Thune for President?

Could the dragon slayer of 2004 become a dragon slayer again in 2012? Hmmm....

From Politico.com:

With speculation growing that he’ll join the wide-open 2012 Republican presidential field, South Dakota Sen. John Thune plans to roll out a sweeping proposal Tuesday to remake the congressional budget process.

Thune’s budget plan would create a joint House-Senate panel on cutting government spending, call for a line-item veto and mandate that 10 percent of the deficit be cut each year until it is eliminated.

As he tries to build up his policy credentials, Thune is also stepping up his political travel, headlining a Republican Party of Virginia event on Wednesday, to be followed by trips to Arkansas, California and Ohio on behalf of GOP Senate candidates. With Thune in heavy demand on the campaign circuit, more such trips are expected soon.

Thune’s political travel and his efforts to make a name for himself on budgetary matters has his Senate colleagues, both publicly and privately, offering encouragement if Thune decides to enter the 2012 presidential race. Never mind that his budget ideas will never see the light of day in a Democratic Senate — they help raise Thune’s policy profile within the Republican Party.

“I think he’d make a great candidate,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The party would be well served by having someone like him.”

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Thune “has all the qualities [for president].”

“John’s future is in his own hands,” Cornyn added. “It depends on what he wants to do.”

In an interview with POLITICO, Thune wouldn’t say whether he is serious about 2012, but he wouldn’t rule out a presidential run.

Thune said his “near-term goal” is to get through Election Day while helping elect more Republicans to Congress, and he declines to discuss his plans after that.

“Like everybody else right now, we’re focused on trying to help elect more [Republican] senators and create some checks and balances with the November 2010 elections,” Thune said. “I have the time and opportunity, so I’m going to go out and help some other candidates.”

Thune would be in a strong position if he wants to make a White House run. Handsome, articulate and very popular among conservatives and evangelical Christians, Thune is unopposed in his bid for a second Senate term, an unprecedented position for any Senate candidate in South Dakota history.

He also has $6.9 million in cash in the bank for his Senate reelection fund, according to his June 30 report with the Federal Election Commission, money that could be used to jump-start a presidential campaign.

“I think this is a very critical time for this country. It’s a difficult time,” Thune added. “One of the reasons I think this whole budget debate plays into that is because that’s what most Americans have in terms of their agenda for Congress to be dealing with front and center.”

Thune’s viability for 2012 is openly acknowledged by top Democrats. Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the Democratic National Committee’s executive director, told a gathering of progressive activists last week that Thune was a potentially difficult opponent for President Barack Obama to take on.

“This is personal, but John Thune is somebody that I have nightmares about,” O’Malley Dillon said at the Las Vegas event, though DNC officials later tried to walk her comments back a bit. “I’ve worked for Tim Johnson and Tom Daschle, and he is just a guy you can’t ever count out. He has his head down and is doing some policy stuff. [You’ve] just got to start looking at him.”

Thune’s new budget-slashing plans may also give him some credibility with the tea party movement, which is heavily focused on deficits and spending cuts. As part of his budget plan, the South Dakota Republican wants to beef up pay-go budget rules, require Congress to adopt a two-year rather than an annual budget, institute a line-item veto and return unspent stimulus funds to the Treasury.

Few of these ideas are groundbreaking — most have been bouncing around Republican circles for some time — but in packaging them into one major policy proposal, Thune is trying to show he’s got a mind for budget issues.

While Thune voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program — probably his biggest liability among conservatives and tea party activists — he has since switched positions and tried to end the program.

A source close to Thune said the senator now believes the bank bailout vote “was a bad vote,” an acknowledgement aimed at limiting the political fallout with the anti-government-spending faction of the GOP.

Some Republicans find Thune appealing because they think that everyone on the current list of GOP presidential wannabes — Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Haley Barbour, among others — has serious vulnerabilities.

“I’m worried about the slate of candidates likely to run,” said a Senate Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s hard to see any of them giving Obama a real challenge. But John could do that.”

But a major hurdle for the 49-year-old Thune is convincing potential supporters, big donors and party honchos that he has the “fire in the belly” to take on better-known figures within his own party and then square off against a sitting president backed by tons of cash and an experienced campaign team.

“It’s not a question of whether [Thune] can win” the Republican nomination, a GOP strategist said. “It’s whether he really wants to do it, really go for it. I think he has to show people that, if he runs, he’s really serious and not looking to be a [vice presidential] option or just get some headlines.”

“If he runs, John will be a first-tier candidate. Don’t mistake him as a dark horse,” said Curt Anderson, a longtime GOP political consultant. “He is the complete package — smart, savvy, telegenic, and he has a national fundraising base ... that he developed from defeating Democrat leader Tom Daschle.”

Jonathan Martin contributed to this report.

Honoring Royalty

In light of President Obama's recent incident of bowing to the Emperor of Japan, here's a cartoon for today:

That's Some Scalpal, Mr. President

Politico.com reports that President Obama is ordering some whopping spending cuts within the national government. The article states that he has ordered $100 million worth of spending cuts.
Remember during the campaign he criticized McCain for wanting to "use an ax, when what we really need is a scalpel" when it comes to the size of government? I think a tweezers would be a more accurate description.

To put it in perspective, economist Greg Mankiw did some basic math in a recent article. With a $3.5 TRILLION proposed budget for 2010, a teeny-tiny cut of $100 million represents just .003 of the proposed budget. And the proposed deficit is projected to be $1.2 TRILLION. The proposed cut represents only .008 percent of the DEFICIT. We've got a ways to go to eliminate that deficit completely!

This is just a drop in the bucket if we're going to balance our national budget, but I do applaud any spending cuts a big spending liberal will give me.

But I sure could go with John McCain's big ax right now.

Where Our President Gets His Info...

Courtesy of Politico.com:

Not a Bow? Psht....

Any honest person with eyes can tell that this is clearly a bow. I'm not even saying it was appropriate or not (which I don't think it was), but the fact that the administration is now trying to say that Obama did not bow to the Saudi Arabian King is ridiculous. Oh, and by the way...State Department protocol is that the president does not bow.

Obama's Slide

I'm going to predict this right now: Obama's popularity will continue to slip. This "freshie" of a senator is someone that people know absolutely nothing about. People desperate for a change latch on to anybody, and this is the guy they got. Now, people are actually starting to get to know him, and he's slipping in the polls (he's at a statistical tie with John McCain), and the more people know, the more they will realize how radical some of his ideas are and reject him. I was very amused at his solution to gas prices: inflate your tires and get tune ups! According to him, if everybody did this, we'd save just as much energy as if we drilled. OK, so why not do BOTH? Think how low prices would be. His next solution? Tax oil companies' profits and give everyone 1000 bucks. So investors (me) can't reinvest as much of those profits, so oil companies don't expand as much and gas prices double next year. So how much is he going to give us next year? $2000? It would be a perpetuating cycle of "taxing oil more, giving more to you, and gas prices increasing. So in other words an Energy Social Security, which is funded by taxing oil companies that Obama/Democrats are trying to drive into the ground anyway. Oil companies are our best hope for exploring alternative energies once oil runs out. Because once Exxon/Mobile runs out of oil to sell, are they just going to sit back and die? NO! They'll be the ones to fund research and development of new energy so they can keep making money, and Obama wants to tax the bejezzus out of them and give us money for oil that will just shoot up in price as the taxes put on the companies are reflected in the price at the pump? No thanks.
74% of Americans support offshore drilling and 56% support ANWR drilling; Obama's tire pressure solution will not make more people vote for him. Enjoy your ride on the slide down, Senator.