The shutdown train is coming.

"Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan joined editorial board member Mary Kissel on Monday where she advised President Barack Obama to give in to the GOP’s latest demands in order to pass a resolution which continue to fund the government.

She said that it would be “wise” of the president to agree to an 11 month delay of the Affordable Care Act in order to fix its flaws and sell the American people on the law’s benefits. Noonan began by observing that Obama is not quick to appeal to the negotiating table when dealing with the Republicans in Congress.
“I think the president, at least in the early years of his presidency, had this sense that if he talked straight to the American people, he would be doing a [Ronald] Reagan or a [Richard] Nixon,” Noonan said. “This president has often tried to do that, but it doesn’t work. It’s almost as if things are stuck.”

When asked how Obama could resolve this crisis, Noonan said that it would be “wise” to partially capitulate to the GOP’s demand to delay the ACA by nearly one year. "

Here is hoping that Barack Obama is not listening to Peggy Noonan or any other republican right about now.

There is a reason for that. Their political instincts are just not that good.

"Of all people, Obama would know if he is in trouble. When it comes to national presidential races, he is a finely tuned political instrument: He read the field perfectly in 2008. He would know if he’s losing now, and it would explain his joylessness on the stump. He is out there doing what he has to to fight the fight. But he’s still trying to fire up the base when he ought to be wooing the center and speaking their calm centrist talk. His crowds haven’t been big. His people have struggled to fill various venues.

 This must hurt the president after the trememdous, stupendous crowds of ’08. “Voting’s the best revenge”—revenge against who, and for what? This is not a man who feels himself on the verge of a grand victory. His campaign doesn’t seem president-sized. It is small and sad and lost, driven by formidable will and zero joy.
 
I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled.  Romney ends most rallies with his story of the Colorado scout troop that in 1986 had an American flag put in the space shuttle Challenger, saw the Challenger blow up as they watched on TV, and then found, through the persistence of their scoutmaster, that the flag had survived the explosion. It was returned to them by NASA officials. When Romney, afterward, was shown the flag, he touched it, and an electric jolt went up his arm. It’s a nice story. He doesn’t make its meaning fully clear. But maybe he means it as a metaphor for America: It can go through a terrible time, a catastrophe, as it has economically the past five years, and still emerge whole, intact, enduring.  Maybe that’s what the coming Romney moment is about: independents, conservatives, Republicans, even some Democrats, thinking: We can turn it around, we can work together, we can right this thing, and he can help." [Source]

Thank you Peggy, the fact that you have not been banished to an island with no running water just goes to show you how stupid some folks are in this country.

Anyway, I see that shutdown train coming down the tracks, and President Obama should not do anything to stop it. It was the republicans who hijacked it and pushed the engineer from the controls. Now they own every part of this looming disaster from the controls to the caboose.

Besides, his signature domestic legislative achievement will be going through no matter what.

Still, in less than four hours bad things will start to happen. We won't notice it right away, but eventually we will. I feel for the folks who are facing furlough and uncertainty with their jobs. Sadly, thanks to the 27th Amendment, the clowns in Washington who set this shutdown train in motion will not have to worry about getting paid. (Senor Cruz has already said that he will continue to cash his check.) Maybe if they did they would not have been so quick to climb up on this phony moral high ground that they are standing on.

"Speaker of the House John Boehner accused Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats of “breathtaking arrogance” for intentionally not convening a Sunday session to deal with compromise legislation to stop a government shutdown.
“The House worked late into the night Saturday to prevent a government shutdown, and the Senate now must move quickly, today, to do the same,” Boehner said Sunday."

Oh shut up tan man, the bars in D.C. will still be open, so you will be fine.

"Obama Is Likely to Lose"?

I like Peggy Noonan. Yes, I know she was reagan's speech writer back in the day, and she is, for all practical purposes, a wingnut---- albeit a more educated and somewhat reasoned one.

Anyway, I read her piece in the Wall Street Journal today (yes, I read the WSJ) and I found her comments about O to be quite interesting.

Basically it was a cheer up fellow republicans note, and it came with the usual things that you would expect from someone trying to give their base hope.

I am paraphrasing here, but she writes things like the following: Obama will lose because he was too focused on his health care plan. His foreign policy is confusing and muddled, and he is getting all he can handle from Gaddafi in Libya. He was outgunned and outclassed by republicans domestically because their budget proposal was serious and offered a unique approach to solving our fiscal problems, and his did not. The polls show that 69% of Americans say that we are on the wrong track and only 38% of Americans say that O deserves reelection. Throw in the fact that his numbers are down among folks he could count on in the past such as....(Gasp!) African Americans, and, well, you can see where she was going.

And yet, in spite of all that gloom and doom predicted for his O ness, she finished her column with a warning:

"You would think Democratic professionals, who read the same numbers Republicans do and pick up similar trends, would be hanging their heads in despair. They are not. They have hope.

Their hope is that Republicans in the early caucus and primary states will go crazy. They hope the GOP will nominate for the presidency someone strange, extreme or barely qualified. They hope that in a mood of antic cultural pique, or in a great acting out of disdain for elites, or to annoy the mainstream media, Republican voters will raise high candidates who are unacceptable to everyone else.

Everyone else of course being the great and vital center, which hires and fires presidents. The Democrats' hope is that centrists will look at the Republican nominee and, holding their nose, choose the devil they know. Especially if the one they don't know seems to have little horns under his hair.

Republicans voting in recent presidential primaries have tended to pick the candidates who are viewed as the moderate in the race—Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008. But in truth, there are some pretty antic candidates out there this year.

The great question of the coming year is not, "Will Obama reignite his base?" or, "Will the Democrats outraise and outspend the GOP?" It is: Will the GOP be serious? Will Republicans be equal to their history, their tradition and the moment? If they are—if they recruit and support candidates who can speak to the entire country, who have serious experience and accomplishments, who are grounded and credible, then they will win centrist support. And with it they will likely win the thing without which they cannot achieve the big changes they seek, and that is the presidency." [Source]

As a fellow republican Peggy is worried that there are no adults or serious candidates in her gang. I can't say that I blame her. When their great weight hope is a guy who can't control his own appetite and yet they want him to control the nation's budget, there just might be a problem.

A problem that doesn't look like it can be fixed with the gang lining up to ride the elephant in 2012.

Good luck wingnuts, at least half of the country is counting on you.

*Pic by Chad Crowe in the WSJ.

The field offers his services to the Repubs: Just for tonight.

"A great party needs give. It must be expansive and summoning. It needs to say, 'Join me.'"

~Peggy Noonan~

Tired of people like Newt,Rush, and Dick being the face of their party, the repubs held a little retreat in Northern Virginia this past weekend. It was billed as the first in a series of town hall meetings-sound familiar?-to reconnect the GOP with real A-merry-cans.

The retreat was called by one of the new faces of the party, the telegenic Eric Cantor.

They are calling the initiative The National Council For White America and.....OK that's bullshit, I kid. It's actually called The National Council For A New America, ("New America". Get it?)and it's supposed to get the party's "fortunes back on track". Good luck with that Eric. After eight years of the frat boy you are not only going to have to get back on the tracks, you are going to have to build the tracks as well.

I am sorry but in case they haven't noticed, the "New America" that they are looking for looks nothing like the old America. Barack and the dems figured it out, but they were slow to the party. They were too busy playing up the old political strategy of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. While they were watching FOX NEWS and pushing hate the rest of the country passed them by.

It's ironic that on the weekend that the grand old party lost one of their best men-- a man who begged them to expand their tent-- they decided to try a different strategy to connect to the A-merry-can voter. Too bad for them that the men leading the charge (maybe with the exception of Jeb Bush) couldn't connect to the typical A-merry-can voter if you locked them alone together in a room filled with table games. But this is what happens when political parties are in the dumps. We get the likes of Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and yes, even Eric Cantor, emerging as leaders.

"Certainly our party has taken its licks the last few cycles, but that's why we're here,' said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. 'The reality is the prescriptions coming out of Washington right now are not reflective of the mainstream of this country."'

Ah, Eric, did you see the results from this past election? I would say that they (the folks in Washington) have that prescription down pretty pat, wouldn't you? See Eric, one of the first things that you are going to have to learn to do if you want to be the leader of a party is to be able to read the signs. Don't delude yourself into thinking that a bunch of town hall meetings, some tea parties, and well paid right wing talking heads are going to do it for you. You need a new message, and some new messengers to deliver it.

Anyway, let me see if I can help you with starting down the right path, because I am a such a nice guy. Here goes:

Recruit some grass roots black folks into your tent. I don't mean the self hating black folks we see commenting on FOX News and who take your money to promote themselves. I mean real community activists (I know you hate that word, but get used to it) who are doing real work in their communities and who are respected by their neighbors. And while we are talking about black folks: would it kill you to talk about issues that effect us just once? Instead of defense, tax cuts, and the right to bear arms 24/7; how about talking about education, crime, and affordable housing every now and then?

Stop making social issues the focus of your party. In case you haven't noticed most A-merry-cans don't give a damn who marries who. And while a majority of us might be for protecting the life of the innocent (and for the guilty as well) we really do believe that a woman has the right to do whatever she wants to do with her own body. So guess what? You can actually be pro choice and pro life as an individual.

Lose Sarah Palin. To steal a popular phrase: "Just do it".

Listen to folks like Peggy Noonan, and some of the moderate East Coast snobs in your party. It's nice to be able to count on the Bubba vote, but you have got to expand. We all know that Arlen Specter switched parties for political survival, but you all made it too easy for him to do that. If I make a peace sign with my fingers I have the total number of republican Senators in the Northeast, now if that doesn't scare you all I don't know what will.

Give us your plan, any plan. We know that Obama is a Socialist Muslim- traitor, who is going to make Cuba the 51st state, but what do you have to offer?

Stop knocking government. In case you haven't noticed times are hard and people are depending more and more on the government. Most A-merry-cans believe that we got into this mess because the private sector got too greedy and pissed over all of us. They want more government (which by the way represents us) to fix the problem, not less.

And finally, bring back J.C Watts (yeah I heard the whispers too) and lose MC Mike. A black face leading your party is nice in the age of Obama, but it can't look like you are just doing it to be like the other guy. Watts was there before Obama, and unlike MC Mike he knows when to shut up. Besides, we know that you all don't like MC Mike , so why don't you end the charade now before it gets any worse?

Eric, I will send you my bill. But please don't write me a check.