November 16th, 2011 by John Feehery
There is a reason Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are most confident debaters, especially when topics turn to international affairs and domestic policy.
They have deep experience in how policy works in the nation’s capitol. They have both taken several trips overseas, they know the players, they understand the bigger game.
They are fluent in Washington.
I was thinking about Washington fluency and Herman Cain.
Cain speaks sixth-grade Washington.
He gets some of the some verbs. He knows how to hit the high-points. But on the deeper policy points, he is lost. Clueless. And it can be embarrassing.
This is not to slam Herman Cain. He is right where the American people are on Libya and other foreign policy issues. They know about as much as he does.
And Cain has an everyman image that has proven to be quite appealing to everyday voters, if the polls are to be believed. But being an everyman has its limits. Voters want somebody who knows how to speak to them, but they also want somebody who actually knows the issues too. And Cain has proven time and again that he just doesn’t measure up in that department. Read more...
Tags: Cain, Gingrich, GOP primary, Hunstman, Perry, Romney, santorum
Posted in GOP, Presidential election, election | No Comments »
October 26th, 2011 by John Feehery
It is generally assumed that Herman Cain will not be the Republican nominee for President. Likewise, it is assumed that Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Gary Johnson won’t get the nomination either.
That leaves Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
The Perry campaign assumes that the dominant conservative wing of the party will never nominate somebody like Mitt Romney.
The Romney campaign assumes that Rick Perry is not ready for prime time and that his Texas shtick won’t translate beyond the Lone Star State.
Neither the Perry nor the Romney campaign are completely sold on their assumptions though, which is why they are slugging away at each other, ignoring the rest of the field, especially the current front-running, Mr. Cain.
Perry and Romney are the only two candidates who have the money to last them past January. If Santorum wins Iowa, perhaps his campaign might breathe in some new life, but I wouldn’t bank on it.
Perry is running the same campaign that he ran against Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the Senator from Texas and his chief rival in his re-election bid. The whole Republican establishment supported Hutchinson, but Perry ran far to her right, nodded to the secessionist wing of the party, condemned her work as an appropriator, called her a Washington insider, and basically bludgeoned her with sharp attacks on her conservative bone fides. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Gary Johnson, Herman Cain, John Kasich, Jon Huntsman, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election, Republican nominee for President, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, TARP program, The Perry campaign, The Romeny campaign
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, GOP, Government, History, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election | No Comments »
October 25th, 2011 by John Feehery
The president does a pretty good job of declaring victory. He doesn’t do a particularly good job of explaining the cost.
He ended last week declaring that our troops in Iraq will be home for Christmas. What he didn’t explain was that decision was reached because the Iraqis are kicking us out of their country and that the likely result will be a dirty civil war that will make Iraq a puppet of Iran.
But the president has a history of these kinds of victories.
Sure, he signed a health care reform law, which he hailed as a victory for the American people. What he didn’t explain was that health care insurance costs would likely continue to climb for most consumers and that many businesses would be ending their health insurance programs in favor of these exchanges created by the law.
Sure, he signed the Dodd-Frank law, which he hailed as a victory for those who are frustrated by a banking industry that doesn’t work properly. But the law hasn’t even been fully vetted by the regulators and already it has made it harder for the banks to loan out their money to small and medium-sized businesses. Read more...
Tags: Anwar al-Awlaki, Congress, Dodd-Frank law, health care insurance, health care reform law, Libya, Moammar Gadhafi, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, History, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election, health care, national security, terrorism, tragedy, war | No Comments »
October 24th, 2011 by John Feehery
Politicians in Washington rushed Nevada into Statehood in 1864 to assure Abraham Lincoln a comfortable margin in his bid for reelection smack dab in the middle of the Civil War, and ever since then, the Silver State has played a unique role in American political history.
Nevada is mostly desert, so it has always been a bit creative in how it has looked at its growth potential. In the early 1900’s, it went the libertarian route, allowing prostitution and gambling, as way to draw more settlers from California. It worked, and Nevadans found a formula that has kept it growing for most of its relatively short history. That is, up until the Obama years.
It was Bugsy Siegel who first thought of building a strip in Las Vegas and the mobsters that followed him gave the city its well-deserved moniker of “Sin City.” An ad campaign that ran a few years ago – “What Goes In Vegas, Stays in Vegas” – helped cement that reputation.
Las Vegas is not necessarily family-friendly. You drive into the city and you see ads on the billboards that would make you blush if you were going with your inquisitive five-year old, for example. In fact, it has one of the highest crime rates in the country, although most of that is attributed to boorish behavior by out of town visitors. Read more...
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Bugsy Siegel, Civil War, George W Bush, Las Vegas, Mitt Romney, Nevada, Silver State, Sin City
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Gambling, Government, History, Politics, Religion, Theory, bad news, election | 2 Comments »
October 21st, 2011 by John Feehery
Marco Rubio
Chris Matthews thought he would get me with his question on Marco Rubio. He asked me, breaking news style, what I thought about the revelations that Rubio’s family fled Cuba two whole years before Castro came to power.
I didn’t scratch my head on camera, but I did so in my mind.
What the hell is the big deal, I thought.
Not knowing a thing about this “breaking story”, I didn’t give much of an answer. I mumbled something about Rubio being a rising star in the party and then the segment ended.
But having read the story this morning, I have a better sense of what is going on here.
The Democrats are desperately afraid that Mitt Romney is going to pick Rubio to be his Vice Presidential candidate, and they are getting the Washington Post to do its bidding.
I don’t know if Romney is going to pick Rubio and I don’t know if Rubio would accept such an offer (he says he won’t), but I do know that the R and R ticket would spell the doom of Mr. Obama and his ill-fated administration. Read more...
Tags: Castro, Chris Matthews, Democrats, Hispanic Vote, illegal immigrants, immigration bill, Marco Rubio, Medicaid, Mitt Romney, Republican, Rubio, the American dream, the Obama Administration, Vice Presidential candidate, Washington Post, welfare
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, Immigration, Laws, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Unemployment, bad news, election, medicare, national security, poverty, spending, taxes, welfare | 2 Comments »
October 20th, 2011 by John Feehery
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday: “It’s very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it’s the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about.”
He was talking about his plan to give more money to states so they can give more money to teachers unions and public safety unions.
Joe Biden breathlessly said yesterday that if you didn’t support this plan, the chances that you might get raped (if you are a woman) or held up at gunpoint (if you run a 7-11) will go up dramatically. He said yesterday in Washington:
“In many cities, the result has been — and it’s not unique — murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up and folks, there’s a simple reason for it. There’s been a perfect storm out there — these God-awful Ponzi schemes that the last outfit allowed Wall Street to engage in resulted in this gigantic collapse of the financial industry. Housing — the bottom fell out. Foreclosures increased, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. Abandoned homes are created. Drug lords move in. Arson increases. Budgets fall because the property taxes fall. Cops and firefighters get laid off. Response times increase from five minutes to 30 minutes, and people die, and people’s homes burn to the ground.” Read more...
Tags: Bloomberg New, Economy, Federal employees, foreclosures, gigantic collapse of the financial industry, Joe Biden, Kevin Zeese, Politics, Ponzi schemes, President’s jobs plan, private sector, private sector jobs, Prosperity Agenda, public safety unions, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Silicon Valley, teachers unions, Wall Street
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Media, Politics, Promises, Unemployment, bad news, corruption, election, housing crisis, poverty, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
October 19th, 2011 by John Feehery
Newt Gingrich had the line of the night towards the end of the debate when he complained that the moderator encouraged a level of bickering that could only make it harder for the GOP to get the White House.
I don’t think Anderson Cooper was really trying to sink the Republican nominee for President in this debate. He was trying to make an 8-person debate interesting for television. But, if the bi-product is to make all the candidates look silly, well, mission-accomplished.
As Mitt Romney has tried to point out occasionally, we live in complicated times and sometimes the simplest answer is not always the best answer, but giving nuanced explanations in 30 second sound bites is damn near impossible, especially when you have a moderator asking your fiercest opponents to tear your ideas apart in a brief rebuttal.
Most avid Republican primary voters probably have heard that Mitt Romney has a 59-point plan to reform government and revive the economy, but I bet you only two people outside the media and Romney campaign have actually looked through it. Newt Gingrich has a new contract with the American people. Nobody knows anything about it and I am sure all of the other campaigns have their own plans, even Rick Perry. Read more...
Tags: Anderson Cooper, APEC, ASEAN, CNN, GOP, Herman Cain’s plan, immigration laws, Mitt Romney, Mormon, NATO, Newt Gingrich, OPEC, pre-primary debates, President Obama, Republican nominee for President, Rick Perry, White House
Posted in Contests, GOP, Government, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election | 2 Comments »
October 14th, 2011 by John Feehery
Never assume.
I usually get in trouble when I make assumptions and then challenge them.
I have been assuming for some time that the Republicans will easily beat Barack Hussein Obama.
I have been assuming that for some very good reasons.
For example, Obama is just not a very good President. He doesn’t have a clue how the private market place works. He is not much of a leader. His neo-Marxist philosophy is all out of step with our free-market system.
Even if you do like the President personally, it is still hard to make the case that he deserves to be re-hired. The economy is in terrible shape. Our country is “this close” to going completely broke. He has failed to take on entitlements in any serious way.
He has had some successes in the war on terror, but unfortunately for him, this election won’t hinge on Mr. Obama’s ability to give the order to kill terrorists.
That is what we all know, and that is why he is cracking 50% in his disapproval ratings.
But the Republicans can still screw this up. Here are a few ways BHO could still win: Read more...
Tags: 9-9-9 plan, afghanistan, American economy, Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Dodd-Frank regulations, economic growth, Freedom Works, Hermann Cain, Hispanic voters, Immigration, Libertarian, Matt Kibbe, Mitt Romney, neo-Marxist philosophy, Obamacare, Republicans, Rick Perry, Super Pacs, Tea Party, Unemployment
Posted in GOP, Government, Politics, Presidential election, Theory, election, spending, taxes | No Comments »
October 11th, 2011 by John Feehery
President Obama has made taxing the rich the centerpiece of his reelection campaign. He talks incessantly about it. It is a key part of his jobs package. So far, an apt summary of the Obama presidency might very well be: “He killed Osama bin Laden and he really, really wanted to tax the rich.”
The President is no dummy. He reads polls like any other politician, and he knows that the taxing-the-rich meme polls well. Most polls show about 70 percent of all Americans supporting higher taxes on wealthier Americans.
In fact, polls show that even wealthier Americans support higher taxes on wealthier Americans. One commissioned by American Express showed that nearly two-thirds of voters making more than $100,0000 support raising taxes on rich people. A CBS poll shows that 65 percent of voters specifically supported a millionaire’s tax, with only 30 percent opposing it.
You would think that the President would be making up some ground with voters because of his pleas to raise taxes on those rich suckers, but the more Obama attacks the rich, the more his poll numbers go down.
Why is that? Here are a few reasons: Read more...
Tags: American Express, Americans, Franklin D. Roosevelt, higher taxes, new tax increases, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Politics, presential election, President Obama, reelection campaign, tax hikes, taxes, taxing the rich
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, bad news, election, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
October 4th, 2011 by John Feehery
Originally posted on THE HILL – October 3, 2011
It might be too early to start analyzing what went wrong with the Obama administration in its first three years, but I am going to do it anyway.
Here are seven turning points that led to the president’s decline and fall, seven places where Obama or his Democratic allies made critical errors that forever altered the course of his presidency. He hasn’t done everything wrong, but he has made enough mistakes to make his reelection extraordinarily difficult.
1. Failed to veto the initial stimulus package: Imagine for a moment if Obama had vetoed that initial stimulus package. Imagine if he insisted that Democratic leaders take out all the pork and cleanse the bill of unworthy projects. Imagine if he had insisted that congressional Democrats work with Republicans to include their ideas, because we are all in this together. He would have immediately branded himself as a different kind of president, as someone above the fray, as a leader who cares first about the country, not the Democratic Party. And if he had done that, he would have had the Republicans hopelessly divided. Of course, he didn’t take that step, congressional Democrats were able to walk all over him and Republicans stiffened up their resolve and presented a united front against the president and his plans. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Bush’s tax cuts, David Plouffe, Democrats, dollar, election, George W Bush, Government, healthcare, House Republicans, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Administration, Obamacare, olympics, Politics, Republicans, spending, White House
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Presidential election, election, health care, medicare, national security, spending | 1 Comment »
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