DEMS COMMIT SUICIDE IN THREE INEXPLICABLE STEPS…NEWT GINGRICH
Democrats Commit Political Suicide – In Three Steps
By Newt Gingrich
Over at Pollster.Com, President Obama’s “streams crossed” this week. That’s part-“Ghostbusters,” part-pollster speak for saying the President’s approval rating dipped below his disapproval rating, causing the lines of the graph charting his standing with the American people to cross.
The declining popularity of one of the most popular and charismatic presidents in memory is no accident. He and his political party, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), are committing political suicide in three stunningly inexplicable steps.
Step One: Raising Taxes the Day of the “Jobs Summit”
As I wrote last week, the White House had its political dog and pony show otherwise known as its “Jobs Summit” last Thursday.
While entrepreneurs and authentic job creators met elsewhere to discuss a real plan to create jobs, the White House convened big business cronies, labor bosses and liberal academics to do…nothing.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, House Speaker Pelosi decided to hold a vote to raise taxes on the struggling American economy the same day.
The House voted to keep the death tax, which was scheduled to expire in 2010. The bill the Democratic House majority approved sets a top rate – in perpetuity – of 45 percent for any American who has worked hard to create wealth and is unfortunate enough to die after doing so.
Step Two: Forcing Through Democratic Health Reform By Christmas
“Another day, another study confirming that ObamaCare will increase the price of health insurance.”
So began a report on the latest study – this one by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association – finding that Democratic health care reform will raise the cost of health insurance.
The study found that individual market premiums will rise under Democratic “reform” an average of 54 percent, a cost increase of $3,341 for families and $1,576 for individuals.
Check out this chart from The Center for Health Transformation, which lays out what many different analyses have concluded about the effect the different health care bills would have on premiums.
Note that each of the proposed and/or passed Democratic bills would increase individual and family premiums according to the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation.
53% – And Climbing – Of Nevadans Don’t Like Harry Reid’s Health Care Bill
The Democratic leadership’s rush to pass health care reform before Christmas is made even more inexplicable by the fact that the more Americans learn about the bills being pushed, the less they like them and the politicians who support them.
In Nevada, home state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a new poll shows that a majority – 53 percent – disapprove of Democratic health reform. And that number is up four points since October.
Democrats may think they are playing to their liberal base when they push liberal health care reform, but for Senator Reid at least, this strategy seems dubious. Only 39 percent of Nevadans approve of the job he’s doing. Fifty three percent of independents don’t support his effort.
Step Three: Off To Copenhagen While Climategate
Raises Temperatures at Home
Next week President Obama will attend yet another summit, this one in Copenhagen, Denmark under the auspices of the United Nations. The point of the summit is to develop policies in response to the “consensus” around scientific evidence that man’s activities are causing global temperatures to rise.
The problem is, there is no such consensus. And President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen – not to mention his administration’s attempt to curry favor with the international climate change crowd by announcing Monday that it will regulate carbon as a pollutant – is a dangerous travesty in light of this fact.
The emails uncovered from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit show a cynical attempt by leading climate scientists to manipulate data and suppress any dissent by scientists to the manmade climate change orthodoxy.
What’s worse, the emails reveal that the Climate Research Unit inexplicably lost or destroyed much of its original data – the very data that the United Nations relied heavily on to form the conclusions about climate change being acted on this week in Copenhagen.
Both Copenhagen and the EPA Rely on Lost or Destroyed Climate Data
And it gets even worse.
In making its announcement this week that greenhouse gases will be regulated by the government under the Clean Air Act – raising the costs of virtually every aspect of life in the United States – the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also relied on the mysteriously-gone-missing data of the Climate Research Unit.
It’s little wonder then, that Americans are increasingly not buying the alarmism. Polls show a dramatic decline in public belief that global warming is a serious problem.
If President Obama and the Democratic Congress are sincere in their belief that human activity is changing our environment, they will work to restore the public trust in the science they claim underlies this belief.
Before anyone goes to Copenhagan, before any EPA ruling is implemented, and before cap and trade is voted on in the Senate, the Democrats who control Washington must open a full scale investigation into bias and politicization in the climate change community.
This is More Than Politics, It’s Our Future
The old saying goes, “never murder your opponent when he’s busy committing suicide.” And that may be good for politics, but this is much more than politics.
Democrats are in charge in Washington. Their fatal missteps are America’s fatal missteps.
For every American who believes in building a better future for our children and grandchildren, now is not the time for complacency.
Now is the time for action.
For more information, go to www.AmericanSolutions.com.
Your friend,
Newt Gingrich
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