“Handsome Swindler”: Romney’s Eerie Post-Flip-Flop Consistency
When Mitt Romney decided to get Republican ideological-purity cautionary tale and non-witch Christine O’Donnell to announce her endorsement of him, he was probably thinking about how useful it would be to have the support of another staunch conservative. He may not have been thinking about some of the secondary issues involved in this plan, such as the fact that it would require O’Donnell to talk, which would involve her saying awkward things like, “he’s been consistent since he changed his mind.”
The line actually gets to the nub of the conservative question on Romney. Since he changed his mind, he has indeed been dogmatically consistent. (In contrast to Newt Gingrich.) But why?
One of the most revealing stories I’ve seen on Romney was written by Jonathan Weisman last month in The Wall Street Journal. In it, Weisman chronicles the degree to which Romney simply flipped a switch in 2005, deciding virtually overnight to stop courting moderates and liberals he needed to get elected in Massachusetts and to start courting the right. The switch occurred across the board, on social as well as economic issues:
A gun-rights lobbyist, Jim Wallace, found himself battling the governor over firearms fees and hunters’ priorities. A low point for Mr. Wallace came one day in July 2004 when Gov. Romney was set to sign a bill that banned assault weapons but that also had some provisions gun-rights groups liked. Mr. Wallace had an invitation to speak at the signing ceremony.
At the last minute, a gun-control activist, Jon Rosenthal, got an invitation too. Not only that, but as Mr. Rosenthal rushed into the news conference, he says he saw Romney aides pulling up the name tags taped to the floor that showed where each guest was to stand —tearing up the paper with Mr. Wallace’s name and replacing it with one bearing his own name. The gun-control advocate was placed close to the governor and got the speaking slot that Mr. Wallace, the gun-rights lobbyist, had expected.
Yet in the following year, 2005, both sides on the gun issue noticed a change.
In May of that year, Mr. Romney declared a “Right to Bear Arms Day.” Mr. Wallace’s group, the Gun Owners’ Action League, began having nearly monthly meetings with the governor’s top aides, he says. Mr. Romney signed legislation cutting some red tape detested by gun owners in November 2005, and less than a year later he became a lifetime member of the N.R.A.
The positive interpretation of this narrative, if you’re a conservative, is that Romney will stay bought — he decided to ingratiate himself with the right, and he needs to retain the right’s support to accomplish anything. That’s more or less the argument Ramesh Ponnuru made in his National Review cover story endorsing him. The negative interpretation is that Romney is essentially running a con, though it’s impossible to tell if he was conning Massachusetts then or is conning Republicans now. (My guess, based on Romney’s admiration for his moderate father, is that he’s conning conservatives now, but I can’t really be certain.) When you’re running a con, of course you stay consistent – you have to keep up the front, no matter what.
The robotic consistency of Romney’s newfound conservatism does contrast sharply with Gingrich, who lurches between hysterical right-wing paranoia and bouts of bipartisanship. And yet the erratic character of Gingrich’s swings suggests that they’re unplanned, and thus that they spring from actual conviction, albeit momentary convictions. Gingrich actually believes what he is advocating at the moment he is advocating it. Nobody can plausibly say the same of Romney.
Romney is the handsome swindler who plots to win your mother’s heart and make off with her fortune. Gingrich is like the husband who periodically gets drunk and runs off to spend a week with a stripper in a low-rent motel but always comes home in the end. Which one would you rather see your mother marry?
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, December 14, 2011
Mitt Romney Can’t Catch A Break–Christine O’Donnell Endorses Him
Former Gov. Mitt Romney just can’t seem to get a break. And most recently, it’s not because of an endorsement he failed to get. It’s because of one he just received, from failed Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, best known for her creepy TV ad reassuring voters that she is not a witch.
At a time when the GOP field is seeking to kick it up a scholarly notch, O’Donnell’s endorsement reminds voters of the intellectual lightweights in the party. Remarkably, O’Donnell—much like professional egotist Donald Trump—seems to think her blessing is desired.
“I’ve been warned by many not to endorse because no matter who I choose, no doubt some will be upset,” O’Donnell said in a statement. Really? Was the field of contenders trying to win her endorsement? Or is it only the campaign strategists of the endorsee who she believes will be upset?
More wisdom from the unsuccessful candidate:
“It is a difficult decision choosing between such great candidates, truly difficult. Yet, this race is too important to sit out.” It’s the presidential race, for heaven’s sake, and we’re struggling out of a stubbornly lingering recession and extricating ourselves from two costly wars. Of course it’s an important race.
Then there’s this political insight:
Additionally, we simply can’t afford to have the primary contest drag out the way it did in 2008. Unlike 2008 when the incumbent president was not a candidate, the longer the 2012 GOP Primary contest drags out, Pres. Obama continues to have a free pass and get away with campaigning from the Oval Office. The sooner we have a nominee, the sooner we as a movement can unite and get to the real task at hand; making sure Pres. Obama is a one-term president.
Baaaaammmmmp! Not really. The 2008 GOP primary didn’t really “drag on;” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee stayed in the race for awhile, but he stayed in longer than he genuinely was in the race. It was the Democratic primary that dragged on until June, and their guy won the election. That primary served to make President Obama a stronger candidate, and had Hillary Clinton won the nomination, she would have been a stronger candidate as well. The difference between the Democrats in 2008 and the GOP in the current cycle is that the Democrats’ last primary dragged on because they had two very strong candidates with very different appeals to voters. The Republicans, at the moment at least, are facing an extended selection process because segments of the party are unhappy with the offerings.
O’Donnell is right, then, in suggesting that a protracted civil war within the GOP could weaken the eventual nominee. But if her endorsement would make the difference, the party has much bigger problems.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, December 14, 2011
Fear and Favor-A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is.
A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.”True, there have been some changes in the plot. In the original, Kane tried to buy high political office for himself. In the new version, he just puts politicians on his payroll.
I mean that literally. As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy.
Arguably, this shouldn’t be surprising. Modern American conservatism is, in large part, a movement shaped by billionaires and their bank accounts, and assured paychecks for the ideologically loyal are an important part of the system. Scientists willing to deny the existence of man-made climate change, economists willing to declare that tax cuts for the rich are essential to growth, strategic thinkers willing to provide rationales for wars of choice, lawyers willing to provide defenses of torture, all can count on support from a network of organizations that may seem independent on the surface but are largely financed by a handful of ultrawealthy families.
And these organizations have long provided havens for conservative political figures not currently in office. Thus when Senator Rick Santorum was defeated in 2006, he got a new job as head of the America’s Enemies program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a think tank that has received funding from the usual sources: the Koch brothers, the Coors family, and so on.
Now Mr. Santorum is one of those paid Fox contributors contemplating a presidential run. What’s the difference?
Well, for one thing, Fox News seems to have decided that it no longer needs to maintain even the pretense of being nonpartisan.
Nobody who was paying attention has ever doubted that Fox is, in reality, a part of the Republican political machine; but the network — with its Orwellian slogan, “fair and balanced” — has always denied the obvious. Officially, it still does. But by hiring those G.O.P. candidates, while at the same time making million-dollar contributions to the Republican Governors Association and the rabidly anti-Obama United States Chamber of Commerce, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owns Fox, is signaling that it no longer feels the need to make any effort to keep up appearances.
Something else has changed, too: increasingly, Fox News has gone from merely supporting Republican candidates to anointing them. Christine O’Donnell, the upset winner of the G.O.P. Senate primary in Delaware, is often described as the Tea Party candidate, but given the publicity the network gave her, she could equally well be described as the Fox News candidate. Anyway, there’s not much difference: the Tea Party movement owes much of its rise to enthusiastic Fox coverage.
As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox” — literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls. It was days later, by the way, that Mr. Frum was fired by the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatives criticize Fox at their peril.
So the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo. What are the implications?
Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that when billionaires put their might behind “grass roots” right-wing action, it’s not just about ideology: it’s also about business. What the Koch brothers have bought with their huge political outlays is, above all, freedom to pollute. What Mr. Murdoch is acquiring with his expanded political role is the kind of influence that lets his media empire make its own rules.
Thus in Britain, a reporter at one of Mr. Murdoch’s papers, News of the World, was caught hacking into the voice mail of prominent citizens, including members of the royal family. But Scotland Yard showed little interest in getting to the bottom of the story. Now the editor who ran the paper when the hacking was taking place is chief of communications for the Conservative government — and that government is talking about slashing the budget of the BBC, which competes with the News Corporation.
So think of those paychecks to Sarah Palin and others as smart investments. After all, if you’re a media mogul, it’s always good to have friends in high places. And the most reliable friends are the ones who know they owe it all to you.
By PAUL KRUGMAN: New York Times Op-Ed Columnist, Oct. 3, 2010
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