“Attack And Distract Strategy”: Mitt Romney’s Empty ObamaCare-Repeal Rhetoric
Mitt Romney strode out to respond to the Supreme Court ruling behind a podium that read “Repeal and Replace.” His response focused on the first verb and ignored the second.
Right off the top, Romney delivered one of the tightest lines of his campaign: “What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States. And that is, I will act to repeal Obamacare.”
It went downhill from there. Careful to repeat the word “Obamacare” some 18 times throughout his brief remarks, Romney was careless with the facts in his rebuttal.
Maybe it is the inherent awkwardness of the fact that Romney’s major governmental accomplishment is an individual mandate-driven health-care plan, but his response was fear- rather than fact-based. This is consistent with the “attack and distract” strategy he has deployed when it comes to policy during his general-election campaign.
At least three claims Romney made in his speech deserve particular scrutiny:
First, Medi-scare: “Obamacare cuts Medicare—cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion.” Medi-scare is a classic fear-mongering technique usually deployed by Democrats against Republicans, most vividly by the television ad depicting Paul Ryan pushing grandma off a cliff. The Affordable Care Act does try to rein in Medicare costs by slowing the rate of growth and ending the Medicare Advantage program, but that should be consistent with Republican values of increasing efficiency and reducing waste, fraud, and abuse. Moreover, the Ryan plan, which Romney endorses, would cut at least that amount but redirect the savings to reducing the deficit. Playing the Medi-scare card is low and discredited, but hearing it from a Republican nominee is more than a bit surreal.
Second, the deficit-bomb card: “Obamacare adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt.” Deficit and debt make up one of the Obama administration’s greatest weaknesses among independents. It is ultimately a form of generational theft. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scored the ACA and determined that it actually would reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion in the next 10 years. I agree that government estimates almost always lowball the eventual costs, especially in the realm of entitlements, but the CBO scoring can’t just be ignored in favor of a partisan narrative. And of course, one of the arguments for health-care reform in general is that it will reduce costs in the long run with our aging population and improve American industry competitiveness.
Third, “Obamacare puts the federal government between you and your doctor.” This is always the emotional kicker, directly connected to the oft-repeated talking point that the ACA is a “government takeover of health care.” That would be scary indeed, but keep in mind the liberal critique of the Obama health-care reform is that it is too insurance-industry-friendly. After all, there was never even a public option, let alone the single-payer fantasy. The current system is far from perfect and far from free market. I happen to believe that third-party-payer problem is a big part of what drives up costs. But the Big Brother dystopian fantasy captured by this instant classic in the paranoid style typed by Ben Shapiro—“This is the greatest destruction of individual liberty since Dred Scott. This is the end of America as we know it. No exaggeration.”—is just that. A paranoid exaggeration.
Other specters offered up by Romney include the estimate that an unspecified 20 million Americans will lose health insurance under the ACA and that the law represents a $500 million tax increase. (Keep in mind that the penalty/tax would only be paid by people who refuse to buy health insurance and therefore continue to freeload off the rest of us when they go to the emergency room for urgent care.)
Of course, this law will not solve all the problems in American medicine, and it almost certainly will create some new ones. But aspects of the bill—like coverage of children up to age 26 and stopping insurance companies from denying people insurance due to preexisting conditions—are justly popular and improvements over the status quo.
Republicans beyond Romney were also quick to hoist the “repeal” banner—calling a vote in the House on July 9. They believe this ruling could be a political benefit in terms of getting out the vote in November. The Romney campaign claimed that they raised more than a million dollars online in the hours after the decision. This could be the boost the Romney camp needs for the Tea Party to overlook the ironic inconsistency of the GOP nominee on this core issue. Republicans may very well get a base boost from this decision, reflected in both dollars and votes.
But if you’re actually interested in governing as well as in winning, the impulse to scream “repeal” has to be followed by a plan to “replace.” There are plenty of good Republican policy proposals on how to reduce costs and increase individual choice in health care, but Mitt Romney still needs to decide which specific policy plan he would enact. Unclaimed ideas range from medical-malpractice reform to expanding health savings accounts to allowing insurance purchases across state lines to generic-drug importation. There might even be some degree of bipartisan support for a few these reforms. Then again, the individual mandate once had bipartisan support as well.
Bottom line: simply making up stats for the sake of soundbites is beneath a serious nominee. There is an obligation to propose as well as oppose if you are running for president.
By: John Avlon, The Daily Beast, June 29, 2012
“An Implausible Argument”: Mitt Romney’s Other Health-Care Contradiction
In vowing this morning to do what the Supreme Court didn’t—repeal Obamacare—Mitt Romney trotted out all his arguments against the newly constitutionally sanctioned health care law. Among them were these two points: First, that Obamacare would cause 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance, and second, that it would be a job-killer to boot.
Problem is, these two arguments directly contradict each other.
The 20 million Americans who presumably would lose their health insurance would do so because their employers would decide to cease offering it, letting their employees fend for themselves on the health-insurance exchanges. Why would these employers opt to do that? The only conceivable reason is that it would be cheaper for them to do that. And if it was cheaper for them to do that, they’d then have more money to hire more employees, creating rather than killing jobs.
You can argue, with serial implausibility, that Obamacare will cause millions to lose their health insurance or that it’s a job-killer. You can’t argue both.
With today’s ruling, the fate of Obama’s health-care reform will be up to the voters in November’s election. For voters who hate Obama and all he stands for, that’s one more reason to go to the polls—but those voters are probably going to the polls in any event. If Romney decides to ride this issue, it’s not clear he’ll gain any more votes than he already has locked up. He may motivate some Republicans who don’t particularly care for him but will vote out of their hatred of Obama to care for him somewhat more. (Polling shows that a higher percentage of pro-Obama voters support the president because they like him than pro-Romney voters like Romney.) But I doubt that raising his positives among voters who are already determined to vote for him anyway matters.
Republicans will doubtless exploit the court’s upholding the mandate under the Congress’s power to tax rather than under the Constitution’s commerce clause. There’s that t-word again! It’s unlikely that more than a couple percent of the American people, those with incomes adequate enough to decline to buy insurance, will ever be subject to that tax, but you can count on Republicans to depict it as a mass confiscation worthy of Lenin. Obama and the Democrats need to be able to counter this with real numbers—in Massachusetts, the one state that has already adopted a similar law, just 1 percent of taxpayers are subject to the penalty—even as they focus on the benefits most Americans will derive from the law, which was the tack the president took in his statement this morning.
By: Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect, June 28, 2012
“Mitt Romney Will Be Relieved”: Republicans Will Soon Stop Talking About Health Care
The Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), particularly Justice John Roberts siding with the liberals, took most everyone by surprise this morning. But if you tune in to Fox News or surf around the conservative blogs, they seem to be taking it somewhat philosophically. They’re not happy, but there’s little rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Mostly they’re saying, well, we’ll just have to win this in November (see here for a representative sample). There’s also a good deal of discussion of the fact that the Court declared that the requirement to carry health insurance is permissible under the government’s taxing power. After all, if there’s one thing Republicans know how to do, it’s complain about taxes. Mitch McConnell quickly took to the floor of the Senate to condemn the decision, and no doubt Mitt Romney will soon say something so vague that no one can determine what he actually thinks.
But here’s my guess: Republicans are going to drop health care very quickly. They took their shot with the only avenue they had to kill the ACA, and they came up short. The legal battle is over, and they know that once they start talking about repealing the whole thing, it makes it easier to talk about the benefits of the ACA that will be repealed, particularly since they have given up on even bothering to come up with a “replace” part of “repeal and replace.” Oh, they’ll still condemn the ACA when they’re on Fox, or when they’re talking to partisan audiences—just enough to reassure base conservatives that they’re still angry. But in short order, they’re going to move on to other topics now that the legal question has been settled.
That suits Mitt Romney just fine. You may remember that when the primary campaign started, many people said it would be impossible for him to become the Republican nominee, given that he had passed a health-care plan so closely resembling the ACA in Massachusetts, complete with an individual mandate. He managed to wriggle and writhe away from questions about it for the last two years. Those questions are no more comfortable than they ever were. As the leader of the GOP, he’ll set the agenda for the party. And there are few things he’d rather talk about less. We’ll pore over this decision for the next week, then the news media will move on, and Romney will breathe a sigh of relief.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 28, 2012
“Selective Memory Loss”: Romney Defended Bush’s Invocation Of Executive Privilege
When the Obama administration announced last week that it would invoke executive privilege and not release some documents related to the “Fast and Furious” operation, Mitt Romney’s campaign was quick to call the president a hypocrite. But in 2007, Romney endorsed a similar move by a Republican administration.
Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul attacked the Obama administration’s executive privilege claim last Wednesday in a statement, saying “President Obama’s pledge to run the most open and transparent administration in history has turned out to be just another broken promise.”
But as Congress sought to compel President George W. Bush’s administration to allow Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to cooperate with an investigation into the U.S. Attorney’s scandal, Romney could not have been more forceful in his support for the executive privilege claim. Asked by a conservative radio show how whether he agreed with President Bush’s decision to simply ignore the subpoenas, Romney said:
Yeah, he’s got a responsibility to protect executive privilege. That’s just part of preserving the powers of the presidency… He should do what he thinks is the right thing with regards to members of his team but preserve executive privilege.
The Bush administration asserted “deliberative process privilege” in that case — the same privilege being cited here for the Department of Justice “Fast and Furious” documents.
By: Josh Israel, Think Progress, June 26, 2012
“Why Mitt Romney Ducks Issues”: There’s No Way To Square The Circle With Conservatives
So why doesn’t Mitt Romney advance any policy ideas, anyway? In particular, why doesn’t he advance some ideas — on the economy preferably, but any issue would do — to shield himself from the obvious attack that he’s a more-of-the-same return to the still-unpopular George W. Bush?
It’s no surprise that he doesn’t want a lot of focus on his own proposals; as with most challengers, his best bet is to win all of the votes of people unhappy with the incumbent, and so being as much a generic opponent as possible is a logical strategy. But that doesn’t quite explain his frequent — and sometimes comical — refusal to have any policy positions at all on numerous issues. In particular, Barack Obama has already begun to attack him as a return to Bush; one would think that a few (bland, unthreatening) policy proposals could convince many in the press to at least not amplify that message.
So why doesn’t Romney differentiate himself from Bush? It’s pretty simple, and it gets back to what drives much of the Romney program: fear of conservatives. Or to put it another way: party constraints. After all, while most voters may think of Bush as a typical conservative Republican, many Tea Partiers and other conservative activists see Bush as one step (if that) removed from the dreaded RINO label. And so for Romney, who still must worry about keeping activists happy, there’s no way to square the circle. If Bush was dangerously moderate, then deviating even a bit to the center would put Romney in dangerous territory for activists. But of course a move to the right to separate himself from Bush, and Romney would be courting a reputation for extremism that could be trouble for him with swing voters.
Granted, Romney might have found ways of moving on to new issues that were perceived as neither left nor right. But that’s apparently not his strength as a politician, and it’s not as if the other Republican candidates, Ron Paul excepted, were generating interesting and untried policies of their own. At any rate it would have been too risky during the nomination process, given how easily conservatives have turned on seemingly (and formerly) safe conservative positions. Better, in the primaries, to use attitude (all that stuff about bowing and apologizing, for example) as a substitute for issues for appealing to conservatives.
And for general election swing voters, Romney is following the same path: substituting attitude such as a vague support for jobs for issues — and taking the hits from the occasional reporter who cares about such things — and hoping that it’s enough. It has a down side; it’s getting him a reputation in the press for ducking issues, and it makes it easier to paint him as Mitt W. Romney — but given his constraints, it’s a rational strategy. Expect plenty more of it.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post, June 26, 2012
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