New Liberal Spin on Why Voters May Vote for GOP in Midterm: They’re “Schizophrenic”

Here’s the new spin on why voters may be about to vote for the GOP in the Midterm Election – They are “Schizophrenic.” So says Newsweek’s Ezra Klein to a man who ought to know about such things – MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

Klein argues that we have a “schizophrenic voter population” right now who supposedly trust Democrats more on issues but are going to vote for the GOP in the Fall.

After what the Democrats have done with their power over the last couple of years, I think Klein is “whistling past the graveyard” if he thinks voters trust Democrats. Voters are about to vote against the Democrats in a very clear-eyed, understanding way. Not because voters are “schizophrenic,” but because they are sick of the radical agenda of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.

THE LEFT WING SPIRAL TRAP
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on July 7, 2010

Barak Obama faces about the same problem that confronted Bill Clinton in 1994 when he lost control of Congress. In both cases, the Democratic presidents had alienated moderate and conservative voters and found themselves increasingly isolated with a political base of liberals and minorities. In each instance, the president worried that off-year election turnout among their base would be attenuated both because it always is in non-presidential years and because their policy failings had reduced the enthusiasm they found among their base voters. And both men found themselves forced to escalate their rhetoric and move their ideological positions to the left in order to try to drum up the kind of turnout they needed to keep power in Congress.

Clinton failed and Obama will too.

When President Clinton asked me to help him to move to the center to win re-election in 1996, he said “I’ve moved so far to the left that I don’t even recognize myself.” At heart a moderate while Obama is, at core, a leftist, Clinton was alluding to the positions he had to take to keep the support of his liberal House majority. Obama — for whom the further left he drifts the better — has no such qualms but the political impact of his move to the left will be just as fatal for his Congressional majority as it was for Clintons’.

When a president moves leftward, a vicious cycle begins to set in. Driven to raise the intensity of his rhetoric and to take positions further to the extreme, he alienates more and more centrists and moderates, forcing himself to rely more and more on left wing voters. This reliance, in turn, fuels an ever more pronounced leftward drift until he ends up with a vastly diminished political base.

In Obama’s case, his reliance on minority voters adds to the difficulty as he drives racially fair whites to see him as governing primarily in the interests of minority voters.

Obama’s decision to have his Justice Department sue Arizona over its immigration law — despite the fact that American voters back the statute by 2:1 — is the latest illustration of that leftward drift. So is Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to prosecute the Black Panthers who posted themselves at a mixed-race polling place in military uniform with clubs to deter white voters.

The further Obama moves to the left, the more he has to move to the left. And the worse it is for his ability to control Congress.

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Obama’s debt commission warns of fiscal ‘cancer’

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 12, 2010; A02

BOSTON — The co-chairmen of President Obama’s debt and deficit commission offered an ominous assessment of the nation’s fiscal future here Sunday, calling current budgetary trends a cancer “that will destroy the country from within” unless checked by tough action in Washington.
The two leaders — former Republican senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton — sought to build support for the work of the commission, whose recommendations due later this year are likely to spark a fierce debate in Congress.
“There are many who hope we fail,” Simpson said at the closing session of the National Governors Association annual meeting. He called the 18-member commission “good people with deep, deep differences” who know the odds of success “are rather harrowing.”
Bowles said that unlike the current economic crisis, which was largely unforeseen before it hit in fall 2008, the coming fiscal calamity is staring the country in the face. “This one is as clear as a bell,” he said. “This debt is like a cancer.”
The commission leaders said that, at present, federal revenue is fully consumed by three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans — the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries,” Simpson said.
“We can’t grow our way out of this,” Bowles said. “We could have decades of double-digit growth and not grow our way out of this enormous debt problem. We can’t tax our way out. . . . The reality is we’ve got to do exactly what you all do every day as governors. We’ve got to cut spending or increase revenues or do some combination of that.”
Bowles pointed to steps taken recently by the new coalition government in Britain, which also faces an acute budgetary problem, as a guide to what the commission might use in its recommendations. That would mean about three-quarters of the deficit reduction would be accomplished through spending cuts, and the remainder with additional revenue.
Most Republicans in Congress are opposed to any tax increases, which has made the work of the commission far more difficult. Bowles and Simpson appealed for support to the governors, who have been forced by their states’ constitutions to balance their budgets with deep spending cuts and, in many cases, tax increases.
Bowles and Simpson said the commission would have had a stronger hand politically had it been created by Congress, rather than through an executive order. Simpson was pointed in his criticism of seven Republicans who once co-sponsored such a measure but who helped block it in the Senate.
“As far as I can discern, it was to stick it to the president,” Simpson said. “That’s where we are in Washington.” He later added that all seven “have now come to us to say, ‘We’re ready to help.’ “
The presentation by Simpson and Bowles, which included repeated statements of determination to produce a bipartisan set of recommendations, drew praise from the governors.
“I don’t know that I’ve every heard a gloomier picture painted that created more hope for me,” said Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D).
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) said that many governors fear that the commission’s recommendations will result in more demands on the states.
Bowles, who noted that the 1997 balanced-budget agreement between the Clinton White House and the Republican-controlled Congress included many provisions that put more burdens on the states, said that wasn’t likely.
“I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of devolution coming from us because the states are all broke,” he said.
Simpson also warned that the November elections could add another wild card to the work of the commission. “I have no idea what’s going to happen on Election Day but it’s going to be disruptive . . .,” he said. “It’s going to be a big wake-up call around the whole United States. I have no idea where it’s going, but thank heaven we have a month then to work through the wreckage.”

"Those same maligned voters got us into this mess in the 1st place..bunch of brain-dead morons who fell for the dopechangey."

Every 16 years, like clockwork, American voters fall for a Democratic candidate who says that being nice to our enemies will lead to a more peaceful world, blah blah blah. Hence, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Bill Clinton in 1992, and Barack O-sh*t-head in 2008.

The policies of the first two led to huge Republican victories -- Reagan in 1980, and the Gingrich-led congressional takeover in 1994. It appears that O-sh*t-head is leading his party to a similar fate in 2010, although the turnover in seats might be larger than in 1994 (+54 for the GOP).

Clinton at least was a savvy politician and was able to keep his office during the 1996 election by veering right (and because Ross Perot ran a second time). Carter tried veering right but he was viewed, correctly, as spineless and incompetent. Obama is far more like Carter than Clinton, and he hopefully will be relegated to a single term.

Why can't the American electorate learn? We are fundamentally a center-right nation yet the electorate votes in these lefty, pansy, feel-good sweethearts every 16 years.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

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