“A Non-Existent Era”: David Gregory’s Tim Russert Problem
Mark Leibovich, in his 2008 profile of Chris Matthews, reported that the MSNBC talking head lived under the constant shadow of then-Meet the Press host Tim Russert.
Russert, the inquisitive jackhammer host of “Meet the Press” — is a particular obsession of Matthews’s. Matthews craves Russert’s approval like that of an older brother.
Following Russert’s death several months after that profile was written, David Gregory took over Russert’s seat. And since then, it’s always seemed to me that Gregory, much more so than Matthews, has suffered from attempts to live up to Russert. While Matthews wears his liberalism on his sleeve, Gregory feels he must maintain a tough-talking ‘pox on both houses’ approach that has become increasingly difficult as the Republican party has veered rightward. Take, for example, today’s Meet the Press.
Earlier this morning, Gregory asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to explain why Romney rarely gets specific about his proposed policies. Christie dodged the question, responding that it was Obama who needed to explain why, among other things, he rejected the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan. (He likely rejected it, by the way, because Congress wasn’t adopting it either, so doing so would needlessly hurt him with the base, which wasn’t happy with the entitlement reductions enumerated in the plan.) And why didn’t Congress adopt the plan? Because Mitt Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan almost single-handedly derailed it.
Ryan [was] “clearly was the leader” of House Republicans in setting the terms of a grand debt bargain, said Andy Stern, a panel member and Democrat….Ryan’s support would have likely drawn votes from (David) Camp and possibly (Jeb) Hensarling and made it all but impossible for the president to reject a plan created by his own self- appointed commission.
But rather than push back agianst Christie, Gregory shifted gears and asked him about his RNC speech. Gregory’s reluctance to mention Ryan’s complicity in the failure of Simpson-Bowles–not to mention the President’s 2011 commitment to a ‘grand bargain,’ or the general fiscal absurdity of the Romney/Ryan budgets–is borne out of his crippling obsession with impartiality. More specifically, I’d argue it stems from his instinct to honor ‘Meet the Press’s’ reputation for being ‘tough on both sides’, a trademark the late Tim Russert helped cement. Here, however, the admittedly tame Gregory’s attempts to live up to Russert’s attack-dog style serves him badly.
In Russert’s seventeen years at Meet the Press, Republicans and Democrats feared his acerbic approach equally. But it’s unclear that Russert would have remained equally balanced were he alive today. He never covered a House so radical and a Senate so obstructionist as the current models. He never encountered a Republican Party platform as extreme as this year’s. He never even got to interview Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, depriving us of the thorough grilling he might have unleashed upon her. In that way, Gregory who’s made it something of a trademark to exchange nuance for balance, has foolishly tried to live up to the Russert model in an era that doesn’t allow for it.
By: Simon van Zuylen-Wood, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 30, 2012
“Tomorrow Is Another Day”: Mitt Romney’s Ever-Changing Opinion On Health Care
Seeking to soften his image, Mitt Romney has this week taken — again — to touting the health care reform law he enacted as governor of Massachusetts, saying it illustrates his “empathy and care about the people of this country.”
While running for president in 2008, and the following year while the Affordable Care Act was still being crafted, Romney was actively evoking ‘Romneycare’ as a model for federal health reform. All that changed after President Obama signed the law in March 2010, at which point repeal became the Republican Party’s raison d’être. Romney quickly latched on to the cause.
That’s when the relationship between the now-Republican nominee and his signature achievement as governor grew complicated. Here’s a timeline.
April 12, 2006: Birth of Romneycare
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signs health care reform into law.
February 2, 2007: ‘Model for the nation’
Preparing to run for president, Romney touts Romneycare in a Baltimore speech. “I’m proud of what we’ve done,” he says. “If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation.” He repeats this message in multiple media appearances throughout his presidential run.
January 5, 2008: ‘I like mandates’
In a Republican primary debate, Romney defends Romneycare and its individual mandate. “I like mandates. The mandates work,” he says. “If somebody — if somebody can afford insurance and decides not to buy it, and then they get sick, they ought to pay their own way, as opposed to expect the government to pay their way.” He continues to echo this message.
July 30, 2009: Adopt my plan, Mr. President
The national health care debate is raging. Romney takes to USA Today to call on Obama to embrace the tenets of Romneycare. “Obama could learn a thing or two about health care reform from Massachusetts,” he writes, making the case for an individual mandate: “Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.”
The federal law enacted in March 2010 includes the three core planks of Romneycare: guaranteed insurance coverage, an individual mandate and subsidies to help people afford to buy their own policies on a regulated exchange.
March 30, 2010: ‘Different as night and day’
Reading the tea leaves, Romney proceeds to channel his party’s calls to unwind Obamacare and insists that it’s different from his plan.
“People often compare his plan to the Massachusetts plan,” he tells the Boston Globe. “They’re as different as night and day. There are some words that sound the same, but our plan is based on states solving our issues; his is based on a one-size-fits-all plan.”
After initially calling for partial repeal, Romney champions the GOP’s push to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act, describing it as both unconstitutional and damaging to the nation.
May 12, 2011: No apology
Weeks before announcing his presidential bid, and under pressure from conservatives to disavow his greatest political accomplishment, Romney gives a speech defending his law but vowing never to impose it on the nation. “Our plan was a state solution to a state problem and his plan was a federal power grab,” he says.
“I also recognize a lot of pundits are saying I should stand up and say this whole thing was a mistake,” he says at the University of Michigan. “But there’s only one problem with that: It wouldn’t be honest. I, in fact, did what I felt was right for the people of my state.”
June 12, 2011: Obamneycare
One day after his Republican primary opponent Tim Pawlenty derisively conflated the two laws with the moniker “Obamneycare,” Romney defends his version in a debate.
“If I’m elected president I will repeal Obamacare,” he says. “And also, on my first day in office … I will grant a waiver to all 50 states from Obamacare.”
Romney proceeds to avoid mentioning Romneycare for the rest of the primaries, but holds the line on the federal-state distinction each time he’s asked about it.
September 15, 2011: ‘One of my best assets’ against Obama
During a Republican primary debate in South Carolina, Romney explains how he will respond to Obama’s contention that he isn’t a credible critic of the Affordable Care Act.
“That will be one of my best assets if I’m able to debate President Obama,” he says, “as I hope to be able to do by saying, ‘Mr. President, you give me credit for what you’ve tried to copy in some ways. Our bill dealt with 8 percent of our population, the people who aren’t insured and said to them, if you can pay, don’t count on the government, take personal responsibility. We didn’t raise taxes, Mr. President. You raise taxes $500 billion. We didn’t cut Medicare.’”
December 7, 2011: ‘It’s not even perfect for Massachusetts!’
Looking to shore up his primary position, Romney puts more distance between himself and his Massachusetts law than ever before. In an interview with the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, he says he actually had serious concerns about his own bill. As for how many other states should mimic his signature law, he replies: “In its entirety, not very many.”
“It’s not even perfect for Massachusetts,” he says. “At the time we created it, I vetoed several measures and said these, I think, are mistakes, and you in Massachusetts will find you have to correct them over time. But that’s the nature of a piece of legislation of this nature. You’ll see what works, what doesn’t, and you’ll make the changes. But they have not made those changes, and in some cases they made things worse. So I wouldn’t encourage any state to adopt it in total.”
June 28, 2012: Upheld
The Supreme Court upholds the Affordable Care Act, and by now Romney has locked up the presidential nomination. “Our mission is clear,” he says. “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.” He does not mention Romneycare.
August 8, 2012: Romneycare revival
Accused in a vicious pro-Obama group’s ad of being responsible for the death of a woman by making decisions at Bain that cost her her health care, the Romney campaign seeks to soften his image by saying the Massachusetts law would have covered her.
“Obviously it is unfortunate when anyone loses their job,” says Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul on Fox News. “To that point, you know, if people had been in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney’s health care plan they would’ve had health care.”
Conservatives threw a fit, unleashing a torrent of criticism at their nominee’s campaign, with some fearing that Saul’s remarks would cost him the election. The criticism, it turns out, would not silence the campaign’s embrace of the law.
August 26, 2012: ‘Very proud’
Fending off Democratic claims that Republicans are waging a “war on women,” Romney says he’s “very proud” that his Massachusetts law gave health care to many women.
“I’m the guy who was able to get all the health care for all the women and men for my state,” he says on Fox News. “They were talking about it at the federal level. We actually did something and we did it without cutting Medicare and without raising taxes.”
September 8, 2012: I like parts of Obamacare — but not exactly
In an interview on NBC, Romney briefly signals support for two key provisions in Obamacare — guaranteed coverage for preexisting conditions and letting young people remain on a parent’s policy until 26, which were also included in Romneycare.
“I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform,” he says. “Of course there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place.”
Soon, his campaign clarifies that he wasn’t expressing solidarity with the Affordable Care Act, but was reiterating support for different versions of the ideas. In the case of preexisting conditions, he wants laws protecting those who have maintained continuous coverage, but not first-time buyers. And he says insurers will adopt the under-26 provision on their own.
September 26, 2012: ‘Empathy and care’
Under fire again from the Obama campaign for his taped remarks deriding 47 percent of Americans as freeloaders, Romney cites Romneycare in a national TV interview as evidence of his compassion for ordinary people.
“Don’t forget — I got everybody in my state insured,” he says on NBC. “One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don’t think there’s anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record.”
On the same day, Romney touts Romneycare in a guest article for the New England Journal of Medicine contrasting his vision for health care reform with Obama’s. “Each state will have the flexibility to craft programs that most effectively address its challenges — as I did in Massachusetts,” he writes, “where we got 98 percent of our residents insured without raising taxes.”
By: Sahil Kapur, Talking Points Memo, September 29, 2012
“Purveyors Of Garbage”: Right Wingers Hitting Rock Bottom, Then Crawling Beneath The Rock
I have, at times, marveled at some of the more ridiculous efforts to smear President Obama and his family. Dinesh D’Souza, for example, wrote a strange book attacking Obama for trying to carry out an “anti-colonial” agenda he inherited from his Kenyan father. It’s a thesis as silly as it is ugly, based on bizarre assertions about the president having the mindset of an African “Luo tribesman.”
The Weekly Standard criticized it for “misstatements of fact, leaps in logic, and pointlessly elaborate argumentation.” When D’Souza’s thesis first appeared as a piece in Forbes, one of the magazine’s own columnists blasted D’Souza’s “intellectual goofiness,” “factual problems,” and “unsubstantiated ideological accusations.” The Columbia Journalism Review called D’Souza’s piece “a fact-twisting, error-laden piece of paranoia” and a “singularly disgusting work.”
By the time the disgusting attack was turned into a movie, it was tempting to think the deranged attitudes of Obama’s most over-the-top detractors couldn’t get any worse. Michelle Goldberg’s latest report proves otherwise — now they’re launching nauseating attacks against the president’s mother (thanks to my colleague Vanessa Silverton-Peel for the heads-up).
For a while now, pictures purporting to show Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, modeling in 1950s bondage and fetish porn have been floating around the darker corners of the Internet. Now, though, they’ve made their way into a pseudo-documentary, Joel Gilbert’s Dreams From My Real Father, which is being mailed to voters in swing states, promoted by several Tea Party groups and by at least one high-level Republican. At the same time, Dinesh D’Souza’s latest book, Obama’s America—the first of all his works to hit the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list—has a chapter essentially calling Dunham a fat slut. […]
What matters here is not that a lone crank made a vulgar conspiracy video, one that outdoes even birther propaganda in its lunacy and bad taste. It’s that the video is finding an audience on the right. Gilbert claims that more than a million copies of Dreams From My Real Father have been mailed to voters in Ohio, as well between 80,000 and 100,000 to voters in Nevada and 100,000 to voters in New Hampshire. “We’re putting plans in place, as of next week, to send out another 2 [million] or 3 million, just state by state,” he told me.
It may seem hard to believe that even the most gullible, wild-eyed fools would find such garbage credible, but there are those on the right who are actually embracing this. Goldberg added, “[T]he fact is, people are reporting receiving the disc in the mail. Tea Party groups and conservative churches are screening it. It was shown at a right-wing film festival in Tampa during the Republican National Convention, and by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum Council in Missouri. Alabama GOP Chairman Bill Armistead recently recommended it during a speech.”
We’re well past the point at which these right-wing activists care about basic levels of decency, but if there’s any justice, this kind of attack will backfire, and make the purveyors of the garbage look far worse than their intended targets.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 28, 2012
“Magic Moment Instinct”: Mitt Romney’s Secret Debate Weapon
With the first presidential debate coming on Wednesday, further details are emerging about how the two candidates have been preparing for the face-offs. The debates have a special importance for Mitt Romney, who trails President Obama by 4.3 points in both Real Clear Politics’s composite of national polls and their aggregation of polls in most swing states. Many politicos believe that the debates are Romney’s last chance to turn the race around. So what’s his secret weapon? Zingers.
This from Peter Baker and Ashley Parker in today’s New York Times:
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. His strategy includes luring the president into appearing smug or evasive about his responsibility for the economy.
This nicely illustrates one of the big problems that the Romney campaign has brought upon itself: They keep trying to find one magic moment on which they can turn around the race. They banked first on the vice presidential roll out and then on the GOP convention as instances where the American people would see and embrace a new Mitt Romney while finally turning on President Obama in the manner Republicans believe he deserves. That magic bullet instinct also explains the campaign’s jumping around from attack message to attack message (see: welfare attacks, “you didn’t build it,” “bumps in the road,” and so forth).
But as I argue in my column in U.S. News Weekly this week (subscription required), while we remember big moments in debates, they rarely if ever actually turn elections. The classic example is Gerald Ford’s declaration that the Soviet Union wasn’t dominating Eastern Europe—it’s remembered as a crippling gaffe, but he closed on Carter during the period of the debates that year. And while conventional wisdom (and, apparently, the Romney campaign) holds that Ronald Reagan only broke through after decisively besting Jimmy Carter with “there you go again” and “are you better off…?” in their late October debate, he was already leading in the polls at that point. It’s true that the polling trend line shows a Reagan surge after the debate, but he had been leading Carter since the late spring and had been creeping upward since late August. The Reagan-Carter debate accelerated an existing trend; it didn’t turn the election or change its dynamics.
And there’s another reason why the Romney campaign shouldn’t bank on zingers to turn around their flailing, failing effort. As The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison observes on Twitter today, “if people don’t like a candidate to start with, they aren’t going to be impressed when he uses one-liners and put-downs.” He goes on to wonder whether Team Romney realizes that candidates with high negatives (and Romney’s are so very high) shouldn’t be relying on zingers. People already find Romney unlikable, in other words; coming across as more of a smarmy smart-ass isn’t going to help him.
On a lighter note, the idea of Mitt Romney’s arsenal of prepared one-liners has given rise to a new Twitter meme: #MittZingers.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, September 29, 2012
“Victimizing America”: Tax Loophole Benefiting Romney’s Estate Costs U.S. $1 Billion Over Ten Years
According to Bloomberg News, Mitt Romney is taking advantage of a tax loophole to pass off a fortune to his children without paying taxes on it. According to administration figures, this loophole costs the government $1 billion over a ten-year budget window:
In January 1999, a trust set up by Mitt Romney for his children and grandchildren reaped a 1,000 percent return on the sale of shares in Internet advertising firm DoubleClick Inc.
If Romney had given the cash directly, he could have owed a gift tax at a rate as high as 55 percent. He avoided gift and estate taxes by using a type of generation-skipping trust known to tax planners by the nickname: “I Dig It.” […]
While Romney’s tax avoidance is both legal and common among high-net-worth individuals, it has become increasingly awkward for his candidacy since the disclosure of his remarks at a May fundraiser. He said that the nearly one-half of Americans who pay no income taxes are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims.” […]
The Obama administration estimates that closing the loophole Romney used would bring the federal government almost $1 billion in the coming decade.
One analyst said that $1 billion is a “laughable” under-estimate of the loophole’s effect, as “a single billionaire could pay $500 million more in estate taxes if these trusts are shut down.”
It’s unclear whether Romney would close this particular loophole, since he refuses to divulge details about his tax plan. However, he has been upfront about his desire to eliminate the estate tax, which only affects the richest Americans. That tax cut would save the heirs of the Koch and Adelson fortunes billions of dollars. As ThinkProgress detailed, the lion’s share of tax breaks doled out in the U.S. go to the very rich.
By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, September 27, 2012
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