A major topic throughout the convention coming off the heels of a big election. There was a lot of talk in many of the meetings about what the most recent election means for homeowners, tax payers, and political action groups ahead.
1. As mentioned in the prior post on gridlock, both Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala commented on gridlock being a good thing because it forces compromise rather than extreme laws to be passed. This should be good for the common Americans, we won't see far-reaching laws or massive slashing of programs, but hopefully something in the middle.
2. The major concern for all people talking on politics ahead was the budget deficit, however there were differing opinions on how to handle it. Some ideas were; tax holidays to bring businesses back into the USA, extending the Bush tax cuts, revising and modifying the Bush tax cuts, raising taxes in general, firing hundreds of thousands of government contractors, scaling back or removing the newly passed health-care laws, and just riding things out and waiting for the slow recovery as expected. No two people shared the same opinions, however many did comment that both parties in DC need to work together to get spending under control and work to more rapidly reduce our trade deficit.
3. Being that now eyes are turning to 2012 there was a lot of talk about who will run for president. On the Republican side two names were commonly floated as currently somewhat unknowns that very well could get the GOP nomination. Those two were Chris Christie the current governor of New Jersey and Mitch Daniels the governor of Indiana. It was commented that this bucks the usual trend for GOP presidential nominees as usually the top choices are people that have run in prior campaigns and lost before. Tucker Carlson a conservative pundit was very critical of the two politicians in the spotlight, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. He said that Romney's undoing in the "Republican base" will be that when he was governor in Massachusetts he instituted a state-wide health care system which much of the national health care laws mirror. Sarah Palin was viewed as "too polarizing" by many speakers and actually had a lot of conservative speakers nervous of losing middle-America in an election with her as the GOP nominee. On the Democrat side it was pointed out that if another high-profile Democrat (Hillary was used as an example) runs against Obama it could shatter the moderate/centrist support for the Democrats this upcoming election cycle. Many were doubtful someone like Hillary would run against Obama again in this cycle and there really wasn't anyone that said Obama wouldn't be the nominee.
4. There was a lot of hopeful talk that this would be a 1994 election cycle all over again, where after two years of full Democrat control the GOP took back the house (and Senate in 1994) and the next 6 years featured compromise and collaborative work between Democrat President Clinton and a GOP congress led by Newt Gingrich. Up until the 2nd to last day I kept hearing that this could be the case, however when hearing the editor for Forbes speaking he pointed out that many of the Democrats who lost this most recent election cycle were moderates, so the party base has actually shifted to becoming more liberal - he was rather doubtful that this could be a 1994 repeat due to extreme opinions between the two parties.
5. In some housing-based politics, the National Association of REALTORS is preparing to go to battle on two major issues. The first and foremost would be the possible restructuring or removal of the tax laws allowing homeowners to deduct their interest paid on their mortgages. The second would be a similar measure except with 1031 tax-deferred exchanges where people can shelter money from investment properties by rolling capital gains into other investment properties without having to pay taxes on it. Both moves are anticipated as something that will be heavily looked at to close the trade deficit gap and help get the government a little bit back on track with its spending.
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