Last weekend Mitt Romney left grasping liberals and panicky conservatives aghast over some harmless Obamacare musings on Meet the Press.

When David Gregory asked Romney what he would do with some of the more popular provisions of Obamacare if elected, Romney replied, “I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform.  Of course, there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place.”

The media went crazy.  First John Roberts, now Mitt Romney.  Everywhere conservatives are wiping the scales from their eyes to behold the glories of Obamacare!

The Hill’s Brent Budowsky trumpeted, “Romney praises and endorses ObamaCare key achievements!”  He wrote: “It is good that Mitt Romney gives Barack Obama credit where it is due, by praising and endorsing two of the most important achievements of the president’s healthcare plan.  Because of President Obama’s leadership, and now with Gov. Romney’s full support, folks with pre-existing conditions will be covered by insurance, and countless kids will be covered by the insurance of their parents.”  read more »

Just in time for the Democratic National Convention, Obama supporters are happily claiming that, why, yes we are better off now than we were four years ago, thank you very much.

For starters, they’re touting Vice President Joe Biden’s bumper sticker slogan “Osama bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.”

Actually, bin Laden and top al Qaeda members killed in President Obama’s wanton drone attacks should be alive and getting waterboarded in Gitmo for all the intelligence we can wring out of them.  General Motors should have gone through bankruptcy proceedings and, if it couldn’t shake off its bloated union benefits packages and improve its efficiency, died.

But I think what Democrats are crowing about is the general economic picture.  They would have us believe that, even if job growth isn’t picking up quite as much as we would like, at least it’s better now than it was near the start of the recession.

No, it’s not.

It’s not even as good as it was when Obama took office.  read more »

A candidate who promises to preserve, protect, and defend Medicare, save it from going bankrupt, implement his plan for only those under 55, and let you keep your benefits exactly as they are now if you don’t like his changes: this is the candidate Democrats are portraying as a faceless monster diabolically wheeling Grandma off a cliff.

We’ve reached the apotheosis of the Democratic Party’s political strategy: take the Republican who’s most likely to do it the favor of justifying, rescuing, and strengthening its bloated, big-government welfare programs, and then smear him as their callous, murderous destroyer.

Ten days after Mitt Romney’s Vice-Presidential nomination announcement, liberals are still spreading the meme that Paul Ryan was a suicidal choice, because he dared come up with a serious Medicare reform proposal—gradually turn the program into a voucher-supported private system—and include it in two House-passed federal budgets.  The left waited about five minutes after the VP pick, then cried, “See—Romney didn’t get a Ryan bounce.  He screwed up!”

Wait till Americans hear Paul Ryan debate Joe Biden and field questions from a smarmy, economically illiterate press.  Then they won’t be crowing that Romney committed political hari-kari.

Back in 2010, the left claimed that Tea Party candidates would hurt the GOP in the midterm elections, because Americans wouldn’t tolerate their extremist, far-right views.  Then Republicans won a historic landslide, picking up 63 seat  read more »

Democrats are hiding their terror at Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate by claiming he was a terrible pick, his ideas horrify people, and now Romney will never be able to run from voters’ fears about his callous persona.

Lost in Democrats’ self-deluding hosannas is the possibility that Romney chose Ryan because he agrees with him and that Ryan will help the ticket.

In “5 Things Mitt Doesn’t Want You to Know About Paul Ryan,” ABC News announced that Ryan’s “budget plans include big cuts” that will enable the Obama campaign to continue its “Romneyhood narrative.”

Outside the Norfolk, Virginia rally where Romney announced his pick, Andrea Mitchell cried that Ryan is “not a pick for suburban moms, not a pick for women.”

Candy Crowley declared the Ryan pick “some sort of ticket death wish.”

Walter Shapiro warned that Ryan’s budgets put Social Security and Medicare “in the cross-hairs.”  read more »

The best objection I’ve heard to Mitt Romney’s nominating seven-term Wisconsin Representative/financial wunderkind Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate is that Ryan could do more good for the country’s financial health as Chair of the House Budget Committee.

The 42-year-old Ryan has certainly done some amazing things in his dozen years in Congress—most notably rolling out his 2010/2012 “Path to Prosperity” proposals, which would cut trillions from the deficit, turn the Medicare program into a voucher system, and simplify the tax code.

But Romney can do even more to fix our budget woes as President than Ryan can in Congress.  And Romney is most likely to end up President with Ryan on the ticket.

Ergo, Ryan must join Romney.

How formidable a Romney-Ryan ticket would be.  Ryan has demonstrated a masterful ability to articulate budget and spending issues in such a way that everyday voters can understand just how thoroughly Democrats are screwing us over.  He’s put serious entitlement reform proposals on the table for the first time in a decade.  He’s resisted caving in to faux-conservative RINO-bait like temporary payroll tax cut extensions.  He’s earned the deep respect of conservatives while getting under Obama’s thin skin and driving fear into the hearts of liberals, all wearing a smile.  read more »

Now that the savior of the crumbling Salt Lake City Olympics and presumptive Republican presidential nominee has passed through London, liberals are suddenly horrified at the prospect of a U.S. president treating the British shabbily.

The left has moved on from lamenting Mitt Romney’s stay in Great Britain to trashing his trip to Israel, but I’m not done with London yet.

At the start of his visit to attend the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics last week, Romney casually noted to Brian Williams that some aspects of Great Britain’s lack of preparations were a bit “disconcerting.”

This probably had something to do with the fact that the security firm contracted to oversee the Olympics didn’t supply enough workers, which forced the British military to supplement these with several thousand troops in order to prevent chaos from breaking out.  Also, British immigration officials had threatened a disruptive strike during the Olympics, which they didn’t call off until two days before the opening ceremonies.  read more »

Let’s not politicize the mass shooting at the Aurora, Colorado midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises last week—unless it’s to blame the Tea Party or renew the push for nationwide gun control!

Based on circumstantial evidence, it is infinitely more likely that gunman James Holmes was an Occupy Wall Street sympathizer than a Tea Party supporter.  In addition to stockpiling rifles, ammunition, and gas canisters, and possibly being connected to anarchist group Black Bloc, Holmes intricately booby-trapped his apartment to kill or maim police and emergency responders.  (I could have it backwards, but I think it’s Occupy and not the Tea Party that slanders the police as heavy-handed, fascist tools of the state.)  read more »

The Obama campaign has been running shadowy ads insinuating that Mitt Romney did not leave Bain Capital in 1999, as he claims, but continued to participate in the company’s day-to-day operations until 2002, when he ran for governor of Massachusetts.

The charges are relevant, because the Obama campaign has accused Bain of engaging in mass layoffs, outsourcing to China and Mexico, and bankrupting several companies between 1999 and 2002.  The Obama camp implies that Romney was responsible for those events.

Instead of defending the layoffs and outsourcing as necessary for Bain’s proper operation, and noting that bankruptcy was inevitable for several companies that were performing poorly and incapable of recovering, Romney has merely pointed out that he left Bain in 1999 and had no say in its hiring, firing, or outsourcing decisions.  read more »

It’s not a tax increase, it’s a penalty expansion!

In a bold, unpredictable move, President Obama declared on Monday his desire to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all but the highest-income earners, by which he means anyone richer than Al and Peg Bundy.

Meanwhile, House Republicans plan to continue their Chinese water torture on the nation by voting on whether to continue the cuts for all levels of income earners for just 365 more days.

Yahoo News repeats Obama’s claim that not raising taxes on the wealthy will mean “cash-strapped state and federal governments have to make deeper cuts to education, infrastructure and scientific research,” by which he means copies of An Inconvenient Truth, solar panels at the White House, and Solyndra subsidies.

Could we stop talking for a moment about the lunacy of raising taxes in a recession, and focus on the fact that the federal government’s failure to enact a fixed, long-term tax structure for more than a few months at a time is nearly as detrimental to the country’s growth as failure to keep down rates on “the rich”?  read more »

On Thursday the Supreme Court rejected the Obama administration’s justification for the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as being covered by the Interstate Commerce Clause, since the law as written would not regulate commerce but compel it.

The court nonetheless upheld the individual mandate, which requires people to buy health insurance from private companies.  The administration had characterized the penalty for not buying insurance as such, yet also asked the court to consider it a tax for the purpose of preventing the plaintiffs from suing, since under the Tax Anti-Injunction Act taxes may be challenged in court only after they have been paid.  Roberts and the majority agreed that the penalty could not be considered a tax for the question of whether the plaintiffs could bring suit now.  Yet in their view, it was perfectly acceptable for the penalty to be considered a tax for the purpose of forcing people to buy health insurance.

Roberts admitted, “Congress’s decision to label this exaction a ‘penalty’ rather than a ‘tax’ is significant because the Affordable Care Act describes many other exactions it creates as ‘taxes.’”

Yet in the majority opinion he wrote, “The Federal Government may enact a tax on an activity that it cannot authorize, forbid, or otherwise control.”

And therein lies the rub: Not purchasing health insurance is not an “activity.”  It is a non-activity.  (The hint is the word “not.”)  read more »