“Romney’s Kind Of Guy?”: Pushed Into A “Quayle-Palin” Decision By A Conservative Establishment
For months, Mitt Romney repeated a common complaint about President Obama’s professional background: he’s spent his life in the political world, not the real world. While Romney’s a businessman (notwithstanding 18 years seeking public offices), Obama’s never run a business and never run a state. It makes Obama, the argument goes, a poor choice for national office.
Oddly enough, Romney hasn’t repeated that line of criticism in a while. I guess we know why.
[Paul Ryan] worked in politics his entire life, beginning as an aide to Sen. Bob Kasten, then working for Sen. Sam Brownback and as a speechwriter to Rep. Jack Kemp. He’s known as a relatively ideological politician who has put forward a detailed policy plan to remake the federal government. It’s a rather different message about what’s important. And how does Romney say the problem with Barack Obama is that he’s “never spent a day in the private sector” and then put Ryan a heartbeat away from the presidency?
Indeed, in May, Romney went so far as to say working in the private sector for “at least three years” should be a prerequisite to national office. Now, Romney wants to put Ryan one heartbeat from the presidency, despite the fact that Ryan’s adult life bears all of the characteristics of a background Romney disdains.
I don’t intend this as a “gotcha” moment, exactly, but rather, my larger point is I’m not exactly sure why Romney thinks Ryan should be the vice president, or would even be good at the job.
Everything we know about Romney — he’s a cautious, management-focused executive, who values experience and private-sector success — suggests Ryan’s the last guy he’d want as a governing partner in the White House. Putting aside the radicalism of the Ryan budget plan, at least for a moment, Ryan hasn’t run so much as a lemonade stand.
He’s a 42-year old, seven-term congressman who’s never even held statewide office and has no natural constituency. Ryan voted for every element of the Bush-Cheney agenda — including votes for the bank bailout, the massive Medicare Part D expansion that he didn’t see the need to pay for, and multiple increases to the debt limit.
Ryan’s also a very high-profile figure from the least popular Congress since the dawn of modern polling. He is, in other words, a professional politician who has played a key role in making Capitol Hill even more loathed than it’s ever been. Ryan, like Romney, also has literally zero background in foreign policy, national security, or international affairs.
What is it about this resume that Romney looks at and says, “Yep, that’s my kind of guy”?
The answer is, nothing. Romney was almost certainly pushed into this announcement by a conservative establishment that doesn’t trust him or feel excited to rally behind him, and Romney didn’t have the standing or intestinal fortitude to push back.
It’s a Quayle/Palin kind of decision that reinforces the perception that Romney is not only unsatisfied with the state of the race, but is starting to feel genuine fear about his candidacy.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 11, 2012
“A Panicky Pick From A Position Of Weakness”: The Illogic Of Romney Picking Paul Ryan For Vice President
Do you hear that noise? It’s the sound of millions of conservative hearts going pitter-patter over this week’s speculation boomlet regarding the prospect of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney tapping House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to be vice president. Maybe they’ll get their fondest wish, maybe Tampa will be flooded with Romney-Ryan signs and bumper stickers in a couple of weeks. But I think there’s a basic illogic to the notion that makes it hard to see it coming to pass.
NBC’s “First Read” and others have pointed to Romney’s comments to the network about wanting a visionary vice president as a nod in Ryan’s direction. Romney said Thursday that, “a vision for the country that adds something to the political discourse about the direction of the country. I mean, I happen to believe this is a defining election for America that we’re going to be voting for what kind of America we’re going to have.” Certainly Ryan has a well-established vision for where he wants to take the country—but therein lies the danger. Whose candidacy would this be anyway? If Romney decides to import the Ryan vision for America lock, stock, and barrel, he’ll run the risk of seeming to be a me-too nominee: He doesn’t have a vision for America of his own so he decided to embrace someone else’s. What then is the raison d’etre for a Romney presidency if it’s a Ryan agenda? Certainly Romney has endorsed the Ryan budget, but adopting it as his own would be taking that to a whole different level.
This potential problem would be mitigated if Romney had laid out a strong vision for the country so far, but he has run a campaign which has become famous (infamous?) for its lack of policy specifics and detail. At the same time, Romney has by apparent design remained something of a personal blank slate for the general public (except for the devastating definition Democrats gave it in July). Romney’s basic campaign message has been: I’m not-Obama (since the middle of June, more than 90 percent of the ads Romney has run have been negative, according to the Washington Post’s ad tracker). Is his campaign really going to fill in that blank slate with someone else’s detailed agenda?
There’s an argument that the three polls out yesterday giving Obama an outside-the-margin-of-error lead could also spur a game-changing pick a la Ryan. “The conventional wisdom had been that Romney was going to be picking a running mate in a coin-flip race. Well that’s not the case now. How does that change his mind? Does it help Paul Ryan?” asks “First Read,” adding that Romney has gone from picking a running mate from a position of strength to “picking one from a position of weakness.” That seems a bit strong, especially based on one set of polls. Does the Romney team want to exacerbate a perception of weakness by making what could be seen as a panicky pick (a sop to a jittery base, a Hail Mary in the face of a widening gap in the polls, and a whiplash-inducing strategic change from deliberate policy vagueness to a highly controversial off-the-shelf economic agenda).
Exit question: Given Ryan boomlet this week, how can the Romney campaign let the faithful down gently if they do indeed go with a more conventional choice?
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, August 10, 2012
“Romney’s Incredible Extremes”: Mitt Romney’s Tax And Spending Plans Are Irresponsible And Cruel
Mitt Romney’s tax and spending plans are so irresponsible, so cruel, so extreme that they are literally incredible. Voters may find it hard to believe anyone would support such things, so they are likely to discount even factual descriptions as partisan distortion.
The pro-Obama New Priorities PAC stumbled across this phenomena early in 2012 in its focus group testing. When they informed a focus group that Romney supported the budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and thus championed ending Medicare as we know it while also championing tax cuts for the wealthy, focus group participants simply didn’t believe it. No politician could be so clueless.
Incredulity may complement what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd dubbed Romney’s strategy of “hiding in plain sight.” Romney refuses to release his tax returns, scrubbed the records and e-mails of his time as governor and as head of the Olympics, keeps secret details of his Bain dealings and covers up the names of his bundlers. And then, he’s able to announce extremely cruel policy positions with impunity, because the voters just can’t believe that’s what he is for.
This is what comes to mind with the publication of a study on the effects of the Romney tax policy by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center and the Brookings Institution.
The study took its assumptions from Romney’s tax agenda on his Web page — where he promises to cut tax rates by 20 percent, sustain all the Bush tax breaks, keep the reduced rate for capital gains, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminate capital gains taxes on married families earning less than $200,000 (or as Gingrich noted, on those that don’t have any capital gains) and eliminate the estate tax (a small boon to his strapping sons).
Romney then promises to make these cuts without losing revenue by eliminating tax loopholes. Only he refuses to identify which tax breaks or loopholes he would eliminate.
Under the best (and most improbable) of circumstances — that the Congress decided to completely eliminate tax expenditures for those making over $200,000 before reducing any of the benefits to those making under that amount — the study found that Romney’s tax plan would transfer a staggering $86 billion in tax burden from those making over $200,000 to those making under that amount. Millionaires would pocket an average tax cut of $87,000 while everyone else would suffer a tax hike of $500 a year.
That’s because to make up for the lost income, Congress would have to cut the mortgage deduction, the deduction for gifts to charity, the deduction for employer based health care, the Earned Income Tax Credit and child tax credit that goes to middle- and lower-income earners. But simply eliminating these and other tax breaks for the rich doesn’t generate enough revenue. So the people who really take it in the teeth are middle-income earners — small business people, middle management and professionals. It is, the study concluded, “not mathematically possible” to lower tax rates as Romney proposes without giving the rich a tax break and working and middle-income people a tax hike.
But will people believe that Romney really is for that — more tax breaks for the rich paid for by tax hikes on working families? Most of course will never learn about the Romney tax plan. But even those that do, could they ever accept the incredible truth?
Last month, the Democracy Corps, led by Stan Greenberg and James Carville, released a survey arguing that Obama and Democrats benefit greatly when the election is framed as a choice on the Republicans’ Ryan plan, the extreme budget passed by the House of Representatives, that exacts deep cuts in education, programs for poor children and turns Medicare into a voucher that pushes more and more costs on seniors.
In their survey, Obama’s margin over Romney “more than doubles” when the election is framed on the two candidates’ position on the Ryan budget. That of course, assumes that the election can be so framed, and that the voters will accept the assumption. But as the Priorities crowd discovered, voters have a hard time believing any politician could be supporting 20 percent cuts in education, an elimination of the refundable tax credit for children or dramatically changing Medicare. That is simply too extreme to be believed.
Ironically, of course, if Romney is elected and Republicans keep the House, the tea party right will claim a mandate. As Grover Norquist says, the House will drive the agenda and Romney will sign anything that emerges from the Senate. And sadly, given that the millionaires on the Democratic side of the Senate aisle aren’t nearly as united as those on the Republican side — and many are dependent on funding from some of the same special interests that now dominate Washington — we’re likely to see less Senate obstruction and more “bipartisan cooperation” on an agenda that Americans consider literally incredible.
The only hope is that voters take another look before they decide to vote for a change. In the case of Romney, the Republican really does support a budget plan that would scrap Medicare and give tax breaks to millionaires. He really is planning to eliminate Wall Street safeguards and take away health-care benefits from millions. He really believes the country will be better off if more teachers and police officers are laid off and foreclosures continue unabated.He really does want to deregulate Wall Street again, and gut the protections the EPA provides for clean air and clean water, to say nothing of global warming, the existence of which he now denies.
This isn’t a liberal caricature based on election-year demagoguery; this is Mitt Romney’s policy agenda. That is truly incredible — incredibly true.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 7, 2012
“Romney Unveils Agenda”: His “Five-Point Plan” Is Vastly Less Specific Than His “One-Point Plan”
Ask and it shall be given, Mitt Romney’s campaign seems to be saying today to critics Left and Right. Need a positive campaign message? Want an agenda? Well, here you are, per Byron York:
[O]n Thursday, the campaign rolled out “Mitt Romney’s Plan for a Stronger Middle Class,” which boiled down nearly every domestic policy proposal Romney has made to just five points: energy independence, education, trade reform, deficit cutting and a plan to “champion small business.”
And on Thursday afternoon, there was Romney, addressing supporters in Golden, Colo., in front of a giant banner that said ROMNEY PLAN. In his remarks, Romney criticized Obama; nothing wrong with that. But he laid out his larger purpose at the very beginning. “Today, I come to talk about making things better,” Romney said, laying out his plan. “If we do those five things, those simple five things … you’re going to see this economy come roaring back.”
“This is the path to more jobs and more take-home pay and a brighter future for you and your kids,” Romney added. “And I know that because I’ve seen it.”
Romney was clear, sharp and focused. If he stays that way, he’ll likely quiet some of his GOP critics, at least for a while.
Well, that’s nice, and clearly more substantive than just touting his own success and rugged good looks as a sufficient agenda. But Lord a-mercy, this five-point plan raises a few follow-up questions, eh? I mean, would Barack Obama dispute any of these five goals? I don’t think so.
The funny thing about this “five-point plan” is that it’s vastly less specific than what you might call his “one-point plan:” the Ryan Budget, which shows in detail how Romney and a Republican Congress would go about achieving those five goals. Until Romney is willing to talk about that, then he can call his vague talking points a PLAN all he wants, but it’s about as accurate as taking photos of a city from an airplane window at 40,000 feet, and proclaiming it all neat and pretty.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 3, 2012
“Romney’s Cliff Notes Version Of The Ryan Plan”: Your Guide To “Ending Medicare As We Know It”
It’ll be the next argument in the campaign, so it’s a good time to brush up.
Yesterday, President Obama went to Florida and told seniors that Mitt Romney wants to end Medicare as we know it, and it appears that this argument (and some related ones) will be a central feature of the Obama campaign’s message in the coming days. It’s entirely possible, as Jonathan Chait has suggested, that all the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s finances and record at Bain Capital are the first stage of a two-stage strategy that culminates with an attack on the Ryan budget. Since we’ll be talking about this a lot soon, I thought it might be worthwhile to refresh our memories on what this is all about, particularly with regard to Medicare, and how it relates to the current campaign.
First: Is it fair to tar Mitt Romney with the Ryan plan? No question. While Romney’s own policy proposals are quite a bit more vague than the Ryan plan is, they follow the same contours, and when Romney is asked about the Ryan plan he never hesitates to praise it. When asked about it last month, Romney’s chief strategist Eric Fehrstrom said of his boss, “He’s for the Ryan plan.” Or in Romney’s own words, “I’m very supportive of the Ryan budget plan. It’s a bold and exciting effort on his part and on the part of the Republicans and it’s very much consistent with what I put out earlier.” Enough said.
Next: Does the Ryan plan actually “end Medicare as we know it”? This is the phrase that Democrats have used in the past to describe it, and that Obama will continue to use. Republicans claim the phrase is unfair and demagogic. But while it would be inaccurate to simply say the Ryan plan “ends Medicare,” because if the plan were enacted there would still be a program going by the name of “Medicare,” it is fair to say that Medicare would be a drastically different program, and some of the critical things that make it so successful would no longer exist.
Today’s Medicare is an insurance program. If you’re a senior, you go to your doctor, and your doctor gets paid by Medicare. It is a single-payer program that covers every senior, and though it doesn’t pay for every conceivable procedure, because of Medicare’s universality there are essentially no uninsured seniors in America, no seniors who are subject to the tender mercies of the notoriously unmerciful insurance companies, no seniors who need to worry about their pre-existing conditions or their lifetime limits or any of the other ways those companies find to screw their customers, and almost no seniors who find it impossible to pay their insurance premiums (seniors do contribute premiums to Medicare, but they are quite modest).
The Ryan plan in its initial incarnation eliminated Medicare as an insurance program, and replaced it with “premium support.” There’s an argument about whether premium support can be described accurately as a “voucher,” but that’s nothing more than a silly disagreement about semantics; premium support in practice is no different from any voucher. Under this plan, seniors would have to get their insurance from private companies, and the government would pay part of the cost. If those private premiums go up, then seniors will have to pay more out of their own pockets; indeed, this is a feature, not a bug, of the Ryan plan. The whole point is to limit government spending on Medicare by limiting how much seniors get in their vouchers/premium support.
And those limits could be vicious. The Ryan plan caps the growth of Medicare at GDP growth plus 0.5 percent. If health costs rise faster than that, seniors will have to pick up more and more of the tab. That means that if the Ryan plan were enacted, there would likely be many seniors who couldn’t afford private premiums and would have no health coverage. This feature of the plan eliminates one of the fundamental pillars of Medicare: that it is an entitlement, meaning that if you qualify, you’re entitled to the benefit. If this year’s costs are higher than we’d like, we can make changes to the program for next year, but nobody goes without coverage. Under the Ryan plan, that would no longer be true.
But here’s an important thing to keep in mind: After Ryan released the first version of his plan in 2011 and caught a whole bunch of flak for basically destroying Medicare, he came back with a revised plan earlier this year that has one critical difference: it allows seniors, if they so choose, to stay on traditional Medicare. Mitt Romney’s Medicare plan does the same thing (Romney’s plan, such as it is, is basically a Cliff Notes version of the Ryan plan). In other words, under political pressure they embraced a public option. But since the plan still caps overall spending at GDP+.05, seniors would likely have to pay more and more out of their own pockets, likely thousands of dollars.
At this point, it’s good to remind ourselves that Medicare does a far better job of controlling costs than private insurance does, partly because of the negotiating power it has and partly because it spends just a fraction of what private companies do on overhead (around 98 percent of Medicare’s costs go to paying for care, while private companies often spend 20 percent or more of their costs on administration, marketing, underwriting, and so on). Yet Republican philosophy tells us that no matter what the facts say, this is just impossible. A government program can’t possibly be cheaper and more efficient (and deliver service that its customers love, by the way) than a private sector alternative. So if we introduce private competition, then costs will of course come down.
But there isn’t much reason to believe they will, which means seniors will be left holding the bag, and most importantly, lose the security they have now. Anyhow, to return to the question we started with: Is it fair for the Obama campaign to charge that Mitt Romney wants to end Medicare as we know it? If you define “Medicare as we know it” as an insurance program that provides affordable, efficient, and most importantly secure health coverage for every American senior, then the answer is clearly yes.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 20, 2012
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