The Tea Party protests show it’s already resonating with some people.

The One can’t cover the debt by taxing the rich, even if he confiscated all of the wealth of the top 5%, it wouldn’t be enough. The most likely way of getting out of that debt is the covert repudiation of inflation. But the Chinese (among others) is already worried about that.

Thus the Chinese, who have been the major purchaser of Treasuries, are a lot less interested in buying our bonds. This means that the interest rate on bonds goes up, and that ripples. The Fed has had to step in and buy the long term Treasuries, making serious inflation all the more likely.

I don’t believe that assumption is correct – despite the MSM’s incessant cheerleading on the stimulus packages, recent surveys show that the majority of US adults know that China owns most of the outstanding debt of our country at present:

http://people-press.org/report/504/knowledge-update

Yet you claim that no ones cares about this issue? Methinks you’re talking out of your hat here.

OK, so far, so good – but then we have this:

Hope and Change’ was brilliant marketing, it was shorthand for whatever end result the listener wanted

So in your opinion the GOP should offer “results,” but also obfuscate whatever those “results” may in fact be composed of, because it’s all in the marketing. Somehow, I don’t think the MSM is going to allow that little fact to go unchallenged or unnoticed. You do realize that no one in the MSM ever challenged Obama on what his mantra of Hope and Change actually meant, yes? Sounds like another epic fail for the GOP if they follow that manual.

And ‘competence’ usually falls flat as a campaign issue (ask Dukasis), it was only when it was connected to an end result that it resonated. BTW, I’ve long thought Bush’s sin was not in the substance of the federal government’s initial response to Katrina, but rather to the (typically) incompetent way he handled the P/R aspects (seemingly aloof and detached, praising someone who was out of touch, not putting blame on LA and city officials who had primary responsibility, not portraying the feds as coming to the rescue of the incompetent locals).

And the doubling, tripling whatever of the national debt is also an non-important abstract, it only resonates if and when it has a negative impact on people.

steve – Sort of like Obama campaigning on the slogan “Hope and Change?” What the hell did that mean anyway? Also, the phrase “rule of law” seemed very popular on the left when used to bash Bush, so what exactly are you talking about?

Per usual, you start from the assumption that my hobby is disributing or formulating GOP talking points, and work your way backwards. Clearly, it has not sunk in with you that your assumption is false. I do some posts giving an opinion on what I think the GOP might do to recover, but I’m pretty explicit about it in those cases. Here, I’m simply noting that the administration is working against its own purposes.

Incidentally, competence might seem like a “process” issue to you, but the effect Hurricane Katrina (or the media version thereof) had on the Bush Admin suggests it has a nasty way of rearing its head with voters.

As for lawlessness being in the eye of the beholder, I would note only that the eyes that matter here are not yours or mine, but those of the people Obama is counting on to make programs like the TALF and the PPIFs work. And those eyes don’t like what they see.

And the GOP gets some of the credit for his (still) high numbers. Instead of offering up their own ideas (i.e., promised results), they’re wandering around throwing around terms like ‘rule of law’ and so on… phrases that the public doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about. Given the choice between the guy ranting about ‘primacy of contract’ and the guy who promises to stabilize housing prices, is it any surprise that the public wants to go with the second guy?

Example: instead of muttering about ‘unprecedented uses of executive power’ (or something like that) to describe Obama’s muddling in Chrysler and GM and AIG and so on, why hasn’t the GOP talked about how MORE people will end up on unemployment as a result of what he is trying to do, how car prices will go up as a result (or whatever) and offering up their own solutions? The GOP can’t win if they don’t offer up a plan of their own, they can only hope Obama screws things up bad enough that voters turn to the GOP out of spite, much as voters turned against the GOP in 06 and 08.