“Mitt Romney Is Still Mitt Romney”: Mitt Romney’s Problem Isn’t Obama—It’s Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney has a problem. And it isn’t his campaign strategy or strategists. It isn’t President Obama’s campaign strategy or strategists. Mitt Romney’s problem is Mitt Romney.
The current rash of polls clearly show that with more exposure, more time on the campaign trail, more time traveling abroad to “highlight” his foreign policy credentials, and the more he hides his tax returns, the worse Romney does with voters.
While President Barack Obama’s blackboard is pretty much completely written on, Romney’s blackboard is getting filled with information about the former Massachusetts governor that is hurting him, especially among independents. Sure, some of it is due to Obama ads and the national dialogue, but most of it is due to Romney himself.
This is all about who Mitt Romney really is; this is about his background, his judgment.
Both the new CNN and Fox polls show the public is beginning to get Romney’s number. Over the summer, his favorable rating dropped six points to 48 percent; his negative has risen five points. It is worse with independents, with favorable ratings dropping eight points. These numbers are according to Fox, which has Obama leading Romney by 49-40 percent.
CNN has Obama leading by 52-45 percent, with similar drops in Romney’s favorable and increases in his unfavorable ratings. With the crucial swing voters who identify themselves as independents, Romney has seen his unfavorable go from 40 percent to 52 percent.
The key question asked by CNN was whether or not Romney favors the rich over the middle class. Basically, two thirds of all Americans see Romney as a creature of the super wealthy who fights for the super wealthy. Now, 64 percent of all Americans believe Romney favors the rich over the middle class and 68 percent of independents have that belief. Even 67 percent of independents say he should release more tax returns.
Bottom line: Voters are not comfortable with who Mitt Romney is. They weren’t comfortable during the primaries and they aren’t comfortable now. The more they learn about Mitt Romney, the less they like him.
Do they believe he changes his positions on key issues on a dime to get elected? Sure. Do they believe he has a tin ear and can’t seem to get it right, as with his foreign travels or liking to “fire people?” Sure. Do they feel nervous about his time at Bain Capital, his foreign bank accounts, and shell corporations? Absolutely.
Fundamentally, this is personal. They know that Romney has worked the system to his advantage, paid little or no taxes, hidden his operations behind a phalanx of accountants and lawyers. He might even get away with being a “master of the universe” if he supported policies that helped the middle class. He might be able to convince voters that he cared about them if he denounced loopholes like Swiss bank accounts, Bermuda dummy corporations, even something as fundamental to his wealth as the carried interest deduction. “Yes, I took advantage of things that were legal, but I am going to close these loopholes when I am president.”
But Mitt Romney stays with his fundamental belief system—stays with policies that give even more tax breaks to the super wealthy and leave the middle class paying the bill. This may be his Bain background, it may be what he really believes, but it is not what the American people believe or need right now when they are hurting. This is back to the future economics and it shows a lack of sensitivity to middle class families.
After all the ads, after all the polls, after all the back and forth, Mitt Romney is still Mitt Romney. And that dog won’t hunt.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, August 10, 2012
“Politics Over People”: Romney Endorses Mass Public-Sector Layoffs
Mitt Romney chatted with Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Josh Tyrangiel for a good-but-brief interview, which was published today, and which turned out to be quite informative (thanks to Tricia McKinney for the heads-up).
Tyrangiel asked, for example, about the famous Bain Capital photo featuring Romney and his colleagues posing with cash, and what Romney thinks of the image now. “Oh, that was a moment of humor as we had just done what we thought was impossible,” he said.
The editor also tried to ask the tax-return issue in a new way: “If you’re an investor and you’re looking at a company, and that company says that its great strength is wise management and fiscal know-how, wouldn’t you want to see the previous, say, five years’ worth of its financials?” Romney dismissed the comparison, saying, “I’m not a business.”
I was also delighted to see Tyrangiel ask how Romney intends to balance the budget without raising taxes, without cutting defense, and without touching Social Security. Romney responded by talking about eliminating “Obamacare,” which, of course, would make the deficit worse, not better.
But what I found most interesting was an exchange that probably won’t get as much attention. Tyrangiel asked a fantastic question about the economy: “One thing that distinguishes this recovery is that public sector jobs, government jobs, have already fallen by 650,000. Given the conservative goal of shrinking government, is this a positive development or a negative one?” Romney didn’t give a straight answer, but his take was nevertheless illustrative of a larger point.
“Well, clearly you don’t like to hear [about] anyone losing a job. At the same time, government is the least productive — the federal government is the least productive of our economic sectors. The most productive is the private sector. The next most productive is the not-for-profit sector, then comes state and local governments, and finally the federal government. And so moving responsibilities from the federal government to the states or to the private sector will increase productivity. And higher productivity means higher wages for the American worker. All right?
“America is the highest productivity nation of major nations in the world, and that results in our having, for instance, an average compensation about 30 percent higher than the average compensation in Europe. A government that becomes more productive, that does more with less, is good for the earnings of the American worker, and ultimately it will mean that our taxes don’t have to go up, that small businesses will find it easier to start and grow, and we will be able to add more private sector jobs.”
It’s far from clear that Romney’s correct about the federal government being the “least productive of our economic sectors,” but for the sake of conversation, let’s say that’s true. Let’s just assume that those rascally federal bureaucracies are just too darned “unproductive.”
This is still a deeply misguided policy position.
Remember, the question from Tyrangiel has to do with the economic recovery: is it good or bad that America has been trying to dig itself out of a brutally-deep economic hole while simultaneously laying off 650,000 public-sector workers — on purpose.
Romney’s response is about a long-term vision — a more efficient and productive federal sector will eventually be good for the private sector. That may or may not be true, but the Republican is badly missing the point: how can the economy get better in a hurry if we’re deliberately putting 650,000 out of work? The answer is, we can’t, but apparently Romney doesn’t much care.
For that matter, Romney may struggle with the details of basic economics, but it’s disconcerting that he doesn’t realize who these people are. “The federal government is the least productive of our economic sectors”? What does that have to do with school teachers, police officers, and firefighters who’ve been laid off in droves in communities nowhere near the Beltway?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 9, 2012
“Go Ahead, Make That Statement”: Why Obama Would Love To Run Against Paul Ryan
Sorry, conservatives: Having the Wisconsonite on the ticket would make it easier for the president to portray Romney as a heartless plutocrat.
As Beltway anticipation builds for Mitt Romney’s vice presidential announcement, conservative pundits have re-upped their calls for a “bold” and adventurous choice. This morning, the Wall Street Journal editorial page took the lead with a plea to add House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan to the ticket.
The Journal acknowledges the appeal of VP frontrunners Tim Pawlenty and Rob Portman—working-class roots and high-level experience, respectively—but says that Ryan is the only politician with the gravitas and vision to campaign on a presidential level. Here’s the op-ed:
Too risky, goes the Beltway chorus. His selection would make Medicare and the House budget the issue, not the economy. The 42-year-old is too young, too wonky, too, you know, serious. Beneath it all you can hear the murmurs of the ultimate Washington insult—that Mr. Ryan is too dangerous because he thinks politics is about things that matter. That dude really believes in something, and we certainly can’t have that. […]
The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election. More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline.
The Journal’s broader argument is that Romney can’t win if this election is fought over “small issues,” like Bain Capital or his taxes. The only way he can prevail, they argue, is if he turns this into a fight over big ideas. Placing Ryan on the ticket would go a long way to making that a reality—he is the architect of the Republican Party’s policy platform.
It’s hard to escape the impression that conservatives view Ryan as a consolation prize for the fact that their best chance for rolling back the welfare state resides in the former Massachusetts governor who gave Democrats the bluebrint for Obamacare. But Ryan would be a terrible choice, and if you aren’t ensconsed in the conservative movement, it’s easy to see why: Ryan’s plan—low taxes on the rich and higher defense spending, funded by sharp cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and most social programs—is wildly unpopular with the public.
Last year, the Washington Post and ABC News surveyed Americans on key elements of the Ryan plan. Would you support reforming Medicare such that beneficiaries “receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy?” Sixty-five percent of respondents said they would oppose such a plan. If told that the cost of private insurance would eventually outpace the value of the voucher—projected under Ryan’s proposal—opposition rises to 80 percent.
The same goes for new tax cuts. By two-to-one (44 percent to 22 percent), according to the Pew Research Center, Americans say that cutting taxes for the rich would harm the economy. The same percentage says that raising taxes on the rich would make the tax system more fair than it currently is.
Both realities have already caused problems for Romney. He does as much as possible to obscure his support for the Ryan plan from the public, but most Americans identify him as someone who would help the rich over ordinary people. Putting Ryan on the ticket would exacerbate that problem, and give Obama a huge boost as he begins the second phase of his attacks on Romney.
Remember, the focus on Bain Capital—and Romney’s tax returns—are a means to a end: showing Romney as a heartless plutocrat who will use the presidency to enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. That image will allow Obama to pin the Ryan plan on Romney, and to (accurately) present him as the avatar for selfish reactionaries.
Without Ryan on the ticket, this is a little difficult: The Ryan/Romney plan is an astoundingly right-wing proposal for the future of the country, so much so that voters refuse to believe that any politican would endorse it, much less make it the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. This was somewhat alleivated by the Tax Policy Center analysis—which shows the degree to which Romney would have to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for his upper-income tax cuts—but would be simple to accomplish if Paul Ryan himself were the vice presidential nominee.
Already, with ads like the recent one from Priorities USA, Democrats are painting a picture of America under the Ryan/Romney plan: less mobility for most Americans, less security for middle-class families, and an explosion of income inequality. A Romney/Ryan campaign would allow Democrats to turn those attacks to eleven, and hammer the extent to which Republicans intend to transform government’s role in shaping our society.
Putting Paul Ryan on the ticket is the election-year equivalent of the Republican strategy on health care reform—high stakes, high reward. If the health-care strategy had worked, categorical opposition to reform would have blocked the law and destroyed Obama’s presidency. But it didn’t, and Democrats passed a health care bill that was more compehensive—and more liberal—than it would have been with Republican support.
A Romney/Ryan ticket could conceivably win, of course, and Republicans could then claim an ideological mandate for sweeping changes to the social contract. In all likelihood, though, Ryan’s vulnerabilities would weigh down the ticket and keep Romney from winning a critical number of undecided voters. By satisfying conservative cries for “substance,” Romney would all but condemn the GOP to four more years of an Obama presidency, allowing Democrats to entrench the major changes of the last three-and-a-half years (namely the Affordable Care Act) and gain a long-term upper hand.
Yes, it’s unsatisfying for ideologues, but for this election Republicans might want to stick to the small stuff, rather than risk it on a “statement.”
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August, 9, 2012
“Romney’s Incredible Extremes”: Mitt Romney’s Tax And Spending Plans Are Irresponsible And Cruel
Mitt Romney’s tax and spending plans are so irresponsible, so cruel, so extreme that they are literally incredible. Voters may find it hard to believe anyone would support such things, so they are likely to discount even factual descriptions as partisan distortion.
The pro-Obama New Priorities PAC stumbled across this phenomena early in 2012 in its focus group testing. When they informed a focus group that Romney supported the budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and thus championed ending Medicare as we know it while also championing tax cuts for the wealthy, focus group participants simply didn’t believe it. No politician could be so clueless.
Incredulity may complement what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd dubbed Romney’s strategy of “hiding in plain sight.” Romney refuses to release his tax returns, scrubbed the records and e-mails of his time as governor and as head of the Olympics, keeps secret details of his Bain dealings and covers up the names of his bundlers. And then, he’s able to announce extremely cruel policy positions with impunity, because the voters just can’t believe that’s what he is for.
This is what comes to mind with the publication of a study on the effects of the Romney tax policy by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center and the Brookings Institution.
The study took its assumptions from Romney’s tax agenda on his Web page — where he promises to cut tax rates by 20 percent, sustain all the Bush tax breaks, keep the reduced rate for capital gains, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminate capital gains taxes on married families earning less than $200,000 (or as Gingrich noted, on those that don’t have any capital gains) and eliminate the estate tax (a small boon to his strapping sons).
Romney then promises to make these cuts without losing revenue by eliminating tax loopholes. Only he refuses to identify which tax breaks or loopholes he would eliminate.
Under the best (and most improbable) of circumstances — that the Congress decided to completely eliminate tax expenditures for those making over $200,000 before reducing any of the benefits to those making under that amount — the study found that Romney’s tax plan would transfer a staggering $86 billion in tax burden from those making over $200,000 to those making under that amount. Millionaires would pocket an average tax cut of $87,000 while everyone else would suffer a tax hike of $500 a year.
That’s because to make up for the lost income, Congress would have to cut the mortgage deduction, the deduction for gifts to charity, the deduction for employer based health care, the Earned Income Tax Credit and child tax credit that goes to middle- and lower-income earners. But simply eliminating these and other tax breaks for the rich doesn’t generate enough revenue. So the people who really take it in the teeth are middle-income earners — small business people, middle management and professionals. It is, the study concluded, “not mathematically possible” to lower tax rates as Romney proposes without giving the rich a tax break and working and middle-income people a tax hike.
But will people believe that Romney really is for that — more tax breaks for the rich paid for by tax hikes on working families? Most of course will never learn about the Romney tax plan. But even those that do, could they ever accept the incredible truth?
Last month, the Democracy Corps, led by Stan Greenberg and James Carville, released a survey arguing that Obama and Democrats benefit greatly when the election is framed as a choice on the Republicans’ Ryan plan, the extreme budget passed by the House of Representatives, that exacts deep cuts in education, programs for poor children and turns Medicare into a voucher that pushes more and more costs on seniors.
In their survey, Obama’s margin over Romney “more than doubles” when the election is framed on the two candidates’ position on the Ryan budget. That of course, assumes that the election can be so framed, and that the voters will accept the assumption. But as the Priorities crowd discovered, voters have a hard time believing any politician could be supporting 20 percent cuts in education, an elimination of the refundable tax credit for children or dramatically changing Medicare. That is simply too extreme to be believed.
Ironically, of course, if Romney is elected and Republicans keep the House, the tea party right will claim a mandate. As Grover Norquist says, the House will drive the agenda and Romney will sign anything that emerges from the Senate. And sadly, given that the millionaires on the Democratic side of the Senate aisle aren’t nearly as united as those on the Republican side — and many are dependent on funding from some of the same special interests that now dominate Washington — we’re likely to see less Senate obstruction and more “bipartisan cooperation” on an agenda that Americans consider literally incredible.
The only hope is that voters take another look before they decide to vote for a change. In the case of Romney, the Republican really does support a budget plan that would scrap Medicare and give tax breaks to millionaires. He really is planning to eliminate Wall Street safeguards and take away health-care benefits from millions. He really believes the country will be better off if more teachers and police officers are laid off and foreclosures continue unabated.He really does want to deregulate Wall Street again, and gut the protections the EPA provides for clean air and clean water, to say nothing of global warming, the existence of which he now denies.
This isn’t a liberal caricature based on election-year demagoguery; this is Mitt Romney’s policy agenda. That is truly incredible — incredibly true.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 7, 2012
“Righteous Tut-Tutting”: The “Missing Evidence” In Romney’s Tax Records
Harry Reid has provoked outrage among liberals as well as conservatives, who seem to believe he has violated propriety by repeating gossip about Mitt Romney’s taxes. The Senate leader says someone connected with Romney told him that the Republican candidate paid no income taxes for a period of ten years. Offended by Reid’s audacity, commentators on the right have indicted him for “McCarthyism” while others on the left have accused him of inventing the whole story.
Evidently the chief complaint against Reid — aside from aggressiveness unbecoming a Democrat — is that he cited “an extremely credible source” who he has so far declined to name. Some journalists have gone so far as to suggest that Reid must be lying because he won’t identify the source.
Despite all this righteous tut-tutting among the great and the good, in newspapers and magazines as well as on television, Reid’s critics simply have no way of knowing whether he is telling the truth or not. From the beginning, Reid himself admitted forthrightly that he has no way of being absolutely certain whether what he was told is factual or not, although he believes the person who said it was being truthful.
Many of Reid’s critics work for news outlets that rely on unnamed sources every day, of course, publishing assertions that range from the mundane to the outlandish. It is hard to see why an unnamed source quoted by a daily newspaper or a monthly magazine – or hidden behind a screen in a TV studio – is more credible than a person whispering in the ear of a United States Senator.
Indeed, several of the news outlets now barking at Reid have suffered their own episodes of scandalous embarrassment due to the exposure of invented sources and quotes (see Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, etc. etc. etc.) . Yet they nevertheless continue to publish quotes from such unnamed individuals. After all, where else would Reid have learned that this is acceptable conduct?
Meanwhile Romney’s response is to demand that Reid “put up or shut up” – that is, reveal the name of his source. But that would prove nothing. As Reid has pointed out, only the former Bain executive can demonstrate conclusively that suspicions about his tax history are unfounded. Although the irritated Romney retorts that he has “paid a lot of taxes,” his denial won’t suffice as proof either. He could have paid hefty real estate taxes on his various homes and sales taxes on his purchases of cars, car elevators, powerboats, and other luxury goods, among other levies, while paying little or no federal income tax.
Obviously it would be simple for Romney to disprove Reid’s statement, which is unlike McCarthyite accusations that involve someone’s personal associations or state of mind. The necessary evidence is not only within Romney’s possession, but is material that candidates in his position normally release to the public and that the public expects to see. It is material that he previously surrendered to Senator John McCain’s campaign staff in 2008, when they were vetting him for a possible vice presidential nomination. (For now, they are conspicuously silent on the Reid controversy.)
There is a legal doctrine that applies to Romney’s current behavior, as Indiana attorney John Sullivan points out – and it doesn’t place the burden of proof on Reid:
At law, if a person in control of evidence refuses to produce the evidence, then the jury is instructed that there is a presumption that the evidence would be against the party failing to produce. It is called the “Missing Evidence” instruction.
The missing evidence is in Romney’s grasp, yet he insists that he will never produce it. Does anyone need instruction from a judge to make the correct inference?
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, August 6, 2012
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