GINA COBB

Do-It-Yourself Town Halls

Necessity is the mother of invention.

As big-government liberals in Congress have begun to cancel or tightly restrict public access to healthcare townhalls, some conservatives have found a new opportunity.  And so we have a new GOP tactic:  the counter-town hall.

Republican challengers across the country have found a new way of capitalizing on the roiling emotions surrounding congressional health care town hall meetings.

Driven by intense voter interest in the topic, the almost-certain promise of media coverage and the opportunity to upstage incumbent Democrats, GOP candidates in state after state are holding their own health care town halls — and reveling in the subsequent publicity bonanza.

The health care events are proving to be a boon for those seeking to oust incumbents, delivering the most precious of political commodities — voter attention and local press coverage.

Florida Republican Allen West, who is running against Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), said his Deerfield Beach town hall meeting earlier this month drew several hundred local residents, many of whom stayed long after the 90-minute session ended to chat with him.

Just as important, the event was the subject of extensive media coverage and was streamed live on a local news website.

“We made the 11 o'clock news,” said West.

“I just think that if you’re a smart candidate right now, you should be getting out there and getting in front of the people,” he said. “If you’re not doing that, you’re putting yourself behind the eight ball.”

The challenger town halls serve another important purpose by offering candidates the chance to fill the void left by incumbent Democrats who have opted against holding large-scale, in-person town halls out of fear of raucous crowds or out of a desire to talk to constituents in smaller or more controlled settings.

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who’s running against freshman Democratic Rep. Deborah Halvorson in Illinois, held five town halls to highlight his criticism of the congresswoman’s avoidance of public health care meetings during the August recess.

True freedom of speech like that enjoyed in the United States is a wonderful thing, and it makes it very difficult to stifle new ideas.  Democrats trying to take control of the healthcare debate by cancelling public meetings are trying to stuff the toothpaste back into the tube.  That effort will prove messy and futile.

Ted Kennedy Is Dead. Can Big-Government Liberalism Be Far Behind?

Ted Kennedy is dead at 77.  The broadcast media are all over it.  We may see wall-to-wall coverage.  Of course, Kennedy's death after a battle with brain cancer was not unexpected.  There's been plenty of time to polish the obituaries.

There will be a concerted effort on the left to turn Kennedy's death into a "win one for the Gipper" cry on health care.  Of course they will try it.  It's all they've got.

And yet I think the American people have their eyes wide open at this moment.  They know who Kennedy was, and was not.  They know what Obamacare is, and is not.  They may be polite and hold their fire on Kennedy out of respect for the dead, but they haven't forgotten anything.

There will be plenty who line the streets out of respect for the Kennedy political dynasty and Ted Kennedy's prominent role in it.  Yet I can't shake the feeling that more than the life of Ted Kennedy has reached its end.

I am thinking about liberalism -- big government liberalism, to be precise.  In 2009, with Obama in the White House and liberal Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, big government liberalism has run into the rock hard wall of reality. 

Liberal Democrats have already run up the largest deficits in America's history.  The White House now projects a $9 TRILLION dollar deficit over the next 10 years.  That leaves no wiggle room to enact any more trillion-dollar bills. 

The big government liberal trifecta of heavily spend, heavily regulate, and heavily tax won't work anymore.  The states that do all three are failing.  Now that Democrats control Congress and the White House, the entire nation is failing.

Add to this Obama's systematic dismantling of our national security apparatus -- from cutting the funding of missile defense and other programs, to releasing terrorists captured on the battlefield, to threatening to prosecute CIA officers who kept America safe, to handing $900 millionto Palestinians who celebrated on 9/11, to abandoning Iraq, to doing nothing effective to stop either Iran or North Korea from perfecting their nuclear weapons capabilities -- the list goes on and on.  Sooner or later, America's luck will run out.  Obama is playing with fire after having cancelled our fire insurance.

There is a natural end to life when the body reaches its physical limits.  So, too, there is sometimes a natural end to failed political movements.

Big-government liberalism is reaching its natural limits.  Beyond this point lies national financial ruin, or outright despotism, or worse.  

There is a point at which a peaceful people grow tired of waking up to progressively worse news each day and begin to wonder whether their leaders are perhaps part of the problem.

Update:  If the health care bill is renamed after Kennedy, will it be called ChappaquiddiCare?

WHOOPS -- Obama and Democrats in Congress Were Wrong About the Deficit AGAIN

Obama Increases 2010 Deficit Forecast 19% to $1.50 Trillion

 U.S. unemployment will surge to 10 percent this year and the budget deficit will widen to $1.5 trillion next year, reflecting a “deeper recession” than previously expected, White House budget chief Peter Orszag said.

The Office of Management and Budget also forecasts that the U.S. economy will shrink 2.8 percent this year, worse than the 1.2 percent contraction the OMB projected in May. For next year, the budget office said the gross domestic product will grow 2.0 percent, less than the 3.2 percent expected in May. By 2011, the economy would be well on its way to recovery, growing at a 3.8 percent annual rate, according to the administration’s mid-year economic review, released this morning.

The budget shortfall for 2010 will mark the second straight year of trillion-dollar deficits. The projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is higher than the $1.26 trillion forecast in May and reflects expectations economic growth will be slower this year and next because of “the severity of the crisis in the U.S. and in our trading partners,” said Christina Romer, White House chief economist, who along with Orszag briefed reporters on the report.

Apparently Obama doesn't know he was elected to "fix" the economy.

Or, more likely, maybe the only tools Obama and Democrats have for the job -- tax-and-spend (or just spend-and-spend)-- are all wrong for the job.

Sadly, and not coincidentally, Obama is on vacation this week so he won't be attempting to explain this latest bad news.

The American people are beginning to reach their own conclusions.

"Why Sarah Palin Should Not Leave the Room"

Nicely done, Doctor Zero.

When It Comes to Obamacare, How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

Rich Lowry:

The Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy. But it has a fallback plan - relying on the sheer dimwitted gullibility of the American public. How stupid do they think we are?

Stupid enough to think that a new $1 trillion health-care entitlement is just the thing to restore the country to fiscal health.

Stupid enough not to know that almost every entitlement known to man has cost more than originally estimated, with a congressional committee in 1967 underestimating by a factor of ten Medicare's cost by 1990.   . . . .

There's more.  Read it all.

Wow

A Marine has harsh words for Democrats who presume to run your life.

From HotAirPundit:

David Hedrick a member of the silent majority writes:

I decided that I was not going to be silent anymore. So, I let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. I was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, I quickly scratched what I wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that I borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before I spoke. So much for the planned talking points of the right wing conspiracy.

"Stay away from my kids"

"If Nancy Pelosi Wants To Find A Swastika, Maybe She Should Look On The Sleeve Of Her Own Arm"