Word: referendum
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...Lisbon treaty, the fruit of seven years of interminable negotiations, cannot enter into force unless ratified by all 27 member states. Eighteen have ratified it in their parliaments and a further eight are due to do so later this year. Only Ireland chose to ratify by referendum...
...offered no comfort to E.U. officials. The Union's consensus-based decision-making system requires that all 27-member states approve the treaty, and a veto by one is enough to torpedo it. Ireland was the only member state to submit the long and confusing document to a popular referendum, and the resulting "no" vote, by a decisive margin of 54% to 46%, has created a crsisis for the E.U. as a whole...
...going to be massively difficult," Brady said. "Ireland is the only one of the E.U.'s 27 countries to have a referendum on the treaty, as it is legally obliged to do. But the high turnout, and high 'no' vote, suggest we could not expect another referendum any time soon. At the same time, the overwhelming message from those who voted no was that they did not understand the treaty, and that they thought others would vote...
...question, then, is whether Obama can turn the election into such a referendum. The economy appears to be doing what it can to help, with the minirevival of April and May giving way to less encouraging data. But Obama's campaign has never really been about people's pocketbooks. That was more Hillary Clinton's thing. Now, with Clinton finally out of the picture, the presumptive Democratic candidate is trying to make up for lost time with a two-week campaign swing through battleground states like North Carolina, Missouri and Ohio, talking about the economy at every stop. That...
...digs by trying to link Obama to Bush (because both are supposedly big spenders) and to Jimmy Carter (because both are supposedly big taxers). It's hard to see either parallel sticking, though--the first is too ridiculous, and the second is too dated. If this election becomes a referendum on the economy and Bush's handling of it, Obama wins and McCain loses. It's as simple as that...