Political Figures – The Right
Allen West: The Man Who Should Have Delivered the State of the Union Address Response (or the Address itself, actually)
So, that’s Congressman Allen West in the clips above…kicking a$$ and taking names on television. Like he does every day. He is the only elected official currently in office that someone could make a marketable action figure for.
This is the man who the Republican Party should put in front of TV cameras to deliver things like the State of the Union Response last night.
Instead, the Cocktail Party GOP establishment put forward, well, THIS…
Mitch Daniels is probably a very nice man, but he’s not ever going to set the world on fire.
He’s the male version of Kathleen Sebelius:
Why present this as the best the party has to offer on such a high profile night when you could have had Allen West do this and knock it out of the stratosphere?
The Party of Stupid fumbles yet again.
PHOTOS: The Exact Replica of the Oval Office in the Reagan Library and Museum
I wanted to post these photos of the exact replica of the Oval Office that’s displayed at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California — because they are an excellent resource for anyone who enjoys photoshopping and would like to use them for political cartoons in the upcoming election.
It’s hard to find photos of the Oval Office without people in them, so on a recent trip to the Reagan Library I took shots of the replica from every angle imaginable so that I’d have access to whatever possible image I’d ever need of an Oval Office in the future.
Analysis of Herman Cain’s press conference on the attacks launched against him
Check back in a bit for video of the press conference as soon as it becomes available (and include a link to it in the thread below if you don’t see it posted here).
I watched the press conference as it aired live, but will have more to say after I’ve had the chance to review it again.
Here are my initial thoughts — and I invite you to add yours in the comments below.
First off, I’m struck by how presidential Herman Cain seems. I am riveted when I listen to him and I applaud his directness. In my lifetime, we’ve never had a president like this — and that’s a great thing. He talks and acts like a CEO, which is who we need to run the country right now. I pictured a President Cain delivering a State of the Union Address and for the first time in many years I bet that speech would actually mean something and be worth watching. I want Herman Cain in office and I believe in him…as well as believe him.
Regarding the allegations lobbed at him, it’s clear to me the agenda-driven media decided Herman Cain was too much of a threat to Barack Obama and thus needed to be destroyed before the first voting contests in the Republican primaries.
I also think the timing of this attack on Cain was decided upon in the “JournoList” circles because Willard Mittens Romneycare needed attention taken off of him the last two weeks. Remember, today is the day that Ohioans voted on the Issues 2 and 5 ballot measures, and on October 25th Romneycare flip-flopped on his support for curtailing public sector union power (before reversing his position yet again on October 26th).
If not for the attacks on Cain this week, scrutiny would have been applied to Mittens in the lead up to this vote…instead, the public forgot all about the Ohio Union ballot measures and focused on the attacks on Herman Cain.
Don’t you think that’s too much of a coincidence to NOT be intentional?
The only thing I didn’t like about Cain’s press conference was the deference she showed Willard Mittens Romneycare. I still have this nagging suspicion that Herman Cain could be in this race to divide the anti-Romney vote, so that Mittens can squeak through to a win in the Republican nominating contest. There is a small part of me that is afraid that Herman Cain is really running to be Vice President for Mittens — and that concerns me greatly.
I’ve talked to people I respect greatly who were part of the Tea Party Express and had a great deal of interaction with Cain and they have assured me that Cain is serious about his presidential run and is not aiming to be VP. But, I still don’t know, especially when Cain deliberately refuses to punch back at Mittens…on a day when Mittens took a shot at Cain. This is vexing and believe me, it’s something I am watching closely in the days to come.
I believe 100% that the Romneycare campaign was behind prompting the Politico story to drop when it did, because if Politico was left to its own devices this story would have broken in December right before the Iowa Caucus…or it would have been held in reserve for October 2012 when Cain was the Republican nominee. The only person who was really helped out by this story dropping now was Willard Mittens Romneycare. Therefore, I think it’s highly likely that his campaign had something to do with this — and I also believe those same operatives did their level best to pin the attack on the Perry campaign, as a way for the Romney guys to damage two rivals at once. This is precisely the sort of move the Cocktail Party GOP establishment would make, since it’s the sort of thing they’ve done in the past.
I find it interesting that the Left, the agenda-driven media, and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment forever use sex scandals to attack black men. This is similar to what was done to Clarence Thomas, and something that keeps popping up whenever a black conservative needs to be destroyed because he is threatening the Left’s hold on black voters.
I also find it very interesting that sex scandals are the weapon of choice to destroy men that Barack Obama does not want to run against in an upcoming election.
Remember back to 2006 when Jack Ryan was on course to win the Senate seat here in Illinois. Mysteriously, his sealed divorce records were released and his campaign was destroyed by claims from his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan (from Star Trek), that Jack Ryan wanted to have exhibitionist sex with her in public and she refused. So, the whole scandal involved a Republican man who was on track to beating Obama in the election expressing a sexual fantasy to his wife that she objected to in her divorce filing. The media turned that into a major scandal for Ryan — and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment in Illinois cowardly cut Ryan loose and made him withdraw from the race because of it.
I need to put the following in bold so that the importance of it registers: IF THE ILLINOIS REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT HAD NOT ABANDONED JACK RYAN BECAUSE OF THAT MANUFACTURED SCANDAL, THEN BARACK OBAMA WOULD NOT BE PRESIDENT TODAY.
This is important because here we go again.
Herman Cain would do more damage to the Democrat Party as the Republican nominee than many of you realize.
In debates, he would clean Obama’s clock…and he’d convince a great many black voters to just sit home on election day, since they’d be fine with Cain winning the presidency (even if they couldn’t buck their cultural conditioning to always vote Democrat and would thus be reluctant to pull the lever for a Republican). Cain would no doubt win more black votes than any Republican in history…but more importantly, he would keep at least a million blacks coast to coast home on election day next year since they’d think “we win either way, with Obama or Cain…we’d have a black president no matter who wins, so why should we bother going all the way down there to vote?”.
This is critical because black voters (and the urban Democrat elite who like to paint themselves as being very attuned to the black community, even though they have a general NIMBY attitude towards interactions with actual black people) are such a key part of the Democrat Party’s Jenga-tower identity bloc makeup. If blacks don’t turn out in numbers greater than 2008 for Obama, he’s toast in the general election.
Herman Cain would pull black votes while simultaneously convincing other black voters to just sit home next year.
The Left can’t allow that to happen, so it wants to destroy Herman Cain.
The agenda-driven media won’t allow Barack Obama to lose because the media invested so much into his election, so it wants to destroy Herman Cain.
The Willard Mittens Romneycare campaign and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment that backs him know Herman Cain would thwart their plans to install Mittens as the latest “it’s his turn” nominee, so they seek to take Herman Cain down before he wins a primary.
That last one is the most important, because you need to remember what the Cocktail Party GOP establishment decided to do to Jack Ryan in 2006.
Yes, the Left attacked Jack Ryan with a sex scandal using sealed documents that somehow the Obama campaign got ahold of.
Yes, the agenda-driven media ran with that story to destroy Jack Ryan to benefit Barack Obama.
But, it was the Cocktail Party GOP establishment that sank the Ryan campaign and demanded he withdraw from the race. In his stead, the Cocktail Party ran an “it’s his turn” candidate that didn’t connect with voters and that no one on the ground here in Illinois wanted as the nominee.
Just look at what the Cocktail Party GOP establishment is doing to Herman Cain…and think about how much the Cocktail Party wants Willard Mittens Romneycare to be the “it’s his turn” nominee to lose to Barack Obama in the next election. This is Alan Keyes all over again.
For anyone who thinks Herman Cain should just bow out because the Left, the agenda-driven media, and the Romneycare campaign have ginned up this controversy against him, I’d love you to respond in comments below and answer this question: Do you, in retrospect, think it was smart for the Cocktail Party establishment to demand Jack Ryan resign from the 2006 Senate race?
Do you also think it was a good idea to take Jack Ryan out of the race, when Obama was afraid of running against him, and giving Obama what he wanted in that race resulted in Obama’s positioning for the presidency in 2008?
Do you see how obviously and directly the Left, the agenda-driven media, and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment conspire to destroy people who are a threat to Barack Obama?
LIVE BLOG TRANSCRIPT: The Cain-Gingrich Lincoln-Douglas-style Debate Watch Thread
[ H/t NYMag for illustration above, depicting Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich in a Lincoln-Douglas style debate ]
WHAT: The Texas Tea Party Patriots Lincoln-Douglas Debate between Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich
WHEN: 8pm EST, 7pm CST Saturday November 5th, 2011
WHERE: In Midland, Texas…carried on CSPAN
FORMAT: 90 minute debate focusing on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
I hope you plan on watching the Cain-Gingrich debate tonight; they’re debating in the style of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, where there will be no moderator asking asinine questions (or attempting “Gotcha!” moments like Anderson Cooper and others do when they host GOP debates on CNN or wherever). Instead, there will only be a timekeeper. This will allow Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich to face off in a substantive debate on both the issues at hand and their visions for America’s future.
I am very excited to watch this debate, and wish similar debates could be held with the other Republican presidential candidates using this same format — instead of having a stage full of people, the debates going forward should all be separate events where two candidates face off like Cain and Gingrich are doing today. There should be no moderators, only time keepers, and the candidates should be allowed to grill each other while giving voters a clear picture of what sort of president each candidate would make.
After the debate is over, we’ll do a recap on The HillBuzz & Mrs. Fox Show at 10pm EST and 9pm CST. You can find a link to that broadcast here.
Please watch the Cain-Gingrich debate or set your DVR to record it for later viewing . I can’t imagine this debate will be anything short of riveting, enlightening, and exciting. It is sure to be a real treat for anyone who loves politics and is deeply involved in the issues facing our country.
WATCH THE DEBATE ON CSPAN HERE 8pm EST/7pm CST
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UPDATE: If the above link does not work for CSPAN on your computer, you can also listen to the debate on the Neal Boortz Network HERE.
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UPDATE: I’ll do a live-blog transcript of the debate for those of you who can’t watch it live on your computers. Check back on this thread when the debate begins. I invite you to leave your own comments and reactions on the debate in the thread below.
Also, don’t forget to tune into the HillBuzz & Mrs. Fox Radio Show after the debate for a recap and discussion. Our show goes live at 10pm EST and 9pm CST. You can hear the show HERE.
LIVE BLOG:
658pm CST: Ben Streusand introduces the rules, claims he will be as unobtrusive as an NFL referee
Congressman Steve King takes the stage.
King: thanks to all who put this debate together. Have always looked forward to a Lincoln/Douglas style debate. Since the two Georgians are in Texas doing this style debate, maybe the two Texans in the race will go to Georgia and do the same.
“My most recent granddaughter just learned to walk, when she came into the world her share of national debt was $44,000. It is now $48,000. The average student loan debt is $28,000. By the time my granddaughter starts 5th grade, she will owe $88,000 for her share of the national debt. It will sink us all eventually.”
[ Shows some charts with debt and spending projections ]
62.3% of the budge is entitlement auto pilot…and then there’s cutting off the funding to Obamacare. Spending is out of control. We have to cut this spending or it will break us all. Entitlements swallow up all of our revenues.
We must service our debt interest or be destroyed. Baseline spending projections are out of sight for the debt. Under the Ryan Plan, the Republican budget plan will flatten out the debt and balance it in 26 years. We are up against a very big problem because Democrats want to just keep spending on entitlements until we are destroyed.
704pm – Congressman King still talking about the debt and showing slides. King should have really spoken before 7pm…the debate should start…this is not the Congressman King Show.
Cain and Gingrich are sitting at a table, just waiting for King to stop talking…but King is going on and on. It reminds me of being at a wedding and really wanting to start eating the steak in front of me, but we have to keep listening to a random uncle no one has ever heard of before talking about what the bride was like as a kindergartener. Meanwhile, dinner is getting cold and I am HUNGRY.
710pm – FINALLY, Congressman King shuts up.
GINGRICH is up first, talking about what happens to the debt under the Ryan plan and without it.
If we are stupid enough to do nothing about the debt, we will be bankrupt like Greece. Paul Ryan would fundamentally change Medicare by getting younger Americans into a premium support model — I do not favor a mandatory premium support model. I want us back into the habit of giving Americans a range of choices so people have those choices in the free market that would beat out the bureaucratic system. They need to go to something because it is better for them not because the government forced them. Americans are not going to let politicians impose things on them.
We have to come up with solutions that are actually BETTER than what the government would force on you. Look at WalMart, people shop there because they think they will get a good deal.
We need to defeat so many entrenched elements of the Left that we have to convince Americans that we represent a better future than the Left does.
We have to get to a better health system before we get to an affordable health system.
Look at STOP PAYING THE CROOKS and read it.
Medicare pays between $70-120 billion a year to crooks…like dentists who file 982 procedures a day. The Super Committee is not looking at this, because it requires thinking about Government…and getting people in Washington to THINK is a very big challenge.
CAIN: I am supposed to have a minute to disagree with Gingrich, but I don’t. So I would like to instead to add a historical perspective, since Gingrich and I can change the rules as we go. I remember talking about Medicare when I first went to Godfather’s pizza. Things inside the company were easier to control outside. Medicare started in 1965 and our government told us it would cost $6 billion to rollout, and we were told that by 1990 it would cost $12 billion. But in 1990, it actually cost $109 billion. IT WAS A 900% MISS.
How many businesses can survive missing a target like this.
Long term government projections about cost have never been right. NAME ONE.
That being said, I believe as Speaker Gingrich believes that we can’t reshuffle Medicare or Medicaid, we must RESTRUCTURE. A guiding principle in the Ryan Plan that I love is that if you want to solve a problem, you must go to the source closest to the problem. It is not Washington DC…it is the states…it is the patients. Allowing Medicare accounts for younger workers is an option.
Another thing we have learned for decades is that people spend other people’s money more recklessly than they spend their own money. Let it be their money and they will spend it better. Get it out of Washington DC.
Politicians have overpromised for decades. We have got to get real because we are headed off a cliff.
717pm – What to do about rising healthcare costs…services, x-rays, etc…going up 17% regardless of the economy in a market of their own. Why does it occur and how do we deal with this?
CAIN: We have the best healthcare in the world.
(applause)
We have a healthcare cost problem, you are absolutely right. In order to solve the healthcare cost problem, we must use market driven patient centered approaches. Talk to doctors. Here again, you cannot micromanage healthcare costs out of DC. Every program we have had out of DC has failed. What we have to do is unravel the system with market driven ideas. HR3000 — introduced by Rep. Price in Georgia, used to be HR3400 — open healthcare savings accounts, allow association health plans. At the Restaurant Association we wanted a plan to customize to our workforce. Under the current structure, we couldn’t do that. Another thing doctors would like is loser-pay laws at the state and federal level. That’s what’s driving up malpractice insurance. A loser pays law is a big step in health reform.
GINGRICH: I think that the mess of the health system is an everything problem. It is federal, state, doctor, patient problem. You can go back to 1943 wage price control decisions which was a gimick in WWII, but what happens in a third party payer system. The person receiving services isn’t paying so they don’t value it. The person writing the checks thinks the doctor is a crook.
Think about McDonalds. You show up and ask for a quarter pounder. They give it to you. You give them money. Everyone’s happen. But if you pay them and you don’t get the quarter pounder, there’s a problem. This is not silly, it’s basic, and this does not happen with healthcare.
We need to be in these non-30 second debates because there is a lot of material that needs to be talked about…common sense regardless of what the national establishment thinks is acceptable. Cain and I are the two most radical candidates in this because we are willing to talk common sense, when most in Washington think that does not count.
I am the only Speaker in modern history to balance the budget in 4 years. We reformed an entitlement, we reformed Medicare very carefully and had AARP neutral in a presidential election year. If you are serious about real health reform, you must abolish the Congressional Budget Office because it lies.
Every hospital will tell you that if you get the family and patient involved, it is better and less expensive. The Congressional Budget Office refuses to see this as a savings. It wants more bureaucracy and less patient involvement.
(Congressman King interrupts to talk some more…gosh, this guy loves hogging the spotlight…someone needs to tell him that this is not his show, and that people want to hear Cain and Gingrich, not him).
CAIN: If you go back to Ryan’s plan, first of all if you are 55 or older or you are already on Medicare you will not be affected so don’t allow the Left to use scare tactics on you. For the younger workers, if they take that option of the Medicare account they will treat it as their own money.
Initially it would be about $11,000 and you would have to buy a Medicare approved plan. When you treat it like it is your money that is how you wean people off expecting that someone else will pay for it and it will be someone else’s money.
GINGRICH: I wrote a book in 2002 called Saving Lives and Saving Money, and I outlined what to do. Washington will do three stupid things instead of one smart thing.
I just put on the table trillions of dollars that would be saved by not paying crooks. Why is it so hard to not penalize good people before you stop paying crooks. You can take existing IBM technology and use it to stop paying crooks.
Why is it so hard to say you can turn this around and pass a bill to contract out to American Express, VISA, and IBM to handle Medicare payments and in 60 days you would save a TRILLION DOLLARS.
Anyone who currently prefers to go to a premium support system should do it next year. Tom Price has a great bill that says if you want to contract out for healthcare let’s give you more freedom. Medicare is more restrictive than the British system.
730PM: GINGRICH — when you get the government in the business of defining what you should have, the government will say you don’t need this or that when you do.
Prostate Example — Medicare says not to test for prostate cancer, when lives can be saved if detected quickly. No one who is a urologist or cancer specialist is making these decisions. It is just bureaucrats. You need to move to a place where people get help buying insurance but the family, the patient, and the doctors make the primary decisions on keeping you healthy. Just imagine if there was government approval on IPhones or computers…bureaucrats would stop innovation and would say that 1960 model is just fine for you.
CAIN: I will make this brief. In the private sector for decades now they have been making the change from defined benefits plans to define contributions plans. It is your money. And so what the Ryan plan does with Medicare accounts is that they have individual names on it with defined contributions where everyone will have an account and own it and spend more responsibly.
GINGRICH: I want to ask Cain what happened at Godfather’s regarding the encroaching of government when CEOs are faced with the out of control bureaucracy.
CAIN: My advice to them is something I realized when I first became CEO in 1986. If I did not get involved in these issues then the entire free market system would be collapsed. Don’t stand back and play it safe. Get involved with the solution. I want to congratulate the Tea Party for putting these talks together and educating people. Better informed people will change this country. You are all becoming better involved. The Tea Party movement is real and growing. The Left is calling people racists to scare them away. My advice to CEOs and business people is to get involved and not sit on the sidelines. You can’t stop it with expensive lobbyists down the road.
My question to Speaker Gingrich is that you spent a lot of distinguished years in Congress and then you left Congress and started other ventures and you were thinking outside the Washington bubble…what are three things you realized outside that bubble.
736pm — GINGRICH: As a business, you don’t get to stay in business unless you wake up every day thinking about how to keep customers. If you don’t earn your pay in business, a business won’t pay you. We need to apply LEAN Sigma Six principles to government.
In every aspect of the private sector someone is doing something brilliant that could be applied to government to reduce costs…but the Left and the media block this. If you found Best Practices across the country, you would be amazed at how quickly you could balance the budget and resolve the deficit.
When I left office as Speaker, there was a swing of 5 TRILLION dollars and we had a balanced budget.
CEOs set big goals with tight deadlines, delegate smartly, and don’t let any so call experts in the room.
740pm – Social Security Reform….
CAIN: Social Security….I am a firm believer in solving problems. Old ideas have prolonged the problem. I am a strong proponent of an idea that Bush introduced, these optional personal retirement accounts. 30 countries have optional personal retirement accounts. Look at the Chilean model and I ask why can’t we do that? We can do it if we fight the demogoguery and fight all those who don’t want the current system to change. We need to educate the public so they understand this.
30 years ago, Chile had a social security system like we do. The workers got to 27% of every dollar earned going into this and the system was broken. When they gave people the option — within 3 years, 90% of people said we want the option because it became their money on an account with their name on it and they don’t have the problems we have dealing with social security.
If older Americans who have paid into the system, they have a choice to continue on, or they can take the option of controlling it yourself. If you are close to retirement,your benefits will keep being paid. For younger people, they will have an option to control that benefit yourself. I have asked young workers if they would want to start investing and controlling their own retirement…I have not found one person who would rather keeping things as they are. Investing conservatively will work better than the current system.
745pm – CAIN — I am about fixing the problems. Payroll tax is the biggest tax that most people pay. We should be invited back to talk about the economy at another time. We have to change the tax code. It is one of the reason that healthcare costs keep going up. It makes no sense. It promotes the idea that this is all someone else’s money and not the employee’s.
The payroll tax would be eliminated in 9-9-9 we would setup those optional accounts with that money that people could control themselves.
GINGRICH: I am going to sidestep the opportunity to talk about 9-9-9. Sean Hannity has asked us to spend an hour in this format with him and I think we should do that. Here in Texas, there is the Galveston System where they discovered that if you put in about half as much money in the private sector you would get twice as much as you would giving it to government.
Any candidate who is not prepared to give younger Americans the right to choose has not serious plan for social security. Everyone who is currently on it, it won’t be touched, so don’t let the LEFT and AARP lie to you.
First of all, with growth, you go back to where we were when I left the Speakership, you can’t look at the current static model from the CBO and see anything…it’s amazing what 10-15 extra million Americans working does to social security.
Lyndon Johnson scored a cheap political point by sucking social security into the budget to try to show a balanced budget. Johnson began the problems of giving people the idea that they could steal this money. Senior citizens should not be scared like this.
Get social security out of the budget and make it a freestanding retirement account again.
If you want to stay in the current system, and let politicians like Barack Obama scare you that they are going to take your money away from you, then you can stay in the system.
If you have your own personal social security savings account and you want to retire early why would Congress tell you not to…or if you were like Andy Rooney and stayed active until age 92, why should Congress tell you that you can’t. Let’s get back to allowing Americans to control own lives.
752pm – CAIN: we as a nation are not short on good ideas of how to fix social security. What we are short on is the ability to educate people on the solutions. CEOs can help educate and inform their workers on what is truth and what is garbage. I believe the businesses in America could provide a service of changing the paradigm of DC and inform the employees on what is fact and what is not.
One of the big advantages in this election cycle is the Tea Party, and the Internet. More people are smart and informed today. The President needs to be a communicator in chief informing and educating people, not scaring them.
GINGRICH: Let’s talk about Herman’s role in turning around Godfather’s pizza. He came in and totally transformed that business. Let’s also talk about the Green Bay Packers and their leadership. I became a leader in Congress just like Herman did in business because I was willing to tell the truth and talk directly to people.
The current president is as accurate and honest as Bernie Madoff in what he tells the American people.
755pm – Here comes Steve King again, wanting to be heard and seen, interrupting and talking on and on….
GINGRICH: It is a fraud and a lie the way that Congress deals with social security. The American people have put money into a trust fund. It is not hidden. It is there. But every politician in Washington wants to find a gimick to balance the budget off the backs of working Americans.
If you take it off budget, you could solve social security. You take what’s in that fund, and you model it on what’s in Chile, you find with a few modest cuts in spending you get to a stable retirement program.
Since Johnson, we have been hiding the real size of our budget deficit by obscuring it with social security. We need to be honest and separate these two things and deal with them.
CAIN: This is what we have to be honest about, it is going to take a long time to work ourselves out of this mess that has been created for decades. We can’t deal with unfunded liabilities, we have to deal with a bill that says starting from now all social security contributions will go towards social security benefits only. What the money is collected for, let’s put it towards that only.
800pm — Steve King interrupts again. Someone please tell him he is not running for anything and should be quiet.
GINGRICH == the private sector money in a personal social security account goes into the private sector. There will be a 1% increase in economic growth just because of the amount of capital that would be saved. In Chile they now have savings in their social security accounts that equal 76% of their capital. That is breahtaking and longterm and stable. We need to have separate money between social security and what would be in the private savings account.
CAIN: In the private sector, most companies have moved to a defined contributions account. The company will make a contribution along with the employee. The employee selects from several options on how to invest. You can declare yourself a low risk, a medium, or a high risk investor. You can do the same thing with personal retirement accounts. Parking the money is never the problem. Yanking it out of the federal budget is the problem.
Next topic: Medicaid
803pm – CAIN: I absolutely agree with block granting to states. IN order to solve the problem, the states know better how to use their resources to provide the greatest amount of help to their citizens.
Medicaid has gotten states hooked on it like crack. We have to break the crack habit with block grants. The states over time will have more flexibility. We should not cut them off cold turkey, but we need to start to end the dependency of states on Washington bureaucracy. We need to end the mandates to the states and let the states decide.
GINGRICH: Let’s look at Obamacare. Go to Newt.org for the proposed 21st Century Contract with America. First step is to repeal Obamacare.
I strongly support Paul Ryan’s approach to block granting Medicaid. Block grant all remaining welfare programs. Give the states the power to deal with the poor using innovation and money savings.
We are going to have a real national debate on all this. I do not believe you solve problems under the Left’s policy of people being helpless. Read THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN COMPASSION. We need to rethink Medicaid much the way we rethought welfare reform. Governor Bush in Florida had a program where people who took care of themselves and didn’t go to the emergency room got a Christmas bonus. To the shock of academics, poor people were aware of money and strived to get that bonus by not abusing the emergency rooms. If you had the ability to triage and send people to minute clinics, then the hospital wouldn’t charge emergency room rates. If you track someone who abuses the system there should be a consequence for that.
We have to start distinguishing between the taxpayer who is concerned with charitable care and taxpayers who are suckers and are being exploited.
CAIN: One of the principles I believe in is going from an entitlement society to an empowerment society. Help people to help themselves.
No entitlement programs…teach people to fish, not give them fish.
I would support a voucher system but not if a voucher would pay all the costs. People need skin in the game, otherwise they will ask how much more the government will give them.
GINGRICH: We need genuine block grants so states can decide how best they should handle matters. The whole purpose of getting back to 50 states is to have 50 laboratories of experimentation since Washington can’t fix things. We’ve seen this.
We need to think of all of these things being integrated into one human being.
Public Housing — if we give people a place to live, they need to help clean it, paint it, and fix it so they have skin in the game.
The Left’s Model: people are weak, helpless, and stupid and need government to tell them what to do…but who does the Left think the government hires to run the bureaucracy?
CAIN: You need to block grant responsibility as well as money. You need the states to adhere to rules, and to have responsibility for making decisions at the state level. Right now they are too caught up in bureaucracy.
GINGRICH: I believe in health information technology. We need to have the same security and ease of information that we have in using ATMs. You can walk up to a machine in a foreign country, you put in a code, and you can get money out in the local currency anywhere in the world. The center for Medicare and Medicaid uses only paper. It is 40 years behind the times. It stops us from getting into a better future.
815pm – CAIN: We need to have standards and not make it easy for people to cheat on things. You can’t get on an airplane without showing a valid ID. Why should we allow people to do other things without IDs. Photo IDs are needed and should be required to vote to end fraud. WHY NOT?
People who are fighting to require voter ID are people who want cheating to continue in the voting process. There is much more cheating going on than people want to admit.
GINGRICH: There is a big gap in rational thinking between the government and private sectors. We have technology that allows you to track a package with FedEx with remarkable accuracy. One of my proposals is to send people a package to determine if they are here illegally…(laughter)…but it’s funny but making a point about where we are. We should be able to identify everyone who gets emergency aid and every state should sue the federal government every year for every cent spent on illegals who should not be in the United States.
That is the federal government’s responsibility.
(LOUD APPLAUSE)
819pm – How to address the 72 entitlement programs:
CAIN: We need to change entitlement to empowerment programs. You need to prove you are looking for a job or are taking classes to get a better job. Means testing will help but you need to make people take ownership and WANT to get off those programs.
I would block grant all entitlement programs back to the states and give them the flexibility on how to modify the programs and stretch those dollars.
GINGRICH: You must start with the question on whether or not means testing requires people to stay below. We have the most effective food stamp president in history right now and that is not a good thing.
Do you want to rise above the point where you would be means tested? You create a discouragement — read the book LOSING GROUND – you are teaching people to be dependent and fail. You need to rethink the idea that people are getting something for nothing, because that’s not how it works. If someone is an able bodied person who is getting something for nothing than we are stupid for giving it to you.
We need to fundamentally change unemployment compensation. We need to require training. 99 weeks of unemployment sitting doing nothing could be turned into an associate’s degree.
I think that each state needs to have primary responsibility for most of these domestic issues.
CAIN: Let me round this out. We have talked about the biggest elephant in the room, entitlement programs. As you can see, Speaker Gingrich and I are not afraid to talk about this. The government has been intellectually dishonest about these programs for 50 years.
Ultimately, all these programs work together and what we come back to is that education and a job are the two best things that get people off these programs. We need to look at how to get people back to work, want to get off it, and there will be a few people who are lazy and they don’t want to help themselves….that’s their little boogiewoogie as my grandmother used to say.
CAIN: I would restructure unemployment so that if you got 26 weeks unemployment one time, then next time you would only get 13 weeks…then 7.5 weeks so that you are encouraged to get and keep a job.
GINGRICH: I would connect the unemployed to the jobs we can’t fill. We have an older workforce who is not trained to do the new jobs we can’t fill. From Day One, you need to get trained as fast as possible to get a full time job because these people will need to do something every single day in order to get a penny.
Cain and Gingrich ask each other a question now — not playing Gotcha! one time all night — Gingrich goes first:
GINGRICH: You have had a terrific life. We fought Hillarycare together years ago, what’s been the biggest surprise to you in running for president?
CAIN: The nitpicketyness of the media. I did not realize the fly specking nature of the media when you move up in the polls….because if there is a journalistic standard, they don’t follow it, and too many people give out misinformation. I thought that — and I did not study political correctness in school — too many people in the media are dishonest and do a disservice to the American people.
CAIN: Mr. Speaker, if you were Vice President of the United States (applause and laughter from crowd) what would you want me to assign you to do first?
(laughter)
GINGRICH: Having studied Dick Cheney, I would not go hunting.
— End of Debate —
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Congressman Allen West’s letter to Emanuel Cleaver scolding the Congressional Black Caucus on its continued bad behavior
Click above to embiggen the awesomeness.
Congressman Allen West is a future United States President.
The man is going to change everything someday: he will personally destroy the Race Industry, and will more likely than not provide the final clobbering to the Cocktail Party GOP establishment.
I swear, I want an action figure of Allen West sitting on my desk inspiring me to write letters like the above to terrible people.
West is the perfect VP choice for 2012…and presidential pick in 2020.
Go, West, Go!
“Age 22″ – Rick Perry vs. Obama
The above image is circulating via email. It might hit your in-box today.
It’s what Rick Perry looked like, and was up to at age 22…
versus what Obama looked like, and was up to at age 22.
Says a lot about who they are today, too, come to think of it.
Michele Bachmann’s call for Tim Geithner’s resignation
This is why Michele Bachmann is our second choice for President after Governor Sarah Palin.
No one in the Cocktail Party GOP establishment ever has the cuts to say what needs to be said like this.
You sure don’t see Mittens “Mood Ring” Romney showing leadership like this.
For the curious, out the of the current and prospective GOP candidates for president, there are just three I can see having what it takes to really sock it to Obama in the general election. They are, in order of preferance:
1. Governor Sarah Palin
2. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
3. Governor Rick Perry
For Vice President, there is only one choice, no matter who is on the top of the ticket: Congressman Allen West
Never in history has it been so clear who the VP nominee should be, so far from the nominating convention. But West is someone the GOP needs to put forward because he would wipe the floor with Joe Biden nine ways to Sunday. AND, it sets up West to run for President himself in 2020, after being VP for 8 years.
Just imagine what will happen to the Democrat Party with a conservative black man at the top of the Republican ticket in a few years, after being VP for that stretch and showing blacks that they do not have to be indentured to Democrats any longer…since Democrats have never done anything to actually help the black community, just hold it back.
The Cocktail Party will resist West, just as the Cocktail Party keeps pushing Mittens and resisting Palin, Bachmann, and Perry.
But the Cocktail Party is going to lose if you help do something about that.
