“Aiding And Abetting”: How The Press Helped Mitt Romney Reinvent Himself
Analyzing the presidential campaign in the wake of the first debate, Time’s Mark Halperin wrote on October 10 that Mitt Romney’s sudden “rush to the center” politically had emerged as the key topic – “the central tactical issue”– for the Barack Obama’s team to address. Halperin stressed it would be a challenge for Democrats because the Romney’s campaign’s “brazen chutzpah knows no bounds.”
How odd. At the first debate Romney had so brashly reinvented himself by shifting his position on taxation, immigration and health care away from the Republican Party, that the onus was on Obama to counter Romney’s slick maneuver. In other words, Romney’s flip-flops, according to Halperin, were a major problem for the Obama campaign, not for the Republican who late in the game unveiled a new political persona. (Farewell “severely conservative.”)
It’s also telling that on October 10, Halperin considered Romney’s makeover into a moderate to be the campaign’s dominant issue. Yet one week earlier on the night of the first debate when Halperin graded both participants, the pundit made no reference to Romney’s “rush to the center.” In real time, Halperin heaped praise on Romney’s style “(Started strong, level, and unrattled — and strengthened as he went along”) as well as his substance (“He clearly studied hard.”)
Final grade, Romney: A-
Between the first debate and October 10, Romney’s brazen flip-flops were not subject to any serious critique from Time’s political team. What coverage Romney received for altering his campaign positions (aka his “tack toward the political center“) mostly revolved around how conservative activists reacted to Romney’s sudden embrace of moderate rhetoric. (They’re totally fine with it.) Time was much less interested in what the about-faces said about Romney’s candidacy, his character or what his presidency might look like.
The fact that the Republican candidate had radically altered his positions on core domestic issues just one month before Election Day was not treated as a campaign evolution that reflected poorly on Romney. To the contrary, it was largely portrayed as a savvy move by the Republican.
Time’s soft peddling of Romney’s broad reinvention was typical of how the Beltway press has politely covered the candidate’s latest chameleon turn.
Politicians once flip-flopped at their own risk knowing the price they’d likely pay from the hypocrisy-sensitive press corps. Indeed, there was a time when it meant something if a candidate made it clear he didn’t believe what he had been saying on the campaign trial, and the press held that revelation against the candidate. Recall that Al Gore was hammered in the press in 2000 as a politician without any core convictions. And George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign was largely built around calling Sen. John Kerry a flip-flopper; a tag that stuck thanks in part to the press coverage.
But this campaign Romney has mostly skated through his latest reincarnation, as pundits marvel at the political ease and wisdom of his flip-flops: “Crafty” announced The Daily Beast. At BuzzFeed, Blake Zeff suggested Romney had bet his entire campaign on the hope that “the era of the flip-flop as untenable, campaign-ending, non-starter is over.” It if is, Romney has the press to thank.
Just look at how his jarring reversals have been watered down in recent days [emphasis added]:
• “Romney ditched that strategy and repeatedly softened the ideological contrasts with Obama.” [Daily Beast]
• “Romney polished the rough edges” [Los Angeles Times]
• “Behind the new efforts by the Romney campaign to soften his conservative edges” [New York Times]
• “It also meant altering or softening his positions on a handful of bedrock issues.” (BuzzFeed)
Romney abandoning the hard-right persona he crafted and campaigned on for the last four years is ‘softening the edges’? Besides, Romney’s maneuver is no big deal, goes the media narrative, because candidates always shift their beliefs for the general election.
From the Washington Post:
Of course, a second-half pivot is a time-honored maneuver in the political playbook. In a primary campaign, a candidate must play to the passions of the base; as he moves toward the general election, the sensibilities of swing voters become paramount.
Right. But we’re not talking about a “time honored” primary-to-general election pivot happening now. We’re talking about a candidate who was trailing in the polls and who decided in October to reinvent himself. That’s not the norm in American politics, although the press has tried to pretend it is. Note that when Obama did reverse his position on the issue gay marriage in May, he offered a public, detailed explanation as to why. Not Romney. He doesn’t bother to explain his campaign 180s and the press doesn’t seem care.
They’re too busy admiring the “chutzpah,” as Halperin called it.
These tweets last week from Politico reporter Ben White helped capture the media’s admiration for Romney’s flip-flops:
Very soon the Mitt Romney who ran in the primaries will be entirely erased. In his place will be a moderate who may win.
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) October 10, 2012
Want to know why Romney is softening on abortion? Married moms in swing states, per Bloomberg poll. bloom.bg/VMtxfX
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) October 10, 2012
Dismiss it as etch-a-sketch if you will but the Romney reinvention is brilliant politics
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) October 10, 2012
See? Romney’s reinvention, his decision to alter his views on the central issues of the campaign weeks before Election Day, is “brilliant.” The brash flip-flopping doesn’t reflect poorly on the candidate or suggest that Romney’s unsure, or unprincipled, about his positions. Instead, it signals savvy politics and “crafty” campaigning.
For the final push of this campaign Mitt Romney is trying to reinvent himself as a moderate, less-scary Republican. And the press is helping him at every turn.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, October 16, 2012
“Death By Ideology”: Among The Lying Liars, Mitt Romney Doesn’t See Dead People
Mitt Romney doesn’t see dead people. But that’s only because he doesn’t want to see them; if he did, he’d have to acknowledge the ugly reality of what will happen if he and Paul Ryan get their way on health care.
Last week, speaking to The Columbus Dispatch, Mr. Romney declared that nobody in America dies because he or she is uninsured: “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” This followed on an earlier remark by Mr. Romney — echoing an infamous statement by none other than George W. Bush — in which he insisted that emergency rooms provide essential health care to the uninsured.
These are remarkable statements. They clearly demonstrate that Mr. Romney has no idea what life (and death) are like for those less fortunate than himself.
Even the idea that everyone gets urgent care when needed from emergency rooms is false. Yes, hospitals are required by law to treat people in dire need, whether or not they can pay. But that care isn’t free — on the contrary, if you go to an emergency room you will be billed, and the size of that bill can be shockingly high. Some people can’t or won’t pay, but fear of huge bills can deter the uninsured from visiting the emergency room even when they should. And sometimes they die as a result.
More important, going to the emergency room when you’re very sick is no substitute for regular care, especially if you have chronic health problems. When such problems are left untreated — as they often are among uninsured Americans — a trip to the emergency room can all too easily come too late to save a life.
So the reality, to which Mr. Romney is somehow blind, is that many people in America really do die every year because they don’t have health insurance.
How many deaths are we talking about? That’s not an easy question to answer, and conservatives love to cite the handful of studies that fail to find clear evidence that insurance saves lives. The overwhelming evidence, however, is that insurance is indeed a lifesaver, and lack of insurance a killer. For example, states that expand their Medicaid coverage, and hence provide health insurance to more people, consistently show a significant drop in mortality compared with neighboring states that don’t expand coverage.
And surely the fact that the United States is the only major advanced nation without some form of universal health care is at least part of the reason life expectancy is much lower in America than in Canada or Western Europe.
So there’s no real question that lack of insurance is responsible for thousands, and probably tens of thousands, of excess deaths of Americans each year. But that’s not a fact Mr. Romney wants to admit, because he and his running mate want to repeal Obamacare and slash funding for Medicaid — actions that would take insurance away from some 45 million nonelderly Americans, causing thousands of people to suffer premature death. And their longer-term plans to convert Medicare into Vouchercare would deprive many seniors of adequate coverage, too, leading to still more unnecessary mortality.
Oh, about the voucher thing: In his debate with Vice President Biden, Mr. Ryan was actually the first one to mention vouchers, attempting to rule the term out of bounds. Indeed, it’s apparently the party line on the right that anyone using the word “voucher” to describe a health policy in which you’re given a fixed sum to apply to health insurance is a liar, not to mention a big meanie.
Among the lying liars, then, is the guy who, in 2009, described the Ryan plan as a matter of “converting Medicare into a defined contribution sort of voucher system.” Oh, wait — that was Paul Ryan himself.
And what if the vouchers — for that’s what they are — turned out not to be large enough to pay for adequate insurance? Then those who couldn’t afford to top up the vouchers sufficiently — a group that would include many, and probably most, older Americans — would be left with inadequate insurance, insurance that exposed them to severe financial hardship if they got sick, sometimes left them unable to afford crucial care, and yes, sometimes led to their early death.
So let’s be brutally honest here. The Romney-Ryan position on health care is that many millions of Americans must be denied health insurance, and millions more deprived of the security Medicare now provides, in order to save money. At the same time, of course, Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan are proposing trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. So a literal description of their plan is that they want to expose many Americans to financial insecurity, and let some of them die, so that a handful of already wealthy people can have a higher after-tax income.
It’s not a pretty picture — and you can see why Mr. Romney chooses not to see it.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 16, 2012
“Incestuous Connections”: Will Federal Funds Subsidize Tagg Romney’s Private Equity Bonanza?
Nobody with the bad manners to ask the question would be likely to get the opportunity at the upcoming presidential debate, but someday—especially if Mitt Romney enters the Oval Office —someone will ask about his son Tagg’s privte equity firm.
Like the businesses operated by the first President Bush’s sons three decades ago, Tagg Romney’s Solamere Capital is rife with potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest. Founded in 2008, by eldest son Tagg and his father’s chief fundraiser Spencer Zwick, Solamere is a “fund of funds” representing more than a dozen private equity outfits, including Mitt’s Bain Capital.
What Solamere’s partnerships and investments also show is the stunning reliance of these rugged millionaire individualists on government contracts and programs. Their financial addiction to federal funds is almost amusing, especially given Romney’s infamous remarks about the “47 percent” who supposedly pay no taxes and depend on government largesse to meet all their needs.
Reporter Lee Fang closely scrutinizes those issues and Solamere’s incestuous connections with the Romney presidential campaign in the current issue of The Nation, with the support of the Investigative Fund (where National Memo editor-in-chief Joe Conason serves as editor-at-large).
Consider the man who hosted the $50,000-a-plate fundraiser where Romney made those comments in his huge, luxurious Boca Raton home. Marc Leder’s Sun Capital private equity firm is a partner in Solamere—and also owns part of the Scooter Store, a company that markets motorized wheelchairs, which Medicare beneficiaries buy with federal funds. Unfortunately the growth of the motorized scooter industry has relied heavily on as much as $500 million annually in improper and even fraudulent Medicare billing.
The Affordable Care Act—which Mitt Romney has vowed to repeal—contains a section requiring stringent reform of the motorized wheelchair benefit to prevent fraud. Would President Romney restore that reform to save Medicare funds even if his son’s business would suffer?
Another health sector suffering from rampant fraud is pediatric dentistry, with scandals in several states that involve very expensive, totally unnecessary treatments of poor children that are paid for by Medicaid—and earn huge profits for “dental management companies” owned by private equity firms. If Solamere is earning huge profits from dental mismanagement, would a Romney administration’s Medicaid agency crack down—or turn a blind eye?
Aside from exploiting Medicare and Medicaid, the private equity industry sees major profit opportunities in education—and in particular the for-profit colleges whose dubious practices and educational failures have become controversial in recent years. As Fang recalls, Mitt Romney himself promoted a for-profit institution called Full Sail University during a town hall event in New Hampshire last year, claiming that it could help students “hold down the cost of their eduation.”
Full Sail is actually the third most expensive college in the country—and happens to be owned by TA Associates, a private equity operation associated with the Romney financial empire. Would a Romney administration continue the current efforts to reform the for-profit colleges? Or would it coddle an industry that is becoming notorious for ripping off students and leaving them in debt and unemployed, after sucking down their federal loan funds?
Fang’s reporting may provide an instructive preview of the years to come in a Romney administration, with various Bush-like sons cashing in on White House connections. But the story of Solamere also suggests the hollowness of Romney’s anti-government rhetoric. More and more, the most apt description of private equity is “no, you didn’t build that.”
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, October 16, 2012
“Dishonest Window Dressing”: Paul Ryan Stunt Exposes Fraudulence Of GOP Charity Rhetoric
As part of the Romney campaign’s current disingenuous pivot to the center, Republicans and their allies have been promoting private charity as a substitute for the social welfare programs they would savagely cut. In anticipation of just this moment, Mitt Romney donated considerably more to charity in 2011 than he does in a typical year, which was conveniently timed to be revealed in late September. (Although, as I pointed out, most of Romney’s giving has historically been to the Mormon Church, his alma maters and the George W. Bush presidential library, not directly to poor people.)
During the vice-presidential debate Paul Ryan pointed to Romney’s donations as evidence of Romney’s compassion. Other conservatives have been doing the same for Ryan. For example, the Family Research Council noted in its vice-presidential Catholic voter guide that Ryan gave more to charity last year than Vice President Biden. (It made no mention of any substantive anti-poverty policy positions.)
But the Romney/Ryan campaign took its obsession with proving their personal charitable bona fides a little too far on Saturday. After Ryan held a townhall at Youngstown State University in Ohio, Ryan stopped by a soup kitchen, without permission from the charity that runs it, for about fifteen minutes on his way to the airport. Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, in an interview with The Washington Post, said the Romney campaign did not contact him prior to their visit. Had they asked for permission to hold a photo op there, Antal tells the Post, he would have denied it because he runs a faith-based organization that avoids the appearance of engaging in partisan politics. But, says Antal, the Romney campaign “ramrodded their way” in. That’s because Ryan does not actually care about helping charities, only creating the appearance that he does.
The Post reports:
By the time [Ryan] arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned.
Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty.
As Antal says, “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.” Now, Antal is left to worry that Ryan’s appearance will offend donors who vote Democratic and result in lower donations.
Personal charitable contributions or volunteerism are no substitute for the far greater sums that Romney and Ryan would steal from the poor and give to the rich through cuts to taxes and spending. If Ryan had actually spent a few minutes cleaning pots and pans at a soup kitchen, it would be no compensation for his proposal to starve families by cutting funding for food stamps. But it’s worth noting that even Ryan’s supposed commitment to private charity is just dishonest window dressing.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, October 15, 2012
“Economic Angel Of Death”: Mitt Romney, Non-Job-Creator
Back in August, the famous Reagan Budget Director David Stockman tore Paul Ryan a new one in an op-ed accusing his presumed doppelganger of great feats of mendacity and cowardice.
Now Stockman’s back with an enraged J’accuse! aimed at the very heart of Mitt Romney’s biography: the idea that he was a champion creator of “jobs” or “wealth” at Bain Capital. Stockman makes earlier critics of Bain look like Starbucks-addicted yuppie pikers. Here’s a sample:
Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise.
If you find Stockman’s rhetoric discredited by his hard-money biases, check out this:
Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.
Whether you find Stockman’s producerism persuasive or not, there’s no question he’s making an effective challenge to the idea that ol’ Mitt knows what ails Main Street and Wall Street, and how to fix them. Romney’s loyalties have always been with the latter, and he knows as much about the former as his campaign’s talking points explain to him when he alights in the heartland locales where people like Mitt Romney once appeared like an economic angel of death.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 15, 2012
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