May 25 2011
Lessons Of NY-26
Lots of good comments on the previous post on the NY-26 elevtion, but I would suggest the path forward is still clear and immutable. The GOP lost NY-26, but not by that much. And we really can’t unravel candidate issues from the quirks of special elections in general – not to mention the faux Tea Party candidate. I should note that while the wave was building across the nation in 2009 and 2010, the GOP lost a special election in NY in a similar manner. So a local exception to a massive realignment is not new. But there are legitimate concerns..
It is clear the GOP has not won back the respect and confidence of the American voter – not yet. The two parties could once again vie for ‘least despicable’ every other cycle, as they have been for decades. For all we know, a new status quo may have been established with one more form of divided government that seems to be the preferred norm at times. But that does not mean the voters are not open to reasonable conservative options. They just cannot be fringe conservative options. The far right still has to be muted and the center respected – or else all those gains from 2010 can evaporate by 2012.
Voters want libertarian solutions to government waste and abuse – that is the immutable bottom line.. They want the deficit spending ended. They want reasonable and temporary safety net programs for all but the most challenged. Permanent support is only going to be for those truly in need of it. But it is HOW we get to these goals that is creating the hesitation. Not to mention the lack of trust, even when the path promoted is sound. Too many false promises by pols for too long for words alone to be taken on faith.
The people want an end to the DC-Knows-Best nonsense. Which means proposals from DC begin as just more nonsense. The people want lower taxes, want their lives back and the return of a good economy. They know these are not achievable (in reality) from the left. The left has lost (and is still losing) credibility. But the GOP has not earned their credibility back yet either. It is a gap that can be bridged, between what the people want and the GOP proposes.
And there is plenty of time for the 2012 election cycle. But be fore warned, there is a need to NOT kowtow to easy votes and stupid slogans. No back sliding. No running away. Paul Ryan has a good solution in general, it needs a combination of refinements and explanation.
More importantly, Every conservative not talking about reigning in DC is off message and not helping the cause. Obama’s birth certificate idiocy was an obvious cause of the rot which ate into GOP credibility. We also don’t need any social issues at this time, simply because politics is not considered a respected source of anything associated with morality. No one can preach to others about how to live a good life from the sewer of corruption and arrogance.
It is not the politicians job to tell us how to live our lives – left or right. It is the job of government to ensure the national defense, establish laws of criminal and economic nature to protect the individual’s rights, and to otherwise get out of the way of people and let them live their lives. Anyone trying to be superior is off track from the start. Runaway government is the prime problem.
If the GOP backs off from the Ryan Plan they lose. If they soldier forward and spend all their energy and time focused on shrinking government safely and without hurting those already in its clutches, they can win a big victory – over time. Over a long time.
This is not a one or two election cycle effort. There is no instant gratification here. Leave the juvenile promises of instant Nirvanan to the lunatics on the left. We need Churchill, not Obama. We need to understand our challenges and feel honor in taking them on. We need shared sacrifice, which is why the power has to be pulled from the bureaucracy FIRST, before the people are asked to sacrifice. What we need is humble dedication, not arrogant grand standing.
This is not complicated, but it is radically different from anything the DC elite have had to do for decades. They will not only be uncomfortable switching gears late in their careers, they will be awkward as well. And too many will resist – on all sides. They have grown up believing some government is required when in most cases none is, and it would be better if none was. Those cannot be salvaged, they must be dumped.
Don’t wilt, don’t lower our sites, and don’t get distracted on issues not important to the American voter in the center. You must win the center to make progress. Yes, it is slower than desired, but look at what winning the center did in 2010. Imagine what it could be like if the center was willing, en masse, to make measured steps for a decade or more in one direction – leaving the idea of government as the answer to all solutions in its wake. Imagine what slow and steady progress could lead to, and learn to work with the center instead of the lazy and useless backstabbing so common to so called patriots. Seasaws go nowhere, they just appear to have a lot of motion.
It is time to stop seasawing between the fringes and for someone to make a lasting alliance with the center.
The fact that NY-26 went to a democrat told the Democrats how they could win next year…by using fake tea party candidates to pull votes away from the conservatives no matter the issues. It’s that obvious.
The conservatives had better do something better than this to win their elections.
I told Pete Olson to own Paul Ryan’s budget plan, including Medicare. He needs to show support, get out and educate people and so on. Funny I said this to Pete, then listen to Bret Baier’s All Star Panel making similar comments.
This is what wws and crosspatch predicted a year ago…http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43175612/ns/business-personal_finance/ – are we peaking at this time?
There are still a lot of foreclosures in the pipeline. Recent federal regulations have greatly increased the amount of time that it takes to foreclose on a property which is increasing the number of homes that are in that range between default and foreclosure sale.
After 2011, things begin to ease up because the number of absolutely crazy ARMs begins to pass out of the system. 2011 sees mortgages let in 2006 resetting.
The slowing of the foreclosure process has meant that there is a slug of homes “in process” so the “shadow inventory” of homes is increasing.
This problem is NOT going to get any better with 10,000 baby boomers A DAY coming out of the housing market. The boomers are not likely to be buying any more homes, they are probably in the last one they will own unless then downsize someplace where the cost of living is less.
The lenders should have been razing every foreclosure over 10 years old and selling them off as building lots.
A weird part of the housing problem is banks sitting on so many vacant pieces of housing. As long as they sell them at a loss, they can keep them on their books at full value – if they sell them at what they can get (a whole lot less) they’ve got to book the loss. So for regulatory purposes it makes them look good to sit on a bunch of deteriorating, vacant houses even though that is an insane thing to do in the real world.
In practical terms, rental prices are going up because good, competitively priced rental housing is getting difficult to find in many areas. If I could find a way to buy some of that bank housing for about half of what they’re carrying it on the books for, I would. So would a lot of people.
And that illustrates why, in the end, the best thing for the real economy will be to just write off all this bad debt and take the loss, even though that will bankrupt quite a few institutions. It’s got to be done, because these assets have to got to be priced for what they’re worth today and sold. They won’t get back on the market until they are. If that drives housing markets down another 50%, well that’s a shame, but that’s just reality. No gain to be had from trying to pretend it isn’t.
That has to happen sooner or later, no way around it. Which means we have no choice but to go through at least one more big round of financial bankruptcies before we can get out of this. All of our efforts have been aimed at avoiding this – better to accept it, go through it, and have done with it.
crosspatch, thanks. It doesn’t look good, doesn’t it? The new jobless claims report doesn’t look good either. I don’t think Obama can do anything to turn the economy around.
I’m seeing an increasing number of “For Sale” signs in my area due to Obama’s illogic decisions regarding NASA. I don’t expect many of these houses to be sold for some time.
Prices in my particular neighborhood have been stable and haven’t really dropped during the bubble. And this is in California but the reason is the school district. It is a very desirable district in Silicon Valley (probably the most desirable). Just outside of the district boundary is a different story, though. Go five blocks East of me across the main road that acts as the school district boundary and the exact same house (same square footage, same age, same br/ba) is $200,000 cheaper.
According to Zillow, the average asking price for a single story ranch home built around 1960 on a 1/4 acre lot with 3br/2ba is about $950,000 in my neighborhood. Many of these homes are being torn down and rebuilt as McMansions (a.k.a garage Mahals), when they are sold though the McMansion trend is starting to wane.
Liberal Media Chicken Littles: ‘The Republican Sky Is Falling!’
In 2010, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stared into the camera with make-up-by-Joker-Products face and proclaimed “Democrats will hold the House” in the upcoming midterms. On November 2nd, the Tea Party helped to deliver us from evil.
The elections of November 2010 went into the history books as a massacre of epic proportions.
It was Little Big Horn, with Democrats playing the part of Custer and his men.
It was Tyson brutally KO’ing Marvis Frasier in a scant thirty seconds.
It was an Iron Chef battle with Bobby Flay squaring off against the guy microwaving burgers at your local McDonald’s.
It was Fox News vs. MSNBC in the ratings.
Liberal politicians, along with their conjoined twin — collectively known as the mainstream media — immediately went into damage control mode. They began spinning the narrative that the stunning losses were not a referendum on and indictment of ObamaCare.
From coast to coast, voters collectively, resoundingly, yelled “HELL NO” to ObamaCare and the best game plan the professional left could come up with was to try and con the people who just voted against ObamaCare into believing they didn’t really vote against Obamacare.
Liberal intellect — truly an oxymoron, eh?
Flash forward to the race for NY’s 26th district, May, 2011. In one of the most liberal states in the union, a Democrat that no one ever heard of defeats a Republican that no one ever heard of, in a special election for a temporary position, and the left is calling it a stunning defeat for Republicans, a rebuke of Paul Ryan’s budget plan, and a bellwether for the 2012 elections.
Democrats lost sixty congressional seats to Republicans, not to mention six Senate seats and twelve governorships in the national elections in November and the left claims it was not a referendum on ObamaCare, but one Republican congressional seat going blue in May is a referendum on Ryan’s budget?
The liberal mindset — stupefying, isn’t it?
Crosspatch – interesting note about prices. Now of course there are always going to be the “desirable” neighborhoods in every market, and they will always carry a premium over even near by markets. Thanks to your school district, sounds like you’re in one of those.
Now in the more desirable neighborhoods in Houston, DFW, and Austin I think average prices for *new* houses get into the $400K range – but in most of Texas, that house you’re describing – “single story ranch home built around 1960 on a 1/4 acre lot with 3br/2ba” – is gonna be about $140K – $220K.
Illustrates why even though California may have pulled back some, there is still a long, long, way to fall. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see an eventual 80% drop in real terms (adjusted for inflation) from the peak valuation before real estate values in Ca reverse and start back up.
This also illustrates why Texas doesn’t have nearly as much to fear from a housing downturn – with housing relatively cheap and jobs strong, is there much danger of prices falling more? Not really – the grand revaluation movement across the country is really just a leveling, a movement on the two coasts to move to parity with the center. Prices in Texas could move up by 10% from here while California *drops* by 50%, and Texas housing would *Still* be cheaper!!!!
3rd point – this is one of the many reasons it pays for someone with money, who isn’t underwater on their loans, to sell out of California and move to Texas. Take the case of the man with a $950K house, paid for. He sells out of California, buys a *better* house for $250K cash, and puts $700K in his pocket.
And THAT is how Texas is pulling all the best taxpayers out of California and drawing them here.