December 2011 Archives

    So I was going to play it safe and wait until after Tuesday's Iowa Caucus to do an analysis of the Republican Presidential race.  That would have been cowardly!  So following are my predictions for the January contests:

    In the recent brouhaha over the payroll tax cut there seemed to be controversy solely over how long the tax cut should last.  The Senate compromise extended it for two months, while the House was pushing for a full year.  In actuality even the President and the Senate want the measure extended to a year at some later date, it's just a question of how that gets negotiated.  The voices were few that thought the extension at any length was a bad idea.

    I have hesitated to comment on the Republican Primary race because of the volatility of the contest, and the difficulty in making any reasonable predictions.  The trepidation I have in writing this blog post seems to be shared by most republican voters in casting their ballots.

     In a recent CNN poll it was suggested that 64% of Americans would like the idea of a third political party to run against the Republicans and the Democrats.  Of course there are already several other parties that do run candidates, but it is assumed that the poll results refer to what would be a viable third party, i.e. a party that has a reasonable chance of winning major elections.