An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. Private sector jobs. That's where everything starts, and that's what everything else hangs from.The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.
Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say "First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love."
Maybe We Need a Brokered Convention to Get This Guy Back in the Race
From Mitch Daniel's rebuttal to the 2012 (as well as the 2011 and 2010) SOTU address:
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5 comments:
Jobs are important, but I'm not sure they're quite the alpha and omega. Even with a robust and successful job-growth plan, you're still going to have to reform entitlements and Federal pensions. Even if you can make that robust jobs picture happen alongside tax increases, you're not going to get where we need to be without those reforms.
It strikes me that a return to principles is what we need. Constitutional principles of government go a long way to addressing entitlements; and a moral understanding of the role of government also ensure that the value of the dollar remains steady, so that we don't end up destroying private wealth in order to destroy public debt.
And even then, there's still the demographic picture... which lies at the feet of another set of principles we've lost sight of over the years.
Jobs are good, certainly. We definitely need more, and they should be a priority. However, there remain many broken things even if we get the economy right again.
Assuming Mr. Daniels is selected, what are you going to do, when all the talking heads start murmuring about all the nameless women they can use to derail the guy's candidacy?
There's a reason why Jimmy Carter invoked Lee Atwater when he was busy accusing Newt of using racist code words. There is a section of the party at the national level that thinks that Lee Atwater's sins justify any subsequent lie, and they have found out that if they just fling enough dirt, justified or not, some of it will stick.
There is a portion of the Republican party that will use the same technique for political gain against fellow Republicans, regardless of the lack of factual basis.
The American people have, from time to time, elected a flawed candidate, including an admitted adulterer, and including to the Presidency, for the purpose of pushing back against the parties' use of this kind of information, particularly in an era of corruption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland
Valerie
I need to clarify that I do no assume that Mr. Daniels is an adulterer. I know for a fact that the present administration has a history of soliciting and publicizing, anonymous accusations of adultery. I also know what the police know: when there is a high publicity situation, people unrelated to a given crime will come forward and confess to it.
Mr. Daniels need never have misbehaved for the Obama supporters to get 5 nameless women to come forward, and claim he did.
Valerie
Jobs are important, but I'm not sure they're quite the alpha and omega.
They aren't, but I think it's a question of order. With jobs, everyone has more money--those more people (to coin a phrase) who now have incomes, and government, which now gets more tax revenues from that increased number of taxpayers, without a tax rate increase.
That increased amount of money then makes it easier, politically in government and emotionally with the individuals, to contemplate serious entitlement reform, serious tax rate cuts, serious spending cuts (not necessarily in that order, and definitely not all in the same election cycle).
A large increase in jobs/employment rate won't guarantee any of the follow-on, but a lack will guarantee that the follow-on cannot happen in any useful form.
Mr. Daniels need never have misbehaved for the Obama supporters to get 5 nameless women to come forward, and claim he did.
I'm not sure it would matter a lot this time around. Such smears would come in the footsteps of Clinton's misbehaviors, factually demonstrated, and on the heels of the smears of Cain and the attempted blowing up of Gingrich. It may be that the Republicans will have figured out how to respond to such things by this summer; it may also be that the voting public will have learned the nature of the smears and give them no credibility and/or simply be tired of such distractions and pay them no mind.
Eric Hines
Frankly, I'm still hoping for Judd Gregg.
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