I find it most frustrating that Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, and most of their surrogates and ad writers, have failed to put forth many of their strongest and most persuasive arguments most of the time. Were they to only set forth their strongest arguments, they would easily turn the campaign around. I offer the following points which I hope readers will be able to bring to the attention of the Republican leadership, or at least to the attention of their own friends, relatives, colleagues, and other acquaintances.
How to Rebut Obama on Taxes
First and foremost, I respectfully believe that the response to Obama's claim to advocate lowering the taxes of 95% of the people should NOT continue to be met with the simple response that he stands for raising taxes or even that his past record shows that he does NOT stand for lowering the taxes of 95% of the electorate. Rather, what Republicans must point out, I respectfully believe, is that when Obama says he will lower taxes for 95% of the people, he will NOT really be reducing what they have to pay because:
At the same time, Obama will tax rich people and companies , but if pressed to the wall, the rich people will just move their primary homes and money out of the country (to the extent they haven't done so already) where none of their money (or much less of it) will be taxed at all, so that the 5% of the people that Obama claims to want to tax will only be paying less than what they are paying now, if anything.
Obama will tax companies that will
(1) pass off their tax increases to consumers by charging more money for everything, so that they (the companies) can pay the higher taxes,
(2) many companies will have to close down because they won't be able to afford the higher taxes, causing all their workers to lose their jobs,
(3) many companies will move out of the country, causing all their American workers to lose their jobs.
So the result will be much less money in taxes collected by the federal government, but the federal government will then have to pay welfare, health care, and other entitlements to all the workers who will have lost their jobs, so the government will have to raise taxes even more, whether from the 95% or the 5%, or from both.
Plus many people won't be able to pay their mortgages, making the current economic crisis even worse than it is now.
Obama wants to pay huge health-care costs, for free, to millions of illegal immigrants and to millions of Americans now too lazy to work or unwilling to work at the low-paying jobs that are available. Where will Obama get the money to do this? Which leads us to the next critical topic:
How to Respond to Obama on Multi-Billion Dollar Bailout
To blame President Bush alone is absurd; to point out that many parties from both political parties are responsible for the economic fiasco is fair; to point out the involvement of the Democrats is necessary. The mainstream media are simply covering up or ignoring the facts that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were instituted and bloated by Democrats, first under Jimmy Carter and then under Bill Clinton. Financial institutions were pressured by government agencies into lending money to people who couldn’t afford to pay back the loans if conditions would change, or be branded as racist or red-liners. The ties of many financiers who were at fault, to Barack Obama, were strong. McCain was among the politicians who blew the whistle long ago, warning of the need for regulation; Barney Frank is on tape asserting, fairly recently, that Fanny and Freddy were basically sound; the economy began to collapse only during the past two years, when the Democrats took control of Congress. Chris Dodd tried to funnel 20% of the profits from the bailout into the Housing Trust Fund that Democrats have used to fund political action groups like ACORN, which Obama had represented in the past as an attorney.
How to Respond to Obama on Health Care
On the surface, free health care for everyone sounds very appealing, especially to Americans who don't work for a living and who are here illegally. But even those of us who happen to be citizens in good standing and who DO work for a living should be told that there are some fundamental problems with the concept of free health care for all the people who reside in America:
1) It would bankrupt our country even more than it is already bankrupted;
2) It cannot be implemented without ruining the greatest health care system in the world;
3) There are reasons why people come from all over the world to the United States for treatment in the best hospitals with the best doctors, benefiting from the best research.
4) Were everything to be "free," the health care would be available in theory but not in practice; we would have to wait months or years for treatment, because we simply do not have enough doctors and facilities to treat every American resident (including illegal aliens and legal welfare slackers) for every hiccup and sore throat, not to mention the tests that are needed for proper diagnosis of every ailment and potential ailment that every American resident would demand. It is said that "justice delayed is justice denied."
The same applies to health care. Delaying operations that are needed immediately will not just inconvenience the recipients, but will cause many of them to die or suffer irreparable setbacks before they will be able to be treated.
How to Respond to Obama on Iraq
Had the United States followed Obama's prescription for surrender when he said we should have pulled out of Iraq long before the surge took place, we would have lost the war, and set a precedent of failure so that Al Quaeda and other terrorist entities would have been emboldened and enabled to take over Iraq and every other country the United States needs as an ally and an oil supplier. Were this to have happened, the United States would have been unable to import any oil, and would have become a third rate country in short order, completely unable to implement any other part of the agenda of Obama or any other candidate. Because our generals in Iraq did not heed Obama's call for surrender, America and the Iraqi government are now winning the peace, so that our troops will be able to return to America with honor and victory.
As to sending troops into harm's way, nobody can be more sensitive to the significance of such actions than a national hero who was tortured for years as a prisoner of war and then gave up an opportunity to leave because he felt duty-bound to honor his commitment to America and to the prisoners who preceded him.
How to Respond to Obama on Off Shore Drilling and Anwar
The off shore and Anwar drilling proposals are not instead of alternate energy but in addition to it, as a bridge not to nowhere but to the time when we will have enough alternative means of energy to sustain our economy. Speaking of bridges, the "Bridge to Nowhere" has gotten a lot of press. But the pipeline that already exists in Anwar leads directly a good part of the distance from the oil fields to the locations from which the oil can be shipped to the other states in our union, so the estimates of 10 to 20 years to reach their destinations are far in excess of the time that will be needed. Some experts have estimated close to 3 years for the additional oil to start flowing. And of course, let us not forget that Clinton's veto of off shore drilling on the basis that it would take 10 years for the oil to reach its destinations took place more than 10 years ago. You can fill in the blanks -- and the barrels of oil. Allowing off shore drilling only 50 miles out, as cynically proposed by the Democrats, is absurd, in light of the waste of time and resources it would require and in light of the modern technology enabling drilling to be much closer to shore without danger of significant leakage. It has even been pointed out that there is natural leakage of oil from the ocean floor, and were we to set up drills in these locations, we could actually REDUCE oil leakage into the ocean. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of off shore drilling is that not only wouldn't it necessarily take a decade or more to have a positive effect, but it could have a positive effect almost immediately since if the oil producers in the Middle East would realize that we are serious about drilling locally and thereby lowering the price of oil and possibly reducing or eliminating future orders for Mideast oil, the Middle East producers would increase their production to lower the prices so that we in America will no longer have the incentive to drill locally!
How to Respond on the Issue of Palin's Experience
Governor Palin arguably had more traditional significant executive experience after her first day as governor than the other major candidates combined, and she has been the chair of INTERSTATE energy entities despite her youthfulness and lack of seniority, and has had some dealings with Canada as well. What does Biden have to show for his seniority besides the chairmanship of a Congressional committee on foreign affairs, based on how many years he served with old timers of the past, many of them now dead and forgotten. He was against the first Iraq war, which most of our Congress people and allies supported, and then FOR the second Iraq war, which Obama and many other Democrats opposed. Biden has made more gaffes per month on the campaign trail than all the other candidates combined; not just cumulatively; so his experience does not exactly stand him in good stead. Nor does his experience as a plagiarist which contributed to his pulling out of an earlier campaign. He has experience accumulating the confidence of less than 1% of the electorate in the first presidential caucuses this year, and an even more negligible percentage after that; he has conceded he was not the best person for the job. As for Obama, since most of his time in the Senate has been spent campaigning and shaking people's hands rather than shaking up Washington, his experience represents under-achievement in the Senate, whereas Governor Palin by all accounts has been a high achiever as governor, with the highest approval rate of any governor, junior or senior, man or woman. This also indicates she wasn't chosen merely because of her gender or as a gimmick, but rather because she is a conservative maverick with a great track record; the fact that she happens to be a woman is a plus rather than a primary or only reason for being selected for a place on the ticket.
Above all, those who believe that Palin's alleged lack of experience is a drawback have to concede that Obama has a dearth of traditional experience as well, but the difference is that Palin can afford to learn on the job as vice president, but Obama, and all of America, can't afford to have a president who has to learn on the job as of Day One. Biden himself, and Hillary, have noted that Obama will not have the necessary experience on Day One. Pollsters have been asking whether Palin is ready to serve as president NOW. What they SHOULD be asking is whether Governor Palin, a proven "quick study," will be ready to serve as Vice President as of January of 2009. Other governors such as Clinton and Reagan vaulted directly into the presidency after only serving as governor. Palin will be more experienced than they were -- in terms of experience that matters -- if she will ever become president because she will first have served as a vice-president with on-the-job training in the White House itself.
How to Respond to Those Who Say Aye to Ayers
The mainstream press has been echoing Obama in ridiculing the claim that Obama has or had ties to anti-American terrorists such as William Ayers. They point out that Obama was just a boy when Ayers was a terrorist, and that Obama has condemned the terrorism against the United States. What the press fails to point out is that:
(1) as recently as in 2001, Ayers went on record that his only regret was that he didn't cause more damage in his terrorism; (2) Obama was on not one but two Boards together with Ayers, and not as mere members of a huge Board but as co-leaders of these Boards;
(3) Purportedly, they remain friends despite Obama's suddenly announced differences about Ayers' terrorist acts, and, above all,
(4) as pointed out by Stanley Kurtz in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 23, 2008, as posted on the Internet, based on documents in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois), Obama launched his first run for the Illinois State Senate at a gathering in Ayers' house; from 1995 to 1999, Obama was the first Chairman of the Board of a radical education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), which was the brainchild of Ayers, who co-chaired the the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy. Obama and Ayers weaved a web of "external partners" like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn, referred to in the discussion of the bailout scandal, above, as a proposed recipient of funds indirectly), the South Shore African Village Collaborative, and the Dual Language Exchange, the latter two of which focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. "CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement."
According to Kurtz, The Daley documents show that Ayers was a member of the board that Obama chaired through the CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee wit h Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Obama. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. I agree that Palin was wrong in merely saying that Obama "palled around" with Ayers and his cohorts; she was "guilty" of understatement. As Kurtz concluded his article: "This is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
How to Respond to Those Who Say Obama Was Wrong about Reverend Wright
Obama gave a few conflicting excuses about Reverend Wright and Obama's relationship to him, but Obama's final excuse, that he didn't know what Wright stood for despite sitting in his pew for 20 years indicates that Obama, unlike Palin, is a pathologically slow learner, at best. Obama's record of 100 votes of "present" rather than "aye" or "nay" likewise is unacceptable for a person who might have to press the button for a nuclear attack on a moment's notice.
How to Respond to This Article
The best response to this article will be to bring it to the attention of Republicans in high places, immediately if not sooner, as well as people of all parties in all walks of life. The life of our great country as we know it is on the line -- a life line. Every responsible American should do what he or she can to keep the reins of power away from a person who, if elected, even if he has the best of intentions (which is subject to doubt) will change the United States of America into a really bankrupt third rate country, and will take liberty away from every inhabitant of the land of the free and the home of the brave
