“Atop The Class Structure”: Does Boca Raton Mitt Romney Dislike America?
The most incisive reaction to Mitt Romney’s disparaging comments about 47 percent of us came from a conservative friend who e-mailed: “If I were you, I’d wonder why Romney hates America so much.”
A bit strong, perhaps. But the more you think about what Romney said, the more you wonder how he really feels about the country he wants to lead.
What kind of nation are we if nearly half of us are lazy, self-indulgent moochers who will never be persuaded to mend our ways? “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney said, thus writing off a huge share of our citizenry.
From his perch high atop the class structure, Romney offered an analysis of political motivations that even Marxists would regard as excessively materialistic. He speaks as if hardworking parents who seek government help to provide health care for their kids are irresponsible, that students who get government aid to attend community colleges are not trying to “care for their lives.” Has he never spoken with busboys and waitresses, hospital workers and janitors who make too little to pay income taxes but work their hearts out to “take personal responsibility”?
In defending himself on Fox News on Tuesday, Romney only deepened his difficulty. “I think a society based upon a government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money, that’s the wrong course for America,” he said.
Put aside that if President Obama wanted a “government-centered nation,” the stock market wouldn’t have doubled, making many in Romney’s Boca Raton, Fla., audience richer. In his impatience with those he accuses of casting themselves as “victims,” Romney misses the real story of government in the lives of most Americans. So often, we combine our own exertions with a little assistance along the way — the GI Bill, student loans, Social Security survivors’ benefits, public education — to become self-sufficient and independent.
And Romney said not a word about all the redistribution upward in a tax code that favors investment over labor income. That’s why Romney pays federal taxes at a much lower rate than do many in middle class — and why, given his stress on the importance of paying income taxes, he might usefully release a few more of his own tax returns.
Romney’s comments, which were caught in a video obtained and published online by Mother Jones magazine, have been widely compared to Obama’s private 2008 comment about working-class people who “cling to guns or religion.” I disliked that line, and as a churchgoing supporter of gun control, I always bristle at the too-easy conflation some liberals make of “God” and “guns.” But Obama’s defenders have been correct in noting that he got a big thing right that Romney got wrong: Most of Obama’s observations were empathetic toward blue-collar Americans who “feel so betrayed by government.” His whole point was the need to reach out to, not write off, a constituency that had not embraced him.
Many have already written wisely about how Romney’s original statement got the facts wrong, notably about how many Americans actually pay federal taxes and how a large share of those who don’t are retired.
But here’s the most important point Romney got wrong: Among the wealthy nations, it’s difficult to find one where people work harder than the United States. In a 2005 New Yorker article (written before the downturn), James Surowiecki noted that, compared with Europeans, “more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth.” Yes, the riches enjoyed by the folks at that Boca Raton fundraiser were made possible in significant part by the strenuous efforts of proud, self-sufficient people, including many in the 47 percent.
Romney misses something else about America: We do believe in a certain amount of “redistribution” toward those in need. We have always rejected what one of our leaders called a “destructive mind-set,” which he defined as “the idea that if government would only get out of our way, all our problems would be solved,” an approach with “no nobler purpose than ‘Leave us alone.’ ”
That would be George W. Bush in 1999, as my colleague Michael Gerson reminded us the other day. Bush added: “Yet this is not who we are as Americans. We have always found our better selves in sympathy and generosity, both in our lives and in our laws. . . . Our national character shines in our compassion.”
Yes, it does, even if the Boca Raton Mitt Romney seems not to appreciate that about us, either.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 19, 2012
“Mitt’s Snake-Bit Season”: The Worst Run Of Disasters This Side Of The Mayan Calendar
Our topic for today is: When Bad Things Happen to Mitt Romney.
Really, it’s been the worst run of disasters this side of the Mayan calendar. The Republicans’ woes started last Friday, when Ann and Mitt filmed a TV interview in which they entertained the kind of personal questions that most candidates learned to avoid after Bill Clinton did that boxers-versus-briefs thing. Asked what he wears to bed, Mitt said: “I think the best answer is: as little as possible.”
Euww.
Then, over the weekend, Romney aides began spilling their guts about how other staffers had screwed up the Republicans’ bounce-free convention. In an attempt to change the conversation, the campaign announced that it had just realized the nation wants Romney to say what he’d actually do as president. Voters “are eager to hear more details about policies to turn our economy around,” said an adviser, Ed Gillespie.
In search of just such specificity, the scoop-hungry Christian Broadcasting Network asked Paul Ryan if he would continue refusing to identify exactly what tax loopholes the Romney administration would close in order to turn our economy around.
“Yes,” said Ryan, who then veered into a disquisition about something that once happened to Tip O’Neill.
You may be wondering whatever became of Ryan, who was such a big sensation when Romney first picked him as a running mate. Since Tampa, he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, resurfacing every now and then to put up another ad for re-election to his House seat in Wisconsin.
It’s not all that unusual for a vice-presidential candidate to go low-profile. And it is totally not true that Mitt Romney strapped Paul Ryan to the top of a car and drove him to Canada. Stop spreading rumors!
Next, Mother Jones published that video of the fund-raiser in Boca Raton in which Romney said that 47 percent of the country is composed of moochers who want to confiscate the earnings of hard-working stockbrokers and spend it on caviar and dialysis treatments.
“So my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney decreed, undoubtedly more in sorrow than in anger.
Then, Republican Senate candidates in tight races began distancing themselves from the top of the ticket.
Ann Romney suggested Mitt was “taken out of context,” in what was undoubtedly meant as a helpful comment.
“All of us make mistakes,” said President Obama, in what probably wasn’t.
“Obviously inarticulate,” decreed Paul Ryan, popping up from a gopher hole somewhere in Nevada.
The fund-raiser, a $50,000-a-pop sit-down dinner, was hosted by Marc Leder, a financier who The New York Post reported as having a “wild party” last summer in the Hamptons “where guests cavorted nude in the pool” while “scantily dressed Russians danced on platforms.” You cannot blame Romney for that. If presidential candidates had to avoid all multimillionaires who held parties with naked guests and Russians on platforms, there would be no money for misleading TV commercials.
The video was a reminder of how ghastly this business of running for president can be. The guests seemed more interested in the breadbasket than the candidate. Romney was blathering away in the manner of somebody trying to stay awake during the 12th hour of a cross-country drive.
On Tuesday, moving to tamp down criticism that he was a conversational disaster area, Romney told Fox’s Neil Cavuto: “Well, we were, of course, talking about a campaign and how he’s going to get close to half the votes. I’m going to get half the vote, approximately. I hope — I want to get 50.1 percent or more.”
With that out of the way, Romney explained that his real point had not been to criticize people who don’t pay income taxes, but merely to point out that he wanted them to make more money. “I think people would like to be paying taxes,” added the quarter-billionaire whose own eagerness to be part of the solution is a matter of public record.
How did he let things slip out of control? Maybe the answer lies back with that Ann-and-Mitt interview, which was on “Live With Kelly and Michael.” Asked about his preferences when it came to heroines of low-end reality TV shows, the future presidential candidate enthusiastically announced: “I’m kind of a Snooki fan. Look how tiny she’s gotten. She’s lost weight and she’s energetic. I mean, just her sparkplug personality is kind of fun.”
It could be worse. He could have announced that he enjoys spending his free hours watching “Hoarders” marathons. But, still, it’s weird that Mitt Romney appears to think a lot about Snooki. Is it possible that while he’s being dragged around from one fund-raiser to the next, he spends his spare time watching “Jersey Shore” reruns in the limo?
That would explain so much.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 19, 2012
“Fingerprints Of The Right Wing Media”: Mitt Romney Campaigns As The Fox News Candidate
Note to Mitt Romney: This is what happens when you run for president on the back of Fox News and embrace the dark anti-Obama conspiracies that fuel the right-wing media.
On Monday, the Republican nominee was forced to hold a rare, late-night press availibility to respond to Mother Jones’ report on a video of Romney taken surreptitiously at a closed-door Florida campaign fundraiser in May where the candidate tells donors that “there are 47 percent who are with [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”
The notion that Obama voters are lazy victims who rely on the government for sustenance from birth to death represents Romney’s open embrace of Fox News and the same insulting allegation that it, along with other right-wing talkers, has been making for the last four years. Here, the Republican’s long-standing caricature of the lazy welfare recipient gets dramatically expanded to include tens of millions of Americans who vote Democratic and who apparently worship big government and disdain hard work.
The sweeping generalization Romney uses to denigrate so many voters, and the fact he did it behind closed doors while speaking to wealthy donors, is what turned the comments into a significant campaign news event. Writing off nearly half the electorate as selfish dependents who refuse to take responsibilities for their own lives isn’t usually how White House candidates frame their campaigns.
What’s telling though is how, once again, the fingerprints of Fox News and the right-wing media are all over the Romney campaign and its latest misstep.
Fact: Fox and friends have been railing for years about how Obama is purposefully making more people dependent on the government (an “entitlement state“) so he can turn that dependency into votes. Obama, according to the fevered rhetoric from the far-right swamp, wants to radically extend the reach of the government in an effort to extract voter loyalty. “He’d rather you be a slave and be economically dependent upon him,” is how Fox favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) put it.
Remember Glenn Beck’s unhinged comparison to Obama as drug-dealer-in-chief?
If he’s not a socialist, if he’s not a Marxist, then he must be a heroin dealer. I believe our new president is pushing a much more powerful version of heroin, and he is getting people strung out.
Meanwhile, discussing welfare work requirement reform this summer (and while completely misrepresenting the changes the Obama administration implemented at the behest of Republican governors), Fox contributor Laura Ingraham claimed the changes were designed to be a “push for election turnout.” Explained Ingraham: “Give more free stuff to people and hope that they come to the polls.”
And of course Rush Limbaugh has been relentlessly promoting the unsavory talking point, claiming the Democratic president doesn’t “want people leaving the welfare rolls” because “those are voters that are getting away.”
All of this strange right-wing media rhetoric has apparently soaked in and has been embraced by the Romney campaign. In fact, just last week, an unnamed Romney adviser complained to National Review that the reason the media are allegedly rooting for Obama is because “the more Washington DC controls our economy, the more important inside-the-beltway publications are and the more money they make.”
Again, with this twisted notion that the (socialist!) Obama administration is trying to control people’s lives by expanding the size of government, and that Americans who receive government services automatically support Democrats. (No unemployment recipient has ever voted Republican?) Indeed, the Atlantic mapped out where Romney’s 47 percent of no-income-tax-paying voters live, and it turns out “those people are disproportionately in red states — that is, states that tend to vote Republican.”
This is the kind of fringe, conspiratorial rhetoric that campaigns usually leave to the periphery. And for good reason. But Mitt Romney is the Fox News candidate and apparently that means echoing every dark, incoherent attack that the talk channel can conjure up.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, September 18, 2012
“Competing Voices”: Did Rupert Murdoch Throw Fox News Under the Bus?
Rupert Murdoch veered off script this week with some tweets that ran completely counter to the Fox News spin this campaign season. In fact, they undercut the entire political premise at Fox, which is to attack Democrats without question, and to force Republican politicians to champion a truly right-wing agenda. Is there a rift brewing?
It’s true Murdoch has a history of taking stances on issues such as global warming and immigration that are diametrically opposed to the propaganda programming Fox airs. So perhaps this is another example of that.
And some observers might say Murdoch’s candid comments suggest competing voices are welcome within News Corp. I think that’s unlikely though, at least within Roger Ailes’ Fox world where you’re either on the team or off. Remember that in 2008, angry that Murdoch might use his New York Post to endorse Obama after Fox had tagged him a terrorist sympathizer, Ailes reportedly “threw a fit” and threatened to quit. (Murdoch’s Post endorsed McCain instead.)
Did Murdoch’s curious tweets cause similar consternation?
Note this one:
Election: To win Romney must open big tent to sympathetic families. Stop fearing far right which has nowhere else to go. Otherwise no hope.
Murdoch stresses Romney has “no hope” of winning in November if he keeps kowtowing (my word) to the “far right.” Instead, he has to embrace the “big tent.”
Where to begin in describing the lack of self-awareness in that statement? Or is it just shocking hypocrisy in play?
Murdoch owns Fox News, the epicenter of the “far right” in America, and Fox News has been relentlessly urging Republican candidates to wage right-wing battles against Obama. But seven weeks before Election Day, Murdoch now thinks Romney should stop trying to impress the “far right”? He should stop trying to appeal to the Fox News audience?
Urging a “big tent” appeal, Murdoch actually sounds like the Republican strategists who try to win elections for a living (instead of winning cable ratings races) who fretted that the vice presidential selection of Paul Ryan would doom the Romney campaign because of the “extremely unpopular” policies Ryan advocates.
The irony is Murdoch (and Fox News) was among those who all but demanded Ryan be the VP pick, and who then loudly cheered his selection. The pivotal Ryan pick was a perfect example of Romney catering to the “far right” in a way that Murdoch now says is counter productive to the candidate.
Also, it’s a bit baffling the way Murdoch dismissively refers to the “far right,” as if he’s not the most important broadcaster within the “far right,” and as if Fox isn’t the “far right” sun around which the conservative movement orbits every day. There’s a reason New York magazine labeled Ailes “the head of the Republican Party.” And there’s a reason a GOP source told the magazine “You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger. Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.”
And note to Rupert: The Republican Party, at the urging of Fox News, eagerly folded its “big tent” years ago.
Here’s another Murdoch tweet from this week that likely produced bewildered looks inside the Fox News green room:
Retrospect; Conventions mixed but net big win for democrats. Michelle O and Clinton the big stars. Bill brilliant, Hillary away until 016.
The proclamation from the Fox News owner that the DNC was a hit last week, and that “big star” Bill Clinton was “brilliant,” must have come as a surprise to Fox talkers who spent last week denigrating the convention and bemoaning Clinton’s flat, “self-indulgent” speech.
In fact, Fox tried for days to deflate the convention by lying about its television ratings, misleading about what Obama said in his acceptance speech, and in general just endlessly bemoaning its very existence. (Fox was simply part of the larger right-wing media crackup over the convention.)
Turns out though, Murdoch thought the whole thing was a “big win for Democrats.”
I don’t know what Murdoch’s long-view strategy is, but in the short-term, by touting the success of the Democratic convention and downplaying the political importance of the “far right,” it sure looks like he’s throwing Fox News under the bus.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, September 13, 2012
“The GOP Manufactured Freak-Out”: What The Constitution And The Democratic Platform Have In Common
Paul Ryan, Fox News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and assorted media figures everywhere seem to be fascinated by the same omission from the Democratic Party’s platform.
The word “God” is notably missing from this year’s 40-page document, as David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network first pointed out.
“We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential,” the party’s 2008 platform said.
This year, a similar paragraph instead states, “We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth — the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.”
The Democratic platform honors religious freedom, but given the absence of the “g” word, the manufactured freak-out is now well underway.
It’s tempting to delve into an extended explanation of why, for believers, God probably doesn’t need perfunctory references in a political party platform, and why this trumped up story is silly, even by 2012 standards, but let’s instead consider another tidbit of news.
The United States Constitution — the foundation of our government, the basis for our laws, and a model for democracies around the globe for generations — includes no references to God. Literally, not one.
If the Constitution doesn’t mention God, I think the political world can probably keep its apoplexy in check over the Democratic platform. Unless Republicans and news organizations are going to start condemning the Constitution, too, demanding an explanation for its secular nature, let’s relax a bit.
BY: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 5, 2012
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