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James Pethokoukis notes some Paul Ryan moves in Iowa and wonders if he will get in the race.
… the current field still seems unsettled enough that Ryan probably yet has a window to jump into the race. Betting markets, for instance, have Mitt Romney and Rick Perry more or less tied at 33 percent. I would imagine Ryan, currently at 1 percent, would be running roughly even with those guys the day after he announces … if he announces, which I still doubt he will. But if Rick Perry can get into the GOP race in mid-August and be seen as viable, Ryan could certainly wait until September.
And Bill Kristol is almost wistful in his interest in another candidate.
… So history suggests a Romney-Perry showdown for the nomination. The legacy candidate vs. the big state candidate. And the polls have the two of them as the frontrunners.
Should Republicans yield to history, and resign themselves to a Romney-Perry choice? They could do worse. And it’s true that all experience has shown that Republicans are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Or, here in the 21st century, is it Republicans’ right, and their duty, to throw off such precedent, and to welcome new champions for our future security and prosperity?
But they can only be welcomed if they step forward.
Jonathan Tobin in Contentions says as far an another candidate is concerned, fagedaboutit!
… Though it is theoretically possible for someone like Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio or Chris Christie (the trio of GOP heavy hitters who the Journal and likeminded conservatives still wish would run for president) to still get in, at this point it would be difficult if not impossible to do so successfully. And that is leaving aside the fact none of those three seem to want to run.
The time for dreaming about the perfect candidate is over. Even if such a person existed, they aren’t running. Bachmann, Perry and Romney all have drawbacks that might, under other circumstances, make it hard to imagine them being nominated, let alone elected president. Yet one of them will be nominated next year, and that person will, depending on the state of the economy, have a good chance of taking the oath in January 2013. Conservatives have a tough choice to make in the coming months. But choose they must.
Nile Gardiner notes the presidential approval ratings of 39% are the lowest since Jimmy Carter.
Strikingly, Barack Obama has achieved the lowest ratings for any US president at this stage of his first term in office for 32 years, since 1979, according to polling data provided by the Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center. To place Obama’s ratings in historical context, at the same stage of their first term (or only term in the case of Bush Snr.), George W. Bush had a 60 percent approval rating (August 2003), Bill Clinton had 46 percent approval (August 1995), George H.W. Bush 71 percent (August 1991), and Ronald Reagan 43 percent (August 1983).
Craig Pirrong at Streetwise Professor calls out attention to yet another series of unintended consequences.
Michael Giberson at Knowledge Problem has an excellent post that illustrates perfectly three fundamental problems with the metastasizing regulatory state. EPA rules on air toxins and mercury are going to force–or at least accelerate–the closure of large numbers of coal-fired power plants especially in the East and Midwest.
Problem One: making uncoordinated policy decisions that have myriad impacts in tightly connected systems. The EPA decision focuses on one thing: air quality. But its chosen remedy has the potential to cause major disruptions in areas outside of EPA jurisdiction, considerations that EPA did not take sufficiently into consideration. Specifically, the loss of such large quantities of baseload generation threatens electricity supply, and electricity reliability. The stability of the grid depends crucially on the spatial configuration of load and generation; those have to be balanced tightly in order to ensure reliability. Shutting down just one plant can upset that delicate balance in a way that greatly increases the system’s vulnerability. So in its zeal to do good, EPA has created a huge potential for bad. …
Here’s that blog post from Knowledge Problem.
Even an article in the New York Times is characterizing the spate of EPA regulations, recently issued or coming shortly, affecting the electric power industry as a “cascade.” Regional power grid operators have been reviewing their reliability projections and becoming alarmed. Here’s Matthew Wald in the Times:
“WASHINGTON — As 58 million people across 13 states sweated through the third day of a heat wave last month, power demand in North America’s largest regional grid jurisdiction hit a record high. And yet there was no shortage, no rolling blackout and no brownout in an area that stretches from Maryland to Chicago.
But that may not be the case in the future as stricter air quality rules are put in place. Eastern utilities satisfied demand that day — July 21 — with hefty output from dozens of 1950s and 1960s coal-burning power plants that dump prodigious amounts of acid gases, soot, mercury and arsenic into the air. Because of new Environmental Protection Agencyrules, and some yet to be written, many of those plants are expected to close in coming years.
No one is sure yet how many or which ones will be shuttered or what the total lost output would be. And there is little agreement over how peak demand will be met in future summers. …
Kevin Williamson in National Review’s Exchequer blog does a number on the many lies of Paul Krugman and the NY Times.
Paul Krugman continues his campaign to discredit the economic success of Texas, and, as usual, he is none too particular about the facts. …
Other liberals are jumping on the trash Texas bandwagon and they are just as foolish as Krugman. Beltway Confidential has some examples.
But the silliest criticism of the Texas job record has to go to Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler, who explored Perry’s line that “Since June of 2009, Texas is responsible for more than 40 percent of all of the new jobs created in America.”
Kessler notes the following:
“This is a great-sounding statistic, and likely will form the core of Perry’s campaign against a presidency that thus far has negative job creation.
But, as always, there needs to be some context. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has especially promoted this figure, and even it acknowledges that the number comes out differently depending on whether one compares Texas to all states or just to states that are adding jobs. Since Texas is adding jobs, and many other states are losing jobs, Texas’s gains become out-sized in a general national survey.”
So Texas’s job gains look better because lots of states have lost jobs. And this is supposed to be a criticism?
Andrew Malcolm has the best of late-night humor.
Leno: President Obama is off on his three-state bus tour this week. I believe the three states are Confusion, Delusion and Desperation.
Fallon: Obama took some campaign volunteers out for burgers the otherday and apparently he left a 35% tip. Oh man, that guy is SO generous… with China’s money.
Leno: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will stay on with President Obama and not join the private sector. Thanks to his economic policies there are no private sector jobs.
Leno: More fallout from that Standard & Poor’s credit downgrading of the U.S.. Today England, France and Germany unfriended us on Facebook.