Heartache

From my friend, prolific blogger, and fellow Tennessean, Bob Krumm:

I just caught a couple minutes of Ralph Bristol’s radio show this morning. He was interviewing local Congressman Jim Cooper. Cooper is the only member of the Tennessee House delegation to have voted against the stimulus package. He thinks that adding another $150 billion to the deficit isn’t how you stimulate the economy. He’s right.

Rep. Cooper has been a spending hawk during his second stint in Congress. He is deeply disappointed at the presidential field, saying that the only candidate who was even talking about the cuts needed in entitlement programs was Fred Thompson, and “You can see what that got him; people don’t want to be told the truth.”

What makes Cooper’s favorable remarks about Fred even more notable was that Jim Cooper was the six-term Democratic Congressman and son of a popular former Tennessee Governor who in 1994 blew a 20-point lead to a novice candidate running for his first elected office: Fred Thompson.

On a side note, I continue to be more and more impressed with my current senator, Bob Corker. I am man enough to admit when I was wrong, and in his case, I was. Corker has turned out to be a fine representative of conservative values. Senator Corker, I salute you. You have earned my respect and support.

crosspost at race42008

Florida Republicans vote Democrat

Florida republicans, like voters in South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Iowa before them have decided that Hillary Clinton should be the next President of the United States.

I know many will say that’s a bit extreme but it’s reality, by supporting weak RINO’s like McCain and Huckabee voters have decided that a repeat of 1996 is in order.  McCain can’t win in the general election, he is the one candidate that will cause conservatives to stay home, or vote libertarian, etc.  Conservatives can’t stand by and give McCain a pass on his litany of offenses, immigration, being against tax cuts, gang of 14, just to name a few, and those that do give McCain a pass are not conservative anyway regardless of what they tell you.

Conservatives would probably have held their noses and voted for weak republicans like Rudy, or Romney.  It would have been painful but we could have done that for the greater good in most cases.  However with a McCain vs Hillary battle looking likely it would be difficult to nearly impossible for McCain to make things right with conservatives.

Conservatives however almost always vote, it’s a matter of principle for us.  We take voting seriously, we view it in terms that too many men and women have served and sacrificed their lives to preserve that right and we won’t disrespect that service and that sacrifice.  So in large part we will go to the polls in November and we will work for electing conservatives in our state offices, county offices, congress, etc, but when it comes to President our best option may be to right in a vote, or vote for a lesser known third party. 

Conservatives have too many times voted for the candidate that we viewed as the one who would do the least damage.  That won’t fly this time, because this time both candidates will do equal amounts of damage.

So let us look forward to 2012 and let us begin the search for the conservative candidate that will defeat Hillary.

More FairTax slight of hand

Because of the length of Ian’s comment on the FairTax I felt it deserved a post to fully refute it’s misconceptions.

• Point 1) The FairTax rate of 23 percent on a total taxable consumption base of $11.244 trillion will generate $2.586 trillion dollars – $358 billion more than the taxes it replaces.

The goal is not to allow the government to confiscate more money.  We need reduce the amount of money that government gets not make it easier to get it.

• Point 2) The FairTax has the broadest base and the lowest rate of any single-rate tax reform plan.

This doesn’t make it right.  A rate of 23% is still much too high and it’s taxation of everything is wrong.

• Point 3) Disposable personal income is higher than if the current tax system remains in place: 1.7 percent in year 1, 8.7 percent in year 5, and 11.8 percent in year 10.

This is not accurate, you make assumptions about the costs of goods going down that will not happen in year  1 and may only begin to happen in year 5.

• Point 4) Consumption increases by 2.4 percent more in the first year, which grows to 11.7 percent more by the tenth year than it would be if the current system were to remain in place.

The assumption that consumption will grow in year 1 is ludicrous. You are looking at this from the perspective of theory and mathematics but you apply no logic to it.  When you start taxing everything at 23% people are going to stop spending.

• Point 5) On average, states could cut their sales tax rates by more than half, or 3.2 percentage points from 5.4 to 2.2 percent, if they conformed their state sales tax bases to the FairTax base.

This is not going to happen, states that have sales tax will never change there systems.

The bottom line is that this plan puts out theory and attempts to support it with mathematics that aren’t real and it makes assumptions that are not going to happen.  The cost of goods isn’t going to drop overnight, people aren’t going to wake up one morning with 1.7% more disposable income.  However if this plan goes through people will wake up one morning and have less money to spend because they are paying 23% on top of the original cost of goods.

There will be less spending, which will be followed by job cuts, to be followed by businesses closing, followed by increased inflation.  This will have a horrible effect on the economy for the first 3-5 years.  Yes we may actually get to the numbers you suggest by year 10 but we will have gone through a depression to get there where we will be facing 15-20% unemployment.

This plan doesn’t repeal the 16th amendment so in all likelihood this will be a 23% in addition to all the state sales, and income taxes that we pay today.

This plan does nothing to reduce government spending.  95% of the problem with taxation is that the government keeps spending money like drunken sailors. 

I am not opposed to a complete change to a consumption based tax system but only under certain conditions:

1. Repeal the 16th amendment
2. Mandatory defense spending of 50% of the federal budget.
3. Reduce entitlement spending to 15% or less of the federal budget.
4. Tax rate of 15%
5. Exempts food and medicine as most state sales taxes do today.
6. Includes no prebate where the government continues to confiscate large amounts of income and then decides to dole out small amounts of it back to the people.

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Statement from Sen. Fred Thompson

McLean, VA - Senator Fred Thompson today issued the following statement about his campaign for President:
“Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States.  I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort.  Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.”

Link

Rasmussen has Good News for Fred

Now you wouldn’t know it from the spin associated with the latest poling data released today by Rasmussen but if you actually look at the data there is a lot of good news in this for Fred Thompson.

First the spin.  In Florida latest polling has Romney at 25%, McCain at 20%, Rudy at 19%, Huckabee at 13%, Fred at 12%.  Now that’s the spin, the headline, etc.  However when you look at the rest of the data we find….

Just 54% of likely voters say they are “certain” of how they will vote. Six percent (6%) have not yet made up their mind and 12% say there’s a good chance they could change their mind.

This by itself doesn’t mean much but when you couple that with other data in the poll you start to see some of the headway Fred has been making.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of Likely Primary Voters view Thompson as politically conservative, 45% say the same about Huckabee and 43% view Romney as a conservative. Just 21% see McCain in that way while 14% see Giuliani as a conservative.

This is huge, since Iowa Fred has been making the case that he is the only consistent conservative in the field and that message is starting to resonate.  Huckabee has been trying to paint himself as suffering from Fred being in the race, trying to paint himself as conservative.  Voters in Florida aren’t buying it.

Other items of interest show that Florida voters have a good read on Rudy, and McCain as well.

Eighty-three percent (83%) see Giuliani as politically moderate or liberal and 76% say the same about McCain. Fifty percent (50%) see Huckabee as moderate or liberal and 49% hold that view of Romney.

This is telling data, for the first time voters are starting to see these candidates accurately.  Rudy and McCain are the most liberal in this campaign but with half the voters viewing Huckabee and Romney as liberal proves they have a long way to go in shedding that label.

Delegate ramblings

So it appears that people have amnesia.  Seven months ago John McCain was the laughing stock of the free world because he was running for President and joined forces with the King of Liberalism, Ted Kennedy, to write a immigration bill that 85% of the people thought was a horrible idea.

Does McCain even try to fool the people with a phony apology, a momentary lapse in judgement?  Nope he blames us as being too stupid to understand.  Now he is the front runner in this race right.  Wrong, this year this race has less to do with winning early states and more to do with actual delegates.  Right now Romney has the delegate lead with 59.  It takes 1191 delegates to win the nomination and right now the guy that is leading has 59.  To listen to the media this race is over, the truth is that this race has a long way to go.

Fast forward to Florida, the only person in trouble is Rudy.  He has pinned his hopes on Florida for a while and if he can’t pull out a win there then he has a lot of work to do.  I won’t say he is done because this year I am not convinced anyone is out until the convention but he would have an uphill climb. 

Now if you look at Super Tuesday we have 21 states voting for the Republican nominee, that comes down to 1081 delegates that will be awarded on Fed 5 but no one candidate will win all those.  It is going to make the states that come after February 5th much more competitive.  There are others that have done the math and are looking at a convention that will be vastly different from ones in the past, it is possible that we may have four or five candidates that have varying totals between 500-600 delegates.

The bottom line is that campaigns that can continue to generate revenue will continue to be in play.  Every time Fred has asked supporters to fund the campaign, they have come through so Fred should press forward.  Romney will continue to go on because he can fund his campaign even if people don’t.  McCain needs a huge influx of cash because he had to borrow $3 million right before New Hampshire.  I know that donations have probably picked up since then but still he would need help.  Rudy hasn’t been bringing in much and needs Florida to help him generate cash to keep up, Huckabee has done well fundraising since his Iowa win but he spent most of it in SC and has an uphill battle, he’s not likely to do well in Florida will have to spend a lot to get 2nd or 3rd.

So don’t despair fellow Fredheads.  There are a lot of states left, many will award delegates in a winner take all format based on congressional districts, most are closed primaries meaning no democrats and independents mucking up the waters.

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