Apr 18 Summarizing Obama's Campaign: Demagogue Central

If there's a way to summarize the central part of President Obama's re-election campaign, it that they're spending the next 18 months demagoging (in the real world, it's called lying) Republicans' policies. That's borne out in many places but especially with President Obama's weekly radio address:

Obama blasted Ryan's plan, which passed the House Friday with no Democratic votes in favor.

"It’s a vision that says that in order to reduce the deficit, we have to end Medicare as we know it, and make cuts to Medicaid that would leave millions of seniors, poor children and Americans with disabilities without the care they need," Obama said.

If anything is clear about recent Democratic campaigns, it's that they aren't interested in the truth. They'd rather play on people's fears rather than on providing real solutions to people's biggest problems. President Obama isn't distancing himself from that strategy. If winning ugly by muddying the waters sufficiently is the only way he'll win, then that's the strategy he'll stick with.

Let's return to the Medicaid demagoguery.

President Obama, Medicaid as it's currently configured will bankrupt states within the next decade. As it's currently configured, limits states' flexability in dealing with the very real needs of the poorest of the poor. That's because Medicaid is ancient and badly needs to be built on a 21st Century model. That's right. It's the 21st Century. Get with it!!! Using that ancient of a model subjects people to a substandard life. It guarantees that taxpayers' money will be wasted.

What's particularly disgusting about President Obama's demagoging this issue is that Medicaid can't continue keeping President Obama's promises much longer. He's making promises that he knows he doesn't have the money to keep.

First, ask state legislators whether adding 30,000,000 people to Medicaid will cause catastrophic damage to their state's budget. Thoughtful legislators will tell you with unanimity that expanding Medicaid that dramatically will hurt their states.

The president called reducing the debt "critical," but he blasted Republicans for taking what he said is an unbalanced approach that proposes "drastic cuts" while giving $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

He's talked that talk in every speech he's given the last 2 years. It's lip service. I won't trust him because he's caused the 3 biggest deficits in U.S. history. His actions aren't remotely close to matching his talk. That's why i won't take his talk about deficit reduction seriously.

I'm supposed to trust the guy who's added $5,000,000,000,000+ to the national debt since taking office as caring about reducing the debt? That might fool some people but it won't fool people who've noticed that this president is more about talking the talk than about walking the walk.

To reduce the national debt, you need to start running surpluses. If the GDP grows at a 5% a year average each year for the next decade, President Obama's budgets will add $10,000,000,000,000 in that decade. That's T as in trillion. Considering the fact that JP Morgan revised their GDP forecast to 1.4% for 2011, there's no chance we'll see a balanced budget before 2016, if then.

Simply put, trusting that President Obama cares a whit about deficit reduction requires the willful suspension of disbelief. There's nothing in his actions that indicates he's interested in anything other than spending like a crazed teenager on his millionaire dad's credit card.

President Obama's SOTU speech was hailed beforehand as his blueprint for reducing the deficit and jumpstarting the economy. He didn't even mention deficit reduction in the first half of his SOTU speech. Even then, he spoke about it in passing, not in detail. President Obama spoke at length  about "investing in the future". That shows what type of a priority he's putting on deficit reduction and how much higher of a priority he's putting on continuing his spending binge.

Part of President Obama's criticizing Paul Ryan is because Chairman Ryan's Path to Prosperity budget blueprint shifted the center of political gravity in DC away from President Obama. Chairman Ryan exposed President Obama as a policy lightweight. President can't let that perception go unanswered, if for no other reason than his ego won't permit it.

With President Obama's approval rating with independents in the latest Gallup poll at 35%, President Obama knows that he can't afford to not respond by attacking Chairman Ryan. The risk for President Obama is that he might be further exposed as a lightweight. If that happens, he knows he won't win re-election.

President Obama's attacks aren't really about offering a superior vision for the nation. It's to win ugly. He won't win going away like last time. In fact, if gas prices keep climbing, his odds against getting re-elected skyrocket. High gas prices mean that unemployment stays high, too.

It's important to understand early that DC in President Obama's lexicon means Demagogue Central. For all his lofty rhetoric, the reality is that President Obama is a man with a long laundry list of things from the progressives' wishlist but few real solutions.

He's desperate to get re-elected because he might well think that that's the only way Obamacare doesn't get thrown into history's stockpile of failed ideas.

The antidote to Obama is Paul Ryan. If Ryan were to get into this race, the fight would be over. Last night, in a Hannity special, a focus group composed of 50% McCain voters, 50% Obama voters consistently gave Ryan rave reviews. Republicans consistently gave him scores in the mid- to high- 80's & Democrats giving him ratings solidly in the mid 70's.

With voters sending that signal, President Obama's advisers are likely drinking Maalox by the bottle. Their guy would get his butt whipped in a matchup against Paul Ryan.

Ryan is the guy who, in a debate, President Obama couldn't demagogue. Ryan is too composed, too knowledgeable, too good at laying out his vision for eliminating the debt and running actual surpluses. This stuff, frankly, is nothing more than the political version of basketball trash-talking.

That works against up-and-coming stars who aren't totally sure of themselves. Trash-talking didn't work against MJ. Similarly, it doesn't work against Paul Ryan.

Comments welcome at LFR.