“Santorum’s Prophecy Is Coming True”: Republicans Scratch Their Heads At Romney Tax Messaging Chaos
Republicans are bewildered by the Romney campaign’s declaration that the health care law’s individual mandate is not a tax. The GOP seized on the messaging opportunity handed to them by the Supreme Court, and immediately started trumpeting the idea that President Obama wasn’t just raising taxes — he was orchestrating the largest tax hike in American history. But a top Romney adviser threw water on that Monday, saying the mandate isn’t a tax. The RNC chairman then said Romney believes it is a tax.
Confused yet? Republican strategists told TPM that far from the unified voice the GOP said it would present after the Supreme Court ruling, the messaging has been chaotic, and ultimately embarrassing for Romney and the GOP. But, they believe, the disarray won’t affect down-ballot races, in which GOP candidates can still push the tax messaging.
“It’s a problem, I’m not going to lie,” said Hogan Gidley, a former top adviser to Rick Santorum’s campaign. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it’s a problem for the Republicans.”
Gidley was often the public face for Santorum’s warnings that Romney would be caught in precisely this kind of health care mess if he became the nominee. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled and Romney’s campaign has already stepped on the GOP’s messaging, he says Santorum’s prophecy has come true.
“Here we are a couple months into the general and you’re going, ‘Hey wait a minute, that Rick Santorum was right,’” he said.
Democrats are certainly enjoying the “message dichotomy,” as Gidley put it. The party has sent out multiple press releases highlighting the differences between Republican leaders and their presidential nominee. But Gidley said Democrats who believe they’ve got Romney and the GOP on the run should be warned.
“Democrats are doing a dance in the street with the fact that the RNC and the Republican nominee are on different spin planes on this issue,” he said. “But when the dust settles, again, you’re just going to realize that Romney wants to repeal it and Obama doesn’t.”
Other Republican strategists agreed that the split on whether the mandate amounts to a tax is bad optics. But they said that Republicans candidates other than Romney — who don’t have the baggage of Romneycare to deal with — can still run on the tax messaging.
“It’s not as clean and on-message as Republican strategists might prefer,” said Jon McHenry, an unaligned D.C.-based GOP consultant and pollster. “But it’s a one-day, inside-the-Beltway, ‘what are these guys doing?’ story as opposed to taking the tax issue off the table for the next five months.”
Down ballot, the tax argument still works, McHenry said.
“[Senate] Democrats aren’t going to put Mitt Romney on air defending their position. They’re just not,” he said. “It’s more a missed opportunity for the Romney campaign than it is a detriment to other [GOP] campaigns.”
Another strategist agreed that Republicans are annoyed by the Romney campaign steering the focus away from the tax-based message, which strategists think has real legs.
“A lot of people think he’s trying to get too cute,” said the strategist.
By: Evan McMorris-Santoro, Talking Points Memo, July 3, 2012
“Bereft Of Discernible Principles”: Our Strange Ideological Divide
When Democrats pursue centrist solutions to problems, Republicans react as though we were all just herded onto collective farms.
If you knew nothing about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the picture you saw last Thursday of liberals celebrating and conservatives lamenting the end of American liberty would have convinced you that a monumental shift to the left had just taken place. Was the military budget cut by two-thirds or higher education made free for all Americans, you might have asked? At the very least, a universal, public health-insurance program must have been established. But no, the greatest ideological battle in decades was fought over a law that solidifies the position of private health-insurance companies.
That isn’t to ignore that those companies will be subject to greater regulation, outlawing their cruelest abuses of their customers, and millions will be added to the insurance program for the poor. The ACA is a very, very good thing, but after its full implementation we will still have the least socialized health-care system of any advanced country in the world. Yet to hear the ACA’s opponents tell it, the law will twist America into a socialist republic just a couple of short steps from Poland circa 1972. In other words, Democrats managed to pass a useful but rather centrist social reform, and Republicans reacted as though all private property were confiscated and we were herded onto collective farms. It’s enough to make one wonder what might have happened if a real-live liberal were to become president and pursue an agenda that even remotely resembles the caricature Republicans present of Barack Obama’s.
One thing we can be fairly sure of is that the ideology represented by that agenda would play almost no role in its chances for success or failure. Through no fault of his own, Obama has made sure of that. Republicans’ burning hatred of him has set the template for them, one they are likely to use again and again. When he embraced a health-care plan with Republican origins (an individual mandate plus subsidies) or a market-based notion of how to handle climate change (cap and trade), they not only turned away from those ideas but in the process also ran to the right even faster than they had been moving before. At the same time, they went about purging their ranks of anyone who had shown anything less than contempt for the other side. Those moderate (and many not-so-moderate) Republicans purged by Tea Party opponents in primaries will not be coming back.
The result is that in future debates, anything Democrats want to do—almost regardless of its content—will be met with cries of “socialism!” Obama could propose that the entire system of public education be dismantled in favor of private school vouchers, and Republicans would promptly declare the idea to be Marxist social engineering and come out for a system of private education without any taxpayer funds at all. The next Democratic presidential nominee could be Bernie Sanders or Joe Lieberman, and his ideas would be met with precisely the same response.
In many ways, Mitt Romney is the perfect candidate for this version of the GOP, bereft of discernible principles and willing to trot to the right at a moment’s notice. You may have noticed that despite the predictions of many a pundit, Romney did not “move to the center” upon becoming his party’s de facto nominee. There is not a single position he has taken that is at odds with the hard-right persona he established during the primaries—not a single radical nutball he has repudiated, not a single signal he has sent that he will be anything but what the Republican base wants him to be.
And what if Romney loses? The loudest voices in the party will insist that it was only because he was not conservative enough, and the pressure will be on to choose a nominee next time around who genuinely believes all the things Romney pretends to believe (get ready for Santorum ’16). Yet there may be a countervailing force within the party, likely led by Karl Rove, arguing that the GOP’s problem is a demographic one (Rove understands this well). It has increasingly become the party of white men, an evolution accelerated when its presidential primaries feature endless fear-mongering about immigration and slut-shaming of any woman more free-spirited than Queen Victoria. That demographic narrowing could prove disastrous this year. Ruy Teixeira, one of the clearest-eyed observers of electoral and demographic trends, argues that because of the growth in the minority populations that overwhelmingly support Obama, the president could lose white working-class voters by 28 points and white college-educated voters by 19 points and still win. In other words, he could do just as poorly with whites as Democrats did in the 2010 blowout and still be re-elected.
If that happens, will the Republicans try to moderate ideologically? The truth is, they don’t really have to. They were more conservative than ever in 2010 and won a historic electoral victory. Or consider the last Republican president. When he first took control of his party’s nominating contest in 2000, George W. Bush was hailed by innumerable commentators as a “different kind of Republican”—someone who could reach out to all kinds of voters with his “compassionate conservatism.” He was particularly good at convincing Latino voters that he bore them no ill will and lost their votes by a measly 9 points in 2004 (in the latest polls, Romney trails Obama among Latinos by more than 40 points). Yet what was the policy substance of Bush’s presidency? Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, needless wars costing trillions, a gargantuan expansion of the national-security state, a federal judiciary filled with movement conservatives—in other words, an eight-year orgy of conservative wish fulfillment.
Democrats certainly warned from the beginning that there was less compassion than conservatism in Bush’s ideas. But they had nothing like the collective freak-out that Republicans had over Barack Obama, casting his center-left accommodationism as a terrifying program to achieve radical socialist tyranny. They will say the same about the next Democratic president, no matter what his or her true leanings. Their own ideology, on the other hand, will be something that most Americans have only the vaguest sense about, and their policy radicalism will be no bar to winning elections. All it will take is the right economic conditions and some symbolic toning-down of their rhetoric to cover the twisted face of anger, resentment, and outright hate that increasingly defines their soul. They’ve done it before, and there’s no reason they can’t do it again.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 3, 2012
“Supreme Conflict”: Was Justice Clarence Thomas Behind The Obamacare Leaks?
The biggest revelation in CBS News reporter Jan Crawford’s piece on the Supreme Court’s health care deliberations isn’t that Chief Justice John Roberts originally voted to strike down the Affordable Care Act and then changed his mind — Crawford merely confirmed what many people already expected based on evidence in the opinions themselves. Rather, the biggest revelation is that fact that, in order for her piece to exist at all, someone inside the Court must have leaked confidential informationto her.
Yesterday, the New York Times‘ Adam Liptak strongly implied that the leak could be Justice Clarence Thomas:
[T]he possibility that conservatives had victory within reach only to lose it seemed to infuriate some of them. The CBS News report, attributed to two sources with “specific knowledge of the deliberations,” appeared to give voice to the frustrations of people associated with the court’s conservative wing. It was written by Jan Crawford, whose 2007 book, “Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court,” was warmly received by conservatives.
In a 2009 interview on C-Span, Justice Thomas singled her out as a favorite reporter. “There are wonderful people out here who do a good job — do a fantastic job — like Jan Greenburg,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Ms. Crawford by her married name at the time.
Thomas’ affection for Crawford is mutual, and Crawford has spent years defending Thomas against his critics. At times, these defenses have been thoughtful and compelling, such as when she shot down the ridiculous idea that Thomas is merely a lapdog for his less conservative colleague Justice Antonin Scalia, or when she defended Thomas’ wife’s Ginni’s right to have her own career regardless of what her husband does for a living. At other times, they have been much less thoughtful, such as when Crawford accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) of racism for criticizing Thomas. Crawford has also conducted high-profile interviews of Thomas in the past.
None of this, of course, proves conclusively that Thomas is one of Crawford’s two sources. But it does demonstrate that the two of them have a strong working relationship based on mutual admiration for each other. If Thomas were looking to leak confidential information to a member of the Supreme Court press, it is likely that he would choose the one reporter he has publicly revealed to be his favorite. The fact that that reporter is a well-regarded conservative journalist who also works for a high profile outlet is gravy.
If Thomas is the leak, that would be a shocking escalation from the justices normal tactics — and one which could have lasting consequences for the future. Appellate courts function because of the assumption that their members can openly discuss their thoughts and misgivings about individual cases without fear that those discussions will later be used to embarrass them. If that assumption no longer prevails in Supreme Court conferences, the Court will morph into a far less deliberative, more factional institution.
Yet Thomas has shown no indication in the past that he cares about the sanctity of institutions or the consequences of his actions. Thomas continually finds himself embroiled in ethics scandals, including a high-profile gifting scandal similar to the one that forced Justice Abe Fortas to resign from the bench in 1969. Thomas’ jurisprudence is equally reckless, as he would declare everything from national child labor laws to the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters unconstitutional.
If Thomas did leak the Court’s deliberations, that still leaves open who the second leaker is (Noam Scheiber makes a strong case that the second leak could be Justice Kennedy). At the moment, however, we know that Thomas is the justice who is most likely to cast long-established practices aside due to a personal crusade. And we know that he already has a good relationship with the reporter who received the Supreme leak.
BY: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, July 3, 2012
“Tying Themselves Into Knots”: Romney Adviser Contradicts A GOP Talking Point
Some Republicans knew that nominating a governor who had signed a healthcare reform law with an individual insurance mandate would be a problem. It would muddy their anti-Obamacare message, they warned, even if Mitt Romney could claim that he supports mandates only at the state level. Well, their fears were well-founded.
Consider the gaffe made by Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney campaign adviser, on MSNBC Monday morning. As I reported on Sunday night, Republicans and conservatives have tried to make the best of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act by saying that if it is justified under Congress’s taxing power, then it must be a tax increase, and a massive one at that.
But Romney, who signed a law that, just like the ACA, imposes a penalty on individuals who don’t buy insurance, does not like to admit that he raised taxes. (That’s why, as governor of Massachusetts, he mostly sought to increase revenue through new and higher user fees, including preposterously cruel ones, such as imposing a $10 fee for a certificate of blindness.)
These conflicting lines got crossed when Ferhnstrom said, “The governor disagreed with the ruling of the Court, he agreed with the dissent that was written by Justice Scalia, that very clearly said that the mandate was not a tax. The governor believes what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the Court’s ruling that the mandate was a tax.” This flies in the face of claims by Congressional Republicans and conservative talking heads such as Rush Limbaugh, who say that the ACA is a tax. Fehrnstrom is also contradicting his own candidate who admitted back in 2008 that the penalty for not buying insurance in Massachusetts is a kind of tax.
But Congressional Republican aides tell the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that they can continue to make this argument even as the Romney campaign says the opposite. He writes:
You’d think the fact that the GOP presidential nominee’s campaign has now confirmed that Obamacare’s mandate is not a tax would undercut the use of this talking point by GOP Congressional officials, right?
You’d be wrong. One senior Congressional aide tells me that Republicans will continue to describe it in those terms. And a second senior GOP Congressional aide emails that there is no contradiction here.…
The Romney campaign and Republican Congressional officials alike both agree with Scalia’s argument that the mandate is not a tax in the sense that claiming it is a tax makes it Constitutional, even as Republican officials continue to argue that the mandate is a tax in the sense that SCOTUS said it was in the course of upholding the law.
It’s a clever argument, and a sort of technically consistent. But, as Sargent’s Post colleague Rachel Weiner points out, “That line of attack is more easily maintained by Republicans who never imposed any such mandate.” It’s irritating to see the GOP paying so little political penalty for their complete flip-flop on the individual mandate, but it’s satisfying to see that by nominating Romney they will at least tie themselves into knots over it.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, July 2, 2012
“Less Than Forthcoming”: Clarence Thomas’s Wife Continued To Lobby Against Healthcare In 2011
Last week, a meme made its way around the Internet asking why Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was planning to rule on the healthcare law when his wife, a conservative lobbyist, has made so much money challenging the law.
Now, just days after healthcare law was upheld (with Clarence Thomas dissenting), new financial forms show that Thomas’s wife, Ginni, continued to rake in a profit from opposing healthcare reforms in 2011—even after she previously came under fire for doing so.
According to Thomas’s 2011 financial disclosure report form, filed on May 15 and obtained Friday by Whispers, Ginni Thomas made up to $15,000 working for political lobbying firm Liberty Consulting. The firm lobbied actively against the healthcare law, according to liberal news magazine Mother Jones.
Ginni formed Liberty Consulting after she was criticized for her work at Liberty Central, a non-profit tea party organization that also lobbied against the health care law.
In March of this year, Liberty Central was the subject of a letter sent to the IRS by Common Cause, a nonprofit that works for government accountability. The letter argued that Liberty Central violated the proportionality rule for non-profits because the majority of its activities were designed to help Republican candidates.
Ginni later stepped down from Liberty Central, but her involvement in conservative politics extends beyond these two groups. Among Ginni’s former employers is the Heritage Foundation, another vocal critic of the healthcare law. She also currently works as a “special correspondent” for the conservative website The Daily Caller.
In January 2011, Justice Thomas “inadvertently” left out information about his wife’s employment, including earnings over the past 13 years that added up to as much as $1.6 million.
Thomas himself has also been criticized for his links to the Republican party, most notably in a October 2010 New York Times story about a Republican donors event bankrolled by the conservative Koch brothers, which listed the Supreme Court justice as an attendee.
As a result of these “questions of candor, accountability, and ethics,” a new Change.org petiton, started by Garrett Troy, a recent graduate of the University of Washington, is calling for Thomas to resign. A similar petition created earlier on CredoAction.com has nearly 225,000 signatures.
“You have been less-than-forthcoming on matters concerning household fiduciary interests,” states the petition. “Justice Thomas, do you think you belong here?”
A request for comment from the Thomas’s office was not immediately returned.
By: Elizabeth Flock, Washington Whispers, U. S. and World Report, July 2, 2012
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