Many Gary Johnson supporters are behind him because they refuse to sacrifice their principles in order to vote for the other two candidates, with whom they agree less (and often absurdly claim are virtually the same anyway). This is a noble theory, but there's one major problem with it - reality.
There are only three realistic outlooks for Johnson in this election:
1. He gets fewer votes than he expects, Romney's margin is larger than expected, so his few votes don't matter, Romney wins.
2. He gets about the number of votes polls show he might, or a few more, denies Romney enough votes to win a crucial swing state or two, Obama wins.
3. He gets far more votes than anyone expected, even wins a state or two (NM, NV, CO?), denies both Obama and Romney enough electoral votes to win, under the Constitution the election goes to the House, Romney wins.
That's it. There is no path to an actual victory for Johnson himself. The best he can hope for is to make a stand on issues and change the discussion and terms of the debate, as Perot did in 1992. That hasn't happened yet, and we have less than 50 days to go. In any scenario, one of the other candidates will win, either despite or because of his presence on the ballot. Johnson's supporters, while by definition ideologically, not politically focused, should understand that the vote they cast for him does have an effect, though it may not be the one they want. Whether they see a difference between Obama and Romney, there is. And whether they think they aren't choosing between them, their vote very well may make the difference in what has been so far the closest election in modern history.
Choose wisely Johnson supporters, for whether you want to or not, you may be choosing between the "lesser of two evils" for us.
NOTE: I supported Johnson in the GOP primary, but once he dropped out to run as a Libertarian, he lost me.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 11, 2012
9/11/12: "Smart Diplomacy" Circus
On what has become a holy day in the United States of America, this 11th anniversary of 9/11/01 has seen a dizzying array of events in the political sphere that expose latent truths about who our leaders are.
First, the candidates' tweets were a study in contrasts this morning:
Later in the day, on the other side of the world, a protest broke out in Cairo, Egypt over a film. Radicals (by definition) stormed the US Embassy, spray-painted the walls with grafitti, and ripped down the American flag.
Not to be outdone by its own State Department, the White House rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's request for a meeting with President Obama while Bibi is in New York at the UN in two weeks. The White House cited an innocent "scheduling conflict" that prevented the two from meeting, and Secretary Clinton will attend instead. But Netanyahu in his request made clear that, despite his short 2.5 day visit to the country, he would be willing to fly down to Washington, DC if it would facilitate the meeting.
And in a final, classy coup de grâce, the Obama campaign violated the political "cease-fire" agreement between the two Presidential campaigns on 9/11 with a Florida rally by impeached former President Clinton on behalf of the Obama campaign.
I don't know about you, but I think we've had just about enough "smart" diplomacy. It's high time we had some strong diplomacy again.
UPDATE: Apparently the film protests have spread from Egypt to Libya, where now one American employee of the US Consulate there has been killed by the violent, gun-wielding, arsonist mob. This is an outrage and should be condemned in the strongest terms. But I'm sure the State Department will issue another apology instead.
First, the candidates' tweets were a study in contrasts this morning:
Later in the day, on the other side of the world, a protest broke out in Cairo, Egypt over a film. Radicals (by definition) stormed the US Embassy, spray-painted the walls with grafitti, and ripped down the American flag.
The US Embassy in Cairo immediately issued a press release condemning...wait for it...the filmmakers for the "hurt feelings" their free speech caused. Seriously. That happened:
U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement
September 11, 2012
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.
Not to be outdone by its own State Department, the White House rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's request for a meeting with President Obama while Bibi is in New York at the UN in two weeks. The White House cited an innocent "scheduling conflict" that prevented the two from meeting, and Secretary Clinton will attend instead. But Netanyahu in his request made clear that, despite his short 2.5 day visit to the country, he would be willing to fly down to Washington, DC if it would facilitate the meeting.
And in a final, classy coup de grâce, the Obama campaign violated the political "cease-fire" agreement between the two Presidential campaigns on 9/11 with a Florida rally by impeached former President Clinton on behalf of the Obama campaign.
I don't know about you, but I think we've had just about enough "smart" diplomacy. It's high time we had some strong diplomacy again.
UPDATE: Apparently the film protests have spread from Egypt to Libya, where now one American employee of the US Consulate there has been killed by the violent, gun-wielding, arsonist mob. This is an outrage and should be condemned in the strongest terms. But I'm sure the State Department will issue another apology instead.
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Sep 7, 2012
One-term proposition: Confirmed.
On February 2, 2009, President Obama told Matt Lauer in an NBC interview that on repairing the economic damage of the Great Recession, “if I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” We've all heard it, we've all seen it, and we all know that the expiration date for that statement was seven months ago. So why hasn't he owned up to this failure? There's always an excuse.
The current excuse, as the administration has been using or a couple years now, but former President Clinton put so succinctly in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention this week is, "No president, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage [to the economy] that he found in just four years." There are two main problems with this excuse.
First, I don't think the mainstream expectation is that the economy be fully recovered in four years. Everyone knows that the Great Recession was the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and the subsequent recovery would take that much longer. The problem now isn't that we haven't recovered fully, it's that we don't have a significant recovery at all. Normal post-recession recoveries grow GDP at a rate of 3-4%. For the last two years we have only been growing at an average of 2% per quarter.
Unemployment was also worse than we've seen in decades, peaking at 10% in October 2009, four months after the recession officially ended that June. Under normal circumstances it takes anywhere from 12-36 months to return to peak employment levels based on past recessions. Peak employment before the Great Recession was 4.4% unemployment in May 2007. We are now more than five years (63 months) past that point, yet we're still near double that unemployment rate (8.1% for August 2012). At the current rate of job creation (~100,000/month) it will literally take decades for us to return to the near-full employment we had in 2007. So no, we don't expect a full recovery in 4 years, but we expect some significant growth and progress toward that goal. The stagnation of the last three years is insufficient, and makes the President's "proposition" long overdue.
The second reason the Clinton excuse falls flat is the timing of the various economic indicators. The recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. We were already on the way out by the time President Obama took office in January 2009. Unemployment spiked from mid-2008 to the end of 2009, but in terms of job losses, the worst ended just as Obama took office, as Democrats so giddily like to point out in this chart (more accurate version here).
So in terms of both GDP and job losses, we had already hit bottom by the time Obama took office. He took office and proceeded to reassure us over the next year that we would be on the road to recovery soon (the fact that we've had two more summers since the first "Summer of Recovery" exposes that lie). The very fact that he said that he would have it fixed in three years after two weeks in office shows he thought he could, and he already had the information necessary to come to that conclusion.
What they're really saying is that it will take more than 4 years to recover from their errors. The Clinton excuse could be more accurately summed up as, "We didn't know how terribly we'd do." Sorry, that's not how it works, especially when we have no evidence that they've learned from the mistakes of the past 4 years and will take a different approach to fix it now. We have elections every 2, 4, and 6 years so that we the people can decide if you get another shot. On November 6, we'll make that decision for them.
Donate today to help make sure we make the right decision.
The current excuse, as the administration has been using or a couple years now, but former President Clinton put so succinctly in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention this week is, "No president, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage [to the economy] that he found in just four years." There are two main problems with this excuse.
First, I don't think the mainstream expectation is that the economy be fully recovered in four years. Everyone knows that the Great Recession was the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and the subsequent recovery would take that much longer. The problem now isn't that we haven't recovered fully, it's that we don't have a significant recovery at all. Normal post-recession recoveries grow GDP at a rate of 3-4%. For the last two years we have only been growing at an average of 2% per quarter.
Unemployment was also worse than we've seen in decades, peaking at 10% in October 2009, four months after the recession officially ended that June. Under normal circumstances it takes anywhere from 12-36 months to return to peak employment levels based on past recessions. Peak employment before the Great Recession was 4.4% unemployment in May 2007. We are now more than five years (63 months) past that point, yet we're still near double that unemployment rate (8.1% for August 2012). At the current rate of job creation (~100,000/month) it will literally take decades for us to return to the near-full employment we had in 2007. So no, we don't expect a full recovery in 4 years, but we expect some significant growth and progress toward that goal. The stagnation of the last three years is insufficient, and makes the President's "proposition" long overdue.
The second reason the Clinton excuse falls flat is the timing of the various economic indicators. The recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. We were already on the way out by the time President Obama took office in January 2009. Unemployment spiked from mid-2008 to the end of 2009, but in terms of job losses, the worst ended just as Obama took office, as Democrats so giddily like to point out in this chart (more accurate version here).
So in terms of both GDP and job losses, we had already hit bottom by the time Obama took office. He took office and proceeded to reassure us over the next year that we would be on the road to recovery soon (the fact that we've had two more summers since the first "Summer of Recovery" exposes that lie). The very fact that he said that he would have it fixed in three years after two weeks in office shows he thought he could, and he already had the information necessary to come to that conclusion.
What they're really saying is that it will take more than 4 years to recover from their errors. The Clinton excuse could be more accurately summed up as, "We didn't know how terribly we'd do." Sorry, that's not how it works, especially when we have no evidence that they've learned from the mistakes of the past 4 years and will take a different approach to fix it now. We have elections every 2, 4, and 6 years so that we the people can decide if you get another shot. On November 6, we'll make that decision for them.
Sep 5, 2012
Real Clear Politics national poll average: TIE
NOTE: Half of the polls included in this average were taken BEFORE the Republican National Convention last week.
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Aug 13, 2012
What Obama has ended "as we know it"
The most prominent and concise attack against Mitt Romney's new running mate, Paul Ryan, is that his budget plan "ends Medicare as we know it". Let's take a look at some other things that have been ended "as we know it" recently, except these by President Obama:
Ending something "as we know it" is also called "reform" when it's favorable. Since when did liberals become the champions of the status quo? Why are Medicare and Social Security the only things the federal government does that aren't up for debate or reform?
- Private health insurance
- General Motors
- Chrysler
- United Auto Workers
- Medicaid
- Immigration
- Student loans
- Defense of Marriage Act
- Don't Ask Don't Tell
- No Child Left Behind
- Libya
- Egypt
- Gulf oil drilling
- Cuban embargo
- Hate crime law
- NASA
- Financial regulation
- Supreme Court
- Payroll taxes
- Food stamps
- Welfare
Ending something "as we know it" is also called "reform" when it's favorable. Since when did liberals become the champions of the status quo? Why are Medicare and Social Security the only things the federal government does that aren't up for debate or reform?
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Aug 11, 2012
Romney/Ryan 2012: Our time is now.
If you haven't turned on an electronic device since last night, Mitt Romney will be announcing his Vice Presidential nominee this morning, and it will be Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. I've been hoping it would be Ryan for months, and I could not be more excited that I was right. Paul Ryan is a cheerful, brilliant, positive, inspiring reformer. He is exactly who we need to truly focus this campaign on what good, pro-growth, free market policies and smart, limited government can do to reverse our current progressive malaise. This choice also sets up Paul Ryan to run for President himself after 8 successful years in the White House. Our future is brighter this morning, America, and in November it will be blinding.
Help us make this happen. Donate today.
Help us make this happen. Donate today.
Aug 7, 2012
Not Four More Years, but a Fresh Start.
By now it should be obvious that I'm not objective observer of politics. I actively support electing Mitt Romney and making Barack Obama a one-term President. He had his chance in 2009 & 2010 with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to get our economy moving again (assuming you believe his policies would do that). Instead, he spent nearly $1 trillion on public sector union bailouts and boondoggle cronyism passed off as economic "stimulus". Instead, he nationalized health insurance regulation, created new entitlements and federal bureaucracies to mandate things that Congress and the executive have no authority to oversee, arguing it was a life and death matter, but phasing it in over 7 years. Instead, he put chains and irons on small business and community banks with national financial regulation that hasn't even been fully implemented almost two years later.
The people saw this vision of "change" for what it was, and in November 2010 they took back as much of the government as they could (dozens of state legislatures, governorships, and the US House of Representatives). This November we have the chance to take back the rest. We must win back the US Senate, and we must win back the White House. If we don't, Obamacare becomes permanent, we get 2-4 more liberal Supreme Court justices, and 8% unemployment, $3 gas, spiraling debt, and $1 trillion deficits become the new normal. Our nation cannot survive that.
Mitt Romney has the vision and experience necessary to wake us from this national nightmare of malaise and dependence. As a business manager and owner he turned around failing companies, created jobs, and evolved industries by eliminating failed business models and creating new, successful ones. As the savior of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, he took the organization from corruption and deficits to a budget surplus and an inspirational and successful international games. As governor he consistently fought for lower spending, lowered taxes, and balanced the state budget, all with the help of the 80% Democratic state legislature.
Barack Obama's pre-election experience went from navel-gazing in the faculty lounge to rabble-rousing and divide-and-conquer on the streets of Chicago. No wonder he got not a single Republican vote in the House on his signature "achievements" of the stimulus and Obamacare. Mitt Romney's experience over the last forty years in businesses, community, and government is the picture of principled leadership.
We need Mitt Romney in the White House, and he needs your support to get there.
Please donate if you can: https://secure.mittromney.com/donate/victory/?fid=8649
If you can't, please volunteer: http://www.mittromney.com/action
The people saw this vision of "change" for what it was, and in November 2010 they took back as much of the government as they could (dozens of state legislatures, governorships, and the US House of Representatives). This November we have the chance to take back the rest. We must win back the US Senate, and we must win back the White House. If we don't, Obamacare becomes permanent, we get 2-4 more liberal Supreme Court justices, and 8% unemployment, $3 gas, spiraling debt, and $1 trillion deficits become the new normal. Our nation cannot survive that.
Mitt Romney has the vision and experience necessary to wake us from this national nightmare of malaise and dependence. As a business manager and owner he turned around failing companies, created jobs, and evolved industries by eliminating failed business models and creating new, successful ones. As the savior of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, he took the organization from corruption and deficits to a budget surplus and an inspirational and successful international games. As governor he consistently fought for lower spending, lowered taxes, and balanced the state budget, all with the help of the 80% Democratic state legislature.
Barack Obama's pre-election experience went from navel-gazing in the faculty lounge to rabble-rousing and divide-and-conquer on the streets of Chicago. No wonder he got not a single Republican vote in the House on his signature "achievements" of the stimulus and Obamacare. Mitt Romney's experience over the last forty years in businesses, community, and government is the picture of principled leadership.
We need Mitt Romney in the White House, and he needs your support to get there.
Please donate if you can: https://secure.mittromney.com/donate/victory/?fid=8649
If you can't, please volunteer: http://www.mittromney.com/action
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