Rats Escaping From the Good Ship White House

Reports indicate that Larry Summers, economic adviser to President Obama, will leave his post to return to a teaching role at Harvard University.

"White House economic adviser Larry Summers will be leaving the administration after the November elections. Summers, as director of the National Economic Council, has been a lead architect of President Barack Obama's economic recovery policies. Those policies, particularly the stimulus, have been attacked from the right as too expensive and from the left as stopping too short."

Summers is at least the third high-profile departure in recent weeks, coming on the heels of the high-profile defection of White House budget director Peter Orszag (who stepped down in July) and White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman, Christina Romer (who left a few weeks ago).

At this point, it's not clear whether Summers is being pushed or whether he jumped. But who cares, really. The fact is, President Obama has done a dreadful job in shepherding the economy, and has clearly received no help from his paid advisers.

The reality is that no amount of shuffling of the deck by President Obama will mitigate the spanking he's going to get from voters in November.

Consumer Confidence Continues to Plunge

Americans are growing increasingly frustrated with the direction of the economy, as consumer confidence has hit a near two-year low.

"Consumer confidence fell in early August to the lowest level since October 2008, a month after the collapse of Lehman Bros. sent the economy tumbling into a severe recession and financial crisis, according to the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index out Tuesday.

The poll of 837 adults was conducted from Monday through Sunday, finishing two days after the Labor Department said private payrolls grew by just 71,000 in July. At that pace, it would take years to absorb the roughly 8.4 million people who lost jobs during the recession."

It should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention that people are growing more and more frustrated with the economic direction of this country.

Handing the keys to the economy to a political party that can do nothing except attempt to redistribute money from one group of people to another does not foster economic growth.

Rumblings of tax hikes (not extending the Bush tax cuts or imposing a VAT), talk of putting "boots on throats" and running massive budget deficits all suggest the Democratic party has absolutely no idea how to create wealth.

They do know how to "reallocate" people's hard-earned money, once it's been earned in the first place.

Hopefully the election results from last night give even more momentum to the more freedom-oriented, Beltway-outsider candidates, so that the country gets constructive "change" following the November elections.

Democrat-controlled House in Jeopardy?

President Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs said over the weekend that the Democratic Party's control of the US House of Representative may be lost following elections in November.

"President Barack Obama's party could lose its House majority in this fall's elections, his spokesman said Sunday, perhaps trying to jolt Democratic voters with the specter of GOP lawmakers rolling back White House policies.

"I think there's no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control. There's no doubt about that," press secretary Robert Gibbs told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Democrats now hold a 255-178 edge in the House, with two vacancies in the 435-member chamber. Anywhere from 40 to perhaps 60 House seats could be competitive by the fall. Republicans would need to take back about 40 seats to slip into the majority, placing the current GOP leader, Ohio Rep. John Boehner, in line to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as speaker."

Let's face it. Democrats deserve to get slaughtered in the upcoming elections. At some point, they have to be held accountable by the American people for the economic mess we find ourselves in.

Unemployment has staggered up to 10% on their watch, and has stubbornly stayed in that range. Democratic policies have been designed to "preserve jobs" at the expense of creating a hospitable environment of low taxes and overall low governmental interference in business.

Not to mention their decades-long approach of rewarding their supporters with government largess or boondoggles, which has only expanded our public debt.

Their legacy of constantly expanding the reach and cost of government is precisely why as a country we are in this economic bind we find ourselves in.

Although dramatically restricting the ability of government to meddle in our lives is ultimately the correct way to put the country back on the road to prosperity and freedom, booting Democrats from office come November would be an excellent start.