GOP congressman: Republican Party has become too extreme, incapable of governing

[Torie]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

[Torie]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

How about the no taxes pledge?

Oh, I am sure that you could come up with some examples sbane. I was just wondering what Hanna considered "extreme."  Anyway, the tax thing is all mixed up and conflated between revenues, rates, dynamic versus static scoring, and on and on. A majority of Pubs in the compromise deal would sign off on more revenues vis a vis slashing deductions as opposed to rate hikes. It is kind of easy to yammer about "starving the beast" until you lock yourself in a dark room, and read polls that a majority of Pubs don't want any Medicare cuts, or SS cuts, or much of anything else that might inconvenience them. So the slaying of the beast chat is just for rhetorical purposes, as opposed to a serious policy stand. They are not any better at math than the Dems.

The other prong, where the Pubs are far more sound than the Dems, is the means testing of entitlements, which the Dems shy away from for reasons I will address in due course in a little essay that I plan to write, and bury somewhere around here.

The guy who mentioned climate change should have a chat with snowguy. The "war on women" sling is a Dem sound byte. It came about because of this notion that contraceptive care should have no co-pay unlike most other forms of care, coming out of the mouth of a law student who will soon be making 150K per year. It was just bizarre.

[Torie]

A majority of Pubs in the compromise deal would sign off on more revenues vis a vis slashing deductions as opposed to rate hikes.

I'm glad to hear this, Torie.  But, try as I might, I can't find anything about the slashing deductions part in Mitt's policy agenda.  He gives me the impression that he wants to lower marginal rates to somewhere around where effective rates are now and then let everybody keep the bonanza of deductions too.  Those Pubs willing to sign off on trading rate cuts for deductions should have a chat with him!

http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

I have heard Romney say he does not want to cut government revenues, and hopes to increase them with a more robust economy. No, he has not said he wants to increase revenues net with static scoring. I don't expect him to during the campaign. Unpleasant painful little truths are not spoken about much in campaigns, because politicians tend to have a courage and candor gap. But that is what will happen. It has to absent a consensus on slashing entitlements more severely, which just isn't there - not even, as I noted, among Pubs.

[Torie]

The guy who mentioned climate change should have a chat with snowguy.

Snowguy is incredibly smart, and he could probably out-debate me, but he is an outlier. The vast majority of published studies and experts in the field accept that the earth is indeed warming and that it is primarily driven by humans.

Splendid, but here is the rub. We don't know for sure if humans are doing the warming, we don't know if they are, how much they are doing, we don't know if the warming will be good or bad economically that the humans do, if they do any, and we don't know the cost of changing course, and whether it is even possible to change course. Beyond that, it seems silly for the US and Europe to go on this green crusade, while China and India massively expand their own carbon footprint, swamping and then some whatever marginal changes in fossil fuel consumption occur in Europe and the US. In short, we know so little (with cooked data and expanding heat islands and so forth causing us to know even less than we thought we knew), that throwing trillions upon trillions at it, often achieving nothing or next to nothing, other than enriching the politically connected,  seems quite nutter to me. As a lagniappe, I recall snowguy mentioning that some hole or other lacunae in the atmosphere or something, is inconsistent with the global warmists little models as to how CO2 is supposed to fry us up.

I am very proud not to be a greenie.

[Torie]

Climate change is an empirical issue, not an ideological one. Aside from his little "ideological" dig, TheDeadFlagBlues made his points well, but ignored the issue of the rapidly increasing Indian and Chinese carbon footprint that will continue. So the experiment we are undergoing will continue, and with more CO2 in the mix, not less. There is no escape from that. The case involving public policy regarding the issue of climate change, needs to revolve around the marginal utility of throwing trillions and trillions at the issue. In the end, what change can be expected that makes that "investment" worth it?