By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 9, 2012
Romney Shows He Hasn’t Read Obama’s Modified Birth Control Reg During Rowdy Maine Town Hall
Mitt Romney doubled down on his new-found objection to contraception coverage during a town hall in Maine on Friday. Romney — who remained mum as Massachusetts implemented a measure requiring insurance companies to cover contraception in 2003, signed into law a health care reform bill that has greatly expanded access to state-funded birth control, and required Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims — told a rowdy crown in Portland, Maine that President Obama’s modified contraception rule does not go far enough:
At the event, Romney also waded into the political fray over the decision by the Obama administration today to require insurers, rather than private employers, to pay for coverage of contraception. The move reversed an earlier decision that would have required religious-affiliated organizations, such as Catholic hospitals, to provide the coverage, prompting an outcry from across the political spectrum.
“Today he did the classic Obama retreat all right, and what I mean by that is, it wasn’t a retreat at all. It’s another deception,” Romney said, arguing that that religious organizations still will have to pay for contraception after insurance companies pass the costs along to employers.
“Companies consist of people, and someone has to pay — the owners, the employees or the customers, and they pass those costs on to the customers,”
he said.
But it’s Romney who is being devious here. Actuaries and real world experiences in covering contraception in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) have found that contraception coverage is at the very least cost neutral within the context of the benefits of the health care plan. And in announcing its compromise on Friday, the administration pledged to work with insurers to issue future regulations that would specifically stipulate that if a religiously affiliated nonprofit chooses to avoid offering contraception in its health care plan, “there be no charge for the contraceptive coverage” for the employer or the employee.
As a senior administration official explained to the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff, “Our policy is saying that the Catholic hospital doesn’t want to cover contraceptives, and they don’t include that in their policy. It also says that Aetna needs to provide contraceptive services for free to workers in the plan. Aetna sets the premium, but it cannot be higher than it would have been without birth control. The premium does not include contraception.” “There is a sort of bank account,” says the official. So, in this particular hypothetical, “Aetna is sucking it up.”
In other words, providing contraception without additional cost sharing will become “a legitimate cost of doing business” for health insurers who work with religious nonprofits, and while they may not be all too thrilled at the prospect, administration officials expect them to agree “that this is going to be a cost-neutral benefit.”
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, February 13, 2012
Iran War Would Cost Trillions: Will the GOP Pay More Taxes For That?
While GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul is doing all he can in this election cycle to gin up a debate about US foreign policy and a measure of the costs and benefits, the debate about Iran, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel’s security has been taking place in a gravityless environment.
Mitt Romney’s opening foreign policy opus at the Citadel criticized Obama for defense cuts with promises to boost America’s defense commitments abroad, to boost military spending on hardware and ships in the Pacific — to do everything we have been doing but more.
Where are the dollars going to come from?
I am one who thinks that war with Iran is far off and in the near term unlikely — unless Israel makes a tremendous mistake by triggering and forcing a geostrategic move by the United States, a choice that could very well ultimately dismantle the close US-Israel relationship, or alternatively if forces inside Iran that would benefit from war actually cause an escalation of events that produce a potential nightmare in the Persian Gulf and region.
That said, fewer and fewer people agree with me — and various of the presidential candidates seem to be competing with each other to tell US citizens how quickly they would deploy US military and intelligence assets to undermine Iran’s Supreme Leader and his government.
That’s OK — in the Summer of 2007, both analysts and agitators in the political left believed Bush and Cheney would bomb Iran before year’s end. Neoconservatives and pugnacious nationalists like John Bolton also believed this. I did a survey of folks on the inside and argued in September 2007 in a widely read Salon article that they would not bomb Iran. They didn’t.
In the summer of 2010, some folks on the left were absolutely convinced that the US would bomb Iran before August. Again, that was not how things turned out — and was not the analysis I had from talking to people in the defense and intel establishments.
Today, things are fuzzier — but at the highest levels of the national security decision-making tree — there is palpable doubt that bombing Iran achieves any fundamental strategic objectives while at the same time ultimately undermining US, Israel, and regional security, undermining the global economy. One senior official I heard when asked about bombing Iran then said, “OK, and then what? Then what?! Seriously, then what???”
I’ll write more soon about what a much more level-headed and serious strategy with Iran would look like — particularly since so many are hyperventilating today and in some cases pounding the drums for a collision, one that they think can be done on the cheap.
It is ridiculous to think that a strike by Israel against Iran, that would in real terms tie the US to the conflict, would not be staggeringly expensive and consequential.
So, it would be interesting to hear from those who want to reside in the White House — and even the Obama administration which has some ‘kinetic action’ advocates on the inside — on what a more sensible financial management strategy for these proliferating conflicts, including an Iran War, would be.
George H.W. Bush got the Japanese citizens to write a check for $13.5 billion to the US to pay for the first Gulf War. He was perhaps the last fiscally responsible war time US President.
Wars cost lots and lots of money — and if a substantial chunk of the GOP crowd wants these wars and feels that it is in our national interest to have them, then by all means they should start lining up some of the wealthiest in the country who are helping to agitate for these conflicts to pay more in taxes for them.
By: Steve Clemons, The Atlantic, February 12, 2012
The “Mau-Mauing” Of Mitt Romney
With Mitt Romney showing vulnerability yet again, it’s an interesting time to study the behavior of Republican elites. Most of them swarmed all over Newt Gingrich and denounced him as unacceptable after the South Carolina primary, when Gingrich had a window to win Florida and seize command of the race. In the course of doing so, many of them offered some kind words for Rick Santorum, who at the time was an also-ran. But you’re not seeing Party leaders try to rally around Santorum as the alternative to Romney. Instead they’re trying to jack up Romney for more policy concessions.
Romney’s plan for his campaign against Barack Obama is simple, and rooted in a clear-eyed reading of the data. He has one enormous asset, which is that Obama presided over an economic crisis. He wants to run against that. He does not want to run a campaign comparing the Republican vision to Obama’s vision, because Obama is both personally more popular than the Republicans, and his ideas are, in general, more popular as well. The House Republican budget is filled with wildly unpopular ideas — cutting taxes for the rich, privatizing and cutting Medicare, and deregulating Wall Street and the health insurance industry. Romney has endorsed the budget, which is now party scripture, but he does not want to run on it.
Conservative Republicans want to make sure that Romney isn’t just telling them what they want to hear only to get into office and govern the way he governed in Massachusetts. So they’re mau-mauing him, raking him over the coals for his timidity, and trying to force him to commit himself more publicly and openly to their agenda. The Wall Street Journal editorial page takes Romney to task today for proposing to index the minimum wage to inflation. (The minimum wage is set by law at a fixed dollar amount, so over time inflation erodes its value unless Congress passes regular increases.) Conservatives urge him to box out Santorum by adopting more right-wing position:
“There is not exactly Romney-mania right now,” Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl told POLITICO, adding that the former Massachusetts governor “absolutely” must shore up the weaknesses with the GOP base that were on such vivid display Tuesday.
“Playing it safe, which Romney tends to do, is not going to get it for him,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a 2008 Romney supporter and a leading voice of his party’s conservative bloc, who called the results this week “a signal.”
And Paul Ryan, in a speech tonight to the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual Washington crazy-fest, prods Romney to abandon his strategy of running against Obama simply on the theme that the economy stinks:
I know there are people in this town who are terrified at the prospect of an election with real alternative visions at stake. “Make it a referendum. Win by default,” they say. “Just oppose — we can win that way. Don’t propose bold ideas — that’s too risky.” I’ll admit, the easy way is always tempting. But my friends, if that’s all we stand for, then what are we doing at here CPAC — the place where so many giants of our movement came to advance their boldest ideas? The next President will face fiscal and economic challenges that are huge, almost unprecedented. He can’t resolve these challenges if he wins by default. He needs a mandate — not just to displace Barack Obama, but to preserve and strengthen the very Idea of America.
This is, in fact, horrible advice. The bad economy is the only reason Republicans have a chance to defeat Obama in 2012, and Romney elevating the profile of Ryan’s ideas would be Obama’s best chance of hanging on if the recovery is still limping in November. Romney can still implement Ryan’s ideas if he wins without a mandate — look at George W. Bush in 2000, running as a compassionate, bipartisan critic of the GOP Congress, losing the popular vote, and implementing his agenda anyway.
I suspect conservatives don’t actually believe Romney needs to campaign on their ideas in order to implement them. They’d be perfectly happy with him running a stealth campaign, winning by being the out-party during a recession, and then implementing an agenda he soft-pedaled during the campaign. What they want is to ensure that Romney will really do it. So they’re trying to force him to shout it rather than whisper it. Once he wins the nomination, they’ll have no more leverage, so this is the time to make him do it.
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, February 9, 2012
“No Policy Or Vision”: The Hole In Mitt Romney’s Campaign
Criticism of Mitt Romney for lacking a coherent message is grossly unfair. He has been forthright, consistent and even eloquent in pressing home his campaign’s central theme: Mitt Romney desperately wants to be president.
Everything else seems mushy or negotiable. Romney is passionate about the need, as he sees it, to defeat President Obama — but vague or self-contradictory as to why. The lyrics of “America the Beautiful,” which Romney has recited as part of his standard campaign speech, don’t solve the mystery; Obama, too, is on record as supporting spacious skies and fruited plains.
Beyond personal ambition, what does Romney stand for? Obviously, judging by Rick Santorum’s clean sweep Tuesday, I’m not the only one asking the question. I suspect an honest answer would be something like “situational competence” — Romney boasts of having rescued the 2002 Olympics, served as the Republican governor of one of the nation’s most Democratic states and made profitable choices about where to invest his money. But with the economy improving and the stock market soaring, Romney’s president-as-CEO argument loses whatever relevance it might have had.
To conservative groups, Romney can sound like a true believer who never met a tax or a labor union he could abide — and not at all like a “Massachusetts moderate,” which is what Newt Gingrich claims Romney really is.
But Romney will never be able to match Gingrich’s record, for better or worse, as one of the key figures in the development of the modern conservative movement. And Romney — who once was pro-choice — will never be able to get to the right of Santorum on social issues.
The intended centerpiece of the Romney campaign — his 160-page economic plan — is really just a list of proposed measures with no discernible ideological framework holding them together. “Any American living through this economic crisis will immediately recognize the severity of the break that Mitt Romney proposes from our current course,” the candidate promises on his Web site. But much of what he pledges to do on “Day One” has already been accomplished, or is promised, by Obama.
Romney wants to cut the corporate tax rate; Obama has said he wants to lower rates while also closing loopholes.
Romney wants to forge new trade agreements; Obama signed into law free-trade pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.
Romney wants to weed out burdensome regulations; Obama has such a project underway.
Romney wants to survey and safely exploit U.S. energy reserves; Obama says essentially the same thing.
To be sure, some other initiatives Romney promises on Day One would take us in precisely the wrong direction. He would ask Congress for a gratuitous $20 million budget cut that would fail to make a scratch, let alone a dent, in the deficit. He would propose ending the federal role in job training, thus abdicating presidential responsibility for meeting one of the central challenges facing our economy. He would sanction China for manipulating its currency — and, perhaps, launch a needless trade war. He would seek to discourage the use of union labor on government projects, purely as a sop to the conservative GOP base.
And, of course, Romney wants to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, whose centerpiece, the individual insurance mandate, was pioneered in Massachusetts. By Romney. Who continues to defend the mandate as a good idea — too good, apparently, for the rest of the country.
My point is that even Romney’s sharp disagreements with Obama’s policies don’t add up to a philosophy or a vision. They’re more like what stuck after a bunch of random tough-sounding positions were thrown at the wall.
On foreign affairs, Romney offers a lot of blah blah blah about “restoring the sinews of American power” and the like, but nothing as distinctive as, say, Santorum’s extreme hawkishness on Iran or Ron Paul’s isolationist call to bring the troops home from just about everywhere. It’s hard to find any substantive differences between what Romney would do and what Obama is already doing.
Romney does accuse Obama of “appeasement,” and perhaps the charge would have some credibility if Obama hadn’t ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, or used unmanned missile-firing drones to decimate the international jihadist leadership, or helped eliminate dictator Moammar Gaddafi, or demonstrated in countless other ways that whatever else he might be, no one can call him some kind of flower-power peacenik.
One distinction — and, really, this may be the most original position that Romney takes on anything — is that he has ruled out negotiations with the Taliban and apparently wants to extend the U.S. troop commitment in Afghanistan indefinitely.
Wish him luck with that on the campaign trail. He’ll need it.
“Version 4.0”: The Return Of Culture Warrior Mitt Romney
It’s easy to forget, but the iteration of Mitt Romney we see in 2012 is by no means similar to the 2008 version. If Romney 1.0 was an independent who distanced himself from Reagan, and Romney 2.0 was a moderate Republican with sensible positions on social issues and health care, Romney 3.0 was a social conservative who cared deeply about the culture war.
It was that third version who sought the Republican nomination four years ago, working under the assumption that this wing of the party would never accept John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, so he could be the far-right standard bearer.
For the 2012 race, Romney has moved on to a yet another persona — version 4.0 is an outsider businessman, representing the GOP establishment and the top 1% — but that doesn’t mean he’s unwilling to try on his old costumes from time to time.
With Rick Santorum positioning himself as a credible rival, and Newt Gingrich baiting Romney “into a discussion of religious values,” we’re getting another look at a facade we haven’t seen in a while: Culture Warrior Mitt.
Consider Romney’s message of late:
On marriage equality, Romney, who used to be a moderate on LGBT issues, was disgusted by yesterday’s Prop 8 ruling in California: “That prospect underscores the vital importance of this election and the movement to preserve our values. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.”
On Planned Parenthood, Romney is not only eager to cut off the health organization from all public funding, he endorsed Komen for the Cure’s original decision to eliminate grants to Planned Parenthood. (Romney attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in Massachusetts in 1994.)
On contraception, Romney is investing a great deal of energy in attacking the Obama administration over its decision to characterize contraception as preventive care in all health insurance plans. That Romney used to agree with Obama has apparently been forgotten.
On religion in public life, Romney has begun adding more faith talk in his stump speech, as evidenced by an appearance in Colorado yesterday. “When they wrote the Declaration of Independence, they chose their words with care,” Romney said. “The state did not endow us with our rights, nor did the king. Instead, the Creator endowed us with our rights.”
Whether social-conservative voters buy any of this remains to be seen. Romney’s Mormon faith, which is a deal-breaker for some evangelicals, and the fact that he was a pro-choice moderate a few versions ago, makes the pitch difficult. But if the race for the Republican nomination becomes a protracted fight, don’t be surprised if Culture Warrior Mitt sticks around for a while.
By: Steve Benen, Maddow Blog, February 8, 2012
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