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Attack Obamacare, but Talk Growth Too
Townhall.com ^ | November 9, 2013 | Larry Kudlow

Posted on 11/09/2013 5:18:14 AM PST by Kaslin

There’s no question that the catastrophic debut of Obamacare -- including the website breakdown and the millions of pink-slip cancellations -- will be a great card for Republicans to play on the way to the 2014 midterm elections. No question.

The president lied about his lies about keeping your health plans and doctors. And when he did finally apologize, he didn’t really say he was sorry. It’s also possible that we’ll see 10 million more insurance cancellations, leading to much higher premiums, bigger deductibilities, and more cutoffs between patients and their doctors. And employer-based cancellations will compound this disaster, with the whole process stretching across most of next year. It will be a killer for the Obama Democrats.

But while my conservative-pundit colleagues are out thrashing Obamacare, I want to raise a critical point: Don’t forget economic growth.

The Pew Research Center’s Andrew Kohut recently wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “The GOP Is in Better Shape than You Think.” It provides an unbelievable statistic: Independents favor the GOP on handling the economy by 46 to 30 percent. Unbelievable. Overall, according to Pew Research, a plurality of all voters gives the GOP a 44 percent to 37 percent edge on the economy.

So I want to make a pitch that Republicans not lose sight of the importance of economic growth in the months leading up to next year’s midterms. And that suggests the importance of a program of pro-growth tax reform and simplification. Keep the spending-cut sequester and budget caps in place. Push deregulation that will help small and large businesses grow more and hire more workers.

The Obama economy is not keeling over. Despite the government shutdown, nonfarm payrolls increased 204,000 in October, private payrolls jumped 212,000, and jobs for the prior two months were revised upward by 60,000 to 70,000. The numbers were higher than expected.

No, these are not fabulous numbers. But they are decent. Of course, 7.3 percent unemployment is still too high, participation rates are way too low, and we need to traverse a multimillion-job deficit to get back to the prior historical trend. So Republicans should keep up the mantra on this, talking jobs and take-home pay. In other words, talking economic growth.

The GDP report for the third quarter, at 2.8 percent, also arrived better than expected. The Obama trend line for the four-and-a-half-year recovery is closer to 2 percent than the more normal 4 percent rate experienced over the last 40 years. But as Mitt Romney painfully learned during the presidential race, just attacking the economy is not enough. It sounds way too pessimistic and doesn’t provide concrete measures to boost growth, jobs, and take-home pay.

So with Pew polls showing a big Republican advantage on the economy, the GOP must not squander the opportunity to stay on top of the growth issue. Interestingly, in this year’s Virginia governor’s race, exit polls showed the economy to be a more important issue than Obamacare.

As a supply-sider, I urge the GOP to stay on track with pro-growth tax reform -- broadening the base, lowering marginal tax rates, and simplifying the entire code for businesses and individuals. And I am also impressed by Senator Mike Lee’s proposal for a substantial increase in the child tax credit, which will boost take-home pay for the middle class.

Now, the push for economic growth is not a brand new idea. But it’s an important idea. And Republicans, I think, can walk and chew gum at the same time. They can nail Obamacare and promote economic-growth policies.

As for the health-care issue, Republicans should also spend more time promoting their own alternative policies. Why not more freedom to choose your insurance plan by shopping across state lines? Why not tax breaks going directly to individuals and families rather than big business and big labor? In a play for the youth vote, why not new plans for preventive medicine and major-medical catastrophic insurance that includes rock-bottom premiums? The young and healthy might think about returning to the GOP if the GOP comes up with a few ideas to help them out.

In the long run, positive conservative messages on growth, taxes, and health care are better than just negative attacks.

That’s all I’m trying to say here. While Senate and House Democrats are panicked over the Obamacare catastrophe, Republicans in both houses must not forget the political importance of a strong growth and jobs message for 2014.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 11/09/2013 5:18:14 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
a great card for Republicans to play

"There's not a dime's worth of difference between these two parties" - George Wallace.

2 posted on 11/09/2013 5:31:34 AM PST by Hardastarboard (You can keep your doctor - if you lock him in your basement.)
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To: Hardastarboard

I did a search and I could absolutely find nothing that George Wallace said this. Stop pulling stuff out of your butt


3 posted on 11/09/2013 5:55:16 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin

The number of people is not growing in America. It is just below replacement levels (1.95 as of 2010).

No growth in the number of citizens means no growth of the economy.

Women are too busy with their careers to have babies and raise them right.


4 posted on 11/09/2013 5:59:16 AM PST by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Kaslin

It’s fake but accurate!!!


5 posted on 11/09/2013 6:01:53 AM PST by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Kaslin

I find it hard to believe that even Democrats could be as incompetent as this roll-out of Obama Care proves them to be. House and Senate Republicans read their plan and repeatedly told the Obama Administration for the last three years it wouldn’t work, and I find it hard to believe none of them bothered to read it and understand it for themselves, so what’s their game?

They’re genuinely surprised, but at what are they surprised? They couldn’t possibly be surprised that the obviously unworkable mechanics of Obama Care and a shoddily thrown together website aren’t working, so what’s going on here?

Could it be that Obama Care was never intended to get this far and was a “Red Herring” all along? As Obama Care was such an obviously unworkable plan, the Democrats knew the Republicans would find a way to prevent it from ever coming to fruition, and the Democrats would be left with the “issue.” Obama could then blame the Republicans for preventing “affordable” medical care for every American citizen and use it to rally his base at election time.

However, as it turned out, they either overestimated the Republican Party, or the Republicans saw this disaster coming and just stepped aside and let the Democrat Party shoot themselves in the foot.


6 posted on 11/09/2013 6:03:56 AM PST by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war, and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
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To: Kaslin
...I could absolutely find nothing that George Wallace said this.

I believe you are wrong, unless, you meant William Wallace never said this.

Growth should have been the primary issue, not zerOcare. But, stealing from working people was so much easier.

7 posted on 11/09/2013 6:07:34 AM PST by depressed in 06 (America conceived in liberty, dies in slavery.)
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To: depressed in 06; Hardastarboard
I believe you are wrong, unless, you meant William Wallace never said this

Here is the post I was replying to.

BTW your name is interesting. Are you one of those we have to thank for that the rats got the majority in both the House and the Senate, because you thought the GOP should be punished?

Thanks a lot! /s>

8 posted on 11/09/2013 6:30:25 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: DJ Taylor

I don’t think the Democrats realize it but they are also the Party’s useful idiots.


9 posted on 11/09/2013 6:40:00 AM PST by EQAndyBuzz ("Senator Cruz basically made the Democrats fight for a whole bunch of things that they already had.")
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To: depressed in 06
BTW I did a search on William Wallace and the only one I found was this one, that is similar to the one in post #2

“Every man dies. Not every man really lives. ”

10 posted on 11/09/2013 7:04:00 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin

[The Pew Research Center’s Andrew Kohut recently wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “The GOP Is in Better Shape than You Think.”]

Posted on FR here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3088802/posts


11 posted on 11/09/2013 7:08:33 AM PST by upchuck (I've got maternity care via Obamacare! Now, if I could just figure out how a male gets pregnant...)
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To: upchuck

Thanks for the link. Great thread


12 posted on 11/09/2013 7:10:27 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin

You’re welcome.


13 posted on 11/09/2013 7:58:02 AM PST by upchuck (I've got maternity care via Obamacare! Now, if I could just figure out how a male gets pregnant...)
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To: Kaslin
I did a search and I could absolutely find nothing that George Wallace said this. Stop pulling stuff out of your butt

You must not have searched too hard...

From wikipedia...

In 1968, when Wallace pledged that "If some anarchist lies down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile he will ever lie down in front of," and asserted that the only four letter words of which hippies did not know were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p; his rhetoric became famous. He accused Humphrey and Nixon of wanting to radically desegregate the South. Wallace said, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats," a campaign slogan that he had first perfected when Lurleen Wallace defeated James D. Martin.

14 posted on 11/09/2013 9:14:37 AM PST by AmusedBystander (The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next)
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