“A Strategy Of Deception”: Romney Complains While Using Race To Divide The Nation
On the eve of his nominating convention, Mitt Romney complained to USA Today about the “vituperative” and “dishonest” assaults on his character by the Obama campaign and its surrogates. “Isn’t it sad?” asked the Republican candidate. “The White House just keeps stepping lower and lower and lower, and the people of America know this is an important election and they deserve better than they’ve seen.”
This whining hardly becomes the politician who dispatched his Republican rivals with multi-million-dollar barrages of attack ads. There is some truth to his complaint that Obama’s campaign is trying “to minimize me as an individual, to make me a bad person, an unacceptable person,” but that is precisely what he did to Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum on the road to Tampa. The Republican primary season was the most vicious in memory – and committees backing Romney led the bloody pack, spending more than two-thirds of their money on negative advertising.
What he is doing now, however, is arguably much worse. And again it is the kind of political behavior that shames the memory of his father George.
What’s truly sad – for a country that hurdled an important barrier four years ago – is that Romney and his aides are running an increasingly racialized campaign, seeking to capture a supermajority of white voters, because they can see no other pathway to victory. Some analysts estimate that the Republican ticket cannot win the White House without at least 61 percent of white voters – a significantly higher percentage than voted for John McCain in 2008.
Romney’s remark about his birth certificate in Michigan last week can be generously discounted as a clumsy attempt at humor, rather than a calculated slur. Growing up in the bigoted environment of the Mormon Church, he may be sufficiently obtuse not to realize that “birtherism” is a racist movement. But that wouldn’t excuse his vile advertising, which is clearly designed to stoke white resentments with false attacks on White House welfare and health care policies. The overall theme, as Thomas Edsall, Chris Matthews, and other analysts have charged, could hardly be clearer: Obama is taking Medicare money away from hard-working whites to give cash and medical care to indolent blacks.
There is no truth to those insinuations, as anyone who spends ten minutes to investigate will discover. Yet we have long since learned that a strategy of deception can succeed if it confirms existing fears and prejudices. America is neither a post-racial nor a post-partisan society, and there are certainly voting blocs, particularly among older whites, whose underlying beliefs make them more receptive to the Republican lies about Obama.
Romney may deplore discussion of his tax returns and business career, although he has used precisely those same questions to raise doubts about Republican rivals in the past. But when he falsely accuses the President of undoing welfare reform “to shore up his base,” he is trafficking in the racial ugliness that disfigured his church for a century. Having claimed that he marched with his father for civil rights, he has a special responsibility to rein in the nastiness of his minions.
If not for the sake of simple patriotism or pride, Romney should abandon the racial messaging to protect his own legacy. More than 20 years ago, Republicans won a presidential campaign with a blatantly racial appeal. The men responsible – Roger Ailes, Larry McCarthy, the late Lee Atwater, even the first President Bush — will never quite transcend that “Willie Horton” moment when opportunism overwhelmed decency.
Neither will Mitt Romney.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, August 28, 2012
“A Last Gasp Candidate”: Is Mitt Romney A Real American?
If it’s our ideals and not our origins that make us countrymen, Romney’s tactics suggest that he’s the one whose Americanness should come under question.
Nobody’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. But as someone of Chinese descent I have been asked plenty of times where I’m from — and when I say “Poughkeepsie,” I often get the follow-up question that’s almost a cliché now among Asian Americans: “No, where are you really from?”
It’s always disheartening to get that question, even though I’ve learned to answer it with equanimity and usually take care to make the inquisitor feel not-stupid. But it’s always clarifying, for it reveals the default picture in the minds of some of my fellow Americans about who they are, who we are, and who I am.
That’s why Mitt Romney’s birther-baiting remarks today are, in a way, welcome. Let there be no doubt: He is the candidate for people who think the name Obama must be Muslim and its bearer indelibly foreign. He is also the candidate for the greater number of people who do not initially imagine that someone with my face, my eyes, my skin could be from this country.
Even in one of his home states (Michigan, the site of today’s remarks), Mitt Romney is not some iconic American hero whose patriotism is beyond reproach. The reason no one questions where Romney was born is simply this: he is white. If that’s good enough for you, then you’re good enough for Romney.
But that’s not good enough for America. I have as much a claim to be the image of an American as Romney and his offspring do. So does Barack Obama. So, by the way, does Bobby Jindal or Ted Cruz or Susana Martinez — nonwhites in Romney’s own party who likely have also been asked (no, really) where they are from.
Romney’s implicit pledge of allegiance to the birther movement is as revealing of his character as anything else in his campaign of half-deliberate opacity. He appears to lack a core capacity for empathy. He literally cannot see himself as someone not white, as someone accented or a newcomer.
In fact, Romney’s tactics suggest that he’s the one whose Americanness should come under question. True Americanness is not about how WASPy your surname is, how pale your skin, or how many generations your family has lived here — or how much you can lord those facts over others. Nor is it about how subtly you can stir up secret prejudices against people who could be deemed outsiders.
True Americanness is about fidelity to a creed that by design transcends color or place of family origin. Yes, we as a nation have often subverted that creed, or averted our gaze, but it still stands in timeless judgment, measuring our willingness to deliver on the promise of equal citizenship. True Americans see in a sea of colored faces a chance to bring everyone into the fold, so that the team is stronger and the creed redeemed. Mitt Romney can prance all he wants but his words today were those of a second-rate American.
And the more he plays his Donald Trump card, the more his becomes a last-gasp candidacy: the inarticulate paroxysm of those who still silently believe, as was once permissible to declare in public, that America is a white nation and that the interests, mores, and preferences of whites should predominate.
Romney may yet win in November. But he and this whole odious line of attack are on the losing side of history. The tide of demographics is irresistible, and soon enough it’ll sweep up his birth certificate and mine into a new notion of who is truly from this country.
By: Eric Liu, The Atlantic, August 24, 2012
“Un-American Ignorant Exceptionalism”: Why John Sununu Is Romney’s Favorite Attack Dog
Stop the presses — John Sununu said something over-the-top.
The 73-year-old former governor of New Hampshire, a top surrogate for Mitt Romney, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday, “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.” He also said President Obama comes from “that murky political world in Chicago where politician and felon has become synonymous,” and brought up what he described as a “smarmy” real estate deal with convicted felon Tony Rezko. And he called the Obama campaign “stupid” and “a bunch of liars.”
Before the call was even over, Sununu was backpedaling on the “learn how to be an American” bit, saying that what he meant was that “the president has to learn the American formula for creating business,” which is not government-driven but creating “a climate where entrepreneurs can thrive.” But it was hardly an isolated outburst. Earlier in the day, Sununu had posited that Obama’s lack of appreciation for the American system of job creation stemmed from the fact that he president “spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something.”
No one should be shocked to hear this kind of language from Sununu. He’s long been the Romney campaign’s designated attack dog and provocateur, from calling Newt Gingrich “self-serving” in December to decrying Rick Santorum’s “emotional outbursts” in March. Sununu’s trademark bluster follows a famously undisciplined career as White House chief of staff under President George H.W. Bush, a job he left under fire in 1991 after such memorable stunts as taking a military jet for a trip to the dentist and a taxpayer-funded limousine to attend an auction of rare stamps.
When the Romney campaign wants to make headlines by going aggressively on the offensive, it summons Sununu, and he never fails to oblige. Sununu’s occasional gaffes are the price of admission; they may even be desirable for a campaign trying desperately to change the subject. If you want the fire of Sununu’s passion, you have to accept a burned-down building every once in a while.
The question is whether, in describing Obama as un-American, the Cuban-born Greek-Palestinian Sununu crossed a line, dog-whistling to those on the fringes who persist in believing that the president wasn’t born in the United States. But even the Obama campaign didn’t see it as that sinister. Campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith issued a statement accusing Sununu of having “gone off the deep end” — more of an eye-roll than a denunciation.
But it would also be a mistake to see this as the singular case of a particularly undisciplined surrogate. If it’s out of bounds to imply that Obama is less than fully American, Romney has been treading close to the line for quite some time. He frequently asserts that the president “doesn’t understand America,” a claim that, like Sununu’s, comes in the context of accusing Obama of insufficiently appreciating entrepreneurial capitalism, but carries other overtones as well.
Sununu, Romney, and plenty of other Republicans really do believe that Obama harbors a deeply un-American worldview — one that sees the amassing of wealth as suspect and favors a more communitarian society. Sununu may have articulated it particularly artlessly on Tuesday. But he wasn’t so much going off message as taking Romney’s message to its logical conclusion.
By: Molly Ball, The Atlantic, July 17, 2012
“Conspiracy Addled Loons”: Birtherism Is Back Now In Full Force
It seems birtherism is now back in full force. This can only mean there is an election coming up, and that the Republicans really, really need to court their worst and foulest supporters. If they can’t impress them with the sack of nothingness that is Mitt Romney, then they’ll at least point out that that other guy is, you know, suspicious.
First we had Donald Trump and his newfound dedication to birtherism, apparently as a direct response to people paying attention to him again. Among the people paying most attention: Mitt Romney, who for some reason is embracing fellow crapsack Trump instead of, say, avoiding him like a communicable disease. There’s still no obvious explanation for this, but apparently Romney really needs Trump voters (gawd help us, I don’t even want to know who those might be. Probably people who watch Jersey Shore, but think it isn’t vapid enough).
This has led to an interesting dance in which Team Mitt simultaneously cuddles up to the now-notorious birther and angrily denounces anyone who points that rather goddamn obvious fact out. Surrogate John Sununu was very, very surly with CNN for having Donald Trump on the teevee the same day as Trump’s event with Romney:
“Why is CNN so fixated on this?” Sununu, the former New Hampshire Governor, asked CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. “It’s CNN that wants to bring this up. I don’t want to bring it up. Mitt Romney has made it clear that he believes President Obama was born in the U.S. You had Donald Trump on last night, and now you are asking the question this morning. It’s CNN’s fixation.”
Why is the media fixated on Trump being an embarrassing, conspiracy-addled loon who yells his conspiracy theories at any member of the media who will listen? Gosh, I don’t know, Mr. Sununu, but it seems a bit like Mitt Romney holding an event with the Florida face-eating cannibal, but then getting mad if anyone mentions the face-eating part.
Donald Trump’s sole contribution to the discourse of late is public birtherism. That’s it. That’s his schtick. A far betterquestion would be why CNN feels any need whatsoever to talk to John Sununu about it. Who the hell cares what John Sununu thinks?
But even as Trump’s newest push into birtherism gets rave reviews from other conservative crackpots, Trump’s far from the only one involved here. Birtherism is resurgent in the entire Republican Party now. While Mitt Romney plays the hug-the-birther game, now Michigan Senate candidate and former congressperson Pete Hoekstra thinks birtherism needs to be elevated to the level of government function:
Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is running for Senate to take on Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, told a tea party town hall last month that the federal government should establish an official committee to review presidential candidates’ birth certificates. […]“Sure. I mean, I think — you know, I think, throw something at me if you want, I think with this president, the book is closed, all right?” Hoekstra tells the man. “It’s kind of like, I hate to say it, but I think the debate’s over — we lost that debate, and we lost that debate in 2008, when our presidential nominee said, ‘I ain’t talking about it.’ OK, I’m sorry.”
Note that Hoekstra doesn’t think the debate’s over because the evidence came in, thus rendering the entire debate pointless and stupid. He just thinks the debate’s over because John McCain didn’t talk about it enough. So now the small government (pfft) conservative wants a new government committee to review what already gets reviewed, just to make super-duper-extra-sure no secret Kenyan is trying to pull a fast one with the secret help of every damn functionary in the Hawaii state government. Goodie.
So is Mitt talking about this stuff? Of course he is. He’s talking about it in that lovely, not-really-talking-about-it way that has characterized his entire relationship with Donald Trump. Why, Mitt Romney just released his birth certificate, in an apparent attempt to prove absolutely nothing to absolutely nobody.
Yes, Republican Mitt Romney appears eligible to be president, according to a copy of Romney’s birth certificate released to Reuters by his campaign. Willard Mitt Romney, the certificate says, was born in Detroit on March 12, 1947.His mother, Lenore, was born in Utah and his father, former Michigan governor and one-time Republican presidential candidate George Romney, was born in Mexico.
Yes, Mitt Romney’s dad was born in Mexico. Want to see the birth certificate? That’s it up there at the top of the post.
Oh, Lord. Now I ask you, does that really prove anything? First off, using my special sleuthing powers I have discovered that it says “VOID” all down both sides of the page! And it was only printed in January of this year! And did they really have that typeface back in 1947? And look at the way the sheet is cut off, on the left, and how the whole page is slanted towards the left, as if it were trying to tell us something? It is obviously not a legitimate certificate that proves a darn thing, leading to the obvious question: Was Mitt Romney really born at all? Let’s ask Donald Trump’s rear end to weigh in on this.
That’s a trick question, of course. The answer is that Mitt Romney is really, really white (Pay no attention to the Mexican heritage, that was just something to do with Mitt’s ancestors fleeing the United States to practice—you know what? Never mind. Stuff happened, let’s just leave it at that.) and that people who look sufficiently white are automatically “true” Americans because conservatism really is just that dull and shallow.
By: Hunter, Daily Kos, May 30, 2012
“Bringing The Sideshow Into The Circus”: Why The Media Is Giving Romney A Pass On Trump’s Birtherism
So what’s up with the free pass Mitt Romney is getting on prominent supporter Donald Trump’s loud-and-proud birtherism? I have a theory.
Romney will collect big bucks today at a Donald Trump-hosted fundraiser in (where else?) Las Vegas. The Romney campaign is even using Trump’s celebrity status for low dollar fundraising, raffling off a chance to dine with both Romney and the Donald. Unfortunately for Team Romney, Trump’s favorite topic (well, after Donald Trump) is his belief that President Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible for the office he currently holds. This theory is so hoary and eye-roll inducing as to not merit serious comment, but its simple demolition by Hot Air’s Allahpundit on Friday night is still worth a read.
The media loves them some Trump birtherism, and this is a political problem inasmuch as, as Allahpundit notes, if the news cycle is devoted to the president’s birthplace, it isn’t focused on the soft economy. And that has been the tenor of coverage (including in this space) regarding Romney and Trump: analysis of the political implications of Donald the distraction. Conservative commentator George Will had a memorable turn of phrase discussing the issue on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, calling Trump a “bloviating ignoramus.” But the politics of Trump is an indirect problem for Romney.
It isn’t a direct problem, yet, which is the mystery. Trump is repeatedly suggesting that the president is not only engaged in a monstrous conspiracy which includes both lying to the American public and suborning the government of Hawaii to pass off forged documents as official ones, but also has illegally seized control of the highest office in the land. So why isn’t Romney quizzed more about whether he approves of Trump’s birtherism?
As Greg Sargent and Steve Benen noted on Friday, when Hilary Rosen questioned Ann Romney’s work experience, it was the focus of an extended media feeding frenzy despite the fact that Rosen had no formal role with the Obama campaign and that the campaign immediately and loudly denounced her comments. The difference, I think, is that the media takes Hilary Rosen (serious commentator, veteran political figure, longtime Washington mover and shaker) more seriously than it takes Donald Trump (serious self-promoter, veteran reality TV show host, longtime clown).
On the one hand it’s understandable why the media doesn’t take Trump the pol seriously. It’s not clear, for example, whether Trump is actually a birther or has just seized, again, on a topic that keeps him in the public eye (all publicity being good publicity). Beyond that no one thinks that, whatever words might pass from Romney’s mouth in praise of Trump, the candidate or his team take the reality TV star seriously in terms of policy. Trump is a sideshow and the media treats him as such.
But inasmuch as Team Romney is benefiting from his celebrity in terms of both primary campaigning as well as fundraising (and, perhaps, benefiting from his fringe, conspiracy cred with winger voters) it is bringing that sideshow into the circus. Romney ought to be forced to be clear about his views on Trump’s birtherism.
The former Massachusetts governor was in fact asked about Trump’s views on Monday, and he pointedly refused to repudiate them. “You know, I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in,” he told reporters. I’m not of the opinion that political candidates are responsible for every unhinged comment some random supporter makes. But this isn’t a throw-away comment from a stray supporter. When the candidate is busy embracing that supporter closely enough to make gobs of money off of him, and when the supporter’s fringe views are his favorite topic of conversation, it’s a legitimate line of inquiry, and one for which he should be forced to come up with a better answer.
Exit question: Four years ago if Senator Obama had enlisted and fundraised with a celebrity who told anyone who would listen that George W. Bush only won re-election in 2004 because he had secretly reprogrammed Deibold voting machines to steal Kerry votes, would he have gotten the same treatment from the media?
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, May 29, 2012
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