The president, as I noted last month in my brief review of his State of the Union address, indicated that he was “prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long term costs of Medicare and Medicaid”. Only problem was that he failed to put forward any of his own.

At another point in the speech, he praised innovation and indicated a willingness to reduce regulation.  Only problem was that he asked others to do the work for him:

After all, innovation is what America has always been about. Most new jobs are created in start-ups and small businesses. So let’s pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow. Expand tax relief to small businesses that are raising wages and creating good jobs. Both parties agree on these ideas. So put them in a bill, and get it on my desk this year.

You’d think the White House Office of Legislative Affairs might have the capacity to put the president’s ideas into a bill and find an ally in Congress willing to introduce it.

Over at RedState, Soren Dayton yesterday caught another example of the White House punting on legislative action, “Jake Tapper asked Jay Carney about this. Should Senate pass a budget? Does the President have an opinion on this? Turns out that the answer is no”:

TAPPER: The White House has no opinion about whether or not the Senate should pass a budget? The president’s going to introduce one. The Fed chair says not having one is bad for growth. But the White House has no opinion about whether –

CARNEY: I have no opinion — the White House has no opinion on Chairman Bernanke’s assessment of how the Senate ought to do its business.

With this response, Dayton observes,

not only is the Senate failing the American people, but President Obama is helping the Senate in dodging this responsibility. The fact is that he has no opinion on running the country like an adult. He has “no opinion” about giving business certainty.

Read the whole thing.

So concludes Michael Barone in his Saturday column as he considers Ryan Lizza’s recent New Yorker piece on the president:

Now, in an article based on leaked White House memos marked up by Obama, Lizza has done it again [writing "a story that makes his subject look bad"]

Contrarian liberal blogger Mickey Kaus sums it up: “The president’s decision-making method–at least as described in this piece–seems to consist of mainly checking boxes on memos his aides have written for him.”

A $60 billion cut in the stimulus package? “OK.” Use the reconciliation process to pass the health care bill? A check mark in the box labeled “yes.”

Include medical malpractice reform in the health care bill? The man who as an Illinois legislator often voted “present” writes, “We should explore it.”

According to Lizza, Obama prefers getting information and making decisions by staying up late and reading memos rather than meeting with people — a temperament that’s a liability because face time with the president is one of his major sources of political capital.

Read the whole thing.  Barone notes further than Lizza provides “minimal” evidence that “that Obama ever seriously considered Republican approaches”, adding “Obama seems to live in a cocoon in which Republicans are largely absent, offscreen actors that no one pays any attention to.”

The impression I had reading Barone’s piece yesterday and Kaus’s piece (via Instapundit) last week is that Obama doesn’t really like being president.  When Clinton faced off against a Republican Congress in the second half of his first term, he delighted in the game.  Obama stays aloof from it.

Sometimes, it seems, the Democrat doesn’t want a second term as president, but instead just to be vindicated at the polls.

Conservative pundits/politicians who claim to know what’s best for We, The People are no less heinous than the liberal ones.

You can surmise who I’m referring to. Hint: More than one person.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Like Mickey Kaus, I didn’t watch the president’s campaign speech State of the Union last night and am finding the text actual quite “boring” with standard Obama tropes repeated so often, you’d think his speechwriters merely cut and paste passages from previous addresses into this one, adding a few references to events of the past year.

Instead of reading the entire speech, I searched instead for a few words, like “obstruction.”  Sure enough, it’s there, “But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.”  There you go again, Mr. President, Republicans aren’t proposing to return to those policies which created the crisis.  That’s just another one of your false choices.

When I searched for other words like “cut”, “Medicare”, “Social Security” and “entitlement”, it became clear that the Democrat has no plan to address some of the nation’s pressing fiscal issues.  As Jennifer Rubin asked, “Where is his entitlement reform? Where is his tax-reform plan? He can’t be bothered with actual governance.”

Sure, he says “we’ve agreed to cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion.”  But, he didn’t specify how he plans to “cut through the maze of confusing training programs” nor identify particular domestic programs he wishes to scale back.

He even proposed new government programs, offering only to fund them through higher taxes on millionaires.  If you’re trying to cut the deficit, you should use any revenue you bring in to pay that off rather than any new liabilities.  As William W. Beach put it in National Review’s symposium on the speech:

. . . among the litany of programs he announced, he promised little action on the driver of economic decay: the blooming debt of governments at all levels, but particularly the government that President Obama runs. (more…)

Four years ago, Barack Obama ran for the presidency promising a new era of hope and change.   He would bring us together with a new kind of politics that transcended partisan differences.

Since starting working in the Oval Office, however, he has adopted a much different tone.  When a Republican Senator challenged the Democratic president “over the contents” of the stimulus, the Democratic President, instead of acknowledging the point, snapped, “I won” as if his electoral victory obviated the need for argument.

Last year, after failing to find much support for the budget he had released, he claimed he was going to offer a different approach and instead of gave a speech excoriating the Republican plan without offering an alternative of his own.  The headline of the Washington Post report on the address read that it had a “partisan tone.”  The Annenberg Center reported that the Democrat “misrepresented the House Republicans’ budget plan at times and exaggerated its impact on U.S. residents“.  Hardly the way to begin a serious dialogue on federal fiscal priorities.

Will his State of the Union address tonight be less partisan?  Will he honestly address his opponents’ proposals?  Will he offer plan to cut deficit?  ”The current fiscal year,”  as John Hinderaker reminds us, “will be the fourth in a row in which the Obama administration racks up a $1 trillion-plus deficit.”

Will he propose sweeping tax reform as some Republican presidential candidates have done — and his own deficit reduction committee recommended?  Will he put forward tonight a plan to reform entitlements and rein in federal spending or will he return to the same old song and dance and repeat the tired refrain about increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires?

Most signs, however, indicate that instead of attempting to bridge partisan differences, the speech will accent them.  Over at Politico, Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush report that Obama “gave the first detailed look at Tuesday’s address in a video message Saturday dispatched through his campaign, not the White House, which is usually the origin for previews.”

No wonder, Ed Morrissey asks a more cynical question than the ones I posed, “What empty promises will Obama offer tonight?”  He reports that Obama failed to deliver on over 70% of the promises he made in last year’s SOTU.

(more…)

Good evening folks! Long time, no see (unless you follow me on Twitter!!!!)

I’m dashing off this quick post from the media room at Wofford College, site of the Republican Presidential Debate. They let me in! LOL. The debate airs live on the CBS television network at 8:00PM Eastern Time. I’ll be live-tweeting and blogging as long as the power on my iPad lasts.

Photos should follow later, too!

For UP TO THE MINUTE reports from the SC GOP Debate, please follow me on Twitter – @GayPatriot – (www.twitter.com/gaypatriot)

UPDATE!

Two early debate photos….

The mostly empty “spin room”…

The FOX News satellite truck outside the auditorum…

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Given the results of last November’s mid-term elections and the approach to economic growth favored by congressional Republicans (as indicated in numerous speeches delivered, policy proposals outlined and legislation written — and sometimes even passed in the House), the president’s jobs bill stood no chance of in that GOP-controlled chamber. It may have failed even in the Senate where some Democrats who voted to end debate may well not have voted for final passage of the costly initiative.

At a time when 57% “of Americans believe the federal government today has too much power“, the president is going to find it hard to sell his policies even to members of his own party facing re-election in “red” or “purple” states — as well as swing districts.

With his failure to advance any of his agenda since his party lost the house, how then will President Obama be able to accomplish anything in his second term?

This year, he can no longer run on the vague mantra of hope and the promise of changing Washington.  He has instead chosen to focus on labeling his partisan adversaries as extremists.  That may well work in securing a second term, but it doesn’t give him a governing agenda.

Former President Bill Clinton, the AP’s Andrew DeMillo reports, “on Saturday offered a vigorous defense of President Barack Obama against what he called the same anti-government stances he faced during his campaign and two terms in office“:

“Underlying those challenges is the same old debate about whether government is the problem or whether we need smart government and a changing economy working together to create the opportunities of tomorrow,” Clinton told the crowd, which was flooded with old campaign signs for him or his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost to Obama in 2008′s Democratic nominating contest.

. . . .

“There’s not a single example on our planet, not one, where an anti-government strategy has produced a vibrant economy with strong and broad-based growth and prosperity,” Clinton said.

Yeah, but Mr. Clinton, as I recall, you compromised with those anti-government forces in the 104th and 105th Congresses. As a result, growth in government slowed as the economy prospered.  The federal government consumed a far smaller percentage of the GDP than it does today.  Indeed, federal spending in the 1990a, as a percentage of GDP, was slightly lower than it was in the 1970s.

And what, pray tell, fell between the 1990s and the 1970s.

UPDATE:  Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward critiques historian Sean Wilentz’s recent article in The New Republic, “20 Years Later: How Bill Clinton Saved Liberalism from Itself”. Here, he addresses a point similar to the one I make above:

Wilentz left unsaid one key part of Clinton’s success that Podhoretz noted prominently: Clinton’s adaptation to the Republican landslide of 1994, which was a direct rebuke to Clinton’s McGovernite ways his first two years in office.  Wilentz’s silence on Obama’s lack of adaptation to the 2010 election result is telling.

I am proud this morning to announce my support for Herman Cain for President.

This is a personal decision by me and does not reflect the views of my co-bloggers nor should be construed as an official endorsement by GOPROUD of which I am a board member.

Now that I’m done with that disclaimer….let me shout this from sea to shining sea — AMERICA NEEDS HERMAN CAIN!!!! I have been flirting with the Cain candidacy for over a year now. I had the pleasure to meet him at CPAC and I have been closely following his campaign long before most people knew his name.

I felt it was important to declare my preference publicly today as I have decided to become actively involved in Team Cain to assist in the South Carolina primary and beyond. I owe my readers the transparency of knowing why I am writing about certain things and not to be confused by my intent.

Why Herman Cain? Well, haven’t been this excited about a Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984 (the first year I was old enough to truly know anything and make a difference).

Some will now say, “now Bruce….there will never be another Ronald Reagan!” And that is true. And I am NOT equating Mr. Cain to Mr. Reagan. What I am saying is that Mr. Cain excites me with his common sense ideas, love of country, and ability to connect to the American psyche. Choosing a President has always been a “gut feeling” thing for America. I have a great feeling about Herman Cain.

Herman Cain has been plucked by destiny to arrive at America’s electoral doorstep at just the right time. He has a solid business background, is an inspirational leader of people, and understands the complexities of the world economy. He wasn’t a community organizer, he is a jobs and growth creator. He wasn’t a concocted creation of America’s radical left and academic centers of power, he is a true child of the American Experience. He has never scoffed at American values, he embraces our nation’s special place in the history of mankind and knows we are teetering on the edge.

Mr. Cain is familiar with rescuing failing enterprises, which to me is his most important qualification. In a sheer coincidence to the timing of my announcement, Daniel Henninger wrote this yesterday in the Wall Street Journal:

Does a résumé like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But after watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I’m rewriting my presidential-selection software. [Emphasis added.]

Conventional wisdom holds that this week’s Chris Christie boomlet means the GOP is desperate for a savior. The reality is that, at some point, Republicans will have to start drilling deeper on their own into the candidates they’ve got.

Put it this way: The GOP nominee is running against the incumbent president. Unlike the incumbent, Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them, and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead. Not least, Mr. Cain’s life experience suggests that, unlike the incumbent, he will adjust his ideas to reality.

No other GOP candidate can bring the fight to Obama over the sorry state of the American economy than Herman Cain. Our other choices are, I’m sad to say, more of the same old thing — career professional politicians. Yes, even Ron Paul, folks.

So there you have it. My big announcement. Herman Cain is the first Presidential candidate I will actively and ENTHUSIASTICALLY campaign for through blood, sweat, money & tears since Ronald Reagan in 1984. That’s a long time of being unmoved by GOP nominees, don’t you think?

There will be more to say about Herman Cain and the issues. But I wanted to stand up today and proudly declare my support for the 45th President of the United States of America and the next true heir of the American Experience — Mr. Herman Cain.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Our readers have engaged in considerable speculation about the “important announcement” Bruce will be making tomorrow on this blog.  We settled on Thursday for this announcement as it is Rosh Hashanah and I will be in synagogue praying and unable to blog.

For the record, I have been privy for some time now to the content of this announcement, but have refused to even hint at what it might entail until such time as Bruce makes it official.  The only thing I will say, as per my communication with Bruce is that this is one of those few issues where he and I do not see eye to eye (hence the advantage of making it when I won’t have the opportunity to reply).

I expect to offer a rebuttal to Bruce’s argument in short order.  Let this occasion remind y’all that while Bruce, Eric, Nick and I all blog on the same site, we don’t always agree with one another.

I’ll be making an important announcement on Thursday here at GayPatriot. 

Let the speculation begin…..

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Wow.  This from Gallup today:

• 49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.
• A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed, adding to negativity that has been building over the past 10 years.

Oh, there’s so much more…. read the whole thing.

Hey, someone should write more about this “Low Grade Civil War” thing!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I can hardly believe that a decade has passed since I was two blocks from The White House and watching the TV in my office as a second plane hit the World Trade Center.

A lot of what drives me as an adult was born on that day. It is hard to believe that 2001 was so long ago. John and I had only met two years before. We enjoyed living in the DC suburbs before that day. None of our current canine companions had been born yet. The creation of the GayPatriot blog was highly influenced by the events of 9/11, but on that day I had no idea what blogs even were. My personal time being invested in politics no doubt increased and I am sure that my convictions about helping to start GOPROUD are rooted in 9/11/2001.

As long time readers know, I don’t talk much about my personal life — but I struggled for a long time to deal with the attacks on America in 2001. As I’ve mentioned before, not only was I in DC that day — but a very close friend was taken from me during the terrorist attacks. I found myself psychologically affected by that day for many years to come. Since 9/11, we moved west to Loudon County, VA…then south to Charlotte, NC ….and now to York, SC. I don’t regret any of those moves, but I can’t honestly say that I would be living where I’m living had 9/11 not happened.

I was thinking about the “9/11 kids” this weekend. It struck me that kids who were 10 & 11 on the day of the attacks are now 20 & 21. I have to believe that they have been profoundly affected by the last decade — perhaps in a way that will never alter that generation’s character.

I’m tired of war, I’m tired of fighting, and I’m just damned tired. But this nation’s founding was an aberration of human history — and I’ll be damned if some two-bit 7th Century ideologues will break my will and take the United States of America down.

Let’s Roll.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Just caught this on AOL:

Guess this’ll be his much touted jobs plan?

Last night before bed, I scribbled a note as a reminder to check the president’s various speeches on his jobs tour across the Midwest to see if he then put forward any specific proposal.

UPDATE:  In response to the president’s announcement, Sonicfrog released this rant:

Don’t you think this would have been more timely maybe FIVE MONTHS AGO?????? And it’s SOOOO important, he’s waiting until September… Because, after all, it’s not like there is any need or urgency to get the economy moving sooner than that! Talk about leading from behind!!!!!

Instead, you went on A [political] BUS TOUR?

Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has much in common with her Republican House colleague from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann.  Both were elected in years where their party did not do so well, the Democrat in 2004, the Republican in 2006.  And neither has accomplished much during her tenure in the House.

Yet, one major thing, beyond their political ideology distinguishes the two.  The Republican has a far more positive message.  The Democrat’s message is almost like a broken record, Republicans are extreme, they’re out of step, they’re on the fringe.  Democrats have solutions; they’re working to get America moving again and create jobs.

Only problem is she doesn’t readily specify those solutions.

Seems the Democrats brought her on, not to promote Democratic policies, but to attack Republican ones.  Bachmann, by contrast, can make a compelling case for small government principles.  It’s not just her charisma.

These two women help define the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic as we move toward the 2012 election cycle.  It’s too bad that Mrs. Bachmann comes with a lot of baggage.  The appointment of Mrs. Wasserman Schultz suggests that Democrats don’t really have principles to champion — at least not principles they want to champion outside deep blue enclaves along the coasts, surrounding colleges and universities and on a few outposts in and around the Great Lakes.

I’m headed to Boston for work this morning, and good fortune has given me a few extra minutes before boarding my flight. So you lucky people get the benefit of my random post-Ames GOP nomination thoughts.

First, I’m not surprised that T-Paw dropped out. He was boring and completely boorish in his very personal attacks on Michele Bachmann during last week’s FOX News debate. Second, I am NOT a Bachmann supporter, but I’m pretty pissed off about how she is being treated by the press — liberal and conservative alike. Yes, Byron York — I’m lookin’ at you.

With regard to Bachmann, I see a major flame-out coming for her campaign. That’s all I’ll say about that…

I’m still a Herman Cain fan, I’ve given his campaign some of my hard-earned money, but I just don’t see him catching on as I hoped by now. I hope I’m wrong and he turns it on soon.

I’m told I should be flocking now behind Rick Perry. Sorry, I don’t see “it” yet. Someone please educate me.

In a week from today, I’ll be a South Carolina voter. So hopefully I’ll get a firsthand chance to meet my potential future President. I’m still holding out hope that Marco Rubio & Paul Ryan hear the desperate call of their fellow Americans to defeat Barack Milhous Obama.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In the past few weeks, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have begun to question their assumption that Barack Obama, this most “remarkable man” would end the acrimonious politics which defined the last years of the previous century and the first years of the current one.  Excavating and building, in his words, “upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans“, he would craft a “new kind of politics.”

Maybe some are finally beginning to realize that the divine image they had of the Chicago Democrat (like the demonic one they had of his predecessor) was based not on his actual accomplishments, but their own eager imagination.  If this guy were such an agent of change, why hadn’t he done anything to reform the notorious political machine in his Illinois hometown?

In his second book, Barack Obama acknowledged that he served “as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”  And project they did.  So, bewitched were they by his rhetoric, that they gave short shrift to his record as Drew Westen acknowledged in Sunday’s New York Times:

Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography . . . .

Via Powerline.

If he does indeed have those qualities about which lefties once waxed eloquent, he has the chance now to show them.  Instead of engaging in pointed partisan attacks on his opponents and fixing his sights on next year’s presidential contest, he should focus on the task at hand, working to effect real reform and craft a budget compromise that can pass a Republican House and Democratic Senate. (more…)

Only in the nation’s capital does president enjoy an approval rating above 60%. In Maryland, the state with a high percentage of residents who work in Washington, D.C., 59% approve of the president’s job.

Seems that while Americans who pay to keep the government running are becoming increasingly disenchanted with President Obama while the governing class is quite satisfied with his performance in office.

Don’t think this was the kind of change Americans voted for in 2008.

Via James Pethokoukis at Reuters.com:

From Goldman Sachs today: We have lowered our forecast for US real GDP growth further and now expect real GDP to grow just 2%-2½% through the end of 2012. Our forecast for annual average GDP growth has fallen to 1.7% in 2011 (from 1.8%) and to 2.1% in 2012 (from 3.0%). Since this pace is slightly below the US economy’s potential, we now expect the unemployment rate to be at 9¼% by the end of 2012, slightly above the current level.

2. Even our new forecast is subject to meaningful downside risk. We now see a one-in-three risk of renewed recession, mostly concentrated in the next 6-9 months. There are three specific issues that concern us. First, a worsening of the European financial crisis, and a failure of European policymakers to respond adequately, could lead to a further tightening of financial conditions and credit availability, which would worsen the economic outlook globally. Second, our forecast assumes that the payroll tax cut—currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2011—is extended for another year, but if that failed to happen the fiscal drag in early 2012 would increase significantly. Third, increases in the US unemployment rate have historically had a tendency to feed on themselves, and this could happen again.

Pethokoukis makes this comparison to the 1980 & 1984 elections:

The consensus used to be that President Obama might be OK if the jobless rate fell below 8 percent by Election Day.  That seems increasingly unlikely. The economy is, at best, in slow-growth mode, just churning and churning, creating few jobs.  Comparisons to President Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” campaign are looking ever-more ridiculous.  Under Reagan’s tax-cut driven recovery, unemployment fell from 10.8 percent in December 1982 to 7.2 percent by Election Day as the economy grew 4.5 percent in 1983 and 7.2 percent in 1984. In fact,  Jimmy Carter’s 1980 campaign might be the better comparison. The unemployment rate jumped from 6.0 percent in December 1979 to 7.5 percent on Election Day 1980 as the economy shrank 0.3 percent.

All I know is that outside of the 4% unemployment rate of the DC Beltway, it is more like Mourning In America under the Obama regime.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

On Tuesday, I linked the closing question of Stephen Green’s insightful post on the Obama administration, but the beginning of that post also merits your attention (as does the middle).  He used Steve McCann’ thoughtful piece at American Thinker, linking the president’s behavior in the debt ceiling debate to his overall failure of leadership, as his jumping-off point.

McCann contends that

Barack Obama’s only interest in the debt ceiling debate was to raise the borrowing limit sufficiently to get by the next election, and as a cudgel to denigrate the Republicans. His concern was not for the American people and the impact of overwhelming national debt, nor an impending and inevitable credit downgrade. Rather, he was determined that raising the debt ceiling would not become an issue during the presidential campaign. . . .

The destruction wrought by the nearly $5.5 Trillion (more than a third of the total debt of a nation 222 years old) he will have added to the nation’s balance sheet by the end of his term was immaterial, thus no detailed plan was forthcoming from the White House, and no lie or accusation aimed at the opposition was too absurd to tell.

The Democrat has, McCann observes, “abdicated all responsibility to the Congress, in particular the House of Representatives, which has little choice but to assume a role they are not structured to do: lead the country as best they can until November 2012.”  Indeed, Obama been doing that since the dawn of his administration where he let congressional Democrats draft the “stimulus” as they would later write the health care overhaul.

Seems the election of a Republican House threw a wrench into his plans of governance.   (more…)