The GOP needs to attack Medicaid instead of Medicare spending. But that’s not going to happen.
Agreed. We won’t beat obama without strong support from seniors. Very strong support. Higher than McCain or Bush got. Seniors were the only age group that voted for McCain over Obama 53-45. They were the only age group he did better with than Bush did in 2004. They were the age group that went the most for the GOP last fall(59%, largely because the GOP effectively portrayed Obama and the dems as threatening medicare). We’re going to need at least 55% of them in 2012, if not higher.
I don’t care how good your ideas are, how good your plans are. They won’t mean anything if Obama gets re-elected. So the #1 goal has to be the beat Obama.
Simple logic tells you we need to lay off medicare for the time being. Yes, Ryan’s plan has good ideas and it’s not as bad as the dems make it out to be. But the dems can easily demagogue it and the media will support them and it’s hard to respond to. Even when you watch Ryan he does it in the context of a long, detailed speech. But the dems have a simple 30 second ad that he wants to get rid of medicare. It’s just not good politics.
And the whole “it won’t affect current seniors or those over 55” just doesn’t work. It didn’t work when W tried it on Social Security and it won’t work now.
Medicaid is much more fertile ground. Seniors may actually vote GOP, and have in the past. They don’t like Obama. However, most of the poor and those on medicaid are already Dems are likely to vote for Obama. So, we don’t relaly lose anything by going after them. We do by going after seniors.
The good news is this happened early enough to serve as a warning and we can adapt. Obama and the dems got a similar warning in Jan 2010 with MA. They chose to ignore it. We all know what happened. Hopefully we won’t ignore this.
Conservatives need to go on the attack against the international bankers of Wall Street.
It’s a casino whose losses were subsidized by we taxpayers. It is not the bastion of capitalism as they like to portray it. Capitalism is about taking risk and producing tangible stuff and paying the piper when you lose. Wall St has become about creating fictitious intangible products and games that benefit only the dealers within the casino. It isn’t about creating broad value. The compensation plans for CEOs and hedge funds are about creating volatility instead of value, of which they both then game to their own advantage.
Wall Street put Obama into office. We need to create a nation with real industry and real jobs are created and not a nation where swindlers always win and we taxpayers lose. Far too much of our economy has gone to the financial services sector and it is only to their benefit and not to the benefit of the nation.