Movement in poll averages for eight Senate races over the last week overwhelmingly favored Republican candidates, affirming the prevailing wisdom that a stiff wind is blowing and gaining force that will make the elections this fall very difficult for Democrats.
The GOP still faces an enormous uphill climb to take back control of the Senate. Republican candidates lead in only 5 of the 10 Democratic-held seats they would need to win to gain the majority. But a Republican Senate is not outside the realm of possibility, since their candidates are within striking distance in enough races that a perfect storm could sweep them in.
Two Democrats – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal – saw their leads over Republican candidates reduced. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running as an independent but is expected to caucus with Democrats if he wins and they retain the majority – also saw his lead over Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio downsized. And four Republican candidates saw their advantages increase.
One Republican candidate – Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois – saw his slim 2.3 point lead of a week ago, as measured by the Real Clear Politics average, dissolve. RCP moved Kirk’s contest with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the state treasurer who benefitted from President Obama’s Aug. 5 fundraiser, to a toss up.
Showing posts with label Republican Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican Party. Show all posts
Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
His new book will enable George Bush to elbow his way into the headlines just in time to muddy a conservative GOP message
George Bush has positioned himself as the author of this year's October Surprise. To surprise us, however, he would have to come across as a conservative, and nothing in his past suggests such an unlikely course.
He has not received the discredit he deserves for the sorry condition of the American economy, the gigantism of its government, or the high-handedness that Washington officials demonstrate toward American citizens and state and local institutions on a daily basis.
We are where we are because Bush took it upon himself, as president, to destroy the traditional housing market so that banks, other financial institutions, and two hiring halls for out-of-work Democrats, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could compassionately distribute house mortgages to anyone who asked.
The vehicle for Bush's largesse, the Community Reinvestment Act, had already been in effect for 23 years when Bush assumed the presidency in 2001. In truth, however, it had never amounted to much, as is apparent in the accompanying illustration. That soon changed, as Bush called for higher and higher increases in home ownership.
Some questions remain unanswered. Why, for instance, was it compassionate to encourage borrowers to obtain mortgages when there was little or no chance that the borrowers could keep up the monthly payments?
Once the housing bubble had materialized, why was it compassionate to continue pushing out high-risk mortgages given the likelihood of an eventual bursting of the bubble?
In deliberately destroying a traditional housing market that had relied largely on local lenders who could assess credit worthiness, Bush and his allies contravened free market principles that were central to the founding. Through elections and commerce, the founders left it to individuals and families to determine who had power, what was produced, and who was eligible to borrow money.
Bush's free-wheeling, high-risk mortgage bazaar ran directly counter to that carefully crafted system.
Now, while still reeling from the housing market collapse, we have to contend with an even more anti-market regime that believes government knows best, even as Arlington National Cemetery tries to correcr errors by matching corpses with the correct headstones.
While the arrogance, fascism and incompetence of the Obama administration is annoying, to say the least, it is having the effect anticipated by the founders. Free market, small government conservatives are again ascendant in the Republican Party, while the Tea Party provides strong conservative voices inside and outside the party.
Republicans appear to be heading for triumph in the November election.
So, the question arises: why is Bush publishing his book, Decision Points, shortly after the election, knowing that the publisher will start isssuing teasers to build interest in the book weeks earlier, during the campaign? A president known, and sometimes reviled, as a Big Government, big spending Republican apostate will elbow his way into the headlines at a time when a chastised Republican Party, under the watchful eye of the Tea Party, has a chance to return to power and place a tether on runaway government.
By doing so, Bush will muddy the Republican message, perhaps deliberately. After all, if the Republican Party makes a right turn, no more Bushes will be elected president. Conservatism is not to be found in their genes.
Steve Sailer in VDare.com
...the Community Reinvestment Act was negligible until the 1990s. And it was still small potatoes until the Clinton “reforms” of 1995 and the rise of well-organized pressure groups of the kind affiliated with the NCRC.
But the biggest flood of CRA assurances came during the presidency of George W. Bush, who repeatedly called in 2002-2004 for 5.5 million more minority homeowners by 2010. Cumulative bank pledges (typically doled out over ten years) grew from $1.85 trillion in 2002 to $4.20 trillion in 2004.
Indeed, total CRA commitments increased by $1.63 trillion in 2004 alone, the first year of the Housing Bubble.
(snip)
In 2004 alone, banks publicly promised to lend over the next decade to CRA-qualified minority and lower income neighborhoods the sum of $1,630,000,000,000.00.
That’s a big number.
And those kind of numbers put a lot of upward pressure on home prices as they got incorporated into expectations. Not surprisingly, the subsequent mortgage defaults that plunged the world into economic crisis are disproportionately concentrated in CRA-covered minority and lower income communities.
Using the NCRC’s data, I created this more readable graph to show CRA agreements by year from 1977-2004:
...the CRA has contributed to the mortgage disaster through a more subtle “selection effect”.
Assume there are two distinct kinds of bankers:
Optimists who think lending more money to CRA-approved folks will turn out to be profitable.
Pessimists who don’t.
Of course, there are always a lot of people in the middle without strong opinions who will go with the flow toward whichever camp seems to be gaining in money, power, and popularity.
If you were a Pessimist who didn’t believe that the government’s favored borrowers were likely to pay their mortgages, the CRA couldn’t make you lend to them. But if you didn’t play ball with the CRA, you couldn’t buy other banks, which is the easiest way for a bank to get big.
And the CEOs of big banks get paid more:
"There continues to be a high correlation between CEO compensation and bank asset size, and no correlation with three-year [earnings-per-share] growth and shareholder returns,’ Citigroup banking analyst Ruchi Madan wrote in a May 6, 2005 report on bank executive pay.”[Are reforms working? Experts say link between pay, performance is lacking, By Len Boselovic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 15, 2005]
See how it works?
Not surprisingly, over the years the CRA’s chokehold on mergers changed the culture of banking. The most powerful and highest paid executives publicly saluted the CRA, while the CEOs who thought it was politically correct nonsense were relegated to the sidelines in the great game of mergers and acquisitions.
The optimists who agreed with Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama that “underserved” minorities would somehow come up with the scratch to pay off their mortgages were allowed to build empires, while the pessimists were not. Those in the middle camp went with the flow and started believing the CRA propaganda.
Q. Whom do we want to win: the Optimists or the Pessimists?
A. Neither! We want a financial system in which the realists succeed and wind up in positions of power. Whether the realists will turn out to be this moment’s Optimists or the Pessimists is not something we should decide ahead of time.
But, that’s exactly what the Community Reinvestment Act does. It puts the government’s thumb heavily on the scale on the side of the Optimists, with, as we’ve seen, catastrophic results.
It’s time to repeal the CRA.
And it’s long past time to recognize the reality of human differences.
In 2006, commenting on Iraq, I wrote:
“Not for the first time, our public class’s refusal to think rationally about race and ethnic differences had resulted in bad—in this case, catastrophic—public policy.”
He has not received the discredit he deserves for the sorry condition of the American economy, the gigantism of its government, or the high-handedness that Washington officials demonstrate toward American citizens and state and local institutions on a daily basis.
We are where we are because Bush took it upon himself, as president, to destroy the traditional housing market so that banks, other financial institutions, and two hiring halls for out-of-work Democrats, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could compassionately distribute house mortgages to anyone who asked.
The vehicle for Bush's largesse, the Community Reinvestment Act, had already been in effect for 23 years when Bush assumed the presidency in 2001. In truth, however, it had never amounted to much, as is apparent in the accompanying illustration. That soon changed, as Bush called for higher and higher increases in home ownership.
Some questions remain unanswered. Why, for instance, was it compassionate to encourage borrowers to obtain mortgages when there was little or no chance that the borrowers could keep up the monthly payments?
Once the housing bubble had materialized, why was it compassionate to continue pushing out high-risk mortgages given the likelihood of an eventual bursting of the bubble?
In deliberately destroying a traditional housing market that had relied largely on local lenders who could assess credit worthiness, Bush and his allies contravened free market principles that were central to the founding. Through elections and commerce, the founders left it to individuals and families to determine who had power, what was produced, and who was eligible to borrow money.
Bush's free-wheeling, high-risk mortgage bazaar ran directly counter to that carefully crafted system.
Now, while still reeling from the housing market collapse, we have to contend with an even more anti-market regime that believes government knows best, even as Arlington National Cemetery tries to correcr errors by matching corpses with the correct headstones.
While the arrogance, fascism and incompetence of the Obama administration is annoying, to say the least, it is having the effect anticipated by the founders. Free market, small government conservatives are again ascendant in the Republican Party, while the Tea Party provides strong conservative voices inside and outside the party.
Republicans appear to be heading for triumph in the November election.
So, the question arises: why is Bush publishing his book, Decision Points, shortly after the election, knowing that the publisher will start isssuing teasers to build interest in the book weeks earlier, during the campaign? A president known, and sometimes reviled, as a Big Government, big spending Republican apostate will elbow his way into the headlines at a time when a chastised Republican Party, under the watchful eye of the Tea Party, has a chance to return to power and place a tether on runaway government.
By doing so, Bush will muddy the Republican message, perhaps deliberately. After all, if the Republican Party makes a right turn, no more Bushes will be elected president. Conservatism is not to be found in their genes.
Steve Sailer in VDare.com
...the Community Reinvestment Act was negligible until the 1990s. And it was still small potatoes until the Clinton “reforms” of 1995 and the rise of well-organized pressure groups of the kind affiliated with the NCRC.
But the biggest flood of CRA assurances came during the presidency of George W. Bush, who repeatedly called in 2002-2004 for 5.5 million more minority homeowners by 2010. Cumulative bank pledges (typically doled out over ten years) grew from $1.85 trillion in 2002 to $4.20 trillion in 2004.
Indeed, total CRA commitments increased by $1.63 trillion in 2004 alone, the first year of the Housing Bubble.
(snip)
In 2004 alone, banks publicly promised to lend over the next decade to CRA-qualified minority and lower income neighborhoods the sum of $1,630,000,000,000.00.
That’s a big number.
And those kind of numbers put a lot of upward pressure on home prices as they got incorporated into expectations. Not surprisingly, the subsequent mortgage defaults that plunged the world into economic crisis are disproportionately concentrated in CRA-covered minority and lower income communities.
Using the NCRC’s data, I created this more readable graph to show CRA agreements by year from 1977-2004:
...the CRA has contributed to the mortgage disaster through a more subtle “selection effect”.
Assume there are two distinct kinds of bankers:
Optimists who think lending more money to CRA-approved folks will turn out to be profitable.
Pessimists who don’t.
Of course, there are always a lot of people in the middle without strong opinions who will go with the flow toward whichever camp seems to be gaining in money, power, and popularity.
If you were a Pessimist who didn’t believe that the government’s favored borrowers were likely to pay their mortgages, the CRA couldn’t make you lend to them. But if you didn’t play ball with the CRA, you couldn’t buy other banks, which is the easiest way for a bank to get big.
And the CEOs of big banks get paid more:
"There continues to be a high correlation between CEO compensation and bank asset size, and no correlation with three-year [earnings-per-share] growth and shareholder returns,’ Citigroup banking analyst Ruchi Madan wrote in a May 6, 2005 report on bank executive pay.”[Are reforms working? Experts say link between pay, performance is lacking, By Len Boselovic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 15, 2005]
See how it works?
Not surprisingly, over the years the CRA’s chokehold on mergers changed the culture of banking. The most powerful and highest paid executives publicly saluted the CRA, while the CEOs who thought it was politically correct nonsense were relegated to the sidelines in the great game of mergers and acquisitions.
The optimists who agreed with Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama that “underserved” minorities would somehow come up with the scratch to pay off their mortgages were allowed to build empires, while the pessimists were not. Those in the middle camp went with the flow and started believing the CRA propaganda.
Q. Whom do we want to win: the Optimists or the Pessimists?
A. Neither! We want a financial system in which the realists succeed and wind up in positions of power. Whether the realists will turn out to be this moment’s Optimists or the Pessimists is not something we should decide ahead of time.
But, that’s exactly what the Community Reinvestment Act does. It puts the government’s thumb heavily on the scale on the side of the Optimists, with, as we’ve seen, catastrophic results.
It’s time to repeal the CRA.
And it’s long past time to recognize the reality of human differences.
In 2006, commenting on Iraq, I wrote:
“Not for the first time, our public class’s refusal to think rationally about race and ethnic differences had resulted in bad—in this case, catastrophic—public policy.”
Monday, February 15, 2010
Call it the Scott Brown Revival; rejuvenated Republicans organizing in Democrat heartland
The state’s loneliest Republicans - those who languish in the navy blue regions from Northampton to Nantucket - are shaking off their years-long malaise and rebuilding a political machine in the land of Birkenstocks and Priuses.
“People are coming out of the woodwork saying, ‘We’ve been Republicans in hiding and now we want to be out and help,’ ” said Jeffrey Hopkins, chairman of the City Republican Committee in the old Democratic union stronghold of Fall River.
In the wake of Scott Brown’s victory in his Senate campaign versus Martha Coakley, a surge in interest in the GOP has come from longtime Republicans, independents, Tea Party activists and even Democrats, dazzling many organizers.
“It was not a team that anybody wanted to join,” said Larry Giunta, 41, chairman of Newburyport Republican City Committee, which grew from zero members to 60 in one year, thanks to organization and Brown’s win. “The days of meeting in the basement of your local library and having two or three people show up are over.”
The GOP is organizing across Boston, the heart of the Democratic Party’s network in the state. This past year, Republican ward committees reorganized in traditionally Democratic Southie, Charlestown and Dorchester.
“Since Scott Brown, the interest has exploded,” said Karen MacNutt of Dorchester, who took over Boston’s Republican City Committee, which, until November, had not met in five years
“People are coming out of the woodwork saying, ‘We’ve been Republicans in hiding and now we want to be out and help,’ ” said Jeffrey Hopkins, chairman of the City Republican Committee in the old Democratic union stronghold of Fall River.
In the wake of Scott Brown’s victory in his Senate campaign versus Martha Coakley, a surge in interest in the GOP has come from longtime Republicans, independents, Tea Party activists and even Democrats, dazzling many organizers.
“It was not a team that anybody wanted to join,” said Larry Giunta, 41, chairman of Newburyport Republican City Committee, which grew from zero members to 60 in one year, thanks to organization and Brown’s win. “The days of meeting in the basement of your local library and having two or three people show up are over.”
The GOP is organizing across Boston, the heart of the Democratic Party’s network in the state. This past year, Republican ward committees reorganized in traditionally Democratic Southie, Charlestown and Dorchester.
“Since Scott Brown, the interest has exploded,” said Karen MacNutt of Dorchester, who took over Boston’s Republican City Committee, which, until November, had not met in five years
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
GOP needs a shadow president who's an expert at rescuing failing enterprises: that's Romney
With the Republican Party riddled with self-doubt, uncertain of its future path, and lacking a broadly accepted leader, it's time for one of its presidential aspirants to take a bold step forward.
For want of an established post, let's call him the shadow president. If he were to perform well, he would get a leg up on the field of Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in 2012.
While it is not my purpose to pick the shadow president, the Obama administration's performance to date points to one man, Mitt Romney. The son of one-time Michigan Gov. George Romney, who also was an auto industry executive, Mitt Romney became rich and famous by recognizing undervalued assets and liberating things of value in failed or failing corporations.
Doesn't that sound like a good job description for the next president?
The situation is so dire, after all, that officials of two relics of Communism, Russia and China, are urging the U.S. government to exercise caution as it piles up previously unthinkable levels of debt
Along with its nuclear arsenal, Russia's partnership with the United States on space exploration is one of its few remaining claims to world status.
For China, the United States is a major market as well as a source of stolen military advances, such as the stealth propellor system for submarines. China also is the leading buyer of U.S. bonds, and that investment becomes more risky as the U.S. debt, and the chance of default, grows at an unprecedented rate.
Whether China values the United States most as a market, or as a mahufacturer of advanced military systems that China can steal, is not clear.
In the absence of a shadow president, the most effective political class spokesman for conservatism has been former vice-president Dick Cheney. But Cheney's strengths are military and foreign affairs, and he is unlikely to retain an official role in future years.
So who do we have who can revive a damaged and dispirited nation that will not have recourse to a bankruptcy court?
The obvious choice is Romney, whose academic career surpasses President Obama's and who earned a fortune as a skilled scavenger prowling through the boneyards of corporate America. Estimates of his net worth run as high as $500 million. Liberals will pillory him for that, but respect for success may make a comeback as the prospect of America's failure looms.
A graduate of Brigham Young, where he was valedictorian, Romney subsequently earned a joint doctoral/master's degree from Harvard's law and business schools. Success in business led, in early 1999, to a summons to rescue the failing 2002 Olympics Winter Games in Salt Lake City. With Romney at the held, the Olympics recovered from a huge deficit to earn a profit of $100 million.
Romney donated his $825,000 salary to charity.
The turnarnound led to a successful campaign for governor of Massachusetts, where he served one term before seeking rhe Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Now that American business is falling more and more under the heavy hand of an arrogant, fascistic government that is running up trillions of dollars in new debt, perhaps it's time for a new approach to candidate selection.
Let the job that is to be done define the candidate. As of now, the job at hand points to an experienced, successful turnaround specialist.
For want of an established post, let's call him the shadow president. If he were to perform well, he would get a leg up on the field of Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in 2012.
While it is not my purpose to pick the shadow president, the Obama administration's performance to date points to one man, Mitt Romney. The son of one-time Michigan Gov. George Romney, who also was an auto industry executive, Mitt Romney became rich and famous by recognizing undervalued assets and liberating things of value in failed or failing corporations.
Doesn't that sound like a good job description for the next president?
The situation is so dire, after all, that officials of two relics of Communism, Russia and China, are urging the U.S. government to exercise caution as it piles up previously unthinkable levels of debt
Along with its nuclear arsenal, Russia's partnership with the United States on space exploration is one of its few remaining claims to world status.
For China, the United States is a major market as well as a source of stolen military advances, such as the stealth propellor system for submarines. China also is the leading buyer of U.S. bonds, and that investment becomes more risky as the U.S. debt, and the chance of default, grows at an unprecedented rate.
Whether China values the United States most as a market, or as a mahufacturer of advanced military systems that China can steal, is not clear.
In the absence of a shadow president, the most effective political class spokesman for conservatism has been former vice-president Dick Cheney. But Cheney's strengths are military and foreign affairs, and he is unlikely to retain an official role in future years.
So who do we have who can revive a damaged and dispirited nation that will not have recourse to a bankruptcy court?
The obvious choice is Romney, whose academic career surpasses President Obama's and who earned a fortune as a skilled scavenger prowling through the boneyards of corporate America. Estimates of his net worth run as high as $500 million. Liberals will pillory him for that, but respect for success may make a comeback as the prospect of America's failure looms.
A graduate of Brigham Young, where he was valedictorian, Romney subsequently earned a joint doctoral/master's degree from Harvard's law and business schools. Success in business led, in early 1999, to a summons to rescue the failing 2002 Olympics Winter Games in Salt Lake City. With Romney at the held, the Olympics recovered from a huge deficit to earn a profit of $100 million.
Romney donated his $825,000 salary to charity.
The turnarnound led to a successful campaign for governor of Massachusetts, where he served one term before seeking rhe Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Now that American business is falling more and more under the heavy hand of an arrogant, fascistic government that is running up trillions of dollars in new debt, perhaps it's time for a new approach to candidate selection.
Let the job that is to be done define the candidate. As of now, the job at hand points to an experienced, successful turnaround specialist.
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