The Consistently Inconsistent Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney, blessed with a series of self-destructing opponents, still needs to come up with a better way to address his history of flip-flops. His current argument boils down to asking voters, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying ears?” This is not going to fly.
Romney made the jaw-dropping claim to a New Hampshire editorial board that his problem wasn’t flip-flopping — it was being insufficiently robotic. “I’ve been as consistent as human beings can be,” the former Massachusetts governor insisted. “I cannot state every single issue in exactly the same words every single time, and so there are some folks who, obviously, for various political and campaign purposes will try and find some change and draw great attention to something which looks like a change which in fact is entirely consistent.”
Pressed during the CNBC debate Wednesday night, Romney repeated his consistency argument — this time topped off with an ode to his long-lasting marriage and an attack on President Obama.
“I think people understand that I’m a man of steadiness and constancy,” he said. “I don’t think you are going to find somebody who has more of those attributes than I do. I have been married to the same woman . . . for 42 years. I have been in the same church my entire life. I worked at one company, Bain, for 25 years. . . . I think it is outrageous the Obama campaign continues to push this idea, when you have in the Obama administration the most political presidency we have seen in modern history. . . . Let me tell you this, if I’m president of the United States, I will be true to my family, to my faith, and to our country, and I will never apologize for the United States of America.”
In court, this answer would be ruled non-responsive. Romney’s ability to stick to a marriage longer than, say, Newt Gingrich or to keep a job is not what’s at issue. The question, and it’s a legitimate one for anyone who has spent even a glancing amount of time examining Romney’s record, is whether he shifts ideological position with the political winds. Fidelity to one’s marriage or one’s religion says something about a candidate’s character, but it does not deal with the flip-flop question. Neither does a jab, justified or not, at the opposition.
“I will never apologize for the United States of America” does not respond to the question: Why did you change your positions on abortion, gun control, gay rights, climate change, immigration — even on Ronald Reagan?
If I were a Republican voter legitimately worried about Romney’s ideological shape-shifting, I would be insulted by this attempt to change the subject.
Perhaps, given the weakness of the opposing candidates, Romney can still skate by. After Wednesday’s gaffe, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is nearly finished. Voters don’t want to see Mr. Oops — or Mr. Giddy in New Hampshire — negotiating with a foreign leader.
Former Godfather’s Pizza chairman Herman Cain is one data point of corroboration away from imploding. Even if nothing more emerges to bolster the substance of the sexual harassment allegations against him — and two financial settlements plus an on-the-record allegation seems too much to disbelieve — his ham-handed handling of the story is nearly disqualifying on its own.
As to the notion that former House speaker Newt Gingrich could emerge as the anti-Romney — that’s hard to imagine. Gingrich’s attack-the-media-at-the-first-opportunity strategy is not going to get him very far even with Republican primary voters. He makes Romney look like the guy you want to hang out with.
But Romney’s failure to rise in the polls even as his opponents flail suggests that the flip-flop issue isn’t going away. There’s no magic solution to this problem. You can’t give a speech on flip-flopping. But flip-flop denialism isn’t going to work — especially when it is so easy to go to the videotape.
Indeed, Romney has even flip-flopped on whether he’s flip-flopped. In New Hampshire, Romney pointed to gay rights as “one of those areas where I’ve been entirely consistent,” opposed to workplace discrimination but also against same-sex marriage. Yet appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” four years ago, Romney acknowledged changing his view on whether federal law should prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; he once supported federal protection, then said it should be a state matter.
“If you’re looking for someone who’s never changed any positions on any policies, then I’m not your guy,” Romney said then.
Except, of course, when he is.
By: Ruth Marcus, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 10, 2011
Newt’s Freddie Mac Lobbying Whopper
At Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate in Michigan, Newt Gingrich was asked by the mostly on-the-ball CNBC panel about his work on behalf of housing giant Freddie Mac. For the former Speaker of the House, it was a bit of a welcome-back moment; for the last few months, he’s been so much of an afterthought that moderators haven’t even bothered with his own personal history and resume.
But Gingrich had an answer ready. He denied the lobbying charge, and then, via Benjy Sarlin, offered this spirited defense:
I offered advice. My advice as an historian when they walked in and said we are now making loans to people that have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything but that’s what the government wants us to do. I said at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible. It turned out unfortunately I was right and the people who were doing exactly what Congresswoman Bachmann talked about were wrong.
It’s pretty self-evident, though, that Gingrich wasn’t hired as a consultant because he was an untenured history professor at North Georgia College in the late 1970s. He was hired because, as a former Speaker of the House, he had a lot of influence with a lot of imporant people. An AP investigative report from 2008 framed Gingrich’s role as that of a political operator, greasing the wheels on Capitol Hill. Key section
Efforts to tighten government regulation were gaining support on Capitol Hill, and Freddie Mac was fighting back.
According to internal Freddie Mac documents obtained by the AP, Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) spent the evening in hard-to-obtain seats near the Nationals dugout with Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin and four of Freddie Mac’s in-house lobbyists. Both were members of the House Financial Services Committee. The Nationals tickets were bargains for Freddie Mac, part of a well-orchestrated, multimillion-dollar campaign to preserve its largely regulatory-free environment, with particular pressure exerted on Republicans who controlled Congress at the time.
Internal Freddie Mac budget records show $11.7 million was paid to 52 outside lobbyists and consultants in 2006. Power brokers such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were recruited with six-figure contracts. Freddie Mac paid the following amounts to the firms of former Republican lawmakers or ex-GOP staffers in 2006…
Pushing back, Freddie Mac enlisted prominent conservatives, including Gingrich and former Justice Department official Viet Dinh, paying each $300,000 in 2006, according to internal records.
Gingrich talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model.
Gingrich made a pretty penny as a consultant in the 2000s. As CPI reported, the former Speaker’s consulting firm took in $312,000 from the ethanol lobby in 2009. Presumably, they weren’t paying him for his historical insights.
By: Tim Murphy, Mother Jones, November 11, 2011
Mitt Romney And The Future Of Anti-Choice Politics
There are a couple of takeaways from Tuesday night’s rejection of the ‘personhood’ measure in Mississippi. One, Colorado is not alone in its repudiation of these extremist measures. Voters in Colorado and Mississippi, two very different states have said “No” by double-digit margins. And two, this vote scares the hell out of former Gov. Mitt Romney because it is a huge liability in the general election.
In a bid for the social conservative base he’s losing to Gov. Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and maybe former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Romney told talk show host and former candidate Mike Huckabee he ‘absolutely’ supports ‘life begins at conception’, the basis for the multi-state ‘personhood’ push. As governor in 2005, Romney vetoed a bill that would have expanded access to emergency contraception for rape survivors, a practice that would also be banned under the Mississippi proposal. Since emergency contraception can work by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg, it doesn’t square with ‘life begins at conception’, as Romney noted in his veto.
This despite Romney’s telling NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, during his 2002 run for governor, that he could soften Republican opposition to reproductive rights and would support increasing the availability of emergency contraception for Massachusetts women. Romney’s positions on choice and reproductive rights are his attempt at being a little bit pregnant.Huffington Post‘s Sam Stein noted on Twitter that he directly asked the Romney camp in the days leading up to the Mississippi vote if Romney endorsed the proposal. Romney refused to answer those questions, as well as inquiries from the New York Times. Now that ‘personhood’ has failed in Mississippi he is desperately backpedaling—or Buckpedaling, in Colorado parlance. Buckpedaling is named for Senate candidate Ken Buck, who embraced Colorado’s ‘personhood’ ballot measure in the Republican primary but then flip-flopped when it became a liability in the general. He lost.
‘Personhood’ proponents, undeterred by continued rejection—fanatics usually aren’t—say they plan to try again in a number of battleground states in 2012, including Colorado (third time’s the charm!), Ohio, Florida, Nevada, and Montana. And they have some allies in Congressional Republicans.
As noted by Nick Baumann in Mother Jones,
Nearly identical language appears in three bills that have been endorsed by scores of Republicans in Congress, including top House committee chairmen Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)…. Sixty-three House Republicans, or over a quarter of the GOP conference, are cosponsors of HR 212, Rep. Paul Broun’s (R-Ga.) “Sanctity of Human Life Act,” which includes language that directly parallels that of the Mississippi personhood amendment.
Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker has introduced S.91, a Senate version of the ‘personhood’ House bills, and it currently has sixteen Republican co-sponsors, including “moderate” Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Richard Burr of North Carolina.
The Republican Party, and the Republican presidential primary, remains captive to its right-wing base in its embrace of the anti-choice, anti-family, anti-privacy ‘personhood’ proposals. But when these proposals have been rejected by voters as diverse as those in Colorado and Mississippi, it tells you something about the mainstream electorate leading into 2012. That is why Mitt Romney wouldn’t answer questions before the vote, and why he is running away now that it’s over.
By: Laura Chapin, U. S. News and World Report, November 9, 2011
The Intransigent “Do Nothing GOP Congress” And Election 2012
The Republicans in Congress have made a wager. They’ve bet the political ranch that they will destroy Barack Obama’s chances for re-election if they can block his proposals to produce jobs.
In fact, it’s the GOP that could lose big when the votes are counted a year from now.
Republicans completely control the House. In the Senate they can use the filibuster to prevent anything from passing.
Last week, for the third time this fall, Republicans successfully blocked Obama’s jobs program in the Senate. Of course this came as absolutely no surprise, since Senate Republican Leader told the world earlier this year — in no uncertain terms — that his top legislative priority was to prevent the re-election of the president.
McConnell, and his House counterpart, John Boehner, don’t lose a wink of sleep over concerns that their intransigence harms the economic prospects of everyday Americans. In their view, the worse the economy gets, the more likely the voters will be to boot President Obama out of the Oval Office.
But a good case can be made that these guys will end up being too clever by half — that in fact they are providing fuel for precisely the argument that could defeat them in 2012.
McConnell and Boehner are right that it is very hard for an incumbent president to win re-election in a bad economy. And unless something dramatically changes, most Americans won’t think much of their own economic circumstances when Election Day rolls around next year.
So next year’s election will turn largely on one question: who does the American people hold responsible for what will likely still be a lousy economy?
Republicans are relying on the simple proposition that the guy in charge — the president — is to blame. But every day of intransigence increases the odds that in fact, they themselves will get the rap.
In 1945 Vice President Harry Truman became president when Franklin Roosevelt died in office. After the War, Truman presided over a substantial post-war recession that helped make him “unelectable” in the eyes of most pundits and politicians. GDP dropped by a whopping 12%. His political viability was complicated further when the Democratic base split into three parts. A portion followed Progressive Henry Wallace and much of the Southern Democratic white vote (the south was a Democratic base at the time) supported Strom Thurmond’s segregationist Dixiecrat Party. In the April before the election, Truman’s overall approval rating in the Gallup poll was just 36%.
But, Truman barnstormed the country, traveling 21,000 miles on a “whistle stop” tour where he decried the “do-nothing Republican Congress.” Though the economy began a modest improvement in 1948, no one — but Truman himself — believed he had a chance to defeat Thomas Dewey — a former Governor cut out of the same elite cloth as Mitt Romney. Truman won.
Obama can do exactly the same thing. Even assuming that the economy continues to experience only modest improvements over the next year, the Obama campaign can lay the lack of progress where it belongs — at the feet of the “do-nothing Republican Congress” that is intent on stalling economic recovery for their own political gain.
And where Truman’s 1946 recession was largely the result of the post war demobilization, Obama can rightly claim that this economic disaster was the product of precisely the same Republican policies that his opponents intend to re-instate if they regain control of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Not only has the GOP refused to support Democratic measures to put Americans back to work, their alternative “jobs program” features no direct, measurable job creation whatsoever. Instead it relies on the same “trickle down” economic theory that didn’t create one net private sector job in the eight years before the Great Recession – and the same unwillingness to rein in the big Wall Street banks that led to the worst financial collapse in 65 years.
But that’s not all. Everyone agrees that the Republican House Majority was swept into office last November precisely because of the terrible economy. But instead of job creation, they’ve busied themselves focusing on trying to defund Planned Parenthood, protecting Americans from the imaginary threat of Sharia Law, and fending off non-existent attack on the use of “In God We Trust.” The Republican controlled House hasn’t voted on a single job creation measure since John Boehner and his colleagues took power last January.
In the deliberations of the “Super Committee,” Republicans have been completely unwilling to give on the fundamental question of whether millionaires should be asked to pay to put America’s economic house in order. The view of the Republican leadership is that — in addition to defeating President Obama — their principal mission is to act as guard dogs for the exploding incomes of the top 1%.
In the upcoming fight over the next fiscal year’s appropriation bills, there is every indication that the Republicans will demand that riders be attached limiting the power of the EPA and restricting funding for contraception — which surveys show is used by 98% of American women.
Battles like these will do nothing but strengthen the Democratic narrative that the GOP leadership is focusing on bread and circuses for its base, while it intentionally blocks measures that could provide jobs to construction workers, fire fighters, cops, teachers and millions other out-of-work Americans.
Then there is the House schedule. Last week the Boehner team published a House schedule for next year intended to guarantee that very little gets done. The House will be in session only 94 days in all of next year (including many days where votes are postponed until 6PM) and will continue its habit of going into recess virtually every third week. Yet another example of a “do-nothing Republican Congress.”
It’s no accident, that while the polls show that most officials in the American government have fallen into disrepute for their failure to get the economy moving again, Congressional Republicans win the prize for negative ratings. Gallup shows Obama’s approval ratings beginning to edge up — from a very low 38%, up to 43%. Some other polls show it rising to 47%. The average rating from Real Clear Politics currently stands at 45.4%.
Meanwhile, Congressional job approval ranges from 9% to 16%, with a Real Clear Politics average of 12.7%.
The recent Democracy Corps poll shows that favorability for Republicans in Congress trails the Republican Party as a whole, Democrats in Congress, the Democratic Party as a whole, and President Obama.
On the other hand, the president’s agenda itself is overwhelmingly popular. His jobs bill is supported by the vast majority of Americans — and becomes more popular the more voters hear about it. When its provisions were explained, 63% offered their support in the October Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. That’s why it’s so important for the White House to continue pressing Congress to pass the bill as a whole — and to focus on its individual parts.
Funding jobs for teachers, firefighters and cops is very popular. Repairing deteriorating schools is very popular. Building roads, ports and airports is very popular. Providing unemployment benefits for those who are out of work is very popular.
And paying for it all by taxing millionaires and billionaires has the support of two thirds to three fourths of Americans — including a majority of Republicans. An October National Journal poll found 68% of voters support the Democratic proposal for a surtax on millionaires to pay for the jobs bill.
In fact, the whole 99% versus 1% message frame that has dominated the airwaves since everyday people began Occupying Wall Street — is very popular — as are the president’s executive actions to improve the economy without Congressional approval.
And what is unpopular? The Republican plan to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers – that is really unpopular. In fact, most polls find that 70% of voters oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit.
Creating jobs, making the 1% pay their fair share, and protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be the defining symbolic issues next year — and on every one of them Democrats hold the high political ground and Republicans have to walk through the valley of political death.
Finally, of course, is the matter of whom the Republicans will nominate as an alternative to President Obama. Unfortunately for the GOP, Presidential elections are not always referenda on the incumbent — they are choices between two living, breathing people — and in this case two clearly distinguishable futures for our country.
The conventional wisdom holds that Romney is the Republican’s strongest contender. If he is — which I doubt — he is no Rocky Balboa.
There are two lines of attack on Romney that are toxic:
He clearly has no core values.
When voters accuse someone of being a typical “politician” they mean someone is a candidate who has no center — who decides what he believes depending entirely on the political winds. Romney could serve as the dictionary definition of “politician.” He has done “one eighties” on everything from abortion rights to health care. He is a political weathervane whose guiding principle is only one thing: what will advance the political career of Mitt Romney?
In 2004, immediately before the election, Gallup showed George W. Bush with an approval rating of 48% approval to 47% disapproval — not much different than President Obama enjoys today. But a not very popular Bush won re-election — largely by convincing large numbers of swing voters that John Kerry had no core values, that he was a flip flopper. They succeeded even though Kerry was a war hero and had a strong record of standing up for what he believed. How much easier will it be to convince everyday Americans that Romney has no core values – since he doesn’t.
Romney is the poster boy for the 1%.
He feels like the guy who fired your brother-in-law. He is in fact the guy who, some time back, gathered his crowd of young Wall Street hot shots around him after he completed a big deal at Bain Capital and posed for a picture with money dripping from their mouths and pockets and ears. He’s a guy who made his fortune dismantling companies and firing workers.
Of course, none of these facts are intended to make Progressives complacent — far from it. None of them guarantees we will win in 2012 — only that we can.
For the first two years of the Obama Administration, Progressives took a lot of ground.
There was:
Health Care for All Americans
Wall Street Reform
Avoiding another Great Depression
Saving a million jobs in the American auto industry
Expanding Medicaid
Eliminating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Expanding Children’s Health
Environmental Reform
Expanding Labor Rights
Expanding Civil Liberties
Equal Pay for Equal Work
Now Obama is ending the War in Iraq.
But last fall the Empire struck back. All of the corporate, special interest money fought back with a vengeance. It fought back because that’s the nature of change. The forces of the status quo don’t just roll over and play dead. They do everything they can to hang onto their money and power and privilege.
Now we have to hold our ground and prepare a winning counter offensive — and it won’t be easy, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that magnifies the power of corporate cash.
But if they win — if America has President Romney or Perry or Cain, Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner — they have made it crystal clear what they will do. They will return America to the Gilded Age. They will roll back the twentieth century — they will rip apart the entire social contract.
They will privatize Social Security, destroy Medicare, emasculate the labor movement, cut taxes further for corporations and the wealthy. They will create new radical conservative facts on the ground that they hope will entrench conservative power for generations.
But they believe their real key to victory is lack of enthusiasm among Progressives. They believe that Progressives — and many in the Democratic base — will stay home next November.
They will be wrong.
That’s because over the next year, the progressive forces in America will rise to the battle. In their own way, the Occupy movement has already shown that Progressives will stand and fight.
They will rise to the battle because they realize that the 2012 election is not just about two people running for President. It is about a moral question. It’s about two competing sets of values. It’s all about how we see ourselves as a nation — as a society. It’s about whether we will be a society based on the precepts of radical conservative social Darwinism, or a society rooted in the progressive values that have always defined the promise of America.
We will not allow them to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
We will not allow them to destroy the American labor movement.
We will not allow them to destroy the middle class.
We will not allow them to destroy the American dream.
And we will remember a central lesson of history: that before change happens it seems impossible. And after change happens it seems inevitable.
American history — human history — is the story of ever-expanding human freedom. There may be ups and downs, but when you back up from the big chart of history, the trend is up.
I believe that our time is no exception — that next year — in this crossroads election — we will do what is necessary to assure that America once again recommits herself to create a brighter future for the next generation than those that went before.
That’s what the revolutionaries that created this nation did. That’s what the soldiers who fought and died to defend it did. That’s what the sit-down strikers who created the labor movement did. That’s what the freedom riders who fought for civil rights did. And that is precisely what we will do again in 2012.
By: Robert Creamer, Political Organizer, Strategist and Author, Published in The Huffington Post, November 7, 2011
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 