The Election-Year Scurry

Don’t you love elections? In the campaigns for the important ones, we get to see frantic tap dancing. We get to see some foaming at the mouth.

This year’s campaigns promise to entertain. In New York, we already see our Governor Andrew Cuomo moving to the right. He knows he has most Democrats’ votes in the bag. Now if he can just win over some Republicans. Then he could boast that he can win votes from both sides of the street. If Hillary Clinton does not run, he could use such credentials to win the nomination to run for the White House.

So to burnish those credentials, he is standing tall for charter schools, and staring down the teachers’ unions. This will earn him more votes from the right for sure.

In this year’s elections for Congress, we will see many Republicans run. We will see many Democrats scamper, and scurry, and hide. Those in close elections must run from Obamacare. Majorities of voters tell pollsters they just don’t like it.

So what do you do if you are a Democrat in a district where a few votes could end your career? When Obamacare comes up, you change the subject. You talk with your armpit about making changes. If you voted for it, you are in real trouble.

The president has postponed this provision and delayed that provision. Twenty-five times or more. To little avail. His shenanigans have not moved the needles in the polls. Ten layers of lipstick and rouge cannot silence the oinks of this one. If you are a Dem in a close race, you have to live with it. Or, the opposite.

Meanwhile, if the president’s plane flies over your district, you leap into a bomb shelter. When his name comes up, you pretend you are deaf. You sure don’t invite him to your campaign rallies. Not if you want to win, you don’t. His approval ratings are down as low as 38 percent in one recent poll and averaging about 43 percent across the board.

A lot of Dems are squeezed between the proverbial rock and a hard place for the upcoming campaign.

Meanwhile, we can already hear a few war cries for the 2016 election for the White House.

Likely candidate Ted Cruz has called for the end of the IRS as we know it. Now, normally only extremists applaud this idea. But this time around?

It is clear to a lot of folks that this administration used the IRS to punish its conservative opponents. It has battered opponents of this administration with audits. It green-lighted most liberal groups that applied for tax-free status. It held up the process for 200 conservative groups. Held them at bay for two election cycles. This sort of stuff frightens folks. Sickens some.

The president told Bill O’Reilly there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in this scandal. A few days later, the woman who headed up that department took the 

Fifth before a congressional committee. The purpose of the Fifth is to protect your backside from prosecution — for criminal activities. Or if you are a heroine, to protect others. Right down to the last smidgen. Note that the word incriminating has “crim” in it. As does the word criminal.

My point is that the idea of abolishing the IRS could become very popular the next few years. Along with another idea Cruz presented: Permanently banning former members of Congress from lobbying members of Congress.

He proposed repealing every word of Obamacare. He proposed term limits for federal lawmakers.

Majorities of voters tell pollsters they like these ideas. Which should make for some very entertaining election campaigns the next few years.

From Tom...as in Morgan.       

Tom Morgan writes about political, financial, and other subjects from his home near Oneonta, in addition to his radio shows and new TV show. For more information about him, visit his website at www.tomasinmorgan.com