Who will take on Obama in 2012?

Sowell is the main exponent of the theory the big bad government caused the banking meltdown and wrote the most about it . Everyone else take their cues from him

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I haven't read Sowell on child labor laws. If you want to enlighten me go ahead. But I have read enough of him in the past to know I am not impressed with his arguments or thought process. I find him to be very disagreeable unlike the more thoughtful writings of Ben Stein, a better writer than actor.

Rick Perry wants the feds to end Social Security. With the unpopular Republican proposal for Medicare already a problem for electing Republicans, that is another nail in their coffin if he is their candidate, a good way to change the subject about the bad economy, Obama's big weakness, and make the alternative unacceptable. Reagan never talked about doing away with SS.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/0...res-From-Obama

Tim Pawlenty’s summer is off to a rough start. His campaign kickoff in late May was well-received and also well-timed, coming just after Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels each decided not to seek the Republican nomination, and around the moment of Newt Gingrich’s foot-in-mouth implosion, all of which placed Pawlenty in a fine position to emerge as the credible alternative to Mitt Romney. But June has delivered little sign of traction for the former Minnesota governor, and maybe even some lost ground. His campaign kickoff and the attendant publicity barely nudged his poll ratings. A prominent conservative writer seemed to come away underwhelmed. And in the first big Republican debate of the campaign, Pawlenty appeared to chicken out of a telegraphed attack on Mitt Romney’s health care plan, reinforcing doubts about his toughness.

Now comes the latest poll out of Iowa by the venerable Des Moines Register, and it’s another bummer for T-Paw. The survey’s big news is that Tea Party upstart-slash-media sensation Michele Bachmann is effectively tied with Mitt Romney, while Pawlenty limps along near the bottom at a measly 6 percent. Despite his numerous trips to the state so far this year, Pawlenty runs behind even the likes of Ron Paul and Herman Cain in Iowa; even’s Newt Gingrich’s month of nightmare publicity hasn’t been enough to make him sub-Pawlenty in the polls. And given that the political class expects Pawlenty to perform well in Iowa, the poll looks like a potential omen of doom.

Pawlenty’s campaign is dismissing the survey as”a flashback to four years ago.” That was when the eventual 2008 Iowa caucus winner, Mike Huckabee, was running running at just 4 percent in the state at an equivalent time in the cycle. Like Pawlenty, Huckabee had been actively campaigning in Iowa at the time. But Huckabee lacked the high-powered team of Iowa supporters that Pawlenty has been bragging about, and, as I recall, he also drew somewhat less media coverage at the time.
“The Huck,” as Pawlenty awkwardly called him in a recent debate, also wasn’t struggling quite so hard back them to establish himself as a heavyweight. In 2007 the former Arkansas governor seemed content to start out quietly, making a pitch focused mainly on social conservatism. Pawlenty, by contrast, touts his broad appeal to all segments of the party, and uses bombastic web videos to brand himself as a serious heavyweight, not a scrappy underdog. Pawlenty, in other words, has implicitly created higher expectations for himself than Huckabee ever did, and his supporters and donors are surely starting to ask why it’s taking so long to meet them.
Finally, if you had to imagine a candidate catching fire, Huckabee-style, this time around, it’s a lot easier to see Bachmann, or even Cain, in that role than Pawlenty. Those two candidates fit the mold of the unconventional, anti-establishment figure who tends to thrive in Iowa far better than the nice guy from Minnesota. That doesn’t mean his cause in Iowa is hopeless. But Pawlenty’s Iowa-or-bust strategy is looking like an increasingly high-risk proposition.

Sorry, been too busy to reply until now. Formatting note: I don't want to put you out, but it's actually very difficult to quote you when you write your replies inside the quote box.

I don't know what this is supposed to refute. They don't have to buy up "most" to have a major impact. Also, I would bet (I have to bet because you're not elaborating or sourcing or anything here) that you're referring to what they held when the crisis hit, not the number that they'd purchased at any point.

Also, as I pointed out earlier, over half of their losses came from bad loans. So this doesn't really change what I'm saying at all. And I'm still waiting to hear how a government institution is supposed to be able to buy up a bunch of bad debt on the secondary mortgage market and magically not distort the market. That makes zero sense, and contradicts the stated goal of the institution to begin with.

I don't think it was ever really "toothless," but it definitely wasn't after Glass-Steagal was repealed, at which point banks could not merge without government approval, and of which redlining accusations factored in.

What's your theory, by the way? You're flatly contradicting what I'm suggesting, but all I'm hearing on the other side is "run amok."

How far did you get? Paragraph 3 makes it pretty clear:

1. "Credit discrimination was an issue confronting many minorities and women, leading to the passage of several laws banning discriminatory lending practices."

2. "The issue of redlining was a main contributor to the passing of the Community Reinvestment Act"

3. "Critics of reports such as these declare that these analyses leave out some of the most important factors in banks providing credit: loan risk, mortgage demand, and external risks that may have threatened property values."

Basically, people claimed (and studies were done to this effect) that there was suspicious overlap between redlining areas and their demographics. Thus, banks were accused of racism and laws were passed with ambiguous criteria. Which, all by itself, makes them bad laws.

Paragraph 6 shows the results: "Studies have also shown that banks and institutions that are CRA regulated tend to loan to LMI households and communities significantly more then those non-CRA regulated institutions."


This is exactly what I'm saying: it doesn't explain why the loans are handed out, it only explains how they were moved around afterwards. I don't know what "reselling them to minimize risk" is supposed to mean, because that's the entire point of contention: how does it minimize risk? Well, it doesn't, not for whoever ends up with it. So why would they buy something risky? Well, you're saying they don't understand it. So who buys things they don't even understand? You're skipping over the thing I keep asking about.

Well, I'm a conservative who's read a bit about this, and this is all news to me. I picked his book completely at random. What's this conclusion based on?

You said his ideology comes first and is the rationale for his economic views, but why can't it be the opposite? Why can't his economic views explain his ideology? That's how it usually works. As far as I can tell you're just deciding to believe the worst about him for no other reason than that you don't like his conclusions. But there is no more evidence for this than what I just described.

Also, I couldn't care less if he is "extreme" based on some arbitrary standard. I care if he's right. And that's yet another reason why it's pointless to try to assess his motives for coming to a conclusion. Unless they are overt or bizarre, just assess the validity of the claim.

I see no good reason to continually try to drag discussions away from the verifiable and into the subjective, but it seems to happen with almost every topic.


I wasn't asking in a smartass way, I was asking because Sowell's not an idiot, so when I hear something like this, I tend to assume there's at least a plausible argument behind it. It's like seeing a campaign commercial where one candidate accuses another of wanting to legalize rape. You don't even need to hear the other guy's side to know that, whatever it is, it isn't going to sound like that.

The point, again, is that the guy who apparently "nailed" Sowell did nothing of the sort. For the most part he just repeated his views (devoid of most of his arguments for them, naturally), and then tossed in a few incredibly-easy-to-retort arguments here and there.

Actually, he wants the states to handle it. That's a pretty big wrinkle missing from this sentence.

My response to this is exactly the same as the last half-dozen times you said this: the polls are mixed, the Ryan plan is hardly gospel in the party (even major party leaders have indicated that they like it more as a guide), and you're basing all this on one special election, which proved to be a terrible barometer as recently as last year. And all this is forgetting that Republicans are fully capable of reminding everyone that ObamaCare also heavily changes Medicare "as we know it" and that the whole system's unsustainable to begin with. So you'd have to believe that Republicans will fail to convey these things, as well. And that this'll still be an issue in nine months.

You are free to believe all of this, of course. But if you're going to keep referencing it as if it it's an established fact, I'll keep reminding you that it isn't. And personally, I try to be wary of believing something that I really want to be true unless the evidence for it is quite strong, and a good deal less ambiguous than this is.

Re: Pawlenty. Not a great start, but political reporters love their premature obituaries. Here's a helpful article from Nate Silver about the silver linings for Pawlenty in that early Iowa poll. The short version is that he's still got very high favorables, and that his problems are more media problems than anything more fundamental, like being disliked by voters who already know him.

I think the Huckabee comparisons are completely wrong. He's not running that kind of campaign at all, and he's not trying to; nor should he, so I don't find the comparison to be a very helpful one.

The only real danger for Pawlenty right now, I think, is the self-reinforcing feedback loop where people talk about a problem enough that it becomes as if it's true. IE: a bad poll means someone starts writing editorials, which means people stop giving as much in early contributions, which means more editorials, and on and on. These things have a way of becoming self-fulfilling, silly as it often is.

Bachman in the debates should be fun. Hopefully Palin can appear to add to the lulz.

Well, she was already in the first debate. By all accounts she did quite well.

Following-up on the Pawlenty thing. The first poll in Iowa last time around had Huckabee, the eventual winner, with just 4% of the vote.

If Bachman gets the nominee, Obama will win by the largest margin in the history of elections.

Well, Nixon beat McGovern by 23 points, and FDR beat Landon by 24, so I kind of doubt it. I don't think blowouts like that are really plausible these days.

Regardless, she wouldn't get the nomination to begin with if she were a bad enough candidate to lose by 24 points. Over time, both parties have minimized the possibility of such candidates getting the nomination in various ways. McGovern's candidacy resulted in the creation of the Democratic superdelegates, for example.

Unless the Powers that be figure they can get as much done with Obama at the helm, and so are tossen a sacraficial lamb into the arena, and will bring out the big guns in 4 years.

Well, it is here the discussion inevitably reaches an impasse. If you believe that some mystical cadre of business owners and politicians have the power to completely orchestrate an election and pick and choose the nominees at whim, then it should come as no surprise that our thoughts on elections are wildly different. So it goes.

indeed it does.

That you believe that Mr Smith can go to washington, accept millions of $$ to get his mug on TV and somehow not be beholden to the not so mystical cadre of business owners to protect the interests of the few over the interests of the many, is troubling.


Tax-Cuts to the Super Rich does not spur the Real economy and create jobs. Yet they still happen at the expense of 95% of the populace.

that it doesn't give you pause, just a teensy weensy bit is remarkable really.

Nope. You are misstating the disagreement. The disagreement is about whether such a cadre exists in an organized form, not about whether or not politicians feel beholden to the people who support them. Of course they do. I'm a conservative: I distrust government, remember? But that's entirely different from implying that there's some kind of body of behind-the-scenes billionaires who pick and choose their nominees at a whim. That's the part that I find implausible.

Yes, it does. And the idea that it doesn't is incredibly easy to pick apart, too.

I'll try to find that Bloomberg poll and post it here.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...oll-shows.html

This is not ambiguous. The relevant numbers is independents' strong disapproval.

Blowouts are not plauable these days? Why? Because of red state, blue state? And what is a blowout? Mondale and Dukakis were pretty much blowouts also. McGovern still would have won even without superdelegates. He won more primaries. Bachmann is not going to win the nomination anyway, but Rick Perry might, and I doubt he would lose by a blowout, but I think he would be a very poor candidate, with so much he has said on the record to criticize and constantly being on the defensive.

That bothers the hell out of me. The economy hit me like a ton of bricks. I lost my job, and I didn't work for nearly two years. And yet the IRS insists I still owe them taxes for those two years. They want to take my earnings from my two part time jobs that don't pay even enough to live comfortably, and they want to empty my bank accounts. I live well below the poverty line. So how is this even CLOSE to fair?

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Pawlenty isn't completely out of it yet, but I find it hard to see how he suddenly catches on. He probably will get past Gingrich and the others at some point in Iowa, but will he beat Bachmann in Iowa? I doubt it. He won't do well in New Hampshire. Where does he go from there? And this is assuming Pick Perry stays out. He will be a poor third or fourth in Iowa if Perry gets in as Bachmann and Perry fight for the top spot.