The Liberal Media Endorse President Obama

Bill O' Reilly - Writing in this space two months ago, I laid out the media advantage that President Obama has in his quest for reelection. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, 32 percent of journalists say they are liberal, 53 percent moderate and just 8 percent conservative. Ask John McCain how the press treated him in 2008 if you want specifics on the tilt toward Obama.
A great illustration of media bias is the recent dustup over Sandra Fluke. She is the liberal activist trotted out by the Democratic Party to deflect the contraception issue away from the "church-state" controversy the White House was losing and into the more emotional "women's health" arena. Nancy Pelosi herself organized a press dog-and-pony show for Fluke, who portrays herself as a law student having a rough time paying for birth control pills. She wants the feds to pick up the tab through mandated insurance benefits even though the pills cost about $9 a month at places like Wal-Mart, and are distributed free at health clinics under Title Ten legislation.
But you won't find those facts being discussed much in the national media. No, for them, Fluke is a victim of a cruel system that wants to unduly burden American women.
Sure.
Of course, Fluke was handed an enormous gift by Rush Limbaugh when he made demeaning comments about her. Immediately, the committed left-wing media machine, led by the amazingly dishonest Media Matters website, cranked up two themes: that Limbaugh should be deported to Tonga, and that he is the real power behind the Republican Party.
MSNBC, which is now partnered with Media Matters in the quest to disseminate left-wing propaganda, went wild, and so, to a lesser extent, did other national media outlets. The story line is that because the Republican candidates did not call for Limbaugh to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, they endorsed his attitude toward Fluke. The analysis was so hysterical that it could have been a Jon Stewart bit, and in fact it was.
The bigger picture is this: Voters who do not pay close attention to public policy and political controversies are at the mercy of so-called "prevailing wisdom" -- that is, what they hear around town, from their friends, etc. As long as most of the media, including the entertainment industry, promote one particular candidate for president, that person will have a major advantage in November.
But informed voters know the fix is in, although there's little they can do about it. A Pew survey taken in January found that 67 percent of Americans believe there is bias in news coverage. They are right, and it is toward the left.
Few in the press are reporting the truth about Sandra Fluke. That is an indicator of what the American media have become, as well as what is likely to come as the election campaign unfolds.

Obama Administration Move Forward With Communist Expanded Contraception Mandate

Tina Korbe - The administration this afternoon released its “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on preventive services policy.” Translation: President Barack Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are moving forward with their controversial contraception mandate, which requires even religiously affiliated employers to provide their employees with insurance that covers contraception — even if those employers object to contraception on religious grounds.
But don’t worry: Secretary Sebelius says your religious liberty is assured, so it is assured.
“The President’s policy respects religious liberty and makes free preventive services available to women,” she said. ”Today’s announcement is the next step toward fulfilling that commitment.”
Never mind that, by drawing a distinction between actual churches and church-operated businesses like hospitals and schools, the administration effectively appropriated for itself the power to determine what constitutes ministry. Also, last I checked, there was no such thing as “free preventive services.”
Sandra Fluke should be happy, though. The administration made a final decision about whether it will require colleges to provide  students with insurance that covers contraception, as well. Take one wild guess as to what their decision was. Yep, that’s right:

Administration officials also released a final rule governing student health plans.  Under the final rule, students will gain the same consumer protections other people with individual market insurance have, like a prohibition on lifetime limits and coverage of preventive services without cost sharing.  In the same way that religious colleges and universities will not have to pay, arrange or refer for contraceptive coverage for their employees, they will not have to do so for their students who will get such coverage directly and separately from their insurer.

Note that the administration still pretends the mandate isn’t a mandate on religious employers if the insurers have to provide contraception coverage “directly and separately” to employees and students. Actually, it’s still a conscience-violating mandate, as Ed explained when the administration first announced its “accommodation”:

So these employers will still have to provide the health insurance, and the health insurance must cover the contraception and abortifacients.  The White House apparently wants to pretend that the funds for these outlays will come off of the Unobtanium Tree, where insurers find money to cover all mandates.  This exposes once again a stunning ignorance of risk pools and how costs are passed along to consumers.
Let’s just take this one step at a time.  Where do insurers get money to pay claims?  They collect premiums and co-pays from the insured group or risk pool.  No matter what the Obama administration wants to say now, the money that will cover those contraception costs will come from the religious organizations that must now by law buy that insurance and pay those premiums.  Their religious doctrines have long-standing prohibitions against participating in contraception and abortion, and nothing in this “accommodation” changes the fact that the government is now forcing them to both fund and facilitate access to products and services that offend their practice of religion.
Basically, the Obama administration told religious organizations to stop complaining and get in line.  This “accommodation” only attempts to accommodate Obama’s political standing and nothing more.

Consider also that many religious employers are self-insured and have no insurer onto whom they can push the cost of contraception insurance.
The timing of this announcement just couldn’t have been better. As The Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke put it, “The announcement came late Friday afternoon, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, as the second day of March Madness basketball games were under way.” People skip work to watch March Madness. Think they’re going to turn off the TV to dig up a dry statement from Her Consistency Kathleen Sebelius? Not likely.

Gas And Food Prices Jump In February

Alex Kowalski - The cost of living in the U.S. rose in February by the most in 10 months, reflecting a jump in gasoline that failed to spread to other goods and services.
The consumer-price index climbed 0.4 percent, matching the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, after increasing 0.2 percent the prior month, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The so-called core measure, which excludes more volatile food and energy costs, climbed 0.1 percent, less than projected.

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The biggest jump in gasoline in more than a year accounted for about 80 percent of the increase in prices last month, leaving households with less money to spend on other goods and services. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

 

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March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Carol Massar examines price movements on items that make up the U.S. consumer price index. She reports on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)

 

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March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Mike McKee reports that the cost of living in the U.S. rose in February by the most in 10 months, reflecting a jump in gasoline that failed to spread to other goods and services. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "Inside Track." (Source: Bloomberg)

The biggest jump in gasoline in more than a year accounted for about 80 percent of the increase in prices last month, leaving households with less money to spend on other goods and services. Federal Reserve policy makers say the advance in fuel costs will be temporary, and most see little risk inflation will flare out of control as unemployment exceeds 8 percent.
“There are some worries from the energy prices perspective, but the Fed and most people realize that the increase will probably be transitory,” said Benjamin Reitzes , an economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. “Outside of energy prices, there is not much risk for the consumer.”
Stock-index futures held earlier gains after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in June rose 0.2 percent to 1,399.3 at 8:31 a.m. in New York. Treasury securities trimmed losses,, with the yield on the benchmark 10- year note at 2.32 percent, down from a high of 2.35 percent in the minutes before the data was released.

Survey Results

Estimates of the 80 economists surveyed ranged from increases of 0.2 percent to 0.6 percent.
Consumer prices increased 2.9 percent in the 12 months ended in February, the same as in January.
The gain in the core gauge followed a 0.2 percent increase in January and was smaller than the 0.2 percent gain median forecast of economists surveyed. They were up 2.2 percent for the last 12 months, compared with 2.3 percent for the 12 months ended in January.
Today’s report showed energy costs increased 3.2 percent from a month earlier. Gasoline jumped 6 percent, the most since December 2010.
Escalating oil prices has pushed up the cost of the fuel. Regular gasoline in February averaged $3.56 a gallon, or 18 cents more than January, according to AAA, the nation’s biggest auto group. It was the highest monthly average since September.
The cost has kept climbing, reaching $3.82 on March 14, the highest in 10 months.

Fed’s View

The Fed, nonetheless, said it anticipates that the pressure on consumer prices from energy will wane later in the year.
“Inflation has been subdued in recent months although prices of crude oil and gasoline have increased lately,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement following a March 13 meeting. Oil will “push up inflation temporarily, but the committee anticipates that subsequently inflation will run at or below the rate that it judges most consistent with its dual mandate” of stable prices and maximum employment.
The central bank’s preferred inflation gauge, the measure calculated by the Commerce Department and tied to consumer spending, rose at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. Fed officials have set an explicit inflation goal of 2 percent.
Today’s report showed food costs were little changed, the least since July 2010.

Clothing Less Expensive

The increase in the core measure reflected higher prices for new cars and hotel stays. Clothing costs dropped by the most since July 2006, and used-cars were also cheaper last month.
“We feel like inflation will moderate,” Charles Holley, chief financial officer at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), said during a March 7 investor conference. “The one wildcard, though, is going to be gas prices. If oil continues to go up, I think that could be a drag on economies around the world.”
Paychecks are failing to keep up with even limited inflation, another Labor Department report today showed. Hourly earnings adjusted for prices dropped 0.3% in February, and were down 1.1 percent over the past 12 months, today’s report showed.
A Labor Department report yesterday showed prices paid to producers rose 0.4 percent in February, paced by the gain in energy expenses. Import prices, reported March 14, also climbed 0.4 percent.
The CPI is the broadest of the three monthly price measures from the Labor Department because it includes goods and services. About 60 percent of the CPI covers prices consumers pay for services ranging from medical visits to airline fares and movie tickets.

Conservatives Were Right About Obamacare

David Nather - President Barack Obama promised over and over during the health care debate that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”
It turns out that, for a lot of people, that isn’t true.
A Congressional Budget Office report issued this week says that 3 to 5 million people could move from employer-based health care plans to government-based programs as the Affordable Care Act takes effect. And in the worst-case scenario, it could be as many as 20 million.
For Obama, it’s an inconvenient truth at a really inconvenient time — coming less than two weeks before the Supreme Court begins oral arguments on the law and just as the administration touts the law’s early benefits on its second anniversary.
And it’s not the only hard truth Obama and the law’s supporters are facing. No matter what they said about rising health care costs, those costs aren’t actually going to go down under health care reform. The talk about the law paying for itself is just educated guesswork. And people aren’t actually liking the law more as they learn more about it — and some polls show they are just getting more confused.
But it’s Obama’s signature promise — “If you like it, you can keep it” — that’s most likely to get thrown back in his face. Here are the four hard truths of health care reform as the law approaches its March 23 anniversary:
1) Some people won’t get to keep the coverage they like.
For Republicans, the CBO report is a giant “I told you so” moment — and they’re lining up to tell you so.
“President Obama repeatedly promised during the health care debate, ‘if you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it,’” House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans said in a statement Friday. “Even under CBO’s ‘best estimate,’ President Obama will have broken his promise to 3 million to 5 million Americans each year, but unfortunately, that number could be much higher.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) cited the 20 million figure, saying: “This law keeps getting worse and worse; it needs to be repealed.”
Supporters of the law say it’s not as bad as all that. The 20 million figure is the extreme scenario, they point out — CBO says that 3 million to 5 million is more likely. And that’s out of the 161 million Americans who would have had workplace health insurance before the law was passed.
Even there, the number is misleading, according to Topher Spiro of the Center for American Progress, because CBO says about 3 million wouldn’t be forced out. They would leave their workplace coverage voluntarily — possibly for better coverage, with subsidies, through the law’s new health insurance exchanges.
And for the rest, Spiro said, employers will have to take the responsibility for what happens — because they’ll still have plenty of incentives to offer coverage to their workers, especially once the individual mandate requires everyone to have it. “If they decide to drop coverage, that will be their decision, and they should not blame the health care law,” Spiro said.
But try explaining all that over the 30-second Republican campaign ads that are sure to come. And it’s not what Obama promised as he pushed for the new law two years ago.
“If you like your plan and you like your doctor, you won’t have to do a thing,” Obama promised at a press briefing in June 2009. “You keep your plan; you keep your doctor. If your employer’s providing you good health insurance, terrific. We’re not going to mess with it.”
The 3 to 5 million estimate is also a net figure, so it masks some bigger changes in both directions.
For one thing, CBO says 11 million Americans won’t get employment-based health insurance they would have had before the law — so they will be forced out (technically by their employer, not by the president, but the context will be the changes brought about by the health law). Another 9 million would gain coverage — but everyone who loses it will see their lives disrupted, and it will be used as more evidence of broken Obama promises.
But all of that assumes CBO is right. For the law’s supporters, the dream scenario is that employment-based coverage will go up — which is what happened in Massachusetts under Mitt Romney’s health care reform law, which (as his Republican rivals have been known to point out) also has an individual mandate. According to the state’s figures, the percentage of employers that offer health coverage has increased from 70 percent to 77 percent since 2005.
2) Costs aren’t going to go down.
The video released by the Obama campaign Thursday has a graph that shows health insurance premiums climbing and climbing — way above general inflation. Giving families and businesses relief was a big part of Obama’s sales pitch for health care reform.
“Health care costs had been rising three times the rate of inflation, crushing family budgets and choking businesses. And he knew that he couldn’t fix the economy if he didn’t fix health care,” narrator Tom Hanks says in the video.
But no matter what happens with the law, the line on that graph isn’t going to go down. If the law works as the administration hopes, premiums may not rise as fast. But they’re not going to plummet.
That’s because the main drivers of rising costs — including technology, expensive new drugs, an aging population, a surge in chronic diseases, and Americans’ propensity to use a lot more health care than many other countries even if it doesn’t make them any healthier — have nothing to do with the law.
It’s not clear whether a lot of people actually expected premiums to go down — but there’s already a perception that the law has increased the cost of insurance, which is feeding the negative attitudes. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this week found that 49 percent believe the law has “significantly increased the price of health insurance.”
That’s not true. An Aon Hewitt survey of health plans found that health insurance premiums on average rose 12.3 percent in 2011 — but only an average of 1.5 percent can be attributed to the health law. And health premiums had been rising for years before the law was passed.
But what is true is that what most people pay for their insurance — either through higher premiums or bigger co-pays and deductibles — aren’t rising more slowly. The law creates lots of experiments for delivering health care more efficiently, but those are just getting underway. If those don’t work, and costs keep rising, the law will get blamed for it.
3) It’s just a guess that the law can pay for itself.
The Obama administration insists that the health care law will actually reduce the deficit — which sounds like a fantasy to many people, since the law will clearly increase spending through insurance subsidies and an expansion of Medicaid.
But that’s what CBO says. And it’s because the budget office believes the law will pay for itself through cuts in Medicare payments and various new taxes, including fees that health insurers and medical device makers will pay.
Like everything else CBO does, though, those estimates are mostly educated guesses — and they assume Congress is actually going to let the Medicare cuts happen. For example, the law is supposed to save $157 billion over 10 years by increasing Medicare payments more slowly for inpatient hospital, home health and skilled nursing facility services. The law expects those providers to become more productive and more efficient. But watch for plenty of lobbying pressure on Congress to cancel those cuts.
4) “The more they know, the more they'll like it” isn’t happening.
When the bill passed, Democrats were convinced that Americans would like the health care reform law more once they were able to see its benefits. When then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to “pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” — an inartful phrase that Republicans have happily quoted ever since — her aides insisted that’s what she meant: People would find out about its benefits once the controversy died down.
Except the controversy has never died down, and people don’t like the law any more now than they did then.
The latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 41 percent had favorable views of the law, while 40 percent had unfavorable views. That’s down from the 46 percent who favored the law in April 2010, right after Obama signed it.
And people actually seem to know less about what’s in the law than they did then. Only 56 percent now know that people will get subsidies to pay for health insurance, compared to the 75 percent who knew in April 2010. Just over half of Americans knew that people with pre-existing conditions will be guaranteed coverage, compared to the 64 percent who knew it in 2010.
The part the most people knew about is the individual mandate — the least popular part of the law. And once the Supreme Court starts hearing the health care reform case on March 26, they’ll hear about that part even more.

Top 10 President Obama Energy Blunders

Human Events - Wonder why gas prices are surging, with the cost at the pump topping $5 per gallon in some parts of the country? Obama’s anti-energy-producing policies certainly are not helping. The buck stops in the Oval Office, as this list of the President’s energy blunders attest.

1. Keystone kerfuffle

Canadian energy producers want to sell the United States an abundance of oil, if only President Obama gives the go-ahead to build the Keystone Pipeline XL. However, the President has chosen his deep-pocketed environmental backers over U.S. energy needs (and thousands of jobs for American workers). With the Middle East more volatile than ever, developing North American energy resources would help free the United States from being beholden to Islamic fanatics.

2. Volt vanity

After President Obama’s bailout of General Motors, the automaker turned its attention to producing the Chevy Volt. Even with the government’s help, the electric car is a flop, with few buyers and an exorbitant price. The Volt has trouble staying charged in cold weather and the battery can burst into flames long after being damaged in a minor accident. Obama’s fantasy of gasless cars is proving to be among the biggest debacles in automotive history—rivaling Ford’s Edsel and Chevrolet’s Corvair.

3. Solyndra silliness

President Obama made sure the $787 billion stimulus package was stuffed with initiatives meant to create green jobs by the millions. What the taxpayer got in return was a parade of bankrupt companies, led by Solyndra. The solar-panel producing company got a $535 million loan guarantee, with the promise that 4,000 jobs would be created, but end up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. Solyndra became the symbol of Obama’s misreading of the marketplace’s demand for green energy.

4. Tesla travesty
Here’s another tragic “green jobs” story. Tesla Motors received $465 million from the Obama administration to produce electric cars. So far the company has created 400 jobs, at a cost of over a million dollars per job, by producing the Tesla Roadster, with a price tag of $100,000 per car. Unfortunately, should the electric car ever become fully discharged, it would cost $40,000 in repairs. Where’s Occupy Wall Street on this?

5. Moratorium morass

After the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama imposed a moratorium on deep-water drilling. The action prompted oil rigs to relocate to Brazil, costing jobs in America. Obama then offered technology and support for Brazil to develop its offshore oil production, creating jobs in Brazil. Does this make sense to anyone?

6. Drilling dashed

It is not only the deep-water drilling pull-back that is wrongheaded. The President also refuses to consider drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or along most of America’s coastline. And he is not aggressively pushing for shale oil extraction or natural gas drilling on federal lands. There is an abundance of energy in this country if only the President would seek to develop it.

7. Price pandemonium

Of course energy prices are exploding. That’s what the President wanted all along. Remember his famous utterance, saying that under his policies, “electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket.” Also telling was his selection of Steven Chu as energy secretary. Chu once said that it was important for U.S. gas prices to mirror Europe’s sky-high petrol costs. It looks like he may be getting his wish.

8. Cap and trade catatonic

Despite a big push by the environmental lobby, President Obama couldn’t get his convoluted cap-and-trade package through the Democratic-controlled Senate. The legislation would have raised energy costs for consumers, while enriching visionary thinkers like Al Gore, who tried to parlay his global warming alarmism into a profitable venture by cashing in on the legislation’s emission-credits trading market.

9. Algae acclamation

With enormous areas of shale oil deposits and oil reserves in the U.S. remaining off-limits for development, President Obama has turned his eye to America’s algae resources to solve the nation’s energy problem. The President claims that by harvesting algae, and turning it into fuel, the nation could replace 17% of the oil it imports. Mr. President, if you want to reduce oil imports, here is some advice: Drill, baby, drill.

10. Energy excess

It takes a village of Secret Service agents and White House aides to accompany Michelle Obama and her husband (sometimes) on vacations to Spain, Martha’s Vineyard, Hawaii, etc. With Air Force One gobbling up copious amounts of fuel, even one of the First Couples’ date nights to New York could light a town, or even Al Gore’s house. With Americans struggling to pay high gas prices, perhaps the first family can set an example for the nation and start cutting back on their excessive energy use.

Church Foreclosures Reach Reacord Levels In America

Jazz Shaw - This is one of those titles which should have immediately lent itself to a discussion of a war on religion or some other social conservative prospect. But the reality turns out to be considerably more mundane. A recent study indicates that churches are being foreclosed upon in record numbers, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the faith or denomination of the property owners in question. They just can’t make the loan payments.

Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.
In 2011, 138 churches were sold by banks, an annual record, with no sign that these religious foreclosures are abating, according to CoStar. That compares to just 24 sales in 2008 and only a handful in the decade before.
The church foreclosures have hit all denominations across America, black and white, but with small to medium size houses of worship the worst. Most of these institutions have ended up being purchased by other churches.
The highest percentage have occurred in some of the states hardest hit by the home foreclosure crisis: California, Georgia, Florida and Michigan.

Many of the stories being told here don’t sound much different from the problems that homeowners have faced. This is particularly true of the Solid Rock Christian Church near Memphis, Tennessee. They took out a nearly $3M loan in early 2008 to construct a new, larger church as their congregation was expanding. Unfortunately, we all know what happened later that year. Another was the Charles Street African American Episcopal Church in Boston, who took out a long term loan. They made all the payments, but to get a low rate they structured the arrangement with the bank to include a million dollar balloon payment at the end, which came due last year. They are unable to make the large payment and are in pretty much the same situation.
While this doesn’t represent some sort of specific attack on churches by the banks, it does reflect the economy of the country at large. During periods of strong growth and plentiful jobs, if a church got into trouble, their economically sound congregants could pitch in to save the day. But when more and more of the faithful are out of work, they simply may not have the extra cash to donate and pay off the bank.
Everyone is feeling the pinch, and the banks can’t make many distinctions just because the borrower is a church. But I imagine selling off a church is more difficult than residential or standard commercial property. Tough situation all around.

Rassmussen Tracking Poll: Romney Up 5 Over President Obama

Ed Morrissey - Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll has good news for Republicans, and two of the Republican candidates.  The ongoing daily survey of 500 likely voters shows Barack Obama’s job approval at 44/54, the lowest since the end of December in this series, and both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have leads in head-to-head matchups:

Looking at Tuesday’s upcoming primaries, the GOP race in Alabama is essentially a three-way tie, while Mitt Romney leads by eight in Mississippi.   Nationally, Romney now leads Rick Santorum by 12 points.  Regardless of who they want to win, 80% of Republican Primary Voters nationwide believe Romney will be the party’s nominee.
With the perception growing that he will be the GOP nominee, Romney leads President Obama by five points in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. Today’s numbers show Romney at 48%, Obama at 43%. That’s Romney’s largest lead since December. Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).
If Santorum is the Republican nominee, he is up by one point over the president, 46% to 45%. This is the second time since polling began in 2011 that Santorum has had a slight lead over Obama. Romney is the only other candidate to lead the president more than one time in the polls. See tracking history   for Obama vs. all four Republican candidates.

Obama still beats Newt Gingrich by eight points (48/40) and Ron Paul by two (43/41), but Obama’s position has eroded against three of the four Republicans over the last few weeks.  A month ago, Obama led Romney by 10, 50/40, and Romney’s 48% today is his strongest in the series.  Against Santorum, Obama led by eight at the same time (49/41), and Santorum’s 46% is also his best in the series.  Three weeks ago against Gingrich, Obama led 51/37, but Gingrich hasn’t come close to his peak in the series of 48% at the beginning of January.  Two weeks ago Paul hit 43% for his best showing and eclipsed Obama by two, but that has been the only lead he has had in head-to-head matchups.
As I’ve noted on several occasions, these kind of matchups are apples-to-oranges comparisons, as Democrats are already united behind Obama as a nominee.  The internal divisions of a primary will handicap each Republican in the matchup, and yet Obama can’t stay above either Romney or Santorum, and now has dropped behind Romney farther than the MOE.  When Republicans finally unite behind a candidate, this suggests that Obama will find himself even more at a disadvantage, and that the election still continues to be a referendum on his performance.

President Reagan Was A Sure Loser Too In 1980

McGurn: Not since Herbert Hoover has a party out of power had such an opportunity to run against everything that troubles the American family—prices, interest rates, unemployment, taxes, or the fear for the future of their old age or the future of their children—than is now presented to the Republican Party.
The Republicans, however, haven't figured this out. This is their basic problem. They have no strategy for defeating an Obama administration that is highly vulnerable on both domestic and foreign policy.

That's the conventional wisdom in a nutshell, isn't it?
It will come as no surprise that these words appeared in a Feb. 29 column in the New York Times. They are reproduced here exactly as written, save for one small adjustment.
The president whose failings they describe is Jimmy Carter, not Barack Obama. The lines were written in 1980, not 2012. The author was the then-dean of conventional wisdom, James "Scotty" Reston. The headline was "Jimmy Carter's Luck," a reference to Reagan's victory in the New Hampshire primary three days earlier.
It appears the conventional wisdom hasn't changed much. Today's narrative holds that however weak President Obama's hand, Republicans find themselves in no position to capitalize on it. A glance back to where we were at this exact point in the 1980 primaries suggests otherwise.

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Bettmann/CorbisThe Republican candidates in early 1980 (from left): Philip Crane, John Connally, John Anderson, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush

Then as now, the Republican primaries opened with a bang, when George H.W. Bush upset Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses. By late February, this loss would lead to Reagan's firing of his campaign manager, John Sears, in a disagreement over strategy.
Then, as now, Republicans feared that an unhappy contender might bolt the party to mount an independent campaign. In 1980, that was liberal John Anderson, not libertarian Ron Paul. Mr. Anderson did end up running as an independent, whereas Mr. Paul will likely be constrained by the effect a third-party run would have on the future prospects for his Republican son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
Then as now, the chattering classes wondered aloud whether a candidate who could win the Republican nomination could prevail against President Carter in November. On March 1, former President Gerald Ford amplified that view when he told a New York Times reporter, "Every place I go and everything I hear, there is the growing, growing sentiment that Governor Reagan cannot win the election."
Then as now, some put their hopes on a late entry, in the same way that some now pine for Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie to enter the race. In the same interview where Mr. Ford predicted that Reagan's nomination would mean a repeat of 1964, he also declared himself open to a draft if there were a genuine "urging" by the party.

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Columnist Bill McGurn compares today's GOP to 1980.

In retrospect, we forget how seriously the Ford possibility was taken, or how popular it was in the polls, or how lingering its effects would be (at the convention, there would be speculation about a "co-presidency"). A Harris Poll released just about this time in 1980 bolstered the case for Mr. Ford by reporting that, in a head-to-head matchup, Ford (the noncandidate) would trounce President Carter 55% to 44%. The same poll showed Reagan (the front-runner) trailing Carter 58% to 40%.
Nor was candidate Reagan without baggage. As governor, Reagan had pushed through the largest tax hike in California's history, had signed one of the nation's most liberal abortion laws, and—as George H.W. Bush pointed out—presided over the doubling of the state budget over his eight-year tenure, to $10.2 billion when he left office from $4.6 billion when he entered.
Along the way in 1980 there were missteps and minor dustups inflated beyond their importance. In Iowa, Reagan lost the caucuses because he sat on a lead and played it cautious. In New Hampshire a month later, he had to apologize for an ethnic joke that made fun of Italians and Poles (to its credit, the New York Times defended him in an editorial).
Later he would face Santorum-like fears about his social message, especially after appearing at a mass gathering of Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. A minister with whom he'd shared a stage was taped saying "we're being attacked by satanic forces," which Times columnist Anthony Lewis declared "the scariest piece of television" he'd seen in some time.
Yes, the parallels to 1980 take you only so far, and Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan. Still, at this same point in his campaign for the GOP nomination, neither was Reagan. The President Reagan we rightly admire for bringing down the Berlin Wall, reviving the U.S. economy, and attracting into the GOP millions of disaffected Democrats was still to come.
And he got there by transcending the conventional wisdom rather than allowing himself or his message to be limited by it.