“Romney’s Closing Argument”: For Those Who Prefer “Big And Bold Dishonesty”
For the candidate afflicted with “Romnesia,” you never know when you hear that he’s making his “closing argument” if that is indeed the case, or he’s got three or four more in his pocket. But that’s the label BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller is giving to Mitt Romney’s speech in Ames, Iowa, today–a place, you may recall, that he strictly avoided when Iowa Republicans kicked off the presidential cycle with a straw poll in the summer of 2011.
But anyway: the guts of Mitt’s final pitch is that he and Paul Ryan are thinking big and bold while Barack Obama is petty and timid:
Four years ago, candidate Obama spoke to the scale of the times. Today, he shrinks from it, trying instead to distract our attention from the biggest issues to the smallest–from characters on Sesame Street and silly word games to misdirected personal attacks he knows are false.
This is pretty rich coming from the guy who has spent much of the last month relentlessly pandering to the coal industry. But at any rate, what’s interesting about the “big and bold change” stuff is that it’s true: but not in any way he’s admitting. To hear his “closing argument,” here’s a sample of what he and Paul Ryan are fighting for:
We will save and secure Medicare and Social Security, both for current and near retirees, and for the generation to come. We will restore the $716 billion President Obama has taken from Medicare to pay for his vaunted Obamacare.
We will reform healthcare to tame the growth in its cost, to provide for those with pre-existing conditions, and to assure that every American has access to healthcare. We will replace government choice with consumer choice, bringing the dynamics of the marketplace to a sector of our lives that has long been dominated by government.
I’m sure you know by now how Mitt ‘n’ Paul plan to “save” Medicare. The “save Social Security” bit presumably refers to “reform” plans they haven’t had the guts to reveal, though Ryan was an early backer of partial privatization and Romney has talked vaguely about means-testing benefits.
But it’s the “health care reform” claim that is really incredible. By repealing Obamacare, Romney and Ryan would eliminate health insurance coverage for 30 million people who would otherwise be covered beginning in 2014. The Medicaid block grant they propose would according to the most credible indeeliminate coverage for another 17-23 million people. That’s 47-53 million Americans who will have to find some other way to secure health care or simply do without. And what are the “reforms” proposed instead? The Romney campaign has already been forced to admit that its candidate’s deep concern for people with pre-existing conditions extends only so far as preserving current laws allowing people to pay both employer and employee shares of health premiums after they’ve lost their jobs, or try to buy terrible, expensive policies through state risk pools. But believe it or not, the big and bold Romney/Ryan agenda would make things worse by the “market-based” reform of interstate insurance sales, which would create a race to the bottom sure to eliminate most of the protections available to poorer and sicker people.
I won’t even get into the hypocrisy of talking about getting government out of health care while demanding that the single-payer Medicare program keep paying insurance companies and providers $716 billion in unnecessary reimbursements. But the gap between what Romney is saying on health care and other issues, and the reality of his agenda, already gigantic when this campaign began, has only grown. If you like your dishonesty big and bold, he’s your man.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 26, 2012
“What America Will We Pick?”: The Cleavage Between Those Who Have Held Power And Those Who Are Beginning To Attain It
This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity — and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be.
President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women — about 11 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll — and enormous leads among Latinos and African Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-to-1 advantage among white men.
It is too simplistic to conclude that demography equals destiny. Both men are being sincere when they vow to serve the interests of all Americans. But it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.
When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.
Issues of race, power and privilege are less explicit this year than they were in 2008, but in some ways they are even stronger.
Four years ago, we asked ourselves whether the nation would ever elect a black president. The question was front and center. Every time we see the president and his family walk across the White House lawn to board Marine One, we’re reminded of the answer.
The intensity of the opposition to Obama has less to do with who he is than with the changes in U.S. society he not only represents but incarnates. Citing his race as a factor in the way some of his opponents have bitterly resisted his policies immediately draws an outraged cry: “You’re saying that just because I oppose Obama, I’m a racist.” No, I’m not saying that at all.
What I’m saying is that Obama’s racial identity is a constant reminder of how much the nation has changed in a relatively short time. In my lifetime, we’ve experienced the civil rights movement, the countercultural explosion of the 1960s, the sexual revolution, the women’s movement and an unprecedented wave of Latino immigration. Within a few decades, there will be no white majority in this country — no majority of any kind, in fact. We will be a nation of racial and ethnic minorities, and we will only prosper if everyone learns to give and take.
Our place in the world has changed as well. The United States remains the dominant economic and military power; our ideals remain a beacon for those around the globe still yearning to breathe free. But our capacity for unilateral action is diminished; we can assert but not dictate, and we must learn to persuade.
Obama’s great sin, for some who oppose him, is to make it impossible to ignore these domestic and international megatrends. Take one look at Obama and the phenomenon of demographic change is inescapable. Observe his approach to international crises in places such as Libya or Syria and the reality of America’s place in the world is unavoidable.
I’m deliberately leaving aside what should be the biggest factor in the election: Obama’s policies. It happens that I have supported most of them, but of course there are legitimate reasons to favor Romney’s proposals, insofar as we know what they really are — and the extent to which they really differ from Obama’s.
In foreign affairs, judging by Monday’s debate, the differences are too small to discern; Romney promises to speak in a louder voice and perhaps deploy more battleships, but that’s about it. Domestically, however, I see a clear choice. I consider the Affordable Care Act a great achievement, and Romney’s promise to repeal it would alone be reason enough for me to oppose him. Add in the tax cuts for the wealthy, the plan to “voucherize” Medicare and the appointments Romney would likely make to the Supreme Court, and the implications of this election become even weightier.
Issues may explain our sharp political divisions, but they can’t be the cause of our demographic polarization. White men need medical care, too. African Americans and Latinos understand the need to get our fiscal house in order. The recession and the slow recovery have taken a toll across the board.
Some of Obama’s opponents have tried to delegitimize his presidency because he doesn’t embody the America they once knew. He embodies the America of now.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 25, 2012
“Talk About Uncertainty”: Mitt Romney’s Question Mark Economy
As we close in on Election Day, the questions about what Mitt Romney would do if elected grow even larger. Rarely before in American history has a candidate for president campaigned on such a blank slate.
Yet, paradoxically, not a day goes by that we don’t hear Romney, or some other exponent of the GOP, claim that businesses aren’t creating more jobs because they’re uncertain about the future. And the source of that uncertainty, they say, is President Obama — especially his Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Dodd-Frank Act, and uncertainties surrounding Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy.
In fact, Romney has created far more uncertainty. He offers a virtual question mark of an economy
For example, Romney says if elected he’ll repeal Obamacare and replace it with something else. He promises he’ll provide health coverage to people with pre-existing medical problems but he doesn’t give a hint how he’d manage it.
Insurance companies won’t pay the higher costs of insuring these people unless they have extra funds — which is why Obamacare requires that everyone, including healthy young people, buy insurance. Yet Romney doesn’t say where the extra money to fund insurers would come from. From taxpayers? Businesses?
Talk about uncertainty.
Romney also promises to repeal Dodd-Frank, but here again he’s mum on what he’d replace it with. Yet without some sort of new regulation of Wall Street we’re back to where we were before 2008 when Wall Street crashed and brought most of the rest of us down with it.
Romney hasn’t provided a clue how he proposes to oversee the biggest banks absent Dodd-Frank, what kind of capital requirements he’d require of them, and what mechanism he’d use to put them through an orderly bankruptcy that wouldn’t risk the rest of the Street. All we get is a big question mark.
When it comes to how Romney would pay for the giant $5 trillion tax cut he proposes, mostly for the rich, he takes uncertainty to a new level of abject wonderment. “We’ll work with Congress,” is his response.
He says he’ll limit loopholes and deductions that could be used by the wealthy, but refuses to be specific. Several weeks ago Romney said he’d cap total deductions at $17,000 a year. Days later, the figure became $25,000. Now it’s up in the air. “Pick a figure,” he now says.
Make no mistake. Wall Street traders and corporate CEOs are supporting Romney not because of the new level of certainty he promises but because Romney promises to lower their taxes.
Meanwhile, many of Romney’s allies who are attacking Obama for creating uncertainty are themselves responsible for the uncertainty. They’re the ones who have delayed and obfuscated Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and any semblance of a federal budget.
“Continued uncertainty is the greatest threat to small businesses and our country’s economic recovery,” says Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been funneled tens of millions of dollars into ads blaming Obama for the nation’s economic woes.
That’s the same Chamber of Commerce that’s been using every legal tool imaginable to challenge regulations emerging from Obamacare and Dodd-Frank — keeping the future of both laws as uncertain as possible for as long as they can. The Chamber even brought Obamacare to the Supreme Court.
At the same time, congressional Republicans have done everything in their power to scotch any agreement on how to reduce the budget deficit. Because they’ve pledged their fiscal souls to Grover Norquist, they won’t consider raising even a dollar of new taxes. Yet it’s impossible to balance the budget without some combination of spending cuts and tax increases — unless, that is, we do away with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or the military.
Business executives justifiably worry about January’s so-called “fiscal cliff”, requiring sudden and sharp tax increases and spending cuts. But they have no one to blame but Norquist’s Republican acolytes in Congress, including Paul Ryan, all of whom agreed to the fiscal cliff when they couldn’t agree to anything else.
Average Americans, meanwhile, face more economic uncertainty from the possibility of a Romney-Ryan administration than they have had in their lifetimes. Not only has Romney thrown the future of Obamacare into doubt, but Americans have no idea what would happen under his administration to Medicare, Medicaid, college aid, Pell grants, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and many other programs Americans rely on. All would have to be sliced or diced, but Romney won’t tell us how or by how much.
Romney is casting a pall of uncertainty in every direction — even toward young immigrants. He vows if elected he’ll end Obama’s reprieve from deportation of young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally when they were children. As a result, some young people who might qualify are holding back for fear the information they offer could be used against them at later date if Romney is elected.
Conservative economists such as John Taylor of the Hoover Institution, one of Romney’s key economic advisors, continue to attribute the slow recovery and high unemployment to Obama’s “unpredictable economic policy.”
In truth, Romney and the GOP have put a giant question mark over the future of the economy and of all Americans. The only way the future becomes more certain is if Obama wins on Election Day.
By: Robert Reich, Co-Founder, The American Prospect, October 24, 2012
“Troubling To Think What Might Happen”: Why A Romney Win Would Be Bad For America
There’s a strong case against Mitt Romney’s candidacy that has nothing to do with ideology. Which is probably a good thing, because no one really knows where Romney fits on the ideological spectrum, and if he really has any deeply held policy views at all.
My own sense, as I’ve written before, is that Romney’s party label tells us pretty much all we need to know about how he’d govern. He’s the nominee of a party that has adopted a far-right platform, and if he were to win he’d have little choice but to stick to it. Conservatives have long viewed Romney’s ideological credentials with skepticism; under a Romney presidency, they’d be perpetually on-guard for any hint of betrayal. Failure to govern as the conservative he swore he was during the GOP primaries would open a rift in the party and threaten to destroy his presidency.
But part of Romney’s appeal to swing voters is an assumption that he’s faking it – that he said the words he needed to say to win the Republican nomination, but that as president he’d revert to Massachusetts Mitt, the middle-of-the-road pragmatist who shunned culture war politics and wasn’t averse to working with Democrats. I have a hard time seeing this, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it actually is his intent. Even then – and even if you think this would work out OK for the country from a policy standpoint – there’s still a compelling reason to fear a Romney win on November 6.
The basic problem has to do with the behavior of Romney’s party over the past four years – reflexive opposition and obstruction rooted in electoral strategy, not ideology – and the lesson that politicians from both parties would draw if it results in a one-term Obama presidency.
Essentially, Republicans looked around when Obama was sworn-in and saw political opportunity. They had lost the White House and faced steep Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. In a way, this made them weak; they had no power to advance their own agenda. But it also gave them strength; they had considerable power to stall Obama’s agenda, and with economic anxiety rampant, it seemed logical to assume voters would blame the ruling party if things didn’t turn around quickly.
The result is that Republicans devoted themselves not to constructively criticizing Democratic proposals, crafting feasible alternatives, and accepting olive branches from the administration but instead to cranking up the hysteria and treating virtually every Obama initiative as a step toward socialism. They matched this with legislative obstruction, tying up scores nominations, forcing a record number of filibusters, and forcing Democrats to pass their agenda on party-line votes.
The calculation was that Republican cooperation would signal to the public that progress was being made and that Obama was living up to his promise to change Washington. But if they railed against him and his agenda instead, Republicans would create an air of controversy around every Obama proposal and bring his approval rating down that much faster.
Mostly cut out of this equation has been policy. Congressional Republicans bitterly deride the stimulus, even though it was loaded up with tax cuts and infrastructure spending that Republicans had traditionally supported. But where was their viable alternative? Healthcare is even more egregious. Obama spent months cultivating Republican support and adopted a basic framework – an individual mandate that would strengthen private insurers – that originated on the right. Not only did they unanimously oppose it; they’ve still failed to produce their own plan to replace the Affordable Care Act – despite promising to do so for more than two years. And while they did rally around Paul Ryan’s long-term budget blueprint, Republicans have had nothing to say on the country’s immediate jobs crisis, offering only tired rhetoric about high taxes and wasteful government. And, as Jonathan Bernstein points out, they’ve offered nothing substantive on foreign policy, settling instead for fake scandals and symbolism.
If Romney wins in two weeks, Republicans may well find themselves with complete control of Washington again. And they will have achieved it by doing nothing but opposing, attacking and obstructing Obama. As Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann explain in “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” this kind of conduct by an opposition party works in parliamentary democracies like Britain. But our system isn’t designed for it. If Republicans win back power with it, though, there’s no reason to think they won’t behave the same way again the next time Democrats claim power. For that matter, it’s possible Democrats will begin to behave the same way.
This last point is worth considering for a moment. There’s a school of thought that Democrats will always be open to entreaties from a Republican president, for the simple reason that they believe in an active and robust government. So, for instance, that George W. Bush found Democratic support – sometimes significant Democratic support – during his first term, even though Democrats were still furious over how he’d won the presidency. But if Republicans succeed in making Obama a one-termer, who’s to say how Democrats will react – and if their party base will even allow any cooperation with President Romney? (Again, this is accepting the idea that Romney would even try to reach out.)
Elections shape the behavior of political parties. Recall that Bill Clinton got more cooperation from Republicans as he beat them (first with the 1995 shutdown, then in the 1996 election), to the point that Republicans ultimately went looking for their own Clinton in 2000, keying in on the affable George W. Bush and his compassionate conservatism. The GOP’s post-2008 behavior has not been healthy for our system of government. It’s troubling to think what might happen if it’s rewarded.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon, October 22, 2012
“A Man Of No Convictions”: You Can Never Meet The Same Mitt Romney Twice
To a skeptic, the most remarkable aspect of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has been how so flexible a politician can represent so dogmatic a party. Contemporary Republicanism is ideological to its core. Everybody who watched the GOP primary debates between Mitt and the Seven Dwarves (or were there nine? I forget) understands that there’s a black-and-white party line on almost every imaginable topic from tax policy to global warming.
Romney, on the other hand, appears to have no firm convictions at all. How anybody purports to know what the GOP candidate actually thinks about any issue other than the size of his own offshore bank accounts beggars my poor imagination. That most Republicans have temporarily persuaded themselves to trust him reflects mainly their fear and loathing of President Obama.
Equally remarkable, however, is the way the Obama campaign has let Romney get away with it. How can his evasiveness not be an issue? For that matter, how can it not be THE issue? Early on, a strategic decision was apparently made to depict the GOP candidate as the “severely conservative” politician he affected to be during the Republican primaries.
Well, it ain’t working. So many and so various are the GOP candidate’s self-contradictions and reinventions that the proverbial “low information” citizens who appear to constitute much of the swing vote are pretty much free to imagine any Mitt Romney that strikes their fancy.
Maybe it’s unpatriotic to say so, but an awful lot of people who manage their personal affairs competently enough simply refuse to understand the most elementary facts when they’re part of a political argument.
Sometimes you have to tell them a story. It helps if that story connects to something close to home; something they’ve had to think about realistically in their own lives.
Such as, what happens if you lose your health insurance and then get sick? Millions live in fear of this every day.
CBS News’ Scott Pelley recently asked Romney a simple question on 60 Minutes: “Does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who don’t have it today?”
“Well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance,” Romney allowed. “If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.”
“That’s the most expensive way to do it,” Pelley observed. Indeed, government figures show the average emergency room visit costs $922, vs. $199 for a doctor’s office visit.
Nor is it free. People do know that. Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act signed by President Reagan, hospitals must treat sick and injured patients regardless of their ability to pay. A civilized society can do no less; much less one that hopes to head off deadly epidemics.
But the law doesn’t say the hospital can’t perform what’s cynically called a “wallet biopsy” and send you a bill. Indeed, many states allow hospitals to hire collection agencies, garnish wages and seize assets in pursuit of payment. For this reason, many people stay away until they’re at death’s door.
Others abuse the privilege and stick the rest of us with the bill.
Back in 2006, the politician Bill Clinton calls “Moderate Mitt” recognized the problem. Hewrote a Wall Street Journal column objecting to the way deadbeats game the system.
“By law, emergency care cannot be withheld,” he wrote. “Why pay for something you can get free? Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes.”
Writing in Time, Kate Pickert catches Moderate Mitt as recently as 2008, explaining the conservative origins of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts.
“They shouldn’t be allowed just to show up at the hospital and say somebody else should pay for me, so we said no more free riders… We said if you can afford insurance, then either have the insurance or get a health savings account, pay your own way, but no more free ride… I think it’s the conservative approach—to make sure that people who can afford insurance are getting it at their expense, not at the expense of the taxpayers or the government. That, I consider a step towards socialism.”
Ah, but then came “Obamacare,” basically Romneycare with a less expensive per capita price tag. Yesterday’s conservative solution turned into today’s Bolshevism. Severely Conservative Mitt played along.
So what would Romney do if elected?
Who knows? To paraphrase the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: You can never encounter the same Mitt Romney twice. Whatever he says today, he’ll say something different tomorrow.
Here’s the question President Obama should be asking: Would you buy a used health insurance policy from this man?
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, October 17, 2012
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