Some thoughts on the next presidential election
by Mike Kimel
Some thoughts on the next presidential election.
1. It seems to be a political truism that only Nixon could go to China.
2. Once a precedent is set, even taboo activities become OK. Clinton could go to China because Nixon had already gone.
3. Obama seems willing to, er, “fix” a number of programs that folks on the left hold dear like Social Security and Medicare.
4. GW was unable to tackle Social Security and Medicare, though he did express the desire to do so.
5. Under the Nixon-has-gone-to-China precedent, Social Security and Medicare will not be off limits to Obama’s successors of either party.
6. If Obama wins in 2012, what other Chinas will he visit?
Thanks a lot, Mike.
Now I can’t sleep.
There is blood in the water and the sharks have been waiting a long, long time.
And there is not a damn jot of intelligence in the “debate.”
From the Big Liars we get… Big Lies. From the defenders on the left we get, “Assuming the big lie is true…. we can save Social Security by Taxing The Rich!”
And in case anybody missed the point: taxing the rich IS the Big Lie. Social Security doesn’t cost the rich, or “the government”, a dime. The workers pay for it themselves. And they get their money back. With interest. When they need it. And they will be able to continue to do so forever, if we don’t let the Big Liars and the feeble defenders come to a “compromise.”
coberly,
This post is not on the correctness of going to China, merely on the fact that it takes a Nixon to be the first to go to China, and that once Nixon does go to China, it creates a precedent any other President can follow should he desire.
As an FYI, another liberal Nixon to China moment… LBJ cut tax rates.
Mike
there is a peculiar fact about blogland. people think i am arguing with them. i know you were not arguing about the correctness of going to china. you were telling me that now that the unthinkable has been thunk we will never get any sleep. because they won’t rest until they have “fixed” the program like you might fix your dog.
Isn’t that the real harm Obama has done? And he could have campaigned on the idea of saving social security and medicare from the GOP–now not so much. I intend to put my dollars and vote in favor of Congress critters who will stand up to the GOP and will give serious thought to supporting Romney in the general election in hopes that the Democrats in Congress can do to him what the GOP did to Obama. That is the only feasible strategy given Obama’s willingness to throw working people under the bus.
Terry
a dangerous strategy indeed.
the democrats will not do to Romney as the R’s have done to the O man. The Dems are in on the scam. Look where they get their campaign money.
SS is probably doomed. O has already cut off it’s balls (payroll tax holiday) and some “compromise” will come out of the “deficit committee” that will ignore the fact that SS has nothing to do with the deficit.
But don’t worry the cuts will be so shallow you won’t notice them. at first.
and by the time you do notice them it will be too late. and you won’t remember where they came from.
coberly,
I imagine if you don’t like the China to which Obama has gone, and you think Obama is going to go to even more Chinas that you will like even less, Terry’s strategy, while dangerous, is about the only one tht makes sense. But then I wrote a long time ago that I wouldn’t support or vote for Obama in 2012.
“only…”
generally means you aren’t thinking of other possibilities.
rather than vote for Romney, don’t vote at all. if an R wins because people voted for him, he has a mandate. if he wins because half the voters stayed home, the lizard people will have to wonder what we’re up to.
Since we are talking about Obama and his potential for visiting virgin turf, his history is well established as failed. One of his paramount failures is his Green jobs intitiatives. We have this article from here: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/08/19/feeding-the-masses-on-unicorn-ribs/
Feeding The Masses On Unicorn Ribs
In it we see: “Besides healing the planet and returning the rising seas to their natural beds, then-Senator Obama promised that his administration would create beautiful green jobs: well paid, stable, abundant jobs, unionized, with full benefits and making the earth healthier and the American people richer. As President, he stayed on message:…”
Indeed, he is still on message even after mounting proof of failure. Read the article for many examples of expensive failures.
We also see this analogy in the article: “Many liberals want green jobs to exist so badly that they don’t fully grasp how otherworldly and ineffectual this advocacy makes the President look to unemployed meat packers and truck drivers.
Let me put it this way. A GOP candidate might feel a need to please creationist voters and say a few nice things about intelligent design. That is politics as usual; it gins up the base and drive the opposition insane with fury and rage. No harm, really, and no foul.
But if that same politician then proposed to base federal health policy on a hunt for the historical Garden of Eden so that we could replace Medicare by feeding old people on fruit from the Tree of Life, he would have gone from quackery-as-usual to raving incompetence. True, the Tree of Life approach polls well in GOP focus groups: no cuts to Medicare benefits, massive tax savings, no death panels, Biblical values on display. Its only flaw is that there won’t be any magic free fruit that lets us live forever, and sooner or later people will notice that and be unhappy….”
The article laughs at the Obama/liberal “green job” policy, but that is only one of the many policies that are being questioned if not out right laughed at.
Liberals your beliefs and ideas are failures. Obama has had many Chinas, and they are abject failures.
Do you think that Huntsmen may be attempting the John Anderson strategy? It sure did not work for Anderson, but did doom whatever small chance jimmy Carter may have had. There are some eerie similarities and i would like to think that a Perry or Bachmann could not get elected even with a “reasonable” conservative alternative to a failed Democrat in the race. Of course, I really did not think Reagan would get elected either, but at least he supported social security.
Mike,
Seems like no one actually took a stab at answering your question. I will skip the SS part as it’s already pointed out above.
So what precedants has Obama set in the ‘Nixon goes to Chhina’ vein and what will he do in the future?
1) He took the country to war in Libya without any congressional approval. Though this precedent may have been set earlier (Clinton in Serbia?), the fact that Obama did so right after Bush congressionally authorized invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan pretty much cemented it into place.
2) Intervened in the bankruptcy of a private entity and flipped long-established BK precedents. (GM)
3) His deep cross-border raid into Pakistan to get OBL set a new precedent on what constitutes a legal military mission into another soveriegn country. That, along with the continued UAV attacks inside Pakistan, makes what constitutes ‘war’ even more vague.
4) Obama not defending DOMA sets a very dangerous precedent (maybe the single biggest issue of them all) that the DOJ at the direction of the president gets to decide which legally passed laws they deem worthy of defending. I have seen many on the left applaud this precedent, but I see it as weakening the rule of law. How will the left feel if in 2013 a Rep president tells the DOJ that he feels that ObamaCare is unconstitutional and decideds not to defend it?
5) Obama signed off on almost all of the Bush National security initiatives put into place after 9/11. This bipartisan move between the two administrations basically cemented them into place also.
6) After 8 years of wailing against Bush’s deficits, Obama’s deficits-on-steroids destroy any claim by the Dems of being the party fiscal responsibility and sets us up to both parties claiming that ‘deficits don’t matter.’
And he kept in place the long-ago set precedent that US Special forces don’t count as ‘boots-on-the-ground’. (Libya, Somalia, Eithiopia, Pakistan, etc etc…)
In the future of an Obama re-election? Well here goes:
1) Obama will set the precedent of no longer sending a Presidential budget to congress. His current ones are ignored as is and he’ll just stop bothering.
2) Obama will sign into law something that will either raise SS taxes, means test SS, and/or raise SS age requirements. This will be bi-partisanally passed and Obama will call it one of his most significant accomlishments.
3) Obama will, as part of ObamaCare implementation, over see the implementation of ‘life-style’ choices as part of people getting care (especially low-availability/high cost care (transplants especially)) and/or increasing costs of people getting care. This will attack ‘non-PC’ groups like smokers, obese, and drug addicts first but will spread. Notibly high-risk, but PC, groups will be excluded – homosexuals and Aids being the most obvious.
4) Obama will sign into law some ‘bi-partisan compromise’ on abortion which will shove the question back to the states. I see something that pushes the time of ‘choice’ back from teh current when the imbelicle cord is cut to, say, 30 weeks when the baby is viable.
5) Obama will impose stricter illegal alien enforcement and deportations. Concentraing on hammering businesses that higher the same. (This is not much of a prediction since Obama’s deportation rate is far higher than under any previous president.)
6) Obama will re-affirm the Second Amendment as an individuals right to bear arms. (Ok, but that would be a really good Nixon-goes-to-China one).
But I expect Obama to loose unless the unemployment rate recovers, and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Islam will change
Uh, not so sure about the whole premise.
Nixon went to China without telling anybody. Nixon didn’t need Congressional support for what he did. The public cares less about foreign policy than about domestic issues, and more about their own economic welfare than about most other domestic economic issues, though at times they have mistaken notions about where their greatest welfare lies. One politician playing against his party type on a foreign policy issue is a long way from creating a model for domestic policy change. We have created a bit of political folk-wisdom around “Nixon goes to China”, and that creates a great temptation to see Nixons and Chinas all over the political landscape. Such temptations can be misleading.
Social security may change. It may not. If it changes in a way that makes “serious people” happy, it will be because the public has been misled about Social Security’s finances. Perhaps there will be some additional lift from Democrats betraying their base, but only if their base is willing to go along. That’s because changes to Social Security, unlike trips to China, require Congressional action.