United Liberty

Note: This is part two of a three-part series that will cover reasons that a voter may choose to support a specific presidential candidate. Part 3 for Gary Johnson will be online tomorrow. Part 1 for Mitt Romney is available here.

I never thought I’d be writing a post of reasons why someone should vote for Barack Obama, but I’ve given it some thought and have found that even though Obama has zero chance of getting my vote in November, there are some reasons voting for him might make sense. He won’t get my vote, but maybe he’s the guy for you. Here are some reasons you might want to vote for him.

You believe a Democrat victory is all that matters.

If you think Democrats are generally “for the people” and that Republicans are generally “against the people,” you’re wrong. (They’re both usually against the people.) But if you think that the Democrats are the good guys, you don’t have much of a decision to make. Vote Obama, and hope for the best.

You want division between the executive and legislative branches of government.

If the latter years of the Bush presidency proved anything, it’s that leaving one party in charge of the House, Senate, and White House is a recipe for runaway government. The GOP is going to keep the House in November and is expected to gain good ground in the Senate. If Obama is pushing for big government, Republicans will oppose it; but if Romney is pushing big government, Republicans will (for the most part) be cheering him all the way. Dividing government is a sure way to stall the erosion of freedom.

You and Obama are the same color.

Note: This is part one of a three-part series that will cover reasons that a voter may choose to support a specific presidential candidate. Parts 2 and 3 for Barack Obama and Gary Johnson will be available soon.

No matter where you stand politically, there are reasons you might want to vote for Mitt Romney in November. Mitt certainly has some unappealing points on his resume, but there’s a silver lining to every cloud. At least that’s what I’m told.

So here are a few possible reasons you might have for standing with Romney in November:

You believe a Republican victory is all that matters.

If you look for the people with the “R” beside their name and vote for them, no matter what, then obviously Romney is your guy, and your mind was made up before the presidential primaries started. I’d encourage you to consider candidates and issues more than parties and party lines, but that’s a different conversation for a different day. Vote Romney, and hope for the best.

You really liked Obama in 2008, but you aren’t crazy about him now.

A lot of people fell for the “Hope and Change” rhetoric last time around. Obama is a great politician, and beyond that, McCain was no better than Bush. The good news for you is that Romney and Obama aren’t really all that different. Sure, Romney is a Republican, so he’ll be a bit farther right than Obama on some issues, but Massachusetts Republicans don’t get to be governor because they’re conservatives.

He’ll take the Republican view on some social issues, and he might not want to grow government as much as Obama would, but the reality is that there are few differences between Romney and Obama. If you thought you liked Obama in 2008, you could probably like Romney in 2012.

Don’t look now, but the Solyndra scandal is coming back up in the media. The now-defunct, politically-connected green energy company was given a sweetheart $500+ million loan from the Obama Administration back in 2009. By August 2011, Solyndra had filed for bankruptcy, leaving taxpayers on the hook for millions.

Supporters of heavily subsidized green energy projects downplayed cronyism, which runs rampant in the Obama Administration. But new e-mails show that a White House analyst warned that giving taxpayer money Solyndra would be a big mistake (emphasis mine):

As the Obama administration moved last year to bail out Solyndra, the embattled flagship of the president’s initiative to promote alternative energy, a White House budget analyst calculated that millions of taxpayer dollars might be saved by cutting the government’s losses, shuttering the company immediately and selling its assets, according to a congressional investigation.

Even so, senior officials in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget did not discourage the Energy Department from proceeding with its plan to restructure a federal loan to Solyndra — a move that put private investors ahead of taxpayers for repayment if the company closed, the investigation by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee found.

Cuts to defense and military spending should reflect a principled commitment to reducing wasteful spending, crony capitalism, and the size and scope of the part of the federal government with all the bullets and bombs — it should not be a matter of political convenience.

When congressional leaders sparred over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling last year, the parties agreed that if Congress failed to come up with a deficit reduction plan, automatic triggers would kick in, and would sequester $1.2 trillion in spending across the federal budget (mandatory and discretionary; defense and non-defense). That agreement, which came to fruition almost exactly a year ago to the day, reflected a trade the president made with House Republicans: he gave up demanding revenue increases in exchange for an agreement to include defense spending in sequestration. Speaker of the House John Boehner reluctantly agreed, making sure no triggers would go into effect until January 2, 2013.

Written by Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Posted with permission from Cato @ Liberty.

I’m not a big fan on international bureaucracies, particularly the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD, funded by American tax dollars, has become infamous for its support of statist pro-Obama policies.

This weekend heralded the Opening Ceremonies of the thirtieth Olympiad of the modern era, kicking off the world’s greatest sporting spectacle as the best athletes in the world converge to see who will lay claim to the titles conveyed in the spirit of the Olympic motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“Higher, Faster, Stronger”). For the next two weeks, literally billions of people from all over the world will be cheering on their country’s athletes, urging them towards their ultimate goal of being draped with a gold medal. These athletes represent the finest in the world, those that have combined natural athletic talent with single-minded focus, grueling workouts, and year after year of tremendous energy expended in perfecting their craft. In the end that talent and hard work, sprinkled with a touch of luck and fate, will reveal who shall be crowned the athletic gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus.

As I watched the parade of athletes entering the Olympic stadium, my thoughts began to wander, as they often do, to the current polarization of the political climate, with one side (limited government conservatives and libertarians) who believe in minimal government interference and robust competition in a true free market), and the other side (liberal Democrats, socialists, and the Occupy Wall Street crowd) who believe in a heavy-handed government which uses force and coercion to right the perceived wrongs of the world.

In that context, I began to imagine what the Olympics would look like if our current president, whose actions could lead one to legitimately question whether he has mistaken himself for our emperor, were given complete omnipotence over the Olympic Games. So with that in mind, may I welcome you to the games of the first Obamalympiad:

If you were hoping that the recent economic report would bring a change in direction from the White House on taxes, you were no doubt let down. The Commerce Department reported on Friday that gross domestic product (GDP) grew by only 1.5% in the second quarter of the year and consumer spending was down, once again showing the weakness of the economic recovery.

When pressed on whether or not the weak economic growth would bring a change in direction from President Obama, who is trying pushing tax hike proposal through Congress, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted that tax hikes during a slow economy weren’t a bad idea. Alan Krueger, President Obama’s top economic adviser, also said that the reason the economy was lagging was because state governments need more stimulus spending.

It seems, however, that not only will the White House push more stimulus gimmicks, they are going to continue to push a tax hike that will have anywhere from a 1.3% to 2.9% contraction in the economy.

But Keynesians pushing a tax hike during tough economy times is question, one that would probably earn the ire of the man himself. Christina Romer, who served as an economic adviser to President Obama, once noted that tax hikes hurt the economy:

After a tragedy, there are things that happen.  Friends and families of the deceased try to come to terms with the event, journalists try to learn what they can about the event and the people affected by it, and if the tragedy involved a madman with a gun then a politician will scream for gun control.

This time, we have none other than President Obama calling for the gun control:

“A lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals,” Mr. Obama said at the annual National Urban League convention in New Orleans. “They belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities.”

…

“Every day, the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater,” Mr. Obama said. “For every Columbine or Virginia Tech,there are dozens gunned down on the streets of Chicago or Atlanta, here in New Orleans. Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns.”

I guess he thinks he can get it passed now?  After all, four years ago he said he wouldn’t try to pass gun control legislation because he didn’t figure he had the votes.  Now, he has lost control of one chamber of Congress, with a lot of politicians still battling to keep their seats.  Gun control is usually a loser issue for Democrats.

However, Obama clearly believes that the Aurora massacre will swing things his way.  He’s using the word “gun owners” to convey the idea that the very people who will be regulated share his belief that an “AK-47” belongs in a soldier’s hands.  Well, that may be true in a few places, but I haven’t met too many of those gun owners.

With three and a half months to go until the election, the Obama campaign team is becoming more desperate; unsurprising considering Obama is in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney despite having so many things going for him (the power of presidential incumbency, the desire of many Americans to see the first black president be successful, the vast majority of the national media solidly in his camp, etc.). Unfortunately for the Obama campaign, the continued bad economic news and a series of unforced verbal errors by Obama has made the going even tougher for Obama.

The latest low for the Obama campaign came recently when Obama surrogate, deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, accused Mitt Romney of being a felon IF he misrepresented his role at Bain Capital while signing SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) documents subsequent to his departure. This is a cheap political move, meant to plant the seed of corruption in voters’ minds, regardless of whether the claim is true. This particular one has already been debunked repeatedly, but in keeping with the “Big Lie” propaganda technique written of in Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, the Obama campaign team keeps throwing it out.

From the Washington Post FactChecker website: “We’ve gone over this problem with the Obama campaign before, awarding three Pinocchios to a January memo the team released blaming Romney for job losses and bad deals that took place after the former executive had stopped working for Bain. . . . These facts essentially exonerate Romney from allegations that he was responsible for any outsourcing, bad deals and layoffs that occurred with Bain’s companies in the early 2000s.”

Over the last month or so, President Barack Obama’s campaign has been hammering Mitt Romney over his time at Bain Capital, making charges of outsourcing and carelessly throwing around potential illegal activity. But voters aren’t buying it. In fact, a new Gallup poll shows that voters trust Romney more on the economy than Obama and view his time at Bain Capital as a positive:

Despite concerted Democratic attacks on his business record, Republican challenger Mitt Romney scores a significant advantage over President Obama when it comes to managing the economy, reducing the federal budget deficit and creating jobs, a national USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.

By more than 2-1, 63%-29%, those surveyed say Romney’s background in business, including his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital, would cause him to make good decisions, not bad ones, in dealing with the nation’s economic problems over the next four years.