It must be something genetic with conservatives why they are driven to offer up advice. From their side flows a never ending stream of hints and tips and tricks and tactics, and the intriguing part is it doesn’t matter what their particular political fortunes are at the moment. Now National Review has a doozy, advising John McCain that in order to defeat Barack Obama he should emulate Hillary Clinton. This is a lot like the 1-15 Miami Dolphins of 2007 offering up playoff advice to the Super Bowl champion NY Giants, but sure, as an Obama supporter I say please listen to them. Because on the last Thursday of August, Sen. Clinton may be in Denver, but she won’t be the center of attention. Sen. Obama will be otherwise engaged.
And if McCain follows this strategy (or the current losing path he’s on), I’m sure he won’t catch a cold on January 20th watching the inauguration on TV.
MIAMI??! Dolphins are Mike Gravel dude!
Dolphins are Mike Gravel dude!
Agreed. Sen. Clinton is more like Dallas. Not quite Green Bay.
Oliver, you write this as if Hillary was beaten soundly by Barack Obama for the nomination. The guys at NRO are right when they say that Hillary did very well after February. I’ve said for some time now that her problem was she thought getting the nomination was a formality and never saw the Obama train coming. Her strategy might have been far different if she knew what a formidable opponent he was going to be.
Rather than just dismissing it outright as folly, perhaps you can tell me what in the article, you specifically think is wrong? You also talk about this “losing path” McCain is on, but in the current environment, Obama should have a commanding lead over McCain in the polls, yet in all of them, the race is a statistical dead heat. You can’t explain that away easily.
Clinton did well in states that demographically fit her well, with the exception of the Appalachias, they were essentially tied in those states. Clinton ran the entire race on her commander in chief ability, which is more or less just what McCain is doing. The problem Clinton and McCain have is that in the most recent, important CiC test they both voted the wrong way.
Sen. Obama is ahead in every poll, some by more than others. We live in an environment very inhospitable to landslide politics and seem likely to do so for the forseeable future. One only needs to have 270 electoral votes to win, not all of them.
I do like how some of the revisionism is happening. In case you didn’t know it, prior to February Hillary was the underdog and then around Super Tuesday started to be a serious contender.
No offense, but I have doubts you understand what a Conservative is.
Do you want to pay higher taxes? Vote Obama. He wants to raise taxes on Corporate America…..guess what that means? The ARE NO taxes on corporations…they pass the tax hikes through higher costs to us! So Obamas tax on the rich will actually mean WE ALL GET A TAX HIKE! Poor as well! Open your eyes man! He wants to bring back the death tax? He wants to raise income taxes? The democrats already are responsible for driving jobs overseas by raising the hell out of employment taxes! They prevent us from searching for our own oil and lowering fuel costs while people all over the country are going out of business because of the highest energy cost in history….all because of a Democratic controlled Congress with a 9% approval rating! They want you and me to ride bicycles to work while they take limousines and Lear jets.
Socialism doesn’t work fella. It ruined Europe, it has failed in every Country it has been a part of…hell even France is swinging more Concervative because their President knows YOU CAN NOT SPEND MORE THAN YOU TAKE IN !
The only thing Socialism (and the Democratic Party is 100% Socialist ) does is kill the will to do better! Get people OFF social programs and promote self sufficiency! Want to do this? Then don’t vote Democrat! They are ruining this Country! They fiddle while Rome burns! Its insane!
Now you want to have the most Liberal, Socialist Democrat in the Senate (who has only worked 147 days as a Senator btw….not my idea of experience) as our President? Do you REALLY think Americans can afford him?
Remember…between New York and Los Angales are 200 million Americans who DON’T live on welfare…do NOT need these slave inducing social programs that make people rely on Government handouts and do NOT live their lives thinking they deserve other peoples money! Obama? I think not…
Sean, where are they saying she was an underdog?
It says she was a “plodding speaker.” Check
It says she is lacking in “pizzazz.” Check
She drew smaller crowds than Obama. Check
She was outspent and out-organized. Check
All the above is true, but that doesn’t mean Lowry and Ponnuru are trying to pass her off as an underdog. She was clearly a favorite that stumbled badly out of the gate. She got her footing and gained serious ground but by the time she did it was too late.
Are they suggesting, that like Hillary, Team McCain should go on and praise Fox News, link up with Richard Mellon Scaif, and accuse Obama’s campaign of being like “Zimbabwe?”
Oh, and Rich Lowry is a pantywaist.
Normally, I don’t waste time arguing with people who offer delusional diatribes like this:
But James has inadvertently hit one of my many reflexive weak spots. In this case, it’s the unquestioning repetition of “known facts”:
James, lad, there are indeed taxes on corporations. Corporate America employs legions of the very finest tax attorneys in the land–at impressive salaries–to find ways to minimize their tax burdens. Do you think they would do that if they could, instead, simply add another dollar to the price of goods and services to offset their tax bills?
Corporate taxes are levied against the bottom line, on company profits. Every single corporation in the world expends every conceivable effort to maximize its bottom-line profit. A change in tax rates will not suddenly make new profit-earning possibilities appear.
Put it this way: Suppose you are the CEO of a company. You have set the prices of your goods and services high enough to cover costs, but low enough to maximize sales and to keep your competition from drinking your milkshake. Your company earns a before-tax profit of $60 million on revenues of $1 billion.
Along comes Congress to raise the tax rate on your profits from 15 percent to 18 percent. Old tax bill: $9 million. New tax bill: $10.8 million. If your profit margin is 6 percent, you’ll have to raise revenues by $30 million to offset the higher tax.
If you could raise revenues by $30 million after the tax increase, why wouldn’t you do it before the tax increase?
OW, your headline made me think this was going to be about Bob Shrum.
No offense, but I have doubts you understand what a Conservative is.
Well, after reading that steaming pile, I have no doubt what a conservative is.
hell even France is swinging more Concervative (sic) because their President knows YOU CAN NOT SPEND MORE THAN YOU TAKE IN !
I wish our President knew that.
Well, after reading that steaming pile, I have no doubt what a conservative is.
Is it a horse?
I love how conservatives keep whining about the “death tax.” Is your estate worth more than $20 million? No? Then IT DOESN’T EFFECT YOU AT ALL!
Is it a horse?
Keep digging, that pony must be in there somewhere.
Lowry and Ponnuru:
Lee Atwater would have been so proud!
It follows that McCain’s main task is to make him unacceptable to voters…
In that case, Great Success! McCain is largely unacceptable to voters.
What? Oooooh….
Since James has decided to take a powder, let’s mock him a little more.
Suppose we turn his argument around and insist that there are no…ahem…NO taxes on individuals. How can I possibly make such a wild claim?
By employing James’ sterling logic.
People need to make enough money to eat, keep a roof over their heads, and give the kids a Wii for Christmas. If they don’t make enough, they’ll give up and stop working.
That’s why it’s up to corporations to raise wages enough to cover individual taxes and leave enough in people’s paychecks to pay the bills.
I don’t pay taxes either, I guess. I just pass them along by buying fewer corporation made products.
if Hillary had voted against the AUMF, she would have been the Democratic nominee. McCain voted for it, and that is but one of the myriad reasons he will lose.
Figuring out that an invasion of Iraq was a certain disaster seems like a good test of a candidate’s ability to understand things that are so simple that millions of Americans figure them out with absolutely no help from the media. Obama figured it out and said so before it was cool to say it.
If my then-83-year old mother could figure out that invading Iraq was a bad idea, surely those with access to more information could figure it out. But they didn’t, did they? Obviously my mom is better qualified for the presidency than either Hillary or McCain, but she doesn’t want the job.
Figuring out that an invasion of Iraq was a certain disaster
Except it wasn’t a disaster.
Contrary to what you liberals believe, the history of the Iraq War hasn’t yet been written.
Obama figured it out and said so before it was cool to say it.
Yeah, when he was a state senator. The bravery!
Except it wasn’t a disaster.
Jay’s right. I hear some schools were painted.
Contrary to what you liberals believe, the history of the Iraq War hasn’t yet been written.
Those 4,000 people will come back to life and the nonexistent WMD they died for will be found under one of Saddam’s beds.
Except it wasn’t a disaster.
So the infrastructure still works, no one was killed, no one was tortured, there WERE WMD, and it didn’t cost anything?
You are showing why wingnuts are not taken seriously by thinking people.
Those 4,000 people will come back to life
no one was killed
You’re right. Nobody ever dies in war.
Excuse me, I have to go catch my eyes as they’ve just rolled out of my head.
Nobody ever dies in war.
I’ve served in the Army (E-5 if you know what that means), and you are a chickenhawk who would wet his pants if I growled at you. (These days I have a job that also separates me from wimps like you: I move pianos.)
Contrary to your successful attempt at stupidity, people do die in wars, and a lot of innocent Iraqis died in a war over WMD that were not there. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because of us, as well as a lot of our own people. How do you think the relatives of all the people we killed feel about the United States?
What did we get for our trillion dollars and all that blood? Could the money that we borrowed from the Communist Chinese have been better spent building a school and a hospital in every county of the United States, or was breaking stuff and killing people the best way to spend it?
Please tell me what we got for our money that was the wisest choice for spending it.
Corporate taxes are levied against the bottom line, on company profits. Every single corporation in the world expends every conceivable effort to maximize its bottom-line profit. A change in tax rates will not suddenly make new profit-earning possibilities appear.
…
If you could raise revenues by $30 million after the tax increase, why wouldn’t you do it before the tax increase?
Because your competition has the same tax rates you do. If the corporation increases its fees or prices simply to raise profits, the competition will simply undercut them and they’ll lose market share.
When the increased cost of doing business is across the board, the competition will have to raise fees or prices as well.
Taxes are nothing more than a business expense (as is the army of lawyers required to ensure that the company is staying within the letter of the 60,000 pages of tax code) just like any other business expense.
If the business expense is increased, the prices WILL increase…and some companies will move their operations to less onerous tax environments.
People need to make enough money to eat, keep a roof over their heads, and give the kids a Wii for Christmas. If they don’t make enough, they’ll give up and stop working.
Spoken like a true liberal.
Actually, you could look at it from the other direction. The business expense associated with labor includes all aspects of remuneration. Wages (including taxes), Benefits, vacation time retirement plans, etc. They are all a part of the business expenses of the company.
Just like prices charged for goods or services, the company must strike a balance between the cost of the labor it employs and the quantity of goods and services produced. Individual income taxes, sales taxes, etc all play into that because the employees must make enough money to pay all those taxes and still have enough left over for HD TV service, car payments and those spinny wheel things…while at the same time, the company must keep labor costs low enough to maintain its profit margin.
So it could just as easily be said that corporations pay all of the taxes…well…except for self employed people and small businesses…but that’s not germane to this discussion.
The bottom line (and the point of the oversimplification of saying that corporations don’t pay taxes) is that increased taxes affect us ALL…not just the target of that taxation. It upsets the balance that exists and creates conditions that affect EVERYONE’S bottom line. Taxing “the rich” or taxing “corporations” or taxing dead people doesn’t just affect the targets of that taxation.
Government does not and cannot generate wealth. Government doesn’t produce anything. It constantly operates at a loss, has no competition and no incentive for efficiency or productivity. Government is a consumer of resources, not a producer.
Transferring wealth from the private sector…the wealth generating engine if you will…to the government sector, reduces the wealth of the entire nation…not just those from whom it is taken.
So, whether you say “corporations pay no taxes” or “individuals pay no taxes” is irrelevant. The point is that we ALL pay, either directly from our income, earnings and as tariffs on the things we buy…or indirectly through increased prices for goods and services, layoffs, lowered wages and benefits, or companies and jobs simply moving overseas.
Tax the rich and those evil, terrible companies all you want. You’ll still end up paying…whether you realize it or not.
“Those 4,000 people will come back to life
no one was killed”
Jay: “You’re right. Nobody ever dies in war.”
In every war people die. That’s why you don’t enter into a war lightly. You only go in if the rewards outweight the risks, and you only go in if you have a solid plan. The Iraq war fails on both fronts.
“Contrary to what you liberals believe, the history of the Iraq War hasn’t yet been written.”
At this point, I have a hard time imagining an outcome in Iraq that would tilt the scales in Bush’s favor. At least no a likely outcome.
You went to a lot of trouble to miss the point entirely, sailorcurt.
Way back up there, it was James, not me, who argued contrary to your thesis:
OW, can I pleeeze has a Preview? Here’s the improved comment:
You went to a lot of trouble to miss the point entirely, sailorcurt.
Way back up there, it was James, not me, who argued contrary to your thesis:
His argument was that it is entirely relevant.
Now watch as I kick the supports out from under your tedious rant with one little kick:
This is false. It is an entirely incorrect statement. Why? Because corporate income taxes are assessed on profits, not on production, not on sales, not on materials, and not on wages. They are assessed after the completion of all business activities. Thus they are not an “expense.”
Now for added amusement:
No? Do you drive a car? Did private enterprise “produce” the roads you drive on? Do you live in a town where criminals are apprehened, tried, and jailed? Does a private company do that for you?
Do you ever eat in restaurants that adhere to a standard of cleanliness? Does some start-up in the restaurant cleanliness sector make sure? Do you live in a country protected by a powerful private military?
Then I guess you’re right. Government doesn’t produce anything. Not where you live.