If we had a GOP, we wouldn’t have a President BHO

Every so often, the newly sworn in President Barack Obama said back on January 20th, the oath of office “is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.” Setting aside Obama’s attempt to improve on the famous “dark and stormy night” line by fiction writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the first six weeks of Obama’s presidency has ushered in just the kind of change people weren’t exactly hoping for.

Unfortunately for those of us who knew Obama was going to be bad news, the Republican Party failed us again. In fact, it’s my view that the Republican Party hasn’t had a good field of presidential candidates since 1988. While some worthy and accomplished individuals have stepped up to run, none of them had enough of what it took to lead the nation in the right direction.

Sadly, this is the same problem faced all too often at the state and local level. This is the reason I emphasize the need for the construction of a genuine Republican Party. Without such a party, we’ll never see better candidates step up to run at any level. Everything that good candidates need to win – message, manpower, and money – can flow from local and state GOP organizations. National campaigns can build upon that.

That first one – “message” – has never been as critical as it is right now. As the main stream media slowly dies, the opportunity is growing for township, ward, county, and state Republican efforts to fill the informational gap that is being created.

If anyone believes voters are receiving enough accurate information about the major public policy challenges we’re facing – well, I’ll just have to disagree.

For those Americans who take the time to seek out news and analysis, this is a golden age. Never before have there been greater resources available – much with the point and click of a computer mouse.

For those who aren’t as interested – or are just lacking in time due to a busy life – Jay Leno’s “man on the street” interviews reveal just how much work is ahead. People have the capability to take in the right information – they’re just not getting it, as Leno’s clips continually reveal.

I emphasizes the difficult work ahead – we need a renaissance and reformation involving a lot of Americans who haven’t yet actively engaged in politics. Our hope – is that the change in their personal financial bottom line will inspire them to step up.

We not only need better candidates running for President of the United States, but for every office. And those candidates will need all the help they can get to spread their message and win support for positive (as opposed to negative) change.

Six weeks into the Administration of Mr. Hope and Change, articles like the ones below are becoming ever more prevalent. It’s early of course, but make no mistake: the dark and stormy night is upon us. Join in the work to create a Republican Party that will insure the Era of Obama ends on January 20, 2013.

What follows are a few excerpts from American opinion writers during the past week.

Pitchfork Time

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“In his campaign and inaugural address, Barack Obama cast himself as a moderate man seeking common ground with conservatives.

Yet, his budget calls for the radical restructuring of the U.S. economy, a sweeping redistribution of power and wealth to government and Democratic constituencies…

Where the U.S. government usually consumes 21 percent of gross domestic product, this Obama budget spends 28 percent in 2009 and runs a deficit of $1.75 trillion, or 12.7 percent of GDP. That is four times the largest deficit of George W. Bush and twice as large a share of the economy as any deficit run since World War II…

We are not “headed down the road to socialism.” We are there… The president says he is gearing up for a fight on his budget. Good. Let’s give him one.”

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How Many Entrepreneurs Can Government Create?

By Steven Malanga

“In his address to Congress last week, President Obama acknowledged the vital role entrepreneurs play in our economy when he said that the answers to our problems lie at least partially ‘in the imaginations’ of these enterprising souls…

A few days later, however, the President released a new budget with sharply higher tax rates for upper income households, which will ultimately mean higher taxes on entrepreneurial earnings, and higher taxes on the capital that finances start-ups.

Entrepreneurs who heard what the president said, and then saw his budget, can be excused for recalling what T.S. Eliot once observed in a different context: ‘Between the word and the deed falls the shadow.’

Lately, America’s entrepreneurs are wondering just how dark the shadow will get for them. And the rest of us should wonder what kind of an impact our federal policies will have on entrepreneurial activity, and by extension on the economy in general.”

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The Innovation Squelch

Obamanomics is bad news for American entrepreneurs.

By James Manzi

“For an academic macroeconomist, Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps can sound shockingly in touch with the real world. In a recent interview, he described the possible implications of the large government-spending programs in President Obama’s stimulus package:

“There’s . . . a chance that the perceived increase in the role of government of this sort will have some unanticipated effects on the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.”

In fact, not only the stimulus package itself, but the higher taxes that it will require-both tax increases explicitly proposed in the president’s budget and the expectation of large future tax increases because we’re paying for all this spending with the national credit card-are likely to reduce the number of entrepreneurs in America.”

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Barack Obama bets the farm in $4 trillion poker game

The President believes he can change US politics for a generation. If he’s wrong he could bankrupt the whole country.

By Tim Reid

One of the most seductive elements of Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House was his unshakeable conviction that he was being called upon, at a time of epochal peril, to bend the arc of history America’s way.

Only a candidate possessed with such boldness and self-belief would have challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination two years after leaving the Illinois state senate, promising in his first campaign speech to “transform a nation and usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth”.

Only a man who frequently compares himself to America’s greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, would declare that when he was elected, “the rise of the oceans will begin to slow”. Only someone who believes that America is on the crest of a dangerous historic wave – and that he “can help guide it” – would have undertaken a glitzy world tour midway through the campaign…

There is still a significant chance that the scale of debt involved could devour Mr Obama’s presidency.”

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