“The White-Knight Syndrome”: Why Republicans Need To Get Over The Idea Of Jeb Bush In 2012
The former Florida governor has made perfectly clear that he has no plans to belatedly jump into the presidential race, despite the clamor from those who are still underwhelmed by Mitt Romney’s candidacy. But let’s set aside his reluctance and imagine what would happen if he did.
First, the elephant in the room: A third member of the Bush family serving in the White House within 20 years? Really? Once the focus moved from virtual Jeb to flesh-and-blood Jeb, the media would go wild speculating whether the country has had enough of the Bush clan.
Jeb’s last name is both a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse. It’s been just over three years since George W. Bush walked out of the White House at a low ebb of popularity. Fairly or unfairly, his eight-year term is associated with the Iraq quagmire, Katrina, big spending, big deficits, an education law no one seems to like, and a Wall Street collapse that led to the much-reviled TARP bailout. The other Republican candidates almost never mention his name, as if he’d been airbrushed from party history.
Jeb Bush has considerable gifts—he was, in fact, widely considered the better politician in the family—and racked up his share of accomplishments in Florida. Which, of course, is a crucial swing state. If his name was Jeb Jones, he would indeed be a formidable contender—and probably would have run in 2012 rather than staying on the sidelines.
But beyond being one of Poppy’s boys, the actual Jeb Bush would have another problem as a candidate. The party has marched inexorably to the right in a way that leaves him decidedly out of step. Don’t take my word for it; here’s what Bush told a gathering in Dallas, as reported by Fox News:
“I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective.”
When a Republican says he “used to be a conservative,” he means he doesn’t much like the party’s rightward lurch. Are angry primary voters who have given Rick Santorum a series of victories (and a near-miss in Mitt Romney’s home state of Michigan) going to flock to a candidate who talks like that?
Then there is Bush’s somewhat moderate approach to immigration. Jeb is fluent in Spanish and married to a Mexican-born woman; that would seem an ideal profile for a party that badly needs to attract Hispanics. But Jeb opposed Arizona’s harsh law cracking down on those here illegally and similar efforts in other states.
As he said in January, “Hispanic voters hear these debates and see the ramifications of the Alabama law and other things like that and get turned off. It’s not a good thing—I know this will sound a little crazy—but I happen to believe that if swing voters decide elections and swing voters in swing states are the most important voters in the presidential race, and if you send a signal that turns them off, that’s a bad thing.”
Is a 2012 Republican candidate even allowed to say that anymore? Remember how Newt Gingrich caused an uproar by saying he wouldn’t deport illegal immigrants who had been part of their community for 25 years?
As governor, Jeb opposed oil drilling off Florida’s pristine coastlines, and even though he’s modified that stance, the record puts him at odds with the “drill, baby, drill” party.
And what about Jeb’s role in delivering Florida for his bro during that fiercely contested recount? The Democrats, and the press, will waste no time resurrecting that contentious subject.
Still, the white-knight syndrome is deeply embedded in the Republican psyche. Andy Card, who was chief of staff in his brother’s White House, calls Jeb the “perfect” candidate. There’s even a Facebook page, “Jeb Bush 2012—Keep Hope Alive.” (Was stealing a Jesse Jackson slogan the best they could do?).
But the thing about white knights is that they lose their armor the moment they charge into battle. The same would happen with Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels, two other GOP “grownups” often mentioned as potential saviors, despite the inconvenient fact that they both weighed running and took a pass.
And don’t forget the practical obstacles. Filing deadlines have passed for all but a handful of large states, such as California and New Jersey. And for all the empty talk about a brokered convention, a sizable number of delegates elected on behalf of Romney and Santorum would have to jump ship.
Jeb could have shut down the chatter by endorsing Romney in the Florida primary, but he kept his powder dry. That hardly amounts to a secret plan to run himself.
Bush probably calculated that memories of his brother’s administration will have faded enough to make 2016 a better year for him. Eight years was, after all, the length of time it took for Bill Clinton to make voters a tad nostalgic for George H.W. Bush, opening the door for his son to recapture the White House for the family. Jeb will be 62 when the next New Hampshire primary rolls around. He’s got time.
Every time the 2012 question comes up, Bush says he has no intention of running. It’s time for the fantasists to take him at his word.
By: Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast, March 2, 2012
“The Real Romney”: The Danger Of Mitt Being Mitt
Political consultants tell candidates to be authentic — to “be yourself.” In Mitt Romney’s case, that might not be such good advice.
Once again, for what seems like the umpteenth time, Romney is being crowned as the presumptive Republican nominee. His victories in Michigan and Arizona took much of the wind out of Rick Santorum’s sails; Newt Gingrich is lost at sea; and Ron Paul is, well, Ron Paul. As long as Romney keeps winning, talk of some kind of a deus ex machina plot twist at the convention — someone just like Jeb Bush surfaces, but with a different last name — remains pure fantasy.
Given the Romney campaign’s huge advantages in money and organization, and given the has-been nature of his opposition, the only reason he hasn’t wrapped this thing up is the “authenticity” issue: Not just “is he a real conservative” but “is he even a real person,” in the sense of having some idea of how most Americans live.
The campaign has sought to answer that question with stunts such as sending Romney to the Daytona 500. The optics were good until a reporter asked the candidate if he follows NASCAR. Romney’s response will live forever.
“Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans,” he said, “but I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”
Well, who doesn’t? In Romney’s world, I mean.
There was a similarly clueless moment in Michigan. Romney was trying to atone for his vocal opposition to President Obama’s bailout of the auto industry. He said that he liked seeing so many Detroit-made cars on the streets — to be expected in Detroit — and noted that he drives a Ford Mustang and a Chevrolet pickup. As icing on the cake, he added that his wife Ann “drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.”
Again, who doesn’t?
The explanation of why Ann Romney can’t get by with one did not advance the candidate’s quest for regular-guy authenticity: The cars are garaged at different residences.
And who can forget the way that Romney, whose wealth is estimated at $250 million, described one of his sources of income. “I get speakers’ fees from time to time, but not very much,” he said.
His tax returns showed earnings from speaking engagements of more than $370,000. Indeed, that’s “not very much” compared to Romney’s income from his investments. To most Americans, it’s a fortune.
I could go on and on with examples of Romney’s Marie Antoinette rhetoric, but you get the point. It’s not just what he says that tends to distance him from voters, but the whole way he carries himself. He’s just not believable as a NASCAR fan, ardent or otherwise.
Advisers tried putting him in jeans. At the end of a long day, they still have a crease.
Romney has been running for president for the better part of a decade yet still hasn’t made a personal connection with the Republican base, let alone the wider electorate. The conventional advice, at this point, would be: Quit pretending. Don’t try to convince voters that you’re a red-meat social conservative when your record on social issues screams “moderate.” And please, don’t pretend to be Average Joe if your proof of identity is that you keep American-made luxury cars at two of your mansions.
Romney took this kind of I-am-who-I-am stand this week when he said that, while “it’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments,” he was “not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support.” He even joked later about his immaculate coif, saying that “it would be a big fire, I assure you.”
That was charmingly authentic. The problem is that the effect of Romney’s comment is to dismiss the Republican Party’s activist base as an unsophisticated rabble. Which is perhaps not the best attitude for a Republican candidate to display.
Romney’s “gaffes” look unmistakably like glimpses of the real Romney — not a bad person but a man with no ability to see beyond the small, cosseted world of private equity and great wealth that he inhabits. He has to be reminded that most voters live in a world where people drive their Cadillacs one at a time.
From the Romney campaign’s point of view, it may be that while fake authenticity is bad, real authenticity is much worse. If I were an adviser, I’d send out a memo to all hands: Whatever you do, don’t let Mitt be Mitt.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 1, 2012
Four Fiscal Phonies: GOP “Irresponsible Deficit Hysteria” Presidential Candidates
Mitt Romney is very concerned about budget deficits. Or at least that’s what he says; he likes to warn that President Obama’s deficits are leading us toward a “Greece-style collapse.”
So why is Mr. Romney offering a budget proposal that would lead to much larger debt and deficits than the corresponding proposal from the Obama administration?
Of course, Mr. Romney isn’t alone in his hypocrisy. In fact, all four significant Republican presidential candidates still standing are fiscal phonies. They issue apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of government debt and, in the name of deficit reduction, demand savage cuts in programs that protect the middle class and the poor. But then they propose squandering all the money thereby saved — and much, much more — on tax cuts for the rich.
And nobody should be surprised. It has been obvious all along, to anyone paying attention, that the politicians shouting loudest about deficits are actually using deficit hysteria as a cover story for their real agenda, which is top-down class warfare. To put it in Romneyesque terms, it’s all about finding an excuse to slash programs that help people who like to watch Nascar events, even while lavishing tax cuts on people who like to own Nascar teams.
O.K., let’s talk about the numbers.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently published an overview of the budget proposals of the four “major” Republican candidates and, in a separate report, examined the latest Obama budget. I am not, by the way, a big fan of the committee’s general role in our policy discourse; I think it has been pushing premature deficit reduction and diverting attention from the more immediately urgent task of reducing unemployment. But the group is honest and technically competent, so its evaluation provides a very useful reference point.
And here’s what it tells us: According to an “intermediate debt scenario,” the budget proposals of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney would all lead to much higher debt a decade from now than the proposals in the 2013 Obama budget. Ron Paul would do better, roughly matching Mr. Obama. But if you look at the details, it turns out that Mr. Paul is assuming trillions of dollars in unspecified and implausible spending cuts. So, in the end, he’s really a spendthrift, too.
Is there any way to make the G.O.P. proposals seem fiscally responsible? Well, no — not unless you believe in magic. Sure enough, voodoo economics is making a big comeback, with Mr. Romney, in particular, asserting that his tax cuts wouldn’t actually explode the deficit because they would promote faster economic growth and this would raise revenue.
And you might find this plausible if you spent the past two decades sleeping in a cave somewhere. If you didn’t, you probably remember that the same people now telling us what great things tax cuts would do for growth assured us that Bill Clinton’s tax increase in 1993 would lead to economic disaster, while George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 would create vast prosperity. Somehow, neither of those predictions worked out.
So the Republicans screaming about the evils of deficits would not, in fact, reduce the deficit — and, in fact, would do the opposite. What, then, would their policies accomplish? The answer is that they would achieve a major redistribution of income away from working-class Americans toward the very, very rich.
Another nonpartisan group, the Tax Policy Center, has analyzed Mr. Romney’s tax proposal. It found that, compared with current policy, the proposal would actually raise taxes on the poorest 20 percent of Americans, while imposing drastic cuts in programs like Medicaid that provide a safety net for the less fortunate. (Although right-wingers like to portray Medicaid as a giveaway to the lazy, the bulk of its money goes to children, disabled, and the elderly.)
But the richest 1 percent would receive large tax cuts — and the richest 0.1 percent would do even better, with the average member of this elite group paying $1.1 million a year less in taxes than he or she would if the high-end Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire.
There’s one more thing you should know about the Republican proposals: Not only are they fiscally irresponsible and tilted heavily against working Americans, they’re also terrible policy for a nation suffering from a depressed economy in the short run even as it faces long-run budget problems.
Put it this way: Are you worried about a “Greek-style collapse”? Well, these plans would slash spending in the near term, emulating Europe’s catastrophic austerity, even while locking in budget-busting tax cuts for the future.
The question now is whether someone offering this toxic combination of irresponsibility, class warfare, and hypocrisy can actually be elected president.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 1, 2012
Mitt Romney’s “Sense Of Entitlement”: He Believes He “Deserves” To Be President
If he weren’t so smug, it would almost be possible to feel sorry for Mitt Romney. Beyond the flip-flopping, has any worse actor ever attempted the role of presidential candidate? It’s beyond Romney’s powers to persuade most people of his sincerity about things he does believe, much less the many tenets of contemporary GOP faith he probably doesn’t share — assuming for the sake of argument that anybody, including himself, knows which is which.
There’s little doubt, however, that Romney believes he deserves to be president, in rather the way the fictional Lord Grantham deserves to preside over Downton Abbey. It’s his inability to conceal that sense of entitlement that makes him such an awkward politician.
The candidate’s cringe-inducing attempts to present himself as a Regular Joe almost invariably end in boasting. Campaigning in his native Michigan, he assured voters that his wife drives not just one $50,000 Cadillac, but two — one at their Boston home, the other at their seafront mansion near La Jolla, Calif., as aides subsequently clarified. No word how Mrs. Romney gets around at their New Hampshire lakeside compound or their Park City, Utah, ski palace.
Visiting the Daytona 500, Romney admitted he’s not a keen NASCAR fan, but does have friends who own racing teams. Defending himself on CNN from the perception that his wealth leaves him “out of touch,” he allowed as how, “If people think that there is something wrong with being successful in America, then they better vote for the other guy, because I’ve been extraordinarily successful and I want to use that success and that know-how to help the American people.”
On the “Today” show, Romney explained that people concerned with income inequality are simply jealous. “You know, I think it’s about envy,” he said. “I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent—and those people who have been most successful will be in the 1 percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country, which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”
Got that, peasants? God’s behind the 13.9 percent tax rate Romney paid on $43 million he earned in 2010 while technically unemployed. Anybody who thinks differently is merely eaten up with resentment. In my experience, the more money people inherit, the more they’re tempted to lecture others about talent and hard work. And to cry the blues about the indignity of paying taxes.
Romney’s air of personal superiority appears to be the one topic about which the poor dork is absolutely sincere. That’s what makes him such a terrible liar. He’s almost frantic with it, like a golden retriever with his ball. Even with the mute button on the TV pressed, you can almost hear him panting.
Look — modest, humble people don’t run for president. President Obama often appears to have trouble restraining his bemusement at the antics of less intelligent people. Nevertheless, Romney’s unrestrained egotism is the reason I think Paul Krugman (among others) has made far too much of an offhand remark the candidate made seemingly renouncing the central tenet of GOP economic dogma.
“If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting [government] spending,” Romney told a group of Michigan voters, “as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.”
Well, no kidding.
To Krugman, Romney’s slip of the tongue revealed him as a “closet Keynesian” who “believes that cutting government spending hurts growth, other things equal.” The columnist added that, after all, “Mr. Romney is not a stupid man. And while his grasp of world affairs does sometimes seem shaky, he has to be aware of the havoc austerity policies are wreaking in Greece, Ireland and elsewhere.”
Oh no he doesn’t.
Or, to be more precise, Romney can be perfectly aware and blithely unconcerned. Krugman left off the next sentence where Romney stipulated that cutting spending alone wasn’t enough. “You have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”
Translation: even lower taxes for multimillionaires.
But I’d never presume to argue economics with professor Krugman. My point is that Romney’s tycoon capitalism has only partly to do with jobs, money and the real economy. It’s also about cultural revanchism, putting the right people back firmly in charge and the lower orders back in their place.
Tycoon capitalists like Romney see a prolonged slump as an opportunity to render the workforce more docile and grateful. Remember, this is the same guy who opposed government loans to save Chrysler and General Motors. Better to crush the Auto Workers Union. Who said the best way to resolve the national foreclosure crisis would be to speed it up, so that “investors” could buy people’s houses cheaply and rent them out.
In the end, it’s all about No. 1.
By: Gene Lyons, Salon, February 29, 2012
“More Than Gaffes”: Mitt Romney’s Two Cadillacs Fallacy
Maybe Rick Santorum is helping Mitt Romney after all: Santorum’s wacky statements about college and snobbery, along with his upset stomach over a 52-year-old John F. Kennedy speech, are distracting attention from Romney’s extremist economic ideas.
Yes, Romney needs Santorum to keep doing his exotic fan dance on social issues because the stage act diverts everyone (especially journalists) from examining the reactionary and regressive ideas that Romney is cooking up on substantive questions. If Romneyism is what now passes for “moderation” in the Republican Party, no wonder the authentically moderate Olympia Snowe decided to end her distinguished career in the Senate. There is no room anymore for proposals remotely worthy of the moderate label.
Romney’s plan is simultaneously extreme and very, very boring. It draws on the one and only idea that today’s conservatives offer for solving any and every problem that comes along: just throw yet more money at rich people.
At his moment of triumph Tuesday night after his necessary victories in Michigan and Arizona, a bit of inspiration from Romney would have been nice. Instead, he detailed a list of tax changesthat might lift the spirits of accountants and lawyers for wealthy Americans across our great nation, while sending everyone else off to the fridge for a beer.
Romney promised to enact an “across-the-board, 20 percent rate cut for every American,” pledged to “repeal the alternative minimum tax” and said he’d abolish the “death tax” (conservative-speak for the estate tax paid by only the most affluent Americans.) He’d lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, “make the R&D tax credit permanent to foster innovation” and “end the repatriation tax to return investment back to our shores.”
It’s not exactly “Ask not what your country can do for you,” but these ideas do appeal to Romney’s most faithful constituency in primaries: Republicans earning more than $200,000 a year. In Michigan, they backed him over Santorum by 2 to 1.
They’re Romney’s base for good reason. That “across-the-board” tax cut sounds fair and balanced. But a Tax Policy Center study in November of the impact of a 20 percent across-the-board rate cut showed that the wealthiest 0.1 percent would get an average tax reduction of $264,000. The poorest 20 percent would get $78, and those smack in the middle would get $791.
And the candidate who says that he’ll eliminate the deficit does not let on, as a new Tax Policy Center report noted Wednesday, that his tax giveaway would add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Romney talks vaguely about closing loopholes to recoup some revenue, but aren’t “moderates” supposed to see deficit reduction as urgent?
There is a terrible bias in the mainstream media that judges “moderation” almost entirely in relation to positions on social issues such as abortion or gay marriage. The media love these issues because they often involve sex, which everyone likes to read about, and do not demand elaborate explanations, charts or tables.
Go right on social issues, and the extremist charge can’t be far behind. But the media rarely peg an extreme economic conservative as “extreme” because doing so requires tedious math-laden paragraphs. Besides, people in pinstriped suits who are driven by money don’t seem “extreme.”
So here’s a counterintuitive argument: These primaries have damaged the Republican candidates’ images in the short run. But in the long run, they may yet help Romney — if he prevails — because by comparison with Santorum and Newt Gingrich, he seems “moderate,” and his supporters are more “moderate” than the voters backing the other guys. And Romney has been on so many sides of so many issues that pundits can arbitrarily imagine their own Romney.
My friend and colleague Matt Miller wrote recently that “everyone knows Romney is basically a pragmatic centrist.” No, “everyone” does not know this. The evidence from his tax plan, in fact, is that he’s an extremist for the privileged.
We’re witnessing what should be called the Two Cadillacs Fallacy: Romney’s rather authentic moments suggesting he doesn’t understand the lives of average people (such as his comment on his wife’s two Cadillacs) are dismissed as “gaffes,” while Santorum’s views on social issues are denounced as “extreme.” But Romney’s gaffes are more than gaffes: They reflect deeply held and radical views about how wealth and power ought to be distributed in the United States. These should worry us a lot more than Santorum’s dopey “snob” comment or his tasteless denunciation of JFK.
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