Saturday, February 28, 2009

Mitt Romney Wins CPAC Straw Poll as Top Choice for 2012 GOP Presidential Nomination

CNN.com is running on its homepage that CPAC has selected Mitt Romney as its top choice for the 2012 Republication Presidential Nomination. This is the third straight year CPAC has selected Romney as its choice for the nomination. CPAC is often seen as a good barometer of conservative intellectual opinion. To read the full article click on the following link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/28/cpac/index.html

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

In Handling of Stimulus, Obama Fails His First Big Test

During the election, Barack Obama promised not only to make a great effort to solicit opposing opinions, but he promised that he would not push any non-emergency legislation through Congress without first giving the general public a full five days to review it and provide feedback. In ramming this one-party stimulus bill through Congress in about two days (a bill that happens to be the biggest spending bill in US history), he broke both promises in a major way.

If this bill were something minor it wouldn't be a concern. But we're talking about a bill that will saddle American taxpayers with debt for generations to come. Most Americans, and even the politicians who voted for the bill, did not even have time to read it. To me that's just inexusable. This is to mention nothing about the fact that Obama did not help establish clear criterion for what could qualify an expenditure as one that would truly stimulate the economy (remember how the first version of the bill requested millions for Head Start and other liberal wish list items that had nothing to do with stimulating the economy?).

Bottom line: Obama did not show good leadership in the way he managed this bill, and he broke important promises he made during the election. I like Obama. I want him to succeed. But in his first big test he failed miserably.