Friday, August 24, 2012

Hope and Change Re-visited

Recently,when Governor Palin released a statement indicating that she wouldn't be speaking that RNC, she noted:
Everything I said at the 2008 convention about then-candidate Obama still stands today, and in fact the predictions made about the very unqualified and inexperienced Community Organizer’s plans to “fundamentally transform” our country are unfortunately coming true.
She is right. What Governor Palin predicted in her speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention has unfortunately come to fruition. In September of 2010, Stacy Drake and I  put together a post highlighting the prescience of just a three minute portion of her speech. Stacy put together the following video with that segment of the speech:



Nearly, two years have passed since we put together that post, and President Obama has fundamentally transformed our country even further. I've re-visited that portion of Governor Palin's speech below to indicate what Governor Palin predicted that has actually come to pass over the past more than three and a half years. The text of her speech is in italics; President Obama's "achievements" are in bold:


This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word “victory” except when he’s talking about his own campaign

·          When President Obama has gave a major speech on the war strategy in Afghanistan at West Point in December 2009 without mentioning the word “victory” once.
·         In 2011, when he talked about ending US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he mentioned the word victory only once in each speech—to reference the killing of Osama bin Laden during his administration which has been a key talking point of his campaign.  

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the roar of the crowd fades away … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger:

·         The Obama administration has taken far greater regulatory and inhibitory control over:
·         Government growth
o    Under President Obama, government spending has been 24% of GDP, which is higher than the last 40 year average of 20.7%.
o    The number of federal employees has increased 6.2%.

take more of your money … give you more orders from Washington … and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world:

·         The ineptness of the Department of Homeland Security and the corruption of Department of Justice has left the border insecure, border control personnel dead, and American guns in the hands of Mexican drug cartels under “Fast and Furious”.
·         During the Obama administration our debt has increased 50%, with about third of that debt held by foreign countries.
·         President Obama signed the START treaty which called for reduction of our nuclear arsenal. 
·          He also made cuts to our missile defense program. 
·         Under looming budget sequestration, the Defense budget would be cut by $500 billion over the next decade.

America needs more energy … our opponent is against producing it. 

·         President Obama has doubled down on a jobs killing drilling moratorium  in the Gulf in spite of court rejection.
·         He has reduced drilling permitting 36%.
·         Energy development on federal land has decreased to its lowest levels since 2003.
·          While development on private lands has increased, even the LATimes concedes this is due to “decisions energy companies made during the Bush administration to develop key reservoirs”.
·         He opposed legislation to increase energy development in Alaska.

Victory in Iraq is finally in sight … he wants to forfeit.
Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay … he wants to meet them without preconditions.
Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America. He’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights? 

·         Both the Christmas day bomber in 2009 and Time Square bomber in 2010 while both thankfully unsuccessful, had ties to al-Qaeda, and both men were read Miranda Rights.

Government is too big … he wants to grow it.

Congress spends too much … he promises more. 

·         In February 2009, President Obama signed a nearly trillion dollar stimulus bill.
·         An additional $17 billion stimulus bill in March 2010.
·         In July, President Obama signed a $105 billion transportation bill.
·         Continuing in the footsteps of President Bush, all three years of the Obama administration to date have included more than a trillion dollar deficits.

Taxes are too high … he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific.
The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes … raise payroll taxes … raise investment income taxes … raise the death tax … raise business taxes … and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.

·         President Obama has raised taxes or instituted new taxes 21 times since taking office, namely through cigarette tax hikes and Obamacare.
·         Additionally, his budgets, which haven’t gotten Congressional support, have called for tax increases:
o    In FY 2010, nearly a trillion in tax increases over a ten year period.
o    In FY2011, as Governor Palin predicted, Obama proposed to increase the death tax and investment taxes.
o    In FY 2012, President Obama proposed $1.5 trillion in tax increases over the next decade and 43 tax hikes.
o    InFY 2013, President Obama proposed $1.8 trillion in tax increases over the next decade.
·         Obamacare includes 18 new tax hikes, and  75% of  the “mandate” tax will fall on families earning less than $120,000, meaning President Obama broke his promise to not increase taxes on those making less than $250,000. 


My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that’s now opened for business — like millions of others who run small businesses.
How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you’re trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio … or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia … or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota. How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?

Those two questions were rhetorical questions in her speech, but they are questions that were facing today as well. She may have asked "how are you going to be better off", but today, the question has expanded to include what are we going to do about it?  Governor Palin gave us her answer in the aforementioned RNC statement:
 I support Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in their efforts to replace President Obama at the ballot box, and I intend to focus on grassroots efforts to rally Independents and the GOP base to elect Senate and House members so a wise Congress is ready to work with our new President to get our country back on the right path. This is imperative.
Let's get to work, grassroots!

Crossposted here and here.

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