Our #1 story shows us how sorry Obama has been in getting the country back on track. #2 points out the hole in the latest poll that gives Romney a 21 point lead in South Carolina. Finally #3 brings the not unexpected news that Huntsman is dropping out of the race and is endorsing Mitt Romney.
The Worst Economic Recovery since the Great Depression
…When President Obama entered office in January, 2009, the recession was already in its 13th month. His responsibility was to manage a timely, robust recovery to get America back on track again. Based on the historical record, that recovery was imminent, within a couple of months or so. Despite widespread fear, nothing fundamental had changed to deprive America of the long term, world-leading prosperity it had enjoyed going back 300 years.
Supposedly a forward looking progressive, Obama proved to be America’s first backward looking regressive. His first act was to increase federal borrowing, the national debt and the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars to finance a supposed “stimulus” package, based on the discredited Keynesian theory left for dead 30 years ago holding that increased government spending, deficits and debt are what promote economic growth and recovery. That theory arose in the 1930s as the answer to the Great Depression, which, of course, never worked…..
…..As should have been long expected, Obama’s trillion dollar Keynesian stimulus did nothing to promote recovery and growth, and almost surely delayed it. That is because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy to spend a trillion back into it does nothing to promote the economy on net. Indeed, it is probably a net drag on the economy, because the private sector spends the money more productively and efficiently than the public sector.
The National Bureau of Economic Research scored the recession as ending in June, 2009. Yet, today, in the 49th month since the recession started, there has still been no real recovery, like recoveries from previous recessions in America.
Unemployment actually rose after June, 2009, and did not fall back down below that level until 18 months later in December, 2010. Instead of a recovery, America has suffered the longest period of unemployment near 9% or above since the Great Depression, under President Obama’s public policy malpractice. Even today, 49 months after the recession started, the U6 unemployment rate counting the unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers is still 15.2%. And that doesn’t include all the workers who have fled the workforce under Obama’s economic oppression. The unemployment rate with the full measure of discouraged workers is reported at www.shadowstats.com as about 23%, which is depression level unemployment.
Today, over 4 years since the recession started, there are still almost 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed. That includes 5.6 million who are long-term unemployed for 27 weeks, or more than 6 months. Under President Obama, America has suffered the longest period with so many in such long-term unemployment since the Great Depression.
Obama apologists cannot argue that this is because the recession was so bad, because the historical record in America is the worse the recession the stronger the recovery. Based on historical precedent, we should at worst be finishing the second year of a booming recovery by now.
Compare Obama’s lack of a recovery 2 ½ years after the recession ended with the first 2 ½ years of the Reagan recovery. In those years under Reagan, the American economy created 8 million new jobs, the unemployment rate fell by 3.6 percentage points, real wages and incomes were jumping, and poverty had reversed an upsurge started under Carter, beginning a long term decline.
While Obama crows about 200,000 jobs created last month, the most for a month during his entire Administration, in September, 1983 the Reagan recovery less than a year after it began created 1.1 million jobs in that one month alone. Under Obama, we are still almost 6 million jobs below the peak before the recession started over 4 years ago! In the second year of the Reagan recovery, real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years.
Expect to hear more about this in the coming months. Elections are hard especially if you are a Democrat.
Before Citing a Poll, Read the Fine Print
On Saturday, a survey came out showing Mitt Romney with a large, 21-point lead in South Carolina. The poll is something of an outlier relative to other recent polls of the state, all of which show Mr. Romney ahead, but by margins ranging from 2 to 9 points.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos for Reuters, has already attracted more than 200 citations in the mainstream media. Most of these articles, however, neglected to mention a key detail: in a break with Ipsos’ typical methodology, the survey was conducted online.
Reuters did disclose this in its write up of the poll, but it wasn’t mentioned until the 17th paragraph:
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online from January 10-13 with a sample of 995 South Carolina registered voters. It included 398 Republicans and 380 Democrats.
There are a couple of other important details here as well, none of which necessarily speak favorably to the poll’s potential accuracy. The poll was conducted among registered rather than likely voters, something which is almost certainly a mistake so close to a primary since turnout in primaries is normally quite low. And it contained a relatively small sample size: 398 Republicans, about half the average of other recent surveys of the state.
Polls are good gauges but you need to look at what the findings are to see if they make sense and then look at the fine print.
Huntsman to drop out of the race
Jon Huntsman will drop out of the Republican presidential race on Monday, a campaign spokesman told ABC News.
A source close to the Huntsman campaign said the former ambassador to China and Utah Governor was “proud of the race that he ran” but “did not want to stand in the way” of rival Mitt Romney, the current front-runner for the Republican nomination.
Huntsman plans to endorse Romney at an 11 a.m. press conference Monday in Myrtle Beach, SC….
It’s about time. Huntsman may end up in a Romney cabinet, but he was never going to be President.
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