“Take All The Time You Need”: President Obama Should Simply Ask Mitt Romney To “Go Through All The Math”
Paul Ryan revealed every bit as much about the agenda of a Romney-Ryan ticket in his Sunday interview with Fox News as Mitt Romney did in his speech to that now-infamous fundraising event in Boca Raton.
Ryan acknowledged during a very long and very painful interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace that nothing matters to a Republican ticket populated by sons of privilege than lowering taxes for sons of privilege.
WALLACE: [What’s] more important to Romney? Would he scale back on the 20 percent tax cut for the wealthy? Would he scale back and say, OK, you know, we’re going to have to raise taxes for the middle class? I guess the question is what’s most important to him in his tax reform plan?
RYAN: Keeping tax rates down. By lowering tax rates, people keep more of the next dollar that they earn. That matters. That is incentives. That’s pro-growth policy. That creates 7 million jobs. And what should go first…
WALLACE: So that’s more important than…
RYAN: That’s more important than anything.
Cutting taxes for the rich is “more important than anything.”
More important than creating jobs.
More important than renewing manufacturing.
More important than maintaining Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
More important that reducing deficits.
More important than addressing debts.
“More important than anything.”
That’s a striking statement of anti-tax absolutism that goes far beyond any agenda Ronald Reagan or most of the great conservative leaders of the past would have dared to advance. And it defines the Republican ticket every bit as thoroughly as did Mitt Romney’s remarks at the fundraising event in Boca Raton.
Romney said to the wealthy donors who had gathered to provide the money needed to elect a Romney-Ryan ticket:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it—that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.… These are people who pay no income tax.… my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
So Romney does not “worry about those people.”
But that is just part of the equation. It prompts another question:
Who would a Romney-Ryan administration worry about?
Ryan has provided the answer: the recipients of the Bush-Cheney tax cuts, who for a decade now have enjoyed the benefits of a redistribution of the wealth upward so sweeping that it has opened a yawning gap between rich and poor.
That’s a political position that Ryan has every right to take. And there is no reason to doubt that he is sincere—as sincere as Mitt Romney was when he said it was not his job to worry about the 47 percent of the American population that has been on the losing end of that redistribution of the wealth upward.
But it is, as well, a position that President Obama and Vice President Biden have every right—and, arguably, every responsibility—to discuss.
When he was being interviewed by Wallace, Paul Ryan was asked to explain the details of his economic agenda. He replied, “It would take me too long to go through all of the math.”
That caused a bit of an outcry.
Ryan responded by telling Milwaukee radio talk show host Charlie Sykes: “I like Chris; I didn’t want to get into all of the math on this because everyone would start changing the channel.”
Ryan argued that “when you’re offering very specific, bold solutions, confusion can be your enemy’s best weapon.”
On Wednesday night, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will take the stage for the first debate between the major-party presidential nominees.
The debate could go anywhere.
The candidates have a good deal of freedom to provide direction.
Perhaps President Obama should simply open up with a simple restatement of what Romney and Ryan have said about dismissing the most vulnerable half of Americans while pouring their energies into maintaining tax breaks for a very wealthy and very politically connected few. Then, on the assumption that an hour and a half might be enough time to “go through all the math,” the president might invite Mitt Romney to take all the time he needs to explain an economic agenda that certainly sounds like a plan to “take” from the 99 percent and “give” to the 1 percent.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, October 2, 2012
“The Usual Litany Of Bogus Economic Promises”: Romney Avoids Social Issues On The Campaign Trail
Colorado is supposed to be Mitt Romney’s most promising major swing state. According to Politico’s Mike Allen, Republicans’ internal polls show Romney ahead in Colorado, even as they acknowledge that he has fallen behind in Florida, Ohio and Nevada. Other Republican-leaning polls, such as Rasmussen Reports, show Romney with a slight edge here, although Rasmussen’s most recent poll is two weeks old. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Obama ahead in Colorado by three points, which is consistent with Virginia and Florida, but smaller than Obama’s commanding leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa.
But Colorado presents Romney with a challenge. In order to win it he must simultaneously appeal to three constituencies: the ardent conservatives—both religious social conservatives and current and retired military personnel—in the Colorado Springs area, the more economically focused Republicans in the Denver suburbs and at least half of the state’s large independent electorate.
The Romney campaign is aware of the importance of the state’s nine electoral votes. Romney has already visited the state repeatedly, and in advance of Wednesday night’s debate in Denver his campaign has scheduled a series of events. Ann Romney will hold a rally here on Tuesday and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) will hold one on Wednesday. On Monday night, Romney spoke in a warplane museum—Republicans seem to love that as a setting for campaign stops—in Denver. It was apparent from Romney’s remarks that he is carefully trying to balance the aforementioned constituencies. But, ultimately, he is betting that he already has the most ardent conservatives in his pocket and so he avoids any mention of his party’s polarizing stance on social issues.
Romney was introduced by John Elway, the legendary Denver Broncos quarterback, who just endorsed Romney. In what passes by Romney’s standards as regular guy sports talk, Romney effused, “You guys have some real teams here, no doubt about that!” He then went on to list to the Denver area’s other assets: “This is the home of the Air Force Academy, of NORAD, that helps keep our skies safe, home to great universities.” It appeared not to have dawned on Romney, nor his enthusiastically clapping audience, that the US military is a government program and that Colorado’s universities are all either public or draw heavily upon federal support for student tuition and research. But the biggest applause by far came when Romney said, “and it’s the home of Focus on the Family.” (The socially conservative advocacy organization, like NORAD and the Air Force Academy, is based in Colorado Springs, about an hour from Denver.)
Given the subtle signal his crowd sent—that these are what used to be called “family values” voters—you might have expected Romney to talk about how he plans to stifle gay marriage, appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade and free Catholic organizations from covering employees’ health insurance for contraception.
But no. Romney delivered his usual litany of vague, bogus economic promises. He will simultaneously increase free trade and get tough on China. He will hand out drilling rights on federal land like it’s candy, and somehow that will create millions of jobs by magically bringing back the manufacturing sector thanks to cheap energy. He will defenestrate teachers unions, so that our workforce is better educated and cut spending to balance the budget. And by extending the Bush tax cuts he will make small businesses grow and then they will go on a hiring spree. Isn’t Romney lucky that every long-held Republican plot to please a group of Republican donors, or antagonize a group of Democratic donors, is also sure to induce economic growth?
In case the message were not clear enough, there were giant letters behind Romney’s lectern: “J-O-B-S.” The only supplement to his economic message was a nauseating pander to Colorado’s large military population. Romney attacked the sequestration defense spending cuts that President Obama agreed to with the Republican Congress, and for which his own running mate, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), voted. “It will cost thousands of jobs here, and millions of jobs across the country,” Romney complained.
Millions of jobs? That sounded exaggerated to me. And sure enough, it is. Romney did not cite a source. Knowing Romney, he may have simply made it up out of thin air. But most likely he is referring to a report by the Aerospace Industries Association, which claimed, “A total of 1,090,359 jobs with a total labor income of $46.5 billion would be lost due to DOD budget cuts in FY 2012-FY 2013.” However, as the Brookings Institution explained, the AIA estimate is totally bogus. (This should come as no surprise, given AIA’s vested interest in the subject.) As Brookings notes, the AIA is predicting that a 10 percent cut to defense spending will lead to one-third of all jobs in the defense and aeronautics industries being eliminated. This is extraordinarily unlikely, especially in light of the fact that not even all of those jobs are defense-related.
But even if what Romney said were true, it’s a disgusting sentiment. We should spend everyone else’s hard-earned tax dollars on building weapons simply to keep people employed? This is wasteful big government at its absolute worst.
“I do not believe in shrinking the military,” declared Romney. “I believe it should be second to none in the world.” Romney did not bother to explain why the sequestration cuts would make the US military lose its spot as number one in the world. Nor did he say who would replace us. The United States spends about six times as much as its nearest competitor, China. So it would still vastly outspend China if the sequestration cuts do occur.
Romney’s effort to tie his views on military spending to his economic pitch was a vague statement that “we need a strong economy to support a strong military.” Almost as an afterthought he added, “We need strong homes.”
And that was about it, as far as social conservatism was concerned. Not a single one of the infamous “three Gs”—God, guns and gays—that Republicans once used to peel away working-class and rural white voters appeared in the speech. There was no mention of abortion or stem cell research. The only time Romney came to close to mentioning any of that was when he claimed, “The founders [had a] great insight that rights come from the Creator, not the government.” That’s a nonsensical false dichotomy: the founders saw fit to enshrine those same rights in the Constitution, the basis of their new government. But Romney was not trying to be historically accurate. His purpose was to nod to theocrats while wrapping even his token religious reference into an argument for small government. Except for military spending, everything with Romney comes back to fiscal conservatism.
That may not please of all his supporters. A young woman named Carol whom I met on the way into the speech said she likes Romney “because he is a conservative like me, he is pro-life, like me.” But you would never know Romney opposes abortion rights from hearing him speak. Lee Ann Barnhart, a middle-aged mother in attendance, told me that she was disappointed that social issues were never mentioned. Still, she is growing to like Romney, she said. (She supported Gingrich during the primaries.)
Romney’s calculation is clearly that he can count on these voters coming out for him in opposition to Obama, and so he can avoid reminding swing voters of the Republican War on Women. It’s probably wise politics. But Democrats devoted much of their convention to making sure women are not fooled. The question now is whether that message gets through.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, October 2, 2012
“Zing” Went The Strings Of His Heart: Mitt Romney Learning The Lessons Of Prior Debates Too Well
The other day, The New York Times reported that in their debate preparations, “Mr. Romney’s team has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August.” This then became the subject of predictable ridicule (check out #romneyzingers or #mittzingers on Twitter), but it actually does give us a window into the unfortunate state of the Romney campaign.
I’m sure they’re feeling pretty tense up in Boston right now. Barack Obama has a small but stubborn lead in every poll, there’s only a month left, and these debates are the best chance the campaign has at doing something dramatic. So if you were involved in Romney’s debate prep, you probably wouldn’t think that just showing your candidate to be smart and likeable will be enough to change the campaign’s direction. Hence the pressure for zingers.
But it’s tempting to learn the lessons of past debates a little too well, and that may be what is happening to the Romney campaign right now. Yes, debates are to a significant degree about “creating moments,” insofar as “moments” are what reporters are looking for. It’s true that reporters’ interpretation of the debate ends up mattering as much or more than the debate itself, since most voters won’t see it and those who do will largely forget the parts they aren’t being reminded of over and over. But if you come out and announce that you’re preparing zingers, then you’ve given the game away, and changed how any zingers Romney does manage to zing are going to be interpreted.
This is one of those things that depends on a mutual agreement between the campaigns and the press. Almost every great line from past debates was planned, but if the zinger is zingy enough, reporters will decide not to spend too much time exploring its provenance and focus instead on what effect it might have on the race. But once you’ve told reporters that you’re preparing some zingers, the only possible response from the observers once the time comes is, “Oh, here’s one of those zingers they prepared.” It will be presented to readers and viewers of post-debate analysis not as “a clever line showing Mitt Romney’s dextrous mind and raising real questions about President Obama,” but “a line Mitt Romney practiced with his campaign advisors, and then delivered on cue.” The Romney campaign has made it impossible for reporters to suspend their disbelief.
Is it possible that the Romney brain trust has crafted a line so brilliant, so biting, so devastating that Obama’s re-election bid will crumble at its utterance? I guess it’s possible, but it’s hard to imagine that the Romney people genuinely believe they’ve come up with such a thing. But at this point, what else have they got?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 2, 2012
“Nowhere To Go”: There Is No Brilliant Strategy Waiting For Mitt Romney To Use
I’m sure that right about now Mitt Romney is drowning in unsolicited advice. That’s what happens when you’re behind—everybody from the consultants you weren’t wise enough to employ to the donors funding your campaign to the guy who delivers your mail fancies themselves a political genius, and will be happy to tell you that all your problems would be solved if only you’d follow their advice. But I wonder: Is there anything all these people are telling Romney and the people who work for him that might help?
Because I don’t know what it might be. Sure, we can all agree that the Romney campaign hasn’t exactly been deft, but their biggest problem isn’t one of strategy or message, it’s that their candidate is unskilled and unappealing. In a long article out today, the National Journal explains that people’s expectations of the economy have just been lowered, and the Romney campaign’s belief that eventually voters would come around to blaming Obama for the country’s troubles just hasn’t materialized: “Each passing day and each new poll brings further evidence that the Romney team has miscalculated. Obama has erased a once-formidable Romney lead on the question of who would handle the economy better as president; in some polls, the president has seized the advantage on that front. Economy-first independent voters are drifting Obama’s way. Voters increasingly say that the economy is on the right track.”
OK, but what was the alternative for the Romney campaign? You can argue that they should have come up with something “bold,” but then you’d have to answer, what exactly? A 9-9-9 plan? When was the last time a president got elected not because of who he was and the national conditions surrounding the election, but because of a particularly striking policy proposal? Never, that’s when.
I’m guessing that most of the people giving Romney that unsolicited advice are telling him to “take the gloves off.” Because it’s obvious, to them at least, that Barack Obama is a horrible president and a horrible person, and if you just tell the voters that, eventually they’ll realize the truth. In that vein, here’s an interesting article in the Boston Globe (h/t Andrew Sullivan) explaining how Romney came from behind to win his 2002 governor race by getting tough:
Shortly after the poll came out, Romney huddled with his aides during a barbecue at his Belmont home, and they decided to shift tactics. He would drop the gentlemanly role he had assumed, one that prompted some voters to see him as a smug, programmed front-runner.
The campaign would drop the feel-good, family-focused ads in favor of sharper, more combative ones criticizing O’Brien’s management of the state treasury. Romney would start delivering attack lines himself, rather than leaving the dirty work to surrogates.
“We knew we needed to use debates and other methods to get our message out in a crystal-clear way,” said Mike Murphy, who was one of Romney’s chief strategists. “We needed to turn the boat a little bit, so to speak. Mitt was totally on board and we hit our stride.”
Within weeks, the polls began to shift. Voters responded to Romney’s negative ads, the most memorable of which portrayed O’Brien as a hapless, sleeping basset hound instead of a watchdog on Beacon Hill. The ad — humorous, yet cutting — is still talked about by political observers in Massachusetts.
The problem is, Shannon O’Brien was the state Treasurer, not the incumbent president of the United States. Voters already know Obama pretty well, so you aren’t going to change what they think about him with a few pointed attacks. And for the last year, Romney has been doing little except attacking Obama, saying that he doesn’t understand or care about America, and that everything he’s done in office has been a disaster. It’s not like there’s some place of greater toughness Romney could go to—at least not one that’s likely to work.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 2, 2012
“Words Not Intended For Voters To Hear”: Precious Moments Of Republican Candor Reveal The Party’s Core
The time-tested tactic used by Republicans to deflect attention from their most unpopular positions — especially on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and taxes — is to cry “class warfare,” as if the workers were laying siege to the citadels of finance. It is a complaint that distracts from substantive debate and disguises the real vector of aggression against middle-class and low-income Americans over the past 30 years.
That old style of misdirection has gone stale, thanks to the emergence of audio and video clips that feature prominent Republican candidates voicing their true views… in private, of course. Caught on tape during those fleeting moments, they reveal intentions that they clearly believe most voters should never hear.
Mitt Romney’s ugly unguarded blather at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton — where he expressed scorn for the “47 percent” who supposedly pay no taxes, glom onto entitlements, and consider themselves “victims” — instantly became notorious when Mother Jones released a pirate videotape that went viral. His harsh (and highly inaccurate) words confirmed negative public opinion about him personally. But there is no shortage of fresh evidence, very little of which has received commensurate attention, that Romney’s remarks reflect core attitudes among the elite in his party.
Consider the audiotaped speech delivered by Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, when he appeared several years ago to pay homage to the late author Ayn Rand at a meeting of her acolytes in the Atlas Society. Although the Wisconsin congressman now insists that he disdains Rand, mostly because of her atheism, he can be heard on tape saying that he measures every important vote according to whether it advances her ideology of selfishness. He denounces Social Security and Medicare, which he constantly promises to “save” and “protect” in public, as “collectivist” schemes that violate individual freedom.
Or consider Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and Secretary of Health and Human Services now running for the U.S. Senate in his home state. Appearing before a Tea Party group several months ago, Thompson offered a boast. “[W]ho better than me, who’s already finished one of the entitlement programs” — by which he meant welfare reform — “to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?”
Around the same time, Linda McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment tycoon and Republican candidate for an open Senate seat in Connecticut, told a Tea Party outfit that she wants to “sunset” Social Security, which means in Washington jargon that she wants a chance to kill it. Surely that would come as a very unpleasant surprise to the working taxpayers who have underwritten the program for decades as a pillar of their retirement.
Obnoxious, offensive, extreme — such blurted gaffes used to be heard mainly from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, who need not worry whether he can win over a majority of the electorate. But the advent of the Tea Party, with its far-right agenda and insistence on purity, has given full voice to the GOP’s core crankiness. These are people who proudly pour vitriol on families surviving through unemployment and food stamps.
Naturally, Republican worthies like Ryan, Thompson, and McMahon protest, usually via paid spokespersons, that they would never, ever damage America’s most vital programs, and that their empathy for the struggles of the middle class is boundless. Amazingly, they seem to think nobody heard what they candidly told their Tea Party supporters. And if anyone mentions those embarrassing tapes, they will scream ” class warfare.”
It just may not work this year.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, October 1, 2012
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