Freedom Line Blog

From today’s installment of Ben Domenech’s The Transom:

The Gallup likely voter screen now has Mitt Romney leading President Obama 51-45.  No candidate who’s had a majority in the Gallup LV poll at this point has lost the election. Which means that if Romney does become the first to lose, it will be due to a late-breaking October surprise, or because Obama’s team outworks them on the ground in key swing states.

Buckle your seat belts, folks. The next few weeks are going to get very exciting.

I have a slightly different take on last night’s debate than Quin. Like my colleague, I thought that Romney’s performance was serviceable, though I won’t go so far as to say he ‘won.’ Truth be told, I don’t think either candidate did much to improve their standing with the small slice of the electorate that still remains undecided, as that group tends to prize style over substance and the constant sniping between the two candidates probably left the swing voters cold to the political process as a whole (that tendency also worked at cross-purposes with both campaigns’ efforts to win over female voters, who are notoriously averse to that kind of incivility).

I also saw a missed opportunity last night, but it wasn’t Obamacare (where I think Romney is unavoidably uncomfortable); it was Libya, where he completely botched an opportunity to call Obama out on his administration’s meandering, thumbless response to the attack in Benghazi (damage that was compounded by moderator Candy Crowley inappropriately — and incorrectly — intervening to agree with Obama that he had framed the assault as a terrorist attack from the beginning).

After the first debate, sources inside the Romney campaign made it known that they had encouraged the candidate to speak in a natural tone — as if he were addressing a group of investors — rather than memorizing sound bites and talking points. It worked for Romney as long as the topic was the economy, where he is in his element. But I hope that the team in Boston encourages a little more thoughtful planning as we head towards Monday night’s foreign policy debate.

Romney has never shown a particularly deep interest in — or understanding of — foreign policy, a trait which I’ve noted in the past could be a potential liability (though his instincts are, of course, far preferable to Obama’s). While I think next week’s debate will easily be the least consequential of the three (both because it’s last chronologically, and because foreign policy will not be a central issue of this campaign), Romney still can’t afford to be as lost at sea as he was at the end of last night’s town hall. Time to hit the briefing books.

Robert Stacy McCain: “By highlighting the Libyan issue and adding a new element of controversy, however, Crowley inadvertently ensured that the administration’s failure in Benghazi will be the focus of post-debate news coverage — which is unlikely to improve Obama’s re-election chances.”

Indeed, every news site covering the presidential campaign has at least one entry mentioning the Libya story – none of it favorable to the Obama campaign.

And even though some are prone to think Mitt Romney missed his one great opportunity to skewer President Obama with the Libya debacle, Romney gets another chance.  The next and last debate is focused solely on foreign policy.

Wanna bet Mitt will be ready next time?

Remember Darden Restaurants? As I blogged last year, they’re the parent company of Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and LongHorn Steakhouse that decided to codify Michelle Obama’s recommendations about nutrition in the menus of their franchises. But their latest change in corporate policy has far more ominous implications for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. From the Orlando Sentinel:

In an experiment apparently aimed at keeping down the cost of health-care reform, Orlando-based Darden Restaurants has stopped offering full-time schedules to many hourly workers in at least a few Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters and LongHorn Steakhouses.

Darden said the test is taking place in “a select number” of restaurants in four markets, including Central Florida, but would not give details. The company said there has been no decision made about expanding it.

In an emailed statement, Darden said staffing changes are “just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the health care regulations and we simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time.”

Analysts say many other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are considering employing fewer full-timers because of key features of the Affordable Care Act scheduled to go into effect in 2014. Under that law, large companies must provide affordable health insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours per week.

If they do not, the companies can face fines of up to $3,000 for each employee who then turns to an exchange — an online marketplace— for insurance.

So in the course of a year, the Obama Administration has cost me my Olive Garden breadsticks and Darden employees a sizable chunk of their livelihood. I’ll be honest: the first one verges on an impeachable offense in my book. But the second one is inexcusable. It’s underemployment by legislative fiat.

So remember this fact when you hear Barack Obama tout himself as a champion of the middle class in tonight’s debate: the Darden example is representative — working Americans without healthcare and with smaller paychecks.

The Heritage Foundation tees up five issues that so far haven’t been mentioned in the Romney-Obama or Ryan-Biden matchups:

1)      Welfare Reform

2)      Trade

3)      Medicaid

4)      Federal Spending and Debt

5)      American-Produced Energy

Each of these is not only critical to American prosperity, but also conveniently is attached to a disastrous policy decision by the Obama Administration.

This summer Obama’s HHS gutted the work requirement for receiving welfare checks that was the hallmark of the mid-1990’s reform.

The President and his fellow liberals in Congress held hostage free trade agreements negotiated by the Bush Administration as a favor to labor unions, and in the process damaged our international standing.

Obamacare is scheduled to hit Medicaid doctors with a 19 percent pay cut starting in 2014.

This is the fourth consecutive year of $1 trillion budget deficits presided over by President Obama, and there is no indication the incumbent will do anything differently if reelected.

As for domestic energy production, Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline angered not only consumers paying high gasoline prices, but also the unionized labor that stood to benefit from short- and long-term job creation.

Mitt Romney should look for ways to insert these failures of leadership into his answers during tonight’s townhall debate with Barack Obama.  People need to be reminded that the President’s kneejerk liberalism is bankrupting the country.

John Fund says that the White House blame-shifting for the Libya fiasco is causing a rift inside the Administration:

Obama officials may have made a key mistake when, in their panic, they attempted to lay blame for the Libyan fiasco solely on others. White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that responsibility for Libya lay with the State Department, not the White House. Ed Klein, a former New York Times editor who has authored recent biographies of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, says his sources tell him that Bill Clinton is already pulling together an informal legal team to create a defense in case Obama officials continue to point the finger in Hillary’s direction.

“If she is left with this stain on her reputation, it could seriously damage her chances for election” as president in 2016, Klein told the Daily Caller.

So, after four years as a loyal Secretary of State, THIS is how Hillary Clinton gets rewarded by the man who beat her in the 2008 Democratic primaries?

Bill must be fuming.  Barack should beware a Bubba-eruption.

The Fox affiliate in D.C. reports that Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecom billionaire and at $70 billion the world’s richest man, is adding to his net worth by owning a controlling stake in a company that specializes in making $10 off of every “Obamaphone” it distributes to eligible Americans.

But although Slim himself is said to have donated to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, it’s the mogul’s American-based surrogate, Frederick “F.J.” Pollack, who seems to be greasing the skids.  Per Fox:

Pollak has donated at least $156,500 to Democratic candidates and committees this cycle, including at least $50,000 to the Obama campaign. His wife, Abigail, is a campaign bundler for Obama and has raised more than $632,000 for the president this cycle, and more than $1.5 million since 2007. She has personally contributed more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2008.

The Pollaks hosted Obama at their Miami Beach home in June for a $40,000-per-plate fundraising dinner, and hosted a similar event with Michelle Obama in July 2008. The couple personally donated a combined $66,200 to Obama’s re-election effort that year.

With 3.8 million customers receiving Obamaphones at $10 a pop, the Pollacks are getting several times their money’s worth for Slim in campaign donations.

Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal in an interview with the Daily Caller frames the tax debate in terms both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should use when attacking President Barack Obama’s soak-the-rich economic policies:

“Fairness is a good principle but should not be put ahead of growth,” Moore said when discussing his new book, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?: The Truth about Opportunity, Taxes, and Wealth in America.  “There’s nothing fair about making everyone poor.”

A hat tip to my father-in-law and former flight instructor Grady Conner for sending along a link from Flying Magazine that reproduced the National Business Aviation Association’s response to President Barack Obama’s debate night swipe at corporate jets:

In an open letter to Obama, NBAA head Ed Bolen said the remarks show that the president is out of touch with reality.

“Your comments seemed to illustrate a complete lack of understanding about the importance of business aviation in the U.S., and appear to be at odds with your stated interest in promoting job growth, stimulating exports, driving economic recovery and restoring America to its first-place position in manufacturing,” Bolen wrote.

Bolen was referring to Obama’s response to a question from debate moderator Jim Lehrer about tax policy, in which Obama stated: “Why wouldn’t we eliminate tax breaks for corporate jets? My attitude is if you got a corporate jet, you can probably afford to pay full freight, not get a special break for it.”

Bolen first countered those remarks in a statement issued to news organizations before the Wednesday night debate had concluded, which noted that the business aviation industry is responsible for 1.2 million American jobs, and contributes $150 billion annually to the U.S. economy.

For those scoring at home, the 1.2 million American jobs maintained by the business aviation industry dwarf the 300,000 non-farm payroll jobs created since President Obama took office.  (And that’s being charitable.  The CNN fact checkers who determined that number didn’t count government jobs.  If they had, the Obama economy would actually have 400,000 fewer Americans working today than in January 2009.)

As a devotee of stimulus, the President should appreciate that tax breaks for corporate jet purchases help stimulate people to buy such aircraft, which in turn help employ 1.2 million domestic workers and generate $150 billion.

Then again, maybe the President just resents the fact that free people in an open market can do a better job stimulating the economy than government experts.

It’s not an overstatement to say that the Heritage Foundation has done the nation a service with its new video chronicling the Obama Administration’s deceit and incompetence regarding the fatal attack on our consulate in Benghazi:

I’d love to see this turned into an ad aired during the presidential debate on foreign policy at the end of this month.

Over at Ricochet, I have my take on the growing meme that President Obama doesn’t really want a second term. My take is different: he wants it all right, but his appetite for prestige and power is tempered by his disdain for the mechanics of the job:

Obama considers it an affront when people fail to accept his brilliance as a given. The man has simply never had to win on the merits. Like most professionals who manage to trade exclusively on personality, he has rocketed to the level of his incompetence. And now, when people actually question him, the sense of righteousness that has calcified around an unchallenged ideology has left him at a loss to construct a rejoinder: how, after all, do you debate someone trapped in false consciousness? Barack is still trying to figure out how to tell us that we’re only staring at shadows on the cave wall.

Read the whole thing here.

Dan Murphy at National Review found another possible debating point for Mitt Romney:

Tucked away in President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal was a little-noticed provision telling Congress that it may need to provide $688 million to cover the FHA’s projected losses this fiscal year. Translation: The FHA will need a bailout for the first time in its 75-year history.

A short-term solution by the Department of Housing and Urban Development covered up FHA’s growing financial problem until mid-November, i.e. after the presidential election.

Mitt Romney should clue-in the American people on this failure before they vote.

Kudos to CNN host Erin Burnett for getting Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter to admit that President Barack Obama’s charge that Mitt Romney is campaigning on a $5 trillion tax cut is just wrong.

From a transcript provided by RealClearPolitics:

Erin Burnett, CNN host: So you’re saying if you lower them by 20% you get a $5 trillion tab, right?

Stephanie Cutter: It’s a $5 trillion tab.

[crosstalk]

Burnett: But then when you close deductions it’s not going to be anywhere near $5 trillion, that’s our analysis.

Cutter: Well, okay, stipulated. It won’t be near $5 trillion but it’s also not going to be the sum of $5 trillion in the loopholes that he’s going to close. So it is going to cost someone and it’s going to cost the middle class. Independent economists have taken a look at this. There aren’t enough deductions for those at the top to account for the number of tax cuts that they get because of Mitt Romney’s policy so you have to raise taxes on the middle class. As Bill Clinton said, it’s just simple math.

Burnett: Okay, they’ll just say that you can do that. There are other studies. I know the one to which you’re referring, but there’s also the possibility of economic growth.

Cutter: Prove it. Erin, prove it.

Burnett: We can’t prove either side, that’s all I’m saying, but the one thing that I can say is not true is the $5 trillion tax cut.

Cutter: I disagree with you. You can prove it. So then they should just say that they’re counting entirely on economic growth to pay for a tax cut. Which is an interesting theory because that is what George Bush and let’s look at how that turned out, we had the slowest economic growth since World War II.

Burnett: They’re not saying entirely, they’re saying closing loopholes and economic growth, both. I understand you disagree with it.

Cutter: But that still leaves you at least a trillion dollars short. The math does not work with what they’re saying. And they won’t name those deductions, not a single deduction that they will close because they know that is bad for their politics. Now look, this is the center, this is the core of Mitt Romney’s economic policy. Last night, he walked away from it, said he didn’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. He does. That’s what lowering the rates amounts to.

Don’t confuse them with the facts!

If headlines earn a vice presidential candidate’s stripes, then Joe Biden may merit consideration as Mitt Romney’s most effective attack dog.

A few days ago Biden said the middle class has been “buried” during President Barack Obama’s economic stewardship.  Today, Obama’s self-immolating Vice President confirmed Mitt Romney’s charge that the Democratic incumbent would raise taxes if reelected:

Biden said Romney and other Republicans often say `Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.’ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That’s not a tax raise. That’s called fairness where I come from.”

It’s true Biden is gaffe-prone, but these kinds of statements are too true to be unintentional.

Watch yourself, Paul Ryan – Good Ole’ Joe is gunning for your job!

H/T: Fox News

Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner flagged a disingenuous statement from the AARP after President Barack Obama’s disastrous debate performance last night:

President Obama invoked AARP to defend his health care law last night, prompting the influential group to release a statement telling him not to do that again.

“While we respect the rights of each campaign to make its case to voters, AARP has never consented to the use of its name by any candidate or political campaign,” the group posted in a statement. “AARP is a nonpartisan organization and we do not endorse political candidates nor coordinate with any candidate or political party.”

The statement is disingenuous because, as I argued in a recent column, AARP stands to gain $2.8 billion if ObamaCare is implemented; an event foreshadowed in an email from a top AARP executive to the White House in 2009 that said, “we will try to keep a little space between us” on health care because AARP’s “polling shows we are more influential when we are seen as independent, so we want to reinforce that positioning…The larger issue is how best to serve the cause.”

AARP already made its choice.  If it wants its money, the group must support its patron, no matter how unpopular he is becoming.

I’ll have more thoughts about this evening’s debate in my column this week, but for now let me just say this: At the rate this one went, I expected it to end with Romney handing Obama a sword and saying “you know what to do.”

Over the last 20 years or so, the conservative movement has undergone a renaissance in its posture towards the news media. The right has become more aggressive about flagging bias when it sees it, and the proliferation of cable and online news sources has created the market conditions for conservatives to counterprogram big media’s overwhelmingly liberal agenda.

During that time, many of us have developed a pretty thick skin for media malpractice. We know it’s there and we try to get it the public shaming it deserves, but we also take it is a given. But even those of us anesthetized to the practice have been taken aback by how badly the mainstream media has dropped the ball on foreign policy coverage over the past month or so — a practice exemplified by the press’s obsession with Mitt Romney’s (totally justified) reaction to the violence in the Middle East, even while the Obama Administration was proving itself to be at best clueless — and at worst, intentionally dishonest — about what was happening in the region.

Through that prism, it’s all the more remarkable that it took the Washington Free Beacon, a relatively new conservative investigative outlet to unearth this story:

Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident.

One official said the cyber breach was one of Beijing’s most brazen cyber attacks against the United States and highlights a failure of the Obama administration to press China on its persistent cyber attacks.

…

According to the former official, the secrets held within the WHMO include data on the so-called “nuclear football,” the nuclear command and control suitcase used by the president to be in constant communication with strategic nuclear forces commanders for launching nuclear missiles or bombers.

The office also is in charge of sensitive continuity-of-government operations in wartime or crises.

The former official said if China were to obtain details of this sensitive information, it could use it during a future conflict to intercept presidential communications, locate the president for targeting purposes, or disrupt strategic command and control by the president to U.S. forces in both the United States and abroad.

Pretty jarring, right? But this ought to soothe your nerves:

… Officials said President Barack Obama was not notified about the cyber attack—which was traced to China when it was first discovered—but was informed about the incident later.

… [White House Press Secretary Jay Carney] sought to play down the significance of the incident and declined to provide specifics when asked if the attacked computer network was located within the White House Military Office. That office is in charge of presidential communications, travel, and the nuclear command and control suitcase known as the “football.”

“Let’s be clear: this is an unclassified network,” Carney said. “These types of attacks are not infrequent, and we have mitigation measures in place.”

“In this instance, the attack was identified, the system was isolated, and there is no indication whatsoever that any exfiltration of data took place,” he said, adding that the attack “never [had] any impact or attempted breach of any classified system.”

So no worries — the Chinese military was just trying to break into our most sensitive computer systems. They didn’t actually get anything.

Sleep tight, America.

Interesting new data from Open Secrets, which tallies the top donors to the presidential candidates (note: these are not corporate donations, but money from PACs, as well as from individuals and their families associated with these institutions). Here are Barack Obama’s top five contributors:

1.    University of California — $703,781

2.    Microsoft — $544,445

3.    Google Inc — $526,009

4.    Harvard University — $431,860

5.    U.S. Government — $396,550

Peruse the top 20 and this trend holds. In addition to Harvard and the University of California system, schools like Stanford, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan also populate the list. On the tech side, Microsoft and Google are joined by IBM (there are also a few big media companies — Time Warner and Comcast). And in government, the State Department alone is responsible for over $200,000 in contributions.

Higher ed and the permanent governing class in Washington are so thoroughly suffused with liberalism that their inclinations should be taken as a given. But conservatives would be foolish to give up on Silicon Valley, where the regnant mores are sufficiently libertarian for Republicans to win converts through a sustained emphasis on free markets (it’s no coincidence that Ron Paul was a huge hit there).

The tech industry’s lifeblood is freedom: freedom to experiment, collaborate, and innovate — which means sooner or later they should realize that the party of 2,000 page laws and dictatorial bureaucracy is not for them. But should doesn’t necessarily mean will. One need only look to African-American voters to realize that political parties can win demographics they consistently neglect if the other side doesn’t even bother competing. The GOP (quite literally) can’t afford to let that happen in Silicon Valley.

Politico on why the Obama campaign is using former President Bill Clinton so often:

As the campaign acknowledges, Clinton brings credibility to the connection between an Obama presidency and a strong economy, reinforcing the idea that there’s a straight line between Obama’s proposals and Clinton’s legacy of budget surpluses and middle class prosperity.

It’s only a credible connection if you don’t consider the wildly differing contexts.

As Tim pointed out earlier this month, “the so-called “Clinton surpluses” didn’t arrive until 1998, four years after Newt Gingrich and the Republicans captured Congress for the first time in four decades, and six years after Clinton was elected.  Given the fact that Congress controls the budget under our Constitution, it is therefore disingenuous for Clinton and his apologists to claim sole credit.”

Thus, if in 2012 the Obama camp really wants to make the case that a national economic recovery is just around the corner, it should have prayed for a complete conservative takeover of Congress in 2010.  Had he been faced with an entire branch of government – not just the House – passing real budgets, chances are the Obama White House would have had a Clintonesque opportunity to make a deal.

Instead, Obama has had no incentive to move to the middle for the sake of compromise because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been willing to abdicate his chamber’s constitutional responsibility to pass a new budget for the last three years of Obama’s term of office.  And so the President dithers while the economy sputters.

Call it the Clinton Conundrum.  Both Clinton and Obama are doctrinaire liberals whose policy impulses created pushes to nationalize health care.  Both prefer to raise taxes and spend money.  But Clinton, unlike Obama, was saved from oblivion when Republicans took over both houses of Congress in 1994 and (implicitly and unintentionally) made him an offer he didn’t refuse: either adopt our reform agenda or face defeat in reelection.  Clinton accepted and has benefited ever since.  Obama’s choice was between Senate Democrat dithering and House Republican reform.  He sided with his party and hasn’t governed since.

If Barack Obama wants Bill Clinton’s success, he’ll have to adopt Bill Clinton’s policies.  In large part, that means adopting conservative budget reforms so that he can claim credit for a rebounding economy.

Fox News explains the ‘ObamaPhone’ program lauded by an enthusiastic recipient in this viral video:

The video is drawing attention to the government program — Lifeline — as a national debate unfolds on entitlements and the growing percentage of Americans who pay no income taxes and get a long menu of government benefits. But even though some beneficiaries may credit President Obama for providing the phones, Lifeline is an extension of a program that has existed since 1985. Still, critics including Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., note the program has swelled from $772 million in 2008 to $1.6 billion.

Much of the increase since 2008 springs from the Obama Administration’s decision to subsidize cellular phones and service on top of the landline systems the program originally covered.  The expanded coverage and spending has grown the number of beneficiaries from 7.1 million in 2008 to 12.5 million today.

The government justifies the nearly $1 billion in new spending by claiming that 92 percent of low-income homes now have phone service.

No doubt President Barack Obama needs four more years – and at least a few hundred million dollars more – to close that pernicious 8 percent gap.