{"id":441,"date":"2012-01-08T19:54:51","date_gmt":"2012-01-08T23:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jparnell.com\/blog\/?p=441"},"modified":"2012-01-08T19:54:51","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T23:54:51","slug":"state-of-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/?p=441","title":{"rendered":"State of the Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent economic data suggest a modest improvement in the job situation. While this news is nothing to celebrate–and overblown in my view–any positive movement in the economy puts those seeking to unseat President Obama in an interesting predicament. If the economy appears<\/em> to be moving in the right direction around election time, the President could make the case to forgetful and less-informed voters that his “economic plan” is starting to work. Should the current strong economic case against Obama weaken a little, the President could find a way to survive in November.<\/p>\n

It’s been said the best economists are right only 51% of the time. I agree and I’m not an economist, but one point is worth making. Recessions in the U.S. typically last less than two years and the current downturn is overdue for improvement. You can put off the purchase of a new car, a TV, or even a pair of jeans for a while, but over time things wear out and must be replaced. Markets still adjust some even in an anti-business climate. While a robust recovery is highly unlikely, the economy could\u00a0improve a little <\/em>in 2012. The present economic malaise is on Obama’s watch, but making that point isn’t good enough. Republicans seeking office in November should be prepared to provide clear conservative, limited-government solutions.<\/p>\n

This is where the Republican primary gets interesting. <\/em>Ron Paul is the only candidate who has laid out a clear plan to significantly<\/em> shrink the size of the federal government. His foreign policy views don’t seem to click with enough primary voters to advance his candidacy, however, leaving Republicans without a consistent small-government option. I’ll leave the political analysis to others, but suffice to say that whoever survives the process will likely run against Obama as a right-leaning moderate (at best). This is where I start to get nervous.<\/p>\n

I reject the notion that a moderate candidate has the best chance against the President. I fully expect Obama to campaign as a moderate, so its essential that the Republican nominee make a clear distinction between the two alternatives. Big government has failed us. We don’t need to slow the growth, but to make it smaller. A lot smaller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent economic data suggest a modest improvement in the job situation. While this news is nothing to celebrate–and overblown in my view–any positive movement in the economy puts those seeking to unseat President Obama in an interesting predicament. If the economy appears to be moving in the right direction around election time, the President could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}