{"id":5032,"date":"2012-03-21T22:24:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T02:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=5032"},"modified":"2012-03-21T22:24:51","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T02:24:51","slug":"the-daily-blog-thursday-march-22nd-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=5032","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Blog, Thursday, March 22nd, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Thursday, March 22nd, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!<\/strong><\/p>\n

First up, Conn Carroll, writing in the Morning Examiner<\/em>, exposes….<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obama’s Buffet Rule Farce<\/span><\/h1>\n

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President Obama previewed the center-piece of his reelection campaign when he delivered his State of the Union this January: \u201cTax reform should follow the Buffett Rule. If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. \u2026 Now, you can call this class warfare all you want.<\/span> But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But since Obama\u2019s State of the Union, the president and his press secretary Jay Carney, have been extremely vague about how the Buffett Rule should be implemented.<\/span> After yesterday, we now know why.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Last month, Sen. Sheldon Whithouse, D-R.I., introduced a bill that actually did translate Obama\u2019s Buffett rule into law, requiring a minimum 30 percent tax rate for the highest U.S. earners. Yesterday, the Joint Committee on Taxation released two revenue estimates of the legislation. The first, found that over 11 years Obama\u2019s Buffett rule would raise just $31 billion. JTC was then asked to re-score the bill.<\/span> They did. This time they made more generous assumptions about how much income wealthy individuals would shield from taxation.<\/span> The new verdict: the bill would raise $47 billion over 11 years<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How much is $47 billion over 11 years? Well, in FY 2012 the federal government is expected to spend $3.63 trillion dollars, otherwise known as $9.9 billion a day. In other words, the center piece of Obama\u2019s wealth redistributing tax plan would take 11 years to pay for less than 5 days of federal government spending<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At $47 billion over 11 years, it is clear that the Buffett rule has nothing to do with fairness, common sense, or reducing the debt.<\/span> Thanks to Sen. Whitehouse and the JTC we now know it is nothing more than election year class warfare rhetoric<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Obama claims to be a Christian; but perhaps, like so much else in Scripture, the Reverend Wrong’s version of the Good Book omits the Tenth Commandment…..you know,….Thou shalt not covet?!?\u00a0 Der Fuhrer had it right: “If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next up, writing in the WSJ<\/em>, Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe ask….<\/strong><\/p>\n

What Do Republicans Believe?<\/span><\/h1>\n

In 2004 the GOP establishment backed Arlen Specter, providing the 60th Senate vote for ObamaCare. Why are the bigwigs urging a similar strategy again?<\/span><\/h3>\n

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Republicans seem particularly prone to doing the same thing again and again, expecting a different result.<\/strong><\/span> While grass-roots Americans seem more committed than ever to taking their country back from an entrenched political class, particularly those occupying the White House and the U.S. Senate, GOP cognoscenti seem reluctant to offer voters a clear choice in 2012.<\/p>\n

President Obama’s re-election campaign is doubling down on the failed economic policies of tax, spend, borrow and print. It’s leaving little doubt in voters’ minds where the aggressively progressive Democratic Party stands.<\/p>\n

But what do Republicans believe in?<\/strong><\/span> The party’s “experts” are retrenching to the defeatist view that a commitment to economic freedom and constitutionally limited government, particularly among the foot soldiers of the tea party, is a political liability. Indiana’s Sen. Richard Lugar even claims that “Republicans lost the seats [in 2010] in Nevada and New Jersey and Colorado where there were people who were claiming they wanted somebody who was more of their tea party aspect\u2014but they killed off the Republican majority.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The 36-year incumbent presumably meant to say Delaware, not New Jersey. But what Senate majority was killed off<\/em><\/span>?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Before a resurgent commitment to principle from the bottom up, and the emergence of a new generation of fiscally conservative candidates turned things around, the party brass was trimming its sails. In the spring of 2010, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), seemed resigned to the prospect of a 60-vote Democratic supermajority. “We’ve not only got to play defense,” he said, “we’ve got to claw our way back in 2010. It’ll be a huge challenge.”<\/p>\n

Establishment strategists have always relied on conventional thinking when it comes to voter turnout. So they embrace candidates based on shortsighted partisan political criteria, and not on long-term public policy grounds.<\/span> This was the logic that saved Arlen Specter in 2004 against the insurgent Pennsylvania primary challenge of Pat Toomey.<\/span> Six years later, Mr. Specter would switch parties and provide the 60th vote for ObamaCare.<\/span> Even then, the GOP establishment showed little remorse about, and even less interest in, Mr. Toomey. “I don’t think there is anybody in the world who believes he can get elected senator there<\/em><\/span>,” said NRSC co-chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This same logic also produced an NRSC endorsement of Republican-in-name-only Charlie Crist against Marco Rubio in Florida’s 2010 Senate primary.<\/span> At the time, Mr. Crist’s primary accomplishment as governor was the unilateral implementation of Al Gore’s radical cap-and-trade agenda.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Could it be that product differentiation\u2014candidates who actually believe that the government is spending too much and stifling economic recovery with heavy-handed intrusions\u2014might bring new customers out to vote?<\/p>\n

We wouldn’t even be talking about a Republican majority in the Senate today if the tea party hadn’t bucked Beltway wisdom by backing strong fiscal conservatives in 2010.<\/strong><\/span> FreedomWorks-endorsed candidates took five races ranked as “toss-ups” by political pundit Charlie Cook: Mr. Toomey, John Boozman in Arkansas, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and Rob Portman in Ohio. Then there was Ron Johnson’s victory in Wisconsin, in a race where Mr. Cook once ranked him as a “solid D.” NRSC favorite Mr. Crist, meanwhile, abandoned the GOP and was promptly crushed by Mr. Rubio, by 19 points<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Today it seems like d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again.<\/strong><\/span> Establishmentarians once more are lecturing activists and candidates\u2014those who, in the words of Rand Paul, “actually believe in limited government and individual freedom”\u2014on the practical limits of principles in politics. Sen. Lugar, facing a serious grass-roots challenge from Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, recycles the arguments once used by Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter: “If I was not the nominee it might be lost<\/span><\/em>.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What is the point of politics anyway? Is it really about power for power’s sake?<\/span> Or are we trying to fix the very real economic problems facing Americans trying to find jobs?<\/span> Is it about “holding a seat”?<\/span> Or about whether we can still provide better, freer futures for our children and grandchildren?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Does anyone really believe that settling for more of the same will create a Republican majority with the principles and practical skills required to replace ObamaCare with a patient-centered approach? To stop the EPA’s destruction of American energy markets? To scrap the tax code, reform our broken entitlements, and balance the budget? Can 36-year incumbents now dismantle the big government they helped build? Are we going to once again do the same thing, expecting different results<\/em><\/span>?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In closely watched Senate races, the top tea party candidates are state treasurers who have successfully won statewide elections. Mr. Mourdock won re-election in 2010 with 63% of the vote. Don Stenberg won in Nebraska in 2010 with 73% of the vote. Josh Mandel won 55-40 in 2010, receiving more votes than anyone else running for a statewide office in Ohio. Maybe voters are looking for someone with actual government-finance experience?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Building on the historic successes of 2010, we have an opportunity to take control of the Senate and dramatically increase the ranks of entrepreneurial fiscal conservatives, creating a dynamic new majority within the majority. That means taking on incumbents who have abandoned their principles. It means fighting for compelling candidates in primaries, like Ted Cruz in Texas. It means winning races in key battlegrounds like Florida, where Rep. Connie Mack is emerging as the most able fiscal conservative, and Ohio.<\/p>\n

Our thinking is simple: When we act like us, <\/em>we win<\/em><\/span>. When we act like them<\/span>, we lose<\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And deservedly so!<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a related item, another member of The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight demonstrates the current crop of GOP campaigners unerring ability to strike the only target they seem consistently capable of hitting….<\/strong><\/p>\n