Created by Geniuses and run by Idiots

* If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book, but not to vote who runs the government . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If the government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If, in the largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If an 80-year-old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a woman in a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If a seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If children are forcibly removed from parents who discipline them with spankings while children of addicts are left in filth and drug infested “homes”. . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government intrusion, while not working is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and free cell phones . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is incentive to NOT working with 99 weeks of Unemployment checks and no requirement to prove they applied but can’t find work . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor buys iPhones, TV’s and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

* If being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government . . . you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.

What a country!

Romney Accuses Obama of hiding Agenda

WASHINGTON—Mitt Romney, fresh off of three momentum-building wins in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of "rhetorical excess" and of muddling his second-term agenda in order to win re-election.

"He wants us to reelect him so we can find out what he will actually do," Mr. Romney told a gathering of newspaper reporters and editors at a Washington hotel. "With all the challenges the nation faces, this is not the time for President Obama's hide-and-seek campaign."

The former Massachusetts governor leveled his latest charges at the president from the stage where Mr. Obama slammed the GOP front-runner a day earlier for supporting a Republican budget blueprint that he called a "radical vision" and "thinly veiled social Darwinism."

Election 2012

• Romney Rolls Up Three Wins
• Santorum Prepares for Last Stand
• Obama Blasts 'Trojan Horse' GOP Plan

The back-and-forth comes as the president and Mr. Romney engage more directly ahead of an expected match-up in the general election, and amid signs that Mr. Romney has opened a nearly insurmountable lead in the GOP contest. Mr. Romney was addressing the Newspaper Association of America the day after his sweep of Maryland, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

Mr. Romney draw new battle lines with the president by expanding on earlier criticism of Mr. Obama that came after the president was heard on a live microphone asking his Russian counterpart for more time and flexibility to negotiate a nuclear-arms treaty between the two countries.

"He is intent on hiding," Mr. Romney, seeking to extend the significance of the president's remark to areas beyond foreign policy. "You and I will have to do the seeking."

While Mr. Obama remains personally popular, Mr. Romney is seeking to raising doubts about the president's character. Such doubts have been less prominent in the primary campaign, with candidates instead unleashing repeated broadsides against unpopular policy measures, including the economic recovery package and the new health-care law.

Mr. Romney accused the president of shifting positions to curry favor with voters ahead of the election, saying that "Candidate Obama" has "experienced a series of election-year conversions." As evidence, he cited Mr. Obama's recent calls to lower corporate tax rates, reduce regulations and develop more domestic oil, coal and natural gas.

The Obama campaign quickly turned the obfuscation charge back on Mr. Romney.

"From completely rewriting his record of more debt, more spending, fewer jobs and bigger government in Massachusetts to misleading on the President's record of promoting economic security for the middle class, there was very little in Mitt Romney's speech today that bore any resemblance to reality," said Lis Smith, an Obama campaign spokeswoman.

Mr. Romney also blasted the president for, in his words, mischaracterizing the House-passed Republican budget, which seeks deep cuts in agency spending and proposes a revamp of Medicare for future retirees.

"President Obama came here yesterday and railed against arguments no one is making, and criticized policies no one is proposing," he said. "It's one of his favorite strategies—setting up straw men to distract from his record."

The president and Mr. Romney are both painting the race as a contest between two starkly different visions for the country. Mr. Obama criticizes Republicans for offering what are, in his view, draconian cuts to social safety nets while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans, in turn, criticize the president for failing to bolster employment while piling debt on an already fragile economy.

"The November election will have particular consequence," Mr. Romney said Wednesday. "It will be a defining event."

He used the rest of his speech to deliver familiar criticism of the president's stimulus plan, the new health-care law and his attacks on over-regulation.

Mr. Romney largely steered clear of his remaining rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. His only mention of the primary came in response to a question from the moderator of the event about whether he had asked any of his GOP opponents to exit the race.

"I hope that we're able to resolve our nomination process as soon as possible, of course, because I'd like to focus our time and attention on those key battleground states and raising the funds to be somewhat competitive with the president and his billion-dollar quest," Mr. Romney said. "We have a real challenging road ahead of us, but I believe we will rise to the occasion."

Mr. Romney also offered a pointed critique of the news business for trading speed and frivolity for substance and responsibility.

"In 2008, the coverage was about what I said in my speech," Mr. Romney said, referring to his initial White House bid. "These days, it's about what brand of jeans I am wearing and what I ate for lunch."

He added, "I find myself missing the presence of editors to exercise quality control. I miss the days of two or more sources for a story."

Write to Patrick O'Connor at patrick.oconnor@wsj.com

‘Stop-Newt’ Republicans Confront Base Unwilling to Take Orders

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Two days after Newt Gingrich defeated Mitt Romney in the South Carolina presidential primary one of Romney’s big-name backers offered a grim prediction for his fellow Republicans.

“The possibility of Newt Gingrich being our nominee against Barack Obama I think is essentially handing the election over to Obama,” former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty told reporters on a Jan. 23 conference call. “I think that’s shared by a lot of folks in the Republican Party.”

Pawlenty’s comments echoed those being uttered publicly and behind the scenes by elected Republicans, party activists, fundraisers and pundits, who represent a portion of the party establishment -- a “stop-Newt” caucus -- populated largely by people who have known the former U.S. House speaker for decades.

The question is: Can they?

For two decades, the Republican Party has seen an erosion of its traditional, top-down hierarchy, a decline aided by Gingrich himself in 1990 when he led a House revolt against a budget agreement negotiated by President George H.W. Bush that raised taxes. The rise of the anti-tax Tea Party wing in 2009 splintered the internal levers of power further, making it even harder to impose a choice on the rank-and file.

“There really is no Republican establishment left that can control anything,” said Matthew Dowd, a onetime aide to President George W. Bush and now a Bloomberg Television contributor. “Some try to act like they are in charge, but the fraternity is now running the campus.”

South Carolina Dynamics

Those dynamics were on display in South Carolina. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, lost by 12 percentage points even after campaigning throughout the state with Governor Nikki Haley and just a day after receiving the endorsement of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Haley, who rose to power with Tea Party backing, didn’t deliver either her state or its grassroots activists.

Meanwhile, Gingrich’s campaign gained momentum after Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who also has support from the Tea Party faction, said she’d vote for Gingrich in South Carolina if only to extend the length of the primary.

Similar signs of an insurgence came to light in the 2010 midterm elections, when Nevada voters tapped Sharron Angle -- a Tea Party-endorsed politician opposed by many of the state’s prominent Republicans -- to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And Delaware Republicans chose Christine O’Donnell over former governor and nine-term U.S. House Representative Mike Castle to seek an open Senate seat. Both Angle and O’Donnell lost.

‘Voters in Charge’

“The voters are now in charge, and Republican leaders need to come to terms with that,” Dowd said. “The media needs to drop the myth that there is a Republican establishment capable of orchestrating anything more than a one-float GOP parade.”

Romney’s campaign, backed by well-known party strategists and fundraisers, has kept up a steady rollout of endorsement announcements from Republican elected leaders that demonstrate his broad support among the insiders. As of Jan. 20, he had the nods of five governors, 14 senators and 59 U.S. House members. That compares with two governors and a dozen congressmen who have endorsed Gingrich, according to Democracy in Action, a political web site that tracks endorsements.

‘Terrified About Newt’

“There are a lot of major players in the Republican Party who are terrified about Newt,” said Gary Gerstle, a specialist on social and political movements a Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “At a more conventional moment in American politics, the establishment would count for a lot more, but this is not a conventional moment. There are now big segments of the Republican Party that will not bow down to the establishment.”

Gingrich -- who served 20 years in Congress, four of them as speaker, and then began a lucrative career in Washington consulting on federal policy -- has been working to turn party leaders’ angst about his candidacy to his advantage, portraying himself as a candidate feared by the ruling class.

In a Jan. 24 message to supporters, he wrote, “The establishment is right to be worried about a Gingrich nomination because a Gingrich nomination means that we’re going to change things.”

The Romney-Gingrich face-off is bringing the simmering power struggle between the Republican grassroots and the party establishment to the fore, said Richard Viguerie, a veteran Republican direct-mail strategist and the chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.

Internal Power Struggle

“There is a war going on here between the grassroots and the establishment,” said Viguerie, who is backing former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. “People in the grassroots see the Republican establishment as part of the problem, not part of the solution, and Gingrich has the ability to go over the heads of the Republican leaders.”

At the root of the concern about Gingrich is whether he will be able to appeal to the broader U.S. electorate. Polls indicate that he has high unfavorability ratings and wouldn’t fare well in a head-to-head matchup against Obama. A January Gallup study found that all national political figures are viewed negatively. Still, “Americans have become more intensely negative in their evaluations of Newt Gingrich -- who now has the lowest score overall,” the study concluded.

Independent Voter Turn-off

Gingrich’s branding of Obama as a “food stamp president,” for example, may not play well with independent voters, whom a Republican nominee would have to win over to have a chance of ousting the president.

Some prominent Republicans say there’s not yet enough of a consensus that Gingrich is unelectable to give rise to a concerted effort among party operatives to thwart his ascent.

“I haven’t seen that there’s an all-hands-on-deck movement to try to block any candidate -- Newt or anyone else,” said Frank Donatelli, the chairman of GOPAC, a training organization for state and local Republican candidates once headed by Gingrich, and a former top party official.

The last time there was such an effort was in 1996, he added, after Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary and prominent Republicans quickly coalesced around Bob Dole, who ultimately claimed the nomination.

“I haven’t heard that kind of alarm emanating about Newt,” Donatelli said.

Former Pennsylvania Congressman Bob Walker, a senior adviser to Gingrich’s campaign, said each time Romney rolls out a new endorsement or dispatches a one-time colleague to criticize Gingrich’s record, it bolsters the former speaker’s argument to voters that he’s their ally against a party machine that doesn’t care about them.

“It took them a little bit of time to realize that Newt Gingrich is capable of beating Obama, but now, I don’t think that they’re going to listen to party bosses anymore,” Walker said. “Newt is basically channeling the people’s anger.”

--Editors: Jeanne Cummings, Mark McQuillan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Washington at jdavis159@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at jcummings21@bloomberg.net

A reprint from Bloomberg Businessweek

Is John Boehner In Trouble?

The position of Speaker of the House of Representatives is normally a coveted and honored seat at the proverbial head of the table. But, as things in Washington, D.C. keep unfolding in disarray as it has for the past year, John Boehner may very well have a target on his back.

Several instances of flip-flopping have been apparent in 2011 and one wonders when will Eric Cantor, House Majority leader, make his move to attain the position he most covets. Boehner has not really shown the kind of leadership the junior members, mostly Tea Party members, want. When challenged by the freshmen representatives Boehner seems to re-position himself to satisfy the younger members of Congress.

If the House Republicans are responsible for raising taxes on the middle class and not close the loopholes for the most wealthy Americans, the message would be clear and resounding. Support for the millionaires and billionaires is, in their opinion, the way America should be led. And, if that is in fact the case, the "Super Pac's" will ultimately run this country while middle and lower class citizens could only run and hide and bury their heads in the sand.

America's businessmen and women understand, the best remedy for growth, hiring and most of all greater profits, is a healthy middle class that will purchase and use their products, not a over-taxed middle class that is scrounging to survive.

Boehner understands that raising taxes to the middle class while maintaining the huge loop-holes for the nation's wealthiest, will simply not fly. It becomes political suicide. Hiding behind a conference committee or talking about a one-year extension is simply crap piled upon crap. The Tea Party simply wants to kill it and claim victory as the "new" ideals for the american people.

Boehner is in real trouble and Cantor is all set to push him out of the way so he can ascend to the throne of power and crush all the dissenting members of the House. Boehner's political posturing has backfired and unfortunately he needs his democratic counterparts, he needs to strike a deal with them, and he needs to cut ties with the Tea Party members and take back control of the House. 

House Republicans push for new payroll tax cut talks

A reprint:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led House of Representatives will set the stage on Tuesday for a showdown with Senate Democrats over a payroll tax cut extension that is becoming a proxy for 2012 election year battles.

The tax legislation has become the latest in a string of battles in Congress this year, all of which have contributed to widespread public discontent with Washington politicians.

When the House votes on Tuesday it will in effect be rejecting a bill that passed the Senate overwhelmingly on Saturday and calling for formal negotiations with the Democratic-led Senate.

The Senate bill would set a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut with the aim of crafting a full-year tax cut extension early next year.

The House move will cast doubt on the future of the popular payroll tax cut, which is caught up in a high-stakes game of brinkmanship between the two political parties that some say could backfire.

Washington gridlock is fueling an anti-incumbent mood among voters heading into next year's elections.

"Our members do not want to just punt and do a two-month short-term fix where we have to come back and do this again," House Speaker John Boehner said late on Monday after a closed meeting with fellow Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shot back that the House should allow an up-or-down vote on the two-month stop-gap plan. "I am happy to continue negotiations on a yearlong deal as soon as the House of Representatives passes the Senate's bipartisan compromise, and prevents a tax hike from hitting middle-class families," Reid said.

Several Republican lawmakers publicly agreed with Reid.

The bipartisan two-month deal crafted by the Senate came after efforts at a full-year tax cut failed.

At stake is much more than politicians' reputations and their 2012 re-election chances. If Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on extending the tax cut that expires on December 31, 160 million Americans will begin 2012 with less money - about $1,000 a year for the average worker - in their paychecks.

That, economists fear, could dampen, or even end what little economic growth there is as the United States struggles to right itself after the deepest recession in decades and severe debt problems in Europe that could infect America.

Not only would workers' taxes go up in a couple weeks if the two sides cannot find a quick compromise. About 2.2 million people who have suffered long-term unemployment will see benefit checks cut off by the middle of February. And doctors treating elderly Medicare patients also will see their reimbursements cut.

Once the House on Tuesday requests a new round of negotiations, as expected, the next steps are unclear.

"We are not coming back, we are not appointing negotiators until they pass the Senate compromise," Reid's spokesman Adam Jentleson insisted.

President Barack Obama already has delayed a Hawaii vacation. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday said, "The president has made clear that he wants Congress to get this done, that he is here now and will be here as Congress tries to sort this out." But Carney did not make clear how Obama might bring the two sides together, or whether he will even try.

(Editing by Christopher Wilson)