“An Echo, Not A Choice”: How The Right Wing Lost In 2012
The right wing has lost the election of 2012.
The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year’s best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to endorse the full-throated conservatism he embraced to win the Republican nomination.
If conservatism were winning, does anyone doubt that Romney would be running as a conservative? Yet unlike Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, Romney is offering an echo, not a choice. His strategy at the end is to try to sneak into the White House on a chorus of me-too’s.
The right is going along because its partisans know Romney has no other option. This, too, is an acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the grand ideological experiment heralded by the rise of the tea party has gained no traction. It also means that conservatives don’t believe that Romney really believes the moderate mush he’s putting forward now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying, what should the rest of us think?
Almost all of the analysis of Romney’s highly public burning of the right’s catechism focuses on such tactical issues as whether his betrayal of principle will help him win over middle-of-the-road women and carry Ohio. What should engage us more is that a movement that won the 2010 elections with a bang is trying to triumph just two years later on the basis of a whimper.
It turns out that there was no profound ideological conversion of the country two years ago. We remain the same moderate and practical country we have long been. In 2010, voters were upset about the economy, Democrats were demobilized, and President Obama wasn’t yet ready to fight. All the conservatives have left now is economic unease. So they don’t care what Romney says. They are happy to march under a false flag if that is the price of capturing power.
The total rout of the right’s ideology, particularly its neoconservative brand, was visible in Monday’s debate, in which Romney praised one Obama foreign policy initiative after another. He calmly abandoned much of what he had said during the previous 18 months. Gone were the hawkish assaults on Obama’s approach to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, China and nearly everywhere else. Romney was all about “peace.”
Romney’s most revealing line: “We don’t want another Iraq.” Thus did he bury without ceremony the great Bush-Cheney project. He renounced a war he had once supported with vehemence and enthusiasm.
Then there’s budget policy. If the Romney/Paul Ryan budget and tax ideas were so popular, why would the candidate and his sidekick, the one-time devotee of Ayn Rand, be investing so much energy in hiding the most important details of their plans? For that matter, why would Ryan feel obligated to forsake his love for Rand, the proud philosopher of “the virtue of selfishness” and the thinker he once said had inspired his public service?
Romney knows that, by substantial margins, the country favors raising taxes on the rich and opposes slashing many government programs, including Medicare and Social Security. Since Romney’s actual plan calls for cutting taxes on the rich, he has to disguise the fact. Where is the conviction?
The biggest sign that tea party thinking is dead is Romney’s straight-out deception about his past position on the rescue of the auto industry.
The bailout was the least popular policy Obama pursued — and, I’d argue, one of the most successful. It was Exhibit A for tea partyers who accused our moderately progressive president of being a socialist. In late 2008, one prominent Republican claimed that if the bailout the Detroit-based automakers sought went through, “you can kiss the American automotive industry good-bye.” The car companies, he said, would “seal their fate with a bailout check.” This would be the same Mitt Romney who tried to pretend on Monday that he never said what he said or thought what he thought. If the bailout is now good politics, and it is, then free-market fundamentalism has collapsed in a heap.
“Ideas have consequences” is one of the conservative movement’s most honored slogans. That the conservatives’ standard-bearer is now trying to escape the consequences of their ideas tells us all we need to know about who is winning the philosophical battle — and, because ideas do matter, who will win the election.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 24, 2012
“Dumber Than A 5th Grader”: President Obama’s Bayonet Analogy Is Just Too Complex For Paul Ryan To Understand
Conservatives have made an admirable attempt thus far to turn President Obama’s “horses and bayonets” zinger in their favor. Mostly, they have been doing this by lying.
What Obama said was that the military uses “fewer horses and bayonets” than it used to, because technology changes over time. Obama was making the point that comparing the number of ships our Navy had in 1916 to the number it has now, as Mitt Romney was doing, is a ridiculous way to gauge military strength, since the ships we do have are vastly more powerful than they used to be.
But some conservatives are pretending that Obama actually claimed that the military uses no horses or bayonets anymore. And the military does use them sometimes, so Obama is a moron! Media Matters gathered some of the more prominent examples:
Immediately following the debate, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace highlighted that a Marine “tweeted Fox News and said the Marines still use bayonets. So it may not be clear who doesn’t understand what the military currently uses.”
Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin complained that “Mr. Snarky Commander McSnark” was “lecturing Romney on how we don’t have bayonets anymore.” At Breitbart.com, Joel Pollak also purported to fact-check Obama, writing that “the military still uses bayonets.”
Fox Nation has similarly posted a story headlined “Mr. President, US Special Forces Rode Horses Into Afghanistan.”
Meanwhile, a guy who sells bayonets to the military tells TMZ that Obama is “ignorant … because our soldiers still use bayonets.” But again, Obama didn’t say that we never use bayonets or never use horses, so all these arguments and criticisms are directed at a straw man.
But Paul Ryan isn’t embracing the straw-man tactic. Instead, on CBS This Morning, he insisted that the whole bayonet analogy was so confusing, he couldn’t even wrap his famously wonky head around it:
“To compare modern American battleships and Navy with bayonets – I just don’t understand that comparison.”
Is it really that complicated? Let’s break down this analogy SAT-style: Outdated ships are to modern ships as outdated weaponry (such as bayonets) are to ____. Now, Ryan might guess something like “horses” or “the ocean,” but the answer is “modern weaponry.” This is a form of logical reasoning that most Americans master around the age of 17.
By: Dan Amira, Daily Intel, October 23, 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
“Mitt’s Ever-Slippery Position”: More Bobbing And Weaving on Abortion By Romney
Strangely enough, Mitt Romney’s ever-slippery position on abortion policy, one of the enduringly shameful features of his entire public career, is at the center of an argument that the mean old Obama campaign and the mean old Democrats are lying about Mitt’s positions and denying him his proper mantle of moderate conservatism.
Kevin Drum’s not having any of that:
It’s true that Romney thinks (accurately) that no flat ban on abortion is likely to cross the president’s desk in the near future. So in the sense of trying to figure out what will actually happen over the next four or eight years, it’s probably true that a President Romney wouldn’t have a chance to sign a flat ban on abortion.
But that’s only half of what any election is about. The other half is about what a prospective candidate wants to do. I don’t think the United States will ever return to the gold standard, for example, but the fact that Ron Paul supports it tells me that he’s a crank. That’s reason enough not to vote for him.
Likewise, even if Romney never has the opportunity to sign a nationwide ban on abortion, he’s obviously saying that he’d like to if he ever got the chance. What’s more, Romney probably would get a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade by appointing a Sam Alito clone to the Supreme Court, and he knows very well that this would result in plenty of states flatly banning abortion. This tells me he’s an abortion extremist, and it tells me a lot about who he is. It’s fair game.
Correct. But I’d go further. Aside from Romney’s comment on a hypothetical flat federal abortion ban, which would be obviously unconstitutional until such time as a President Romney stacked the Supreme Court to reverse Roe, he promised in his “My Pro-Life Pledge” ukase published by National Review in the early stages of the nomination fight to “advocate for and support a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.” That would be a federal version of the state legislation being promoted around the country testing the very margins of Roe by banning abortions before an arbitrary point at which a very small minority of scientists and a very large majority of antichoicers claim a fetus can feel pain.
So looking at the big picture, Mitt Romney’s promised to do everything within his power to restrict abortion rights under Roe, and then everything within his power to get it reversed, all within a “pro-life” position that sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t include exceptions for the incredibly tiny percentage of pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, or direct threats to the life of the woman involved. And this has been his basic position since 2007, or at least as long as Paul Ryan has refrained from public praise of Ayn Rand as his great mentor and become a self-proclaimed Thomist.
It should also be recalled that Mitt has identified himself unambiguously with the argument of conservative religious figures that the HHS contraception coverage mandate is objectionable because it includes “abortifacients,” reflecting the belief of anti-choice ultras that Plan B, IUDs, and even standard contraceptive pills actually kill human beings.
This does not add up to a “moderate” position on abortion, however Team Mitt tries to bob and weave and play the victim.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 19, 2012
“Don’t Worry, He’s Lying”: The Basic Gist Of The Case For Mitt Romney
Yesterday, I did an online debate with Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, for New York magazine. We went through a wide range of topics, but one thing we stuck on—for a while—was the issue of Mitt Romney’s political commitments. Bissinger refused to believe that Romney is the conservative he’s campaigned as for the last 18 months, and he insisted Romney would be more moderate than he’s appeared if elected president. Here’s the nut of his argument:
[T]ake a look at Romney’s record as Mass governor. He was not some crazoid conservative. He crossed party lines. He provided the template for Obamacare, for God’s sake.
Romney has at least shown some ability to cross lines, however weak. Obama has not. He is not politically adept. He is not good at crossing the aisle. I can only go on what I have read, but he does not like politics and all the gab and bullshit. Politics is gab and bullshit. So I think Romney has a much better chance of appealing to Dems than Obama will ever have appealing to Rs.
One thing I’ve noticed in defenses of Romney is this idea that we should trust that he’s lying to his conservative supporters, and will be more moderate once in office. This view was recently pushed by Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal, who wrote an entire column asserting that Romney has no intention of following through on any of his promises.
Since Romney is a chameleon—and happy to switch positions for electoral gain—I can see why some would look at him and assume that he doesn’t plan to carry out his stated plans if elected president. But there are two things worth remembering: First, that presidents almost always attempt to fulfill their campaign promises. Americans like to believe otherwise, but the truth is that the first-term agenda of most presidents mirrors their rhetoric during the campaign. Barack Obama promised middle-class tax cuts and health-care reform, and he delivered. Tax cuts and education reform formed the basis for George W. Bush’s campaign in 2000, and were the first items on his agenda in 2001. Mitt Romney has promised large, across-the-board tax cuts, increased military spending, and cuts to social services. Most likely, that’s what he’ll do.
One last thing: All of this is to say nothing of congressional Republicans, who are committed to following through on the right-wing budgets they passed last year. If Romney wins the White House, one of their own—Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan—will be second-in-command, and it’s absurd to think that they won’t want him to make a push for implementing the Ryan budget. Indeed, as long as they control the Senate, Republicans will be able to pass the Ryan budget without a single Democratic vote. And if they don’t? As Bush demonstrated in his first term, it’s not hard to find a few vulnerable Democrats who will support your priorities for the sake of electoral safety.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, October 18, 2012
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