Obama’s recent defense of women’s rights in the free contraceptives fight is a good, but not great, display of his social restructuring strategy. It was a two-fer: (1) an opportunity to label Republicans as anti-woman and (2) a needed distraction from his freedom of religion gaffe. It seems, as far as the first point is concerned, that the stumblebums at the GOP are all too willing, albeit unwittingly, to help him out. During the dust up, credible discussions about whether contraceptives should be available gratis went largely unnoticed. Not really surprising as those pieces lacked an emotional element.

Individual skirmishes such as the free contraceptive example may be interesting, but they aren’t especially telling in trying to identify a cohesive campaign strategy. That comes from the main theme of speeches over time as well as other campaign outreach efforts. In Obama’s case, the overarching pitch is his oneness assertion. As he sees it, we are one nation, one people. We owe a responsibility to each other and a shared responsibility to future Americans. We rise or fall as one. Under this view, the purpose of government is to protect and expand the interests of the one.

A great example of oneness is the justification for increasing taxes on the rich to raise the standard of living for everyone else. Enlarging the levy on fat wallets was once couched in strictly economic terms, but not any longer because it makes no economic sense. So, now days, it’s mostly characterized as one of the many fair and decent things the federal government can do for all of us. It is a manifestation of Obama’s personal belief that some people simply have too much money and get tax breaks they don’t need.

Complementing that social argument is Warren Buffet’s statement that decent rich people don’t mind having their taxes raised. So, there it is. Decent people don’t object to the government being decent, which means only the indecent protest. But, the government does not exist to protect them. The argument does have a horrifyingly attractive allure, like being transfixed by the lights of an oncoming train. But, it is failed logic.

Taking from the rich is just one example of the application of Obama’s social strategy. Obamacare with its individual mandate was an early instance of the strategy. Wall Street regulation is another recurring theme. While Obamacare is an easy target, it is difficult to take a pro Wall Street stance, although the Occupy movement is a great motivator. The President’s social agenda also limits consumer choices. So, global warming justifies shutting down the oil and gas industry in favor of solar energy, high speed trains, algae-based fuel products and so forth. Pipe dreams replace pipelines in the President’s social order.

Team Obama believes that social advocacy will attract the much-coveted independent vote by doggedly labeling the GOP as the party of fundamental unfairness. If the Republicans can be made to look bad enough, voters won’t be able to stomach voting for them despite razor-thin pocketbooks. It’s a risky bet. Traditionally, voters in U.S. elections cast their ballots based on their economic well-being. If Obama’s re-election strategy is to prevail, it must not merely buck the tide of history. It must do so by convincing voters that traditional virtues such as individual responsibility and achievement have become vices.

Will the strategy succeed? Possibly, but only if voters surrender to the mob mentality that Obama appeals to in every campaign speech. It is never enough for him to state his positions on the issues he chooses to address and criticize those of his opponents. His re-election spiels are clarion calls to grab our pitchforks, light up our torches and storm the castle of the individual rights monster.

You can almost see the trail of lights going up the hill from here.

See you in the mirror.

The President’s rebukes have been uttered in Ankara, London, Prague, Cairo, Strasbourg, Trinidad and Washington D.C., among other places. In these appearances, Obama criticized America for committing a whole host of misdeeds. Among them are slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, the global financial crisis, nuclear weapons, global warming, practicing self-interest, being dismissive and derisive of our allies and arrogance.

While Obama’s denouncements were well received by the international community, many in this country resented them. So, critics viewed Obama’s letter to Karzai after last month’s Koran burning as just another apology by a president too eager to utter them.

But, that critical assessment is wrong. Obama has never actually apologized for America at all, not even to Karzai for the Koran burning incident. His earlier remarks amounted to admissions and condemnations, but they were never apologetic. Read in context, Obama’s statements are simply Obama being Obama. In most cases, he is ponderously critical, not just of America, but of the nations of his audience as well. His disparaging assessments come with utopian instructions on how countries must change in order to live in Obama’s future.

As far as the apology to Karzai is concerned, it was about as sincere as Rush Limbaugh’s mea culpa to Sandra Fluke. Obama’s intent was damage control. He wanted to save American lives and to minimize other predictable adverse consequences. For all the good it did. Afghanis killed six Americans and claimed another thirty lives in violent riots that continued for several days after the burning was reported. Regardless, apologies given to limit negative outcomes are not apologies at all.

When the riots in Afghanistan were in full force, the Defense Department announced that the remains of an undisclosed number of 9/11 victims were desecrated. The bodies of 9/11 victims were processed at the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base.  Until 2008, unidentifiable remains from the Pentagon attack and the plane crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania were reduced to ashes and dumped in a landfill.

A defense contractor burned the remains and put them in the refuse dump. While incineration is standard procedure at the base, dumping is not. And there is no indication that military personnel were aware that it occurred. They mistakenly assumed that nothing survives incineration. (These folks must be truly stumped over the market for cremation urns.)

The story didn’t get a lot of press and even less reaction from the White House. Obama himself has said nothing about it at all despite the obvious similarities with the latest Koran incident. Through poor judgment, the books were burned and dumped in a landfill on base. Afghani workers discovered the charred remnants. Through utter disregard for oversight and decency, the 9/11 remains were incinerated and discarded in a garbage heap. The years-long actions were discovered during a whistleblower-triggered investigation into allegations of mismanagement at the mortuary.

As Commander In Chief, Obama sent his regrets to Karzai for a mistake committed by troops on foreign soil. But, we’re still waiting for his apology about the misdeeds of a base under his command in this country.

Why did the President treat the incidences so differently? In a word, politics. With the Koran burning, Obama leveraged an opportunity to appear presidential in sending his regrets. And, most Americans agree with that decision.

But, Obama gains no benefit at all in highlighting yet another 9/11-related tragedy through an apology or otherwise. Considering the public response to his pro Ground Zero Mosque stance, Obama wants to keep 9/11 out of the mix of issues this election year. It may not be a bad political strategy, but it is far from presidential. Or honest.

On the day the 9/11 story broke, Obama was in Washington D.C. He spoke at a UAW conference, ate lunch with Joe Biden and took a couple of briefings. He had ample time to consider and respond to the shock and pain of the 9/11 families and of the country as a whole. Where is an actual presidential apology when you need one?

See you on the left-side.

In a nutshell, these writers lay the blame for today’s political gridlock in the Capitol at Obama’s feet. Stalemate naturally follows in the wake of vitriolic posturing. They also believe that the President cannot win re-election with a constructive campaign because of his performance failures. His road to victory, if there is one, runs straight over a scorched earth. But, that strategy, already adopted by the President’s handlers, will only widen the political divide worsening dire issues facing the country. The authors’ solution is to run Hillary Clinton, the savior, not only of the Democrat Party, but also of the country.

It’s an interesting article, made more so by the political affiliation of it’s authors. But, the most interesting thing about it is the comparison, however brief, of Obama to the 1952 version of Harry Truman. There are dozens of articles on the Internet likening Obama to Truman in 1948. Some merely offer the possibility. Others predict a Truman-esque victory for Obama. There are also articles suggesting that Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter in 1980 or Gerald Ford in 1976.

But, Truman in 1952 is becoming a more likely scenario. In 1957, five years after he left the Oval Office, Truman claimed that he stepped down in the best interests of the country. He supposedly made the decision in 1949 based on his concern that advancing age would prevent him from governing effectively through 1956.

A much more plausible explanation is that Truman, deeply disliked, accepted the fact that 1948 Redux was not in the cards. He suffered a humiliating defeat in the first primary of 1952 at the hands of a freshman Senator.  Days later he withdrew his name from consideration. He did, however, successfully deny his primary opponent the Democrat nomination at a brokered convention later that year.

Will 2012 play out for Obama like 1952 did for Truman?  There are similarities. For Truman, the Korean Conflict was very unpopular in a war-weary America and he couldn’t bring it to an end. His administration was riddled with charges of corruption and cronyism. Even the post-WWII economic boom could not quiet concerns about the Federal deficit, miniscule by today’s standards. In the end, his past successes forgotten, voters rejected the man from Missouri.

Obama finds himself in worse circumstances than did Truman. America today is in protracted military conflicts in two countries. The economy is in the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression. Financial collapse hangs over irresponsible spending like Damocles’ sword. The administration is facing corruption and incompetence charges in the ongoing Solyndra and Fast and Furious fiascos. While Truman, at least, took responsibility, Obama works very hard to deny it. Years of Obama’s persistent blame antics inevitably wear very thin.

So, our President’s approval rating, like Truman’s before him, is dismal. Even Obama admits that we’re no better off now than when he became president. Not surprisingly, if the polls were open today, the Elephant would win.

But, are elections that occurred sixty years ago meaningful in predicting the course of the 2012 contest? Is there a dissenter among Democrats who will challenge Obama in the primaries? Are today’s voters enough like those in 1952 who preferred a maverick entry in an early primary? More to the point, are enough voters today like American adults in 1952? Those folks were battle-hardened and self-reliant. People these days are products of decades of entitlement indoctrination.

Then there’s the question of whether Obama can find the moral high ground with a map and a compass. Or, whether he’s so scorched the earth, it’s no longer discernable. If someone else is to be the Democrat standard bearer next year, it will take one very big push.

See you in the mirror.

Oh, and one other thing. It clarified Obama’s re-election strategy. Like the sun rising in the east, he will, of course, continue to lob blame bombs in all directions. But, he’s also putting geographic distance between himself and Washington D.C.  He places a lot of faith in the out-of-sight-out-of-mind maxim, hoping physical separation will disassociate him from the mess he’s helped create.

Obama’s re-election game plan should not come as a huge surprise since it has a lot in common with his governance style. For the latter, he offers meaningless straw man proposals for chronic problems that can neither work nor be accepted. And when they aren’t, he casts aspersions on whomever for rejecting them.

The latest two examples are his “millionaires and billionaires” debt solution and is his jobs plan. Both are non-starters because there’s a lot more harm than the little good in them and so cannot responsibly be put in place. But, they’re great sound bites for those desperate for easy solutions to devastating dilemmas. Obama hopes enough of those folks are out there to keep him in the White House.

To be sure, Obama’s strategy, whether governance or re-election, is much easier than long hours at the negotiating table facing huge helpings of bitter choices. And at least part of that strategy is getting support from unexpected places. Democrat Congressman Heath Shuler, D-N.C., agrees that Obama should stay out of town.

Shuler is the co-leader of a bipartisan group of 100 representatives urging the Super Committee to cut the debt by $4 trillion. He doesn’t think a divisive President can help that effort. Obama has made himself such a lightening rod for political rancor that the resolution process stands a better chance of succeeding without him. That’s a pathetic commentary on the so-called leader of our Country especially from someone who sits on the same side of the political aisle.

Shuler’s bipartisan effort, co-led by Republican Mike Simpson (R-ID), is one ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak outlook. Unlike the rest of their colleagues, they and the other 98 representatives in their group, want all options on the debt reduction table. Without both revenue increases and spending cuts, there’s no chance of a sustainable debt reduction. Without both revenue increases and spending cuts, there’s no chance for a sustainable debt reduction.

The question is whether anyone in D.C. is listening to them. Some in Congress are already revving up the blame machine, as the Super Committee remains deadlocked. The prospect of failure looms so large that, today, the smart money in town is squarely on fiasco. Two years ago, Obama was labeled the “Great Mediator”. Where is that guy now? Oh, yeah, he’s out of town.

When asked, given the perilous economic times at home, whether the President would cut short his Asian trip, White House officials said no. They fear that a foreshortened trip would be a slap in the face to Asian allies. But, it seems a small risk in order to prevent people from growing old on our unemployment line.

What this Country needs, even more than debt reduction, is an actual leader. We just can’t seem to elect one.

See you on the left-side.

Still, the flat tax flap does give pause for thought. Is flattening federal income taxes really what the Republican candidates want? Or are they using the idea as a gimmick? As a recent Blogcritics offering laments, intellectual thought rarely makes an appearance at a political debate.

Assessing the current GOP flat tax proposals with this precaution in mind, are they just shallow attempts to grab the ever-fickle media spotlight? Or, like a lightening rod, are they purposefully erected to draw attention to the real problem? Or is it a combination of the two – a spotlight-grabbing gesture that accidentally shines light on a serious issue? Door Number Two would be nice. Really. And we really think the answer lies there.

The Bloomberg article is a string of knee-jerk claims that ignores the essence of the flat income tax argument. For example, a true flat tax is based on gross income rather than adjusted gross, resulting in a net revenue gain. It also simplifies the federal tax code. Today, that legislation, together with the IRS’s interpretive rulings and regulations, is almost 73,000 pages. It’s a conglomeration of complexity and convolution that almost no one, including your friendly taxman and White House officials, understands.

But, Bloomberg editors are happy with it and they should be happy for a long time to come. The flat tax idea has been around for decades and has gained absolutely no Congressional traction. While it has a popular fairness appeal, it cannot withstand the phalanx of special interests arrayed against it. The tax code is not an unintelligible mishmash by happenstance.

So, why are the Republican candidates talking about it again? The facile answer is the coveted media attention lavished on Herman Cain for his 9–9–9 plan, which includes, among other things, a flat tax. In what appears to be predictable monkey-see-monkey-do chain reactions, several of the other Republican candidates formulated flat tax proposals, too. But, is that really all they’re about? Inhabitants of a Pavlovian kennel, classically conditioned to crave the spotlight?

More likely, they are simply cowards. Pushing an idea with some popular appeal, these people are actually advancing a fairness argument they fear to make directly. And here it is. The problem with the federal revenue system is that too few people pay into it.  Put another way, too many people take too much out of it.

As we know, nearly half of all federal tax filers either pay no income tax or pay a negative tax. That number is increasing and not merely at the lower income levels. The fastest growing group of income tax non-payers includes those earning between $75,000 – $100,000 annually. These people cannot even pretend to be among the financially downtrodden yet they’re getting a free income tax ride. Meanwhile, the government’s generosity to them has a multiplying effect on the deepening federal debt burying our economy and us with it. It’s pure insanity.

We teach our kids to avoid child predators, those depraved individuals who would do them harm. Children are told to reject the lures of candy and puppies and other cute stuff and simply run away screaming for help. As adults, we have to do the same thing. When Uncle Sam tries to snuggle up using fistfuls of fiscal candy, we need to run away screaming, too. The scary arithmetic lurking behind those promises will do us all in.

See you in the mirror.

Obama has never been much for bipartisanship anyway. From his first days in office, when he rebuffed Republican overtures with his “I won” retort, he has shown neither the aptitude, nor inclination, for it. With the new Republican House, Obama’s notion of negotiation is a lot more like dictation. He only tried to work out a deal with Republicans on one occasion and that failed when he kept moving the goal posts. Most often, his approach has been as it was with his jobs plan. Unveiling proposals to everyone at the same time while unilaterally anointing them beforehand as bipartisan. That is, and will always be, an amateurish non-starter.

By the middle of September, Obama’s re-election chances were dimming, even without a consensus Republican opponent. His base, consisting of leftist groups, was increasingly disenchanted. Independents, whom he has pursued ardently for the past year, remained aloof. Even California voters, for the first time since Obama’s inauguration, disapproved of his performance. Special elections in New York and Nevada went to GOP candidates because voters spurned Obama’s policies.

Things got so bad for the President that Clinton Strategist, James Carville, urged him to fire his staff and learn how to actually compromise. Instead, Obama’s response is to become more combative, more divisive and more extreme. Dismissing voter rejection, the President believes that isolating himself on the political left and excoriating all who disagree is a winning strategy. If he’s correct, it will be the first time in American history that an incompetent wins re-election by a take-no-prisoners appeal to extremism.

Fortunately, Obama’s strategy isn’t working. Oh, he’s made those in his base less jittery with assurances that his next term will be more to their liking. But, the left can’t get him elected. He needs the Independent vote, which he carried in 2008. To attract them, Obama has engaged in emotional, and distorted, rhetoric aimed at making the Republicans look so bad that he looks good by comparison.

Among his weapon of words is legislation that has no chance of passing. Obama plans to introduce several bills of that kind just to paint Republicans as wrong for the country. Basically, our President will throw childish temper tantrums in an effort to make himself look better than the adults in the room. “Hope and Change” has become “The Best of the Worst”. Not even Democrats are getting in line behind that.

While rhetoric and Bush got Obama elected in 2008, he’ll need more than verbiage and the Tea Party to do it again. He’ll need Republicans to nominate the wrong candidate, a polarizing right-winger, like Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, who makes thinking people cringe. A majority of American voters generally reject extremist candidates on both ends of the political spectrum. While fanatics do occasionally win elections, it’s because they are smart enough not to campaign as one. And neither Perry nor Bachmann is that smart.

Obama’s campaign swing this week was full of bombastic self-praise for his successful first term and exhortations for four more years of the same. If an economy and job market made perilously worse are accomplishments, if dead end government programs and spiraling debt are resume headliners, what’s failure? We’ll never know because we’ll be moving to Australia.

See you on the left-side.

And yet Obamanomics hasn’t changed one whit. No lessons learned, not even a slight course correction. It’s still all about government control of wealth through taxing and spending, regulating, granting unfair advantage to handpicked businesses and industries, etc. Take Obama’s jobs proposal, or Stimulus 2.0, unveiled in his September 7 speech. The payroll tax cut is merely an extension of the current one-year reduction. It won’t improve hiring because it’s not a cause of unemployment. But, it is convenient diversionary dressing around a window the White House can’t break through.

And then there’s infrastructure spending, redux. In 2008 and 2009, Obama preached the importance of shovel ready jobs so much he practically turned it into a religion. But in a September 2010 interview, published the following month, Obama admitted those jobs don’t exist in the public sector. One short year later, he’s pushing them again.

The tax increases in the President’s just announced debt reduction plan are nothing new, either. He’s pressed the issue of increasing taxes on the rich since his first term candidacy days. But, at this juncture, even Democrats are having a difficult time supporting them. The reason is obvious. The economy cannot be fixed by taking money out of it. Increasing taxes on those who invest their incomes in growing businesses is much more than merely foolish.

Obama’s persistence in the face of these failures is very like Einstein’s definition of insanity. That is, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. It doesn’t happen in physics and it won’t happen in economics, either. But, is Obamanomics just insanity or is it also the slick strategy of a President desperate to win re-election?  The facts are stacking up in favor of the latter.

From the moment of his first presidential campaign appearance, Obama has clung to the politics of blame like an addiction. Now, in these beginning days of his re-election bid, with his poll numbers tanking faster than the Titanic, he desperately needs a distraction to hype. Anything that will get the electorate more upset with Republicans than with his mishandling of the economy. So, he offers proposals that couldn’t get through Congress with a battering ram in order to contrive blame scenarios.

His jobs plan is a typical example. Before its delivery, he set the stage by characterizing it as ‘bipartisan’, which, of course, is wrong since it takes two parties to create bipartisanship. No matter, in his Saturday address to the nation, Obama stated his intention to extort GOP support for his new Stimulus proposal. His grand scheme is to blame House Republicans for continuing high unemployment if they oppose it. What he’s not saying is that, if Republicans do support his plan, he will include them in a circle of ‘bipartisan’ blame when it fails. Using blame like a flamethrower is what got Obama elected and blame is what he believes will get him re-elected. Meanwhile, we’re getting much too cozy with double dip.

In another favorite blame pitch, Obama pits the “rich” against the “little guy” over the amounts of money they earn and taxes they pay. But, concocting divisions and wielding them like weapons to get re-elected merely underscores his unsuitability for the office he holds. He ignores the fact that the rich pay most of the federal income tax while about fifty percent of wage earners pay zero dollars.

Obama also fails to mention that many in his crosshairs are small business owners who employ the majority of the American workforce. Taking more money out of their pockets leaves them with less to invest, which means businesses stagnate and the unemployment rate remains high. It also depresses tax revenue.

But, it works for Obamanomics, which holds that government, not the private sector, is the engine of economic growth. As if on cue, the Solyndra loan scandal, presently engulfing the White House like a Gulf oil fire, belies that argument. Taxpayers, courtesy of the Obama Administration, guaranteed $535 million in venture capital loans to the handpicked company. One thousand new jobs were supposed to be created in return.

Fourteen months later, the company folded, laying off eleven hundred workers and leaving taxpayers holding an expensive bag. At a cost of over $535,000 per job, the loan guarantee is being criticized as “crony capitalism”. One of the Solyndra investors is a high-profile Obama campaign contributor. Regardless, the whole debacle highlights the inability of a government bureaucracy to drive an economy anywhere but off a cliff.

In an unusual public chastisement, former Clinton strategist, James Carville, scolded Obama last week for not firing his staff and completely changing his direction. Press Secretary Jay Carney responded that the American people know Obama is doing all he can to grow the economy and create jobs. At last, we all agree on something. We know Obama’s doing all he can. And it’s not working.

In that February 2008 speech, candidate Obama promised to remake this country, block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county and state by state. If you’ve had enough of that, get your shovels ready. You’ve got a job to do come November 2012.

See you in the mirror.

First, Obama talks too much. He’s a man of big words and small deeds, long on rhetoric and short on results. In fact, his Administration has produced no sustained economic growth in its existence. We’ve heard the reasons for this failure repeatedly and the only thing that changes is the length of the list. It grows. And grows. Bush, the evils inherent in the American financial industry, the Tea Party, the Republican House majority, the Tea Party, the tsunami in Japan. But, when the smoke is blown away, what remains is what Obama has actually done. And it is a pitifully small pile of inconsequential, albeit costly, programs.

Lest we forget, the Republican congressional majority has existed for only the last 8 months or twenty-five percent of Obama’s time in office. For the first 24 months, he had his way with Congress, to the point of losing control of the House in the 2010 elections. What were the President’s economic accomplishments during that two-year period? Absolutely nothing that had a sustainable impact. Much of what he did had no impact at all.

The futility of the Administration’s efforts to jump start the economy is not limited to embarrassing hype programs like Cash for Clunkers. A much more telling example is Obama’s efforts to resurrect the housing market, the other elephant in the room that he mostly ignores. There was HAMP, 2MP, HAFA, PRA, HAUP and several others. Despite those efforts, and the billon$ they cost, the housing market is now in a double dip recession. You could argue successfully that it never arose from the first one. But, economists agree that, if it did, it fell into the second one last May. So much for the power of acronyms over actions.

Second, with his majority in the House a thing of the past, Obama must compromise to move the country forward. But, he either misunderstands compromise or simply can’t bring himself to engage in it. That’s really a coin toss. Compromise is not in his nature. For example, he is advertising his Thursday night speech, with its first word yet to be heard, as “bipartisan”. This billing could simply be political, as in everything the President says is bipartisan and therefore anyone who disagrees with him is necessarily partisan.

Or, as likely, Obama believes that if he moves away from any part of his original agenda, he is being bipartisan. But, this belief, of course, ignores the meaning of the word. Bipartisan means of, relating to or involving representatives of two different parties. Unless you suffer from a mental disorder like schizophrenia, you can’t be bipartisan all by yourself. The President needs to come to grips with this fact and stop listening to the little voices both in his head and in his Administration. He actually has to involve Republicans in defining solutions. Simply making unilateral pronouncements and daring his opponents not to accept them isn’t bipartisanship. But, it is a strategy for failure.

Third, making a significant, and sustainable, reduction in the unemployment rate is beyond Obama’s capabilities and those of his hand-picked advisors. This reason is the crux of the problem with all of his speechifying. He’s not very good at politics, but he’s even worse at problem solving. To gain acceptance of his ideas, he prays on people’s fears, distorts opposing viewpoints and protects sacred cows beyond our ability to support them. None of this will fix our unemployment quandary.

Joblessness cannot be dealt with in the vast vacuum of political posturing. The unemployment rate will come down when the economy recovers and not before, at least not in a lasting way. Getting the economy on track means taking strong actions. We are way past short-term fixes for political advantage. We need: (a) tax reform including, among other things, incentives to business, (b) repeal of much of the costly, burdensome business regulations put in place since 2009, and (c) a serious commitment to deficit reduction, which requires effective entitlement reform. These actions create the stable environment that businesses need in order to recover and begin hiring in earnest again.

The good news for Obama is that if he can get those things done, he can also get re-elected. But, as long as his speeches are major and his actions minor, he doesn’t stand a chance. And that’s good news for everyone else.

See you on the left-side.

O.k., not really, but a conspiracy might as well exist. With the possible exception of Mitt Romney, none stands a snowball’s chance of living in the White House in 2013. Why? Each has a platform with such narrow appeal the Great Wallendas would lose their balance. Obama is already taking aim at the Republican field although, if he were smart, he’d wait. His attacks might help produce a new contender who defeats him.

The problem with the current GOP candidates is that they’re treating the 2012 presidential election as a one issue race. Each is betting that independent voters fear our desperate economic plight deeply enough to overlook his or her polarizing positions on other subjects. With that bet placed, they are racing to grab the nomination by playing to a narrow segment of the Party with the most apparent influence.

While it’s true that elections are usually a barometer of the way voters believe their lives are going, voting isn’t always just about the economy. With Obama’s divisive rhetoric and thick misdirection smoke screens, solutions for a broader range of issues must be defined. That’s a requirement the current GOP candidates are not up to meeting.

More than at any time in living memory, politics lies in polarized pieces. Politicians have come to mimic players in a TV ‘reality’ show, the more extreme the better. Predictably, the debt reduction plan of the interparty Gang of Six died aborning because it lacked the extremism that made the eventual legislation meaningless.

The fringe in both parties tries to lay exclusive claim to “principle”, reducing party value to brand marketing. But neither labels nor rhetoric solves problems. What does most often are plans with a mix of provisions that, collectively, defy categorization. But that’s a lesson too many choose to overlook.

Take Michele Bachmann, winner of the Iowa Straw Poll, although garnering a whopping 4,823 votes out of 16,892 cast isn’t much of victory. She bleeds Tea out of every political pore from tying the knot to waging war. It won’t get her to the White House. Although she is trying to broaden her appeal, her dye has been cast for much too long.

Ron Paul, the 76-year old Texas libertarian, may be Nostradamus and Edward Cayce combined when it comes to the economy, but he has no chance.  He does have, whether or not deservedly, a crackpot aura, which would be a problem except the media mostly ignores him. As the modern day Harold Stassen, he should save his money and go home.

Rick Perry, the hardline Texas conservative and newcomer to the race, is supposed to threaten the chances of both Romney and Bachmann. But, he has yet to be tested in a national context and his baptism by fire is just beginning. Speaking of baptisms, personal religious beliefs are great but they shouldn’t be showcased as a prelude to a national campaign. It’s bad theater on several levels. If Perry keeps that up, he won’t have a prayer.

And then there are the acknowledged and unacknowledged also rans. Tim Pawlenty, the weakest of the weak, dropped out of the race the day after his poor showing in Iowa. And only Gingrich thinks Gingrich is actually running rather than showing up periodically to pontificate. Santorum and Cain combined would have come in behind Paul in the Iowa poll while “Other” got more votes than Huntsman and McCotter put together. Don’t look for one of these four to be the 2012 breakout candidate.

Even Romney, who has the best chance of victory among the known’s, has flip-flopped himself to the right side of the political frying pan. They all want to outdo each other in staking a claim to the Republican’s most conservative wing. In their rush to be Right, they appear more and more Wrong to independents essential for victory next year.

The GOP’s best 2012 hope is that the election turns out to be a rerun of 2008. With an economy Obama has made much worse and his tanking poll numbers, he’s becoming the reincarnation of George Bush. Either that happens or the convention in Tampa Bay next year brokers a real winner. That last one is a desperate solution, but so are our times.

See you in the mirror.

The prospect of perpetual prosperity can be alluring. This enticement lies at the heart of Obamanomics, which promises endless entitlements for some through higher taxes on others. But, as the demand for entitlements increases through larger aging populations and expanding social services to many more, the price tag grows exponentially. This necessitates a bigger and bigger revenue pot or deeper and deeper annual deficits. Since most of Obama’s fellow democrats agree that deficits must be tamed, entitlements require a mushrooming revenue stream gushing into federal coffers.

Under Obamanomics, the funding source is higher taxes on the rich, of course, but the sustainability of that model is not addressed. The continuing ability of those footing the bill to meet the growing demand for their money is simply assumed. These people are supposed to be a perpetual moneymaking machine with a need-to-achieve compulsion that assures ever more federal revenue.

A telling dichotomy underlies this belief. While abiding achievement is assumed in one part of the population, indelible dependence is assumed in the other, much larger, part. Viewed in microevolution terms, this change in a once-unified group marks the beginning of two subspecies, producers and consumers. Under predictable evolutionary progression, producers prosper, even if it means migrating to more accommodating locales, while consumers eventually go extinct.

The analogy could not be clearer. The indispensable core of Obamanomics is also its inevitable demise. Friedrich Heinemann, the Corporate Taxation and Public Finance Department Chair at the Centre for European Economic Research, defines the problem as a forced morality change.

In a study of the long-term impact of social norms on the welfare state, Heinemann concludes that increasing benefits and unemployment fatally destabilize the system. A generous welfare state creates a dependency in those who take from it, undermining the social norms indispensible to its survival. People become so used to feeding at the public trough, they will cheat to keep the benefits coming. Heinemann’s is not a politically correct study, but reality rarely is.

The reaction of the Greeks to their Government’s austerity measures is also real and underscores Heinemann’s point. After decades of extravagant social spending, the Greeks have shot through dire straights and are dangling in mid air over financial ruin. Keeping them from falling into the abyss is the refusal of European leaders to see their banks and their economies undone by unpaid Greek loans. But, the eurozone’s rescue imposes “austerity” on the country, if living within its means can be fairly called austere.

And the Greeks don’t like it one bit. They burn. They loot. They riot. They vent their displeasure like spoiled children whose profligate parents are trying to change their ways. And yet, public support is critical to the success of reforms necessary to restore financial health. Whether it is ultimately given is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, in a show of resolve, Wisconsin voters rejected the bullying tactics of national unions, refusing to restore democrat control to their legislature. All the national boys could buy for their thirty-five million dollars in campaign spending was a net gain of two seats. Sounds vaguely like the federal deficit.

Granted, this was not a direct showdown on Obamanomics. But, it does maintain the reforms that were ushered in by the 2010 elections, which were a rejection of Obama’s fiscal policies. And you can bet that, had the unions succeeded, our president would be on the stump today pushing the result as next year’s victory predictor.

Will the country’s voters follow Wisconsin’s lead and opt for responsible government or will they burn and loot in the footsteps of Greek rioters? Is there really a choice? On October 8, 2008, the national debt stood at $10.1 trillion. Today, less than three years later, it has spiraled past $14.6 trillion for a 45 percent increase. Other than hand waving and smoke screens, all we have to show for it is an historic downgrade in our credit rating.

In 2012, voters can turn out the lights on Obama or tune up the orchestra because it’ll be time for “Nearer My God To Thee”.

See you on the left-side.