Archive for August, 2010

Marika gives me her take on the conference right after Thomas Peters’ speech.

You can find her here.

Ezra looks at the trend lines on President Obama and thinks liberals are worrying needlessly:

But so far as the polls go, Obama is doing okay among the left. In fact, as the graph below shows (click on it for a larger version), his approval trends among Democrats, independents and the country mirror Ronald Reagan’s ratings among Republicans, independents and the country almost exactly.

Tell you what Ezra lets make a bet. I’m a little hard up but I’m confident enough to make this wager:

You say Obama’s poll lines mirror Reagan’s? Fine. I’ll pay you $500 for every state Regain lost (including DC) in 1984 that Obama wins in 2012. You pay me $500 for every state that Obama loses in 2012 that Reagan won in 1984.

Or if those odds are too long for your trend lines, How about I pay you $10 per electoral vote that Obama gets in 2012 over Reagan’s total in 1984 and you pay me $5 for every electoral vote under Reagan’s 1984 total Obama wins in 2012. I’m broke and unemployed but I don’t mind giving you odds.

How about it Ezra, wanna put your money where your graph is?

Update: If any of you other liberals want to put your money where your confidence is come pony up

That is the answer to her piece about one terms presidents.

Winning may not be the only thing, but in politics, it’s the thing that makes everything else possible.

That is actually a pretty solid statement and the next two are significant as well:

Being a one-term president is a badge of failure, not success, even if it comes by being true to your convictions.

Being a one-term president means that, for the next term, someone who rejects those convictions will be making the decisions that count. How can that be a good thing?

KingGold not withstanding she makes an important point (remember Polk didn’t run for re-election) you need both convictions and the willingness and ability to make your case to the American People to succeed in the White House. The fact that Polk comes to mind so quickly makes her case since when you have only a single exception to prove a rule false, it’s usually a pretty good general rule. (There is also Grover Cleveland who after losing due to following his convictions defeated the person who beat him four years later.) Her argument fails for a totally different reason; she is making the wrong case.

Susan thinks the problem is being so true to his convictions, that people are forgetting the second part of the equation here.

She is misreading these people, the leftists lionizing one term presidency are trying to make lemonade out of lemons.

The problem is not that president Obama doesn’t know how to make a case to the American People, he does, it’s that he has made his case for months and America has rejected it.

They have rejected it not because he didn’t make it properly, but because if you put dogfood on a cracker and call it Hors d’œuvres, no matter how you sell it, it’s still tastes like dogfood on a cracker.

…and I think he will be a spectacular senator but I think this press release is silly:

Nearly 18 months after he campaigned for the $862 billion failed stimulus with President Obama, Charlie Crist tells NBC in Tampa Bay that he’s “not surprised” that there was waste in the stimulus program, though he is not “aware of” any. This is a stunning admission from a leading cheerleader of the stimulus program. Unfortunately for Floridians, it is just the latest indication that the Obama-Crist stimulus has failed.

By all means highlight Crist’s support of the horrible stimulus plan and hit him upside the head with it, but hitting him for saying he is not surprised that there is waste in the program?

C’mon Marco, we are all conservatives here. The Stimulus is a federal program, the surprise would be if there was NO waste in it. That is one of the reasons why both Crist & the stimulus should be opposed.

What is stunning is not Crist’s admission of stimulus waste, what was stunning is support for it and that voters would elect him after that fact.