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Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Friday, September 27, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
Just say ‘no’ to GOP suicide BY DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN The Republican base must not require its representatives in Congress to run off a cliff and commit suicide as the price of avoiding a primary challenge in 2014. The tea party must not eat its young. The polling shows that there are nowhere near the preconditions that would have to be in place for a government shutdown over defunding Obamacare. While voters oppose Obamacare by 38-54 percent, they also oppose defunding it by 38-44 percent, according to the latest Hill poll. And, when it comes to shutting down the government to force its defunding, opposition swells to 19-59 percent. To force Republican Congressmen to side with the 19 percent against the 59 percent is to endanger the gains we made in 2010 and hasten the day of Democratic control of the House. How do voters reconcile their opposition to Obamacare with their opposition to a government shutdown to defund it? Think of the metaphor of teachers’ pay and schools. Voters strongly favor increases in teacher pay. But they just as strongly oppose teacher strikes, which close down schools as a way of achieving higher pay. It’s hard to understand that some voters depend on government and still others worry that its shutdown would cut off their social security checks. In any case, the whole idea of a government shutdown is a huge negative, implying a total inability of the two parties to co-exist or to govern. And polling suggests that voters are far more likely to blame Republicans for gridlock and conflict in Washington than Democrats. Instead of baiting its supporters to shut down the government to defund Obamacare, the tea party and base voters should be demanding a firm stand on increasing the debt limit. While voters feel there is nothing positive to be achieved by shutting down the government, they do agree with stopping additional government borrowing until or unless there are substantial cuts in spending. Debt, especially government debt, has a bad odor in this era of a $15 trillion national debt. Extending the debt limit -- raising the limit on the government’s credit card -- is very unpopular, especially if it is not matched by a cut in public spending. The Republican insistence on sequester cuts as the price for the last debt-limit extension triggered the first real deficit reduction since the Clinton years. Despite the feeling of a few that the sequester was a negative for the GOP, it was not. It is just what the public wanted. Republicans should pass enough of a debt limit expansion to accommodate debt-service payments for 30 days and then demand that any further expansion must be subject to spending cuts. Eliminating the medicaldevice tax, scaling back Obamacare, capping means-tested entitlements like Medicaid and food stamps, and even basic tax reform should be on the agenda. Having cut discretionary spending to very low levels, Republicans should turn to entitlements -- not Social Security or Medicare, but to welfare spending -- and insist on caps. If the Democrats stand firm and demand a clean debt-limit expansion, Republicans could then force a government shutdown by refusing to raise the debt limit (except to pay debt service already owed). While this will be the same battle as would ensue over the continuing resolution, it would be on very different and much more advantageous terrain. Voters would see the linkage between spending cuts and the debt limit and would heartily approve of the Republican position. President Obama, on the other hand, would find himself begging to be allowed more borrowing, not a good message to have to sell. (Daily Corinthian columnist Dick Morris, former advisor to the Clinton administration, is a commentator and writer. He is also a columnist for the New York Post and The Hill. His wife, Eileen McGann is an attorney and consultant.)
Prayer for today Father, inspire us to have power with our prayerful words to make a positive difference in one’s life as we speak blessings upon them. Grant us confidence and meaningful expressions of blessings as we reach out in the name of Christ, for it is in His name that we pray. Amen.
A verse to share “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” — Matthew 6:33
A verse to share Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. — Abraham Lincoln
Why the president looks so exhausted BY ROGER SIMON Barack Obama looks exhausted these days. He looks about as tired, in other words, as the nation feels. He knows this. At a speech last Saturday, he said tpeople are always telling him to “hang in there.” “Don’t worry about me!” Obama said. “I am still fired up ... because I still see the work that needs to be done!” The audience cheered and applauded his old slogan from 2008 -- “Fired up! Ready to go!” -- the old fire in the belly, the old Obama. But by Sunday, he seemed drained again. Speaking at a memorial to those slain in the Navy Yard shooting, he pointed out it was the fifth time in his presidency he has addressed communities “ripped apart by mass violence.” And his presidency is not even five years old. Though his words were elegantly written and delivered and, I do not doubt, of genuine comfort to the families of the victims, Obama offered no solutions. “By now,” he said, “it should be clear tthe change we need will not come from Washington, even when tragedy strikes Washington. Change will come the only way it ever has come, and that’s from the American people.” So in the world’s greatest democracy, our national
government is so broken it cannot act to save the lives of its citizens from mass slaughter. And the president admits it. How sad. How true. I do not blame the president. I do not blame the nation. Nor will I say “the system” is to blame. The system is not to blame. The scorpions are to blame. It is the fable of “The Scorpion and the Frog,” which dates back at least as far as Aesop and has many forms. It goes like this: A scorpion comes to the edge of a stream and asks a frog to carry him across. “But if you sting me, I will die,” the frog says. The scorpion replies, “But if you died, I would drown.” So the frog begins to take the scorpion across, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. “Why?” the frog gasps, knowing they now both will drown. “It is my nature,” the scorpion says. There are scorpions among us. They sit in Congress, committed not to solving problems but to blocking solutions. They would take the food out of the mouths of children. They would put the insurance companies back in charge of health care. They would shut the government down, refuse to pay the na-
tion’s bills, destroy the trust other countries place in us when they buy our bonds. They would do all this rather than give President Obama the slimmest of political victories. Why? It is their nature. I am not talking about the entire Republican Party. I am talking about a faction of far-right, tea party-driven congressmen who do not care who drowns. They don’t have real alternate plans to help people. They weren’t, they believe, elected to help people. They were elected, they believe, to keep the other side from helping people. “It’s just they’re not focused on you; they’re focused on politics,” Obama told a group of autoworkers in Liberty, Mo., last week. “They’re focused on trying to mess with me.” The audience laughed, but Obama was deadly serious. Our government lurches from crisis to crisis. Our nation staggers from brink to brink. And why? To mess with the guy in the Oval Office, that’s why. (And now that you mention it, where was he really born?) Obama wants Congress to pass a budget. (Fat chance!) He wants it to raise the debt ceiling so our nation can pay its bills. (Ha!) And he wants something else. “You should expect some
compassion; you should expect some compromise,” Obama told the autoworkers. “You should expect the conviction of leaders who wake up and go to work every day not to tear something down but to build something better.” (Oh, stop. You’re killing me. This is just too funny.) Unlike some, I don’t fear a shutdown of our national government. I fear a shutdown of our national conscience. Last week, Congress voted to cut $40 billion from the food stamp program over the next 10 years, even though food stamps keep many working people, including military families, from slipping into poverty. Cutting off food? Really? Is this what our country has come to? The good news is this probably never will happen. In the unlikely event the bill were to be passed by the Senate, Obama would veto it. It is just more games. More politics. More meanness of spirit. More trying to tear down rather than build up. It is just, sadly, what passes for normal in Washington these days. (Daily Corinthian columnist Roger Simon is Politico’s chief political columnist.)
Peace and tolerance starting to break out I know that life is supposed to be full of surprises but the last few weeks have been ridiculous. For example, you had the unnerving spectacle of Vladimir Putin, the former KGB thug who runs Russia, rescuing Barack Obama, the former community organizer who runs his mouth, from the trap Obama had laid for himself. President Obama was, to borrow a phrase, between a rock and a hard place. Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, was behaving badly — killing people, possibly with poison gas, that sort of thing — and refused to stop. So Obama, who had warned and warned Assad of dire consequences, decided to lead a charge against the dictator. But when he jumped out of the trenches, raised his sword and said “follow me,” nobody followed him. Not Democrats nor Republicans, not England, Europe or the United Nations, not the American people. He was out there alone in No Man’s Land, except for a funny looking French guy
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with glasses. So he said, “Maybe I should get Congress’s approval on this. That Donald would be a Kaul good idea.” But not that Other Words good an idea. If Congress rejected him on the issue he would either be forced to attack Syria on his own authority -- and his authority isn’t what it used to be -- or be seen letting a murderous pipsqueak back him down. Enter Putin to save Obama from disaster by saying, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, can’t we all get along?” Russia offered to help negotiate the crisis and both Obama and Assad jumped at the life preserver. Thus, we didn’t get dragged into another nowin war, Putin walked away smelling like a rose, and Obama lived to vacillate another day. What’s not to like? We had hardly recovered from the shock of being introduced to Vlad the Statesman when Iranian Presi-
dent Hassan Rouhani began making peaceful noises to us, suggesting maybe something could be worked out on the issue of their nuclear program. Nothing definite was proposed, mind you, but it has been hinted perhaps Iran would give up its nuclear activities in exchange for an easing of the sanctions that have crippled its economy. Do you think it’s possible Obama’s maddening ropea-dope style of diplomacy is actually working? Now that would be a surprise. But perhaps the greatest surprise of all came from the Pope, of all people. In an interview with an Italian Jesuit journal he said that the Church shouldn’t be so obsessed with abortion, contraception and homosexuality. The Church, he said, had “locked itself in small things, in small-minded rules” and shouldn’t be so prone to condemn. He further said he envisioned a greater role for women in the Church and he wasn’t in a position to judge homosexuals who are of good will and in search of
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God. Wow. I never, in my lifetime, thought I’d hear a Pope talk like that. Admittedly, he didn’t say women should be priests or have the right to choose or being gay was grand. But simply letting a little light and fresh air into a room that has been sealed tight for centuries was an amazing phenomenon. Not everything was surprising, though. The Republicans in Congress are back at it, toiling away to save America from an expansion of health care and plotting to shut down the government if they can’t stave off this specter. Also, a disturbed military contractor took out his anguish at people crossing his path at the Washington Navy Yard, leaving 12 dead before authorities killed him. The head of the National Rifle Association said it proved the Navy Yard needed more guns. Some things never change. (Daily Corinthian and OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. OtherWords. org)
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