July 19th, 2011
Jonah Goldberg has another excellent column. He focuses on Obama’s claim to pragmatism, but mentions in passing something that should be a line in the stump speech for whoever the Republican nominee is.
Goldberg notes the following line from Obama:
Earlier last week, referring to the fact that he is rich, the president said: “I do not want, and I will not accept, a deal in which I am asked to do nothing. In fact, I’m able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need.”
He then adds, “the man lives in public housing and has a government jet at his disposal.”
But that’s not going far enough. The Republican nominee should quote this line of Obama’s often, and then follow it with some of the extravagant expenses Michelle Obama has racked: the $500,000 trip to Africa, the pleasure trip to Spain with 40 of her friends, the $100,000 “date night” in New York, the extensive and expensive personal staff she requires.
All of these expenses were picked up by taxpayers. The eventual nominee should note all of this and then tell voters that perhaps President Obama would “need” more money if the rest of us didn’t have to pay for his wife’s lifestyle.
Jason O. July 19, 2011 at 11:26 am
JVL: You and everyone else, left and right, D and R, with 1/2 a brain knows that nothing will be done re: meaningful austerity until the “bond vigilantes” take aim at US treasuries. IMO, this happens during this decade and then “shared sacrifice” will ratchet top marginal rates north of 50% easily. At least we’ll get real entitlement reform at that time.
As Kaus and John Derbyshire have eloquently noted it’s way too easy to engage in demagoguery re: meaningful reform, that is until the day the bond market wakes up. Niall Ferguson will be as correct about his predictions for the US as Milton Friedman was about the Euro and the EU back in ’99.