2012 Presidential Election

Susan Ferrechio Chief Congressional Correspondent Follow us @Examinerpolitic As the Republican hopefuls vying for their party’s presidential nomination gather in New Hampshire Monday for the second GOP debate, some of the attention is shifting to Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry is weighing whether to jump in the race. Perry is said to be seriously considering such a move, which many political… examinerpolitics.com

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Speculation builds about Perry presidential bid

Earthquake. It’d be hard for him to say no. Romney, Pawlenty, and Huntsman will split the centrist vote, so there’s an opportunity on the right for a prominent conservative to swoop in and consolidate the base. That’s what Palin’s going to try to do, leveraging her higher name recognition to swamp Bachmann and Cain in Iowa, Read this post

The crowd at AEI didn’t come to see a governor, they came to see a presidential contender Continue reading here: TheDC Analysis: Despite his emphatic denials, don’t count Chris Christie out of the 2012 picture yet

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TheDC Analysis: Despite his emphatic denials, don’t count Chris Christie out of the 2012 picture yet

Oprah Winfrey sounded the bell for the 2012 presidential race with her thinly veiled whack at Sarah Palin in the new issue of Parade Magazine; And the mainstream media are already lapping it like swine. When asked whether Palin’s running for President scares her, Oprah was quoted as saying , “It does not scare me because I believe in the intelligence of the American public.” So, is Oprah saying that the American people are too smart to vote for Palin? Is she also saying that intelligent people want Obama’s Big Government agenda that Palin is opposed to? If she is, did she bear witness to the recent Midterm Election Massacre of 2010 that symbolized the complete and utter rejection of the President and the progressivism he’s been force-feeding us? If that is indeed what the Queen of All Media is saying, someone may need to screw her head back on. MSNBC’s Chris “Tingles” Matthews probably got a thrill up his other leg when he read the transcript of Winfrey’s comments. He praised the talk show diva saying, “Isn’t it incredible how Oprah can deliver a zinger like that while in the same sentence, offering such an uplifting portrait of us?” Yes, all hail Oprah. Like Oprah, Matthews is known for his gushing adoration of Obama. He even cries during his speeches and compares him to Jesus. During the 2008 Election, Matthews said of then Senator Obama, “I’ve been following politics since I was about 5. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.” Others unbiased journalists in the mainstream media have added their own adulation to the media cesspool. On Matthews’ Hardball show in June 2009, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas offered up this non-partisan insight comparing Obama to Reagan, “Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God. He’s going to bring all sides together.” “Yeah,” gushed Matthews. And this, as Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard correctly points out, is the guy [Matthews] who says his show is “absolutely nonpartisan.” Oprah, Matthews and others make no bones about why Obama is the end-all, be-all for them: Big Government socialism. Back in January, Bill O’Reilly took a closer look at an Oprah TV episode called, “The World’s Happiest People.” In the clip, Oprah gushes over Denmark’s free healthcare, free education, and unemployment security, where if you lose your job the government pays up to 90% of your salary for four years. Strange longings for a woman who makes $100 million a year and whose personal belongings wouldn’t even fit in the pea-sized country that is Denmark. What Oprah doesn’t mention is that Denmark’s taxes are the highest in the world – between 50-75% of your income. It is no secret that President Obama and the mainstream media look to Europe’s socialist model for inspiration, hoping to eradicate American capitalism once and for all. In the video, Oprah, too, is giddy with excitement to be with those bicycle-riding Danes who share her worldview. But Americans are not the Danes and we do not share this view of Big Government. It is not our cultural identity to believe in the equality of outcomes, just the equality of opportunity. That is Sarah Palin’s view as well. However, to an Oprah Winfrey or a Barack Obama, those who do not share their view are simply not intelligent or sophisticated enough to understand what they are trying to do or how they are – sigh – trying to make the world a better place. As much as the mainstream media has heart palpitations over Obama, they’re salivating over more opportunities to attack Palin as they did in the 2008 Presidential elections. Not only is Palin a top contender for the GOP nomination, but she is also a powerful new force in media and entertainment. Could she eventually unseat Oprah as Queen of All Media? Could that be another reason for Oprah’s snide remarks? You bettcha.

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Obama Groupies Oprah, Matthews Spread the MSM’s Anti-Palin Gospel

Not ratifying nuclear arms treaty ‘would undercut President Reagan’s call to trust, but verify,’ president said in his weekly address Read the original here: Obama aims for second lame-duck victory with START treaty push

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Obama aims for second lame-duck victory with START treaty push

In a conversation with John Meacham, Scarborough answers the age-old question, will you run for president? Visit link: Joe Scarborough on running for president: ‘You never know’

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Joe Scarborough on running for president: ‘You never know’

Reuters – Japan’s yen-selling intervention will likely be on the agenda when Prime Minister Naoto Kan meets President Barack Obama next week in New York, the Asahi newspaper reported on Friday.

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Japan PM and Obama to discuss forex intervention: media
(Reuters)

Responding to my post from yesterday that attempted to discuss the apparently non-newsworthy topic of what Christine O'Donnell actually campaigned on in her successful Senate primary run in Delaware, Andrew Sullivan lasers in on my description of the defeated Mike Castle as “just another TARP supporter”: Does even the most devoted libertarian really believe that any responsible president of any party would not have tried to save the economy from a total financial meltdown? Do they recall that the Congress initially did turn it down and then changed its mind? And would it be possible for them to acknowledge that the bank bailout seems to have been far more successful than almost anyone believed at the time? As readers know, the Dish is very libertarian-friendly. But sometimes they drive us nuts with their utter disengagement with, you know, political reality. Taking those in order, with the caveat that I'm hardly “the most devoted libertarian”: 1) When you assume as axiomatic both a looming “total financial meltdown” and a presidential ability to “save the economy,” the only drama left is the final number of digits on the blank check. From inarticulate fears and unrealistic savior-dreams come panicky, incoherent, power-aggrandizing policies whose details don't matter to their biggest supporters, as we learned the hard way twice under George W. Bush. Let's recall the nightmare scenario that the 43rd president said would rain down on our heads unless Congress took “immediate action” to pass TARP: More banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet. Foreclosures would rise dramatically. And if you own a business or a farm, you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit. More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs. Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession. Anything on that list not happen after Bush got his way? Yet the people who were warning about the dire long-term consquences of nationalizing downside risk , of granting vague yet colossal and open-ended powers to the executive branch and Federal Reserve, of continuing to artificially prop up housing prices and kick difficult decisions down the road, it is these people who the Andrew Sullivans of the world want to portray as blind devotees of an unworkable faith, impervious to reality. I invite anyone who thinks that way to read our coverage at the time , including this Sept. 25, 2008 roundtable of free-market economists discussing TARP and other potential government interventions. There you will find people scrambling in real time to put hard numbers and economic principles on fuzzy notions like “total financial meltdown,” and concluding frequently that some things needed to be done by the federal government, just maybe not an Iraq War-sized toxic assets fund that never got around to buying up toxic assets . 2) Yes, we are more than aware that Congress changed its mind on TARP , after arm-twisting from the president and authoritarian hysterics from the likes of David Brooks. I have no idea what that's supposed to add to a debate about TARP's effectiveness two years later. 3) It is not remotely true that “the bank bailout seems to have been far more successful than almost anyone believed at the time.” You don't need to take my word for it; just re-read that Bush quote above about what the bailout was designed to avert . That was safely mainstream opinion in the fall of 2008. Meanwhile, as Tim Cavanaugh pointed out yesterday , ongoing skepticism of TARP's effectiveness probably has something to do with the fact that “performance of the economy has been even worse than interventionists claimed it would have been without any intervention.” 4) As for “utter disengagement” with any kind of reality, let alone “political,” I for one am always happy to plead guilty, since reality bites (or at least the movie did). But even so, I prefer my version of realism to a Sullivan Planet where cash-for-clunkers was “right” and “helpful,” the administration's economic policies ” are defensible for the large part from the perspective of the actual circumstances we face ,” and where Obama and the Congress ” should both get the benefit of the doubt .” The world just doesn't look that way through my eyeballs, no matter how hard I squint. While I don't begrudge Sullivan or anyone else adapting their political and economic views to changing circumstances (or even just for the hell of it), I'd find the arguments a lot more persuasive if he (and they) dropped the pretense that it's only their opponents who are being ideological in any given debate. Do-something mentality , “pragmatism,” and deference to power can all be just as ideological as libertarianism, even if they don't have their own seven-syllable descriptors and bad taste in prog-rock. More pressing to the matter at hand, they can be wrong , and they usually hold the power. It's gonna take more than the absence of bread lines to make me believe this particular P.R. campaign.

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Andrew Sullivan Defends TARP, Criticizes Libertarians for “utter disengagement” with “political reality” (Like That’s a Bad Thing)

Newt Gingrich stirred up a big of a controversy Friday night just by commenting on an article in Forbes Magazine by Dinesh D’Souza. The premise of the article is many of Obama’s positions were influenced by his dad. What then is Obama’s dream? We don’t have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father . According to Obama, his dream is his father’s dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father . Obama isn’t writing about his father’s dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father. Whether you agree with it or not this is not a terribly, outlandish position, many of us can say that we were influenced by our father’s dreams. I certainly carried many of my father’s dreams into the next generation. Gingrich felt the D’Souza article was incredibly insightful. Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D’Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.” “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.” According to David Frum , Newt Gingrich’s comments were made to promote the “birther” nonsense that says Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., and D’Souza’s article was written for “race-baiting” purposes: So it’s his mission now to present himself as the most ferocious right-winger in the race. Confident (over-confident) that he can best Sarah Palin among business-minded and ideas-minded Republicans, he wants to deny her or some other Tea Party style challenger any footing to attack him as a compromise-minded moderate. Calling President Obama a Kenyan fits into that strategy. As for the underlying D’Souza article that inspired Gingrich, what is there to be said? When last was there such a brazen outburst of race baiting in the service of partisan politics at the national level? George Wallace took more care to sound race-neutral. Huh? It Did?  Wow, who’d have thought it? I thought the article related Obama’s father’s political background to his own.  I went back to the Forbes article to look for the part where it says that Obama wasn’t born in the US, or the part saying that Obama’s race made him a better or worse president, but I couldn’t find it.  I printed out the Gingrich interview and the Forbes article and held them up to the light to see if it was some sort of subliminal message written in between the lines… nothing! I was at a loss to figure out how Frum got racism or “birtherism” from those articles.  So like I always do in a case like this, I called my Cousin Ben, the spy (his mother wanted him to go to med school, but that is a story for a different day).  Ben worked for military intelligence back in the 1980’s. He is an expert in disguise a master in interpreting data, and the best part is, he is willing to work for free, as long as he gets first dibs on the white meat every Thanksgiving (note: white meat is a turkey term and has nothing to do with race). Ben told me he would break into Frum’s office and see what he could find. Within an hour the ring of the fax machine sounded, it was a fax from Ben. On the top of the paper was the headline, Things About Newt Gingrich and Other Bad Conservatives That Only David Frum Knows Anybody who disagrees with my position on anything is by nature hurting the Conservative movement. Newt Gingrich was heard discussing the fact that Obama breathes air.  Muslims breathe air that means Newt Gingrich believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Sarah Palin was in the United States on 9/11/01.  There were attacks on the US on 9/11/01 that means Sarah Palin believes that Barack Obama was behind the 9/11 attacks. Newt Gingrich was on the Tonight Show when Conan was the host.  Conan’s Tonight show was canceled, that means Newt Gingrich believes that Barack Obama is a communist. Rush Limbaugh went to high school with Terry Jones. Terry Jones wanted to burn a Koran which means Rush Limbaugh believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim. There was a list of over one hundred items just like that. After I finished reading, Iphoned Cousin Ben, the spy. “Ben” I asked “Are you sure you got the right paper? Did you look at it?  This list is totally ridiculous.” Cousin Ben countered, “are they any more ridiculous than Frum’s piece about Gingrich and the D’Souza article?” I thought about it for a second, and as usual, my Cousin Ben’s analysis was spot on.  It wasn’t that I was missing something because I didn’t see racism or “Birtherism” in the Forbes article, it simply wasn’t there. Either because he was looking to create a controversy or because he is “seeing things,” David Frum labeled Gingrich as a “birther” and D’Souza a racist. Ben really earned is white meat this Thanksgiving (remember I am talking about the lighter colored meat of a turkey).

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What’s Behind David Frum’s Attack on Dinesh d’Souza and Mr. Newt?

AFP – The US Senate Thursday passed a bill providing billions of dollars in aid and tax benefits to small businesses, handing a victory to President Barack Obama in his bid to rekindle economic growth.

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Senate passes small business aid, in victory for Obama
(AFP)