Government-Shutdown Blame Game

Image via Wikipedia Shut it down now. Obama can not win this one, as Boehner, Ryan and the house GOP leaders have him boxed in. The poll numbers (and the truth) support them, unlike in Newt's day...T

Sometimes you get an idea of the way opinion is headed by the phrases you don't hear. Case in point: In all the discussion and debate these past weeks about a possible government shutdown if Congress and President Obama fail to agree on funding bills, I don't recall having heard the phrase "train wreck."

I think that's significant, because back in the 1990s, when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich's Republicans and President Clinton failed to reach agreement and the government actually did shut down, "train wreck" was a common term.

And, of course, a derogatory one. The implication was that a government shutdown was a horrifying mess. In fact, the country weathered the 1990s shutdowns pretty well. And so did Gingrich's House Republicans, who lost only nine seats in the next election -- a lot fewer than the 63 seats Nancy Pelosi's Democrats lost last November.

Which is not to say that voters view a shutdown as an unalloyed positive. But you're not hearing it described as a train wreck, either.

House Republicans passed a stopgap funding bill Tuesday that Obama and Senate Democrats have signaled they will embrace, which will keep the government open after the March 4 deadline. But that would just postpone the prospects of a shutdown for two weeks. If the government is shuttered then, who would the public blame?

Both sides equally, say the pollsters in surveys over the past two weeks.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, says 41 percent would blame Republicans and 39 percent would blame Obama.

Gallup says that 42 percent say Republicans are doing a better job of reaching a budget agreement, while 39 percent say Democrats are.

The Hill says 29 percent would blame Democrats for a shutdown and 23 percent would blame Republicans.

The Washington Post says 36 percent would blame Republicans and 35 percent would blame the Obama administration.

It's a general rule that people have more favorable feelings toward individuals than they do to groups -- that's why the president, any president, almost always has better ratings than the Congress. You might want to keep that in mind in interpreting polls pitting the individual Obama against the group congressional Republicans.

Also keep in mind that opinion is not where it was during the Clinton-Gingrich struggle 16 years ago. The Washington Post helpfully notes that its polling then showed 46 percent blaming Gingrich and the Republicans for the shutdown and only 27 percent blaming Clinton.

We're in a different political environment now in two important respects. The first is the media. There was no Internet or blogosphere in 1995; Fox News Channel did not start until October 1996; talk radio was in its infancy, with Rush Limbaugh already an important national voice but with few other conservative hosts on the air.

In that environment, liberal-inclined media were able to tell the story and frame the issue the way they liked without much dissent. ABC's Peter Jennings could compare voters who supported Gingrich Republicans to infants having a tantrum. Such voices don't have a monopoly today.

The second significant difference is that in the mid-1990s the economy was growing and it was not clear why we needed to limit government spending. We could afford more for this, that and the other thing.

Now we're in straitened circumstances, just out of a severe recession (though many voters don't think it's over just yet) and in a very restrained and anemic recovery. We've seen that a substantial increase in government spending -- from 21 percent to 25 percent of gross domestic product -- hasn't done much to stimulate economic growth. And we've seen that government kept growing even as the private sector suffered.

In that setting, pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 58 percent of likely voters would rather have a government shutdown until both parties can agree on spending cuts, while only 33 percent would prefer spending at the same levels as last year.

Liberal poll critics may say, correctly, that the question frames the issue the way Republican politicians would like. But that's the point. Republican politicians today have a much better chance to persuade voters to view issues the way they do than they did in the Clinton-Gingrich days.

All of which explains why Obama and congressional Democrats seem more willing to make concessions than Clinton was. And why we're not hearing the phrase "train wreck" much anymore
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Related articles

• Government Shutdown No Longer a 'Train Wreck' - Michael Barone - Townhall Conservative (gds44.wordpress.com)
• The politics of blame, shutdown edition - Washington Post (news.google.com)
• Gingrich: We won in government shutdown, not Clinton (politico.com)

FOX News Sunday - Limbaugh Assails Obama's 'Radical' Agenda, Predicts One-Term Presidency

Rush Limbaugh via last.fm

Rush Limbaugh assails the Obama administration for its economic "stimulus" (fascism funding bill) package, health care reform plan (fascist takeover of the US economy) and alleged uncertainty (unilateral, American hating, surrender to our enemies) over the way forward in Afghanistan - T


President Obama is pursuing a "radical" agenda that is putting the economy and national security in peril, talk show host Rush Limbaugh told "Fox News Sunday," giving the young president failing grades across the board and standing by his sustained criticism of the administration.

The conservative radio host assailed the administration for its economic stimulus package, health care reform plan and alleged uncertainty over the way forward in Afghanistan. In a wide-ranging interview, he called Obama a "child" driven by his "out-of-this-world ego."

And he predicted that Obama, who built a broad-based majority over Republican candidate John McCain a year ago, would not win a second term.

"I'm really, really worried. We've never seen this kind of radical leadership at such a high level of power in the country," Limbaugh said. "I don't think we're better off in any way it could be measured."

Limbaugh is one of the administration's fiercest critics and has often found himself in the White House crosshairs as a result. Top White House aides blasted Limbaugh earlier in the year for saying he wanted Obama to fail as president.

Months later, Limbaugh has only doubled down on his criticism.

"He's immature, he's inexperienced -- in over his head," Limbaugh said of the president. He repeated former Vice President Dick Cheney's charge that Obama is "dithering" on deciding a strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

And Limbaugh scoffed at the administration's claim that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been saved or created by February's economic stimulus package, saying the government has become the job engine -- not the private sector.

"I believe that the economy is under siege," he said.

White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod, reacting to the interview Sunday, downplayed Limbaugh's comments, saying: "We'll let Mr. Limbaugh foment."

"I think it's a surreal day when you're getting lectures on humility from Rush Limbaugh. ... The fact is that he is an entertainer," Axelrod told CBS' "Face the Nation." "But I think the American people are well-served and believe they're well-served."

Limbaugh also blasted the Democrats' health care bills as a front that would steal money from American businesses and effect the partial takeover of the private sector.

"This is not about insuring the uninsured -- this is not about health care," Limbaugh said. "This is about stealing one-sixth of the U.S. private sector and putting it under the control of the federal government."

Limbaugh warned that the legislation currently being worked out in Congress would amount to massive encroachments on personal and private behavior, much of which would fall under the purview of the legislation.

"And when they get this health care bill -- if they do -- that's the easiest, fastest way for them to be able to regulate every aspect of human behavior, because it will all have some related cost to health care -- what you drive, what you eat, where you live, what you do -- and there will be penalties for violating regulation."

Limbaugh said these changes would have a drastic effect on the U.S.: "It's going to be the biggest snatch of freedom and liberty that has yet occurred in this country."

Though he criticized the Republican Party for lacking a clear leader or message that can unify Americans, Limbaugh nevertheless predicted anti-Democratic Party sentiment will propel Republicans to victory in 2010.

"I know that there is an eruption waiting to happen at the ballot box," he said.

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GOP Should Run Against the Power of the Center

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The argument has been frustrating.

We have the Colin Powell types demanding we draw and quarter the Rush Limbaugh's and abandon conservatism. It's just not fashionable, you see! We should just manage big government better than the democrooks.

Then there are the purists. Preferably start a new party, but at the very least, kick all the RINO's and McCain's to the curb! The republicans are worse than the democrats and must all lose, so that we can then win.

I've always thought both of these schools of thought were self defeating, for yes, we need to stand for limited government and constitutional jurisprudence, but there will never be enough of us to form a lasting majority. We must get better at teaching, explaining, and finding thoughtful, principled candidates, as well as finding some answer to the leftist, statist media monopoly that feeds the cancer of socialism that has befallen us. Reagan is the prototype. Idealistic, educated, dedicated to a purpose, not to a career, and yet appealing to centrists and democrats because he could explain conservatism in simple ways that people are instinctively drawn to and can't ignore.

Mr. Barone has hit on a perfect message to which we can only hope the GOP is listening!...T

"So I think Republicans today should be less interested in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center. Here I mean a different "center" -- not a midpoint on an opinion spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets.

...To govern is to choose, as John F. Kennedy said, and those in charge of these new centralized institutions are making choices that inevitably favor some and hurt others. Unsurprisingly, the politically well connected tend to get the favors. Banks forced to take government money are now blocked from paying it back and in the meantime must direct funds where the government wants them to go...when government gets this intertwined with the private sector, when it makes decisions not based on neutral economic criteria but by what is at best guesswork about the allocation and valuation of vast amounts of capital, bailout favoritism and crony capitalism are inevitable.

...It's arguably good policy as well as good politics to run against this over-powerful center. Bailout favoritism and crony capitalism not only misallocate economic resources, they also sap faith in the fairness of our institutions. After World War II, Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls -- all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans ran in 1946 on the theme of "Had enough?" and won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.

The 1946 Republicans didn't move to the center. They ran against the power of the center and permanently redefined where the center of the political spectrum was. That's a path today's Republicans might want to consider.
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The Obama Rosetta Stone

See, it's not just me. It's not just bloggers calling Obama a socialist, a communist, and even worse. Read what Rush Limbaugh says in his introduction to the WSJ piece by Daniel Henninger that quotes from Obama's own budget, proving that these leftists know full well their policies will not produce revenue, just retribution. Read what Rush has the courage to call Obama - A Stalinist -

"Daniel Henninger is a brilliant guy. His column is consistently superb, and this one really nails who Obama is. It's why, during the campaign, Obama made the "moral" argument for taxing the achievers even when it was pointed out to him that this would necessarily depress revenues and therefore deny his big government the resources to do the big things he wants to do.

This was never about economics, not principally. It's about "social justice." His education plan is Maoist (no surprise given the Ayers/Klonsky influence), and he is otherwise a Bolshevik. I'm also quite sure, given his character traits, that he would be a Stalinist if he thought he could get away with it ... and he's working on that, too. I wonder what the country will look like in his 10th or 15th year as president?"

Finally, here is Henninger's take on Obama's motivation -

"The White House says its goal is simple 'fairness.' That may be, as they understand fairness. But Figure 9 (click to view) makes it clear that for the top earners, there will be blood. This presidency is going to be an act of retribution. In the words of the third book from Mr. Obama, 'it is our duty to change it.' "

The full article is linked below. Sadly, I couldn't agree more...T
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