GOP Must Stress Growth and Reject Personal Attacks

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial that begins:

Inside the GOP's Tampa convention hall this week, one prominent feature is a debt clock ticking toward $16 trillion. With due respect to that horrifying number, it's the wrong figure to watch. What Mitt Romney and the GOP need above all is a growth clock and a persuasive case for economic revival.

Most Americans have concluded that Obamanomics is a failure, but polls also show that independent voters remain skeptical that either party has an answer to the malaise of the Obama and latter Bush years. This cynicism plays into the hands of President Obama, who is trying to convince Americans that 1.5% growth and 42 months of more than 8% unemployment is the best we could have expected.

Our view has long been that Republicans have the best chance of winning when they make the growth message their top priority. That's especially true this year. The Reaganites had it right: Rapid economic growth causes the deficit and debt to fall, not the other way around.

The rest is at the link and is interesting along the same lines. After the Convention speeches last night, the Charlie Rose Show had five commentators who had been recorded earlier at 6pm & hadn't seen Ann Romney's moving encomium for her spouse. The theme among the five was that the Romney Team should go more positive. I thought that this is the old Little Black Sambo routine of "don't throw me into that briar patch." The press would love nothing else than to see the Romney Plan to grow the economy so that Obama's scurvy crew would dissect it and the press would fall on each iffy proposal like Great Whites on chum.

Of course, on another level, what they say is true. There is a race that is tied at 45-45% and the American People do not like negative ads, although there is a sliver of leftist policy wonks and just plain agitpreppies in their mom's basement who snipe BS endlessly on line. And on MessNBC, if the truth be told. Coupled with Obama's provocative and dishonest ads, these are intended to get Romney's dander up. He should not, however, descend into the Valley of Lies and Dishonesty that Obama wants him to.

Mitt's campaign chief in Massachusetts, a certain Mr. Murphy, was certain that Mitt might be able to shed the "stainless steel" quality that John Dickerson said he had. And Matthew Dowd said the Presses' tendency to "chase shiny objects" might get the American People, 10% of whom are undecided and of those, 2 of 3 are women predisposed to swing leftward, diverted from attacking Romney as is the MSM's sworn mission in life [as well as the hapless Akin & any other Republicans who make a misstep].

And if Romney can keep it low key and have the brilliant Paul Ryan flesh out whatever economic programs the GOP proposes, all the better. But of course, the Republicans and the MSM know that the devil lies in the details and those, of course, might have downsides for the GOP.

Watch for Obama to hit on more money for education and jobs for the public sector, which mean getting the teachers' unions solidly behind the Dems, because more for education means more for indoctrination into social studies and more administrative positions. Paul Ryan can point to Wisconsin and Gov. Walker, freshly demonized by the MSM, as an example for education. The teachers there ditched the unions and now more are going back to work.

But if Romney and Ryan can school the country into "It's the economy---stupid," then the past could be prologue. Back to WSJ:

The Reagan years offer an instructive history, because the economy's troubles in the 1970s and the steep drop in real middle-class incomes (some $4,000 per household since 2009) were so similar to today's. Reagan put pro-growth tax cuts and a rebuilt military ahead of his ambitions to balance the budget, and he was right.

After his tax cuts fully kicked in on January 1, 1983, annual growth averaged some 4% over five years, while employment gains were swift and long-lasting. The deficit fell in half from a peak of 6% of GDP in 1983 to under 3% in 1989.

The temporary surge in federal borrowing that the media fretted so much about at the time was dwarfed by private asset and wealth gains as national net worth doubled. Annual tax revenues soared to nearly $1 trillion in 1989 from $517 billion in 1980 with much lower tax rates.

The pattern continued in the 1990s, after the mild recession of 1990-91 and a decline in the rate of growth in the Clinton tax increase year of 1993. The real reasons the budget balanced by the end of that decade were the peace dividend after the Cold War ended, spending restraint mid-decade after the GOP took Congress in 1994, and above all another burst of economic growth. Revenue surged into the Treasury from 1996-2000, including a wave of capital gains after the tax rate was cut to 20% from 28% in 1997.

Not exactly a shiny object, but if the American People can grok the basics of supply side and say "let's give the GOP a chance," then Obama will sink beneath the wave or with an alternative metaphor, be cast into the outer darkness where there is a gnashing of teeth.

Before a deficient public school system permanently dumbs down our youth and an MSM propagandizes the Roman Catholics and Evangelicals into a ridiculous life-without-parole, the American People must pull themselves out of becoming bewitched by the siren song that Europe succumbed to many decades ago, with disastrous consequences. And also reject the command economy model, with capitalist frills, that that shiny object China proffers as an example. In Matt Dowd's language, we should offer Obama a gold watch, admit he's a likable guy [instead of the narcissistic prig he really is], and choose a new chapter in American history. Missteps by Obama such as snubbing Archbishop Dolan of NYC and inviting Muslim clerics might be stupid, but just another drip-drop in the descent into silliness by the Dem left. But for a moment, let's get back to the positive and just pretend:

Consider what would happen if economic growth increased today to what it would be in a normal economic expansion—about twice what Mr. Obama has delivered. That return to prosperity would raise far more revenue for Uncle Sam than the panoply of Mr. Obama's planned estate, capital gains, dividend and income tax hikes.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that each increase of 1% in GDP means $2.78 trillion more in revenue over a decade. Nearly every problem known to man is more solvable with a larger economy—and what better gift to leave our heirs.

A Romney election victory would make this a possible outcome. An Obama second half---fuhgeddabouddit!