index.html

Barney Frank and the 60 Vote Rule

Barney Frank apparently fancies himself an advocate of democratic principles. Recently, he called the guidelines in the Senate “anti-democratic” for requiring 60 votes for bill passage, and suggests that an initiative be taken by Democratic senators to abolish the rule. His opinion is that the revision to lower the requirement from 67 votes to 60 was a good start, (1) so one can only assume that he would like for that threshold to be a strict majority, or 51 votes. Frank feels that this will alleviate the influence of roustabouts in the “smaller states” and diminish their role in a filibuster against a party in majority.

Barney Frank is calling for the abolition of this 60 vote rule under the guise of moral outrage and an adherence to democracy. But it is nothing more than a ploy to garner more control in Congress, and it has absolutely nothing to do with our system being “anti-democratic.”

This is obvious when we examine, for example, the healthcare reform package that his party supports. Barney Frank would argue that it should only require a majority vote in the Senate to initiate sweeping and costly healthcare reform. That would be “democratic.”

But this question looms. If he indeed values the precepts of democracy, why does he ignore the majority of Americans that have been much more prevalently against this healthcare bill? (2) This Senate majority has been blindly charging forward with their agenda in blatant spite of public opinion. By what logic is that acceptable within the guidelines of democracy?

For that matter, according to the most recent polls, the majority of Americans are against abortion, (3) despite the Democratic Party’s largely “pro-choice” agenda. Shall we ban abortions across the board because 51 percent of Americans feel it is wrong? The majority of Americans also persist in opposing gay marriage, (4) in clear opposition to Barney Frank’s obvious position in that arena. Shall we take the right to decide on this matter from the states and apply a federal ban on gay marriage because well more than 51 percent of Americans are against the practice?

With these issues, would Barney Frank stand firm with the democratic principles he claims to maintain, and support such large-scale reform on the basis of the majority? I would wager that he would not.

The fact is that Barney Frank is not truly an advocate of democracy. He is an advocate of his party’s agenda, and an advocate of any measures necessary to advance that agenda. In this case, he is just feigning a devotion to democracy to lower voting requirements, which will then allow Democrats pass their unpopular legislation without having to hide their backroom deals that grease politicians for those few extra votes.

No one knows better than Barney Frank that Americans are paying attention to Washington’s corruption and shady deals, and that they don’t like it. His home state just shouted its disapproval in an election.

William Sullivan
Houston, TX

1) http://www.breitbart.tv/barney-frank-god-didnt-create-the-filibuster/
2) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_and_democrats_health_care_plan-1130.html
3) http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspx
4) http://www.gallup.com/poll/118378/majority-americans-continue-oppose-gay-marriage.aspx

Election Eye Opener

As every media outlet and political website and blog have headlined, the GOP won two very telling victories on November 3rd. Bob McDonnell won the governors race in Virginia by 18% and Chris Christie won the New Jersey governors race by 5%*. The Christie victory, while still surprising, is not as cut and dry as it might appear. Christie is a moderate Republican, and Corzine was extremely unpopular in New Jersey. Nevertheless, both victories are sending shock waves through the political community and, hopefully, a message to all incumbents.

The reason that these two races have received so much attention is due to the fact that Obama carried both states in the 2008 election and had campaigned for both Democratic candidates. This could easily be viewed as a direct showing of disapproval of the Obama administration and democratic congressional policies. The sway Obama and the democrats seemed to have over both states appears to have faltered but the GOP should only look at this as a small stepping stone going into the 2010 elections and even Republican incumbents should be paying attention.

When the Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate in 2006, a Democratic political adviser warned on CNN that the majority of the country still leans fiscally conservative, and that the newly elected Democrats would be wise to keep this in mind if they want to remain in office. He went on to say, that prior to 2006, the Republicans in power had drifted away fiscally conservative principles. Their constituents were unhappy and it showed at the polls. This remains true today and the two governors races might just be a warning to all incumbents that listening to the electorate is job one.

The current congress has one of the lowest approval rating in history. The amazing thing about this statistic is that their approval rating is about the same now as it was in 2005. So despite the Democrats winning the majority in 2006 and taking even more seats and the presidency in 2008, Americans are still unhappy with the job that congress is doing. This has always been a hard concept to grasp considering that Americans can simply "vote out" who they are unhappy with. Apparently the overwhelming belief held by citizens has been one of being somewhat satisfied with their personal representative and not as pleased with those from other districts or states. This unfortunate trend seems to be fading. As of right now, both the senate majority leader and the Speaker of the House are experiencing problems on the home front. Pelosi's approval ratings have dropped significantly as have Harry Reid's. And although Pelosi's district may be a lost cause to conservatives, Reid's position could very well be up for grabs in 2010.

The American political system is supposed to be a relatively simple concept. A given district or state elects an individual to speak on their behalf. Now, as seen in the stimulus, health care and cap and trade bills, this does not always occur. When the so called "blue dog democrats" were holding out on the health care vote, due to discourse from their respective constituencies, Pelosi and Reid held closed door meetings with the holdouts. In these meetings the "blue dogs" were basically told that if they wanted any kind of future in the democratic party, including appointments to any important committees, then they should drop their objections. This is by no means a new trick, nor is it one that is party exculsive, and it worked at the time. However, on November 4th, not even 24 hours after the election, Reid himself stated that he did not believe that health care would be passed this year like the president had wanted. Before the election, some thought that a vote could come as early as November 5th. Many politicians are rethinking being linked to a bill that, so far, is wildly unpopular with the majority of people. This is also the reason that cap and trade has floundered thusfar. Not many people in congress want to explain to their electorate why they voted for a bill that is guaranteed to raise their energy costs, especially in a recession. Being guaranteed a future in any party by party leaders is worthless if you are bound to lose the next election. Hopefully this election has shown politicians on both sides of the aisle that their sole purpose is to do as their constituents would have them do. Otherwise, these constituents have shown that they will find someone who will.

*According to the AP

Calvin Parker