Optimistic Candidate

Reader comment on: Obama Targets Speculators, Oil, Pharma

Submitted by John Gillis (United States), Apr 20, 2011 17:43

The last sentence in this well-sliced-and-diced piece on Obama's demagoguery is optimistic because you hope for that "free market, growth-oriented" opposition candidate.

But the current field of the opponents of Obama can only cause despair. The clown Trump is in the lead, with the arch-religious, non-free market Huckabee next in line, and then the Obama-light Romney, and warmed over non-growth, non-free market guys like Barbour and Gringrich. A pathetic anti-capitalist motley crew. Then we have the current star deficit hawk -- Paul Ryan whose "tough" budget proposal is an embarrassment because it cuts zero from the budget. Instead of doing something serious, such as move all the budget categories back to 2000 or 2002, as I understand it, his plan actually only cuts part of the proposed increases. So, we are presented with a false alternative -- either the faux-tough approach or the non-approach of Obama's budget "plan", which isn't even a plan.

By setting the terms of the debate this way, Ryan has possibly embedded all the trillions of dollars of malicious new spending from the past two years into the eternal budget. Nice going.

So, it's had to be optimistic about the Republican field, unless someone comes forward who is not currently in the running and can take on Obama in a genuine and credible way. But the likelihood of that happening is slowly dwindling (though there is still theoretically time for such a savior to come forward.)

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