“Still Separate And Unequal”: Mitt Romney Fails To See America
After a third reading of Mitt Romney’s Liberty University commencement speech, I still fail to see how my Post colleague Michael Gerson could have described it as “more than good.”
Romney’s address struck me as standard fare for a college graduation. He hit all the familiar notes: gratitude to school and a nod to parents for sacrifices made; celebration of the virtues of hard work, devotion to principles, individualism, service, family. There was even a little shameless politicking, with Romney telling the audience “what the next four years might hold for me is yet to be determined. But . . . things are looking up, and I take your kind hospitality today as a sign of good things to come.”
It was the kind of speech that could have been delivered — sans the pandering and the references to more-contemporary figures (the late Chuck Colson; the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded Liberty University; and the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) — to college graduating classes in the 1950s or even in 1900.
The Liberty remarks, as seems to be true of many Romney speeches, reflected a rather constricted view of the country. Perhaps it’s because Romney chooses to deliver most of his lines to narrow audiences.
Missing in his Liberty offering, as with some other Romney speeches, is any recognition — not praises, mind you, but simple acknowledgment — that 21st-century America is more than a white, middle-class country.
He revealed no sense whatsoever of knowing that the overwhelming majority of Liberty grads will, in their adult lives, inhabit an America in which they will be the minority.
Romney’s speeches seem tailor-made for audiences that look pretty much like him.
At least that is what one is led to believe after observing where Romney chooses to go and what he has to say.
I tried to imagine Romney’s Liberty address being delivered to the graduates and their families at the 2012 commencement exercises I attended a week ago at historically black Howard University in Washington.
I cannot believe, however, that the Romney campaign apparatus would have allowed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to tell an African American audience numbering in the thousands that Falwell was “a gracious Christian example” and a “courageous and big-hearted minister of the Gospel who . . . never hated an adversary.”
Indeed, Romney lauded Falwell, who famously said: “I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations.”
Romney spoke glowingly of the same Falwell who said of the landmark Supreme Court school desegregation decision: “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never had been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
The same Falwell who disparaged Nobel Peace Prize winner and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a phony. (Falwell later apologized for that remark and claimed that he had misspoken.)
And who can forget Falwell’s finger-pointing after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks? He declared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” show: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’ ”
I suspect if Romney spoke at Howard, he would have skipped that part about Falwell.
But what does the man who seeks to lead this country have to say about, and to, this rapidly changing nation of diverse people with diverse interests and needs?
Thus far, Romney’s thoughts and policy prescriptions seem focused on America’s largest — and slowest-growing — racial group: his own.
Democratic critics accuse Romney of having values that skew to the rich at the expense of the poor. They say he’s disconnected from the problems of average Americans; that he’s out of touch and just doesn’t get it.
Would that it were only a matter of determining whether Romney is on the side of the rich or middle class.
The question is much broader and more significant: When Mitt Romney thinks and speaks of Americans, do those who don’t look like him even come to mind?
Since he launched his presidential campaign, it’s been hard to tell. And Romney’s Liberty University speech was no help.
By: Colbert King, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, May 18, 2012
“Pro-Domestic Violence Party”: GOP Opposes Expanded Domestic Violence Bill
The Violence Against Women Act was enacted in 1994 and has been reauthorized twice with bipartisan support. No one in Congress has ever wanted to be branded the pro-domestic violence party. Yet this week, the Republicans and Democrats entered into a bitter feud that fuels talk of the GOP’s purported “war on women,” and gives Democrats like Representative Judy Chu of California an opportunity to bust out phrases like, “It’s not the Violence Against Women act, but the Open Season for Violence Against Women Act.” From the perspective of the GOP, approving a new version of the act would help protect immigrants and homosexuals from intimate partner violence, and in 2012, that simply cannot stand!
In April, the Senate passed legislation that expands services for immigrants who are domestic abuse victims and specifies that people who are gay, lesbian, and transgender are covered under the law. After a bitter fight on Wednesday, the House passed its own version of the bill, which removed the new provisions in the Senate’s legislation, in a 222 to 205 vote.
Throughout the debate, the GOP’s refrain has been that the bill already protects everyone, so there’s no need to name specific groups. Sounds pretty logical! Yet the GOP is ignoring the fact that immigrants and LGBT people won’t be adequately protected under the House’s version of the law. Per the Christian Science Monitor:
The House bill does not allow for a path to citizenship for illegal women who have been abused and agree to cooperate with the police investigation of the crime. Moreover, it holds the cap on temporary visas offered to women cooperating in legal investigations to 10,000, below the Senate’s increased 15,000 level. Republicans say the citizenship provision is akin to amnesty for illegal immigrants, and expressed fears that the Senate bill will lead to an epidemic of immigrants staging elaborate fake domestic violence situations to get away from their non-abusive partners.Democrats, on the other hand, say that women fearing deportation may never come forward to take abusers off the street under the House bill.
The intent behind specifically naming lesbian, gay, and transgender victims is to prevent law enforcement from using the vague language in VAWA to exclude them from services. Studies have shown that these groups experience domestic violence at the same rates as the general population, but victims are far less likely to seek help.
The American Bar Association, Human Rights Watch, and leaders from 31 religious groups, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals, have all spoken out against the House’s bill. President Obama has threatened to veto the House bill, and now Congress needs to hash out a compromise between the two versions of the bill, ensuring that the debate will stay in the news.
By: Margaret Hartman, Daily Intel, May 17, 2012
“Flim Flam Budgeter Paul Ryan”: Government Programs That Help Women Are “Creepy And Demeaning”
Mitt Romney surrogate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is criticizing the “Julia” interactive infographic released by the Obama campaign last week. The infographic shows how policies created and supported by President Obama’s administration help women, cradle to grave. Ryan thinks the whole idea of government services is “creepy” and “demeaning.”
“It suggests that this woman can’t go anywhere in life without Barack Obama’s government-centered society. It’s kind of demeaning to her,” Ryan said. “She must have him and his big government to depend on to go anywhere in life. It doesn’t say much about his faith in Julia.”
Because there’s nothing demeaning about going hungry and being unable to provide health care or education for your kids, Romney’s and Ryan’s preferred path for “Julia.” That “government-centered” society giving Ryan the creeps includes Head Start, public education, Pell Grants, health insurance, fair pay, access to birth control, prenatal care, small business loans and tax cuts, Medicare, and Social Security.
This part is good, too.
“Every one of those slides, I could go after their manipulation of statistics, and disentangle and unpack each of those talking points,” said Ryan. “It’s just the narrative that they’re trying to tell, that for this woman to succeed, she has to have a really big government.”
That coming from the flim-flam budgeter who insists that massive tax cuts for the wealthy will be revenue neutral (we still don’t know what loopholes he would close) and that the Pentagon can be wallowing in funds. This is the Very Serious guy who seems to think tax cuts are the unicorn poop fertilizer for prosperity for the nation.
By: Joan McCarter, Daily Kos, May 7, 2012
“I Could Have Done That”: All Good Ideas Belong To Mitt Romney
So says a campaign advisor, who pinned the auto bailout success on the former Massachusetts governor.
Back in 2009, when the newly elected President Barack Obama was contemplating a bailout of the auto-industry, Mitt Romney emerged from his temporary hiatus to push policymakers in the other direction. “Let Detroit go bankrupt,” he urged in an op-ed for New York Times. For Romney, a managed bankrupcy of the kind he had pioneered at Bain Capital was the only way to “save” the American auto industry. As for Obama’s approach, Romney warned that “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.” A few months later, Romney repeated his warning: If Obama continued on his path, “it would make GM the living dead.”
Three years later, Romney’s prediction hasn’t come to pass. The American auto industry is thriving even as conservatives run with the idea that government is categorically ineffective. In February, during the Republican primary in Michigan, Romney further disparaged the auto bailout, granting its success, but accusing Obama of kowtowing to “union bosses.” This message didn’t play well, and only gave Obama and Democrats an opportunity to tout the success of the bailouts, and contrast them with Romney’s position.
Now that Romney is in the general election, he has begun to shake the Etch A Sketch on a number of issues. One of those, if this comment from Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom is any indication, is the bailout:
“[Romney’s] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed,” Fehrnstrom said. “He said, ‘If you want to save the auto industry, just don’t write them a check. That will seal their doom. What they need to do is go through a managed bankruptcy process.’”
“Consider that the crown jewel,” Fehrnstrom said. “The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.”
Writing at Talking Points Memo, Pema Levy points out that Romney’s position on the bailout has been hazy; he was vehemently against the administration, but in a way that gave him a way to claim credit, as Fehrnstrom does. Of course, the fact that Romney has rhetorical space to take credit for the bailout doesn’t mean that’s any less ridiculous; it’s the political equivalent of twelve-year-old boasting—“I could have done that too! If you’d picked me first.”
One last observation—this continues an odd pattern by the Romney campaign, which inhabits a frame established by the Obama campaign rather than creating something for themselves. First, there was the “War on Women,” where Romney advisors argued that it was Democrats who were fighting the real war on women, while conceding that the existence of an actual war. Then, in Romney’s speech last Tuesday, there was “fairness,” when the former Massachusetts governor argued that government was the real purveyor of unfairness in the country. And now we have the auto industry bailout, where Romney claims to have been the real mastermind behind the policy.
I’m not sure what the campaign hopes to get out of this approach. By continuously talking about Obama on Obama’s terms, they do nothing but put themselves on the defensive. It’s a bad strategy, and the only saving grace is that we’re still early in the election.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, April 30, 2012
“A New Pair Of Briefs”: Senate Democrats Plan To Give Mittens A Wedgie
The Hill is reporting that Senate Democrats are planning to bring the Paycheck Fairness Act to the floor this week. The PFA, which is opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and the G.O.P. (and come to think of it, have you ever seen those two institutions in the same place at the same time? just sayin’), would expand the protections enshrined in the Equal Pay Act by, among other things,
allowing employees to compare the pay of male colleagues not only within the same office but also with colleagues in other local offices. A female employee could allege wage discrimination if she is paid less than a male working the same job for the same employer across town.
Unsurprisingly, women’s groups are strongly supportive of the proposed law. It’s a popular piece of legislation, especially among female voters, a group that, in a political season that has been defined by the G.O.P.’s ever-escalating war on women and a widening gender gap between to the two parties, Romney needs to court. So the upcoming vote puts him in a difficult position: he “will either have to split with Republicans and an important business group or take a position that could further erode his support among women.”
The Dems, for once, are playing very smart politics with this. What I don’t understand is why they don’t do this sort of thing more often. One of the signature failures of Harry Reid and the Obama administration has been their reluctance to bring popular legislation to the floor and force Republicans to go on the record opposing it. Using wedge issues to pry apart a political coalition and appeal to swing voters is a tried and true technique. The Bush administration did this kind of thing all to time to Democrats, with great success. Even if there is no possibility that the legislation will pass, political points are scored.
Supporters of the Obama administration certainly have a point when they argue that the President’s effectiveness has been severely hampered by an extraordinarily hostile and recalcitrant Congress. But the President has other powers to move his or her agenda forward, such as appointments, executive orders, and working with Congressional leaders to bring votes to the floor that will put the opposing party on the defensive. My biggest disappointments with the Obama administration have been its failures in these kinds of areas, where the President really does have a lot of control. Which is why I despair when I read about things like this. Or this.
That said, I don’t want to dwell on the negative here. I heartily applaud what the Dems are doing with the Paycheck Fairness Act vote, and I strongly encourage them to wield the wedge a lot more often. Among other things, it help builds morale amongst the base — it’s fun to nail those bastards to the wall and observe their obvious discomfort as they squirm and try to weasel their way out of going on the record. More like this, please!
By: Kathleen Geier, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April 29, 2012
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