Don't let it rain on our parade!

Although Isaac threatened some of the events of this year’s Republican National Convention, the rain could not dampen the mood of a re-energized Republican Party.

The party’s stars are different than they were four years ago. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Senate candidate Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey are the new rising stars.

The leadership of these stars and the current state of the economy under the Obama administration has me convinced that the Republicans have a strong chance of taking back the U.S. Senate, and possibly the White House.

When President Obama took office, he promised to cut the deficit in half during his first term. His projected budget plan estimated that there would be a deficit of $557 billion in 2012 and $512 billion in 2013.

Well, things aren’t exactly going as planned. After four years of Obama’s leadership, the deficit will now exceed $1.4 trillion, a record, and more than triple the record set last year. Economically, it is fair to say that the president’s first term was a complete failure.

It only gets worse if you examine the deficit as a share of the economy. In Obama’s first proposed budget, he promised Americans that the deficit would account for only 3.4 percent of the gross domestic product, but right now it is at 7.3 percent. He then promised that by 2013 the deficit would be just 2.9 percent of the GDP, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will be at 6 percent, causing the CBO to issue a warning of another recession next year.

Let’s not forget the administration’s spending spree. Obama’s outlays have exceeded 22.8 percent of the GDP each year since he has been in office.

He claims that these alarming numbers are the result of President Bush, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and even social programs such as Medicare. The truth is that Obama needs to take a long look in the mirror.