Mitt Romney’s “Post-Truth Campaign”
Suppose that President Obama were to say the following: “Mitt Romney believes that corporations are people, and he believes that only corporations and the wealthy should have any rights. He wants to reduce middle-class Americans to serfs, forced to accept whatever wages corporations choose to pay, no matter how low.”
How would this statement be received? I believe, and hope, that it would be almost universally condemned, by liberals as well as conservatives. Mr. Romney did once say that corporations are people, but he didn’t mean it literally; he supports policies that would be good for corporations and the wealthy and bad for the middle class, but that’s a long way from saying that he wants to introduce feudalism.
But now consider what Mr. Romney actually said on Tuesday: “President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others.”
And in an interview the same day, Mr. Romney declared that the president “is going to put free enterprise on trial.”
This is every bit as bad as my imaginary Obama statement. Mr. Obama has never said anything suggesting that he holds such views, and, in fact, he goes out of his way to praise free enterprise and say that there’s nothing wrong with getting rich. His actual policy proposals do involve a rise in taxes on high-income Americans, but only back to their levels of the 1990s. And no matter how much the former Massachusetts governor may deny it, the Affordable Care Act established a national health system essentially identical to the one he himself established at a state level in 2006.
Over all, Mr. Obama’s positions on economic policy resemble those that moderate Republicans used to espouse. Yet Mr. Romney portrays the president as the second coming of Fidel Castro and seems confident that he will pay no price for making stuff up.
Welcome to post-truth politics.
Why does Mr. Romney think he can get away with this kind of thing? Well, he has already gotten away with a series of equally fraudulent attacks. In fact, he has based pretty much his whole campaign around a strategy of attacking Mr. Obama for doing things that the president hasn’t done and believing things he doesn’t believe.
For example, in October Mr. Romney pledged that as president, “I will reverse President Obama’s massive defense cuts.” That line presumably plays well with Republican audiences, but what is he talking about? The defense budget has continued to grow steadily since Mr. Obama took office.
Then there’s Mr. Romney’s frequent suggestion that the president has gone around the world “apologizing for America.” This is a popular theme on the right — but the so-called Obama apology tour is a complete fabrication, assembled by taking quotes out of context.
As Greg Sargent of The Washington Post has pointed out, there’s a common theme to these whoppers and a number of other things Mr. Romney has said: the strategy is clearly to portray the president as a suspect character, someone who doesn’t share American values. And since Mr. Obama has done and said nothing to justify this portrait, Mr. Romney just invents stuff to make his case.
But won’t there be some blowback? Won’t Mr. Romney pay a price for running a campaign based entirely on falsehoods? He obviously thinks not, and I’m afraid he may be right.
Oh, Mr. Romney will probably be called on some falsehoods. But, if past experience is any guide, most of the news media will feel as though their reporting must be “balanced,” which means that every time they point out that a Republican lied they have to match it with a comparable accusation against a Democrat — even if what the Democrat said was actually true or, at worst, a minor misstatement.
This isn’t an abstract speculation. Politifact, the project that is supposed to enforce truth in politics, has declared Democratic claims that Republicans voted to end Medicare its “Lie of the Year.” It did so even though Republicans did indeed vote to dismantle Medicare as we know it and replace it with a voucher scheme that would still be called “Medicare,” but would look nothing like the current program — and would no longer guarantee affordable care.
So here’s my forecast for next year: If Mr. Romney is in fact the Republican presidential nominee, he will make wildly false claims about Mr. Obama and, occasionally, get some flack for doing so. But news organizations will compensate by treating it as a comparable offense when, say, the president misstates the income share of the top 1 percent by a percentage point or two.
The end result will be no real penalty for running an utterly fraudulent campaign. As I said, welcome to post-truth politics.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, December 22, 2011
Willard Mitt Romney Rails Against “Entitlement Society” — That Takes Chutzpa
Earlier this week, Republican Presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney delivered a speech framing the 2012 presidential election as a choice between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.”
It really takes chutzpa for a guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth to rail against an “entitlement society.” Here is a guy who got his start in life the old-fashioned way — he inherited it.
Now I realize that you don’t get to choose your parents. He had no role in deciding that he would be born into the family of an auto executive and Michigan Governor — but at least he should have the decency not to attack “entitlements.”
This is not a guy who pulled himself up by his boot-straps. His name, his family connections and — not incidentally — his money gave him a real leg up when he decided to go into the investment banking business. And let’s not forget that when he did go into business for himself, he didn’t make money building things or inventing things — or designing new products. He made money buying companies, and often breaking them up, or firing employees.
Last Sunday’s New York Times reported that Romney continued to make money from his old firm Bain Capital through his time as Governor and his attempts to run for Senate and President. It noted that much of his income is likely taxed at only 15% — though we don’t know for sure since he refuses to release his tax returns.
He is the poster boy for the one percent — and he is talking about “entitlements”?
If you ask someone on the street which kid in high school Mitt Romney reminds him of, he is likely to tell you it’s the kid who drove to school in a Ferrari and got all the socially “in” girls. He was the smug guy who knew he was set for life.
As humorist and political commentator Jim Hightower used to say of the first George Bush — Romney is a guy who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. And he is lecturing America about the “entitlement society? ”
And let’s look at what he refers to as “entitlements.” Mainly he’s talking about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Let’s remember that Social Security and Medicare are not “entitlements” at all. They are earned benefits that people pay for through their payroll taxes throughout their working lives.
And Medicaid? It’s the program that guarantees that if you’re a child who is not lucky enough to be born into the household of an auto executive and Michigan Governor you still get health care. It’s the program that assures that if you weren’t lucky enough to have a trust fund — or if some investment banker bought your company and fired you — that you can still get treatment if you get hit by a bus. It’s the program that assures that when you’re 80 years old and get Alzheimer’s but your 401-K disappeared because a bunch of Wall Street sharpies made reckless investments and sunk the economy — you can get long-term care instead of being left to die on the street.
Then again that’s not something a guy like Mitt Romney would know about. In fact he admitted the other day that he didn’t really know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid until he was 55 years old. Guess a guy who has about $200 million in assets doesn’t have to worry about such things.
You see, a guy like Romney doesn’t have the foggiest that the government initiatives he attacks are precisely the things that actually do create “an opportunity society.”
It was the GI Bill that sent the generation of Americans that fought World War II to college. It is Pell Grants and government-guaranteed student loans that allow most middle class Americans to send their kids to college.
It was Medicare and Social Security that rescued American seniors from poverty and provided guaranteed health care and a guaranteed base income for retirement. Romney, of course, wouldn’t know how important an average $14,000 annual Social Security benefit is to an everyday senior — that’s an hour’s compensation for the high-flying Wall Street types he hung around with at Bain Capital.
No, Romney is much more interested in privatizing Social Security and Medicare so his Wall Street buddies can get their hands on the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds — even though that would eliminate the guaranteed benefits that are so critical to the health and welfare of America’s seniors.
Romney and the Republicans in Washington don’t seem to give a rat’s rear about the unemployment insurance or payroll tax holiday that will expire in ten days because the House Republicans have refused to pass a two-month extension while the terms of a year-long extension can be negotiated.
Forty dollars a paycheck — the cost of the increased payroll tax bite that everyday families will experience the first of the year — may not mean much to a multi-millionaire like Mitt Romney. But to ordinary families, $40 is the electric bill or several bags of groceries — and after just a few pay periods, it begins to add up pretty fast.
Turns out that when Republicans in Washington talk about taxes, they’re not so worried about a $40 increase ordinary people will have to pay in payroll taxes every time they get a paycheck. They’re worried about million dollar tax breaks for the gang on Wall Street.
Romney doesn’t even seem to have a clue that it is funding for public education and the public infrastructure that allows everyday Americans to have an opportunity to succeed — or that government has a responsibility to jumpstart the economy so that everyday, middle class people can get jobs.
In fact, he seems to agree with the Republican leaders of the House who say that unemployment benefits discourage people from looking for work. Guess Mitt has never been one of the five people competing for every available job. Oh, I forgot, Mitt says he is “unemployed” too. Talk about out of touch.
No, Romney’s view of an “opportunity society” is one where the government does nothing to help prevent foreclosures “so the market can bottom out.” It is one where the government stands by while the American auto industry collapses and costs a million Americans their good middle class jobs.
Then again, maybe Mitt’s idea of an “opportunity society” is having the “opportunity” to win the lottery — or maybe that would be a $10,000 bet. Doesn’t everyone make those?
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, December 22, 2011
Mitt Romney Relied On Corporate Welfare: How Bain Capital Leveraged Government Assistance To Boost Profits
During the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has lashed out at the Obama administration’s taxpayer subsidized grants to clean energy start-up companies. “The U.S. government shouldn’t be playing venture capitalist,” wrote Romney in October. “The very process invites cronyism and outright corruption.” But public records show that Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, repeatedly persuaded the government to play venture capitalist when it came to its own portfolio of companies.
News outlets have recently focused attention on Romney’s history as a businessman at Bain, which he founded in 1984. What hasn’t been reported, or fully explained by the candidate, is how Romney often got ahead in the private sector by using government help.
The likely GOP nominee made much of his estimated $250 million fortune buying companies, reorganizing them, and selling them for a profit. Though Romney, whose only government experience is his one term as Massachusetts governor, is quick to claim that he turned around investments using sound management and data-driven strategies, he does not mention one aspect of his success. Bain Capital owned companies that padded their profits using millions in public subsidies. In other cases, firms owned by Bain employed K Street lobbying firms to pursue lucrative government programs.
Consider two of Romney’s first major investments: office supply company Staples Inc. and photo album manufacturer Holson Co. Both persuaded state officials to subsidize their growth.
Shortly after Bain took control of Holson in 1987, executives pushed for the company to expand in the South. Officials from the firm had negotiated with Gov. Carroll Campbell, a Republican, to extend $200,000 in utility support for a new Holson plant in the city of Gaffney. The local city council also approved a $5 million bond for construction, after meeting with representatives from Holson. Five years after South Carolina’s taxpayers had helped finance the factory, Bain chose to sell Holson’s Gaffney facility for $2.8 million. Romney’s firm reaped the profits on the taxpayers’ expenditure.
The history of Staples, a company that Bain grew from a single store, is a hallmark of the Romney record. Staples’ rapid growth, however, drew on substantial state subsidies.
In 1996, Tom Stemberg, a close Romney business partner leading Staples, met with Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, a Democrat, to negotiate a package of taxpayer sweeteners to build a new distribution center in Hagerstown. The Glendening administration, using a “Sunny Day” fund of discretionary development money, awarded Staples $2.3 million in grants and low interest loans. The following year, as Glendening prepared for his reelection campaign, top Staples executives maxed out in donations. Stemberg and his colleagues gave a total of $16,000.
A similar story played out in Connecticut, where Staples landed a deal in which taxpayers subsidized over $6 million in low-interest loans for the company to construct a distribution center in Killingly in 1998.
Tapping Washington
The federal government also played a pivotal role in Romney’s ascendant path through corporate America.
GS Industries, a steel company purchased by Bain in the early ’90s, faced fiscal problems as Bain withdrew large dividends and management fees. Under Bain’s leadership, the steelmaker hired the K Street lobbying firm of Wiley Rein to seek government support. In 1998-99 the firm paid $140,000 for a lobbying team that included former Democratic Rep. Jim Slattery. GS Industries eventually won a federal loan guarantee, but before the loan could be delivered, the company fell to bankruptcy in 2001. Bain’s executives still made $50 million from their involvement with the firm.
In 1999, Romney departed Bain to take over as the chief executive officer of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. The experience, turning an organization in disarray and deeply in the red into a popular event that actually earned over $100 million in profits, is portrayed as yet another example of the candidate’s private sector management skills. Yet the turnaround was achieved in part through the use of professional influence peddling. Under Romney’s management, the Olympic organizing committee spent over $3.3 million on Beltway lobbyists to secure federal funding for the 2004 Winter games.
Olympics lobbyists from firms like Patton Boggs and King & Spalding helped secure federal grants for communications equipment, educational money and public transportation. Millions of dollars were procured from federal officials, who wanted to allay safety concerns in the aftermath of 9/11.
As the New York Times reported earlier this week, Romney’s has continued to earn a windfall from Bain. When he left the firm, he signed a severance package that allowed him to share in the company’s profits in perpetuity. The arrangement might come back to haunt the candidate, given Bain’s increased reliance on lobbyists over the last five years.
Starting in 2007, Bain Capital began retaining various lobbying firms to pressure lawmakers to keep open a loophole that allows much of the earnings by private equity managers to be taxed as capital gains rather than the top income bracket of 35 percent. Given Romney’s profit-sharing retirement deal, the campaign to extend the loophole, which still hasn’t been closed, likely boosted the candidate’s fortune. (Romney has refused to release his tax return, leaving questions about his income.)
As Romney pillories Obama for using the government to fix problems in society (health reform, the auto bailout, etc.), he invites a closer examination of his own career. A balanced view of the Romney record shows he has never had any qualms about government help when it came to his own bottom line. Whether through hiring insider lobbyists or funneling taxpayer subsidies to his companies, government assistance has been part and parcel to the rise of Romney.
By: Lee Fang, Salon, December 21, 2011
The “Non-Romneys” And The GOP’s Iowa Chaos
Is Rick Santorum the next non-Romney to emerge from the pack? Could he conceivably win Iowa?
That these are plausible questions tells you all you need to know about the unsettled nature of the Republican presidential contest — particularly here, the state whose caucuses on Jan. 3 have become a bookie’s nightmare. At the moment, anyone among the six major candidates has a reasonable chance of coming in first or second, and the contest is becoming less settled as the brief Christmas interlude in campaigning approaches.
For example: If libertarian Ron Paul has a chance of triumphing anywhere, it’s in Iowa, where all his competitors acknowledge the energy of his organization. Establishment pick Mitt Romney’s opposition is so badly split that he could conceivably come in first and begin locking up the nomination — or he could emerge deeply scarred by finishing in the bottom tier. The line between success and failure is that thin.
Newt Gingrich seems to be surrendering the lead he briefly held, the target of millions of dollars in negative advertising. He still hopes to use jujitsu to turn all those negative ads in his favor, and at a factory here on Tuesday, he denounced Romney as “purely dishonest” for refusing to push his super PAC — theoretically independent of the campaign but closely connected to Romney’s supporters — to stop running anti-Gingrich ads.
Gingrich mocked the attack ads his opponents are running, winning laughter when he declared: “I think these guys hire consultants who get drunk, sit around and write stupid ads.”
Yet the ads, however stupid, are hurting him. He spoke here at the Al-jon company, which manufactures recycling and compacting equipment, and stood in front of a giant, bright orange contraption. An Al-jon official explained that the machine could take a large truck “and in two minutes, it cubes that truck into a bundle the size of a refrigerator.” Figuratively speaking, that’s what Gingrich’s opponents threaten to do to his candidacy.
This explains Santorum’s opportunity. If Gingrich’s chances depend on uniting the overlapping Tea Party and evangelical constituencies against Romney, his rivals for conservative hearts — Santorum, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann — refuse to give way.
Santorum has spent so much time here that, as the former Pennsylvania senator told a gathering at the Royal Amsterdam Hotel in Pella, he can challenge lifelong residents to Iowa trivia contests. Bachmann threatens to shatter Iowa records for the most campaign events per day. Perry, desperate to salvage his campaign after many verbal missteps, is spending lavishly on television and radio commercials that plant him proudly on the right wing of the right wing.
Santorum has going for him what’s been going against him until now: Having never emerged as a top candidate, he has avoided attacks from his opponents and is the only conservative left unscathed. He has kept his focus on the very religious voters who have played a central role in Iowa Republican caucuses since the Rev. Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential campaign.
Speaking before a banner touting his “Faith, Family and Freedom” tour, Santorum combined detailed proposals — including tax policies aimed at reviving American manufacturing — with harsh attacks on President Obama. But he tries to close the deal with frankly theological reflections. “I approach every problem in my life through faith and reason,” he said. “If your reason is right and your faith is true, you’ll end up in the same place.”
The bad news and the good news for Santorum came together on Tuesday when Family Leader, a conservative Christian group, announced its formal neutrality in the contest (the bad news reflecting the fragmentation of the religious right), even as the organization’s CEO, Robert Vander Plaats, and another prominent Iowa Christian conservative, Chuck Hurley, gave Santorum strong personal endorsements. The net effect was to add to the sense that Santorum is on the move, while leaving open the question of whether he is moving fast enough.
Thus the tale of Iowa: a grass-roots Republican Party dominated by a right wing that cannot come together; Paul trying to build on a solid core; Gingrich desperate for unity on the right but under a relentless pummeling; Santorum hoping to be the last person standing; and Romney seeking only to survive Iowa in a strong enough position to profit later from dissension among his foes. For Republicans, it is a campaign in which faith may not be enough, even in the Iowa caucuses, and reason leads more to confusion, perhaps even chaos, than to clarity.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 21, 2011
“Dear Leader” Boehner And House Republicans Cave In Payroll Taxcut Fight
This morning, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other leading officials from his caucus told reporters that House Republicans would stick to their guns when it comes to extending the payroll tax break. If Democrats wanted to avoid a tax increase on the middle class, they would have to cave and make Boehner and his cohorts happy.
Not quite six hours later, Boehner and his cohorts threw in the towel.
House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the 2 percent payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.
The House made the move after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to appoint conferees to a committee to resolve differences between the Senate’s two-month payroll-tax cut and the House’s one-year alternative.
Reid, you’ll remember, made this offer on Monday, and soon after Boehner said this morning that the deal wasn’t good enough, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) endorsed Reid’s solution. President Obama backed the same approach shortly thereafter.
The House will reportedly make some technical changes to the Senate bill, and the Senate will approve that final bill by unanimous consent.
With nine days to go, it appears all but certain that the payroll tax break — as well as a clean extension of unemployment benefits — will be extended for two months. Between now and then, a conference committee will be tasked with working on a deal for a full-year extension.
What changed Boehner’s mind? Or more accurately, what changed Boehner’s mind again? The Speaker, as recently as Saturday, wanted to pass the Senate compromise and send his caucus home for the holidays. They rebelled and the leader quickly became the follower.
By some accounts, this happened again today. House Republicans —- Wisconsin’s Sean Duffy, Arkansas’ Rick Crawford, Pennsylvania’s Charlie Dent, among others — started breaking ranks after getting an earful in their local districts. GOP lawmakers who wanted to fight the Senate Braveheart-style came to the conclusion, “Maybe that Senate bill isn’t so bad after all.” When his members reversed course, the Speaker again took his cues from them, rather than the other way around.
If Boehner were a stronger, more effective House Speaker, this fiasco could have been easily avoided. He could have told his caucus this was a fight they were likely to lose, so passing the Senate bill quickly was the smart course of action. But he couldn’t — Boehner takes orders; he doesn’t give them.
It’s what helps make this story a disaster, not only for Republicans in general, but also for John Boehner personally. As he surrenders this afternoon, Boehner becomes The Speaker Who Has No Clothes.
He stuck out his neck, vowing not to cave, knowing he’d likely have to cave anyway. Boehner than waited until the pressure became unbearable — after he’d lost face and friends — and walked away with his tail between his legs.
Neither party has had a Speaker this feeble in modern times. His instincts told him to take the deal over the weekend, but Boehner allowed himself to be pushed around by his unhinged caucus, then get pushed around by Democrats, then get pushed around by his allies, then get pushed around by Senate Republicans.
How big a disaster was this for Boehner? Keep an eye on whether Eric Cantor’s travel schedule changes over the holidays.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 22, 2011
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