Yeah, but, his second term will be worse...

Jon Stewart took the GOP to task Wednesday night for something I've recently found intriguing, namely, the fear-mongering about a second Obama presidential term.

We're talking about a second term here, remember.

Prior to the 2008 election I saw it all over my Facebook, how we would descend into chaos under an Obama presidency. He would mark the end of 'merica as we knew it, eat our newborns, etc.

Stewart pointed out the ridiculousness of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and other stalwarts of the party using quotes like, "as soon as he's re-elected..." So why haven't the predictions from pre-November 2008 come true? Well, I'm sure according to many, they have. Some are mighty sore about the health care bill, which they hate primarily because Obama was for it, and they see it as their worst fears realized. Overall, they look around and see something different than the majority of the public sees, namely, that nothing has changed that dramatically.

Except we seem to be recovering from the recession the last president led us into. Oh, and Osama bin Laden is dead.*

* Stewart added the interesting note that Obama's administration has deported more illegal immigrants than Dubya did, suggesting that he wants to allow them to rest up in their home countries to prepare for an invasion during his second term.

The fear-mongering about a second Obama term is going to play well to the GOP base. But the idea that as soon as he's sworn in for a second term he's going to unleash his true Islamo-socialist agenda? Sure, he'll probably become more aggressive with some policies, as most second-term presidents/governors do. But the fact of the matter is, if the economy is at least continuing its current trajectory in November, the Republicans -- and their narrative -- don't have a chance; it will go from a question of "can we win the presidency?" to "can we hold Congress?"

Bad news behind the $ for Romney

As Talking Points Memo points out, the source of Mitt Romney's donations for his presidential campaign should be a source of concern for him and anyone who wants him to be elected President.

TPM has graphed the amount of money that comes from small donors, those under $200, and the numbers are staggering; nearly 90 percent of his donations come from those donating above this number ($56.4 million of  a total $62.4 million). Obama is getting around 40 percent of his money ($42.6 million of a total $106.3 million) from these smaller donors, who are much more likely to turn into voters (and volunteers, etc.); it just shows a more broad base of support. Interestingly, both Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have raised substantially more from these smaller donors than Romney has (Paul has almost doubled him).

The Republicans have themselves a candidate who is buying the nomination, but will he be able to buy the general election?

Their craziness still sometimes amazes me

NPR likes to talk about "driveway moments," those times when you sit in the car even after you've reached your destination, because you need to hear the end of the story. 

I had a variation yesterday -- more of a road rage moment. They were interviewing Repugnicans at a Romney rally, and played an interview with a guy who said that Detroit's recovery had nothing to do with Obama, that such things were cyclical and they would have recovered on their own.

This caused me to laugh out loud, and yell at my radio. I think what I yelled was, "You must be insane!"

Of course, it really goes without saying.

Some fiscal conservative he is

The Washington Post has a project where it is "mapping the earmarks," showing earmarks "to dozens of public projects for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members."

Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, a borderline Tea Partier, is featured. It seems he's earmarked $7.1 million for a project to beautify the area around his home in a residential area in Somerset. 

Rogers is no stranger to such pork, as there are a number of things in and around Somerset named after him or that he at least appropriated money for. 

How in the world can Tea Partiers possibly stomach this guy? This is an example of exactly the kind of stuff they're supposed to be against.

Republican "logic"

So the Republicans have unveiled a plan to stave off automatic cuts in defense spending that were triggered when the "Super Committee" failed last year to come up with mandated cuts.

Part of their plan includes a way to save some of the social programs dear to Democrats, in an effort to woo them over to the dark side. Of course, Democrats are actually fairly united in their idea for saving those social programs -- raise taxes on the "wealthy" (whatever the definition of that is).

According to the Repugnicans, though, raising taxes on the wealthy is bad because it would cost jobs (a dubious argument, but...).

"We're not going to use a millionaire tax to fix every problem around here," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) added. "We have a problem with that because we think it's about jobs."

So, what do we need to do in order to stave off these job-killing tax increases on the wealthy?

Cut jobs.

Yeah, that's right. Only a Repugnican could come up with such a brilliant plan (it's very reminiscent of George W. Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative" that was based on cutting trees down). What they want to do is cut the federal workforce by five percent, and freeze their wages.

Here is the follow-up question from Talking Points Memo:

Why are the jobs that would supposedly be lost as a result of a millionaires tax better than the ones that will be lost by phasing out federal jobs? Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) finessed the question.

"We're not laying anybody off, we're not proposing to fire anybody," Kyl said. "We're simply saying as people retire or quit and go to another job in the private sector or for what ever reason they leave the federal workforce, we don't have to replace all of them -- we can replace two out of every three."

But, as TPM goes on to point out, those are still jobs lost. But that's actually not entirely true...you see, the Repugnicans always accuse the Dems of being socialists and wanting to "redistribute" wealth. But they are just as guilty of it -- it's just harder to pick up on when the wealth is moving the other direction.

Graham:

"It's a spot not filled in the public sector. That doesn't mean it can't be filled in the private sector. We believe that the growth of government has been too large.... That's something we should do apart from defense. I would want to do that no matter if you had a defense problem."

What Repugnicans hate at all levels of government is people getting decent salaries straight from the government -- whether it's a teacher or some under-secretary to an under-secretary in the Department of Gravel Roads. Their problem with the bloated bureaucracy isn't that there are all these needless jobs being performed -- it's that needless jobs are being performed without the private sector getting a cut off the top.

So fire the government worker making $50,000 per year and bring in a contractor who can pay someone $40,000 to do the same job, while taking $10,000 for themselves.

It's not unlike what their likely 2012 Presidential nominee did as a private equity investor...