Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Election Year Reality and Insanity


By Alan Caruba

There is something about an election year that seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people. Having settled on a candidate, they defame the opponents and the motives of those that support them. This is greatly aided by the charges that fly backward and forward among the primary candidates themselves. It’s not pretty, but it is the way a democracy works.

A conspiracy theory I keep hearing and reading is that Obama will create “an emergency” and declare martial law, putting himself in complete charge. I keep telling people that the nation is filled with millions of people who have taken an oath to protect and preserve the Constitution and they run the gamut from everyone who ever served in the military to law enforcement personnel, to members of the Secret Service. The likelihood that all would stand aside and let Obama have his way is, to my mind, very small.

All this is testimony to the growing fears about Barack Hussein Obama and there is ample evidence for concern as he seems to have very little regard for the Constitution and a decidedly Leftist approach to politics and governance.

By contrast, I have seen so much factual information; hard cold data, to suggest Obama not only won’t get elected, but will likely suffer a historic defeat. To keep the insanity at bay, it would be a good idea to get familiar with some of it.

Over at Big Government.com, Wynton Hall authored “It’s the Math, Stupid! Devastating Facts About 2012."  With a great big hat tip to him, here they are:

1. Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.

2. The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.

3. Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.

4. College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.

5, Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.

6. The ravages of the Obama economy now mean that more Americans live under the federal poverty line than at any time in U.S. history since records have been kept.

7. Under President Barack Obama, every fifth child in America now lives in poverty.

No one gets reelected with that level of misery extent in the nation. The days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt are long gone. This is the age of Fox News and the Internet.

Karl Rove, whom George W. Bush called “the architect” for his political acumen, took note of Obama’s inclination to link himself to FDR and to Truman. “In many ways,” Rove wrote in December, “his situation is significantly different than that of his Democrat predecessors. For one thing, a year out from the 1948 election, Gallup measured Mr. Truman’s job approval rating at 54%, whereas Mr. Obama’s is 43%--substantially lower than any president who has won re-election.”

Let me repeat that. “Substantially lower than any president who has won re-election.”

Obama may run against a “do-nothing Congress” as Truman did, but today’s House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans, has been active enough to produce 29 bills intended to spur economic growth. Of those pieces of legislation, 21 remain stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate

Indeed, voters may well wish that Obama had done a lot less. After comparing himself to Johnson, FDR and Lincoln in a “Sixty Minutes” interview, even a casual look at his stimulus package has falling flat with voters, 62% of whom, according to an Ipsos/Reuters November poll, believe that they did little more than create more debt. Obamacare is even less popular.

Blue-collar Americans took notice when Obama delayed the XL Keystone pipeline that would have generated 20,000 construction jobs and an estimated 118,000 spin-off jobs.

Kimberly A. Stossel who writes Potomac Watch for The Wall Street Journal, noted in November that, mostly due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts, “the Obama administration has done more to kill working-class industries than any modern predecessor, adding that “Among the reasons the GOP regained control of the House in 2010 was the fact that “the white working class surged to give the GOP a record 63% of their vote.”

As Rove noted, “America is not a nation of amnesiacs.” And neither should you be. Keep the facts cited in mind.

Remain calm and come together behind whoever the GOP selects as its candidate.

No desertions.

No faint hearts.

No conspiracy theories.

No third parties.

Just the defeat of Barack Hussein Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

9 comments:

Ronbo said...

YOU DA MAN, ALAN!

(But I won't do a write-in for you to be president this year :-)

AD said...

I thought your prediction was that Obama would resign before the election?

Alan Caruba said...

Thank you, Ronbo. It will all work out by the end of the year.

Alan Caruba said...

@Alexandra. You're right. And I was wrong. At the time I made that prediction, I felt sure that his ineligibility would become an issue to force him from office.

Anonymous said...

The election is still a long ways off, Obama could resign, I doubt he would, Queen Mooch would castrate him, but, it's a possibility..

Lime Lite said...

Agree Alan - America needs to unite behind the GOP nominee no matter what. Someone needs to rile them up for the vote!

Rich Kozlovich said...

Here is some interesting information from the 1980 Carter –Reagan election.

Carter, depending on who you read, was either up 8 point; 6 points; 3 points, or even in October. Yet his approval rating was only 30%, and Reagan, the, great communicator, won by 10 points. That came to 35.4 million votes against 43.9 million for Reagan, with an Independent by the name of John Anderson taking 5.7 million votes; and who knows where they would have gone.

However Reagan took every state except Hawaii, Wisconsin, Georgia, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Maryland, West Virginia…and D.C. Seven states.

I thought that was worthwhile.

Here is the problem. There is no great communicator now.

Alan Caruba said...

@Rich: True, Reagan is gone and he was a great communicator, but even he faced an often hostile press.

Romney is pretty good on the stump and I think that is attracting support. When elected, he would become even better, given speechwriters and such.

Rich Kozlovich said...

True, especially since he was the prototype! I had forgoten just how badly they attempted to beat him up.