I understand conservatives' angst in nominating a candidate in the GOP Primaries, but I remain optimistic that whoever is nominated will thrash Obama soundly. It may even be more one-sided than Reagan vs Carter was in 1980. In a CBS poll from December 9th, 2011, a staggering 75% of Americans say that under Obama the country is going in the wrong direction. This is a crucial element, obviously, because it speaks directly to whether Americans would be willing to give Obama another 4 years (of going in the wrong direction).
A Gallup poll from December 22, 2011 shows that 87% of Americans think that it is "a bad time to find a quality job". Not only is this a horrendous statistic, but it has been hovering around 90% for about the last two years. At the start of Obama's term, in 2008, that percentage was around 60%. At this time in Bush's second term, the number was about 48%. This speaks directly to the old campaigner's question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
The increase in the negative outlook on quality jobs occured at about the same time that ObamaCare was signed into law. The passing of ObamaCare has stifled job creation, worsening Americans' bleak outlook on the job market. The administration's refusal to push for fast-tracking to the Supreme Court the various constitutionality questions surrounding the individual mandate in the law has exacerbated the uncertainty, and thus, the negativity.
Keep in mind, all of these numbers are before the GOP has even begun running ads highlighting various failures, problems, and scandals the country and the administration faces. (See: Occupy Wall Street, Solyndra, and Fast and Furious)
So keep smiling Republicans, Obama, with his Alinsky tactics and horrible economic policies, has rendered himself a sitting duck.
A Gallup poll from December 22, 2011 shows that 87% of Americans think that it is "a bad time to find a quality job". Not only is this a horrendous statistic, but it has been hovering around 90% for about the last two years. At the start of Obama's term, in 2008, that percentage was around 60%. At this time in Bush's second term, the number was about 48%. This speaks directly to the old campaigner's question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
The increase in the negative outlook on quality jobs occured at about the same time that ObamaCare was signed into law. The passing of ObamaCare has stifled job creation, worsening Americans' bleak outlook on the job market. The administration's refusal to push for fast-tracking to the Supreme Court the various constitutionality questions surrounding the individual mandate in the law has exacerbated the uncertainty, and thus, the negativity.
Keep in mind, all of these numbers are before the GOP has even begun running ads highlighting various failures, problems, and scandals the country and the administration faces. (See: Occupy Wall Street, Solyndra, and Fast and Furious)
So keep smiling Republicans, Obama, with his Alinsky tactics and horrible economic policies, has rendered himself a sitting duck.
The extreme failure of the U.S. economy to rebound from the 2008 recession has brought harsh criticism of the President and the Democrat party, much of it claiming that they don't know what they're doing. Some critics claim they don't understand free market economics, or that they are only concerned with growing government at the expense of the economy and the American people. I say that the President does know what he's doing. He and the radical Progressives who control the Democrat party have never intended for their economic policies to succeed. Their intention has been exactly the opposite.
I don't claim to be an economist, or an expert in finance and investment. However, I remember learning that, to the best of anyone's knowledge, recessions are cyclical, and are the result of market correction after a 7 - 9 year period of sustained growth. I've heard conspiracy theorists speculate that it's the Fed that purposely induces recession in order to reap gains from the shift in favorable assets and investments that recession causes. Those further out on the fringe have said that recessions are orchestrated by globalists pushing for a New World Order.
Whatever the cause(s), recession has normally been dealt with in responsible fashion by reining in government spending, lowering capital gains taxes to spur investment, lowering investment restrictions, and other traditionally conservative fiscal measures.
The Obama administration has employed the complete opposite measures that are known to have been successful in the past. The Left's goal has evolved into a quest to bring an extreme loss of confidence in capitalism and free market economics by the American people, and by domestic and foreign investors. If they could accomplish this loss of confidence during a time of extreme economic crisis, they could use the crisis as an excuse to seize control of banking, lending institutions, housing, health care, education, transportation, etc., all in the name of emergency crisis control. The frightened American people would not object if they had lost confidence in the traditional ways of doing things.
To achieve this loss of confidence and mistrust, the Obama administration has put a 'wet blanket' on every single aspect of the economy, and killed every single area that shows promise for growth in the private sector. Meanwhile, they blame Republicans, corporations, the Tea Party movement, and anyone else that wanders into their sights.
To make matters worse, the effect that the sustained housing depression has got lending institutions wary and holding cash and assets to as they struggle to stay afloat. Loans are harder to obtain now than any time in recent history.
These, and every other move Democrats have made since then, have prolonged the housing problem, the lending problem, the jobless problem, and the energy problem. They all remain broken, or frightened into inaction, to this day.
I believe the reason that the Left's goal has radically changed during this recession, is that they saw opportunity to collapse the system when they saw the swollen debt left by the Bush administration. Combined with the 'crisis' caused by the predicted and known collapse of Fannie/Freddie, they saw the opportunity for unprecedented spending for bailouts that it provided. I believe they saw this as an opportunity to, with just a little more 'emergency' spending, push the whole works over the edge.