Politics Updates tgfl lab
Download 319.57 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- ***Midterms
No Political CapitalObama has no political capital- It was spent on healthcare. Hill, Writer for Uncoverage, 2010. [Dell Hill, "Obama's Political Capital Tank Running On Empty", May 2, 2010, http://www.uncoverage.net/2010/05/obama-political-capital-tank-running-on-empty/] Understanding the American political process doesn’t require a PhD., but it does require a basic understanding of what it takes to present, move and enact legislation to become law. It’s called “political capital”. Basically, political capital is the currency of politics. It’s what one politician uses to convince another politician to support a particular piece of legislation. Some would call it “one hand washing the other” and that’s a fair analogy. For the President to advance a political agenda, political capital is his fuel tank to get things done. He wheels and deals – all the while using that political fuel tank to get what he ultimately wants, and some agendas consume incredible amounts of that fuel. ObamaCare, for instance, required an enormous amount of political capital to get enacted. It has become the centerpiece of the Obama administration and is, quite frankly, about the only real victory the President can claim, but it came at a tremendous cost, literally and figuratively. Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, writing in the Sunday, May 2, 2010 edition, discusses the President’s “fatal flinch on immigration reform”; a piece that seems to scold and defend the President’s actions all in one fell swoop. You can read the entire piece here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043001389_pf.html Milbank dances all around the fact that Barack Obama has just about run out of political capital and is in no position to jump out of the frying pan into the fire by attempting to advance immigration reform legislation during this legislative session. The cost – in political capital – would be much too great and that fuel tank is already running on empty. Even though we’ve only scratched the surface on the “who promised whom, what” to get ObamaCare passed, suffice to say it required every imaginable political trick and Chicago-style political skull-duggery. To Obama, it was worth it, even if nearly 60% of the country still doesn’t like it, at least it’s something he can call a political victory. When you throw in the obvious problem of potential massive losses in the mid-term elections, now just a few months away, you get a much better understanding of how the system does, or doesn’t work. From all indications, Democrats will take it on the chin in November and for Obama to alienate about 60% of the country by supporting another amnesty-for-illegals proposal….Well, you get the picture. Right now, Obama is in damage control mode. He has to be. The political capital tank is running on fumes, so candidates who have made “guaranteed promises”, like Harry Reid of Nevada, will get thrown under the bus. Reid already determined his own political fate when he declared the war in Iraq “is lost”; his failure to deliver on his campaign promise to pass immigration reform “just like we passed health care” relegates him to the trash heap and a prominent position under that bus. Obama will rename a post office in his honor and that will be the last we’ll see from Mr. Reid. Obama didn’t “flinch on immigration reform”. He’s in constant contact with David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel and I’m sure they’ve informed him that he has no more political capital in the tank to take on another blockbuster issue that may very well touch off even larger demonstrations than the health care legislation triggered. Besides, it would be much smarter for him to pull in his skirts, learn to deal with a Republican controlled House of Representatives, and let THEM have to deal with financing his spending spree, right along with immigration reform. By doing so, he refills that “political capital” fuel tank and lives to fight another day. ***MidtermsGOP WinningGOP will gain control of Congress—pre-polls prove Roff, 07/12/10 [Peter, contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report. A former senior political writer for United Press International, he is currently a senior fellow at the Institute for Liberty and at Let Freedom Ring, a non-partisan public policy organization. His writing has also appeared on Fox News' Fox Forum, Polls Show Why Republicans Could Win Big in November, http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/07/12/Polls-Show-Why-Republicans-Could-Win-Big-in-November] Things continue to look bad for the Democrats. Appearing Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs conceded there are enough congressional seats in play to deny the Democrats another turn as the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives. The outcome, he suggested, hinges on whether or not President Barack Obama can convince enough people that the way he and his party have led the nation over the last two years is still preferable to the way the Republicans would govern. Gibbs has likely been reading the polls, which on the surface show the contest for control of the House is at least competitive. Looking further down, however, it appears that the Democrats are in a deep hole. The latest Gallup poll, taken among more than 1,300 randomly selected registered U.S. voters, has the Republicans with a 2 point edge over the Democrats. The GOP’s 46 percent to 44 percent lead is inside the plus or minus 3 point error margin, meaning the race looks like it is a statistical dead heat--but there’s more to it than that. Polls of registered voters, while useful, measure opinion against status--not behavior. A person who is registered to vote is, it should be obvious, not as certain to turn out and cast a ballot as someone who is a likely voter, either because they say they are almost certain to vote in the next election or because their voting history suggests it is highly probable they will. Probing further into the new data Gallup found that “Republicans continue to hold a significant edge on this potentially important indicator of voter turnout rates” by 13 points--which is down from the average 17-point lead the GOP has held since March but is still part of a consistent trend.
The momentum away from the Democrats is almost certainly fueled by a case of buyers’ remorse among Independents who bought a package when they voted for Obama only to find they did not get what they were expecting. But it is still momentum away from the Democrats, not toward the Republicans--a qualitative difference that will be increasingly important in the weeks and months ahead. In its analysis of the data Gallup concludes that “historical trends suggest that a slight Republican lead on the generic ballot among registered voters--or even a statistical tie--would translate into sizable Republican seat gains in Congress on Election Day, given their typical advantage in voter turnout.” That does not mean, however, that the GOP has sealed the deal with the American electorate. To do that they need to offer, in contrast to what Obama has done, what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used to call “An agenda worth voting for.” Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 319.57 Kb. Share with your friends:
|