“Living By Biography”: Mitt Romney Blistered By Conservative Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
This Wall Street Journal editorial is getting a lot of attention this morning for its scathing criticism of the Romney campaign’s equivocations over whether Obamacare’s individual mandate is or isn’t a tax. Yesterday Romney declared that, yes, it is a tax after all — contradicting his campaign’s earlier contention that it wasn’t — and the editorial blasts Romney for squandering a key issue against Obama.
But let’s face it: The skirmishing over whether the mandate is or isn’t a tax probably won’t have much of an impact on the election’s outcome.
That’s why the real news in the Journal editorial — the stuff that should drive the discussion today — is its scalding attack on Romney’s lack of specificity on multiple issues:
The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it’s Mr. Obama’s fault. We’re on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that “Obama isn’t working.” Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President’s policies aren’t working and how Mr. Romney’s policies will do better.
The Journal notes the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s Bain years and offshore accounts, and adds:
All of these attacks were predictable, in particular because they go to the heart of Mr. Romney’s main campaign theme — that he can create jobs as President because he is a successful businessman and manager. But candidates who live by biography typically lose by it. See President John Kerry.
The biography that voters care about is their own, and they want to know how a candidate is going to improve their future. That means offering a larger economic narrative and vision than Mr. Romney has so far provided. It means pointing out the differences with specificity on higher taxes, government-run health care, punitive regulation, and the waste of politically-driven government spending.
The GOP-aligned Journal editoral board is implicitly agreeing that one of the leading critiques of Romney —one being made by the Obama campaign and Dems, but also by more and more media commentators — is entirely legitimate: That he’s refusing to detail his policies with any specificity to speak of on issue after issue.
This goes right to the heart of the central dynamic of this race: The Romney campaign’s gamble that he can edge his way to victory by making this camapign all about Obama, and that along the way, voters won’t notice that he isn’t meaningfully telling us what he would do if elected president. The Journal is calling this out as a non-starter. Does this represent broader GOP establishment opinion? It’s more important than all the short-term skirmishing over whether the mandate is a tax or not.
By: Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, July 5, 2012
“Winking With A Blind Eye”: Where Are The Pro-Life Reactions To The Romney-Stericycle Story?
Yesterday, David Corn reported in Mother Jones that Mitt Romney may have played an active role Bain Capital’s $75 million investment in Stericycle, a company that disposes of medical waste from abortion clinics. According to Corn, Bain had previously claimed that Romney left the firm in February 1999 and that Romney probably had nothing to do with the deal.
Since this could potentially lose Romney some enthusiasm among social conservatives, I initially thought I would write a post about reactions to the story in the pro-life blogosphere.
Except… I couldn’t find any. Guys, I looked, but as of Tuesday afternoon, here’s where it stands:
Lila Rose’s Twitter feed? No mention as of this writing.
National Right to Life? Top headline as of July 3, 3:57 central time was “Supreme Court Decision Means Americans Must Elect Mitt Romney and a Pro-Life Congress Committed to Repealing ObamaCare.”
Susan B. Anthony List? Its president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, wrote a column for National Review Online yesterday titled “Pro-Lifers Must Unite Behind Romney.” (The discussion in the comments thread did make its way around to the Stericycle story, with folks chiming in both to support and criticize Romney.)
Americans United for Life? Again, as of 4 p.m. central, their online media center made no mention of it.
LifeSiteNews, which previously reported on a Romney fundraiser at the home of a pharmaceutical executive whose company makes the morning after pill, and which published a piece in January calling Stericycle a “medical waste giant allied with the abortion industry” didn’t turn up anything when I did a search for “Romney” and “Stericycle,” and the story wasn’t in their top headlines.
Jill Stanek? Again, no mention in the top headlines and a site search turned up nothing.
World Magazine, which is currently taking a critical stance toward the National Association of Evangelicals over the latter’s acceptance of a grant from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy? Again, my site search turned up nothing.
It could be that nobody’s gotten around to writing about it yet, I guess. Or, it could be that the pro-life blogosphere isn’t thrilled to learn about Romney’s possible role in the Stericycle investment; but, particularly on the heels of the Supreme Court decision, cares most about defeating Obama. In any case, the question will be whether it has any effect on voter enthusiasm. If no likely Romney supporters hear about it, I rather imagine it won’t.
By: Sarah Morice-Brubaker, Religion Dispatches, July 3, 2012
“We Own You Mitt”: Conservatives Worrying About Romney
Are prominent conservatives panicking about Mitt Romney’s campaign? It sorta looks that way, today. The Wall Street Journal editorial board — the men who ensure that even educated, newspaper-reading rich conservatives are successfully misinformed on all the major issues of the day — has a big “Mitt Romney is blowing it” editorial today (published online late Wednesday) that seems designed to stir up as much trouble as possible for the candidate.
The first line is hilarious and patently untrue: “If Mitt Romney loses his run for the White House, a turning point will have been his decision Monday to absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class.”
In reality, Mitt Romney will definitely accuse Obama of raising taxes, even if he’s squishy on the “mandate is a tax” line. Also, it’s early July, it’s guaranteed to be an incredibly close race and, honestly, the only people who will notice whether Romney decides to declare the mandate a tax are people who have been paying close enough attention to the race to have already made up their minds.
But the point is actually just to hammer Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom for being sort of feckless and horrible at messaging, and to let the Romney campaign know that the Journal will be telling them which things to say, thank you very much. (The conservative press is much better at bullying its candidates into adopting particular strategies and policies than the liberal press, which has approximately zero power over candidates and elected officials.)
This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign’s insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity. Mr. Obama is being hurt by an economic recovery that is weakening for the third time in three years. But Mr. Romney hasn’t been able to take advantage, and if anything he is losing ground.
The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it’s Mr. Obama’s fault. We’re on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that “Obama isn’t working.” Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President’s policies aren’t working and how Mr. Romney’s policies will do better.
Then! The Journal compares Romney to John Kerry. So mean!
Following this explosive editorial, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, America’s wrongest and dumbest partisan pundit, weighed in with his me-too “Romney’s strategy is all wrong” column, which has the very troll-y headline “Dukakis, Kerry … Romney?” Kristol wants to hear policy specifics from Romney, which is an awful idea, frankly, because Republican policies are pretty much universally unpopular once you go into actual detail, and Romney is correct in believing that his best hope is to remain as vague as possible on as many issues as possible.
But the argument is about a broader fear that a winnable election is slipping through the Republican Party’s grasp, and if that is indeed happening, Romney and his campaign are going to be blamed for letting it happen. As Josh Marshall says, columnists and pundits actually usually don’t have much of an idea what’s going on in a campaign. Conservatives are frustrated that Romney’s not kicking ass in the polls, and if he isn’t, it’s because his stupid campaign (made up of longtime Romney associates, for the most part) is stupid and bad.
It’s possible, though, that the Romney campaign is doing the absolute best it can running against an incumbent president who remains broadly personally popular. And it’s probable that Romney, for all his flaws, was the best candidate to face Obama this year. Buyer’s remorse aside, does anyone honestly think Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels or Tim Pawlenty or Chris Christie would be performing better right now?
As I said, the words of the WSJ editorial page carry weight, so we’ll see if Romney (who has already called the mandate a tax) makes some sort of gesture toward “shaking up” his campaign (which would lead, naturally, to headlines about his campaign being in disarray — it’s lose-lose!), but these guys are actually just whining about how it’s harder to beat Obama than they have always thought it ought to be.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, July 5, 2012
“Insane Economic Policy”: GOP’s Rejection Of Medicaid Funds Is One More Ideologically Driven Bad Idea
My emotions after the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act last week went through various stages: confusion (thanks, CNN), shock and finally sheer joy. It was a complete surprise to have the highest court uphold the entire law, including the individual mandate. Liberals rightly celebrated the ruling as a historic step toward ensuring a better quality of life for all Americans.
But in the jubilation hangover, some more sober analysis has taken its place. One important aspect of the Court’s decision gives no reason to celebrate: the ruling that the federal government can’t withdraw all Medicaid funds from governors who refuse to expand Medicaid rolls in their states, essentially making it possible for them to opt out. The Medicaid expansion is meant to give coverage to about 17 million Americans by 2019, accounting for almost half of the 32 million people the bill promised to insure. Yet as Sarah Kliff reported, if states opt out of expanding Medicaid, it could leave some of the poorest Americans stuck in a no-man’s land in which they don’t qualify for Medicaid but also don’t qualify for subsidies to buy insurance. Beyond literally being a matter of life or death for many uninsured Americans, it’s also an economic issue: the White House calculated that expanding the number of Americans with insurance would increase economic well-being by about $100 billion a year, or about two-thirds of a percent of GDP.
It seems foolhardy for governors to reject what is basically free money to help more people in their own states gain health insurance. Josh Barro wrote just after the ruling that while the White House’s stick was taken away, its carrot—the federal government’s picking up 100 percent of the states’ Medicaid expansion tab for the early years, gradually declining to 90 percent after that—would be enough to incite states to participate. And they stand to see other economic benefits. States that already provide coverage and care to people living at 133 percent of the poverty line would no longer shoulder those costs, saving them millions. Even for those that don’t offer such coverage, the bill stands to save all states money by getting rid of the “hidden tax” they pay in higher insurance premiums that account for the cost of covering the uninsured, also potentially saving millions.
Yet Republican governors are already contemplating rejecting the money. The Hill reported this week that fifteen governors are either flat-out planning to reject the Medicaid expansion money or are leaning in that direction. Firm nos have come from Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and Wisconsin. Eight more are still undecided yet appear to be following suit: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Texas and Virginia. Yet Brian Beutler reports today that these very states have some of the country’s highest uninsured rates and would stand to see the biggest benefits. Florida ties with Nevada and New Mexico in second to last place in the country at 21 percent uninsured, and South Carolina and Louisiana come in with 19 and 17 percent rates, respectively.
An indignant refusal of federal money in these states may sound familiar. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas were among the handful of states to say they would reject federal stimulus money way back in early 2009. The argument was similar back then: as with the Medicaid expansion money, the states were expected to change some policies to protect more of their residents from economic harm. In the case of the stimulus money, they had to expand unemployment benefits to more people. That’s what made GOP governors too cranky to accept the funds. Eventually all fifty accepted federal funds, although some still turned away the money meant to increase those unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, the last holdout, South Carolina, had the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate at the time that it was contemplating rejecting the funds on ideological grounds.
But other federal money was later rejected outright. After President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union, he called for building a high-speed rail network and pledged $8 billion in stimulus money for rail projects in various states. Yet four Republican governors—New Jersey’s Christie, Wisconsin’s Walker, Ohio’s Kasich and Florida’s Scott—refused to take money for the projects. They would have created tens of thousands of jobs in each state—an estimated 16,000 in Ohio, 10,000 in Wisconsin and 10,000 in Florida.
Meanwhile, as research my colleague Mike Konczal and I conducted showed, ultraconservative Republican governors across the country have been enacting policies that hurt their economies, and therefore the entire economy, in other ways. In the midst of a massive jobs crisis, the eleven states that flipped red after the 2010 midterms and Texas accounted for 70 percent of public sector job losses last year, either laying off or pushing these workers out through attrition. The rest of the states lost only an average of .5 percent of their government workforces. Without these massive waves of job losses, our unemployment rate would likely be closer to 7 percent.
What ties all of these conservative state-level actions together? An adherence to ideology over what’s best for the economy—even their own state economies. The belief that government spending should be shrunk at all costs has steamrolled over policies that shouldn’t be about party affiliation. Taking federal money for much-needed updates to our infrastructure that would also create thousands of jobs is clearly the right choice. Throwing government workers out of their jobs at a time of sky-high unemployment is clearly the wrong choice. And now these conservative states are threatening to keep millions of Americans out of health insurance policies because they worry about higher state spending in the long run. This despite the fact that their residents and their budgets stand to see huge benefits now. The Republican Party’s abhorrence of government is driving bad economic decision-making—and that’s hurting all of us.
By: Bryce Covert, The Nation, July 5, 2012
“Voting Rights Are Precious”: A Crack In The GOP’s Support For Voter-ID Laws
There’s little question what the political calculus behind voter-ID laws is. Advocates argue that the laws, which require government photo identification to vote, are necessary to prevent voter fraud—despite there being virtually no evidence that such fraud is a problem. In practice, the laws will disproportionately have an impact on poor people and those of color, two Democratic-leaning groups that are less likely to have such IDs. Predictably, Republicans have been pushing for these laws, while Democrats generally oppose them.
That is, until earlier this week, when Michigan Governor Rick Snyder shot down his own party and vetoed a state voter-ID law. He also vetoed laws that would have made it harder to conduct voter-registration drives and to confirm U.S. citizenship for voters. All three—pushed by Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and sponsored by Republican lawmakers—would likely have dampened turnout, particularly among disadvantaged communities.
During hearings on the measure, protesters stormed the Capitol. “This is a naked assault on that sacred right to vote and to not have unnecessary obstacles placed in their path,” said one Democratic state representative.
The governor’s press release, titled “Snyder signs most of election reform legislation,” shows he wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to make his announcement and in both cases cited “confusion” as the key reason for knocking down the measures.
But in a letter to lawmakers, Snyder expanded his point. “Voting rights are precious,” he wrote, “and we need to work especially hard to make it possible for people to vote.”
As the latest results from Wisconsin’s recall election showed, high turnout does not necessarily help Democrats. Snyder, and others of a more moderate ilk, may recognize that there’s no reason Republican candidates shouldn’t be reaching out to new voting populations. Keeping voter turnout down is hardly a long-term strategy, and as the Prospect‘s Jamelle Bouie recently noted, there’s a lot of room for Republicans to grow in popularity among nonwhites.
Right now, Snyder stands alone. Last week, New Hampshire’s Republican-dominated state legislature overturned a veto from Democratic Governor John Lynch on similar legislation. Several state voter-ID laws are stuck in the courts. But the news from Michigan may help spur others who have wavered on the issue.
The fundamental right to vote should not be a partisan issue, and Snyder’s decision may have a welcome ripple effect on others in the GOP who see the troubling implications of these laws.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, July 5, 2012
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