“Missing The Medicare Forest For The Trees”: GOP Want’s You To Believe They Are The Defenders Of “Socialized Medicine”
I was reading Charles Krauthammer’s column this morning, and noticed that he’s adopted the Romney/Ryan talking points on Medicare — the far-right columnist accused President Obama of “robbing Granny’s health care.”
My first instinct was to explain how wrong this is, but it occurred to me how disjointed the nature of the debate has become. The fight over Medicare, on a conceptual level, got off track recently and has been careening in the wrong direction ever since.
Given how critically important this is in the presidential election, let’s pause for a moment to consider the bigger picture.
The Romney/Ryan argument is that Obama/Biden is cutting Medicare, hurting seniors, and undermining the financial security of the Medicare system. All week, I’ve been making an effort to set the record straight by pointing to the facts: Obama’s savings strengthen the system; benefits for seniors have been expanded, not cut; the Republican budget plan embraced the same savings Romney/Ryan is now condemning; the GOP privatization alternative is dangerous; etc.
The facts are, to be sure, still true, and they’re important. But let’s ignore the trees and look at the forest.
What is Medicare? It’s a massive, government-run system of socialized medicine. It’s wildly popular, very successful, and one of the pillars of modern Democratic governance. This government-run system of socialized medicine was created by Democrats against the opposition of conservative Republicans, and it’s Democrats who’ve fought to protect it for more than a half-century.
Or to summarize, the left loves Medicare and always has; the right hates Medicare and always has. For liberals, the system is a celebrated ideal; for conservatives it’s an unconstitutional, big-government outrage in desperate need of privatization.
In 2012, once we get past all of the talking points and attack ads, we’re left with this: Romney/Ryan wants you to believe they’re the liberals. No, seriously. Think about what the Republican presidential ticket, Fox News, Krauthammer, Donald Trump, and the Republican National Committee have been saying all week: those mean, rascally Democrats cut our beloved Medicare and voters should be outraged.
In other words, the argument pushed by the most right-wing major-party ticket in a generation is that Barack Obama is a left-wing socialist who wants government-run socialized medicine and that Barack Obama is a far-right brute who wants to undermine government-run socialized medicine.
If you care about protecting the popular system of socialized medicine, the argument goes, your best bet would be to put it the hands of conservative Republicans who steadfastly oppose the very idea of a government-run system of socialized medicine.
The questions voters should ask themselves, then, are incredibly simple: putting aside literally everything else you’ve heard this week, why in the world would a Democratic president want to “gut” Medicare? Why would liberal members of Congress and the AARP join a Democratic president in trying to undermine the system Democrats created and celebrate?
Why would voters expect conservative Republicans to be the trusted champions of socialized medicine?
As a political matter, I understand exactly what Romney/Ryan is trying to do. As Greg Sargent explained this morning, “It’s important, though, to get at the true nature of the Romney strategy here. It isn’t about drawing an actual policy contrast with the Obama campaign. It’s about obfuscating the actual policy differences between the two candidates over the program.”
That’s exactly right. The Republican plan to deal with the intense unpopularity of the Romney/Ryan plan is to simply muddy the waters — both sides are accusing the other side of being against Medicare; the media doesn’t like separating fact from fiction; and voters, even well-intentioned folks who want to know the truth, aren’t quite sure what to believe. For all I know, this obfuscation strategy might actually work.
But while assorted hacks may find partisan value in falsely accusing Obama of “robbing Granny’s health care,” does that make any sense on a conceptual level? Since when do Republicans look at President Obama and think he’s too conservative when it comes to socialized medicine?
All I’m suggesting is that a little critical thinking on the part of the electorate and the political world can go a long way.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 17, 2012
“Dark Days Of Repression”: Ohio Early Voting Cutbacks Disenfranchise Minority Voters
On Election Day 2004, long lines and widespread electoral dysfunctional marred the results of the presidential election in Ohio, whose electoral votes ended up handing George W. Bush a second term. “The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters,” found a post-election report by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. According to one survey, 174,000 Ohioans, 3 percent of the electorate, left their polling place without voting because of the interminable wait. (Bush won the state by only 118,000 votes).
After 2004, Ohio reformed its electoral process by adding thirty-five days of early voting before Election Day, which led to a much smoother voting experience in 2008. The Obama campaign used this extra time to successfully mobilize its supporters, building a massive lead among early voters than John McCain could not overcome on Election Day.
In response to the 2008 election results, Ohio Republicans drastically curtailed the early voting period in 2012 from thirty-five to eleven days, with no voting on the Sunday before the election, when African-American churches historically rally their congregants to go to the polls. (Ohio was one of five states to cut back on early voting since 2010.) Voting rights activists subsequently gathered enough signatures to block the new voting restrictions and force a referendum on Election Day. In reaction, Ohio Republicans repealed their own bill in the state legislature, but kept a ban on early voting three days before Election Day (a period when 93,000 Ohioans voted in 2008), adding an exception for active duty members of the military, who tend to lean Republican. (The Obama campaign is now challenging the law in court, seeking to expand early voting for all Ohioans).
The Romney campaign has recently captured headlines with its absurd and untrue claim that the Obama campaign is trying to suppress the rights of military voters. The real story from Ohio is how cutbacks to early voting will disproportionately disenfranchise African-American voters in Ohio’s most populous counties. African-Americans, who supported Obama over McCain by 95 points in Ohio, comprise 28 percent of the population of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County but accounted for 56 percent of early voters in 2008, according to research done by Norman Robbins of the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates and Mark Salling of Cleveland State University. In Columbus’s Franklin County, African-Americans comprise 20 percent of the population but made up 34 percent of early voters.
Now, in heavily Democratic cities like Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo, early voting hours will be limited to 8 am until 5 pm on weekdays beginning on October 1, with no voting at night or during the weekend, when it’s most convenient for working people to vote. Republican election commissioners have blocked Democratic efforts to expand early voting hours in these counties, where the board of elections are split equally between Democratic and Republican members. Ohio Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted has broken the tie by intervening on behalf of his fellow Republicans. (According to the Board of Elections, 82% of early voters in Franklin County voted early on nights or weekends, which Republicans have curtailed. The number who voted on nights or weekends was nearly 50% in Cuyahoga County.)
“I cannot create unequal access from one county board to another, and I must also keep in mind resources available to each county,” Husted said in explaining his decision to deny expanded early voting hours in heavily Democratic counties. Yet in solidly Republican counties like Warren and Butler, GOP election commissioners have approved expanded early voting hours on nights and weekends. Noted the Cincinnati Enquirer: “The counties where Husted has joined other Republicans to deny expanded early voting strongly backed then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008, while most of those where the extra hours will stand heavily supported GOP nominee John McCain.” Moreover, budget constraints have not stopped Republican legislators from passing costly voter ID laws across the map since 2010.
The cutbacks in early voting in Ohio are part of a broader push by Republicans to restrict the right to vote for millions of Americans, particularly those who voted for Obama. “The Republicans remember those long lines outside board of elections last time in the evenings and on weekends,” Tim Burke, Democratic Party chairman in Cincinnati’s Hamilton County, told the Enquirer. “The lines were overwhelmingly African-American, and it’s pretty obvious that the people were predominately—very predominately Obama voters. The Republicans don’t want that to happen again. It’s that simple.”
Ohio in 2012 is at risk of heading back to the dark days of 2004. “Voting—America’s most precious right and the foundation for all others—is a fragile civic exercise for many Ohioans,” the Enquirer wrote recently.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, August 8, 2012
“The Unraveling”: Republican Drooling, Stupid, Transparent, Self Conscious Lying
One of the habits of political spinmeisters that I dislike the most is the tendency to claim that close contests are invariably about to break wide open into a complete debacle, a historic humiliation, a defeat of biblical proportions for their opponent. I don’t know what this sort of stupid, transparent, self-conscious lying is supposed to accomplish. Intimidation? Exciting “the base?” Discouraging the other “team’s” “base?” Working the refs? Beats me.
In any event, we’re getting a lot of this right now from the Romney campaign and its supporters. Here’s an item from The Hill:
A top Romney spokeswoman said the Obama campaign’s allegations that he misled the public over his tenure at Bain Capital are “reckless and wild,” and a sign that the president’s campaign is “unraveling.”
And here’s a post from Michael Walsh at The Corner:
The Obama campaign’s desperate “felony” charge against Mitt Romney ought to serve as a wake-up call for the Romney campaign and for the American public regarding the utter amorality of the president and his functionaries.
Neither of these excited people is offering any rationale for why the Obama campaign should be feeling “reckless and wild” or “desperate,” or should be “unraveling.” Well, actually, the Romney staffer in the Hill story, Gail Gitcho, offered this drooling bit of spin that wouldn’t fool a first grader:
[T]his attack from yesterday has frankly just jumped the shark and it shows that the Obama campaign, they are scared to death of having to run on their own record because they haven’t been able to create jobs and they have no plans in the future to be able to fix the economy, and that’s what the American people care about.”
That, BTW, is an excellent example of another spinmestier habit I absolutely hate, which is making generalizations about what “the American people” think or want.
But anyway, why would anyone actually think the Obama campaign is in extremis right now? Every time I turn around there’s another article about the incredible stability of the polls of this contest, and their utter imperviousness to the events of the campaign. The electorate is so polarized that Obama couldn’t drop to more than a few points behind Romney even if he suddenly came out and said his favorite writer was Frantz Fanon. The actual outcome is likely going to depend on GOTV efforts that aren’t even underway yet. So what, pray tell, is the point of the constant claims that Obama’s panicking or is going to lose as badly as Mondale or has been “rejected by the American people?” Will this change a single vote? I can’t imagine why.
What “the American people” really need are spinmeisters who are a little less shameless.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 13, 2012
“The Real Romney”: The Danger Of Mitt Being Mitt
Political consultants tell candidates to be authentic — to “be yourself.” In Mitt Romney’s case, that might not be such good advice.
Once again, for what seems like the umpteenth time, Romney is being crowned as the presumptive Republican nominee. His victories in Michigan and Arizona took much of the wind out of Rick Santorum’s sails; Newt Gingrich is lost at sea; and Ron Paul is, well, Ron Paul. As long as Romney keeps winning, talk of some kind of a deus ex machina plot twist at the convention — someone just like Jeb Bush surfaces, but with a different last name — remains pure fantasy.
Given the Romney campaign’s huge advantages in money and organization, and given the has-been nature of his opposition, the only reason he hasn’t wrapped this thing up is the “authenticity” issue: Not just “is he a real conservative” but “is he even a real person,” in the sense of having some idea of how most Americans live.
The campaign has sought to answer that question with stunts such as sending Romney to the Daytona 500. The optics were good until a reporter asked the candidate if he follows NASCAR. Romney’s response will live forever.
“Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans,” he said, “but I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”
Well, who doesn’t? In Romney’s world, I mean.
There was a similarly clueless moment in Michigan. Romney was trying to atone for his vocal opposition to President Obama’s bailout of the auto industry. He said that he liked seeing so many Detroit-made cars on the streets — to be expected in Detroit — and noted that he drives a Ford Mustang and a Chevrolet pickup. As icing on the cake, he added that his wife Ann “drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.”
Again, who doesn’t?
The explanation of why Ann Romney can’t get by with one did not advance the candidate’s quest for regular-guy authenticity: The cars are garaged at different residences.
And who can forget the way that Romney, whose wealth is estimated at $250 million, described one of his sources of income. “I get speakers’ fees from time to time, but not very much,” he said.
His tax returns showed earnings from speaking engagements of more than $370,000. Indeed, that’s “not very much” compared to Romney’s income from his investments. To most Americans, it’s a fortune.
I could go on and on with examples of Romney’s Marie Antoinette rhetoric, but you get the point. It’s not just what he says that tends to distance him from voters, but the whole way he carries himself. He’s just not believable as a NASCAR fan, ardent or otherwise.
Advisers tried putting him in jeans. At the end of a long day, they still have a crease.
Romney has been running for president for the better part of a decade yet still hasn’t made a personal connection with the Republican base, let alone the wider electorate. The conventional advice, at this point, would be: Quit pretending. Don’t try to convince voters that you’re a red-meat social conservative when your record on social issues screams “moderate.” And please, don’t pretend to be Average Joe if your proof of identity is that you keep American-made luxury cars at two of your mansions.
Romney took this kind of I-am-who-I-am stand this week when he said that, while “it’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments,” he was “not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support.” He even joked later about his immaculate coif, saying that “it would be a big fire, I assure you.”
That was charmingly authentic. The problem is that the effect of Romney’s comment is to dismiss the Republican Party’s activist base as an unsophisticated rabble. Which is perhaps not the best attitude for a Republican candidate to display.
Romney’s “gaffes” look unmistakably like glimpses of the real Romney — not a bad person but a man with no ability to see beyond the small, cosseted world of private equity and great wealth that he inhabits. He has to be reminded that most voters live in a world where people drive their Cadillacs one at a time.
From the Romney campaign’s point of view, it may be that while fake authenticity is bad, real authenticity is much worse. If I were an adviser, I’d send out a memo to all hands: Whatever you do, don’t let Mitt be Mitt.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 1, 2012
“MBA And Law Degree”: Rick Santorum Is A “Snob” By His Own Definition
So Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama, and a whole bunch of other people in politics want to be president.
What a bunch of snobs.
That is, of course, if we use Santorum’s definition, which seems oddly to equate the quest for success with snobbery. Santorum called Obama a “snob” for encouraging young people to go to college, which is pretty much the opposite of what most parents say to their kids. It’s especially odd when we consider that Santorum has his MBA and law degree, and is encouraging his own children to go to college. And as for Santorum’s claim that all Obama wants is for young people to be recreated in his image by liberal college professors ready to indoctrinate them, is that how Santorum explains Harvard Law and Business grad Romney? With an estimated wealth of $250 million and a wife who, the candidate disclosed recently drives “a couple of Cadillacs,” Romney’s not exactly from the ‘hood.
Snobbery isn’t defined by inclusion. It’s defined by willful exclusion. Wanting more people to attend college isn’t snobbery; it’s advocating a route that statistically puts the individual in a place of higher wealth and lower unemployment. Refusing to talk to someone at the PTA meeting who didn’t go to college is snobbery. Refusing to associate with people simply because they don’t have money or fancy cars is snobbery. It may be more than that, of course. It may just be that people tend to hang around people from similar backgrounds. But encouraging someone to seek higher education isn’t snobbery at all. It’s the opposite.
Santorum is correct if he was saying that four-year colleges aren’t for everyone. Not everyone has the interest or the intellect to attend such institutions, and the world indeed needs laborers, artists, performers, and technicians who can do their work well with other kinds of training. Community colleges in particular provide critical education for people not suited to four-year school, and they have the added advantage of training people for jobs that for the most part can’t be outsourced. As Rep. Barney Frank once astutely observed, “You can’t stick a needle in somebody’s ass from Mumbai.”
But what’s really happening on the campaign trail is the tired and unbelievably hypocritical effort to seek the snobbiest job in America by demonizing parts of the electorate as “snobs.” And where does the concern for the non-snobby among us go after the campaign? Candidates may tout the value of “Joe The Plumber,” but they let guys like “Sheldon The Las Vegas Casino Billionaire” bankroll their campaign through unlimited super PAC donations. All the candidates have at least one million-dollar donor helping out. Santorum, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, just got $1 million from Louisiana businessman William Dore; Foster Friess has also been dumping cash into the Red, White and Blue Fund for the former Pennsylvania senator. If Santorum wins the White House, who will guide his decisions—Joe the Unsnobby, or the billionaires who paid for his campaign?
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 28, 2012
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