The financial meltdown could not have come at a worse time for John McCain. When it started, he had a slight lead in the polls, with party regulars confident and energized. The Obama campaign seemed to be losing focus.
The credit crunch, however, made it seem Republican policies were responsible for a projected significant economic downturn. After all, a Republican had been in the White House for nearly eight years, with his party controlling both houses of Congress for four of those years and Democrats only recently taking charge.
Yet, people think that just because a party is in power, it gets its agenda through. And even if the president’s party does not control Congress, he (and his party) take the rap for an economic slowdown as happened to George H.W. Bush in 1992.
That president’s son, warned repeatedly about problems and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) at the heart of the current mess. Despite presenting numerous proposals fo reform, he failed to see any enacted in time to avert the crisis. Overwhelmingly, Democrats thwarted his efforts while assuring us of the soundness of the GSEs.
Now that they have collapsed, the same Democrats, notably Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, are leading efforts to fix the miss they made while their party blames Republicans. Even Bill Clinton acknowledges the responsibility of members of his party:
As John Hinderaker put it:
The current economic crisis should, by rights, hurt the Democrats, who bear far more responsibility for causing it than the Republicans. But the public doesn’t understand that, and blames anything bad on the party that controls the White House, however irrational that may be. And, of course, the television networks and newspapers aren’t going out of their way to enlighten the voters.
That’s why I’ve had this sick feeling of late. The Democrats block Republican reforms, then blame Republicans for their allegedly failed policies — even though they were never enacted. And the MSM lets them get away with it.
Outside of FoxNews, what major networks or newspapers have devoted any significant time to John McCain’s co-sponsorship of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 designed to reform FannieMae and FreddieMac? And Democrat opposition to that plan?
I have a sneaky feeling that congress made this appear worse than it was – then killed it in order to create a bigger problem – I’m beyond thinking that the Dems care about us. From what I’ve seen happening in the last month – the Dems and MSM will do everything in their power to see their guy win.
They did nothing about gas prices, they created then killed the bailout bill. If it gets Obama elected, it won’t matter to them that millions of Americans have suffered through this.
I’m no fan of politicians, but the Dems are lowest on my list these days.
McCain is toast.
Teh Resistance begins November 5.
Let’s payback the left for the last 8 years, fight Obamunism, put in a Republican Congress in 2010, and a conservative president in 2012.
I have always thought McCain had a slim chance and that seems to be eroding. A number of my employees have asked how we are doping through the crisis, and so far, so good, but not because of any outside influence. Most of them are Obama supporters and they just don’t understand how his policies will impact my ability to keep them employed. They think Obama and the government can make their jobs more secure, when in fact that’s all up to me. I try hard to make them see the connection, but for many of them the light never goes on. I think it’s funny that some Democrats consider voting Republican as a move against your own self interest, when in many cases, the truth is the opposite.
and, just as I was finishing the about comments, I received a call from a local bank doing some cold-calling to see if I needed any commercial real estate funding. What a way to run a credit crisis!
One frustration I have long had as a republican is that when the republicans are in power and the democrats block legislation, the GOP is blamed for the failure. When the DNC is in power and the GOP blocks legislation, the GOP gets the blame.
Basically it doesn’t matter what the GOP does, they get the blame. Also, there has long been this perception that the democrats are better on the economy-or at least better when it tanks, and I don’t understand why-more often than not the democratic policies caused the tanking in the first place.
I agree with V the K though-McCain appears to be toast and I suspect barring some massively, huge gaffe on the part of Obama that the media can’t ignore, McCain will return to the senate and Obama will move into the white house.
When I heard Eric Cantor whine about Pelosi’s speech prior to the bailout vote, I thought then that McCain was toast. It had nothing to do with the merits of Cantor’s complaint or the partisanship of Pelosi’s speech, but everything to do with how the media would spin this and how the average voter who doesn’t pay much attention to politics would perceive this. I predict an Obama win, unfortunately, but this will not deter me from voting on November 4th. After all, I could be wrong… 😉
Harry Reid is talking down a major insurance company, and you’re telling me the Dems aren’t trying to destroy our economy?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/34261
Sure, the Republicans will be blamed, and who knows, maybe because of this Obama wins the election. A nightmare – but as he flays and fails, I’ll be reminding all my lovely liberal friends who is charge.
John, even some conservative bloggers didn’t receive Cantor’s complaint well. Check out the folks at Commentary’s Contentions.
Yes it does seem bleak, but it not over for McCain and its not impossible for him to still win. The way for him to win is for Palin to stop the bleeding tonight, she needs to undo the damage that has been done with the interviews. I have hope that she can do it, she has gone into debates as the underdog before and triumphed. That would get some positive motion and possibly positive movement, there has been a pattern of Obama rising in States where Palin’s image has fallen. I think it would atleast stop and change the storyline enough, McCain needs a new story line.
The eocnomic debate will be the debate that ends up deciding the election, the issue is so critical to the public. If McCain does upset Obama and comes out with a win, it will change the race and the dynamic. McCain needs to get across to everyone that Obama’s policies will only hurt the economy more and that he has no experience in dealing with the big economic issues. He has to narrow Obama’s advantage on the economic front, it won’t be easy but its not impossible.
McCain has been counted out before and come back, so maybe we shouldn’t give up yet. That being said, this election had all the trends for Dems to win and its only because Obama is such a poor canididate that it has been so close.
There is something I discovered about the Senate bail-out bill. Due to the nature of the Bill, it must originate in the House per the Constitution (something to do with revenues). As we all know, the House rejected it’s bill, so there is no Bill to go to the Senate to vote on.
So what did the Senate do? It took a compeltely irrelvent bill that the House approved but the Senate hadn’t acted upon, and basically hijacked it.
So now that the Senate as approved a Bill that the House already approved, there has to be a Conference Committee formed between House and Senate to resolve the differences.
This means that House non-leadership members are now totally locked out of making any changes to the Bill the Senate has passed.
So the Democrats lard up this bill with thier goodies and then use a technique so that no one in the House can do anything about it other than pass or reject the whole thing
The nation is in an emergency and the Democrats do this.
If this country elects Obama it deserves the destruction to follow.
For info on the Parliamentary nonsense see :
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR01424:@@@L&summ2=m&
I dont know if this link will survive my session..
So if you have to start from the home page, the bill is H.RES.1014
The first weekend that events have caught the public’s attention I was optimistic that McCain would seize the opportunity to call attention to the Dem’s involvement.
You see, I’ve been aware of the Fannie and Freddie thing since the early 2000s. I have been calling it the Democart Enron.. and i was waiting for their inevitable collapse and then the public outing of the Dem culpability
When McCain decided to attack “Wall Street” and “Greed”, all of my post-Convention enthusiasm evaporated.
The republicans are too stupid to have power.
You all underestimate the collective distrust Americans have for the mainstream media. If they fell hook, line and sinker for every spin that came out of CNN, MSNBC and the networks, McCain/Palin would be down by at least 30 points. Moreover, no one would know who Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko, and Bill Ayers are. Why? Because Americans are less and less inclined to allow the TV networks to dictate the political narrative in this country. Think about it, half of America believe that the country’s TV and printed media have a vested interested in seeing Obama win the election in November. Despite all of the underhanded softballs they lob at Obama and despite their absolution of every Biden gaffe (along with the severe scrutiny of every aspect of Palin), Obama still can’t seal the deal. This is because Americans are more scrutinizing of their news sources than the media give them credit for.
A lot can happen over the next few weeks. Historically, Presidential polls are irrelevant up until the final week of the election. Heck, even the exit polls on Election Day in 2004 had Kerry winning in states that he lost. Figures lie and lies figure.
>You all underestimate the collective distrust Americans have for the mainstream media
I understand it all too well. That is why I was expecting McCain to finally seize upon the opportunity that Fannie and Freddie would give him to lay out the facts to the people.
But he hasn’t done that. He could have pivoted off the media mistrust and focused the agitation onto the Democrats who are the root of the economic meltdown.
Well he hasn’t. And how in the world is going to be able to in the time left? That would mean he would have to account for all the weeks where he wasn’t talking about it.
So he has totally disappointed all the people who are more than aware of the media misinformation and were hoping that he would prevent the media from being able to cement in people’s mind that all these problems are due to Bush.
So many forces are conspiring against McCain/Palin now. As one conservative friend of mine put it: “with the MSM slanted the way they are, it’s a miracle almost any Republicans ever win.”
I like the notion of remaining hopeful and optimistic. But I fear that it may get a lot worse with a liberal President, Congress, Supreme Court (gulp) and press…….. before it gets better.
12, plenty of forces were conspiring against Bush/Cheney the likes I have never seen in my lifetime. He still won. Today we have 4 non-incumbents running for office, three of whom are acting senators and a governor far from the Beltway. So anything goes until November.
Tonight I listened to O’Reilly’s attempt to roast Barney Frank on the issue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulation. While I think that Frank was certainly part of the problem O’Reilly was a total damn jerk.
Most folks from all political persuasions can agree on the fact that Bill O’Reilly is an asshole.
No I agreed totally with O Reilly. It is about time someone got in these jerks face about this scandal. All the Dems want to say it is the Administration when it was the crooked Democrats who refused more regulation on fannie and freddie. And that windbag, Barney Frank likes to intimidate reporters and filibuster til an interview is over only answering those questions he wants to. Anytime the media or the Dems say, “let’s not point fingers, there is enough blame to go around…”that means they can’t place blame on a Republican and don’t want you to look for Democrat crooks.
McCain could use the fannie freddie wall street mess as a sledge hammer the next 4 weeks. For the life of me I don’t know what the hell he is waiting for. It is mostly a Dem scandal. I’d be asking for resignations 20 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Name names. Is he waiting for the bail out plan to pass first? Is it because he doesn’t want to undermine the plan. His committment to bi partisianship reminds me of W’s compassionate conservatism. If you don’t have a trustworthy, honest broker on the other side….it can’t happen. Fight for us damn it!
i could be wrong, but it seems to me the bottom line on the “bailout” is that it’s an attempt to protect the 401K’s etc of the baby boomers. sure, there are going to be peeps who will make out like bandits, but those folks benefitting from securing the value of the bonds issued, are those babyboomers. like to the tune of 40 to 70% or more of the “rescue”. it’s kinda like the medicare drug benefit. it sits well with a significant segment of the voting populace.
Does the phrase “excessive deregulation” mean anything to conservatives? That is what got us into this mess. Capitalism run wild. Now these piggish capitalists want the govt to step in. Hmm, I thought most of these overly paid CEOs who are primarily republicans didn’t want government butting into their lives. Now they are begging for big government to step in. Strange times, indeed…
Will January 2009 hurry-up sp we can get rid of the worst president in the history of the U.S
#15: Agreed – O’Reilly makes me mad even when I agree with him.
Rush was in fine fettle Wednesday exhorting McCain to be a real maverick – lay out the problems honestly and start naming names. At this point, maybe he should consider going for broke.
Of course, with McCain’s fetish for bipartisanship, I’m not holding my breath.
I don’t think the Republicans have it in them to fight rough – even when the facts are on their side.
I think Leah’s exactly right – this is a manufactured crisis (which is not to say that there’s not a big problems here) and Bush, as is his wont, bought into it.
antho, when the reward for worker productivity was ursuped by stockholder reward, that is when capitalist went awry.
18 antho: So somehow you have managed to shield yourself from any of the information that has been disclosed publicly by the grassroots about the entities involved with the economic problem triggered by collapse of sub prime loans?
Why should someone take what you say seriously? Why should someone devote more time and effort correcting you then you would take time to do your own research?
#18: this problem was caused by government “good intentions” and the roots go back to the Carter years. The fuse was lit in the mid 90s and even Bill Clinton has said that the Dems stood in the way of regulating Fannie and Freddie.
Many of these overpaid CEOs and Wall Street firms are large contributors to the Democrat Party. And the people that really ran Fannie and Freddie into the dirt are Dems (Frankin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, etc) who parachuted out with tens of millions. Enron on steroids.
If you’d pay attention, you’d notice that the people squawking the loudest about this bailout are conservatives. If the Dems could pin the blame on the elephant, you can be damn sure that there would be hearings to fix blame and calls for special prosecutors.
But blaming everything from humidity to flat beer on Bush is so much easier than thinking, isn’t it?
when the reward for worker productivity was ursuped by stockholder reward, that is when capitalist went awry
Yes, michael, tell us about all the communist workers’ paradises where worker productivity has been rewarded. The USSR? Cuba? Venezuala? North Korea? East Germany?
Please tell us of a better system.
Here’s a little factoid they probably forgot to teach you in gummint
indoctrination centerschool: companies are owned by owners . If it’s a public corporation, the stockholders are the owners.I own stock (since Social Security is broke – I will have to rely on it – I’m probably screwed) and I work for a company owned by stockholders (and I own some of that stock).
What is your alternative? Should the gummint run everything? In my town, the government can’t even synchronize traffic signals a block apart (despite the professed concern for the environment).
Comment by SoCalRobert…. there will be peeps who will called into account…in the interim, you can’t say with conviction, that the prevoius 6 year of conervative control gave us the benefit.
Yeah, like Obama campaign advisor and supporter Franklin Raines, who personally presided over Fannie Mae taking on risky debt and cooked the books to ensure his continued big bonuses.
And then after that, you can prosecute Chris Dodd and Obama, both of whom opposed any sort of regulation for Fannie Mae and who received the largest and second-largest campaign contributions in the Senate from Fannie Mae.
Yes, it means you havent got the faintest clue what youre talking about and are regurgitating the talking points youve been fed. But, by all means, Antho, connect the dots! Explain precisely how “excessive deregulation” got us into this mess. Which laws caused it and how.
1. The reward for worker productivity is being employed and getting a paycheck. Being productive is what you are paid to do. 2. Productivity increases in our economy are mostly due to capital investment in new technology. Faster computers, better programs, networking, etc… Investment that is made possible by stockholders, not workers. naturally, being the good little commie theif you are, you think you deserve the reward for someone elses risks.
The roots of this crisis are that government (and by government I mean Barney Frank, ACORN, and Chris Dodd) decided as a matter of policy to force banks to give mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them. The theory was that home ownership would lead to social responsibility, when, in fact, nature demands that it work the other way around. Otherwise, you’re just left with millions of socially irresponsible people with mortgages.
Will January 2009 hurry-up sp we can get rid of the worst president in the history of the U.S.
This is the kind of stupidity you get when public schools stop teaching history in favor of teaching kindergartners how to put condoms on bananas. You get people who’ve never heard of James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Johnson, or Richard Nixon.
GW Bush has been a mediocrity and a disappointment, but calling him the worst American president only demonstrates ignorance of history.
I’m not ready to concede the election, but I am determined to see Sarah Palin in the White House — whether it’s 2012 or 2016.
Speaking of financial messes, California shows us where Obamunism leads. Massive taxes (Check). Hostile to business (Check). Lavish spending on public employees (Check). Fiscal Bankruptcy (Check).
I think the sick feeling about election (and financial mess) may be common among conservatives/Republicans.
It seems September and October gives me at least a sense of dread. During this time in 2006, the MSM was seemed downright giddy about reporting the casualties of the Iraq War. Now they do it with the sense of impending financial doom.
Worst of all, they do their best make it appear that the election is over, the Democrats won, we can go home now. They do their level best to suppress the conservative/Republican turnout.
We all know they are determined to see their candidate, the Great Black Hope, elected President.
WHERE IS THE REPUBLICAN ATTACK MACHINE WHEN YOU NEED THEM?!
There is no RAM.. it’s a fiction of the Left.
But you did hit upon something withyour fear of October.
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, do you know where we were two years ago at this very moment in time? Two years ago, Snerdley and I went back and looked it up. Two years ago, going into the ’06 elections, on the front page of every newspaper for six weeks, the lead item on the Nightly News, the cable networks for five, six weeks, Mark Foley and an e-mail sent to a page in the House of Representatives. At the same time, we were in the third or fourth week of front-page stories, editorials and columns in the Washington Post about macaca. Six weeks, four weeks, every day, day in, day out, stories about George Allen and macaca, Republican racism, Mark Foley, and e-mails of a sexual nature to a page in the House of Representatives. Two years later, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which dwarf Enron, WorldCom, and we do not yet have an honest portrayal, no curiosity, and no reporting of the root cause of this scandal, because it’s all traced to Democrats.
So you could say upon reflection, Mark Foley e-mails of a sexual nature to a page in the House and macaca, they are larger, they dwarf a genuine scandal around whose necks you can place the entire noose on Democrats. Just so you know, ladies and gentlemen, Fannie execs did exactly what Enron and WorldCom did and got prosecuted for. They misstated their earnings so they could hit their numbers. During required disclosure periods, whether quarterly or yearly, report exactly or slightly above the earnings per share that had been predicted is what they did. If you hit your numbers, two important things happen, Wall Street assumes your company is profitable and well managed, meaning the stock price goes up and management gets its enormous bonuses, bonuses which, by the way, multiply an executive’s base salary by a factor of two or three or more, are typically triggered by hitting the earnings per share targets. And note how this feeds on itself. Since a lot of executive salary is in company stock, fraudulently hitting the earnings per share target means that the compensation the exec continues to pile up is more and more valuable. This is exactly what happened at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is exactly what happened.
We frog-marched all of those execs, from Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, we frog-marched ’em into court and we frog-marched ’em into jail. Ken Lay had a heart attack before serving his sentence. What has happened here with Fannie Mae is identical and nobody, nobody wants to talk about the blame. Isn’t that amazing? But we couldn’t get away from macaca for six weeks. We couldn’t get away from Foley and an e-mail message of a sexual nature to a page in the House for six weeks. But we’re told the house is on fire and we gotta put out the fire. The arsonists are the Democrats. They keep setting the fires. The Republicans are the fire department. We keep trying to put out the fires. We get rebuffed. When the house is burning, the Democrats say, “It’s not burning. You don’t see any flames there. What are you talking about? You just are racists. You are just trying to create a problem where none exists so that we no longer have affordable housing in this country.” We’ve got a scandal that makes macaca look like what it should have always been, a simple little joke that was ill told, it’s worth a day on the campaign trail. The media destroyed a man’s career over it.
The very people who did the exact same thing that Ken Lay did and that Kozlowski do at Tyco and that Bernie Ebbers did at WorldCom are rewarded with advisory positions on Obama’s campaign, and they were also rewarded with millions of dollars. No frog marching, no prosecutions. So you just remember where we were two years ago. Remember where we are today. We’ve got something going on that just makes macaca and Foley as irrelevant as anything else you could come up with. And yet macaca and Foley remain bigger stories today, stories that have more impact on an election, more impact on events in this country than a scandal involving Democrats, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that probably dwarfs Enron and WorldCom combined.
Vince P has really hit on the true story that is not being told. If Fannie and Freddi had been real companies, the execs would be in jail, and the lawyers would be having a field day. In a way excessive deregulation did cause this…Fannie and Freddie were totally exempt from any and all meaningful regulations that others in their industry had to abide by.
V, you forget Harding and arguably the worst of the lot, and certainly the worst ex-president of all, Jimmah Carter.
michael wrote: you can’t say with conviction, that the prevoius (sic) 6 year (sic) of conervative (sic) control gave us the benefit.
michael – you’re right, I cannot say we’ve seen much benefit simply because conservatives have NOT been in control. GWB is no conservative and when the GOP had control (barely – not enough for cloture – look it up), they shamed themselves by imbibing the same vote-buying potion the libs have been drinking for years.
yup robert, they do have the tendency to drink the koolaid.