“Snob With No Common Sense”: Romney Is Winning Young Voters … For Obama
Why is Barack Obama officially kicking off his presidential campaign this weekend at Virginia Commonwealth University and Ohio State University?
Ohio and Virginia are easy since both are key presidential battleground states. But why start on college campuses? The answer is simple. To win re-election, the president needs the same kind of enthusiasm and support from young people he enjoyed in 2008. The president will have to work very hard to capture the magic of his last campaign. Not coincidentally, the Obama campaign just released a new viral ad called the “The Life of Julia” which depicts the positive impact that Obama policies will have on an American woman as she progresses through her life and career.
Rick Santorum may not recognize the importance of a college degree but most people do. A college degree gives young Americans the chance to compete effectively in a cut throat global economy. Helping young people get a college education is not snobbery, it’s just common sense. Data shows that college grads are less likely to be unemployed and more likely to make good money than people who don’t have degrees.
But the House Republicans want to make it more difficult for young people to compete internationally. Student loan interest rates will double by July 1 unless the GOP gets off its butt. But Republicans in true Darwinian fashion are pitting college students against pregnant women in the struggle for federal aid. But the GOP won’t even consider the idea of eliminating federal tax freebies for their budget buddies, the banksters and billionaires to fund college student loans and preventive healthcare for women. The banksters and billionaires have well-heeled lobbyists and millions of dollars to contribute to GOP campaigns. Pregnant women and college students don’t have anything that matters to Republicans.
I am a part-time college professor and many of the students I taught this semester won’t be back in the fall if House Republicans fail to block the increase in interest rates for college loans. Their absence will be a tragedy for America and our ability to compete in the global economy.
Since Mitt Romney has a degree from Brigham Young University and two degrees from Harvard, he should understand the importance of a college degree. But Mitt Romney doesn’t understand anything that matters to most Americans. Romney advised young people who can’t afford a college education to borrow money from their parents to go to school. Well that’s fine if your dad is as rich as Mitt Romney. But middle class Americans are just barely paying their mortgages and putting food on the table, so lending their kids money for a college education is just a pipe dream and another indication that Richey Romney doesn’t have a clue about the problems of working families.
Romney and other Republicans are doing everything they can to drive the millennial generation of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 back into the Obama fold. When Barack Obama went on Jimmy Kimmel’s TV show, the GOP ran a TV ad which criticized the president for being “cool.” Since young people like “cool,” the Republicans were simply spending their own money to reinforce the Obama message to the millennials.
It’s just not the Republican position on college loans that is hurting the party. GOP positions on social issues are also keeping young people in the Democratic camp. Millennials are overwhelmingly prochoice and pro-gay marriage. Young people believe that there should be an easy path to citizenship for immigrants and they support the president’s efforts to reform the healthcare system. The religious fundamentalists who dominate Mitt Romney and the GOP scare the living hell out of young people who are suspicious of any kind of religious orthodoxy. According to Morley Winograd and Mike Hais in their book Millennial Makeover, the Republicans will pay an even higher price for their right wing social policies when the growing millennial generation becomes the dominate force in American politics over the next decade.
Republicans feel that the president is too cool for school. But the kids in school will vote again for Barack Obama because of his campaign efforts and because of the help he is getting from Republicans.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, May 4, 2012
“An Unlevel Playing Field”: Lifestyles Of The Rich And Politically Connected
Mitt Romney made the case last week that young people looking for opportunities and success should rely on their parents’ wealth. If your folks don’t have much in the way of disposable income, well, good luck.
To drive home the significance of the Republican candidate’s vision, consider the tale of Tagg Romney, the former governor’s oldest son.
The New York Times had a fascinating report this week on Tagg getting together in 2008 with Spencer Zwick, a Romney campaign fundraiser, to create a private equity fund called Solamere Capital.
Neither had experience in private equity. But what the close friends did have was the Romney name and a Rolodex of deep-pocketed potential investors who had backed Mr. Romney’s presidential run — more than enough to start them down that familiar path from politics to profit.
Two years later, despite a challenging fund-raising climate for private equity, Solamere, named after a wealthy enclave in Utah’s Deer Valley where the Romneys have a winter home, finished raising its first fund. The firm blew past its $200 million goal, securing $244 million from 64 investors, including a critical, early $10 million from Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, and hefty commitments from wealthy supporters of the campaign.
There’s no reason to think Solamere Capital did anything wrong. Rather, the point is, Tagg Romney, despite having no background in private equity, partnered with someone else who had no background in private equity, and they were able to put together a very successful financial operation, thanks in large part to Tagg’s father’s wealth, his last name, and Republican donors who probably assumed Mitt Romney would run for president in 2012.
Adding an interesting wrinkle to the story is the fact that Romney’s Solamere Capital invested in Allen Stanford’s Stanford Financial Group in 2009, hiring several of the firm’s employees. Stanford, of course, is now incarcerated, after getting caught running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.
Stanford’s former employees, who became Tagg Romney’s employees, have been accused of ignoring widespread fraud, though Tagg says the staff wasn’t with Stanford long enough to learn of the boss’ wrongdoing.
Of course, the larger significance is what the story tells us about the Romney vision of economic opportunity.
To hear Tagg tell it, his political connections were irrelevant. “Our relationships with people got us in the door, but that did not get us investors,” he told the Times.
Paul Waldman offered a more compelling perspective.
Does Tagg Romney actually believe that his dad had nothing to do with his successful entry into the private equity game, and the millions he has made and will continue to make are the result only of his own merit? That his life is radically different from those of the millions of people struggling to get by only because they don’t work as hard as he does, or have his gumption and entrepreneurial spirit? Maybe he does. That may strike you and me as utterly insane, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. […]
There are a thousand ways in which wealth determines the opportunities available to you, in large part by making things easy. Yes, if you’re a poor kid being raised by a single parent who never finished high school, you can get to Harvard. But you’re going to have to be one in a million. It’s going to take extraordinary spirit, determination, and luck for you to make it. I’m sure Tagg Romney is a fine fellow, but the truth is that even if he was a lazy dolt he’d still do well. He went to the best schools, his parents gave him all kinds of enriching experiences, and he never had to worry about much of anything. He wasn’t going to get pulled out of college and have to take a job if one of his parents got sick. When he decided this private equity thing looked interesting, there was an escalator waiting, and all he had to do was hop on. That’s opportunity.
Well said.
Look again at what Mitt Romney said last week, while talking to college students, after condemning President Obama for an imaginary “attack” on “success”: “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”
In the Republican’s mind, this actually constitutes a vision of opportunity. If you work hard, get into a good school, but can’t afford the tuition, Romney believes you’ll have the opportunity to find some other college with cheaper tuition. If you’re innovating, come up with an idea for a new business, but can’t afford the start-up costs, Romney believes you’ll have the opportunity to ask your parents for money they may or may not have.
It’s not the job of public institutions to create a level playing field; it’s the job of individuals to find an unlevel playing field and “take a shot.”
It worked out well for Tagg Romney, right?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 2, 2012
“Turning The Page”: Obama’s Winning Strategy On Foreign Policy
We expect some hypocrisy in politics, but it was still jaw-dropping to behold Republicans accusing President Obama of politicizing the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Wasn’t it just eight years ago that the GOP organized an entire presidential campaign — including the choreography of its 2004 national convention — around the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and George W. Bush’s response to them?
Obama’s opponents don’t just think we have short attention spans. They imagine we have no memories whatsoever.
Yet very quickly, Mitt Romney and the rest of his party began slinking away from their offensive. It’s true, of course, that Obama played the ultimate presidential trump card. He visited our troops in Afghanistan on Tuesday, the anniversary of the bin Laden raid, and, with military vehicles serving as a rough-hewn backdrop, addressed the nation from the scene of our longest war.
But the GOP retreat reflected something else as well. For the first time since the early 1960s, the Republican Party enters a presidential campaign at a decided disadvantage on foreign policy. Republicans find it hard to get accustomed to the fact that when they pull their favorite political levers — accusations that Democrats are “weak” or Romney’s persistent and false claims that Obama “apologizes” for America — nothing happens.
The polls could hardly be clearer. In early April, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 53 percent of Americans trusted Obama over Romney to handle international affairs. Only 36 percent trusted Romney more. On a list of 12 matters that a president would deal with, Obama enjoyed a larger advantage on only one other question, the handling of women’s issues. And on coping with terrorism, the topic on which Republicans once enjoyed a near-monopoly, Obama led Romney by seven points.
How did this happen? The primary reason, to borrow a term from science, is negative signaling: By the end of Bush’s second term, the Republicans’ approach to foreign policy was discredited in the eyes of a majority of Americans. The war in Iraq turned out (and this is being quite charitable) much differently than the Bush administration had predicted.
It is always worth recalling Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 16, 2003. Among other things, Cheney famously declared that “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.” And when Russert asked whether “we would have to have several hundred thousand troops there” in Iraq “for several years in order to maintain stability,” Cheney replied, “I disagree,” insisting: “That’s an overstatement.”
It was not an overstatement.
More generally, Americans came to see that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with what they cared most about, which was protecting the United States against another terrorist attack. Indeed, the war in Afghanistan, which was a direct response to 9/11, was pushed aside as a priority. At one point, Bush declared of bin Laden: “I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him . . . to be honest with you.”
And this is where negative signaling turns into a positive assessment of Obama. He understood the importance of bin Laden. He addressed the broad and sensible public desire to get our troops out of Iraq. He focused on how to get a moderately satisfactory result in Afghanistan — which is probably the very best that the United States can do now.
The Afghan policy Obama announced Tuesday reflected the president’s innate caution. He wants to withdraw our troops but not so fast as to increase the level of chaos in the country. He imagines a longer engagement with Afghanistan because he does not want to repeat the West’s mistake of disengaging too quickly after U.S. arms helped the mujahedeen defeat the Soviet Union there in the 1980s.
Public opinion is on the side of getting out sooner. But most Americans are likely to accept the underlying rationale for Obama’s policy because it is built not on grand plans to remake a region but on the narrower and more realistic goal of preventing terror groups from regaining a foothold in the country.
And that’s why Republicans finally seem to realize that driving foreign policy out of the campaign altogether is their best option. After a decade of war, Americans prefer prudence over bluster and careful claims over expansive promises. On foreign policy, Obama has kept his 2008 promise to turn history’s page. The nation is in no mood to turn it back.
“Evangelical Chauffeur’s: What The Religious Right Want’s From Romney
After Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell resigned on Tuesday in response to social conservative complaints about his sexual orientation and his support for same-sex marriage, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is claiming credit. On his radio program Tuesday afternoon Fischer–who was the first to criticize Grenell for being “an out, loud and proud homosexual”–boasted, “This is a huge win… I will flat out guarantee you [Romney] is not going to make this mistake again. There is no way in the world that Mitt Romney is going to put a homosexual activist in any position of importance in his campaign.” (Fischer is a former evangelical pastor who is prone to making controversial remarkssuch as, “we should screen out homosexuals who want to immigrate to the United States.”)
That, of course, raises an important question: if staunch religious conservatives such as Fischer can dictate Romney’s policy and personnel decisions, what other demands will they make?
I called Fischer to find out. He says there are a number of stances on issues Romney has thus far avoided that would reassure the “pro-family” community. The most significant includes a pledge to veto the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination, reinstating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) and removing spousal benefits for the domestic partners of federal employees. Fischer laid out these same ideas in his initial attack on Grenell. “Romney needs to make the following public commitments… if he is to have any hope of generating even modest enthusiasm in the base…. If he’s going to pander, he’d better start pandering in a big, fat hurry.”
Here’s what Fischer told me on Wednesday:
One thing [Romney] can do is come out and endorse North Carolina’s marriage amendment. Sanctity of marriage is a very important issue for the pro-family community. I would urge him to restate his commitment to rigorously defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). I would urge him to commit to revoking spousal benefits for unmarried domestic partners. President Obama has extended spousal benefits to partners of federal employees in violation of DOMA. We need to hear Romney take a position on reversing that. He needs to publicly commit to vetoing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) if it reaches his desk. I think he should reinstate the ban on homosexuality in the military. He said he won’t do that, but he should make it clear that military chaplains on his watch will have freedom to teach biblical view of sexuality without any fear of repercussions.
Romney has a nuanced–some might say slippery–relationship with a few of these issues. On DADT Romney criticizes President Obama for signing the law repealing it and allowing gays to serve openly in the military. But his rationale is not exactly that it was the wrong policy in the abstract, only that it was too stressful for the military. Therefore he says it would be even more disruptive to reverse the repeal now. This complicated position has the virtue of being partially acceptable to people on both sides of the issue. He must attempt to keep the anti-gay conservative base mollified while not alienating the large majority of the public that supported letting gays serve. His position allows him to sidestep taking any stance of accepting or rejecting homosexuality, while nominally caring only about what is best for the military as a whole. Of course, what was best for the brave men and women already serving in the military who happened to be gay doesn’t enter into this calculation. It is politically shrewd, albeit nakedly calculating and cowardly.
On some of these other hot button issues, such as benefits for the domestic partners of federal employees and ENDA, Romney hasn’t taken a stance in this campaign. His campaign declined to comment on these issues. But Romney has spoken about ENDA in the past. Back in 1994 when he ran for U.S. Senate he pledged to co-sponsor ENDA if he was elected. Then, in 2007, he said he would not support ENDA as president. So Fischer should rest assured that, as of Romney’s most recent flip-flop, he opposes protecting gays from discrimination in the workplace.
The other issues are essentially symbolic. The president has no say over state ballot initiatives regarding marriage. The supposed oppression anti-gay military chaplains is an obscure myth that no one outside the religious right even knows about. It is mostly idle conjecture that chaplains will not be allowed to insult homosexuality now that gays can serve openly in the military, not actual evidence of any chaplains being punished.
Symbolism, though, is important to Fischer, as it is to many social conservatives. Unlike other evangelical leaders, who pretended that their only objection to Grenell was his advocacy for marriage equality, Fischer readily admits that he doesn’t think Romney should have openly gay staffers. “If Richard Grenell had kept his sexual preferences to himself, none of this would have happened,” says Fischer. “Nobody would know, nobody would care.” I asked if that meant he thinks gays can work on the Romney campaign only if they remain in the closet, but not if they are open about their sexual orientation. Fischer didn’t dispute that characterization of his views, saying, “In [Washington], D.C. personnel is policy. If [Romney] wants to reassure the evangelical community that he’s with us on the sanctity of marriage then he should not make hiring decisions that confuse us about where he stands.”
The Romney campaign declined to respond to Fischer’s comments. Romney has butted heads with Fischer in the past, most notably when he criticized Fischer’s lack of “civility” at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year.
Given that Fischer has expressed misgivings about Romney in the past, especially about whether he is truly committed to the social conservative cause, I wondered why Fischer was so happy that Romney dumped Grenell. Isn’t this just more evidence that Romney doesn’t, in his heart, oppose homosexuality; he just will bend to the conservative base as much as he has to? Then again, does it matter? Or is the proof that you can control a candidate as valuable as the proof that he personally agrees with you? “You would prefer to have a candidate that you know is with you in his heart on these issues,” says Fischer. “But 10 years from now all that’s going to matter is the policies he pursued, it’s not going to matter why he pursued them. If he will do the right thing because it is politically expedient, then he will have done the right thing. At the end of the day that’s what’s going to count.”
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, May 3, 2012
“From Politics To Profit”: The Republican Opportunity Society
Whenever the subject of inequality comes up, conservatives usually say the same thing: Barack Obama wants equality of outcome, while we want equality of opportunity. The first part is ridiculously disingenuous, of course—no one could honestly argue that Obama’s major goals, like raising income taxes from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, would bring us to some kind of pure socialistic society where everyone has precisely the same income and no one is wealthier than anyone else. But the second part is, I think, offered sincerely. Conservatives not only seek a world where everyone has the same opportunities, most of them think that’s pretty much what we have already, so major changes aren’t necessary, except in the area of getting government off your back. After all, this is America, where any kid, no matter where he comes from, can achieve whatever he wants if he’s willing to work hard. Right? Which brings me to the story of Tagg Romney.
Today’s New York Times has a story about the private equity firm Tagg and the chief fundraiser from his dad’s 2008 presidential run started after that campaign ended, called Solamere Capital. They didn’t do anything illegal or unethical, so it isn’t an exposé of wrongdoing or a potential problem for the current Romney campaign, just a somewhat interesting tale about how “that familiar path from politics to profit” works. But here’s the portion that jumps out. Though neither of the two original founders had any experience in private equity, using their contacts among people who had donated to the Romney campaign they quickly found investors who gave them $244 million to play with:
Solamere’s founders dispute any notion that they have cashed in on their political connections, arguing that Solamere, like any fund, has had to persuade investors on its merits.
“No one we went to as an investor said, ‘Oh, your dad is Mitt Romney, I’m going to give you $10 million,” Tagg Romney said, noting that his father’s political future was uncertain when the firm began. He added, “Our relationships with people got us in the door, but that did not get us investors.”
Even so, Mitt Romney was the featured speaker at Solamere’s first investor conference in Deer Valley in January 2010. Mr. Romney, who made his fortune in private equity at Bain Capital, also gave early strategic advice.
Does Tagg Romney actually believe that his dad had nothing to do with his successful entry into the private equity game, and the millions he has made and will continue to make are the result only of his own merit? That his life is radically different from those of the millions of people struggling to get by only because they don’t work as hard as he does, or have his gumption and entrepreneurial spirit? Maybe he does. That may strike you and me as utterly insane, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
I’m not privy to the private conversations among folks like Tagg, but in public anyway, it seems that conservatives have become particularly vehement in defending inequality since the meltdown of 2008, insisting that in America, there is no such thing as privilege, money comes only from merit, wealth is a sign of virtue, and if we raise taxes a smidge on those at the top of the income ladder, we’re only “punishing success.” Repeat that to yourself and others often enough, and you can easily come to believe that we really do have equality of opportunity. But true equality of opportunity is actually nearly as radical an idea as equality of outcome. True equality of opportunity would mean that every public school would be equally good, for instance. But of course they aren’t—people with means move to towns with good schools precisely so they can give their kids more opportunity than other kids get.
There are a thousand ways in which wealth determines the opportunities available to you, in large part by making things easy. Yes, if you’re a poor kid being raised by a single parent who never finished high school, you can get to Harvard. But you’re going to have to be one in a million. It’s going to take extraordinary spirit, determination, and luck for you to make it. I’m sure Tagg Romney is a fine fellow, but the truth is that even if he was a lazy dolt he’d still do well. He went to the best schools, his parents gave him all kinds of enriching experiences, and he never had to worry about much of anything. He wasn’t going to get pulled out of college and have to take a job if one of his parents got sick. When he decided this private equity thing looked interesting, there was an escalator waiting, and all he had to do was hop on. That’s opportunity.
So when conservatives begin arguing that we don’t want equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity, look closely at what it is they’re arguing against. More often than not it’s the most modest of efforts to make things a just a bit easier for people who aren’t at the top. Not a full scholarship to an Ivy League school, just some student loans you’ll have to pay back. Not free nose jobs, just a guarantee of health insurance, so you know you won’t lose your home if you get sick. Not enough money to buy that Cadillac, just a minimum wage high enough that you’ll be able to feed your family. Not anything like real equality of opportunity, in other words. But even that is too much.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, May 1, 2012
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