“Leaving Bush Behind Elevator Doors”: Mitt Romney Throws “Air Kiss To Bill Clinton”
Mitt Romney was against Bill Clinton before he was for him.
There was Romney, campaigning Tuesday in Iowa, praising the nation’s previous Democratic president and casting him as far superior to the current incumbent.
“Almost a generation ago, Bill Clinton announced that the era of big government was over,” Romney declared. “Clinton was signaling to his own party that Democrats should no longer try to govern by proposing a new program for every problem.” President Obama, he said, “tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas.”
So you might assume that Romney likes Clinton. But that would be wrong. Scrambling during the GOP primaries this year to explain why he had voted in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary for the late Sen. Paul Tsongas, Romney invoked that old GOP standby: Clinton hatred.
“In my state of Massachusetts, you could register as an independent and go vote in [whichever] primary happens to be very interesting,” Romney averred. “And any chance I got to vote against Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy, I took.”
Now, strictly speaking, I suppose that Romney can praise Clinton now while once having voted against him. Or he can claim that, while he prefers Clinton to Obama, he preferred Tsongas to Clinton. That so much of what Romney says requires such careful parsing suggests how little he feels bound by anything he has said in the past. For Romney, every day is a blank slate. Consistency, he seems to think, is the hobgoblin of losing campaigns.
There is more here than casual flip-flopping. Romney says he likes Clinton’s view of government better than Obama’s. And it’s true that government’s share of the economy grew under Obama because he inherited a downturn and baby boomers got older.
But what about taxes? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, government receipts as a share of gross domestic product rose from 17.5 percent in 1992, the year Clinton was elected, to 20.6 percent in 2000, his last full year in office. By contrast, government receipts as a share of GDP were just 15.4 percent in 2011. Which numbers make Romney happier?
The top income tax rate under Clinton, for incomes over $250,000, was 39.6 percent. Obama wants to go back to the Clinton rate. Romney wants to cut the top rate from its current 35 percent to 28 percent. Who is Clinton’s real heir?
And Obama would not restore all of the Clinton tax rates. He wants to raise only the top one. In principle, Obama favors lower taxes on middle-income Americans than Clinton did. By this measure, Obama is less “pro-government” than Clinton.
You can make the same case on health care. The law that Obama signed in 2010 is less adventurous and less government-oriented than the health plan Clinton proposed in the early 1990s. Obama’s law is based on many Republican ideas, including the individual mandate that Romney supported as governor of Massachusetts. Clinton, to the consternation of conservatives, was for a mandate on businesses.
It’s revealing that Romney made his pro-Clinton comments the same day that — speaking to reporters as elevator doors were closing on him — former president George W. Bush announced, “I’m for Mitt Romney.” Funny that Romney made a bigger deal about Clinton than about that Bush endorsement. Yet Republicans, including Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), categorically reject the lessons that Clinton taught.
When Clinton raised the top tax rate, without a single Republican vote, supply-side conservatives howled that asking a little more from the wealthy would tank the economy. It did nothing of the sort. After Clinton’s tax increase, the economy roared, deficits turned into surpluses and the empathetic guy from Arkansas, despite certain well-known difficulties, earned the long-term affection of the American people. On the other hand, polls show that Bush, who pursued policies Republicans are proposing more of now, is remembered less fondly. Romney would prefer to leave Bush behind the elevator doors.
For the rest of this campaign, count on Republicans to tout Clinton as more pro-business than Obama and to do all they can to separate our current president from the best parts of Clinton’s legacy. Yes, many business folks who initially resented Clinton’s tax increases came to appreciate the economic boom that followed. But whose approach to government, budgets and taxes more closely resembles Clinton’s? Here’s a hint: It’s not the guy who went out of his way to vote against Clinton in 1992.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr. Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, May 16, 2012
“Still Hung Over”: George W. Bush’s Elevator “Blink Of An Endorsement” For Mitt Romney
A few weeks back, I wrote in Newsweek that Republicans were treating George W. Bush’s tenure “like a bender from which the party is still hung over.”
Yes, he was president of the United States for eight years, but Mitt Romney and the other GOP candidates had practically airbrushed him out of the picture. They barely mentioned 43, and when they did it was usually to criticize him over spending and bailouts—because, former spokesman Ari Fleischer told me, “they don’t want to deal with Democratic attacks in the fall for having said something praiseworthy about President Bush.”
That may explain why Bush’s endorsement Tuesday—if you can call it that—consisted of all of four words, and the Romney campaign barely cleared its throat in accepting his backing.
Here’s the sum total:
“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House.
Elevator doors closing. Like in a B-movie comedy.
So that’s it? Not even a measly photo op?
A Romney spokeswoman told the New York Observer: “We’re proud to have the president’s support, but he made clear when he left office that he was not going to engage in political campaigns and we have no reason to believe that is going to change.”
What about the convention? Will Bush be ushered in through a back door?
Look, it’s not hard to decipher what’s going on here. Bush left office on Jan. 20, 2009 as an extremely unpopular figure. Polls show that more people blame him than Obama for the decrepit state of the economy. Romney wants to run against Obama’s record, not defend W’s.
At the same time, the Obama campaign keeps driving home how Romney wants to take the country “backwards,” meaning to the bad old Bush years. So keeping the former president out of the spotlight won’t be as easy as stepping inside a closing elevator.
By: Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast, May 16, 2012
“Inconvenient Biblical Truths” And Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves
Well, it’s been quite a whirlwind week for same-sex marriage, from North Carolina to Obama to Colorado—and, of course, to the many outraged conservatives concerned with preserving traditional marriage, i.e., the time-honored sacred bond between one man and one woman. Why, just last week, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said that marriage has meant just that for over five thousand years.
Huh?
Time to break out your Bible, Mr. Perkins! Abraham had two wives, Sarah and her handmaiden Hagar. King Solomon had 700 wives, plus 300 concubines and slaves. Jacob, the patriarch who gives Israel its name, had two wives and two concubines. In a humanist vein, Exodus 21:10 warns that when men take additional wives, they must still provide for their previous one. (Exodus 21:16 adds that if a man seduces a virgin and has sex with her, he has to marry her, too.)
But that’s not all. In biblical society, when you conquered another city, tribe, or nation, the victorious men would “win” their defeated foes’ wives as part of the spoils. It also commanded levirate marriage, the system wherein, if a man died, his younger brother would have to marry his widow and produce heirs with her who would be considered the older brother’s descendants. Now that’s traditional marriage!
Later Islamic and Jewish sources, unclear on these parameters (the prophet Muhammad, of course, had several wives), debated whether it is permissible for a man to marry a three- or four-year-old girl. St. Paul, meanwhile, said that marriage was a compromise between the ideal of celibacy and the unfortunate fact that people like to have sex. Fortunately, we pluralists can appreciate both those religious traditions which advise men to marry little girls and those which tell them not to marry anyone at all.
And of course, even until the present day, traditional marriage has meant arranged marriage. The notion that two adults would enter into a marriage on their own volition is a radical innovation in the institution of marriage, at most two hundred years old.
Oh, and let’s not forget that in Europe and North America, marriage was considered a commercial proposition first and foremost—not a romantic one. Princes married princesses not because of fairy tales, but because their parents had political alliances to consider. Further down the economic ladder, people married for a variety of biological, commercial, and genealogical reasons—but rarely for love. (See Stephanie Coontz’s excellent Marriage: A History for more.)
Oh, and that’s right, I almost forgot about interracial marriage, which in some parts of America was seen as a crime against nature and God up until the 1960s. (Of course, Moses himself was in an interracial marriage, but the anti-miscegenation crowd overlooked that inconvenient fact.) It’s easy today for the likes of Tony Perkins to say that this change was a minor one; but let’s remember that a century ago, African Americans were not considered fully human by religious conservatives. Interracial marriage—as much as it’s disgusting to even say so today—was seen as an unnatural marriage between different species.
Oh, wait a minute, I forgot the most laughable part of this whole ludicrous spectacle: that it’s the Mormon Mitt Romney who’s insisting that marriage has “always” been between one man and one woman. Right—except that Romney’s own great-grandfather had five wives, before the LDS church, under massive pressure and persecution, reversed its doctrine on polygamy.
So, let’s see if I can total all this up. Traditional marriage is one man with multiple wives, multiple concubines, wives conquered in war and wives acquired in levirate marriage, possibly including girls under the age of ten, but definitely not including anyone of a different ethnic group, in an arranged marriage with disposition of property as its purpose. That seems very different from “one man, one woman,” does it not?
Of course, it’s easy to say that marriage as an institution evolves—but then, if we admit that, we have to admit that sanctioning loving, same-sex unions is just another step in that evolution. Perhaps this is why the Tony Perkinses of the world simply ignore the Bible when it doesn’t suit their purposes, instead preferring to make pseudo-scientific (and wholly unsupported) claims about what’s best for children and society. The Bible’s truths are just too inconvenient.
By: Jay Michaelson, Religion Dispatches, May 16, 2012
“Out Of Egypt, Into The Red Sea”: Romney’s Cowardly Speech On The Deficit
Another day, another economic speech by Mitt Romney. Romney is constantly trying to refocus the campaign on the economy. After being sidetracked by President Obama’s announcement that he supports gay marriage speech last week, and Romney’s appeal to the religious right at Liberty University on Saturday, Romney is once again on the attack against Obama’s economic record. Romney’s Tuesday afternoon speech in Des Moines, Iowa, was nominally focused on deficit reduction.
There are plenty of reasons to worry about the rate of job growth in the short term and federal debt accumulation in the long term, but unfortunately Romney’s proposals would make both problems worse. Rather than offer specific investments or incentives to hire now and plausible plans to reduce the deficit later, when the economy is strong enough to withstand spending cuts, Romney offers the same austerity measures that have crippled the recovery in much of Europe.
It’s worse than just that. If Romney specified which tax loopholes he would close and spending he would cut, at least we’d get deficit reduction, if nothing else. It would also allow for an honest debate about the American people’s priorities on taxes, spending and deficit reduction. But he stubbornly refuses, out of cowardice. Specific cuts could trigger opposition, so Romney offers only bromides.
Romney compared the rising federal debt to a “prairie fire” sweeping the nation. “The people of Iowa and America have watched President Obama for nearly four years, much of that time with Congress controlled by his own party. And rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire,” said Romney. “He has spent more and borrowed more.”
While technically true, this is a bit misleading. Obama inherited an imbalance between spending and revenue because of tax cuts and wars started by George W. Bush and congressional Republicans. Much of the increase in the deficit since Obama took office can be attributed to increases in mandatory spending such as food stamps and decreases in tax revenue that were caused by the recession he also inherited, rather than any of his policies. While Obama did sign some new spending bills, he also signed the Affordable Care Act, which would reduce the deficit. Romney pledges to repeal the ACA and complains that it cut spending on Medicare.
“The time has come for a president, a leader, who will lead. I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno,” Romney promised. But how? Romney does not say. He wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, then cut taxes an additional 20 percent and raise spending on defense. All of this increases the deficit.
To pay for all of this and then reduce the deficit from current levels would require drastic cuts in domestic programs. But Romney knows that the American people like the idea of cutting domestic spending more than they like cutting actual programs they rely upon. So he avoids offering any specifics. “Move programs to states or to the private sector where they can be run more efficiently and where we can do a better job helping the people who need our help,” said Romney. “Shut down programs that aren’t working. And streamline everything that’s left.” None of this really means anything. No one is for programs that aren’t working or inefficiencies. Unless you say which programs you believe are not working, or which inefficiencies you will remove, you aren’t really saying anything at all. Romney says he will lead on this issue, but he offers no leadership at all.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, May 15, 2012
“Nothing Personal, Just Policy”: Let Me Guess, Mitt Romney Has Gay Friends
George W. Bush has gay friends. So does Sarah Palin. Amazingly, so does Rick Santorum. And let me guess: soon Mitt Romney will, too.
Every Republican politician seems to have at least one gay friend these days. That’s not too difficult: even if you tried, it would be hard to live and work in America without meeting at least one openly gay person you can get along with. But for a right-wing politician having gay friends, shall we say, has benefits. These unnamed, unseen gay friends send a message that an anti-gay politician isn’t a hater. I mean, how can you hate your friends? It’s just policy, nothing personal.
Of course, the problem is that it is personal. Having gay friends doesn’t absolve one of anti-gay prejudice any more than loving one’s wife and daughters absolves one of defunding Planned Parenthood. Even if you’d be happy to have gay people over to dinner, that doesn’t give you a pass to deny them fundamental rights.
The “gay friends” defense is weak, but popular. And Mitt Romney, scrambling to clarify his position on equal rights after President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality, must be considering it right about now.
Romney has always been careful to stipulate that his various and elusive anti-gay policies have nothing to do with any personal anti-gay animus. This strategy was clear in a 2006 speech to the right-wing Family Research Council, recently unearthed by PFAW’s Right Wing Watch. In it, taking homophobia to a whole new level, the candidate declares that “the price of same-sex marriage is paid by the children” and amazingly asserts that marriage equality is the result of “spreading secular religion and its substitute values.” He then offers a spoon full a sugar with a call for an “outpouring of respect and tolerance for all people” and laughably encourages his listeners to “vigorously protest discrimination and bigotry.”
When President Obama announced last week that he supports marriage equality, Romney responded by repeating his opposition to not only marriage equality but also to civil unions. He then insisted that same-sex couples have the “right” to “have a loving relationship, or even to adopt a child.” The next day, he changed his mind about the adoption part. The day after that, he delivered a commencement address to Liberty University, which bans openly gay students and is allied with some of the most vile anti-gay rhetoric in the Religious Right today.
But none of this wavering matches Romney’s recent, brief hiring of an openly gay staffer, foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell. A Republican adviser told the New York Times after Grenell was forced out of Romney’s campaign, “It’s not that the campaign cared whether Ric Grenell was gay. They believed this was a nonissue. But they didn’t want to confront the religious right.” Increasingly, when it comes to choosing between basic dignity and futile attempts to appease the far right, the mainstream GOP has been choosing the far right.
Unfortunately for Romney, the Religious Right, the object of his caving, isn’t buying his frantic attempts to pander. The most outspoken critic of Romney’s decision to hire Grenell quickly, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, became the most outspoken critic of the decision to fire him. “How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me?” Fischer demanded.
It has to give at least some Republicans pause that the far right has become so extreme, and Republican leaders have become so subservient to their demands, that it is now not even possible to have any gay people work for a GOP campaign.
But soon Mitt Romney will tell us that he has gay friends.
By: MIchael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, may 15, 2012
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