Posts By Author » David Harsanyi

Democrats Are the Silent Majority — For Now
8 Nov 2012 12:03 am

Don’t get too depressed, Republicans; the national decline will be divvied up justly. After all, in a liberal nation, there is no higher calling than fairness.
And a liberal nation it is. The electorate is complicated, and factors of culture and geography can dictate party identification more than any specific policy. And yes, the Republicans rolled out some ghastly candidates. But that shouldn’t fool anyone; there’s been a fundamental shift in how Americans view government’s role in society, and the GOP is losing the argument.
There was no theoretical hope peddling this …

The Department of Bad Ideas
1 Nov 2012 12:03 am

You know what could really help the economy? A huge new bureaucratic department in Washington, that’s what.
President Barack Obama, a man who recently asserted that the “free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known,” intimated that once he secures a second term in office, he would appoint a Secretary of Business to manage a newly-merged, but still unnamed, agency that would offer Americans that top-down guidance they never asked for — a homeland security for cronyism, if you will.
“We should have one Secretary of Business, …

Obama Doesn’t Have a Jobs Plan
25 Oct 2012 12:05 am

Fear not; Barack Obama has an economic plan for America, and it’s all in a glossy brochure, called “The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security” — an antidote, we’re told, to the vagueness of Mitt Romney’s agenda.
This is what the president, according to a campaign official, believes will ensure that “every voter knows what a second term of an Obama presidency would mean for middle-class Americans.” So, in other words, a shiny substance-free pamphlet is a metaphor for the Obama presidency — because these 11 pages …

Obama: The Free Enterprise President?
18 Oct 2012 12:03 am

Perhaps the most intriguing moment of the second presidential debate came late in the contest when a rock-ribbed undecided voter asked both candidates, “What do you believe is the biggest misperception that the American people have about you as a man and a candidate?” And really, this is the sort of compelling inquiry that makes these contrived town hall-style debates so worthwhile.
President Barack Obama began his answer with a strong statement: “I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known.” I have …

Democrats Are the Real Tax Ideologues
11 Oct 2012 12:04 am

Some of us are old enough to remember when Washington, embroiled in a debt ceiling negotiation crisis, was on the brink of default.
Way back in 2011, newly empowered congressional Republicans (then commonly referred to as “nihilists”) attempted to negotiate a dollar-for-dollar deal on the debt. Those who used the good faith and credit of the nation as a cudgel for political gain — or even to try reduced spending — were, we were told, absolutely bonkers.
Barack Obama, Tim Geithner, Nancy Pelosi and a number of other economic patriots concurred with …

Debate Exposes Obama’s Ridiculous Tax Myth
4 Oct 2012 12:10 am

Not long ago, a former Obama staffer working with a left-wing think tank concocted a study using an assortment of cooked-up assumptions that claimed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would have to increase taxes on the “middle class.”
In Washington, this is referred to as an “independent study.” At the Denver debate, the president called this an “impartial” analysis.
The report, by the Tax Policy Center, “estimated” that Romney’s revenue-neutral tax plan would necessitate an $86 billion tax increase on the middle class, and more crucially, it allowed every Democrat in the …

Let’s Be Honest: No One Is Closing Tax Loopholes
13 Sep 2012 12:09 am

After the lack of journalistic vigor displayed during Barack Obama’s magnificently ambiguous 2008 campaign, it’s comforting to see so many reporters clamoring for details about Mitt Romney’s policy proposals.
Romney, you see, has a tax plan — a vague plan that relies on the sound notion that tax cuts can generate economic growth and even, consequently, raise revenue. Many in the media disagree. But as Harvey S. Rosen, an economist at Princeton University, recently wrote, “under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue …

Democrats Lose Grip on Reality
6 Sep 2012 12:13 am

Government is the only thing we all belong to — but, don’t worry, you won’t have to pay for any of it. That about sums up the Democratic National Convention’s case to America, a place where whatever isn’t handed to you is actually just being taken away.
Democrats like to claim that Ronald Reagan and William Buckley would be simply horrified if they saw the modern-day GOP; but please take a moment to ponder the spectacular display of bonkers in Charlotte, N.C., this week.
Here you’re free to imply or even say …

Voters Don’t Want Specifics
30 Aug 2012 12:04 am

Bold ideas move people. Big ideas seduce them. And nothing crushes passion like a decimal point.
Few things get politicians into more trouble than offering voters too many details. Yet every election cycle, pundits of all denominations join to lament the fact that candidates (mostly Mitt Romney) aren’t putting enough meat on their platitudes. Let’s be honest; in politics, details can equal disaster.
Whereas wonks and columnists might eat up charts and white papers, the electorate has better things to do — most notably any activity not entailing looking at a chart …

What Democrats Mean When They Say ‘Radical’
16 Aug 2012 12:02 am

With words like “radical” and “extreme” being liberally flung around, it’s probably time to define our terms. After all, vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, I am assured, embodies both words in deed and spirit.
These days, radical ideas appear in many forms: a plan offering future seniors a choice of health care insurance or one that marginally cuts back on deficit spending or even a plan — when things get really, you know, German – that attempts to balance the budget over two decades.
If a person is to believe his media, he would …

Why Not Paul Ryan?
9 Aug 2012 12:01 am

The other day, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nonchalantly explained to a group in Florida that conservatives are in the “E. coli club.”
The next day, a pro-Barack Obama super PAC began running an ad blaming Mitt Romney and Bain Capital for the death of a steelworker’s wife (who actually had insurance and passed away seven years after Romney ran Bain and five years after her husband was laid off from a money-losing steel plant).
The Obama campaign has, more than once, implied that Romney is a felon.
We often have the tendency …

Mr. President, You’re No Bill Clinton
3 Aug 2012 12:01 am

Former President Bill Clinton is slated to deliver a prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention. No doubt, he’s going to give one hell of a talk. The man is on his game, enjoying the highest favorable ratings he’s seen since 1993; a robust 66 percent of Americans think highly of the former president.
It’s a politically astute choice by Barack Obama, as “there isn’t anybody on the planet who has a greater perspective on not just the last four years, but the last two decades, than Bill Clinton,” David Axelrod …

In Reality, Clinton Belongs in Tampa
2 Aug 2012 12:02 am

Are Obama’s Ideas Un-American?
19 Jul 2012 12:02 am

It seems that one of Mitt Romney’s top surrogates, John Sununu, recently gave us a guided tour of the life cycle of a political gaffe.
First, he wished that President Barack Obama “would learn how to be an American,” and then he amended the comment with a “what-I-really-meant-was” clarification, and finally, he surrendered, as they almost always do, by saying, “I made a mistake.”
But did he? You don’t have to be a birth certificate conspiracy kook to ponder the question. After all, we’re no longer debating whether government should just be …

Tax Hike Would Accomplish Nothing
12 Jul 2012 12:03 am

Is there a “fairness” factory somewhere out in Middle America producing self-sustaining jobs? If not, President Barack Obama’s obsession with ending Bush-era tax cuts makes no sense as either policy or politics.
To begin with, Obama — and nearly all media coverage of the decade-old tax cuts — continues to discuss the “cost” of tax cuts as if Washington had first dibs on your money. Is the president arguing that the base line of spending includes all wealth and that anything the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t take is something we have …

The President’s Populist Pablum
28 Jun 2012 12:01 am

Outsourcing has been successfully lowering costs, creating better jobs and spreading wealth since … well, since the Persians hired Greek mercenaries to do their pillaging. So why are we always knocking it?
After the nation’s intuitive comprehension of basic economics sank Barack Obama’s inane diatribe against investment banking, the administration has thrown a new ladleful of populist chum into the political swamp.
There it was, unexpectedly playing right into the hands of the Obama campaign, a Washington Post piece reporting that Mitt Romney, while head of Bain Capital in the mid-1990s, invested …

Mr. Executive Power
21 Jun 2012 12:02 am

The greatest crisis of American democracy is not getting your way.
And when a sluggish republic hinders progress, it’s time to act. Just ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who advanced an astonishing argument the other day on the Senate floor: The president, explained Reid, is free to unilaterally craft immigration policy because we’ve tried to do that for years, and we can’t because they won’t let us.
Ah, they.
For those of you who have forgotten, in “The Federalist,” Paper 51, Publius writes: “In a republic, all the power surrendered by the …

Create Wealth, Not Jobs
13 Jun 2012 12:04 am

Soon after the president dropped his ill-advised “the private sector is doing fine” gaffe, White House press secretary Jay Carney scolded the media for failing to frame the comment in the proper “context.” Which is weird, because the context is the worst part.
Yes, government “creates” jobs, often out of thin air. The private sector creates wealth — which, in turn, allows us to fund the vital work of sending weapons to Mexican drug lords and prosecuting Roger Clemens.
Yet there is a pervasive argument coming from Democrats these days — and, …

The Democrats’ ‘Fairness’ Canard
6 Jun 2012 12:04 am

Only one group of Americans can make this nation a fairer place: trial lawyers.
After all, crushing injustice has enveloped the nation. New Yorkers make more money than Iowans. Female lawyers earn more than male fishermen. People who are 6 feet tall — and I saw this in a semi-scientific study — earn, on average, about $5,000 more annually than people who are 5 feet 6 inches tall. Beautiful women populate cable TV news shows, while doughy, middle-aged, pale-skinned columnists are relegated to the Internet and newspapers.
Unfair, but not ridiculous. For …

Church of the Holy Contraception
23 May 2012 12:04 am

Are you sick and tired of these moralizing moralizers imposing their morality on the rest of us? I know I am.
Though it’s commonly said that social conservatives would force us to live under theocratic rule if they could, these days the group most successful in imposing its worldview on others happens to be called the Democratic Party.
Just ask more than 40 Catholic organizations — the Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame, the archdioceses of New York and Washington, etc. — that filed suit against Obamacare’s contraception mandate. …

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