Thursday, September 4, 2008

Reality Check

Good speech. Not great, but certainly good enough to rally the Republican faithful. No doubt a lot of independents are taking notice. The combination of McCain's foreign policy hawks and Palin's small town values only partially address the economic issues. The reform of the discretionary spending free-for-all is a good sign, but the missing link is still entitlements. Social Security reform is the subject left unspoken. President Bush dropped privatization early in his first term and no-one has picked it up since. McCain, by his own admission, is no economic wizard. It will be interesting to see if he mentions entitlements tonight.

Also of interest is whether all this is a rebuilding of the Reagan coalition, or a realignment within the Republican party. I think the jury is still out on that one. A good article on the political/economic trends can be found here. A good idea of where we've been and where we're going is here.

3 comments:

http://texex-xpress.blogspot.com/ said...

Nice catch on your first link but I don't think the GOP will read and consider it.

I'll bet you a dead fishhead tonight will be "elect me because I was a POW" and no substance at all. Or isn't that what we had last night already?

Ron said...

A dead fishhead? That's about all I can afford to wager too. All that stuff about Palin's daughter really got folks riled up. I think we're in for another biography and pot-shots speech. It's hard to say what McCain will say at any given moment. I haven't heard anyone offer an economic plan that doesn't involve printing and spending even more dollars than we already are. It's just the nature of the beast I guess. I'll take a rain check on the wager. I'm sure we can find something worth a dead fishhead to bet on before November.

http://texex-xpress.blogspot.com/ said...

Agreed on the wager. heh heh heh..

And agreed that folks got fired up since last night. Obama took in $8 million today and they expect it to be $10 mil by the time they are through tonight. Helluva fundraiser!