[Mishmash] Wanted: A "Suck It Up" Candidate

[Carole]

i love this woman.  sometimes she subs for bill o'reilly on his tv show. 
she should have her own show.-------this is very thought provoking.....still
no one that I feel I can "jump" on the bandwagon for......

 
 
Wanted: A "Suck It Up" Candidate
By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, January 16, 2008  Something to think about.   
I need a man. A man who can say "No." A man who rejects Big Nanny government
 A man who thinks being president doesn't mean playing Santa Claus. A man
who won't panic in the face of economic pain. A man who won't succumb to
media-driven sob stories. 
A man who can look voters, the media and the Chicken Littles in Congress in
the eye and say the three words no one wants to hear in Washington: Suck. It
 Up. 
The Michigan primary put economics at the top of the political radar screen,
and the Democrat presidential candidates have been doling out spending
proposals, stimulus packages, housing market rescues and other election-year
goodie pledges like Pez candy dispensers gone haywire. Which leading GOP
candidate represents fiscal accountability and limited government? Who will
take the side of responsible homeowners and responsible borrowers livid at
bipartisan bailout plans for a minority of Americans who bought more house
than they should have and took out unwise mortgages they knew they couldn't
repay? 
I don't want to hear Republicans recycling the Blame Predatory Lenders
rhetoric of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Jesse Jackson. Enough with the
victim card. Borrowers are not all saints. There's nothing compassionate
about taking money from prudent, frugal families and using it to aid their
reckless neighbors and co-workers who moved into McMansions they couldn't
afford or went crazy tapping their home equity and now find themselves
underwater. 
Economist Tyler Cowen points out the problem of predatory borrowing --
something you never hear politicians spotlight. He notes, "As much as 70
percent of recent early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations
on their original loan applications," according to research on more than
three million loans done by BasePoint Analytics. "Many of the frauds were
simple rather than ingenious. In some cases, borrowers who were asked to
state their incomes just lied, sometimes reporting five times actual income;
other borrowers falsified income documents by using computers. Too often,
mortgage originators and middlemen looked the other way rather than slowing
down the process or insisting on adequate documentation of income and assets
 As long as housing prices kept rising, it didn't seem to matter." 
Message to Washington: Stop treating every defaulting borrower like Mother
Teresa. 
At last week's Fox News debate in New Hampshire, the He Men of the GOP field
went all mealy-mouthed when asked about the signs of recession. Mitt Romney
asserted our need to "stop the housing crisis." Does he mean the government
should insulate borrowers and lenders from culpability? Continue to
artificially prop up housing prices? If so, why? If not, then what? 
Last month, Mike Huckabee told an NPR reporter unequivocally that it "is not
the purpose of government to prop people up from every poor decision they
make." Amen, Rev. Huckabee. But at the New Hampshire debate, he sheepishly
avoided tough pronouncements and instead voiced support for President Bush's
Hillarycare-Lite housing bailout approach since it "didn't involve tax
dollars." Yet. 
Huckabee is comforting himself and his followers with semantic self-delusion
 The Bush measures, including a subprime interest-rate freeze, a proposed
expansion of the freeze to cover prime-rate borrowers, and a push to
increase the availability of so-called jumbo mortgages and lift the $417,000
loan cap, are the camel's nose under the tent. Eventually, responsible
taxpayers will pay. 
As for "Straight Talk" Sen. John McCain, he immediately pitched federal
education and job training programs for laid-off workers. "We need to go to
the community colleges and design education and training programs so that
these workers get a second chance. That's our obligation as a nation." It
is? This is conservative? This is the alternative to Clintoncare? No, this
is Clintoncare. Why can't Americans be expected to pay for their own
schooling and retraining? 
Fred Thompson, supposedly the conservative's conservative, asserted the need
for a fiscal stimulus: "I think that has to be considered somewhere along
the line if the economy calls for it." 
McCain and Romney want expansion of the Federal Housing Administration to
allow borrowers to refinance -- on the backs of taxpayers. Rudy Giuliani
wants government aid for borrowers who were "cheated." No word on what he
would do to borrowers who did the cheating. 
As we head toward Super Tuesday, the subprime mess and the economy will
dominate -- and the Do Something Democrat candidates will turn their spigot
of overextended homeowner sob stories on full blast. Do Republicans want a
clear alternative to liberal-nomics? Or will you settle for a lip-service
conservative who will reward fiscal recklessness with only slightly less
government intervention than the Dems? 



Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of
investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of
Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild . 






 


 
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