Always show the heart of Christ and give the world a smile each day!
JUST TO LET YOU KNOW THAT IT IS CHRISTIAN PERSON WEEK AND YOU SHOULD SEND THIS TO ALL BEAUTIFUL CHRISTIAN PEOPLE.
When I say that 'I am a Christian', I am not shouting that 'I am clean living.
I'm whispering 'I was lost, but now I'm found and forgiven.'
When I say 'I am a Christian' I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble and need Christ to be my guide.
When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak and need His strength to carry on.
When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed and need God to clean my mess.
When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not claiming to be perfect.
My flaws are far too visible, but God believes I am worth it.
When I say 'I am a Christian' I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches, so I call upon His name.
When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner who received God's good grace, somehow!
Today is Beautiful Christian Person's Day.
Pretty is as pretty does, but beautiful is just plain beautiful..
I'm supposed to send this to Beautiful People,
and you are one of them!!!
If you share this with another person, you will boost another person's
self esteem, and they will know you care about them!
Be Blessed, Be a Blessing.
--
--
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. -- Mark Twain (1866)
IN GOD WE TRUST
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Sobering news from friend Marge Rusnak of D.C.
And Canada is in or being sucked into the US hip Pocket
There is nothing political about this email.
It simply points out very probable changes that are in our future.
CHANGES ARE COMING ----
Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them.
But, ready or not, here they come
1. The Post Office.
Get ready to imagine a world without the post office.
They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term.
Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive.
Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check.
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018.
It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks.
Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check.
This plays right into the death of the post office.
If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper.
The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper.
They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition.
That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man.
As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it.
The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an
alliance.
They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book.
You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages.
I said the same thing about downloading music fromiTunes.
I wanted my hard copy CD.
But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music.
The same thing will happen with books.
You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy.
And the price is less than half that of a real book.
And think of the convenience!
Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story,
can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone.
Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore.
Most people keep it simply because they've always had it.
But you are paying double charges for that extra service.
All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes
6. Music.
This is one of the saddest parts of the change story.
The music industry is dying a slow death.
Not just because of illegal downloading.
It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the
people who would like to hear it.
Greed and corruption is the problem.
The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing.
Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional
music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists.
This is also true on the live concert circuit.
To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book,
"Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper,
and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. Television.
Revenues to the networks are down dramatically.
Not just because of the economy.
People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers.
And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV.
Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator.
Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds.
I say good riddance to most of it.
It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery.
Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
8. The "Things" That You Own.
Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the
future.
They may simply reside in "the cloud."
Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents.
Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be.
But all of that is changing.
Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services."
That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system.
So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet.
If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud.
If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud.
And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your
whatever from any laptop or handheld device.
That's the good news.
But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear
at any moment in a big "Poof?"
Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical?
It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case
and pull out the insert.
9. Privacy.
If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy..
That's gone.
It's been gone for a long time anyway.
There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone.
But you can be sure that 24/7,
"They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View.
If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits.
And "They" will try to get you to buy something else.
Again and again.
All we will have that can't be changed are Memories.
19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Will Blow Your Mind
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe.
All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them,
but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing.
It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.
It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.
It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.
But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America .
Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone.
Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period.
The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.
Do you know what our biggest export is today?
Waste paper.
Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on
whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.
The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was.
Once upon a time America could literally out produce the rest of the world combined.
Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.
If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things.
So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?
We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.
Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.
So what happens when the debt bubble pops?
The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country.
But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.
Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.
The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.
About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.
#2 Dell Inc., one of America 's largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem , North Carolina in November.
Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide.
So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States ? Zero.
#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute,
if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current
rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18
percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing
jobs since October 2000.
#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the
foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to
10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at
American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output.
In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that
produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul , Minnesota . Approximately 750 good
paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers
in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new "global" manufacturing strategy.
#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in
manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed
in manufacturing was in 1941.
#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP.
Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.
#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing
jobs since the year 2000.
#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita
broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually
lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products.
Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.
#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for
every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States .
#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will
be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now
living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor
Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we
do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we
all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before
we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war
zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national
economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis.. It needs to be
treated like one.
If you disagree with this article, I have a direct challenge for you.
If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable
economic future, please do so below in the comments section.
America is in deep, deep trouble folks.
It is time to wake up.
There is nothing political about this email.
It simply points out very probable changes that are in our future.
CHANGES ARE COMING ----
Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them.
But, ready or not, here they come
1. The Post Office.
Get ready to imagine a world without the post office.
They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term.
Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive.
Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check.
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018.
It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks.
Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check.
This plays right into the death of the post office.
If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper.
The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper.
They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition.
That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man.
As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it.
The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an
alliance.
They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book.
You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages.
I said the same thing about downloading music fromiTunes.
I wanted my hard copy CD.
But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music.
The same thing will happen with books.
You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy.
And the price is less than half that of a real book.
And think of the convenience!
Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story,
can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone.
Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore.
Most people keep it simply because they've always had it.
But you are paying double charges for that extra service.
All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes
6. Music.
This is one of the saddest parts of the change story.
The music industry is dying a slow death.
Not just because of illegal downloading.
It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the
people who would like to hear it.
Greed and corruption is the problem.
The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing.
Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional
music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists.
This is also true on the live concert circuit.
To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book,
"Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper,
and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. Television.
Revenues to the networks are down dramatically.
Not just because of the economy.
People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers.
And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV.
Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator.
Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds.
I say good riddance to most of it.
It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery.
Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
8. The "Things" That You Own.
Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the
future.
They may simply reside in "the cloud."
Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents.
Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be.
But all of that is changing.
Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services."
That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system.
So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet.
If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud.
If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud.
And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your
whatever from any laptop or handheld device.
That's the good news.
But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear
at any moment in a big "Poof?"
Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical?
It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case
and pull out the insert.
9. Privacy.
If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy..
That's gone.
It's been gone for a long time anyway.
There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone.
But you can be sure that 24/7,
"They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View.
If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits.
And "They" will try to get you to buy something else.
Again and again.
All we will have that can't be changed are Memories.
19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Will Blow Your Mind
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe.
All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them,
but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing.
It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.
It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.
It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.
But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America .
Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone.
Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period.
The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.
Do you know what our biggest export is today?
Waste paper.
Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on
whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.
The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was.
Once upon a time America could literally out produce the rest of the world combined.
Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.
If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things.
So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?
We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.
Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.
So what happens when the debt bubble pops?
The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country.
But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.
Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.
The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.
About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.
#2 Dell Inc., one of America 's largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem , North Carolina in November.
Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide.
So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States ? Zero.
#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute,
if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current
rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18
percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing
jobs since October 2000.
#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the
foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to
10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at
American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output.
In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that
produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul , Minnesota . Approximately 750 good
paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers
in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new "global" manufacturing strategy.
#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in
manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed
in manufacturing was in 1941.
#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP.
Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.
#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing
jobs since the year 2000.
#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita
broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually
lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products.
Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.
#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for
every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States .
#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will
be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now
living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor
Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we
do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we
all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before
we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war
zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national
economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis.. It needs to be
treated like one.
If you disagree with this article, I have a direct challenge for you.
If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable
economic future, please do so below in the comments section.
America is in deep, deep trouble folks.
It is time to wake up.
NJ's Gov Christie feared by demos- Newsmax
Doug Schoen: Democrats Fear Christie Entering Presidential Race
Tuesday, 31 May 2011 04:44 PM
By Jim Meyers and Ashley Martella
Forward Article Political analyst and Democratic pollster Doug Schoen tells Newsmax that while Mitt Romney is currently the strongest Republican challenger to President Obama, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the candidate the Democrats fear the most.
Schoen also asserts that Democrats are engaging in “scare tactics” in attacking Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare overhaul proposal while offering no plan of their own, and says Republicans should offer a “less draconian” alternative to the Ryan plan.
Schoen served as an adviser during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. He is a Fox News analyst and co-author, along with pollster Scott Rasmussen, of the book “Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System.”
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Schoen was asked which GOP candidate would have the best chance of defeating President Obama in 2012.
Story continues below.
“Right now I think it’s Mitt Romney,” Schoen responds.
“He’s got name recognition, he’s got money, and he is a former businessman who has the ability to run on the economy. He does have the liability of having proposed a forerunner of Obamacare.
“But at this point I’d say Mitt Romney would be the toughest candidate for President Obama to beat.”
As for the potential candidate the Democrats fear the most, Schoen opines: “I think Democrats fear someone who’s not in the race, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
“The American people are looking for fresh faces and if somebody like Chris Christie got into the race, I think there is a real chance that there could be a boomlet of excitement that could catapult him pretty quickly to the top of the polls.”
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the top pick for president among Republicans and independents in a CNN poll released last week. Explaining the results, Schoen says: “That’s name recognition and dissatisfaction with the Republican field.
“I said Mitt Romney is the front-runner, but I didn’t say he’s enthusiastically embraced by the Republican base. He isn’t. Rudy Giuliani is remembered well for is work in New York City, fighting terrorism, helping the city recover after 9-11. There is a clear sense that he is somebody who could and should be heard from.
“The problem he has is he is perceived as too much of a centrist for an increasingly conservative Republican primary electorate.”
Schoen tells Newsmax that the Democrats’ efforts to vilify Rep. Ryan’s Medicare reform plan is a “winning strategy,” noting that a Democratic House candidate won a special election in a traditionally Republican New York district last week by focusing largely on that issue.
“They did win substantially and it was all because of Medicare. They are engaging in scare tactics. They don’t have an alternative set of policies.
“But bottom line, it’s a lot better to win than to lose in politics, and last week the Democrats won and the Republicans lost.”
He adds that the results of that election show that “people are angry and scared” about the perceived threat to Medicare.
Referring to an anti-Ryan plan TV commercial showing a grandmother in a wheelchair being dumped off a cliff, Schoen declares: “It’s probably fair game if it works, dirty pool if it doesn’t.
“But in this case both sides have engaged in extreme rhetoric. I don’t think it helps the system, but Democrats would argue it is a visual representation of what the Republicans have done with the Ryan plan. And while I don’t think it’s necessarily constructive in the broader sense of the word, in the more narrow sense it’s been effective.”
Schoen says Republicans should not stand staunchly behind the Ryan plan as it is now formulated.
“You can always revise a plan. You can always clarify a plan. I think the Republicans would do well to take the Ryan plan, go back to the drawing board, and see if they can come up with something that is a little less draconian and offer something less than the complete replacement of Medicare with a voucher system.”
Schoen also says that while President Obama has won ratings approval for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, he remains vulnerable on the economy.
“The economy is a real drag on the president’s performance. So far he’s benefitted from the fact that there is positive economic growth, however tepid, and interest rates have stayed low.
“But if interest rates went up and gas prices continued to go up, I think we could see that this election, which is a tight one now, could get tighter still.”
Tuesday, 31 May 2011 04:44 PM
By Jim Meyers and Ashley Martella
Forward Article Political analyst and Democratic pollster Doug Schoen tells Newsmax that while Mitt Romney is currently the strongest Republican challenger to President Obama, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the candidate the Democrats fear the most.
Schoen also asserts that Democrats are engaging in “scare tactics” in attacking Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare overhaul proposal while offering no plan of their own, and says Republicans should offer a “less draconian” alternative to the Ryan plan.
Schoen served as an adviser during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. He is a Fox News analyst and co-author, along with pollster Scott Rasmussen, of the book “Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System.”
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Schoen was asked which GOP candidate would have the best chance of defeating President Obama in 2012.
Story continues below.
“Right now I think it’s Mitt Romney,” Schoen responds.
“He’s got name recognition, he’s got money, and he is a former businessman who has the ability to run on the economy. He does have the liability of having proposed a forerunner of Obamacare.
“But at this point I’d say Mitt Romney would be the toughest candidate for President Obama to beat.”
As for the potential candidate the Democrats fear the most, Schoen opines: “I think Democrats fear someone who’s not in the race, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
“The American people are looking for fresh faces and if somebody like Chris Christie got into the race, I think there is a real chance that there could be a boomlet of excitement that could catapult him pretty quickly to the top of the polls.”
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the top pick for president among Republicans and independents in a CNN poll released last week. Explaining the results, Schoen says: “That’s name recognition and dissatisfaction with the Republican field.
“I said Mitt Romney is the front-runner, but I didn’t say he’s enthusiastically embraced by the Republican base. He isn’t. Rudy Giuliani is remembered well for is work in New York City, fighting terrorism, helping the city recover after 9-11. There is a clear sense that he is somebody who could and should be heard from.
“The problem he has is he is perceived as too much of a centrist for an increasingly conservative Republican primary electorate.”
Schoen tells Newsmax that the Democrats’ efforts to vilify Rep. Ryan’s Medicare reform plan is a “winning strategy,” noting that a Democratic House candidate won a special election in a traditionally Republican New York district last week by focusing largely on that issue.
“They did win substantially and it was all because of Medicare. They are engaging in scare tactics. They don’t have an alternative set of policies.
“But bottom line, it’s a lot better to win than to lose in politics, and last week the Democrats won and the Republicans lost.”
He adds that the results of that election show that “people are angry and scared” about the perceived threat to Medicare.
Referring to an anti-Ryan plan TV commercial showing a grandmother in a wheelchair being dumped off a cliff, Schoen declares: “It’s probably fair game if it works, dirty pool if it doesn’t.
“But in this case both sides have engaged in extreme rhetoric. I don’t think it helps the system, but Democrats would argue it is a visual representation of what the Republicans have done with the Ryan plan. And while I don’t think it’s necessarily constructive in the broader sense of the word, in the more narrow sense it’s been effective.”
Schoen says Republicans should not stand staunchly behind the Ryan plan as it is now formulated.
“You can always revise a plan. You can always clarify a plan. I think the Republicans would do well to take the Ryan plan, go back to the drawing board, and see if they can come up with something that is a little less draconian and offer something less than the complete replacement of Medicare with a voucher system.”
Schoen also says that while President Obama has won ratings approval for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, he remains vulnerable on the economy.
“The economy is a real drag on the president’s performance. So far he’s benefitted from the fact that there is positive economic growth, however tepid, and interest rates have stayed low.
“But if interest rates went up and gas prices continued to go up, I think we could see that this election, which is a tight one now, could get tighter still.”
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