Thune will run will win the nomination and will beat Obama in a landslide.
He is that good.
No, it is Barack Obama who will win in a landslide under the following circumstances:
1. Graceful exit from Iraq
2. Graceful exit from Afghanistan
either one of those is highly highly unlikely. Iran now owns Iraq, and nothing in Afghanistan has ever been "graceful".
Well, it may be a “graceful exit” for American troops, but Iraq will begin, starting this summer, to tear itself into pieces and be well on its way to becoming a proxy of Iran. I’m not blaming Obama for this, but it’s just the way things are – we will lose Iraq to the radical elements of Islam. That outcome is almost assured due to the absence of a strong secular self-sustaining and ruling government.
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Apparently you have never heard of a town called Marja in Afghanistan. The Taliban is being wiped out. No Taliban in Afghanistan means that we can leave Afghanistan with victory.
Dude, you are a dreamer. The Taliban or some equivalent will return. Again, I’m not blaming Obama for this, but it’s just the way things are – we will lose Afghanistan...and maybe Pakistan...to the radical elements of Islam.
But, even though Obama is not to blame for this, it will make him look weak simply due to the way he has handled it and the false claims of his policy of apology and retreat. He’s fishing for a graceful outcome using his own naiveté as bait.
Throw in a airline bombing or two and a nuke-test by Iran and Obama’s foreign policy will be viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a complete failure on almost every front. Although Bush43’s policies were naive, at least he was viewed as pushing the front lines into the countries of the bad guys, even if most of the effort was wasted on the wrong bad guys in the wrong countries. But Obama will be viewed as allowing the bad guys to re-establish American soil as the front lines.
Another attack on American soil after 2006 would have been a disaster for Bush43. But for Obama, even losing a couple of airliners is going to be fatal because Obama’s popularity can’t sustain attacks on American soil exactly due to the fact that his policy has been geared towards “graceful exit” – which in the context of renewed attacks on American soil will become viewed as “full fledged retreat”. Women would abandon Obama and Obama would be political history.
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But as for the giant deficits -- those saved the hides of people who, even if they didn't deserve being saved (and I am not discussing religion) had to be saved if others weren't to be taken down with them. I suggest that you read a college-level textbook in economics -- the late Paul Samuelson's Principles of Economics is a good survey text.
I was all for the “bailouts”, but the American people are not going to tolerate higher taxes and an additional $1T of long term spending on social programs while running of deficits of $1.5T per year.
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Tell me about those giant tax increases: recission of Dubya-era tax cuts to the rich? That has yet to happen; they will simply expire in 2011.
Well, let’s see: Obama will allow the bush tax cuts to expire...local and state taxes are going up for all...Obamacare raises taxes by $100B per year...cap and trade proposes to vastly increase energy costs for all, etc, etc, etc....
The vast majority of voting Americans will be facing higher taxes while Obama proposes new taxes and over a $1T of new spending during a time when Obama’s own budget projects a deficit of $1.6T in 2010 and $1.3T in 2011...and that is if interests rates remain at near zero and the economy grows by >4.5% for the remainder of the decade...otherwise the deficit will be much higher.
