“Unvarnished Negativity”: The Romney Campaign Continues To Lack A Positive Message
Since the Republican National Convention wrapped up last week, the Romney/Ryan campaign has abandoned its brief pretense of running a positive campaign based on leveling with the American people about serious issues. It’s back to all attacks on President Obama, all the time. On Tuesday they issued multiple press releases gleefully celebrating President Obama’s giving himself a grade of “incomplete” on his first term. On the campaign trail and in interviews Ryan has repeatedly asserted, as Romney argued in his nomination acceptance speech at the RNC on Thursday, that President Obama cannot tell the American people they are better off than they were four years ago. (As Media Matters points out, cable news channels, especially Fox News, have complicitly repeated this charge without offering context of the economic freefall we were in when President Obama took office.)
A close examination of the GOP’s major speeches from last week shows that even their nominally affirmative case for small government was internally inconsistent. The crucial applause lines actually undermined their arguments. Between that, and their immediate return to unvarnished negativity, it is clear that the Republican Party simply does not have a positive conservative message for this election cycle.
The RNC was supposed to be filled with homage to the virtues of private enterprise. But both of their main speakers on Thursday night—Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mitt Romney—implicitly made the case for the necessity of government instead.
When it comes to exhorting a nation to collective democratic action, private equity investment can seem a bit lacking. As anyone who watched the biographical video of Romney on Thursday night noticed, investing in a chain of office supply stores just isn’t that inspiring.
Perhaps that’s why Romney tried to summon memories of America’s supposed mid-twentieth-century greatness, he talked about a government program. Although he never actually used the acronym NASA, that’s what he was talking about when he said:
When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn’t whether we’d get there, it was only when we’d get there.
The soles of Neil Armstrong’s boots on the moon made permanent impressions on OUR [emphasis in original text] souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent’s sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world.
God bless Neil Armstrong.
Tonight that American flag is still there on the moon. And I don’t doubt for a second that Neil Armstrong’s spirit is still with us: that unique blend of optimism, humility and the utter confidence that when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.
Nothing about this reflects the advantages of limited government. The space program is a governmental endeavor, not the work of some plucky businessman. Its success illustrates the virtues of collectivism, not individuality. Indeed, Romney’s kicker: “you need an American,” makes no sense. Neil Armstrong did not get to the moon by himself. What the moon landing shows is that for “the really big stuff” you need the American government.
Similarly, Rubio said, “Mitt Romney knows America’s prosperity didn’t happen because our government simply spent more. It happened because our people used their own money to open a business.” But as anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of the modern economy knows, the vast majority of new businesses are not opened entirely with the proprietor’s own money. Rather, they borrow money from a bank or—as Romney would surely point out—venture capitalists. This in turn, necessitates a functioning banking system. As we have learned over the years, a functioning banking system requires governmental institutions such as the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
As President Obama might have said, with regard to everything from the monetary system to the space program, “you didn’t build that.”
Meanwhile, one of the most oft-repeated anti-Obama talking points was taken to its logical conclusion, and its absurdity was thus demonstrated. Republicans like to joke that President Obama has never had a “real” job, meaning one in the private sector. This has even morphed into a shorthand that he has never had a job before the presidency at all. For example, Tim Pawlenty joked in his speech in Tampa: “Barack Obama’s failed us. But look, it’s understandable. A lot of people fail at their first job.”
Strictly speaking, this is not actually true. Besides the fact that most people would probably consider community organizer, law professor, book author, state senator and US senator to be jobs, Obama worked for several years after college at the Business International Group, a publishing and advisory firm that assisted US companies abroad. (It was later bought by the Economist Group and is now part of the Economist Intelligence Unit.)
But current Republican ideology holds that jobs in the nonprofit sector or public sector are not real jobs. And since Obama never talks about his brief foray into the for-profit sector, Republicans figure they can assume their listeners won’t know about it. So, in his acceptance speech at the RNC, Mitt Romney said, “[Obama] took office without the basic qualification that most Americans have and one that was essential to his task. He had almost no experience working in a business. Jobs to him are about government.”
Even just a cursory examination of this claim shows it makes a lot less sense than Romney—and his audience, which cheered enthusiastically—assumes it does. Business is a broad category: a teenager who spends his summer flipping burgers at McDonald’s works “in a business.” Is Romney seriously suggesting that such work experience would make one better qualified for the presidency than serving in the United States Senate and teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago? Taken literally, Romney’s comments would mean just that.
Coincidentally enough, Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan and his cheerleaders in the conservative media have actually cited the summer Ryan spent working at a McDonald’s as evidence of his real-life experience. That’s because, if you accept Romney’s standard of presidential qualification, his running mate is otherwise badly unqualified. Ryan has spent his entire professional career working in politics and political advocacy. And yet this does not bother Romney nor his supporters.
It shouldn’t. There is absolutely no reason to think that Herman Cain—a successful businessman in the fast food industry, who has a ridiculous tax plan and demonstrated disturbing ignorance of international affairs—would make a better president than Paul Ryan. The president’s effect on the economy comes through macroeconomic policy making. One can understand that well, or poorly, from a variety of backgrounds. Republicans know this. That’s why they’ve nominated career politicians for the presidency or vice-presidency before, and they happily nominated Ryan this year. There is nothing wrong with that. But it means there is something very hypocritical about their attack on Obama’s work experience.
Given the rank hypocrisy of their convention rhetoric, and their reversion to one-note economic attacks on Obama immediately thereafter, it looks like Romney’s hopes of reinventing his image and reframing the race will surely be dashed.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, September 4, 2012
“Southern De-Construction”: With Voter Suppression, The Confederacy Rises Again
On Sunday I attended a fascinating panel of Southern politics experts convened by UNC-Chapel Hill. One of the major takeaways from the session was how diverse the South has become. For instance, Charlotte, the host city of the DNC, is now 45 percent white, 35 percent African-American and 13 percent Hispanic.
Among baby boomers aged 55–64, the South is 72 percent white. Among kids 15 or under, the South is 51 percent white, 22 percent Hispanic, 21 percent African-American and 6 percent other (which includes Asian-Americans and Native-Americans). In North Carolina, people of color accounted for 61 percent of the 1.5 million new residents the state gained over the past decade. Since 2008, the black and Hispanic share of eligible voters in North Carolina has grown by 2.5 percent, while the percentage of the white vote has decreased by a similar margin. This increasing diversity allowed Obama to win the Southern states of Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in 2008—all of which are competitive again in 2012.
The region’s changing demographics are a “ticking time bomb for Republicans,” said Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center. The Southern GOP is 88 percent white. The Southern Democratic Party is 50 percent white, 36 percent African-American, 9 percent Hispanic and 5 percent other. The GOP’s dominance among white voters—who favor Romney over Obama by 26 points in the region—has allowed Republicans to control most of the region politically. But that will only be the case for so long if demographic trends continue to accelerate. Yet instead of courting the growing minority vote, Republicans across the South are actively limiting political representation for minority voters and making it harder for them to vote.
Eight of eleven states in the former Confederacy have passed restrictive voting laws since the 2010 election, as part of a broader war on voting undertaken by the GOP. Some of these changes have been mitigated by recent federal and state court rulings against the GOP, yet it’s still breathtaking to consider the different ways Republicans have sought to suppress the minority vote in the region.
– Laws mandating strict forms of government-issued identification to cast a ballot were passed in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Virginia tightened a looser voter ID law. A federal court blocked Texas’s discriminatory voter ID law last week and will rule on South Carolina’s law shortly. Mississippi and Alabama must also receive preclearance for their voter ID laws—which are scheduled to go into effect in 2013 and 2014—from a federal court in Washington or the Department of Justice under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. According to a 2005 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, 11 percent of US citizens don’t have government-issued IDs, but the number is 25 percent among African-Americans.
– Laws requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote were passed in Alabama and Tennessee. Restrictions on voter registration drives were enacted in Florida and Texas. Florida’s law has been overturned by a federal court. Texas’s law has also been blocked by a state judge. Data from the 2004 and 2008 elections in Florida show that “African-American and Hispanic citizens are about twice as likely to register to vote through drives as white voters,” according to Project Vote.
– Early voting periods were reduced in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. African-Americans in states like Florida were twice as likely to cast ballots during early voting as white voters. According to University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith, 800,000 voters in Florida cast ballots during early voting hours in 2008 eliminated by the GOP. A federal court overturned the law in the five Florida counties covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
– Florida also prevented felons convicted of non-violent crimes from voting after they’ve served their time, which disenfranchised nearly 200,000 Floridians who would have been eligible to vote in 2012. Blacks are 13 percent of registered voters in Florida but 23 percent of disenfranchised felons.
– Only three Southern states—Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina—did not pass restrictive voting laws since 2010. North Carolina Democratic Governor Bev Perdue twice vetoed efforts by North Carolina Republicans to pass a strict voter ID law before the 2012 election. If GOP gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory wins in November, it’s all but certain a tough voter ID law will be among the first pieces of legislation he signs.
– In conjunction with these new voting restrictions, Republicans all across the South used their control of state legislatures following 2010 to pass redistricting maps that will lead to a re-segregation of Southern politics, placing as many Democratic lawmakers into as few “majority minority” districts as possible as a way to maximize the number of Republican seats. “Their goal is to make the Republican Party a solidly white party and to make the Democratic Party a majority African-American one,” says Kareem Crayton, professor of law at UNC-Chapel Hill and an expert on voting rights in the South. The Texas redistricting maps, which a federal court ruled last week were “enacted with discriminatory purpose,” are simply a more extreme version of an effort that has been replicated in virtually every Southern state to undercut black and Hispanic political representation.
The consequences of these changes will be to make it harder for growing minority populations to be able to cast a ballot in much of the South and to make the region more segregated politically at a time when it is becoming more diverse demographically. “The net effect is that the potential for any coalition to exist in the Democratic Party of moderate-to-progressive whites and African-American voters is pretty much decimated,” says Crayton. Obama is betting he can once again turn out such a coalition in states like Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, but that task has become tougher in 2012. The outlook for state and local Democrats in the region is far bleaker.
The regression in the South today when it comes to voting rights is eerily reminiscent of tragic earlier periods in the region’s beleaguered racial history. “After Reconstruction, we saw efforts by conservative whites in Southern state legislatures to cut back on opportunities for black Americans to cast a ballot,” says Crayton. “It’s hard to dismiss the theory that what we’re seeing today is a replay of that scenario.”
Today, four southern states (Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas) are supporting a constitutional challenge to Section 5 originating in Shelby County, Alabama. When Republicans in Tampa yearned for the good ‘ol days, it was hard not to get the feeling that they were thinking of a time in the South when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not exist.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, September 4, 2012
“Do Republicans Really Want To Compare?”: America Is Definitely Better Off Under Obama
Republicans seem to have hit on a question that has Team Obama fumbling, or at least squirming: Are you better off now than four years ago? Judging by my E-mail inbox yesterday, it’s a question Republicans seem genuinely interested in pursuing. Please do, GOP. It’s a trap.
I say this for two reasons. The first is factual, the second political.
On the matter of facts, when President Obama took office in January 2009, the economy was shedding 800,000 jobs per month. Stop for a second and read that again: 800,000 jobs lost per month. The economy has now added private sector jobs for 29 months running.
Does that mean that things are good? Not at all. The topline unemployment figure has worsened even as the overall economy has improved, and we still haven’t emerged from the jobs crater wrought by the Great Recession. But middling job growth is indisputably better than economic free fall.
More: As Time’s Michael Grunwald points out the economy shrank by an annual rate of 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. At that rate, Grunwald writes, “we would have shed the entire Canadian economy in 2009.” Grunwald, who has written a book on Obama’s stimulus, goes on to make a pretty good thumbnail case about why that jobs plan did in fact work, as well as generally why Obama and his advocates have a lot to be proud of—the post is worth a read.
But it brings me to my second point—why the GOP is walking into a trap if they pursue the “better off” question. Look back at the figures quoted above: 800,000 jobs lost per month; an 8.9 percent annual contraction rate. Is that really the point of comparison to which Mitt Romney and the Republicans want to draw Americans’ attention? Please. Please!
Republicans constantly whine about President Obama pointing to the dreadful circumstances of his ascension to the Oval Office—but now they want to invite the comparison? Really? Really!
I understand that the president and his team have to toe this line carefully—we’re still digging out from George W. Bush’s recession. But Jon Favreau and the presidential speechwriting staff, are you paying attention? If the GOP wants to ask whether the country is better off than it was four years ago, then the answer is a no-brainer yes, and I can’t think of a better person or place to give that answer than Barack Obama on Thursday night.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, Washington Whispers, September 3, 2012
“Another Shift In The Works?”: Mitt Romney’s Latest Conversion On Abortion
Is Mitt Romney shifting his abortion position again?
It’s fairly well-known that Romney proclaimed himself in favor of abortion rights when he ran for office in Massachusetts, then reversed himself before launching his presidential bid. But recently, the GOP nominee seems to be softening his opposition somewhat. Or is he?
Romney proclaimed himself a strong supporter of abortion rights both in 1994, when he ran unsuccessfully for Senate against incumbent Democrat Edward Kennedy, and in 2002, when he defeated Democrat Shannon O’Brien to become governor.
“I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose,” he said in a 2002 debate with O’Brien. “And I do take exception to Shannon characterizing my view as being any different than hers in this regard; The Boston Globe recently reported there’s not a paper’s width worth of difference between our two positions in this regard.”
But that changed halfway though Romney’s term as governor. He says his conversion came after he talked to a Harvard scientist about embryonic stem cells. Now, he says his position is to oppose almost all abortions.
“My own view is that I oppose abortion except for cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is threatened,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Aug. 24.
But that’s slightly different from what he told CBS that same week.
“My position has been clear throughout the campaign,” he said. “I’m in favor of abortion being legal in the case of rape and incest, and health and life of the mother.”
So in that interview, Romney added one more exception — for the woman’s health.
The Romney campaign won’t say the candidate misspoke, but a spokeswoman does say he doesn’t support an exception to protect the health of the pregnant woman. That’s because other abortion opponents, including GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, insist it creates too large a loophole, since health often encompasses mental health, too.
“The health exception is a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through it,” said Ryan on the House floor during a debate in 2000 on a bill to ban the procedure some call “partial birth” abortion. “The health exception would render this ban virtually meaningless.”
Beth Shipp, political director for the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, says she’s stunned by those who oppose exceptions for health reasons.
“They actually think that somehow women make up health problems like diabetes, or kidney failure, or breast cancer,” she said, “or any of the myriad of other health concerns that women in this country face when they become pregnant.”
But even without a health exception, the question remains: Does Romney really support abortions for victims of rape? The question has become more relevant in light of the recent controversy surrounding Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin. He suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” couldn’t get pregnant, and later apologized.
But for all of Romney’s efforts to try to distance himself from Akin, when he was governor of Massachusetts, Romney vetoed a bill that would have required that rape victims be provided not abortions, but morning-after pills in the emergency room.
“It’s very important to remember that emergency contraception is birth control,” says Shipp of NARAL. “It’s not RU-486, which people refer to as the abortion pill.”
Although some very ardent opponents say the morning-after pill can technically cause a very early abortion by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg, medical experts insist that’s not how it works. Yet Romney said it could “terminate life after conception” in a Boston Globe column explaining his veto.
The Republican platform calls for protecting life from conception. It doesn’t allow any exceptions, including those for rape, incest or the life of the woman. Shipp says if that’s Romney’s position, then fine. But voters will see through it if he tries to go back and forth.
“They pay attention. They learn about the issues,” she said. “And every time that Mitt Romney tries to reinvent himself, they say, ‘But wait a minute, I remember you said …’ They do their homework; they understand the responsibility that comes with voting for the highest office in the land.”
Last week, Romney’s oldest sister Jane told reporters at the convention that her brother wasn’t going to ban abortion if he becomes president. “It’s not his focus,” she told a National Journal reporter.
But comments like that, clearly aimed at closing the candidate’s sizable gender gap, could come as a rude surprise to social conservatives Romney’s worked hard to woo for the past seven years.
By: Julie Rovner, NPR, September 3, 2012
“Is That A Rhetorical Question?”: The Obvious Answer To The “Better Off” Question
Much of the Sunday shows were dominated by a simple question: asking Democrats whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago. Dems inexplicably seemed to be caught off guard by the question, and struggled with the answer. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) even felt compelled to clarify his “no” answer from yesterday.
This morning, Democrats tried to get back on message.
With a definitive “absolutely,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the country was moving in the right direction by pointing to job growth and the auto industry.
“By any measure the country has moved forward over the last four years,” she said on NBC’s Today. “It might not be as fast as people hoped. The president agrees with that. He knows we need to do more. That’s what this week is about, laying out a road map of how we can continue this progress, how we can continue moving the country forward.” […]
This attack was echoed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic National Convention chairman…. “[T]he answer is yes, we are better off. But we’ve got to keep on working harder.”
While Dems struggled with this yesterday, I think they may be missing the importance of this opportunity. If Republicans and many in the media are going to be focused on the “are you better off” question, it’s a chance for Democrats to remind the public of something much of the country has forgotten — just how cataclysmically terrible things were before.
Indeed, I’m at a loss to explain how this is even a debate. Whether you love the president or hate him is irrelevant — four years ago the economy was shrinking, now it’s growing; four years ago the nation was hemorrhaging jobs, now it’s adding jobs. The auto industry, the stock market, American manufacturing, the deficit — they’re all better now than when Obama took office.
Put it this way: Mitt Romney thinks the American economy has improved under Obama.
Consider this gem.
In his remarks [Friday], Romney also acknowledged the economy was getting better — something he has said before….
“And [President Obama]’s going to say the economy is getting better,” Romney said. “Thank heavens it’s getting better. It’s getting better not because of him, it’s in spite of him and what he’s done.”
Notice, in this quote from earlier in the year, Romney said twice in three sentences that he believes the economy is “getting better.”
Or how about this stunning exchange between Romney and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham:
INGRAHAM: You’ve also noted that there are signs of improvement on the horizon in the economy. How do you answer the president’s argument that the economy is getting better in a general election campaign if you yourself are saying it’s getting better?
ROMNEY: Well, of course, it’s getting better. The economy always gets better after a recession. There is always a recovery.
INGRAHAM: Isn’t that a hard argument to make, if you’re saying, like, OK, he inherited this recession, and he took a bunch of steps and tried to turn the economy around. And now, we’re seeing more jobs, but vote against him anyway? Isn’t that a hard argument to make? Is that a stark enough contrast?
ROMNEY: Have you got a better one, Laura? This happens to be the truth.
If the president’s critics want to argue that conditions haven’t improved enough, fine. If they want to argue that conditions have improved, but Obama shouldn’t get credit, fine. If they want to say conditions would be even better if we’d tried a different course, we can at least have the debate.
But to say a growing economy that’s adding jobs is worse than a shrinking economy that’s losing jobs is demonstrably ridiculous. Is the country better off than it was in the midst of a global crash four years ago? Is that a rhetorical question?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 3, 2012
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