Romney will get a convention bounce. It always happens. It will only be maintained if something external happens that is bad for Obama. If the stock market falls due to the Euro crisis for instance, or unemployment has a big change, or something drastic happens in Iran or Syria, all bets are off.
Otherwise, I don’t think this play will appeal to the undecided votes - it will turn out the base, but the base is being polled and what Romney needs is the undecided voters and a shift in the middle. Moreover, while this will turn out the tea party and evangelical base, it is not a move likely to appeal to seniors and our aging baby boomers, who may lean right, but aren’t necessarily dependable.
In fairness to Ryan, maybe he was just trying to say his community is too dumb to understand what global warming means, not that he himself is that dumb.
Krugman and Keynes have theories of how to grow an economy. No one in practice has been able to get consistent results from any set of policies. If Keynes and Krugman knew how to get growth, then stimulus would work consistently. The only way you can say it does is by insisting that stimulus always creates more growth than there would otherwise be, an undisprovable assertion.
Then we shouldn’t do it? Just because something doesn’t plug the entire deficit hole by itself means it’s not worth doing? If this is 10% of the problem, let’s do it!
Uh huh. Well, you do have a keen analytical insight.
[QUOTE=BobLibDem on 08-18-2004 at 02:29 PM; 5179681]
I happen to think it will be a Kerry landslide. I see a lot of red states turning blue but none will go the other way.
[/QUOTE]
Personally, I think after the election the GOP should just give in on the Bush tax cuts for the rich. That way it takes it off the table and they can turn to the Democrats and say, “Okay, how do we solve the rest of the problem?”
Now Bricker, no one claims to be right all the time. I’ve made my share of bad predictions in the past too. I was sure McCain was going to beat Obama easily.
I think Bob is wrong again, but his 2004 prediction doesn’t really have any bearing on whether he’s right this time or not. Predicting election results is tough even for the pros.
And Florida I think is still leaning GOP. Seniors know there’s a problem, it’s just never been in their self-interest to see it dealt with until after they are gone. Ryan’s plan caters to their desires by exempting them.
If anything, Ryan’s plan is better for current seniors, because otherwise seniors get stuck with IPAB and more draconian Medicare fixes like reducing doctor reimbursements. And of course Dems have already cut MEdicare Advantage pretty severely. Which may be good policy, but can’t be too popular with seniors taking advantage of the program.
Politifact is an unbiased source, but not wisdom coming down from the mountaintop. They note that Medicare continues to grow under ACA, the rate of growth is just slowed.
Whenever Democrats attack Republicans for merely slowing the growth of spending, they call it ‘crippling cuts’. As a matter of fact, Ryan’s budget plan, supposedly the most heartless budget plan ever produced, grows spending at 2.5% per year. So if the ACA contains no cuts, then Democrats can’t attack the Ryan plan for having cuts.
They support the reforms the cut Medicare mostly, they just don’t support taking money out of Medicare to create a new entitlement. And then double counting that money.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Kaiser Family Foundation, there will be no reduction in services under the cap in growth that the ACA requires.
Since both the ACA and Romney/Ryan include this same cap on growth, the real difference is that Obama takes the savings and uses them to help address the nation’s health care needs.
Romney/Ryan uses them to provide additional tax cuts to the very wealthy.
Millions of seniors in popular private insurance plans offered through Medicare will get a reprieve from some of the most controversial cuts in President Obama’s healthcare law.
In a policy shift critics see as political, the Health and Human Services Department will award quality bonuses to hundreds of Medicare Advantage plans.
The $6.7-billion infusion could head off service cuts that would have been a headache for Obama and Democrats in next year’s elections for the White House and Congress. More than half the roughly 11 million Medicare Advantage enrollees are in plans that are rated average.
Hmm, looks like there are service cuts. CMS and Kaiser were wrong. or politically influenced.
