Some points from Rich Lowry that will sound familiar to regular readers here at SP:
1) Every day the markets continue to slide, it makes it harder on Obama to blame the mess on President Bush and forswear any responsibility himself; 2) if I were Eric Cantor or John Boehner, I'd be talking about a "real recovery package" every day-- payroll and corporate tax cuts, regulatory reforms for the financial and auto industries, relief for small business. None of it is going to pass, of course, but it will dispel the idea that they aren't for anything and show they are zealous about trying to check the economy's downward slide.
That last sentence of Lowry's should be a constant point of focus for Republicans at the state and federal level. Democrats, swamped with the task of governing in difficult times, will try to claim the GOP is the party of "no." The challenge of being in the minority AND not having a sympathetic media is Republicans have to continually be emphasizing their own solutions in order for that message to actually break through.
Posted by Eric Earling at March 02, 2009 05:18 PM | Email ThisIf Cantor, Pence, Boehner, DeMint and other Repubs showed some guts and told this to the press lap-dogs of this President, people would listen and pay attention more and actually have some hope. It is high time to shake things up - remember what the Democrats did when Iraq went out of control ? They made lots of noise. Will the Republicans remain feckless or will they show some stones along with bringing solutions to the table ? Time to tell and maybe before this country immerses itself in total economic hell.
Posted by: KDS on March 2, 2009 06:30 PM
I'll bet the Republicans dredge up another fossil to run in 2012. Wankers, all of them.
Posted by: joebandmember on March 2, 2009 07:43 PMThese are the same fools who think a snow storm in winter disproves global warming. Thanks for the amusing post about the intellectual level of the republicans. Apparently, deep thoughts and anything but immediate gratification is beyond the republican ken.
Posted by: correctnotright on March 2, 2009 09:20 PMObama promised Change and the Islamic Marxist nutjob delivered.
Posted by: Mark on March 2, 2009 09:22 PMI respectfully disagree with the paths taken by 1-4 and disagree also with 7.
Now is the time for conservatives to try something new: Humility.
I see conservatism as a very wounded animal right now, and by no means is this Obama's fault.
When Norm Maleng decided not to charge Gary Ridgeway with the death penalty, he set the stage for the abolition of that penalty in the state of WA. If you don't execute Ridgeway, who do you execute?
Similarly, when the the leader of the Republican Party initiated a $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street bankers, and got enough of his party to go along to give this bailot Republican authorship, he set the stage for conservatism to become nothng but a joke, at least for the time being.
If we don't say no to welfare for Wall Street bankers, who do we say no-welfare to?
A poor immigrant child with a congenital health problem?
Give me a break.
In my opinion the Republicans have never been good explainers or even advocates for the market for precisely this reason, they've never been sure which they really like when push comes to shove:
Rich, successful corporations, and the pretenses of the people who run them, or the market, which when not interfered with by government can be very murderous to wealth and pretense.
The support for the bailout, and the lack of humility and rigor in admitting it was a mistake, will hurt the Republicans and the credibility of "conservatives" for a very long time, and the only hope Republicans have isn't that people will come to them out of love and respect, it's that people will be driven to them by the failure of the Dems.
Don't hope for this, we don't want this country going down the tubes, and when it does, there will be lots of people, including me, who will still trace the fall right back to faux-conservative George W. Bush.
Thanks all,
New Left Conservative # 1.
They are emotional and react immediately.
Long term you may be right, but more than likely not. The economy would have turned around early this summer if not for Obama. He has prolonged the pain we are feeling.
Posted by: swatter on March 3, 2009 07:25 AMI see the market is heading down again. )-:
Posted by: Medic/Vet on March 3, 2009 08:57 AMCapital, bluntly put, has gone on strike. Those who own wealth are pushing it to the sidelines, as a young and inexperienced president tries to jam through the most sweeping economic changes in over 70 years.
ABC News reported this week that many upper-income taxpayers already are planning to cut back on work and investments to stay under $250,000 in income -- the point where Obama's punitive taxes kick in. No one wins from this, yet Obama seems oblivious.
Yes, I DO feel quite smug and vindicated, thank you very much:
Number 38
"....That's what I've been hearing now from many of my sources on Wall Street who voted for the president..."
The majority of companies P/E ratios are still well above the '82 recession. Just have to wait it out while the overinflated market corrects itself.
The economy would have turned around early this summer if not for Obama. He has prolonged the pain we are feeling.
LOL!!
So you are claiming that Countrywide, WaMu, Bear Sterns, AIG, etc. would all have been fine and dandy, been able to rid themselves of their toxic assets and credit default swaps had Obama not become President? Thanks for the laugh, fell out of my chair after reading that one.
A better bet is the S&P 500, it's broader, more inclusive, and list companies that represent every sector of the US economy.
Gasparino whom is a paid for being a financial talking head should know better.
I guess the obfusCATOr missed this little bit:
In the three months since the election, the broadest measure of the stock market's value, the Wilshire 5000 Index, has plunged more than 30%, slicing over $3 trillion from Americans' wealth. Investors have walked away from investing, while businesses shut down factories and offices and slash jobs.Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on March 3, 2009 03:30 PM
Excellent, 5000 is an even better sampling. Guess what, the market was overinflated...everyone knew it. I pulled my money out two years ago.
Leave it to Ragnar to think that the market can defy the reality of factual data.
I guess shouldn't be too surprised though, because you believe in Creationism which is a magical fairy tale much like "house prices and the stock market will continue to go up forever so I'm going to take a huge ARM loan out against my home equity".
Come back when you have a clue Ragnar.
Come back when you grasp basic economics obfusCATOr... or when you conveniently change the subject you cannot win.... or when you read the ugly facts from the Investors Business Daily article... my oh my we nasty little investors, high ncome workers and spenders just refuse to cooperate with your toddler president; boo hoo for you.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on March 3, 2009 04:12 PMThat's great, but stocks are also based on the reality of the situation at hand which is caused by past events.
Now let's see, what happened this summer that could have led to to stock market declining? Oh I don't know, maybe the people got wise to the idea that the whole market was built in false promises and that Bear Stearns was just the tip of the giant financial iceberg? Maybe it was that company AIG going under but the President at the time wanted to bail it out because it was "too big to fail". Maybe it also had something with the large drop in the US GDP? Maybe it had to do with the largest bank failure in history happening around that time?
No those would be rational explanations for the market going down, something you couldn't possibly comprehend.
Come back when you grasp basic economics
And your degree is in what Ragnar? Religious Studies? Art History? Underwater Basket Weaving?
Only a fool would bother to tie the current economic situation with the current President when the blame clearly lands on the President who brought us here in the first place.
Maybe this was the problem:
"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse."
So Bush was for it before he was against it. What a great leader he was to burden us as a nation with the problems he created and then leave for greener pastures.
"I feel a sense of obligation to my successor to make sure there is not a, you know, a huge economic crisis. Look, we're in a crisis now. I mean, this is -- we're in a huge recession, but I don't want to make it even worse."
- President Bush
Nothing remotely comparable to "wah! wah! Rush Limbaugh wants us to fail, wah! wah!"
Democrats always remind me of nasty playground bullies who beat people up and then when someone finally stands up to them they turn into pathetic whiners.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on March 3, 2009 05:26 PMClearly if we were in a crisis at that point he must have caused it. It takes at least four years to screw a private free market like the Stock Market up as badly as this. The person sitting in the big house running the nation, holding the veto power, passing the laws, and writing the budgets for the last eight years was...*drumroll*...President Bush.
Now the Dems are having to swallow the same medicine and looked at how they are all whining and crying
No whining here. I took my money out two years ago (was also making good $$ shorting bank stocks till President Bush abandoned his 'free market principles' and outlawed it) because it was clear the downward spiral was coming. At the time I certainly didn't think that Bush would screw it up this badly.
Look at all the Bush Socialism in his last year in office...now you have Ragnar basically saying "Boo Hoo Hoo, IT CAN'T BE BUSH'S FAULT, HE WAS A FREE MARKET HERO...SEN. OBAMA MADE HIM NATIONALIZE ALL THOSE 'TOO BIG TO FAIL' COMPANIES". What a joke.
It is the Bush Recession, it's not my fault that you can't face the facts and admit to it.
Or even better, were not really in recession at all, were in a "mental recession". LOL!!
I don't recall Republicans blaming Clinton for the 2000-2001 recession.
I seem to recall you and the rest of the GOP blaming Clinton for 9/11.
You also blame Barney Frank and minorities for the collapse of WaMu despite the mountains of evidence proving otherwise. Give me a beak.
"I seem to recall you and the rest of the GOP blaming Clinton for 9/11."
Baloney. I've never, ever made any such comment.
As for the "rest of the GOP" blaming Clinton for 911 you are lying.
Speaking of lying. What party as far back as 2004, (when we were enjoying economic growth and low unemployment), lied and said it was the "worst economy since the Depression"?
Why, it was the Democrats, of course.
You are a bunch of damned liars.
Rather a strong coincidence that the DJIA peaked right as the last GOP/Bush budget ended, October 1 2007, isn't it? It's been downhill since there, with the Slavery Party in control. With the giants of economics known as Pelosi, Reid, and Obama...
HOPE AND CHANGE!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 3, 2009 06:28 PM"That's great, but stocks are also based on the reality of the situation at hand which is caused by past events.
Now let's see, what happened this summer that could have led to to stock market declining? Oh I don't know, maybe the people got wise to the idea that the whole market was built in false promises and that Bear Stearns was just the tip of the giant financial iceberg? Maybe it was that company AIG going under but the President at the time wanted to bail it out because it was "too big to fail". Maybe it also had something with the large drop in the US GDP? Maybe it had to do with the largest bank failure in history happening around that time?"
The market IMMEDIATELY discounts what it knows. What you mentioned was KNOWN way back last fall and fed into the drop in the market then. The market is NOT dropping now for what happened 5 or six months ago.
You also said "Only a fool would bother to tie the current economic situation with the current President..."
There's a BIG difference between the "economic situation" and the movement of the stock market. As I said, the stock market discounted the "current economic situation" months ago. What they are discounting today is what new things they are learning--such as the makeup of the "stimulus" plan, the Obama budget, the Obama new taxes, the Obama Cap and Trade, etc., etc., etc.
Obama is DIRECTLY responsible for the downturn in the market over the last two months. You can graph everytime he opens his mouth to show his agenda, the market drops.
Posted by: Bill H on March 3, 2009 07:51 PMHas somebody on SoundPolitics figured out exactly why stocks go up and down?
Wow, Impressive! Why are they wasting time on SP?
It's just absurd and ridiculous to try to pin all the blame on Obama here.
All the greed and risk from the last decade would take time unravel regardless who is President. An interesting article in Business Week suggests that the whole thing was made worse when they saved the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in the late 90s--it sent the completely wrong signal to Wall Street at the wrong time.
Conservatives should spend less time spewing anger and more time warmly explaining to people why all this government intervention actually does make things worse, and really isn't necessary.
And less time pretending they know exactly why the market is going up or down on a given day.
Best wishes,
New Left Conservative #1
Democrats have been in power since 2007 and obstruccted the Iraq war as well as all the right agenda. It was Charles Schumer, democratic senator from NY who sent a letter to the FDIC and Indy bank that cause the run on the banks that started the domino effect of runs on the banks, on june 04 2008. The FDIC comfirmed this!!
Posted by: HW on March 3, 2009 09:59 PM