Posted on 10/22/2008 8:14:50 AM PDT by RetiredArmy
Obama, Unchecked
The coming rout of Republicans will have major consequences.
Hopes of a Republican victory on the presidential level are already distant this year, but further down the ticket, hopes are simply nonexistent.
To be sure, there has been some good news. Rep. Jack Murtha (D., Pa.) could lose after calling his constituents "racist." His opponent, retired Lieutenant Colonel Bill Russell, will have at least $500,000 to spend in the campaigns final weeks. Rep. Tim Mahoney (D., Fla.) could well fall after revelations that he engaged in numerous extra-marital affairs, paying hush-money to one mistress before obtaining a federal earmark for the other.
But these represent just two of 435 races in the U.S. House of Representatives. The cold, hard fact remains that Democrats are in position to win perhaps 30 House seats from Republicans, perhaps more. Members once believed to be safe now find themselves struggling to survive. According to sources in Florida, Rep. Tom Feeney (R., Fla.) may be the latest to enter this category.
In the Senate, Republicans finally gave up this week on their only serious pickup opportunity the chance to defeat Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.). The pressure to spend money on defense had simply become too great. GOP Senate seats in New Mexico and Virginia were written off months ago. Seats in Alaska, New Hampshire, Minnesota, North Carolina, Colorado, and Oregon are all looking shaky. Republicans in Kentucky and Mississippi face uncomfortably close races. A filibuster-proof Democratic majority has become a real possibility.
In the absence of a Senate firewall or a significant coalition of opposition to his policies in the House, a President Barack Obama could make many permanent and sweeping changes to Americas economic policies. It is worth examining this conservative nightmare the possible consequences of an unchecked Obama presidency.
Although a significant bloc of House Democrats has in the past provided a working majority against the most offensive pro-abortion legislation, this may no longer be possible after the election of 2008. Obama promised on July 17, 2007 that he would sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would strike down all of the incremental gains that pro-lifers have made in state and federal law on the issue of abortion. The bill would re-legalize partial-birth abortion, strike all state restrictions on government funding of abortions, and overturn state laws requiring parents to be notified when their minor daughters seek abortions. The bill has 19 Senate co-sponsors (including Obama) and 109 co-sponsors in the House. It will likely receive a vote in the 111th Congress, and it could well pass. Obama, who has opposed all restrictions even on late-term abortions, called this bill a top priority.
Obamas economic policies will also move quickly and make a deep impression in law. His tax policy has been hard to pin down, as it keeps changing with the election season. But he appears to be serious about raising capital gains taxes from 15 to 20 percent (or higher, as his previous statements suggested) for the sake of fairness, as he has put it. That change could be made and made permanent if there are 60 votes in the Senate. Employers both corporations and small businesses that pay personal income taxes on profits could pay permanently higher taxes under Obama that make them less competitive, facilitating the further shipping of American jobs abroad. President Obama will be able to explain away any damage this does to the economy by blaming his predecessor, who is an easy enough target.
The failed cloture votes of the current Congress provide further indications of what an unchecked Obama presidency could look like. Exhibit A is the Employee Free Choice Act, an effort to expand union membership by removing the guarantee of secret-ballot elections in the workplace. It received 51 votes toward the 60 needed for cloture in June, with one Democrat absent, and it could easily achieve cloture in the coming Congress.
When Democrats decided to make speculators the bogey-men for a rise in world oil prices, their plans to limit trade on commodities markets hit a snag in the Senate. In June, they could only deliver 51 votes toward cloture, in the absence of Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama. With Obama in the White House and larger majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats have good odds of keeping their promise to reinstate the ban on offshore energy production that lapsed at the beginning of October. Caps on carbon emissions received 48 of the 60 Senate votes needed for cloture in June, and that was in the absence of Obama, Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.), Joe Biden (D., Del.), Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) and two other Democrats. With their enlarged Senate majority and a willing president, this scheme of limiting carbon emissions by raising consumer energy prices could become reality as soon as next year.
As depressing as the future under total Democratic rule may appear for conservatives, far worse is the role Republicans have played to bring the United States in the direction of a centrally planned economy. Democrats cannot claim credit for nationalizing the mortgage market or directing nearly a trillion dollars to sustain a credit bubble on Wall Street. They cannot claim credit for recent years growth in government spending. They cannot claim credit even for the new entitlement that is paying for even the wealthiest senior citizens' prescription drugs at the expense of younger wage-earners, at a ten-year cost of $395 billion, according to new estimates from August.
Americans are already depending on government today as much as they ever have since the Great Depression, and Barack Obama cannot be blamed for it. If he wins and his unchecked presidency can make America drink of socialism, it will only be after President Bush and Congressional Republicans brought her to its waters.
Au contraire, it’s precisely at times like that real leaders emerge. During non-threatening, mundane times, you seldom get real leaders. Crisis demands leadership. American patriots can, and will, step forward.
I pray that you are correct!
I have great faith in the American people and the divine mission of the Republic. It is more than a mere socialist suit, backed by an angry foreign billionaire, can overcome!
IMPEACHMENT FOR CRIMINAL ACTS! INTERNATIONAL LAWS BROKEN IN KENYA! VOTER FRAUD IN USA! REZKO!
Let me say, if Obama were to win, Freerepublic and all of its allies will have to a duty, to pound The Courts, Media, World Courts, and all embassy’s Worldwide, friends and foes alike, For immediate Impeachment, and Criminal hearings.
This must include Media Cover ups on a stolen election and fraud in Polling results.
We will be working with Various legal groups to bring in representation, and will begin educating those who wish to make a change from all races,creeds, Worldwide.
The obvious course is up to us, The Citizens to bring back a rule of LAW! I will be setting up an alternative Shadow
Gov. Blog, and I am sure Rush and others will follow the campaign.
McCain/Palin 2008
And I respond, “What balderdash.” You apparently have no faith at all in the American people. That is what separates us.
Obviously.
Except I have real evidence.
You have nothing but dreams.
(no offense to you, of course)
This is excellent, thank you!
Some of that half are actually on-the-take or power hungry as well. I call it simply selfish.
Lay your evidence out. Waht you’re talking about is a Nazi-style Holocaust with the American people standing by and letting it happen to themselves.
Surely, such an assertion requires more than a couple of attack posts.
My evidence is the American electorate. Who and what they have been voting FOR in the last decades.
Just look at the US House and Senate. Look at the State Houses, and Governorships.
The majority are spoiled rotten, and snivel about gas prices, yet vote for the man who puts cute animals in a campaign commercial, Americans whine about every perceived or real injustice and beg for a solution from gov, they whine about medical and education costs, yet vote for men who will increase gov involvement that increases prices! They whine about jobs, yet want (and vote for) “big” corps to be punished with high taxes and regulations, they whine about illegals but elect men who are pro-illegals as to not be called racists, they complain about affirmative action, yet vote for men who agree with gov sponsored discrimination, for years and years they complained about not being able to get a mtg, yet they are about to reelect the very men who caused the stock market woes, the whine about hurricane relief, yet vote for men who want to grow government making it more unable to work in an emergency.
Americans are more addicted to gov emotionally and literally, than ever.
Human beings throughout the world...and throughout history...have stood by and allowed atrocities in the name of stability, order, and government subsidies.
On the contrary, my experience is survival of the American Republic through plenty of thugs and morons.
None of what you’ve provided is evidence, but mere opinion.
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