Hang Your Hat

Climb High
Congressional redistricting, a decennial process that generally allows the party in legislative power in each state to draw new lines, has not created many opportunities for new seats for Republicans, as the party’s leaders once expected. But it has forced multiple House Democrats, viewing their odds in new districts as slim, into retirement. Many of those districts are now either in play or solidly Republican, making the climb for Democrats all that more onerous. (NYT, 4/19/2012)


The New York Times got themselves all twisted up here trying to explain why re-districting was not going to help Republicans much. In a previous article which they link to they gave us this:


On paper, the sweeping gains Republicans enjoyed last year in statehouses across the country gave the party a profound advantage in the nascent and increasingly contentious power struggle to create new Congressional districts. 


But those gains are likely to add up to fewer than 10 seats in the House of Representatives, largely because Republicans took so many seats from Democrats in 2010 that there are not many left to change hands through redistricting. (NYT, 6/11/2011)


So Republicans are victims of their own success......or something like that!


Throwdown
The President's Socialist rival is a throwback of a different sort. François Hollande's campaign has adopted a fiery old-left style that most had taken for dead after the Socialists' 2007 defeat. All of Mr. Hollande's major economic policy plans have roots in a punitive populism that would make U.S. Congressional class warriors blush. According to the latest polls, he leads Mr. Sarkozy 29%-24% in the first-round vote and by an even wider margin in the likely runoff.

Mr. Hollande says he's "not dangerous" to the wealthy—he merely wants to confiscate 75% of their income over €1 million, and 45% over €150,000. (WSJ, 4/19/2012)


Sarkozy's rival in France echos RedStateVT's call for confiscation....er, a fairness tax, on all wealth above a stated amount. Call it Le Rule d'Buffett Billion.


So, of course, RedStateVT has been having fun at the expense of Liberal billionaires who know that a higher tax rate is not going to hurt them given their tax shelters and trusts. They can appear populist by volunteering to pay more (although they never do) knowing that it is not going to pinch them financially. The Buffett Billion Rule facetiously proposed by RedStateVT is designed to get them thinking about what happens AFTER the Buffett Rule proposed by Obama, i.e. what happens when Liberals start coming for the principal of billionaires. Think it won't happen? Read up on what Colonel Bernie Sanders has to say about the inheritance tax!