House of Eratosthenes

Oh, my. Has any rule been more thoroughly shot full of exceptions than this one about “it’s way too early to talk about 2012”? Now we talk about Obama somehow becoming a two-termer:

Collective wisdom (and wishful group-think) among Republicans is that Obama will be a one-term president. “One & Done” is a rallying cry with the merchandise to match.

Not so fast my friends — as Obama’s victorious lame duck session proves, never underestimate this president or the power of the presidency.

Obama does not take defeat easily and tends to recycle negative energy into fuel for his re-launch. Obama’s re-launch plans for 2011 include spending more time outside of Washington “engaging with the public,” according to a top White House adviser. This is in reaction to criticism of him for being aloof and disconnected from the great unwashed masses.

So as the president re-engages the public, the media will be there to chronicle glowing accounts of every backyard summit. We can watch as Obama’s two-year road to re-election is paved with re-kindled love between the “lamestream” media and “The Anointed One” version 2.0. And we on the opposing team will shake our heads in disgust as our GOP candidates get lambasted in the media for every small infraction from their past and present.
:
Question: How do Republicans make their way back from 173 to 270?

Answer: With much difficulty.

I have an answer for this.

Let the battle-of-personalities go. Even better, just admit defeat there. Obama, on His most audacious, stuck-up, snobbish day under the sun, is warmer and more personable than any challenger that can be stacked up against Him.

Repeat after me, challenging candidate: Yes, President Obama, you’re a much better person than I am. More fun, more compassionate, maybe even smarter. But my ideas are the ones the country needs right now.

Have democrats ever won a battle on the field of ideas? Yes, they have…when the ideas have something to do with giving money away. They get votes from Paul when they steal from Peter to pay him. Right now, the people are sick and tired of it — even the Pauls, I daresay. The objective in 2012 is to keep them fed up.

The challenge that rises up, is: Redistribution becomes appealing, and rather quickly, when people suffer too much. Paradoxically, the more dreadful Obama’s redistribution ideas are, the more people suffer, the quicker they get over their revulsion against policies for redistribution. They will start to crave that which previously poisoned them.

I think, though, that deep down people are honest. And when honest people see the game has been rigged and warped, and it didn’t come out right, they’ll start to make the connection. They’ll start to think, maybe we’ve been given a lesson here. Maybe we should have played it straight. That’s the sentiment that has to endure. If it does, Obama can pack His bags.

But in the end, I think it’ll all come down to one thing: How many people did the 112th Congress piss off?

I think what I’m concerned about is this.

Let’s say the new Republican House actually appears to “take to heart” the message ostensibly sent by the Tea Party and the rest of the voting public in the last election: Get a handle on spending, lower taxes, drive government back into its proper boundaries.

Let’s say that they pass several bills which collectively do this to one extent or another, get them through the Senate, and Obama (so as to appear to be tacking to the center and making compromises with the Republicans) signs them.

Let’s further postulate that as a result of this new fiscal sanity, the economy begins to improve significantly over its present state and appears to be well on the road to recovery by the time of the 2012 presidential election.

Take a wild guess. Who do you think is going to get the credit for that, and who do you think is going to get re-elected by millions of grateful voters…polls of which have shown again and again that jobs and the economy are #1 on the list of national concerns?

I have noticed that the American voter has an annoying tendency (and even more annoyingly, California voters specifically, but that’s another rant)…to presume that the president (or in CA’s case, the governor) is all-powerful and deserves all the credit (or blame) for every tiny thing that happens while he’s president – especially as concerns the economy. The annoying tendency – and I see this attitude displayed again and again on the comment section of peoples blogs, especially among liberal and moderate commentors – is to make this logically-fallacious post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc (or is it non sequitor?) assumption that the president writes spending and taxation bills, passes them, signs them, and implements them – all apparently with no input whatsoever from either house of Congress.

The regulars here (and of course Morgan himself) are politically astute enough to know this is utter nonsense, but I am VERY reluctant to make that assumption of logical thought when it comes to the general public. There is a HUGE contingent of the electorate – ranging anywhere from the middle 20-60% of the overall vote – that doesn’t seem to pay a dime’s worth of attention to how all this works.

(I mentioned California because I happen to think this phenomenon played a huge role in the GOP losing the Governor’s office in November. Ah-nold is a Republican, the economy sucks, so it must be the Republicans’ fault. So let’s put a Democrat in the chair and see what happens. The presidency is no different.)

The bottom line is that if the economy improves because of actions of the Republican congress, Obama’s going to get the credit and therefore, four more years. And you know perfectly well how the drive-by state-run media is going to paint the picture for the gullible public. Remember, we’re talking about viewers who get their news from the likes of The Daily Show and think Jon Stewart is some kind of modern-day Walter Cronkite.

I think the House’s best course of action is to stay true to the Tea Party-ish agenda, avoid any semblance of compromise with Obama, and let him drown while continuing to push his hard left agenda. At least that way when the economy tanks, the public won’t be so united in giving him all the credit.

In a way, it would have been better if our big takeover had been postponed two more years, though yes, I shudder to think of how much more damage Pelosi and Reid would do in that amount of time.
- cylarz | 01/04/2011 @ 01:52
Somewhere I likened their understanding of how it all works, to a Hanna-Barbera cartoon complete with the same clump of trees going by every three seconds. I think that captures the quality of it or lack thereof. As far as content…

Well, you start with the goal. We’re trying to make a (more) perfect union, meaning a utopia where nobody ever goes hungry, there’s no disease or war, and when a decision comes up everybody has a say because this is a democracy. In order to get there we have to shut those Republicans up because they keep getting in the way…yeah, we have to make sure some people can’t talk, so we can build this society where everybody can say whatever they want. So the President signs these wonderful bills while Congress sits around and watches. Sometimes Congress has some stuff to do, though, like tell us how super-awesome the President is. And then it becomes our job to figure out what Congress is trying to tell us and believe everything they say. Unless they’re Republicans in which case we should tell them, shut up you stupid Republican and you go home because you stink. And then John Stewart’s job is to tell us all about what happened, because he’s funny.

While all this is going on, it’s super-duper important that we sit down and talk out our differences with our enemies so that we can banish war forever and ever. John Stewart will tell us all about that, too, except we shouldn’t try to find out anything about what’s being said when these people all sit down and talk to each other. All we should care about is that they’re talking. And sitting down. And Republicans suck.

Sometimes a Supreme Court vacancy opens up, and then it’s up to the President to replace the guy that died or is resigning with a woman. She needs to be smart and wise, and we have this reality-teevee show called “The Senate” where they find out how smart and wise she is by letting her tell some jokes. If she’s funny then she can have the job. So you see, it’s really all about everybody doing what they’re supposed to do. The President does everything, Congress watches the President and makes approving sounds, John Stewart tells us what’s going on and makes sure everything he says is funny, the Supreme Court is funny too, and you and I are just supposed to go to work and do our jobs. Oh, on that last one, not really. When you get down to our level, jobs are not things we do; they are things we own. Government works to make sure we get everything we want, and then the government forces these other people called “employers” to hire us and give us medical insurance. And then we sort of just bumble around and watch sporting events and bitch about Republicans.

We don’t act very much like happy healthy people living in a perfect Utopia, but that’s probably because there’s all this work that still has to be done. It is a work in progress. Just watch John Stewart and he’ll tell you how it’s going.

There. You see? Same quality as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
- mkfreeberg | 01/04/2011 @ 07:02

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