Posted on 09/28/2008 11:32:49 PM PDT by GeeMoney
During Friday's debate, John McCain assiduously and inexplicably avoided using the issue that might have won him the debate and the presidency: opposition to a taxpayer-funded bailout of the financial crisis.
Congress is about to pass - and the president is about to sign - a bill that the American people detest by 2:1 margins. When Americans realize that there is, indeed, an alternative to handing over $700 billion to financial institutions as a reward for their failure, opposition to the idea will swell even further.
The bailout ideas proposed by the House Republicans and trumpeted by former Speaker Newt Gingrich make eminent sense. Indeed, they make so much sense that it is as if the roles of the parties have been reversed. It is the Republicans who are demanding that the banks and financial institutions pay for their own bailout, granting them only a mixture of loans and premium-paid insurance, while the Democrats want to pass the hat among the taxpayers to buy their dirty paper.
In an unusual act of political foresight and skill, the normally dead-headed House Republican leadership has crafted a platform that can carry the party to victory in November. All that remains is for the Party's candidate - and perhaps even its president and Treasury Secretary - to get on board. McCain can recover at the negotiating table the economy issue he lost in Friday's debate. He needs to have the courage of his convictions and insist on a bailout without requiring taxpayer-funded purchase of defunct mortgages from failing institutions.
The difference in the bailout plans is, of course, largely cosmetic. Dead paper is dead paper whether it is on the books of the government, purchased from banks, or on the books of the banks, insured by the government. The game is the same: Through loans or grants fund the deficient debt service on the defaulted mortgages until homes can recover their value in the cyclical real estate market.
But it makes all the difference in the world politically if this task is accomplished by buying bad debt or by lending the bankers the money to cover their current losses while they keep their bad debts on their books and by insuring them against future losses.
Loans are politically viable. Purchase of bad debt with tax money is not.
The Democrats and our politically-challenged president have failed to appreciate the difference between spending and lending. Treasury Secretary Paulson can be excused for not realizing it. Politics is not his thing.
But John McCain must realize the crucial distinction and must use his leverage to stop a taxpayer-funded bailout, insisting instead on loans and insurance.
If McCain stands firm, the Democrats will either have to pass the bailout package on their own, without Republican votes, and rely on Bush's signature on the bill to provide a fig leaf of bipartisanship - or they will have to cave in and pass the Republican package.
Either way, McCain comes out ahead.
If he gets his way, he gets credit for the bailout. If he doesn't, he can spend the campaign attacking Obama and the Democrats for spending $700 billion of taxpayer money.
If the Democrats don't adopt either course and play a game of chicken with the Republicans, their Congressional status as the majority party dooms them to taking the blame for any ensuing collapse.
Voters can count.
They know that Reid and Pelosi are Democrats and that they control Congress. With this power comes responsibility.
And if the Democrats do nothing - that is they fail to use their majorities to pass a bailout or to cooperate with the Republicans in adopting the GOP version of the package - it is they who will get the blame for the catastrophe which will follow.
The Democrats don't dare take that chance.
The cards are dealt for John McCain. All he has to do is have the guts to do what he didn't have the courage to do in the debate: Play the hand.
There is no time. The vote will go Monday morning. Early before the American public knows they have been had.
The problem with Dick Morris being right is that he’s Dick Morris. No one will listen to him.
If it passes the house, it goes to the Senate on Wednesday. So there is time.
What is wrong with these guys? This was obvious to anyone with a brain LAST WEEK for God’s sake!
They’re a day late and a dollar short of not only using this to their advantage, but actually doing the right thing here.
The Morrises wrote a very good column here but they need to do a little more homework. Paulson is a lifelong Democrat and an old buddy of Chuckie Schumer. He does what the rats tell him to do. He will absolutely NOT "get on board" any Republican alternative plan. And Bush - - well who knows what's going on there anymore....
sometimes I just don’t think McCain really wants to win.
Are there enough Republican to vote it down? Has McCain said anything?
Here is this 110 page Beast:
http://financialservices.house.gov/
Morris is selling books. Period.
4 years of darkness. We need a Reagan conservative to appear.
Bush screwed us by going into Iraq. Yes, he won, but he gave us Obama and the Marxists.
McCain should have picked Romney. Palin is toast. That blew up in his face.
Now we have to live under a brutal Marxist regime, imposed because 50% of our population do not believe in a Constitutional Republic, but in 50% of the population want to rob the other 50% of their wealth.
Iraq has been a huge expense in blood, treasure and Republican public confidence. But the payoff over time may well far exceed all of went into it. It is far too soon to tell.
Palin is hardly “toast”. Her first debate will tell the tale.
Obama is nowhere as near to winning this thing as you seem to think.
As far as your last contention about 50% of the population wanting the wealth of the other 50% of the population via their vote, well you missed the boat... It's been that way now for some time...
I thought McCain was going to propose this type of plan last week during the negotiations. Did I miss something?
I, and my small group of local conservatives numbering maybe eight, would not have voted for Romney or McCain.
McCain wrote and passed a bill to outlaw the 1st Amendment and censor political speech by groups 60 days before an election, and Romney stated that he would ban all semi-automatic firearms.
I’m telling you straight as can be, not a one of my friends ever intended to vote for McCain and the ONLY reason we are now is because of Sarah Palin.
If she does poorly on the debates, or is manhandled so badly by the press that McCain asks her to step down, or she steps down of her own accord, I will never, ever vote for McCain, as I wasn’t going to in the 1st place.
Ed
it would have already been over if mccain picked another rich white guy during an economic slowdown. DOA. They were WELL prepared for romney
Almost seems like he went back to finish reading about the pet goat...
PLEASE SENATOR MCCAIN! As you said with so much passion in your nomination speech, “Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!”.
Sarah Palin drew a crowd of 60,000 people last week, and has energized the Republican base like no one in a generation, and you call her "toast"? What are you, a Democrat?
Nice try on demoralizing the troops, but no buy.
great article by dick who i agree w/ about 40% of the time
“with this power comes responsibility”
Not a chance—there is not one congressperson who is willing to say they “did it”. Just ask godbama, dodd, rangel, frank, etc.
The DU trolls are out in full force I see.
I agree. Palin is his best asset. How many regular average Joes and Janes understand half of the high rhetoric that comes out of DC? DC insiders and the elite media revel in discourse that is obscure, wonky and over the heads of most people. For instance, how many people really understand what this bailout is all about?
The beauty of Palin is that she can talk at a level that people can understand - like President Reagan. People respond to her candidacy as they see her as their emmissary to federal government. They relate to and identify with her. People are tired of being “ruled” and want a handle on what is happening. For instance, it doesn’t make sense that since the Carter years, nothing has been done about alternative energy and we are stuck with the same energy crisis. Everybody wants this done. Why can’t this get solved? What is the problem?
Palin is the hope that common sense, decency and self government might return to DC. Palin is the hope that someone can explain things better to people so that they can come together to solve the problems.
Definitely, Palin can win the election this week.
If they let Palin take the gloves off, Obama will not know what has hit him. It will be Shock and Awe.
This thing is all teed up for McCain.
Because Morris changes his opinion every 3 days.
He plays both sides, like a Drunken Uncle on Thanksgiving.
Right now Romney would be trashed by the media for his Religion and his hedge fund.
Romney would have been a huge mistake with the Wall street Mess, because of his ties there.
Are you even trying?
I am not a golfer - is it a slice or a curve that goes left.
I doubt if our elected reps even had a total grip on what was in this bill, and the exact meaning of the legalese.
The People weren't even allowed a chance to know what was in the bail-out bill before it was voted on. Notice the news from last night that the Democrats would be seeking to vote on it as early as 8:00 AM today.
Pelosi did that precisely to avoid public disclosure prior to the vote, and she ought to be roundly criticized for it in the press (right....like that's going to happen).
The beauty of Palin is that she can talk at a level that people can understand - like President Reagan. People respond to her candidacy as they see her as their emmissary to federal government.
Absolutely. If Sarah were unleashed to give the American people her own opinion of the bail-out treason, she'd likely call it just that. Treason. She's not an economist, but she's got great intelligence, common sense, and a good idea of what's constitutional, and what's not. Just like we average Joes do.
Part of the problem though, is that Sarah is running for number two. Not number one. She's got to be a good general and support her CIC, McCain, at the moment. It sort of makes her pull her punches, in my opinion.
Not to worry though. She's just got to get Big Mac through the door. He'll turn the baton over to her in due course.
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