The consequences

President Obama left his signature domestic policy in the hands of Congress, and now he is facing the consequences.  From the outset of his presidency, Obama invited Congress to devise the details of health care reform legislation — an apparent bid to avoid what happened when President Clinton tried to overhaul health care 17 years ago.

Leaving it to Congress put an unusually glaring spotlight on how Capitol Hill does business. The spectacle of Congress’ horse-trading, secrecy and gridlock has fueled today’s virulent anti-Washington mood. The public’s reaction was all the greater because Obama had campaigned on a promise to change the way Washington did business, and because health care reform engendered such personal high hopes and anxiety.

Ron Paul for President!

Sorry, Sarah, it’s Ron Paul in a sweep!

Conservatives want the Texas congressman as their next President.

Paul was preferred by 31% of voters in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s presidential preference straw poll yesterday, one of the strongest wins in CPAC history.

Mitt Romney, after topping CPAC’s poll for the past three years, came in second, with 22% of the 2400 votes cast.

Sarah Palin, who skipped the group’s conference, came in a distant third with 7% of the vote.

If the GOP had carte blanche to run the country

With Republicans positioned for major electoral gain in 2010, Newsweek is taking a look at how the party would govern if they were in power. The center of any Republican agenda would be tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts, but the article notes that anti-spending and anti-taxation fervor among the party’s faithful could make it near impossible to address the deficit without touching Social Security and Medicare, which are extremely popular. “Small-government Republicans come down squarely on the side of smaller deficits…Sounds great. Except that no one in either party has figured out how to do that in a way that won’t cause a rebellion among the voters,” the article reads. The article notes that there’s significant agreement between Obama and Republicans on both foreign policy, with the president presiding over an increase in troops in Afghanistan, and education, where the president’s support for charter schools and providing incentives for school reform on a state level has GOP roots.

Sunday, 2/21/10, Public Square