“The Factions And Their Guns”: Don’t Blame Mitt Romney For The GOP’s Problems
Yes, Mitt Romney had a week I wouldn’t wish on … well, Mitt Romney. Yes, his campaign is incompetent, as Peggy Noonan wrote Friday. Yes, there is something really off about the guy personally. But as conservatives like Noonan start in on Romney vilification, I feel the need to stand up and reiterate: Romney’s problems aren’t all Romney’s fault. They’re not even half his fault. They’re chiefly the fault of a movement and political party that has gone off the deep end. Almost every idiotic thing Romney has done, after all, can be traced to the need he feels to placate groups of people who are way out there in their own ideological solar system, with no purchase at all on how normal Americans feel and think about things. This is much the harder question for Noonan and others to confront, and they really ought to ponder it.
Since he started running, Romney has had to cater to four factions in the GOP, each of which contributes in its way to the party’s self-destructiveness: the rich and their apologists, who think Barack Obama has made life in America well-nigh impossible for those earning $1 million a year; the Tea Party populists, the middle-aged and older white people who feel intense resentment against Obama and his America; the foreign-policy neocons, who invented this fable about Obama apologizing for America and so on; and the rabble-rousers—Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, etc., whose megaphones announce all these anxieties and others.
These four groups have each been holding guns to Romney’s temple. He’s a weak man, yes. But in a way—in only this one particular way—I feel a little sorry for him. These groups permit no room to maneuver whatsoever. None. Not an inch. So when something happens that is in their wheelhouse, the expectation immediately arises that Romney will utter every syllable precisely as they want to hear it.
So it was with the neocons after the Cairo and Benghazi riots. Now, I’m sure it’s partly true that Romney and his team are one big overeager floppy-eared dog, galumphing across the lawn anxious to please their masters. But the master sets the dynamic in place. There’s no doubt whatsoever that if the Romney people didn’t feel they had to rush to please that crowd, he wouldn’t have issued that statement at an utterly inappropriate time and then tried absurdly to defend it the next morning.
The same can be said with regard to Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan. We don’t really know that this was forced on him per se by the right, but we have reason to believe that the logic, shall we say, of his naming Ryan was made clear to him. And what good has Ryan done him? Did you notice the poll last week, which deserves more attention than it’s received, showing that Ryan was a less popular vice-presidential choice than Sarah Palin? This is the man the gun-holding factions said was a brilliant, game-changing choice. He’s game changing all right, though not as they intended.
And it’s the same story on the 47 percent. The man who asked that question was speaking very clearly for Faction A above. There can be little doubt that the vast majority of the people in that room, maybe every person, felt his pain, and Romney knew exactly what he had to say. Again, it’s certainly a two-way street; Romney obviously believed every word he said. But he knew the catechism.
And by the way, does anyone think a Republican presidential candidate would have said this, even behind closed doors, in 1992 or 1996 or 2000 or even in 2008? I think there’s no chance. It’s probably the sort of thing a lot of them thought. But it’s something they never, ever would have said. They’d have known better. So the existence of these factions in their precise form is new. The concealed anxieties of all these factions were brought to the surface by the financial crisis and its aftermath, the black guy standing up there representing the America that they don’t know and that scares them, and the former Massachusetts governor who seems squishy and must forever prove his loyalty. And boy is the lid ever off now.
Could Jim Baker fix this campaign, as Noonan asserts or hopes? He’s a knife fighter, there’s no doubt about that. Look at Florida 2000. But remember, he came in during the late innings to help Poppy Bush’s 1992 campaign, and that ended pretty ingloriously. And besides, he’s 82 now. Can he work 14-hour days, make crisp, snap decisions? One could argue that Romney’s gotten all the help he needs this year from 82-year-old men.
Romney deserves everything that is happening to him (I guess I would wish this past week on him after all). But it isn’t happening because of Mitt Romney alone, or even the now-hated Stuart Stevens. It’s happening because of the factions and their guns. It’s happening because of a party and movement that are out of control and out of touch. There is not a prominent Republican in the country who could be doing any better, with the possible lone exception of Jeb Bush, but it’s probably too early yet for another Bush. Face it, Republicans: he was and is your best candidate, and he’s tanking now more because of you than because of him.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 23, 2012
“A Political Pickle”: Conservative Media Tries To Save Romney’s Campaign
Mitt Romney sure is lucky that major media outlets exist to serve his interests. After a video came out on Monday afternoon in which Romney denigrates the nearly half the country that did not pay federal income taxes last year as irresponsible and entitled, it seemed he was in quite a political pickle. The comments were unlikely to endear him to swing voters who perceive Romney as an out-of-touch elitist. But since Romney got the idea that 47 percent of the country are lazy Democratic moochers from movement conservatives, he could not repudiate his own remarks.
At first, Fox News had no idea how to respond. They simply ignored the story, even as it dominated coverage on other networks, all through their primetime lineup on Monday. Finally, when Romney gave a press conference after 10 pm, in which he admitted to having made poor word choices but not a substantive error, they showed it. On Tuesday, the Fox Business network hosted Romney for a softball interview with Neil Cavuto. Fox was determined to avoid covering the story except to help Romney burnish his self-defense. Alas, Romney himself did not have much of a defense, other than to say that he had simply been acknowledging that he will not win a landslide victory.
But then, Providence struck. On Tuesday afternoon the Drudge Report released an audio recording from 1998 in which Barack Obama says, “I actually believe in redistribution.” Drudge splashed the phrase in a banner headline across his front page as if it were earth shattering news. Since then, according to Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone, Fox has played the audio clip twenty-two times.
The Romney campaign immediately seized on the clip as a way of shifting their defense of Romney’s unappealing rhetoric into more friendly terrain. Speaking to Cavuto, Romney said:
There is a tape that just came out today where the president is saying he likes redistribution. I disagree. I think a society based upon a government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money, that’s the wrong course for America…. The right course for America is to create growth, create wealth, not to redistribute wealth.
Romney’s campaign sent out the quote as part of a press release. They followed up shortly with another press release that lists their usual litany of depressing economic indicators as proof that “Obama’s redistribution plan…didn’t work.” What is missing is any proof, besides a fourteen-year-old quote, that Obama actually pursued a redistribution plan once in office.
By Wednesday, the Romney campaign had regained its footing. Reporters were being inundated with statements using the redistribution quote as a hook for all their usual talking points. For example, they released a statement headlined, “Obama’s Redistribution Didn’t Work For Small Businesses.” “Mitt Romney understands that opportunity and free enterprise create jobs and grow our nation’s small businesses—not government redistribution,” said Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul. The campaign also worked the phrase into their stump speeches. Paul Ryan told a Virginia audience that, Obama is “going to try and distract and divide this country to win by default.” Then he asserted:
President Obama said that he believes in redistribution. Mitt Romney and I are not running to redistribute the wealth. Mitt Romney and I are running to help Americans create wealth. Efforts that promote hard work and personal responsibility over government dependency are what have made this economy the envy of the world.
As Slates Dave Weigel points out, it is ridiculous to blame Obama for distracting and dividing the country, and then attack Obama for something he said fourteen years ago.
Conservative pundits, though, are cheering on the Romney/Ryan campaign’s silliness. After Romney’s appearance on Cavuto, Fox panelist and Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes said of the attack on Obama’s quote, “[It’s] good, [he should] make the argument. Going back to 1998 shows the president has believed this for a long time.” That’s a specious argument. If you go back to 1998 and look at anything Mitt Romney said, it may be diametrically opposed to what he believes today. Generally, the older the quote, the less relevant it is. Certainly that’s the standard Hayes would use if it were Romney who long ago said something Hayes considers damaging.
More importantly, Ryan’s statement creates two false dichotomies. Contra Ryan, redistribution can promote hard work instead of government dependency. A great example is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a wage subsidy for low-earning households. The purpose is to make menial jobs more financially attractive relative to being unemployed and eligible for welfare, food stamps and Medicaid. It was created with bipartisan support, and by all accounts it has worked well. It also happens to be one reason that so many low-income families do not pay any income taxes, the very state of affairs that Romney decried.
It is also wrong to assume that any wealth redistribution is the opposite of creating wealth. Reasonable people can differ on the optimal amount of redistribution to generate economic growth. But a glance at countries such as Denmark and Germany shows that high marginal tax rates, with the revenue going to strong educational and healthcare systems can develop a healthy, educated and therefore globally attractive workforce. That, in turn, can yield strong rates of economic growth.
The underlying complaint against Obama is bogus anyway. Drudge misleadingly cut the quote to create a false impression. As Jonathan Chait explains in New York magazine, if you read the full quote, you see that Obama is actually expressing a very moderate, neoliberal attitude. Obama actually said that some of the backlash against government has been deserved. To revive faith in collective action, Obama argues, government programs must be more efficient. “We do have to be innovative in thinking, what are the delivery systems that are actually effective.… because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot,” said Obama. This is not radical socialism. But then, neither is the Affordable Care Act, even though conservatives have labeled it as such. If Romney’s incompetent campaign did not have the conservative media to invent these myths, they would truly be lost.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, September 19, 2012
“Talking To Themselves”: Republicans Are Barricaded Within A Self-Reinforcing Informational Bunker
Mitt Romney and his Republican allies thought they had a way to diffuse the fallout from his now-legendary secretly-recorded fundraising video when somebody unearthed a tape of President Obama saying he favored “redistribution.” Sure, the tape is 14 years old. And sure, as Jamelle pointed out yesterday, pretty much everybody favors redistribution in some form, even Mitt Romney (if he didn’t, he’d be advocating removing all progressivity from the tax code). Romney is bringing it up whenever he can, as is Paul Ryan, and the Obama tape has been shown on Fox News approximately three million times in the last 24 hours. Are they a little desperate? Of course. But the fact that they think such a thing will have even the remotest impact on what people think of Barack Obama shows that they are existing within an ideological cocoon that makes it almost impossible for them to figure out what they’re doing wrong.
It isn’t just that the tape is 14 years old (and man, has Obama aged in that time), or that what he’s saying is pretty innocuous. It’s that they think there’s any statement of Obama’s that they can unearth that will change how voters think of him. As though some significant number of voters are going to say, “I’ve been watching this guy on television every day for the last four years, but this 14-year-old videotape that contains the word “redistribution” has finally made me realize that he’s a dangerous socialist. I was undecided before, but now you’ve got my vote, Mitt.”
A couple of years ago, bloggers had a discussion about “epistemic closure,” the tendency of many on the right to barricade themselves within a self-reinforcing informational bunker. The danger is that you wind up with a skewed view not only of the facts but of what other people believe as well. This can be deadly for a campaign, whose goal, after all, is to persuade people, some of whom don’t already see the world as they do. And it sure seems like Romney and his people are falling prey to it. The temptation is strong, because everyone who works on the campaign is a partisan who was probably getting much of their information from partisan news sources before they got there.
So when Romney comes out and says triumphantly “I don’t believe in redistribution!” he probably thinks voters will respond with, “Me neither, Mitt! Screw those freeloaders! Viva job creators!” But the more likely response among people who aren’t already committed Republicans is that once again, this rich guy who disdains everyone who isn’t as rich as him is saying, “I got mine, Jack, and the rest of you can go to hell.” In other words, he’s not countering the attacks the Democrats are making on him, he’s reinforcing them.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 20, 2012
“Mitt’s Snake-Bit Season”: The Worst Run Of Disasters This Side Of The Mayan Calendar
Our topic for today is: When Bad Things Happen to Mitt Romney.
Really, it’s been the worst run of disasters this side of the Mayan calendar. The Republicans’ woes started last Friday, when Ann and Mitt filmed a TV interview in which they entertained the kind of personal questions that most candidates learned to avoid after Bill Clinton did that boxers-versus-briefs thing. Asked what he wears to bed, Mitt said: “I think the best answer is: as little as possible.”
Euww.
Then, over the weekend, Romney aides began spilling their guts about how other staffers had screwed up the Republicans’ bounce-free convention. In an attempt to change the conversation, the campaign announced that it had just realized the nation wants Romney to say what he’d actually do as president. Voters “are eager to hear more details about policies to turn our economy around,” said an adviser, Ed Gillespie.
In search of just such specificity, the scoop-hungry Christian Broadcasting Network asked Paul Ryan if he would continue refusing to identify exactly what tax loopholes the Romney administration would close in order to turn our economy around.
“Yes,” said Ryan, who then veered into a disquisition about something that once happened to Tip O’Neill.
You may be wondering whatever became of Ryan, who was such a big sensation when Romney first picked him as a running mate. Since Tampa, he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, resurfacing every now and then to put up another ad for re-election to his House seat in Wisconsin.
It’s not all that unusual for a vice-presidential candidate to go low-profile. And it is totally not true that Mitt Romney strapped Paul Ryan to the top of a car and drove him to Canada. Stop spreading rumors!
Next, Mother Jones published that video of the fund-raiser in Boca Raton in which Romney said that 47 percent of the country is composed of moochers who want to confiscate the earnings of hard-working stockbrokers and spend it on caviar and dialysis treatments.
“So my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney decreed, undoubtedly more in sorrow than in anger.
Then, Republican Senate candidates in tight races began distancing themselves from the top of the ticket.
Ann Romney suggested Mitt was “taken out of context,” in what was undoubtedly meant as a helpful comment.
“All of us make mistakes,” said President Obama, in what probably wasn’t.
“Obviously inarticulate,” decreed Paul Ryan, popping up from a gopher hole somewhere in Nevada.
The fund-raiser, a $50,000-a-pop sit-down dinner, was hosted by Marc Leder, a financier who The New York Post reported as having a “wild party” last summer in the Hamptons “where guests cavorted nude in the pool” while “scantily dressed Russians danced on platforms.” You cannot blame Romney for that. If presidential candidates had to avoid all multimillionaires who held parties with naked guests and Russians on platforms, there would be no money for misleading TV commercials.
The video was a reminder of how ghastly this business of running for president can be. The guests seemed more interested in the breadbasket than the candidate. Romney was blathering away in the manner of somebody trying to stay awake during the 12th hour of a cross-country drive.
On Tuesday, moving to tamp down criticism that he was a conversational disaster area, Romney told Fox’s Neil Cavuto: “Well, we were, of course, talking about a campaign and how he’s going to get close to half the votes. I’m going to get half the vote, approximately. I hope — I want to get 50.1 percent or more.”
With that out of the way, Romney explained that his real point had not been to criticize people who don’t pay income taxes, but merely to point out that he wanted them to make more money. “I think people would like to be paying taxes,” added the quarter-billionaire whose own eagerness to be part of the solution is a matter of public record.
How did he let things slip out of control? Maybe the answer lies back with that Ann-and-Mitt interview, which was on “Live With Kelly and Michael.” Asked about his preferences when it came to heroines of low-end reality TV shows, the future presidential candidate enthusiastically announced: “I’m kind of a Snooki fan. Look how tiny she’s gotten. She’s lost weight and she’s energetic. I mean, just her sparkplug personality is kind of fun.”
It could be worse. He could have announced that he enjoys spending his free hours watching “Hoarders” marathons. But, still, it’s weird that Mitt Romney appears to think a lot about Snooki. Is it possible that while he’s being dragged around from one fund-raiser to the next, he spends his spare time watching “Jersey Shore” reruns in the limo?
That would explain so much.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 19, 2012
“This Is Crackpot Stuff”: Why Must We Take The Family Research Council Seriously?
The FRC, which sponsors the Values Voter Summit that took place in Washington over the past weekend, is a big, big player in conservative politics. Tony Perkins, its leader, has a lot of power in the GOP, appears on television as a serious person, and so on.
So in that context, I think it’s worth noting what goes on at those conclaves when they think no one is watching. They hosted Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann and the other big names last Friday. Then, on Saturday, after the mult-boxes had all been safely packed away and the media weren’t looking, out they came.
Alternet’s Zaid Jilani was watching, and here’s a bit of what he saw. Jerry Boykin, the retired lieutenant general and Christian jihadist who now works at FRC, basically called for World War III. An “ex-Muslin convert” named Kamal Saleem issued a different warning:
During the question-and-answer session, a number of attendees wanted to know more about how Muslims were supposedly infiltrating the U.S. government.
Saleem alleged that a U.N. treaty that Obama was working to enforce to replace the constitution with sharia law. Under this new, purportedly Obama-enforced regime, “churches and synagogues will go down underground because now you’ll have to submit your sermons to the government.” The consequences of an Obama re-election, he said, would be to “lose this nation.”
All right, this is crackpot stuff. But according to the Serious Men and Women of Washington, the FRC is not a crackpot outfit. Can you imagine if the Center for American Progress, say, or Jim Wallis‘s group featured a speaker who alleged that Romney had a secret plan to convert everyone to Mormonism and force Christians to reject all they’d been taught and embrace Joseph Smith’s teachings? I know I said last week I generally steer clear of analogies, but this one is pretty precise.
Except that neither CAP nor Wallis would ever dream of doing such a thing in a jillion years. And not because it would be politically unwise and they’d get their heads lopped off–but because it would just be a plainly nutty and deeply offensive thing to do. And, sure, they’d know that it would erode or destroy their credibility.
But FRC can do this and still be accorded respect. Why? Because we just take it as a given and accept that the right wing is full of nativist and reactionary and racist cranks. And this, remember, is a religious organization.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 17, 2012
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