Elections 2012

Bob Cesca points to this line from Newt Gingrich:

GINGRICH: “When I was speaker, we had four consecutive balanced budgets.”

As Bob points out, we only had two, not four balanced budgets.

But there is something else here that has been eating away at me. More and more the right is trying to make it out that Newt was the sole man responsible for the balanced budget. They won't mention President Clinton and that it involved negotiations. Somehow the Speaker of the House has become the budget writer for the United States under these people.

So why haven't we had one since? In the 14 years since the time Newt refers to ten of those years we had a Republican Speaker. Neither Dennis Hastert nor John Boehner have produced a balanced budget. During most of Hastert's term we also had a Republican controlled Senate and White House. Why no balanced budget?

I'm not going to get on Newt for lying. We know this is a man that has a hard time ever telling the truth. What does get me is how many people on the right buy into this line of bullshit. To those people they need to ask themselves this; if the Speaker is the man who balances the budget and that is what we need right now, then why isn't Newt running for Congress? I think we all know the answer to that....

Iowa is now the Florida of primaries:

In a stunning turn of events, Rick Santorum now appears to have won the Iowa caucuses, though the state’s Republican Party says there are too many holes in the results for them to ever be able to say for certain.

The party, which runs the caucuses, has done a recount since the Jan. 3 voting, and told the Des Moines Register the tally now shows Mr. Santorum up by 34 votes. On caucus night the party said Mitt Romney had won by eight votes.

The news dents Mr. Romney’s air of inevitability — he had claimed he’d gone two-for-two in the first nominating contests, and was poised to try to land a knockout punch with a victory in South Carolina’s primary on Saturday.

And there's even more drama to this:

The deadline for final certification of the results was Wednesday. Party officials said eight precincts failed to follow the rules and fill out the official forms on caucus night, meaning those results can never be certified, while other precincts turned in forms that didn’t meet the legal requirements.

“It’s a split decision,” Chad Olsen, the party’s executive director, told the Register, which was given the final results Wednesday, a day ahead of when the party was to release them.

Instead of worrying about being the first in the nation, maybe Iowa should worry about making sure every vote counts.

There has been a lot of questions about Mitt Romney's income taxes and we finally got one answer:

Q: What’s the effective rate you’ve been paying?

ROMNEY: What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last ten years, I’ve, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, rather than earned annual income.

To put this in perspective most middle class Americans pay 25-28%. So for every dollar Mitt makes he pays about 15 cents. For every dollar middle America makes, they pay 25-28 cents. Doesn't seem fair at all, does it?

To answer that question we'll consult a just released Washington Post poll.

31. What do you think is the bigger problem in this country – (unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy), or (over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity)?

Unfairness: 55%
Over-regulation: 35%;

Most Americans view this system as unfair, yet the GOP goes out there and continues to push to keep it and even make it more unfair. Look at the Paul Ryan budget the House GOP approved last year. That actually increased taxes on the middle class by closing loopholes they have, yet left the loopholes in for the top 2% and even exposed new ones. It was nothing more than a middle class tax hike.

Blogging over at the Plumline, Jonathan Bernstein brings up a very interesting question:

As Pema Levy reports in a nice item, the message among neutral Republicans over the weekend was simple: It’s time to shut down GOP WH 2012 before somebody gets hurt – in particular, the “somebody” being the very likely but ever-vulnerable Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. As she notes, this replaces a previous Republican case of Obama-Clinton envy, in which many GOP insiders decided that Barack Obama helped himself in 2008 by fighting a long nomination battle.

There’s inconclusive political science literature about the effects of divisive primaries. Those studying the problem have recognized two competing effects. On the one hand, a hard-fought primary may energize the party and the winning campaign may have been forced to build an effective electioneering operation; on the other, the losing side may defect or stay home in the general election, and attacks made by same-party candidates may lend credibility to general election attacks from the other party.

There’s no particular reason to believe going in which of these effects are strong; it’s an empirical question, and one that’s proved difficult to answer. What’s more, most studies have been in statewide or House races. It’s not clear how any of this translates into presidential elections, and it’s harder to assess presidential races effectively because there just aren’t that many of them.

What we have happening in the primary this year is nothing like the Obama/Clinton battle of 2008. In 2008 people chose a candidate they liked and supported them. This year Republicans are picking a candidate they don't like then choosing an alternative, with the only real exception being the Ron Paul supporters.

That is a big problem.

This is ridiculous:

Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel (man-DEHL') has emerged this year as one of the most ambitious young politicians in a closely divided battleground state.

The Republican has aggressively worked the fundraising and speaking circuit to amass more than $3.8 million this year in his bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.

At the same time, his weekly calendars at the treasury are almost devoid of appointments besides meetings with staffers and speaking engagements. He hasn't held any news conferences to discuss the work he's doing for Ohioans.

This is a major problem in politics today and the root cause is money. Politicians win an office and spend their time in that office working to collect money for their next gig. In doing so they neglect the office they were elected too. In cases like this the person should be impeached from office and forced to repay the salary they had collected.

It's time to take the damn money out of politics and get real leaders in there, not these panhandlers!

Just now in:

A federal judge has ruled against four GOP presidential candidates seeking a spot on Virginia's March 6 primary ballot: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

It's pretty uncommon for the courts to get involved in primaries like this. Generally they leave it up to the party to fight it out. That brings up an interesting point. If there is any outrage in the GOP over this, then why doesn't the Republican National Committee tell Virginia GOP to either allow the candidates on or they will strip them of their delegates? That's a common practice in national politics and one that could be done here.

My guess?

The RNC doesn't want these people to actually appear on the ballot. The establishment wants Mitt and this really helps him.

Mitt Romney's win in New Hampshire last night was a given the pundit world has talked about for months. Interesting enough though many are calling this the end game and now saying Romney is the nominee. I wouldn't count on that quiet yet.

Romney has constantly polled best in New Hampshire of all 50 states. Going into last night's primary his RCP average was at 16.6%, which is eerily close to the margin between him and second place Ron Paul. But Romney's numbers have been dropping in New Hampshire over the past several weeks. It was only in November Romney was seeing numbers giving him a 30+ point lead, so his support has about dropped in half.

Then we have the big factor in the horse race - the delegate count. Last night's contest only accounted for 12 delegates (New Hampshire's delegates was cut in half do to a RNC penalty). New Hampshire is also one of the few states in the GOP primary that isn't "winner take all" in the delegate race. Including last night's race, Mitt Romney now has 23 delegates. Ron Paul comes in second with 10 and Rick Santorum is third with 8. But we still have a long ways to go. 1,144 delegates are needed to win the GOP nomination and we start seeing some bigger states coming up in the next couple of weeks. If those races do go to Romney then I think we can safely say he has it, short of some major fubar on the campaign trail (not that unlikely given it is Mitt).

Mitt Romney made a big gaffe yesterday. Sure it ended up being taken out of context, but hey - that's the game Romney likes playing! Here's what Romney said:

“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep people healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.”

But there is still a problem there, even if we accept it in the context Romney put it. Here's what Aaron Carroll pints out:

The real issue, unfortunately, is that very, very few people have the luxury that Gov. Romney is endorsing. Let’s say that you are self-employed, and lucky enough to have found a company to provide you with health insurance. Then, let’s say you develop cancer. You suddenly find out that your insurance company stinks. So you fire them, right?

Of course not. You’re screwed. Now you have a pre-existing condition. There’s not an insurance company out there that wants to cover you. So you don’t fire them. You scream, and curse, and cry, but you’re stuck. Only healthy people have the luxury of picking and choosing.

And that is a very serious issue and one that the healthcare bill did address, but also a serious issue that Republicans want to keep around with their "repeal" talk. So how does Mitt Romney suggest we fire our insurance companies? Maybe someone will ask him on the campaign trail.