Here is a statement from Tuesday night’s Republican convention that won’t prompt any fact-checking by liberal media:
“In states with Republican governors, the average unemployment rate is a full point lower than in states with Democratic governors. Republican governors lead seven of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates, and 12 of the 15 states ranked best for business.”
The reason liberals won’t challenge this statement, made by Virginia’s Gov. Bob McDonnell, is because it’s indisputably true. The average unemployment rate for states with Republican governors, according to Department of Labor data, is 7.6 percent. The average for states with Democratic governors? 8.8 percent.
And as for the best states to do business? According to both CNBC’s analysis and a Chief Executive annual survey of CEOs, 12 of the top 15 states to do business in are, in fact, run by Republicans. The bottom three, according to Chief Executive, are the Democratic strongholds of Illinois (unemployment 8.9 percent), New York (unemployment 9.1 percent) and California (unemployment 10.7 percent).
[…]
In Maryland, Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, a 2016 White House hopeful, has enacted nine tax hikes since the recession began, including a huge President Obama-like hike on the highest income-earners this fall.
Now, Maryland suffers from net out-migration to other states. It still has a billion-dollar deficit for the next fiscal year. Chief Executive rates the state as the 40th best state in the union to do business, and unemployment stands at 7 percent.
Meanwhile, across the Potomac in Virginia, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell cut spending and did not raise taxes. Not only is Virginia’s budget back in the black, but McDonnell has announced a $448.5 million surplus. Chief Executive rates Virginia as the sixth-best state for business, and unemployment is just 5.9 percent.
But the biggest applause of the convention, before Wednesday night at least, came when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker walked on stage. His brave fight against government unions in Wisconsin has already saved taxpayers there $1 billion in public employee compensation.
After the crowd settled down, Walker said, “On June 5th, voters in Wisconsin were asked to choose between going backwards to the days of double-digit tax increases, billion-dollar budget deficits and record job losses, or moving forward with reforms that lowered the tax burden, balanced the budget and helped small businesses create more jobs.”
Contrast Wisconsin with its neighbor, Obama’s home state of Illinois. After raising taxes by 66 percent last year, Illinois’ Democratic governor, Pat Quinn, finally has something to show for it. Standard & Poor’s just downgraded the state’s credit rating.
Virginia or Maryland? Wisconsin or Illinois? That’s the choice Americans will face this Nov. 6th.
Agreed, in part. I have no doubt that Romney / Ryan will implement pro-growth tax measures that will unleash the economy, and that is doubtless a very good thing. But lowering taxes and managing a sprawling federal government more efficiently is no longer enough. People are looking for fundamental transformation, to borrow a phrase — not of the country and its founding ideals, but rather to an unwieldy federal government that has overstepped, overreached, and overtaken in direct defiance and dismissal of those founding ideals.
We don’t want pandering pragmatism and compassionate conservatism. We want the federal government to stop trying to save us; we want to be free and unmolested, not micromanaged and “nudged.”
And that will take the stones to gut the federal bureaucracies — which in turn will take a resolve that I just don’t see among the GOP ruling class.
Meaning, we’ll get a happy pendulum swing with a Romney presidency, but in the end, I’m not convinced we’ll have done much to affect any great permanent and necessary change.
But Christ, how I hope that I’m wrong.
I’m a bit more optimistic. Not that I won’t be wrong. But – as I noticed last night – the crowd was riveted and silent when Ryan spoke about our budget crises. It wasn’t an applause line. It was “more” than the Redmeat usually thrown out to an agreeable crowd.
” I’m not convinced we’ll have done much to affect any great permanent and necessary change.”
You’re right – it won’t completely change the direction this country is lurching, but if Romney follows through in his promise to stop Obamacare it will be enough for me. Just having Romney prevents whatever destruction Obama had planned for his second term. I can live with that for now.
Taken on face, this could be interpreted as calling on the tag team of Romney and Ryan to, as is continually alluded to by Steadfast Republican Establishmentarians and Pragmatists, make us free. To give us the liberty to prosper. To pass something that we like. To provide what cannot occur unless provided.
Which is not what you meant and to which I would otherwise say bullshit.
Fortunately you continue:
Yes.
It is imperative that conservatives make a clear and eternal distinction between passive and active means to whatever ends they can agree on are desirable. We must not, for example, pass legislation that artfully contains other legislation and thereby continues Medicare, Social Security, public education, and the entire Statist complex more or less as-is, excepting that we reduce the rate of ruin. We must not hire ORmoney and his Boy Wonder to nicely temper the rate of statist growth. We must not lose more slowly, which damn near the entire right-o-sphere is hell-bent on doing, from the look of it.
Rather our people must deconstruct the State, dismantling it brick by brick before we all live out together what happens when, for the first time in the history of man, we unwind a fiscal, financial, and monetary system that by its numbers shows the Great Depression to be a problem an order of magnitude smaller than this one.
Why are we in this mess? State programs. What will get us out of it — assuming we can pay back and/or down that quarter quadrillion staring us in the face? Well, nothing. But if we’re going to try, austerity isn’t the word to describe it. Deconstruction is.
And that ain’t coming from the fools and tools we see in Tampa this week.
A promise is not enough for me. Leaving a system intact that cannot but run trillion dollar deficits before Obamacare is not good enough for me. Romney stating he’ll just make ORomneycare work is not good enough for me.
And that will take the stones to gut the federal bureaucracies — which in turn will take a resolve that I just don’t see among the GOP ruling class.
They won’t do a thing unless they’re forced to. Our job is to build the pressure to force them, before basic arithmetic finishes the whole enterprise.
O’Romneycare stays in place unless the GOP wins the Senate, and they have chosen to be ideologues instead of winners. Ask Todd Akin.
Even if they win it, don’t count on Romney pushing hard for a repeal bill. You heard it here. Skip the pretty speeches and mawkish conventioneering. Is there anything in his past as a governor that suggests he is willing to risk the fight of a political lifetime by dismantling ACA from top to bottom? While he vetoed Romneycare a few times, he ultimately signed on with an explosion in the socialization of medicine, and just this Sunday he restated his pride in Romneycare.
This guy won’t be as swiftly poisonous as Obama, but he will betray you.
Like that’s ever stopped them before. Come on, for God’s sake. What rock are people living under?
Well if Romney buys us some time that would be nice. The deficits and spending are going to sink us, but Romney will slow it down maybe so I can get my farm running before the final death rattle.
I know that’s selfish. But I figure hey – if we do finally get a politician who is brave and could change things (like Palin was), then I would vote again for sure.
Until then, I’ve got Nikki Haley for a governor and I’m not sure what else to do but prepare.
The deficits and spending are going to sink us, but Romney will slow it down maybe so I can get my farm running before the final death rattle.
I know that’s selfish.
That’s not selfish, that’s wise. Remember, you and I and the rest of us are mere subjects to the ruling class. They expect to scrape enough crumbs from all of our individual tables into a vast pile, large enough to feed the appetite of Camelot-on-the-Potomac. They never expect to return to the middle or lower classes, not so long as they have the coercive state at their disposal.
Cheat the beast at every turn.
It would be nice if they actually implemented a cap of 20% of GDP spending for the federal government, but I think it is going to be very difficult. The biggest problem won’t be the entrenched interests as much as the interest on the debt. Once ZIRP goes by the wayside and the interest ont he national debt starts rising people are going to be amazed at how little is left for the entitlement programs and discretionary spending.
You want to tlak about playing a long game? That’s the ace in the hole the Democrats have to torpedo any responsible actions in bringing spending under control.
Breaking: Court Blocks Texas Voter ID
I’d say we’re looking for a restoration of the fundamentals.
I think we’ve had enough fundamental transformation, thank you very much.
So, unless you can prove a negative, you must eat a plate of voter fraud.
Someday I would like to live in a republic.
It seems to me that the main functional governing difference between the parties is that the Democrats want to squeeze everything they can out of the economic engine, consequences be damned, whereas the GOP is more willing to take care of the engine. But they still like to gun it, just like the Dems.
This. Candidate Romney would better serve the electorate not by telling us which federal agencies he would close, but instead which ones would remain.
Like that’s ever stopped them before.
I dunno. I think there are a handful of arguments so difficult to refute or mischaracterize that the Left simply covers them up. Which gets us back to one of Jeff’s central theses: don’t try to suck up to the cool kids. If they can keep you down by lying about you, they will; and if they can’t, they’ll just pretend you don’t exist.
This isn’t just about restoring fundamentals. It’s about understanding fundamentals. We literally no longer understand why “printing money until you’re no longer in debt” is third world country logic.
Even for those who do, do they understand that QUfantastic! is code phrase for it?
Just because they wait until later to lie doesn’t mean they’re not challenging the undeniability of the truth — least of all because it’s undeniable. They’re simply waiting for the dust to settle so they can insist that it wasn’t their claims that crumbled to rubble just now, oh no.
They’ll pretend to pretend we don’t exist. Meanwhile we live rent-free inside their heads.
sdferr says August 30, 2012 at 11:25 am
Breaking: Court Blocks Texas Voter ID
As if more proof! were needed that Oklahoma > Texas.
We demand the voter ID. No excuses.
The Texas AG will of course carry the case to the Supreme Court.
On the other hand, it is good Oklahoma seeks to measure itself against the very best, albeit somewhat laughable that Ok. would think itself to have surpassed it’s touchstone so early on its journey of self improvement.
Heh. We do have a way to go, that’s for sure.
Our new governor is working on lowering our taxes, so that’s help.
Ok,
So Texas was unable to disprove a negative. I thought we were a Nation of INNOCENT until proven guilty.
Oh,
And what injury or standing did the complaintifs have? I might be discriminated against because I’m too fat and lazy to go get a free State issued ID.
Oops,
Overlooked G.O.’s comment.
George,
Just consider that a Darn Skippy from the infantry
“O’Romneycare stays in place unless the GOP wins the Senate,”
George, 51 won’t be enough. It will have to be 60 (not including RINOs like McCain) or any attempt to actually do anything will be talked to death.
Ideally, what we really need is 67, so that any judge or bureaucrat who gets in the way can be impeached right out of the way.