Day: August 18, 2012

Important To Remember: No Wartime President Has Been Defeated For Reelection!

Ronald 25 Comments

An interesting point to remember with 80 days left to the Presidential election, and just two days to August 20, precisely five months to the inauguration!

NEVER has a President in wartime been defeated, including two times when war clouds hovered, but we were not technically at war!

Witness the following:

James Madison, the War of 1812, reelected in 1812
Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, reelected in 1864
Woodrow Wilson, World War I, not at war but nearing it, reelected in 1916
Franklin D. Roosevelt, World War II, not at war but nearing it, reelected in 1940, and then at war, reelected in 1944.
Lyndon B. Johnson, using the Vietnam War issue through the Gulf of Tonkin, elected in 1964
Richard Nixon, Vietnam War, reelected in 1972
George W. Bush, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, reelected in 2004

This list does not include James K. Polk, who chose not to run for reelection AFTER the end of the Mexican War in 1848; William McKinley, reelected AFTER the Spanish American War’s end, in 1900; Harry Truman, who chose not to run in 1952 during the Korean War; Lyndon B. Johnson, who chose not to run during the Vietnam War in 1968; and George H. W. Bush, who was triumphant during the Persian Gulf War, but then lost 18 months later for reelection in 1992, due to the bad economy and the candidacy of Ross Perot helping Bill Clinton to win in a three way race.

So the odds of Barack Obama winning reelection with the Afghanistan War raging are excellent!

Choosing A Sitting House Member For Vice President Not Productive!

Ronald Leave a comment

This author mentioned last week that Paul Ryan was the fifth member of the House of Representatives to be nominated for Vice President in the past half century, which is true.

However, two of those five House members were not still in the House of Representatives when nominated for Vice President, and had accomplished beyond being a member of the House. These are Jack Kemp, nominated with Bob Dole in 1996, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H. W. Bush from 1989-1993; and Dick Cheney, nominated with George W. Bush in 2000, who was Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush for the same years as Kemp, 1989-1993.

But the only SITTING House members to be nominated were William E. Miller with Barry Goldwater in 1964; Geraldine Ferraro with Walter Mondale in 1984; and now Paul Ryan with Mitt Romney in 2012.

The first two experiments were a total failure, with Goldwater losing all but six states in 1964, and Lyndon B. Johnson winning the highest percentage in history, 61.1 percent of the popular vote. And Mondale lost all states except Minnesota and the District of Columbia, with Ronald Reagan winning 525 electoral votes, an all time high, and 59.4 percent of the total popular vote!

No one is saying that Romney and Ryan will do as disastrously as the other two cases, but the prospects for victory are based on very long odds!

Paul Ryan Pays Higher Percentage Of Taxes Than Mitt Romney! Why Should That Be?

Ronald 4 Comments

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, the Vice Presidential nominee on the Mitt Romney Republican ticket, revealed yesterday that he paid about 16 percent income taxes in 2010 and 20 percent in 2011.

Mitt Romney paid only 13.9 percent on his 2010 income, and has not yet revealed his 2011 tax return, but claims he has always paid at least 13 percent on his income in the past ten years, but refusing to show those returns, and wanting us to trust him.

The question that arises is why should Paul Ryan pay a higher percentage of his income than Mitt Romney?

Paul Ryan WORKED for a living as a Congressman, while Mitt Romney lived off his investments since 2007!

Why should unearned income be taxed lower than earned income?

Why should those who work pay more than those who have leisure time to do what they wish?

Why should a person with an estimated fortune of $250 million be taxed lower than someone who is worth, probably, maybe one or two million dollars and works?

And why should the average person, who does not make what Paul Ryan earns, pay the same as Paul Ryan, or even a higher percentage?

These are questions that need to be dealt with in the next Presidential term, as fair taxation is essential, and it is time for the wealthy, those who work, and those who don’t work, to pay their fair share–meaning MORE!

David Stockman And Bruce Bartlett, Former Reagan Economic Policy Advisers, Condemn The Romney-Ryan Republican Ticket As Out Of Mainstream!

Ronald Leave a comment

The Republican Party loves to invoke Ronald Reagan as their patron saint, even though his record clearly shows he would not be very happy with the trend in the GOP, as even his son Ron Reagan Jr claims.

But beyond Ron Reagan, Jr., two leading economic policy advisers under President Reagan, Bruce Bartlett and David Stockman, have condemned the Republican Party and its candidates and economic policies as out of the mainstream of American politics.

Bartlett says the party has gone insane, dreams of anarchy and the end of government, and has lost all reasonableness.

Stockman has ridiculed the Ryan budget plan, and condemns the idea of Ryan that more defense spending is necessary, and more tax cuts to the wealthy, while the middle class and the poor are victimized. Stockman see the Ryan Plan as not serious, and lacking any common sense!

It is not just Bartlett and Stockman who are critical of the Ryan Plan, and of the turn of events in the Republican Party.

Many past Republican leaders are privately shaking their heads, and see an electoral disaster coming, and we are seeing moderate conservative Republican Senators such as Olympia Snowe of Maine, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and Richard Lugar of Indiana, all three leaving, with Lugar not by his own choice, bemoaning the turn of events toward unreasonable extremism, and failure to be willing to cross the aisle for support from Democrats.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee is one of many former Republican leaders who have promoted that states led by GOP Governors stop fighting ObamaCare, and to start exchanges for the uninsured, required under the law by 2014, or else the federal government will do so for those states against their will. Frist, himself a surgeon, says these Republicans leaders are misguided, and that the Obama plan was originally a Republican idea in the mid 1990s., an absolutely true statement!

Former Senator Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson is another Republican who has condemned present Republican attitudes, and many former George H. W. Bush aides quietly have joined the Reagan former advisers in calling for an end to the extremism of the present Republican Party.

But, as in 1964, when we had an ideological election defeat for the GOP with Barry Goldwater, it is clear that there will be a need for a defeat of the ideological environment that Mitt Romney has provoked by selecting ideological Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate!