GOP Presidential Candidates Totally Cynical Or Totally Clueless?: Herman Cain Was No Accident
There are two crucial things you need to understand about the current state of American politics. First, given the still dire economic situation, 2012 should be a year of Republican triumph. Second, the G.O.P. may nonetheless snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — because Herman Cain was not an accident.
Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year — and who, even as they declare their hatred of government, will balk at any hint of cuts to Social Security and Medicare (death panels!).
And you also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security.
So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or to be totally clueless.
Mitt Romney embodies the first option. He’s not a stupid man; he knows perfectly well, to take a not incidental example, that the Obama health reform is identical in all important respects to the reform he himself introduced in Massachusetts — but that doesn’t stop him from denouncing the Obama plan as a vast government takeover that is nothing like what he did. He presumably knows how to read a budget, which means that he must know that defense spending has continued to rise under the current administration, but this doesn’t stop him from pledging to reverse Mr. Obama’s “massive defense cuts.”
Mr. Romney’s strategy, in short, is to pretend that he shares the ignorance and misconceptions of the Republican base. He isn’t a stupid man — but he seems to play one on TV.
Unfortunately from his point of view, however, his acting skills leave something to be desired, and his insincerity shines through. So the base still hungers for someone who really, truly believes what every candidate for the party’s nomination must pretend to believe. Yet as I said, the only way to actually believe the modern G.O.P. catechism is to be completely clueless.
And that’s why the Republican primary has taken the form it has, in which a candidate nobody likes and nobody trusts has faced a series of clueless challengers, each of whom has briefly soared before imploding under the pressure of his or her own cluelessness. Think in particular of Rick Perry, a conservative true believer who seemingly had everything it took to clinch the nomination — until he opened his mouth.
So will Newt Gingrich suffer the same fate? Not necessarily.
Many observers seem surprised that Mr. Gingrich’s, well, colorful personal history isn’t causing him more problems, but they shouldn’t be. If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, conservatives often seem inclined to accept that tribute, voting for candidates who publicly espouse conservative moral principles whatever their personal behavior. Did I mention that David Vitter is still in the Senate?
And Mr. Gingrich has some advantages none of the previous challengers had. He is by no means the deep thinker he imagines himself to be, but he’s a glib speaker, even when he has no idea what he’s talking about. And my sense is that he’s also very good at doublethink — that even when he knows what he’s saying isn’t true, he manages to believe it while he’s saying it. So he may not implode like his predecessors.
The larger point, however, is that whoever finally gets the Republican nomination will be a deeply flawed candidate. And these flaws won’t be an accident, the result of bad luck regarding who chose to make a run this time around; the fact that the party is committed to demonstrably false beliefs means that only fakers or the befuddled can get through the selection process.
Of course, given the terrible economic picture and the tendency of voters to blame whoever holds the White House for bad times, even a deeply flawed G.O.P. nominee might very well win the presidency. But then what?
The Washington Post quotes an unnamed Republican adviser who compared what happened to Mr. Cain, when he suddenly found himself leading in the polls, to the proverbial tale of the dog who had better not catch that car he’s chasing. “Something great and awful happened, the dog caught the car. And of course, dogs don’t know how to drive cars. So he had no idea what to do with it.”
The same metaphor, it seems to me, might apply to the G.O.P. pursuit of the White House next year. If the dog actually catches the car — the actual job of running the U.S. government — it will have no idea what to do, because the realities of government in the 21st century bear no resemblance to the mythology all ambitious Republican politicians must pretend to believe. And what will happen then?
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, December 4, 2011
Is Newt Gingrich Just A More Bombastic Mitt Romney?
The Republican primary voters who continue to cast about for a presidential nominee not named Mitt Romney have lately alit on Newt Gingrich as their newest infatuation. Gingrich has plenty of appealing qualities, chief among them that he’s entertaining. But why, exactly, should conservatives prefer him to Romney?
Going down the list of conservative objections to Romney, every one applies equally, if not more so, to Gingrich.
* Support for health-care mandates:
Romney’s embrace in his Massachusetts health-care reform of a requirement that individuals buy health insurance, which he’s refused to repudiate, is his scarlet letter for many on the right; he says he opposes mandates at the federal level but that the provision was right for Massachusetts and promotes personal responsibility.
Gingrich, for his part, has long been a vigorous supporter of mandates — from the 1990s, when many conservatives championed the idea in opposition to Hillary Clinton’s health-reform proposal, to as recently as 2008, when he wrote in his book Real Change: “We should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor.” In a 2007 Des Moines Register op-ed, Gingrich specifically used the dreaded words “individual mandate,” saying, “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance.”
It’s not clear when Gingrich’s position changed to his current vehement rejection of mandates. As recently as May he was speaking favorably about “some requirement you either have health insurance or you post a bond” — comments that were followed by a hasty retreat the next day: “I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and, I believe, unconstitutional.” In making that statement, Gingrich didn’t explain the dissonance with what he’d said the day before.
* Squishy on abortion:
Romney’s conversion (or flip-flop, depending on your point of view) from pro-choice as a Massachusetts politician to pro-life as a national one is well known. Gingrich has never been vociferously pro-choice, and, unlike Romney, he has now signed the pro-life pledge proffered by the Susan B. Anthony List, which asks candidates to promote anti-abortion legislation, make pro-life appointments and cut off federal funds for abortion providers.
But — as social-conservative purists like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann have lately been pointing out — in his days as the leader of a resurgent House GOP, Gingrich advocated a big tent. In 1990, for example, he said that rather than being strict abortion prohibitionists, the Republican Party ought to “be the party that on balance prefers the fewest abortions possible.” He supported some taxpayer funding of abortion, a stance that his campaign now says he has reversed.
* Squishy on immigration:
In the last debate, Gingrich made an emotional argument in favor of some sort of legalization process for some illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S., particularly those brought to the country as children. The resulting dust-up revealed that Romney’s stance, beneath his many evasions, isn’t materially different: He’d rather talk about securing the border, he doesn’t want lawbreakers to get special treatment, but he also is not in favor of mass deportation. In 2006, he told Bloomberg that he would not have illegal immigrants “rounded up and box-carred out.”
If immigration hawks are looking for a candidate who’ll take a tougher stance than Romney, though, Gingrich’s line in the debate showed he’s not their man. “I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, ‘Let’s be humane in enforcing the law, without giving them citizenship, but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families,'” he said.
* Generally squishy — a flip-flopper:
This is the main knock on Romney, from left and right alike — that he changes his positions based on political expediency. While few politicians with long careers have been absolutely consistent, Gingrich has an especially rich history of reversing himself when something he said proved to be unpopular.
To take just a couple of recent examples, in 2008, when being “green” was fashionable, Gingrich recorded a television commercial for an Al Gore project in which he sat on a loveseat with Nancy Pelosi and declared, “We do agree our country must take action to address climate change.” Now that he’s running in a GOP primary that’s hostile to environmental regulation, he’s skeptical that anything needs to be done.
Earlier this year, when the Obama administration hadn’t taken action on the violence breaking out in Libya, Gingrich called for immediate imposition of a no-fly zone. When the administration took his advice, though, he was against it: “I would not have intervened,” he said. As one of his critics noted at the time, it was hard to see this swift reversal as anything other than blind partisanship — knee-jerk opposition to Obama’s stance, regardless of its policy merits.
Gingrich has basically admitted this was the reason for his reversal on health-care mandates: In the 1990s, he told the New Hampshire Union Leader, the individual mandate “was designed to block Hillarycare.” Yet Gingrich maintains that Romney’s flip-flops are objectionable because they were for political reasons, while his have been authentic changes of heart: “I wouldn’t switch my positions for political reasons,” he said recently. “It’s perfectly reasonable to change your position if … you see new things you didn’t see.”
* Not all that conservative, deep down:
Many conservatives suspect that no matter how many conservative positions Romney espouses, deep in his heart he’s just not one of them. It’s a sense based on his record, his current policy proposals (such as an economic plan that gives suspicious emphasis to relief for the middle class), and his general tone and temperament. But Gingrich’s record is hardly that of a right-wing crusader.
The 1994 takeover of the House Gingrich engineered was an enormous victory for the Republican Party, one for which Gingrich is still justly revered in GOP ranks. But he didn’t do it by enforcing conservatism — he couldn’t have. Much of the “Contract With America” — which was, after all, designed to appeal to swing voters — was technocratic. For the landmark achievements he still touts, welfare reform and balancing the budget, Gingrich worked arm in arm — and compromised — with Bill Clinton.
This year, shortly after launching his candidacy, Gingrich didn’t win many Republican friends when he blasted the House Republican budget proposal drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as “right-wing social engineering.” As Ryan said at the time, “With allies like that, who needs the left?” Gingrich quickly repented and now says, “Paul Ryan came up with some very good ideas.” But there’s ample reason to question the true colors of a politician who, early in his career, was a state chairman for the presidential campaign of Nelson Rockefeller — the emblem of liberal Republicanism that sought to halt the rise of conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. In a 1989 interview, Gingrich called this “the classic moderate wing of the party,” and said it was where he had “spent most of my life.”
So why are the anti-Romney conservatives flocking to Gingrich?
In conversations with Republicans — some Gingrich backers, some not — about why he’s more appealing than Romney, most acknowledge it basically comes down to style. Gingrich’s tone is that of an angry crusader, unlike Romney’s placid assurance. And because Gingrich has such a penchant to say whatever comes into his head, his inconsistencies tend to get chalked up to a lack of discipline rather than cold calculation.
As the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis put it:
Gingrich and Romney couldn’t be more different. Gingrich questions authority, challenges conventional wisdom, and disputes premises. He also has fun. He is winsome. He can be undisciplined. He enjoys politics, and seems to gain energy from engaging in the battles. Romney, on the other hand, is a consummate “adult.” He is highly disciplined. He plays by the rules, accepts reality as it is, and then — within those confines — sets about fixing things as best he can.
It’s also true that if Gingrich and Romney really are so similar on paper, voters might as well pick Gingrich. Perhaps that’s why Romney’s camp sees Gingrich as a threat and will seek to highlight the former speaker’s personal baggage.
But as Gingrich’s current surge enters the closer-inspection phase, many conservatives may discover their infatuation with him is based on equal parts bluster and mythology. In the words of conservative guru Erick Erickson, the RedState.com founder: “The conservative warrior people tend to think Gingrich is, often is not.”
By: Molly Ball, The Atlantic, December 1, 2011
Distilling Mitt Romney’s Position On Immigration
Former Gov. Mitt Romney underwent a tough and fair interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier.
Romney seemed particularly, well, Romneyesque on immigration.
The confusion stems from the fact that, between 2005 and 2007, Romney gave every indication of supporting something like President Bush’s reform proposal: a system whereby illegal immigrants “come out of the shadows” and to the “back of the line” of the citizenship application process.
In 2006, the Associated Press was apparently unclear enough on Romney’s position to write this:
Meantime, one of McCain’s potential rivals for the GOP nomination, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has made it known that he supports the president’s immigration position, saying that Republicans who have broken rank with Bush “made a big mistake.”
The same year, Romney said, “I don’t believe in rounding up 11 million people and forcing them at gunpoint from our country.”
He called elements of the Senate bill sponsored by John McCain and Ted Kennedy “reasonable proposals.”
As seems undeniable, Romney took a hard line on illegals when he decided to run for president. That much we know. But I’m still trying to suss out how, precisely, he threads the needle. In the interview with Fox’s Baier, Romney insisted that illegal immigrants who come forward must park themselves in the “back of the line,” behind those who’ve come here legally.
But this was a central feature of both the Bush plan and McCain-Kennedy plan, which was praised by business types as well as conservative activists like Linda Chavez, Grover Norquist and Jack Kemp.
The Weekly Standard‘s Fred Barnes wrote of the Bush plan:
Earned citizenship would permit the 12 million immigrants living illegally in the Unites States to apply for citizenship. They would be required to work for six years, commit no crimes, pay back taxes, and learn English. Then and only then could they get in line to become citizens [emphasis mine], a process that takes five years.
As far as I can tell, Romney found the thinnest of the reeds on which to lean his newfound opposition to the McCain-Kennedy bill: that it would allow immigrants to collect Social Security benefits they’d amassed while working here illegally.
Does Romney really expect anybody to swallow that?
By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, November 30, 2011
Romney Misinforms Voters When He Promises To Repeal Health Reform Through Waivers
Mitt Romney is running around the country promising conservatives that he will repeal the Affordable Care Act through executives orders (or waivers) that will allow states to opt out of implementing the health reform law. Critics — including some within the Republican party — have argued that a president does not have the authority to eliminate a law passed by Congress, and today, a report from the Congressional Research Service confirms that while Romney would be able to alter certain regulations, issuing waivers through executive authority would “likely conflictwith an explicit congressional mandate and be viewed ‘incompatible with the express … will of Congress’”:
A President would not appear to be able to issue an executive order halting an agency from promulgating a rule that is statutorily required by PPACA, as such an action would conflict with an explicit congressional mandate…However, Presidents have issued executive orders on regulatory review that have increased the President’s involvement in agency rule making generally. […]
A President would not appear to be able to issue an executive order halting statutorily-required programs or mandatory appropriations for a new grant or other program in PPACA, and there are a variety of different types of these programs…However, there may be instances where PPACA leaves discretion to the Secretary to take actions to implement a mandatory program, and…an executive order directing the Secretary to take particular actions may be analyzed as within or beyond the PResident’s powers to provide for the discretion of the executive branch.”
Romney admits that he won’t be able to eliminate the entire law through executive authority and save a Republican majority in the senate, has pledged to use the reconciliation process to undo the rest of the measure. But that too isn’t possible, since “budget reconciliation bill would have to apply only to the budget-related elements of the new law” and would leave many portions of the law intact. Romney would end up “creating a chaotic environment driven by enormous uncertainty over just which parts of the new health care law would be implemented–for consumers, health care providers, and insurers.”
Unfortunately, this reality hasn’t stopped the former Massachusetts governor from telling voters that he will easily repeal Obamacare on “day one.”
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, November 30, 2011
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