10/13/08
Economic situation limits Obama's potential damage
One of my reasons for being somewhat less afraid of President Obama than I was some months ago is that the current financial and economic turmoil will limit how much he can tax, spend, and socialize.
And regarding an issue that's particularly important to me, I have argued that "cap and trade" or similar legislation designed to deal with the hoax of man-made global warming, will also be extremely difficult to pass during a time of a weak economy and high energy prices.
Now even the AP is acknowledging that likelihood in a Sunday news story entitled "Economic woes chill effort to stop global warming."
And if the AP weren't enough of a leftist source for you, the San Francisco Chronicle is making the same argument:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/12/MNO313EQ65.DTL&tsp=1
I don't suppose there's much point in telling the AP reporter that "global warming" appears to have stopped in 1998 (or in 2001, if you look at satellite data). The media has drunk the global warming kool-aid, much to the financial benefit of Algore, the Sierra Club, and other opponents of economic liberty.
I would also note that on this particular issue, Obama and McCain agree...it's one of my biggest problems with John McCain and one of the main reasons I probably won't vote for him.
Just as I had argued that events on the ground will keep Obama from pulling out of Iraq in a precipitous fashion, the economic situation will keep him from implementing his dream of a socialist America.
It makes me all the more confident in my view that the GOP must not be made to believe they can or should win with candidates who support things like McCain-Feingold, Cap and Trade legislation, or the government buying bad mortgages and saddling taxpayers with the losses. If we're going to have a socialist, let it be a real socialist and let the Democrats get the much-deserved blame for what will happen.
Yes, we will all suffer for it, but we'd suffer under McCain too. If the Republicans learn that they need to give truly economically conservative candidates to win, we'll all be better off in the long run.
The best argument for McCain is the Supreme Court. It is indeed a strong argument. But at the end of the day, I can't support a candidate as flawed as John McCain just because he's better than the other guy. A McCain victory is a modest short-term win and a substantial long-term loss for people who believe in the principles of the American founding.
Democrats will be incapable of improving the terrible financial and economic conditions we'll be seeing for at least the next year because they don't know how to do anything but raise taxes...exactly the wrong medicine for what ails us. They probably won't be able to raise taxes, however, and they will finally get the blame they deserve for the situation...the blame they should be getting now but for the refusal of the dominant liberal media to expose what should be obvious and the pathetic weakness of the Republican attack on the Democrats' corruption of Fannie Mae, and Fannie's corruption of Democrats in return.
When even the AP begins to acknowledge that Obama's power to destroy the economy is threatened by the economy's already weakened state, I feel somewhat less nervous about a President Obama, even though I will be even more ashamed of my country for electing him than I was when we (or they, in this case) elected Bill Clinton.
8 comments
I'll differ with the "Supreme Court appointments" argument on a couple of powerful grounds:
1. McCain-Feingold(Constitution-crushing the 1st Amendment)
2. McCain-Leiberman(affecting private property rights)
3.Overwhelming commie-lib Dem Congress(House and Senate) in next cycle who will utterly remove any faintest possibility McCain would have ANY say in a conservative pick(assuming the Dem-allied faux Senator would make such a pick)
4.McCain voted for both Ginsberg and Breyer(I believe it was Breyer)and I seriously doubt McCain knows (or cares if he does know)what the Constitution says.
5. He believes in letting mad scientists play with human embryos.
Other than than that I agree with the real danger being that our fast approaching disasters should be hung on the party that caused them, and they are going to have precious little money to spend socializing us further than El Presidente Jorge has done so far.
I basically agree with you.
I have argued in the past that McCain might look for someone who would be likely to uphold his signature legislation, McCain-Feingold, and that a judge who would find that constitutional would likely be wrong about everything, or at least everything important.
there is a counter argument; that it is when economic fear is at its highest that the libs strike and lock in programs that we can't get rid of 70 years later--- like social security, gov't unions, and other vestigial tails of the New Deal.
If we didn't feel so fearful, we would have never handed over our retirement accounts to a govt bureaucracy in the 1930s...
Consumers are victims (& can't be trusted to make their own decisions), so there's a program to punish the rascals who sell us things. Homeowners are victims, and those nefarious mortgage companies will pay dearly for giving us what we want, w/ new administrative requirements & heavy fines. Workers are perhaps the biggest victims of all, so there's a plethora of new goodies, like "tax credits" for people who don't pay taxes.
Fear not, though, for there are as many subsidies are doing "the right thing" as there are protections for victims. New energy alternatives, clean cars, creating good jobs, buying a house, companies not leaving the U.S., job retraining, the list goes on and on.
I guess I'm a little old fashioned. I still cling to the quaint idea that the reward in a capitalist society for doing the right thing is making money, while the punishment is losing money. Silly me! Markets of willing buyers won't determine needs any more, government will do it!
If you believe a poor economy will limit Obama, recall the words of Churchill, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Remember that FDR enacted ALL of his gov't-expanding agenda during economic weakness, & that never slowed down anything. They just created a new school of economics to fit the direction they wanted to go. FDR had majorities in both houses of Congress, as Obama is likely to as well.
I hate when I agree with you.
That's about the best compliment I could get.
McCain-Feingold is a travesty that liberals and conservatives alike should despise.
It should not be a partisan issue, but it seems like everything becomes partisan in recent years.
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