During the 2009-2010 congressional health care reform debate about the president’s signature law, ObamaCare  --  passed without a single Republican Senator or a single Republican Representative voting for it  --  Sarah Palin issued a “statement on the current health care debate” which warned about ObamaCare’s “death panels.”

Palin wrote, on August 7, 2009, seven months before Obama’s socialized medicine scheme was signed into law:  “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel”’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “’level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

“K St. lobbyists predict a big rebound in 2013,” blared in gigantic bold letters at the top of the front-page article in “The Hill” newspaper on March 5, 2013.  Let us all hope that headline is not true.  Because what is good for K Street is bad for American taxpayers and vice versa, for the most part.  Those of us who have worked on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. have friends who are or have been corporate lobbyists on K Street which runs parallel to Constitution and Independence Avenues, between the Capitol Building and the White House.  “The Hill” article reported that “K Street firms are predicting a strong rebound in 2013.”

As usual, the RINO (Republicans In Name Only) wing of their national party  --  and their comrades in the establishment media, such as Bill O’Reilly on Fox News  --  have given up on defunding ObamaCare.  Their argument is that the president won reelection and it is time to acknowledge that fact. 

What is it about what the Founding Fathers  --  and about what the Constitution  --  gave this great country that the establishment does not understand?  The People’s House, i.e. the United States House of Representatives, is supposed to be the most powerful part of government. 

After getting badly beat by Barack Obama in the first two major battles of 2013  --  passage of Obama’s $620 billion tax increase and his $60 billion “disaster relief” bill  --  the Republicans will gain a huge victory if they can muster up courage for the next battle coming to a head on March 1^st.  

The Republicans in Congress will not even have to pass any legislation to gain a victory on March 1^st.  That is because what Obama, and his fellow Democrats in Congress, thought was a clever little trap for Republicans  --  automatic cuts amounting to $1.2 trillion (half in defense spending cuts and half in domestic spending cuts spread over a 10 year period  --  will back-fire on Obama and Democrats if the Republicans allow the “sequester” cuts (which will also reduce the nearly $17 trillion federal debt by $1.2 trillion; no small feat) to become reality on March 1^st.

Since November’s election, which gave the Democrats the White House and the Senate and the Republicans the House of Representatives, there have been two major pieces of legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives; the first, a big spending and taxing bill, and the second, a big spending bailout bill.  Both times, the Republican-controlled House passed the bills with a very small number of Republicans voting for them. The Republican leaders could have, and should have, refused to bring these bills to the House floor for a vote. In the first of these two big spending bills, the Republican-controlled House also passed the biggest tax increase in some 20 years; Barack Obama’s whopping $620 BILLION tax increase legislation.

When the Tea Party and conservative movements gave control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in 2010 with a huge pick-up of 63 new seats,   --  after the GOP had lost majority control in 2006 because of their prolific spending  --  and control of the House again with a large majority last November, there was no way conservatives believed that the Republican Party would repay them with two gargantuan back-to-back spending bills. 

Republicans should let Barack Obama jump off the “fiscal cliff” if he wants, but they can also do something productive for the American taxpayers.  That is why the American people gave them huge majorities in the House of Representatives in both the 112th Congress in 2010 and in the 113th Congress in last month’s election.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives should pass a permanent extension of President George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, leave town and have a Merry Christmas.

Newt Gingrich was quoted in a “NewsMax.TV” article on Saturday that he is almost afraid that agreement will be reached to avoid the country from going over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” because “the agreement will be ‘a really bad deal.’”  Remembering past deals such as the one President Ronald Reagan said was one of his worst decisions  --  i.e. Reagan said he would deliver $1 dollar in tax increases for every $3 of federal spending cuts offered by then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill  --  Speaker Gingrich said, “I don’t see any evidence that the president is prepared to deliver liberal Democrats in the Senate for any kind of spending cuts that matter.” 

The 1994 election provides a beacon of hope for Republicans in Congress.  Voters in the historical mid-term election gave control of the United States House of Representatives to the Republicans for the first time in 40 years.  The last time the Republicans gained control of the House was when Dwight David Eisenhower won his overwhelming victory over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

Senate Republicans also regained control of the Senate from 1953 to 1955, just as the Republicans in the House did.  While House Republicans were in the political wilderness for the next 40 years, President Ronald Reagan’s two landslides in 1980 and 1984 gave Republicans control of the Senate for six years.

The reason the U.S. Congress was controlled by the Democrats for most of the 40 years prior to the 1994 election can best be personified by the long-time minority  --  emphasis on minority  --  leader, Congressman Bob Michel, a very kind and genial man, but a highly ineffective leader.  Congressman Michel was perfectly content to accept crumbs from the Democrat spending feast.  If the Democrats promised a cut of $1 dollar in federal spending for every $1 tax increase  --  a highly unlikely proposal since they normally wanted more tax increases --  you can bet the spending cuts would not materialize following the tax increases because of decades of weak Republican leadership.

So, what does the battleground for the coming 2012 presidential election look like?  Well, those national tracking polls you've been hearing about won't tell you.  All they do tell you is what a national sample of registered (or maybe "likely") voters said on any given day.   And of course the samples for those polls (and even the questions) get "gamed" by the media who sponsor them.

But the simple fact is that we don't elect a President "nationally".  In effect, we hold 50 different state-by-state elections, with each state being allotted a set number of "electoral votes" based on state population.  And you can pretty much bet the farm on "how" about thirty-five or forty of the states will vote in November...which leaves you with the "swing states".

The map below reflects the most likely swing states, based on polling over the past year.  They are: Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.  Of course that list could (and will) expand or contract over the coming months, but this gives you a pretty good idea of the lay of the land.