Fox doesn't seem to want to spend much time discussing the fact that neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be attending the 2012 Republican Convention. But they've got a big interest in Bill Clinton going to the Democratic Convention - and in concert with the Mitt Romney campaign, they've pronounced the decision to give Clinton a big role "a sign of weakness."
CNN noted yesterday:
Republicans pounced on Clinton's appearance, saying it was proof of Obama's electoral weaknesses.
“After four years of trillion-dollar deficits and anemic economic growth, it’s clear President Obama would love to run on President Clinton’s record in office. But no amount of showmanship can paper over the differences between these two presidents. Americans deserve a president willing to run on his own record, not the record he wishes he had," Ryan Williams, a Romney Campaign Spokesman, said in a statement.
And lo and behold, Fox News is touting the same message! Fox Nation posted:
Fox Nation also said:
Polls continue to show the race tied or Mr. Obama slightly ahead. But other surveys point distinctly in another direction. One out today from the Hill newspaper gives Mitt Romney an edge with voters on three key qualities: sharing their values, being a stronger leader and being more honest and trustworthy. What's more, 93 percent of voters in this poll said policies and competence were more important than likablity, that's an area, of course, where Mr. Obama has enjoyed a large advantage.
Add to that the Rasmussen survey in which voters by 62 percent to 30 said economic growth was more important to them than economic fairness. Fairness, of course, is a major theme of Mr. Obama and his party. With his attacks on Mitt Romney's business record and his repeated and unsubtle appeals to elements of his party's base, Mr. Obama is clearly shooting for a big Democratic turnout in November.
But Gallup reports that the number of Democrats who say they are more enthusiastic about voting this year is at 39 percent, down from 61 percent four years ago. 51 percent of Republicans, meanwhile, said they are more enthusiastic this year, that is up from 35 per cent in 2008.When you put all this together with the continuing bad news on the economy, you know why Mr. Obama is suddenly reaching out to Bill Clinton.
All that may be true but what Fox News didn't say? That Rasmussen shows President Obama way ahead in electoral votes. Currently, their tally is 247 - 191, in Obama's favor. RealClearPolitics gives Obama 231 to Romney's 191. 270 is needed for a win. RealClearPolitics also shows President Obama leading in the polls - as does the last Fox News poll.
A successful two-term President with 65% favorability rating who’s wife is the Secretary of State speaking and nominating the current Pres. is seen as a sign of weakness??? The real sign of weakness is that the two former Repub. Presidents and Vice-Presidents aren’t even showing up to their own convention to lend support. And yes mj, unfortunately for the Repubs., the Mitter is planning to attend.
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“Obamaâs economic plans have not only failed miserably, they made the economy worse, wasted billions of dollars, and even improved foreign economies as a result of his misplaced spending. Get with the times.”
Get with the times, indeed . . .
Gov’t spending under President Obama is at its LOWEST rate in decades:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/05/25/spending-rate-lower-under-obama-and-democrats/
It’s you who needs to “get with the times” — you can start by getting your head out of your ass . . .
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During Clinton’s presidency, he was a center-right politician who regularly combined Republican and Democratic points of view, which tended to leave the GOP without any position. Naturally, this led to a series of fairly nasty personal attacks on him that started during his candidacy in 1992 and continue from Rush Limbaugh to this day. Make no mistake, the Republicans openly HATED Clinton when he was in office. Newt Gingrich made a point of refusing to shake his hand. As soon as Fox News was started, they launched an unending stream of attacks on him on any issue they could find or make. (Does this sound familiar? It should – it’s the same playbook they’ve been running at Obama, with similar results.)
Clinton became President during the bad recession that was the tail end of George HW Bush’s term. A strong case can be made that Ross Perot’s run made it much easier for Clinton to beat Bush. The economy rebounded under Clinton – but we should remember that the engine that revved everything up, in all honesty, wasn’t the tax increases, although those did help in keeping public sector workers employed. The engine that picked everyone up was the Internet, which exploded in the mid-90s and fattened many people’s wallets. There was also a real estate boom, which turned into the bubble we saw in the 2000s.
When George W. Bush was declared President in 2000, the economy was in pretty good condition. We had a surplus starting to run, which would have allowed us to pay the deficit down and have the kind of “rainy day fund” hawks always advise. Instead, Bush’s team decided to do a series of tax cuts and give the surplus away. In one shot, Bush turned a surplus back into a deficit. The 2001 terrorist attacks certainly did help anything, and certainly did depress things for a few months, but they did not destroy the economy. The economy was damaged by a series of factors, including the mismanagement by the Bush team, two unfunded wars that had to be paid out of somewhere, and which dragged on through the rest of Bush’s term, and a housing/credit bubble that eventually, inevitably popped. Bush’s own popularity and approval rating tanked in his last two years in office, reaching horrifyingly low numbers in 2008 when the economy totally imploded. It’s no mistake that the McCain people wanted to distance themselves from Bush, and no mistake that the Romney people will not have Bush or Cheney at the convention.
The first term of our current president has unfortunately been marked by even more acrimony than what was thrown at Clinton in the 90s. The GOP in Congress still worked with him on several issues, albeit because of his taking more right wing positions on things like welfare. I have to give Bob Dole credit for sticking with President Clinton in 1993, when Saddam Hussein made some comments in an attempt to be divisive over here. This is the sort of thing we haven’t seen from the GOP in Congress over the last three years. Instead, we’ve seen willful obstruction on a scale not imagined before. These guys have openly stated that their priority isn’t to do their jobs but instead to try to unseat the President in this election. Which is really shameful.
For the record, President Obama’s plans have actually kept the economy from sliding completely off the cliff. Millions of jobs were saved and generated both by the stimulus and the auto company bailout. The GOP talking points that try to minimize this ignore that unemployment would have skyrocketed into the teens had those steps not been taken. Granted, things could have gone better had the GOP wanted to cooperate, but at least we’ve started a recovery, as weak as it is.
And it’s really interesting that Fox News pundits now want to express their admiration for Bill Clinton, a man they showed unmitigated hostility toward, including when Chris Wallace tried to ambush him in an interview a few years ago and then had it blow up in his face. Does this mean that when the next Democrat is elected after Obama’s second term, they’ll suddenly embrace Obama?
President Obama would love to run on being impeached for getting a hummer in the White House? Is that what you’re saying, CNN?
Seems the “librul” media isn’t content anymore with just rewriting Dumbya’s history — before, they couldn’t mention Clinton’s name without adding the words, “weak on terrorists”, “draft dodger”, “whitewater”, or “Monica Lewinsky” . . . now, that the blah guy with the funny name is in THEIR White House, all of a sudden Bill Clinton is the greatest thing since sliced {white} bread . . .
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