July 22, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Why is Joe Biden still the President?
By Robert Romano
Why is Joe Biden still the President?
After dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and ceding the Democratic Party nomination and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President, but in staying in office to serve out his term, the American people have a right to know why this decision was reached.
The truth is, after his dismal performance in the June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump, and subsequent interviews and campaign appearances, Biden had difficulty completing his thoughts and spoke incoherently often enough that members of the President’s own party wanted him to step aside because he’s not up to the job.
Is there some sort of cognitive disorder that Democrats have kept a secret?
In a July 21 post on X, Biden stated, “I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.”
Biden had been trailing Trump in national polls since Sept. 2023, with not much change in the race—Trump’s last lead against Biden was an average of 3 percent, 47.7 percent to 44.7 percent.
Whereas, in the sparse amount of polls done for a Trump-Harris race, Trump leads an average 48 percent to 46.3 percent, not much better.
The implication is that Trump is leading the national popular vote whoever his opponent is, and that’s been true for almost a year now.
So, it’s not the polls per se. Harris does not necessarily give Democrats a better chance of retaining the White House. About 35 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to stay in the race in the latest AP-NORC poll taken July 11 to July 15, and many of whom might now feel betrayed.
The fact is, no adequate explanation for Biden’s departure is being given, impacting Harris or whoever replaces Biden at the Democratic National Convention’s ability to keep the Democratic coalition together. This could put Harris or anyone else in an even worse position than Biden was to do well in November.
Another factor is that replacing the incumbent hasn’t recently worked. When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson did not stand for reelection in 1952 and 1968, Republicans still won relatively easily. They could try, but Dems’ argument still becomes “The country got so bad we had to replace the president. Would you still vote for us?” It’s a show of weakness.
So, it’s not the optics or history on their side either. Harris could wind up being something akin to a sacrificial lamb should Trump go on to easily win the election anyway.
No, Biden’s decision to step aside, fueled by calls of elected Democratic leaders and Democratic-leaning media organizations, is because he can no longer do the job, and certainly not for another four years.
If he couldn't handle a debate, he cannot possibly handle negotiating with our nation's adversaries, whether in Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, in order to keep the peace.
So, why is Biden still the President? Democrats would have to admit that they had been lying about Biden’s ability to discharge his constitutional duties. Kamala Harris most of all. If Biden truly has a condition that makes it so he cannot do the job, her own job under the 25th Amendment is to get a “written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” by Cabinet officials that she signs to remove the President, requiring two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress to have Biden removed.
Instead, Biden, for now, gets to stay in office and the country is left to pretend it was not because of anything to do with his abilities.
The implication is that this is a cover-up of Biden’s condition, which now continues. They’d rather leave a vacant president in office than do damage to their party. Party before country.
In the meantime, the damage being done to the country is incalculable, when the preferred option is to destroy the presidency in order to “save” it. Now, the calls will come for Biden to resign the position outright.
But it is clear that Biden’s decision to step aside was not something he came to all by himself. He was pressured into this course.
If Biden is not fit to run, then he is not fit to serve. He should resign.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/why-is-joe-biden-still-the-president/
Echoes of 1952 in Today’s Presidential Election
By Bill Wilson
It may seem odd to look at an election held 72 years ago for some insight into the contest consuming virtually every facet of life in 21st Century America. But the parallels are striking and do provide some guidance.
In 1952 the American people were faced with war – just a few years after the cataclysmic World War. The Democrat incumbent was facing rapidly sinking polling numbers. With little warning, President Truman announced his decision not to seek re-election. That decision immediately propelled Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver to front-runner status. But many inside the Democrat Party opposed his populist stands. Often referred to as a Huey Long wannabe, Kefauver had made many enemies with his crusading hearings on organized crime. Then, like today, the top levels of the Democrat Party could not allow too deep a look at organized crime and its many political ties. As an aside, Nancy Pelosi’s father was one of those who could not allow such a thorough investigation.
So, desperate to find a candidate that would continue the policies, attitudes and relationships of the Democrat Hierarchy, the consensus finally developed among insiders to elevate the Governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson. Kefauver led after the first two ballots but was short of the majority. After a number of backroom deals with other candidates, mostly with segregationists in the deep south, the “liberal” Stevenson won the nomination on the third ballot.
And like today, with little time to present their candidates and positions to the American people, the Democrat Party went full-negative. While today the Democrats and the new deposed Joe Biden’s speech writers attack the Heritage Foundation Agenda 2025 – as if anybody in America outside of a tiny number of policy wonks know about it – the Democrats in 1952 attacked someone other than their opponent, Senator McCarthy of Wisconsin. It only confused people then, as it is today.
The entire theme of the Democrat campaign was a contrived series of distortions and willful forgetfulness. Its effort can best be summarized by a poster, below, that tried to gloss over the perpetual war, inflation and shaky economy.
Even their tag line echoes today – Which Will be Safer? Nearly everyday we have some talking head of “mainstream media” or a pseudo-celebrity messaging how scary it will be to elect Donald Trump.
The negative and fear-centric effort failed miserably. The GOP ticket got 442 electoral votes. There are similarities on the Republican side of the coin as well, although the flipped side of that coin.
In 1952 the forces of globalist Wall Street were able to capture the GOP with a real national hero and the use of underhanded tactics that “shifted” 42 delegates from anti-interventionist Senator Taft to Eisenhower. Without those dirty tricks the vote would have gone differently. Another aside, it was those same GOP, Inc. tricks that forced the CIA Director George Bush on the GOP ticket of 1980. There was no support for him. But the “Internationalist Republicans” demanded him. The similarity with 2024 is that when the internationalists came demanding “one of ours” on the ticket and viciously attacked J.D. Vance, the nominee, Donald Trump, had the strength and courage to reject them.
We know that politics runs in patterns. As the old saying goes, history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme. A dysfunctional Democrat/leftist party that cannot figure out who it wants to have as their standard-bearer, the country sick to death of unnecessary wars, inflation and a breakdown of all institutions, and a desperate need for a generational change would have all sounded familiar in 1952. And a battle inside the Republican Party over an America First agenda and the globalist-Wall Street-war machine cabal would be almost identical. The only difference is today the forces of America First have discredited, humiliated and disposed of the “internationalists.” There was no Bush at the recent Republican Convention, only the family’s attack dog Karl Rove sitting on Rupert Murdoch’s knee carping.
Peggy Noonan, respected political commentator and observer of the Wall Street Journal, summed up things best of all when she wrote on Friday, July 19:
“We saw something epochal: the finalization and ratification of a change in the essential nature of one of the two major political parties of the world’s most powerful nation. It is now a populist, working-class, nationalist party. That is where its sympathies, identification and affiliation lie. There will be shifts, stops and accommodations in the future, no party ever has a clear line, history intervenes, but it is changed, and there will be no going back.
“A final point. We have, many of us, for some time—months, certainly the past few weeks—felt various degrees and kinds of horror. But oh these are exciting times. Things are moving, shifting. Again, this is big history. Hold on to your hat.”
Amen! And historic shifts just like in 1952.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/echoes-of-1952-in-todays-presidential-election/
End Small Business Tax to Make Main Street Great Again
By Rick Manning
President Donald Trump’s choice for running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, succinctly personalized Joe Biden’s runaway inflation when he said that “Joe Biden’s inflation crisis is really an affordability crisis. And many of the people I grew up with can’t afford to pay more for groceries, more for gas, more for rent and that’s exactly what Joe Biden’s economy has given them. So prices soared, dreams were shattered so China and the Cartels sent fentanyl across the border adding addiction to the heartache.”
It's an affordability crisis for those who live paycheck to paycheck, work two jobs just to try to keep up, and for those on fixed incomes. But this affordability crisis is a chain reaction car wreck of Biden’s making. Small, local businesses get caught in the vice between their customers who are being squeezed and rising costs due to Bidenflation. While large, national or multi-national competitors have the means to ride it out, Main Street gets hollowed out with more and more commercial vacancies and empty storefronts.
As those local, small, and mid-sized businesses tighten their belts, and the owner/entrepreneurs who have built them find themselves having to choose between laying off employees or suspending their own pay, the very pulse of towns like Middletown weakens.
The federal government tax code contributes to this crisis.
According to the Small Business Administration, 33 percent of all small businesses fail in the first year, 50 percent have failed after two years, and 66 percent have failed after five years. Yet the U.S. tax code imposes a 21 percent tax rate on all businesses – small, medium, or large.
The Small Business Administration’s report titled, “Small Business Profiles for the States, Territories, and Nation” tells us on page 4 that there are 6.1 million small businesses employing between 1 and 499 employees. Small businesses employ more than 61 million Americans in fields ranging from legal and accounting firms to restaurants and machine shops.
Ending the federal tax liability on small businesses through a simple standard deduction would allow 6.1 million small businesses to keep billions of dollars of the money they have earned to reinvest right into the bloodstream of towns like Vance’s hometown of Middletown, Ohio, and thousands of other communities just like it.
Whether that money is spent on hiring a new employee, giving people a raise, refurbishing the retail outlet, advertising, or buying another lathe so you can handle more orders is not the government’s business. That is for the individual owners to decide based upon their own vision. But imposing a 21 percent tax on those businesses which are the backbone of America is economically stupid and runs counter to the focus of rebuilding America.
Another way to accomplish the same mission with a twist would be to end the federal corporate income tax for every business that employs only American citizens and those who are legally able to work in America. This would incentivize domestic business expansion rather than having companies like General Motors invest tax windfalls into expanding their presence in China rather than re-opening their closed plant in Flint, Michigan.
The mechanics of implementing this type of tax system is more challenging, but it could be utilized to incentivize businesses of all sizes to prioritize building their next factory in the United States rather than China.
President Trump’s regulatory agenda is clearly designed to unleash American prosperity. His energy policy is a proven path to make America energy dominant, as well as unburdening our public utilities from green energy mandates that are making our electrical grid more and more unreliable. His trade policies will encourage domestic production and growth. If the administration adopted a corporate tax policy which ended the corporate income tax stranglehold on small businesses, tax policy would be in alignment with Mr. Trump’s overall economic renewal agenda.
It is time to give Main Street, USA a fighting chance against the corporate behemoths. Ending the small business corporate tax would allow those without lobbyists in D.C. to compete with the big boys who do.
And that is just one more way to meet the ‘affordability’ crisis created by Bidenomics. Unleash small business entrepreneurs from federal income taxes and just watch them compete, grow, and expand opportunities for everyone. Employing more of their neighbors and pouring money back into the community through Little League sponsorships, charity donations, and all those activities that make a town actually home.
As Vance pointed out in his speech, under the presidency of Donald J. Trump, the bottom 40 percent of earners in America saw their salaries grow well beyond inflation and at a faster clip than the top 60 percent of earners. Letting those small businesses which employ many of these lower-wage workers free from federal corporate income tax will accelerate this wage growth while helping heal our community’s, and that is making America great again.
Rick Manning is the president of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2024/07/20/end-small-business-tax-to-make-main-street-great-again-n2642171
Biden departure: Destroying democracy to save democracy?
July 22, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 presidential election:
"President Biden being pushed out of the presidential race by Democrat elites and billionaires ends the argument that they are saving democracy. They don't care about democracy, they only care about raw power and I don't believe anyone is fooled."
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2024/07/biden-departure-destroying-democracy-to-save-democracy/