About That Enthusiasm Gap . . .

I mentioned yesterday that continued comparisons between the two campaigns could be interesting.  I’m just laying out what I found, with no cherry-picking.  Here’s a line of folks (via Twitter) waiting outside an OFA office August 11th, for tickets to Obama’s appearance at Oskaloosa today, Tuesday August 14th:

Next are the photos of the actual Obama in Oskaloosa event that I found on Twitter today.

First, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” is now stuck in my head.

Second is the line of folks waiting outside the Nelson Pioneer Farm and Museum.  “Really, really, really long line for tickets to attend Pres. Obama’s event in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Enthusiasm gap? HA!”

The above photo of the queue is getting some distribution on the Twitterz.  I’m not sure what time it was taken, but the tweet above was sent at 11:11am.  The event was to begin at 9am according to this report.

Here are the rest that I found, in chronological order.  10:19am:

11:42am:

12:35pm:

12:50pm:

1:50pm:

2:19pm:  Oh dear.  I couldn’t embed this picture for some reason.  You’ll have to click over.

And finally, a Fox News photo from a 2:37pm tweet:

Whew, this linking and saving and attaching is pretty tedious.  Nevermind, I shall perservere.

On to the Paul Ryan event in Lakewood, Colorado, also held today (Tuesday August 14th).  This event was set to begin at 10am.

9:14am, the queue waiting to get inside:

9:44am, another view of the queue:

11:56am:

At 12:03pm @Chris_Moody tweets:  “Paul Ryan about to address totally packed gym in Lakewood, Colorado.”  Here’s his photo:

12:05pm:

At 12:10pm, @JoyLinFN tweets:  “Fire marshal says gymnasium at Lakewood High School has reached max capacity for Paul Ryan speech.  Crowd waits.”  Here is her photo:

At 12:13pm, @tripgabriel tweets:  “Packed to the rafters awaiting Paul Ryan at Lakewood HS in Colorado.”  His pic:

12:26pm:

12:57pm from @ShepherdCNN:

And finally, at 12:58pm, @KContiforCO tweets:  “Paul Ryan.  Addresses a Rockin’ crowd at Lakewood High School.”  Her photo:

These comparisons are proving interesting to me.  What do you think?

Here’s a strange thing.  At this very moment, the headlining topic at Memeorandum is  “GOP pros fret over Paul Ryan.”  Huh.  Perhaps there is a disconnect between the pros and the actual voters?

Related:  Rasmussen: Ohio likely voters favorable toward Ryan, 51/39

cross-posted at NoOneOfAnyImport

 

Sigh. Yet another misleading attack Ad against Paul Ryan

These people are so predictable and the ad itself is really, really bad.

Does anyone wish to inform these morons and the useful idiots seniors that were protesting Ryan that Obamacare cut $575,000,000,000 from Medicare?

Leftists demagogue that conservatives want to cut Medicare, but leftists actually CUT Medicare.

And in spite of all of the manufactured hysteria from the Democrats, Ryan’s budget is still a deficit spending budget. It’s just not as reckless as Obama’s budget.

The Republican budget plan would produce deficits totaling $3.13 trillion over the next 10 years – significantly below the $6.39 trillion in deficits that the Congressional Budget Office says Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget plan would produce.

And never mind the fact it has been 1055 days (nearly 3 years) since the Democratically controlled Senate has passed a budget.

 

Paul Ryan exposes Geithner/Obama Budget fail, or “We don’t have a definitive solution… We just don’t like yours”

 

House finance committee chairman Paul Ryan grilled Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner  on the failure of the proposed budget to work towards solving our long-term debt crisis. Instead of dealing head-on with a $99.4 trillion dollar liability, the Geithner/Obama budget does nothing to avert the looming debt crisis. Geithner’s answer is that his budget stabilizes our current insanely high debt for a few years but does not fix it. Ryan is right, it is all about confidence and trajectory and this budget will not bode well with credit rating agencies or those who might invest in U.S. debt and will result in default.

Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury have a responsibility to fix problems, this administration and this budget are an epic fail when it concerns future financial liabilities. As Ryan said, “Our Government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for them!

 

Mitch McConnell dancing to the beat of a different drum

After listening to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s detailed discussion on the Debt, the Budget and Spending on Saturday, along with Congressman Paul Ryan’s assertion that the people are way ahead of the political class on Meet the Press yesterday, there seems to be a disconnect with establishment Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vision of the way forward.

McConnell’s appearance on Fox News Sunday left me scratching my head, because his apparent biological predisposition to compromise with Democrats was in stark contrast with House leadership.

No video or transcript of FNS’s McConnell segment is available at this time, but Roll Call has a little blurb about it.

Cantor was dismissive of the President’s latest ‘Commission’ headed by Joe Biden, as he was of Pat Toomey’s Bill, ceding the power of the purse to the President.

Eric Cantor is not exactly a Tea Party Republican, but the contrast between him and RINO boy is vast. Cantor gets it. McConnell does NOT.

If Republicans take the Senate in 2012, the very FIRST order of business is to make sure that McConnell no longer holds any leadership position.

This is not negotiable.

 

The People are Way Ahead of the Political Class

Conventional wisdom has long told us that meaningful Medicare reform is the third rail of politics. So when Paul Ryan proposed the Republican budget containing serious and well thought out and effective reforms of Medicare, it is no surprise that it made headlines and launched a tsunami of criticism from the left.The dispicable ads, including the granny off the cliff posted on this site earlier this week are unfortunate but not unexpected.

What is surprising is that after an overwhelming victory in the house the House Republican Budget started receiving some less than enthusiastic support by establishment types like Mitch McConnell and of course the full assault by the dinosaur Newt Gingrich which he has since issued a retraction and instructed the American people do disregard the statement, I’m not exactly sure how that works but I’ll save that for another post.

We have the old guard, even when faced with the collapse of medicare with this decade, afraid to act while Paul Ryan, who represents the future of the Republican party, boldly proposed and is aggressively advocating for real Medicare reform which will give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient providers, while the Democratic plan is to give government the power to deny care to seniors. These career politicians are conditioned to avoid tough choices and kick the can down the road even when we have come to the end of the road.

The American people do understand that the status quo is no longer an option and they have known it for some time now. The major impetus of the tea party movement was the recognition that this country is in a huge hole and the only two solutions being proposed were digging deeper or kicking the can down the road.

The American people understand that adding four billion dollars a day to our debt is unsustainable. The American people understand that without significant spending cuts and reform of our entitlement programs our debt will continue to explode and destroy our economy. The American people understand that with 10,000 baby boomers a day becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security, those programs are unsustainable without serious reform.  

With so much on the line this is no time for timidity, Paul Ryan is willing to lead and if the Republican leadership is to take the Senate and the White House in 2012 they should follow Mr. Ryan’s lead.

 

Is The Panderer in Chief Smarter Than A 4th Grader?

While Republicans have publicly declared that they are willing to risk losing an election in order to save our nation, Mr. Obama has decided to sacrifice our nation in a blatent attempt to pander his way to a second term. After ignoring his own debt commissions recomendations in his 2012 budget and then calling for yet another debt reduction committee, the community organizer, has made clear that he plans to focus on miniscule domestic cuts limited to waste, fraud, and abuse, large cuts to defense ( odd, since this is actually one of the enumerated federal powers).At the same time he plans to spend more on unions, seniors, and other special interests and increase taxes on the wealthy to balance the budget.

The president at one point clearly and accurately defines the defecit problem;

Now, if we don’t close this deficit, now that the economy has begun to grow again, if we keep on spending more than we take in, it’s going to cause serious damage to our economy. Companies might be less likely to set up shop here in the United States of America. It could end up costing you more to take out a loan for a home or for a car, because if people keep on having to finance America’s debt, at a certain point they’re going to start charging higher interest rates. We won’t be able to afford investments in education or clean energy, or all the things that we care about because we know it’ll help drive our economy and create jobs.

Apparently, he is not retaining what he reads off the teleprompter and he fails to realize that serious cuts cannot wait until after the election as he outlined his impotent plan to reduce our debt.

So what my plan does is it starts with combing the budget for savings wherever we can find it. [skip] I’m not going to quit until we’ve found every single dime of waste and misspent money. We don’t have enough money to waste it right now.[skip] But finding savings in our domestic spending only gets you so far. We’re also going to have to find savings in places like the defense budget.[skip] So we’ve begun to cut those out. And Secretary Gates has found a lot of waste like that and has been able to save us $400 billion so far. I believe we can do that again. Four hundred billion dollars — even in Washington, that’s real money.[skip]And we’ve also got to end tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans

I should add the president also cites impending savings from Obamacare, but nobody seriously believes that this legislation (which double counts the $480 million medicare cuts) will reduce our deficit so I left it out to spare him from further ridicule. His refusal to seriously cut spending recently prompted the S & P outlook downgrade to negative. The notion that he can continue to invest spend to pander his way to the White House and make up for it by taxing the rich is laughable.

I believe that people who have been really blessed in this society like me and have a very, very, very good income can afford to pay a little bit more — nothing crazy, just go back to the rates that existed when Bill Clinton was President. That wasn’t that long ago — (applause) — that that’s a fair thing to do, especially if it makes sure that seniors are still getting their Medicare and kids are still going to Head Start. Why wouldn’t I want to make that sacrifice?

Reverting back to the Clinton taxrates would add $100 Billion revenue. When you consider that Obama’s annual deficit is 1.6 trillion any 4th grader can see the numbers do not add up!

 

“Unfortunately, the president failed to put a serious proposal on the table.” – Senator Tom Coburn

Senator Tom Coburn gives a sobering critique of the pesidents debt reduction plan.

While the president calls for continued pandering by protecting unsustainable entitlements in their current forms Coburn more clearly defines the situation.

“What the country needs to hear from the leaders in Washington is that we understand how big this problem is and that we’re wiling to lose elections to do what’s best for the country and that’s what’s not happening now,” Coburn said on “Fox News Sunday.”

 

The ship is changing course. Plouffe has Obama tacking to the starboard.

After two long years of complete Democrat leadership in which the incompetent team of Obama, Biden, Reid, and Pelosi have charted a course which leads our nation to a Titanic like disaster, we are now seeing signs that our ship is tacking to starboard in an attempt to avoid a massive fiscal iceberg.

Now it appears that the president is changing course, and fast. David Plouffe, who was Obama’s campaign manager in 2008 and recently replaced David Axlerod as senior advisor to the president, was interviewed pre-recorded) on Meet the Press and he was asked if the president was going to present his own deficit reduction plan to which his reply was “you will have to ask President Obama”. Then on a live interview on Fox News Sunday Plouffe announced that Obama will be announcing his deficit reduction plan this week.

President Obama had an opportunity to lead on this issue when he submitted his 2012 budget but as Paul Ryan says he did nothing, punted, ducked, and kicked the can down the road. Now that Ryan has courageously led on deficit reduction, Obama wants to run to the front of the parade and grab the flag.

Despite the politics, as an American I am glad that the conversation is changing. Thank God for the Tea Party movement and the patriotic Americans who understand that liberty can only be preserved with responsible self governance and an adherence to our founding principles. Without the uprising of the American people, the ideas espoused by conservatives like Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn, Marco Rubio, and others would be cast aside as “extreme”. Now serious attempts to rein in spending are now part of the mainstream national conversation.

I understand that Obama is pivoting in an attempt to be re-elected and I am not fooled by it, but I am encouraged that he now feels he needs to pivot much more than he had originally planned.

 

The Paul Ryan Budget Plan

Jack Ohman-Tribune Media Services

 Maker or Taker? This twitter message pretty much sums up how people feel about the plan.

@cspanwj Your opinion of the Paul Ryan budget plan depends largely upon whether you are a “maker” or a “taker”.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Here are some of the key components, facts and figures contained in “The Path to Prosperity” 2012 budget resolution:

Where the President has failed, House Republicans will lead. This budget helps spur job creation today, stops spending money the government doesn’t have, and lifts the crushing burden of debt. This plan puts the budget on the path to balance and the economy on the path to prosperity.

SPENDING

• Cuts $6.2 trillion in government spending over the next decade compared to the President’s budget, and $5.8 trillion relative to the current-policy baseline.
• Eliminates hundreds of duplicative programs, reflects the ban on earmarks, and curbs corporate welfare bringing non-security discretionary spending to below 2008 levels.
• Brings government spending to below 20 percent of the economy, a sharp contrast to the President’s budget, in which spending never falls below 23 percent of GDP over the next decade.

DEBT AND DEFICITS

• Reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion compared to the President’s budget over the next decade.
• Surpasses the President’s low benchmark of sustainability – which his own budget fails to meet – by reaching primary balance in 2015.
• Puts the budget on the path to balance and pays off the debt.

TAXES

• Keeps taxes low so the economy can grow. Eliminates roughly $800 billion in tax increases imposed by the President’s health care law.
• Prevents the $1.5 trillion tax increase called for in the President’s budget.
• Calls for a simpler, less burdensome tax code for households and small businesses.
• Lowers tax rates for individuals, businesses and families.
• Sets top rates for individuals and businesses at 25 percent.
• Improves incentives for growth, savings, and investment.

GROWTH AND JOBS

• Creates nearly 1 million new private-sector jobs next year, brings the unemployment rate down to 4 percent by 2015, and results in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade.
• Spurs economic growth, increasing real GDP by $1.5 trillion over the decade.
• Unleashes prosperity and economic security, yielding $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average $1,000 per year in higher income for each family.

Read the plan here