“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
“Unhappy Surprises”: In A Democratic System, There Will Be “Wacky Primary Voters”
Missouri Republicans have just nominated a Senate candidate who appears to believe that the government’s college student loan program is the equivalent of Stage 3 cancer. Actually, he said “the Stage 3 cancer of socialism,” which is perhaps not the exact same thing. But I believe you get the idea.
This was a week after Texas Republicans nominated a Senate candidate who is worried about protecting the world’s golf courses from the United Nations. Republicans, I think you need to get a grip.
Meanwhile, the most cheerful place this side of Disney World is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the Democratic incumbent, was regarded as the political equivalent of roadkill until the Republicans picked Representative Todd Akin for her opponent. Now, the McCaskill campaign is doing a happy dance while Akin will be trying to explain that he thinks student loans are cancerous only when they come from the government rather than private industry.
This is not the kind of argument you really want to be having on your big primary win day. Also, Akin not only wants to keep the government out of the student loan business, his past votes suggest he also wants to see it steer clear of school lunches.
Before the primary, McCaskill ran an allegedly anti-Akin ad that cynics saw as an actual attempt to propel him to the front of the pack. It failed to mention the congressman’s principled opposition to the national School Breakfast Program, but instead denounced him as “too conservative” and an enemy of Planned Parenthood. Honestly, if you wanted to drive Tea Party voters to the polls, it was the next best thing to hiring a bus.
The Tea Party is once again giving Democrats a new lease on life. Not everywhere, of course. Tennessee Republicans seem to be happy with their incumbent senator, Bob Corker, while Democrats woke up on the day after their primary to discover that voters had nominated an anti-gay-rights activist named Mark Clayton, who, according to ClaytonforSenate.com, “works in insurance and is also writing a book intended as a scripture study aide.” A spokesman for the Tennessee Democratic Party, which is disavowing Clayton, theorized that he won because “his name was at the top of the ticket.”
We have been through this sort of thing before, Democrats. Remember Alvin Greene? The guy you accidentally nominated to run against Senator Jim DeMint two years ago? The one who turned out to be facing felony obscenity charges? Didn’t everybody agree that from then on, if you gave the voters a ballot full of totally unfamiliar names, you would warn them which ones to avoid?
But mainly, the Republicans are the ones getting stuck with the unhappy surprises. Richard Lugar, the longtime senator from Indiana, was tossed out in a primary by a Tea Party favorite, Richard Mourdock, who went on to become involved in a controversy over whether or not he compared Barack Obama’s auto industry bailout to slavery. We do not really need to resolve the issue, except to say that Mourdock is fond of making convoluted historical analogies and that he really, really did not like the auto bailout, despite Indiana’s rather large population of autoworkers.
Besides Tea Party upsets, one of the big trends this year is for Democratic Senate candidates in red states to demonstrate their independence by announcing that they are not going to the party convention. This is pretty much a no-brainer, since these events are really, really boring anyway, unless 1) You really like to eat finger food paid for by special-interest groups or 2) You really enjoy being in Southern cities with high humidity around Labor Day.
Skip the convention! Everybody’s doing it! Although Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia did seem to be going a little bit overboard when he refused to say if he’ll even vote for President Obama. “I am just waiting for it to play out. I am not jumping in one way or another,” Manchin told The National Journal. “I’m worried about me. I’ve said it’s not a team sport. You need to go out and work for yourself.”
You’ve got to give the man credit for candor. Manchin may be pretending to be more worried than he really is, given that the Republicans nominated a Senate candidate whose big media splash involved comparing no-smoking regulations to the Nazis’ actions. (“Remember Hitler used to put Star of David on everybody’s lapel, remember that? Same thing.”)
Next week we have Wisconsin, where former Gov. Tommy Thompson, the guy everyone expected the Republicans to nominate for the Senate, is in trouble thanks to a challenge from — yes! — the Tea Party. And will Connecticut Republicans nominate a former congressman with a reputation for bipartisanship or a businesswoman whose claim to fame is building a professional wrestling empire? Duh.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, August 8, 2012
“Benjamin Franklin Would Gag Today”: If Congress Can’t Fix The Postal Service, It Can’t Fix Anything
Most Americans know that the U.S. Postal Service is a mess. What they also ought to know is that Congress is largely responsible for this once-competent institution’s bad rap.
This is the same Congress that is going to have to bring Medicare back from the brink of insolvency, find a way to fund Social Security as it becomes top-heavy with retired baby boomers, and pay down trillions in federal debt without short-circuiting the whole economy. Compared with all that, fixing the Postal Service is easy. Yet Congress dithers, cultivates decline and allows festering problems to become worse.
The Postal Service has been making headlines again because it just defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment due to the U.S. Treasury to fund healthcare costs for future retirees. Another such default is likely at the end of September. The details are technical and boring, and for now, the mail will still show up in the mailbox. So the members of Congress perpetrating the default—mostly House Republicans—act like it’s no big deal.
But it is a big deal because the recalcitrance of political leaders shows an alarming willingness to dismantle the basic machinery of the economy. The Postal Service isn’t some dispensable outpost doing research on cow pies or freshmen mating habits. It’s an elemental part of the government that has been around since before the Constitution. Benjamin Franklin, the seminal American, was the first Postmaster General. He’d gag at today’s handling of the Postal Service.
Here’s the basic background: In 1971, Congress reorganized the USPS as an independent agency that’s supposed to pay for its operations through stamp sales and other forms of revenue, like a normal company. But the catch is that Congress still holds sway over strategic decisions, and most Postal Service employees are treated as members of the federal workforce. So at best, the Postal Service is a hybrid organization that’s as vulnerable as ever to political meddling.
That’s what is holding up reform plans now. The Postal Service itself has detailed a plan to eliminate Saturday delivery, consolidate processing centers, close underperforming post offices and make other cuts to adapt to a technology-driven economy that is obviously less dependent on physical mail delivery than in the past. Hundreds of regular companies have changed their business models and made similar adjustments to survive. Those that didn’t—Eastman Kodak, Borders, Lehman Brothers—paid a brutal price.
The Senate has even passed a bill that would fix some of the Postal Service’s problems and buy time to sort out others. That brings us to the House, where sensible legislation goes to die. There is a House bill meant to fix the Postal Service, but House leaders won’t bring it up for a vote. Nor will they vote on the Senate bill. House leaders like Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t say why, exactly.
Most likely, there’s not enough support in the House to pass any bill, so holding a vote would be an embarrassing setback for the GOP leadership. Opposition to reform seems to come from some usual suspects, such as rural lawmakers who don’t want postal facilities in their districts closed. Others (including Republicans) object to provisions that would allow the Postal Service more freedom to lay off unionized postal workers. Then there are Tea Party types who would prefer to privatize the agency, or who seemingly want to starve it of cash, so that … well, it’s not clear what purpose that would serve. What makes this standoff infuriating is that there are plenty of proposed solutions, including studies by at least three well-known consulting firms that execute corporate turnarounds for a living. There’s no need for further analysis, there’s only a need to make a decision and do something.
But the problem can be put off for a little longer, even if that makes the ultimate solution more expensive and encourages big mailers like Amazon and other retailers to look for other delivery choices. So Congress does less than the bare minimum and the Postal Service drifts toward ruination. Maybe the House will get to it in the fall, after their customary six-week August vacation. Maybe next spring. Maybe never, in order to show those impudent postal employees and their arrogant customers who’s really in charge around here.
Meanwhile, at the end of this year, Congress needs to come up with a deft way to forestall billions in tax hikes and spending cuts that will induce another recession if allowed to fully go into effect. By early next year, it will have to come up with a way to extend the government’s borrowing limit while also weaning Washington off its desperate borrowing habit. Then come some huge decisions about how to reform Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the long-term defense budget. If the handling of the Postal Service is any indication, we all ought to be terrified.
By: Rick Newman, U. S. News and World Report, August 1, 2012
“Congress Goes Postal”: A Full Agenda Of Futile Symbolic Votes, On The Rare Occasions It’s In Session
Congress is gone. Yeah, I miss them, too.
All the members are off on a five-week recess, after which they’ll return for a few days, then go away again, then hobble back as lame ducks. This is going to do terrible things to the Congressional approval rating, which had climbed all the way up to 17 percent at one point this year. Now it’s sunk to BP oil spill level, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re back to the point where poll respondents say they have a more favorable attitude toward “the U.S. becoming communist.”
You are probably wondering what your elected officials have been up to. Well, the best news is that House and Senate leaders worked out a plan to avoid a government shutdown for six more months by agreeing to just keep doing whatever it is we’re doing now.
This is known as “kicking the can down the road.” Failure to kick the can down the road can lead to “falling off the fiscal cliff.” There are so many of these crises looming that falling off a cliff should be reclassified as an Olympic event.
Just this week, Congress failed to protect the Postal Service from tumbling, and the service defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment for future retiree health benefits. It was the first time that the U.S. mail system failed to meet a financial obligation since Benjamin Franklin invented it.
The Postal Service has multiple financial problems, and, earlier this year, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to deal with them. It would not have fixed everything, or even resolved the question of whether the strapped agency would be allowed to discontinue Saturday mail delivery as a cost-savings measure. “It’s not perfect,” admitted Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, one of the sponsors.
At this point, the American public has been so beaten down by Congressional gridlock that “it’s not perfect” sounds fine. In fact, we’d generally be willing to settle for “it’s pretty terrible, but at least it’s something.”
The Senate plan would have definitely been preferable to the Postal Service default, which could be followed by an all-purpose running-out-of-cash later this fall. Carper was pretty confident that if the House passed a postal bill of any stripe, the two sides could work out a compromise during the long August vacation. That would presumably be a watered-down version of imperfection, which, as I said, is exactly what we’re currently dreaming about.
But the House leadership wouldn’t bring anything up for a vote. Speaker John Boehner never said why. Perhaps he was afraid voters would blame his members for the closing of underused post offices. There is nothing Congress cares more about than post offices, 38 of which the House has passed bills to rename over the past 18 months.
So, no Postal Service bill. You can’t deal with every single thing, and the House had a lot on its to-do list, such as voting to repeal the Obama health care law on 33 separate occasions.
Meanwhile, the national farm program was teetering on the cliff.
The farm bill has long been a classic Congressional compromise, combining aid to agriculture with the food stamp program, so there’s pretty much something for everybody. The Senate recently voted 64 to 35 to approve a new five-year authorization, which reformed some of the most egregious bad practices, like paying farmers not to grow crops. It was, I hardly need mention, not perfect.
Then, the House Agriculture Committee passed a bipartisan farm bill itself. Yes! In the House, people! Everybody was on board!
Then, the House leadership refused to allow it to go up for a vote. Boehner told reporters, “no decision has been made” about what to do next, without giving any hint as to when said decision might be coming along.
The problem appears to be Tea Party hatred for the food stamp program. But who knows? Boehner isn’t saying. Maybe his members want the power to rename the farms.
The House Agriculture Committee chairman, Frank Lucas, just kept making sad little noises. Lucas is from Oklahoma. His state is having a terrible drought. It’s been more than 100 degrees there forever. As a gesture of appeasement, the leadership did allow passage of a narrow bill providing disaster relief to cattle and sheep ranchers. The Senate dismissed it as too little, too late.
Meanwhile, several attempts to get a bill passed on cybersecurity for the nation’s power grid, water supply and financial systems failed entirely.
Maybe Congress will pick up the ball when it comes back to town for a couple of weeks this fall before the election. But it already has a full agenda of futile, symbolic votes plus the crucial kicking the can down the road.
Maybe it’s possible to have a negative approval rating.
By: Gail Collins, Op Ed Columnist, The Washington Post, August 3, 2012
“Demented Dominion”: Jim DeMint Claims Romney Personally Pledged Support For Pushing Tea Party Agenda In First 100 Days
Senator Jim DeMint is all smiles. Ted Cruz’s upset victory in Texas’s Republican Senate primary means the conservative wing of the GOP conference, a bloc the second-term lawmaker from South Carolina shepherds, will almost certainly increase its ranks.
“This confirms that there is a new political reality,” DeMint tells National Review Online in an interview in his office. “The people who are winning, for the Senate particularly, are those who are telling Americans the truth.”
Political observers expect Cruz, should he win in November, to join DeMint’s coalition of tea-party favorites, which includes Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, among others.
DeMint agrees that Cruz would be an ally, but he emphasizes that he is looking for an ideological partner, not a political loyalist. Cruz’s rise has not whetted DeMint’s ambitions. “I have no intention of running for leader,” he says, when asked whether he will challenge Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader. “I’ve been a leader ever since I walked in the Senate door. You don’t have to be elected to lead.”
Besides, DeMint says, McConnell sees the signals coming out of Texas, Indiana, and other states where tea-party candidateshave won. And as a savvy operator, McConnell is probably not looking to buck the newcomers.
“Elected leaders carry an important administrative function, but they are going to reflect the conference,” DeMint tells me. “If the conference is moving in the right direction, our leaders will move in the right direction.”
A week ago, DeMint traveled to Texas, where he stumped for Cruz alongside former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Standing with the youthful contender and Palin in Houston in front of thousands of voters was “pretty emotional,” DeMint recalls. “For so long, the party bosses controlled all the money and picked the candidates, pretty much deciding who they would run as a Republican.” These days, thanks to conservative activists and the rise of the Tea Party, “that has totally changed.”
Last summer, DeMint was one of the first conservative leaders to endorse Cruz, who was then an unknown. DeMint weighed in early to send a message to his fellow Republicans. “There is not enough urgency around here,” he says, commenting on Capitol Hill’s ongoing fiscal debate. “But when I got to know Ted, it became clear that he is ready to make the hard choices — and they’ll need to be made.”
DeMint already has a legislative plan ready for Cruz’s arrival. “If we get the [Senate] majority and the White House, we have got to pass a budget that sets up the structure, through reconciliation, to repeal Obamacare by killing the mandate,” he says. He also wants to “totally redo our tax code,” put “Medicare on a sustainable course,” and “deal with Social Security.” But should Republicans win then stumble, “it’d be betrayal to our country.”
“We need to do it in the first 100 days,” DeMint says. “[Mitt] Romney has told me, face to face, that he knows that he needs to get these things done right away. He is looking at this as a one-term proposition.”
DeMint acknowledges that reform faces many hurdles, but come January, the 60-year-old senator is optimistic that he’ll have a slew of tea-party senators ready to help. “Ted Cruz, Richard Mourdock, Deb Fischer, hopefully Mark Neumann, these folks will hopefully come in and bring a lot of closet conservatives in the Republican party out in the open,” DeMint chuckles. “Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Lee — they have the sense of urgency. But they are outnumbered.”
“If we get four or five more like them, it will embolden a lot of [Senate] Republicans who are conservative at heart, but got into a business-as-usual rut and don’t want to rock the boat,” DeMint says. “Now, if they see the boat rocking, I think it might help us.”
By: Robert Costa, National Review, August 2, 2012
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