Follow Me On Twitter!

Please join me on Twitter @MonicaCrowley

Tweet

What Mitt Needs To Do Next

Yesterday's Florida primary marks the end of the beginning for the GOP presidential race. For some candidates, it's actually the beginning of the end. At this point, it's still a contest of organization and money, and Mitt Romney is dominant in both. In a state as big as Florida, Romney prevailed because he was able to canvass the state with ads and physical campaigning. The other candidates simply didn't have the resources to do that as extensively. Romney also won because he is increasingly seen---with the help of hypothetical match-up polls---as the GOP candidate most likely to be able to beat President Obama. Fair or not to the
others, Romney is starting to look like the best equipped to attract independents and others disillusioned with Obama.

In relatively short order, there will be another element that will come into play for Romney. He's got the organization and the dough. But he's going to have to start
giving us a bigger picture rationale for his candidacy. The Wall Street Journal has a great piece about this today---and it's something I learned while working for President Nixon during the last years of his life.

It's not enough for a candidate to simply tear down the other side and point out how disastrous the other guy has been---as bad as he and his policies actually HAVE been. That's only half the battle. A successful candidate must also offer a positive, compelling reason to vote FOR him rather than just AGAINST the other guy.

Romney spends a lot of time talking about his successful private sector experience and track record of job creation, and in this Obama Economy, that's no small thing. But he needs to start advancing a positive rationale for his candidacy beyond just "vote for me---I know how to bring jobs." Which he does. But he needs something more transcendent, an articulation of why he's running beyond simply "I've done it before, it's my turn, and I'm the business guy." The message needs to
go beyond him personally--and beyond simply quoting or singing (!) "America the Beautiful," which Mitt is inclined to do.

A successful presidential campaign is not about the candidate per se. It's about the country and the big direction he or she would like to take it. Romney needs to start teeing that message up, and fast---because Team Obama is already up and running with their version of it. And God help the Republic if they succeed.

Sunshine State Bookend

Today is the Republican presidential primary in Florida. It's also the last day of January. A lot of us in the conservative movement can't quite believe either. We can't believe that we're already at the Florida primary. And we can't believe that at this late date, these are still the candidates with whom we're going to have to ride into battle against Barack Obama. Or one of them, anyway. Some conservatives still pine for a late entry by a Mitch Daneils, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan or Sarah Palin. It's not gonna happen.

So here we are, staring down February, with the dawning realization that this is it, and we'd better refocus on who can win in November and with what message.

Florida voters are still sizing up the candidates, even as they head to the polls today. We've had an unprecedented result in the first 3 primaries: a different winner in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. It's true that the voters are different in each state, as each state's concerns and issues vary. But it's highly unusual to have 3 states vote so differently in the space of about 3 weeks. Part of it is a direct function of the fact that we can't believe this is our field. We're trying to mix it up to give ourselves the impression that we've got more of a choice than we do.

The remaining four candidates all have big strengths and some real weaknesses. We'll see what the voters in Florida do today. If Mitt Romney wins, it could cement a momentum and lead that will be very difficult for anybody else to surmount. If Newt Gingrich wins, everything is back up in the air and things will get even more nasty because the race will be back on. If Rick Santorum wins, he will have pulled off the biggest upset yet. And if Ron Paul wins, well, then the whole thing heads into mayhem. Or I should say more mayhem than usual.

Whatever happens, today's primary marks the end of the beginning, a bookend for the first round of contests. We then go into February, which is marked by a few caucuses in Nevada and Maine and elsewhere but is without a major primary or debate (the next one, mercifully, isn't until Feb. 22). This will give time for Mitt to consolidate if he wins today. If Newt wins, expect all hell to break loose as the GOP and DC establishments will go bananas and try to recruit someone else into the race. Again, that's not gonna happen.

This is the field. We'll get the results tonight and have about a month to take a breather. Us voters need to regroup and re-evaluate our choices too, you know.

And we must do all of this while keeping our eyes on the Big Prize: defeating Barack Obama. Let's not lose sight of the fact that HE is the person in this race with the most baggage and the most destructive policies.

Not Mitt. Not Newt. Not Rick or Ron.

Barack.

Moving Stuff Around

President Obama is on a campaign swing through some pivotal states, and he just said this about the economy:

"On Tuesday at the State of the Union, I laid out my vision for how we move forward. I laid out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last, that has a firm foundation. Where we're making stuff and selling stuff and moving it around and UPS drivers are dropping things off everywhere. That's the economy we want. An economy built on American manufacturing, with more good jobs and more products made here in the United States of America."

Making stuff. Selling stuff. Moving it around. UPS drivers dropping stuff off.

And George W. Bush was supposed to be the idiot?

Obama, with the supposed "genius" IQ, talks about the economy like a 2nd grader. And then people wonder why we had pathetic GDP growth of 1.7% in 2011. The White House had predicted 4.3% growth for last year, as well as for this year and next. Apparently, however, there isn't enough "moving stuff around" as we see from this anemic growth. It doesn't take a "genius" IQ to understand why: redistributionist, high-tax, big regulatory policies suffocate the free market until it can't function. Which is precisely the objective of the "genius" IQ sitting in the White House.

I think, come next November, there will be more "stuff" being "moved around." Starting with Obama's personal belongings from the White House Residence. He can get a UPS driver to drop it all off in Chicago.

Wisconsin vs. Illinois

Illinois is being run the way Obama is running the nation. His home state is a microcosm of the country under Obama. With its tax hikes, stifling regulations and astronomical government-union obligations, Illinois just received a credit downgrade. Meanwhile, next door in Wisconsin, Republican Scott Walker led his state through reforms that spurred Moody's to praise the state's budget and give the state a positive outlook. This great news for Wisconsin's taxpayers is being met with a Democrat and union-led effort to recall Walker. His heroic actions to save his state are under assault, as is he. We've got to support Walker---and Kasich and Christie and other Governors who have the cojones to take on the government unions on behalf of their taxpayers, which would be us.

Here is a fantastic editorial on the contrast between Wisconsin and Illinois, published this week by the Wall Street Journal. It's worth reading---and reading again.

The Greece Next Door
Illinois gets a credit downgrade, in contrast to Wisconsin
Wall Street Journal
January 20, 2012

Run up spending and debt, raise taxes in the naming of balancing the budget, but then watch as deficits rise and your credit-rating falls anyway. That's been the sad pattern in Europe, and now it's hitting that mecca of tax-and-spend government known as Illinois.

Though too few noticed, this month Moody's downgraded Illinois state debt to A2 from A1, the lowest among the 50 states. That's worse even than California. The state's cost of borrowing for $800 million of new 10-year general obligation bonds rose to 3.1%-which is 110 basis points higher than the 2% on top-rated 10-year bonds of more financially secure states.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Only a year ago, Governor Pat Quinn and his fellow Democrats raised individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46%. They did it to raise $7 billion in revenue, as the Governor put it, to "get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing" and improve the state's credit rating.

So much for that. In its downgrade statement, Moody's panned Illinois lawmakers for "a legislative session in which the state took no steps to implement lasting solutions to its severe pension underfunding or to its chronic bill payment delays." An analysis by Bloomberg finds that the assets in the pension fund will only cover "45% of projected liabilities, the least of any state." And-no surprise-in part because the tax increases have caused companies to leave Illinois, the state budget office confesses that as of this month the state still has $6.8 billion in unpaid bills and unaddressed obligations.

It's worth contrasting this grim picture with that of Wisconsin north of the border. Last winter Madison was occupied by thousands of union protesters trying to bully legislators to defeat Republican Governor Scott Walker's plan to require government workers to pay a larger share of their health-plan costs, and to shore up the pension system by trimming future retirement liabilities. The reforms passed anyway.

In contrast to the Illinois downgrade, Moody's has praised Mr. Walker's budget as "credit positive for Wisconsin," adding that the money-saving reforms bring "the state's finances closer to a structural budgetary balance." As a result, Wisconsin jumped in Chief Executive magazine's 2011 ranking of each state's business climate-moving to 17th from 41st. Illinois dropped to 48th from 45th as ranked by the nation's top CEOs.

Yet Mr. Walker, who balanced the budget without new taxes, is the governor facing a union-financed attempt to recall him from office this year. If Wisconsin voters want to see where a state ends up without the kind of reforms that Mr. Walker made, they need only look to the Greece next door.