Pin It

Too Much Meta

by Elias Isquith on May 25, 2012

I wonder if the guys who wrote this piece felt dirty in the process:

Mitt Romney’s campaign team has been quietly laying plans for an outreach effort to President Obama’s most loyal supporters — black voters — not just to chip away at the huge Democratic margins but also as a way to reassure independent swing voters that Romney can be inclusive and tolerant in his thinking and approach.…

Despite the obvious difficulties, Romney’s outreach to black voters could reap dividends even if he is unable to significantly chip into Obama’s support. “Suburban voters will be a real battleground, and upscale white voters like to think of themselves as tolerant and they won’t vote for a candidate that is seen as exclusionary, and the Romney folks must be aware of that,” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “He has to persuade suburban voters that he isn’t Rick Santorum. He could break the mold a little bit and do some campaigning in African American communities. It would get people talking, and it would be all gain and very little pain.”…

Romney campaign officials understand their challenge with black voters against a Democratic incumbent, particularly when that incumbent is also the first African American elected to the presidency. Still, they insist they will try.

I suppose this is one of those instances in which the line between reporting and participating is hard to discern; but I would not be thrilled, were I either of these scribes, by being so obviously used.

{ 3 comments }

Pin It

Gruesome Twosome

by Elias Isquith on May 24, 2012

trumpney

Something about this strikes me as less than entirely Presidential:

Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump and Mitt Romney will make an appearance together later this month in Las Vegas.

The three men will appear together at a fundraiser for Romney’s presidential bid at Trump Towers on May 29, NBC News reported on Thursday.

In February, Romney received Trump’s endorsement during a press conference at the casino. The former Massachusetts governor went on to a commanding win in the state’s caucuses, which Trump took partial credit for. Gingrich endorsed Romney shortly after he ended his own presidential bid.

Romney’s campaign is also fundraising off a chance to dine with Trump, along with Romney, in New York City. Any supporter who makes a donation will be entered in a raffle to win a trip and dinner with the two men.

It makes sense for Romney to sidle-up to Trump, though. He seems to occupy a cultural space today not unlike that of Archie Bunker a few decades ago. The only thing that’s changed, however, is that the Archie Bunker zone, while still significant — and clearly especially so with a more downscale type of GOP voter — is precipitously shrinking. But it’s not gone yet; and Romney needs all the All in the Family Reagan Democrats he can get.

It’s like if Mr. Burns tried to curry favor with the proles by talking about how Homer Simpson’s his kind of man.

{ 1 comment }

Pin It

Essay in The New Inquiry

by Elias Isquith on May 24, 2012

I recently had the good fortune to write a piece for The New Inquiry — an excellent magazine that anyone who enjoys this blog would certainly love — based on my research and experience in Kentucky, focusing on the state’s politics of coal. Here’s the lede, as it were. Hope y’all enjoy:

It was in Inez, Kentucky, that Lyndon Johnson, standing on the porch of a beat-up little shack, launched the opening salvo in his War on Poverty in 1964. Forty-eight years later, when the voters of Kentucky elected Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican, to the U.S. Senate, their state had an unemployment rate of 10.5 percent, the ninth highest in the country. In the Eastern part of the state — celebrated for its natural beauty but infamous for hosting vicious battles between coal-mine capital and labor — things were even worse, with unemployment reaching 12.4 percent. And this low point was not an aberration from otherwise prosperous years. From 2006 to 2010, the median household income in the U.S. was roughly $52,000 per year; in Kentucky, it was $41,576.

This is the state Rand Paul won in 2010, by 11 points. Some D.C. pundits credited the Aqua Buddha — a satirical deity a college-aged Paul once “worshipped,” bong allegedly in hand, and the focus of an ill-received attack ad from Paul’s opponent — and others, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, wanted to credit money. The race saw at least $8.4 million spent by third parties — 65 percent in support of Paul.

What propelled Paul — a man who, if not for his father, would stand as by far the most doctrinaire and unbending libertarian politician on the national political stage — to the “world’s greatest deliberative body”? How was a political novice, stiff and severe on the campaign trail, barely familiar with many of the fundamentals of recent Kentucky history, wishy-washy on support for the War on Drugs and opposition to abortion, and with much to say about the evils of government but little to share on how his free-market fundamentalism would bring Kentuckians the economic bounty that had eluded them for so long, able to coast to victory in a state where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans?

{ 0 comments }

Pin It

Volcker Politics

by Elias Isquith on May 22, 2012

volbacker

(Believe it or not, this post has absolutely nothing to do with Cory Booker.)

A new horserace poll was the focus of a lot of today’s political media, but I think this is actually the most important news of the day:

The Obama administration will likely tighten rules to prevent federally insured banks from speculating with their money after financial giant JP Morgan lost billions of dollars — and continues to hemorrhage — on a risky bet intended to pad the firm’s profits.

The acknowledgment by a senior administration official Monday threatens to reopen a protracted fight between Wall Street allies and the White House over imposing new rules on big financial companies in the wake of the 2008 crisis.

The administration hasn’t specified any particular steps it would like regulators to take to shore up the so-called Volcker Rule — a bid perhaps to avoid an ugly public fight with powerful interests in an election year. But inaction — or a too-tepid response to JP Morgan’s losses — will hurt President Obama with key allies, who want to use the debacle to further rein in Wall Street.

“We will want to use this real-life example as something that will help instruct, help inform, how the ultimate contours of the Volcker ruler come out–make sure that it is strong,” a senior administration official told reporters.

It’s correct to immediately note how political exigencies are informing this announcement — especially when you consider how vague and open-ended are the White House’s promises at this juncture. Obama took a lot of criticism, rightly, after the JP Morgan debacle not because Dimon & co.’s trades ran afoul of the watered-down Volcker Rule, but because they didn’t.

The whole episode was an unwelcome reminder — to advocates and the White House, both, albeit for different reasons — of how relatively meager was Dodd-Frank. And regarding the Volcker Rule especially — which, recall, Obama did not announce until well into Dodd-Frank’s interminable gestation, and only in a moment rife with criticism of his handling of the Presidency thus far — unsatisfied supporters of the President were reminded of how often it was Treasury (with the full backing of the White House) urging less ambitious reform. At the very least, then, the White House wants to talk the talk about making Volcker count.

But considering their lack of detail, I’d be skeptical. These reforms are set to phase-in during the Summer, when most of the media’s time and attention will be focused on the Presidential campaign (yes, sadly, the horserace coverage will become even more suffocatingly omnipresent than it is already). If the White House is so inclined, it would be very easy to simply run out the clock on improving the Volcker Rule — while cashing banker campaign donations before and after the deadline. 

{ 1 comment }

Pin It

The Real Reason Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

by Elias Isquith on May 22, 2012

Cory booker chris christie 4x3 thumb 400xauto 35686

Well, it’s about time we had ourselves a good old fashioned front-page food fight! Things have been entirely too calm and placid hereabouts — at least on the surface. (We all know comment threads are eternal, churning whirlpools of rancor and discontent.) So let’s do this thing and see what we can make from Mark’s recent post, a post that a Huffington Post editor would likely say SLAMMED yours truly and various other lefty talkalots for overwrought criticism of Mayor Booker.

Skipping over the intro — which I must say is something of a masterpiece of libertarian harrumphing — Mark’s main point seems to be the following. Er, well, that is, it’s the opposite of the following, since it’s written in a style that has me wondering if, by the time he was finished, Mark’s tongue had left a gash in his cheek like Ed Norton’s at the end of Fight Club. Anyway, he writes:

In other words, who cares that Cory Booker actually takes his job – the job for which he was elected – seriously, or that he has actually helped an awful lot of people by implementing undeniably progressive policies in that job? His failure as a surrogate demonstrates that he’s just another POS dishonest centrist more concerned with appearing reasonable than supporting good governance.  What he said on Sunday is far more important than what he’s done over the last 6 years.

If I believed Cory Booker was a bad mayor, I would feel chastened by the above. I don’t, on either count; but I will grant that there was a bit of forest-for-the-trees in much of the Left’s criticisms of Newark’s mayor after his Meet the Press appearance. However, I think Mark is, in his own right, missing the point somewhat.

No one was mad at Cory Booker due to his supposed nonchalance about gun violence or because he ran his city like a reincarnation of Richard Daley. In fact, I’d argue that, at its root, no one is really mad at Cory Booker at all. What’s happened here is that Booker’s become something of a stand-in for the entire Clintonian, DLC wing of the Democratic Party.

(Before you beat me to it: yes, those are quite imprecise terms — the DLC was very good on some issues, even from a traditional leftist perspective. Further, you know who else was Clintonian until very recently, and largely remains so in all but rhetoric? A guy named Barack Obama. I know.)

We’re currently in an era where politics on the Left is, more than has been the case in America in decades, being defined through the rhetoric and analytical framework of class. Considering the vagaries and near-universalism of the 99% vs. 1% dynamic, it’s a rather pedestrian form of class consciousness — but it’s still quite remarkable in the American context. In any event, the reason I think Booker rankled so is because he reminded a slew of liberals — and note that this has been a liberal whinefest rather than a Democratic one; Democrats like Harold Ford, Jr., as well as Jonathan Chait and Matt Yglesias, have to varying degrees defended Booker — of how effectively if not rhetorically powerless those who’d subscribe to the 99/1 dynamic remain.

That was the rawest nerve Booker struck. It’s what turned a situation that no doubt would’ve resulted in carping into a mini tsunami of criticism.

The other nerve? Well, frankly, it rankles partisans when a member of their team goes off-message. Democrats are especially sensitive to this since many believe, only with limited justification in my humble, that Republicans’ superior message management and team discipline is the cause of movement conservatism’s many victories and liberalism’s many defeats. I understand this can strike libertarians, or those of any persuasion who have a very limited tolerance for tribal norms, as distasteful — but, c’mon, get over it! Surely this isn’t our first rodeo.

And a final parting note: I never thought Booker’s comments deserved a rebuke any greater than what he received, which is going to clearly be, in retrospect, a mere rap on the knuckles. But that’s largely a consequence of my never being the biggest Booker fan in the world. Yes, he’s very charming in Street Fight — but Lord knows even Roger Ailes would look good next to Sharpe James. What’s more, as Corey Robin’s previously noted, if you’re not one to applaud the Democratic Party’s embrace of the financial sector, Cory Booker was never likely to be your hero.

{ 44 comments }

Pin It

Cory Booker, Living In The Past

by Elias Isquith on May 21, 2012

Rick Klein correctly notes that Cory Booker’s comments yesterday were actually rather Obama-esque. The problem is, he sounded like the wrong Obama — Hope’n'Change is over:

Cory Booker got himself in surrogate hot water yesterday for sounding too much like … Barack Obama? Booker’s call to end “nauseating” political attacks — as he categorized both possible Jeremiah Wright ads, and Democrats’ efforts to demonize Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital — echoed those long-ago Obama calls to rise above petty partisanship. By day’s end, the Newark mayor was on camera trying to contain the damage from his “Meet the Press” appearance. But clarifying videos can’t end the deep unease inside President Obama’s own party over what’s becoming the main line of Obama attack on Romney. With a new Bain-focused ad out from the Obama campaign today, Democrats’ challenge will be to focus their attacks on Romney’s particular actions, rather than venture capital in general. And, of course, Obama campaign aides want Democrats to sound like Obama 2012, not necessarily Obama 2008.

Last thing: I didn’t realize it at first, but there’s something quite fitting about Booker’s contention yesterday that criticisms of Bain are equivalent to injecting Reverend Wright into the campaign debate. Beyond reinforcing the bizarre but very real fear held by the superrich that the rabid mob is just a few inches away from inaugurating an American Bastille Day in lower Manhattan, Booker’s conflation of private equity and race echoes an infamous request one (unknown) Master of the Universe made to Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina, as reported by the New York Times‘ Nick Confessore:

For the next hour, the donors relayed to Messina what their friends had been saying. They felt unfairly demonized for being wealthy. They felt scapegoated for the recession. It was a few weeks into the Occupy Wall Street movement, with mass protests against the 1 percent springing up all around the country, and they blamed the president and his party for the public’s nasty mood. The administration, some suggested, had created a hostile environment for job creators.

Messina politely pushed back. It’s not the president’s fault that Americans are still upset with Wall Street, he told them, and given the public’s mood, the administration’s rhetoric had been notably restrained.

One of the guests raised his hand; he knew how to solve the problem. The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich? Around the table, some people shook their heads in disbelief.

{ 5 comments }

Pin It

Cory Booker Is Very Reasonable

by Elias Isquith on May 20, 2012

Booker

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has been on something of a permanent honeymoon with the Democratic Left — the apotheosis of which was his foray into firefighting — but that now seems to be over.  He had to go and ruin it all on Meet the Press this morning, saying something centrist, like calling the Obama campaign’s anti-Bain Capital ads “nauseating to the American public.”

Eric Kleefield of Talking Points Memo has more:

Booker, who has acted as an Obama campaign surrogate in the past, deviated from the official path: “As far as that stuff, I have to just say from a very personal level I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity.”

“To me it’s just we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.” …

Booker then went on to compare these attacks with the controversial proposal by conservative businessman Joe Ricketts’ political operation, to attack President Obama’s past membership in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“But the last point I’ll make is this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides,” Booker said. “It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough.”

“Stop attacking private equity,” Booker continued. “Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop, because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues. It’s either going to be a small campaign about this crap or it’s going to be a big campaign, in my opinion, about the issues that the American public cares about.”

Predictably, Booker’s comments inspired a tidal wave of criticism, much of it on Twitter (where the Mayor has long been notably — and clearly personally — responsive and involved). Defending himself through a series of tweets, Booker made plain, at least in my eyes, that his Meet the Press comments were hardly off-the-cuff. The shots to Team Obama, his self-defense on Twitter; all of it has sounded, as Booker often does, thoroughly calculated and premeditated. (He is a politician, after all.)

And if one didn’t know better, they’d think Booker was gunning for that not-so-coveted Americans Elect nomination:

 

Over at Salon, Steve Kornacki’s shared his take on the matter; and he more or less sees this as a move by Booker to solidify his close ties with the .01% community, a group of people he already is quite friendly with and that he’ll need to seek either New Jersey’s Governorship or one of its Senate seats:

[I]t’s not at all surprising to see Booker going to bat for private equity. The allies he’s cultivated on Wall Street and in the financial industry (think, for instance, of his chummy relationship with Michael Bloomberg) have made Booker a prolific fundraiser, and when he ventured into the ultra-expensive statewide game, he’ll need them more than ever. Many of them have turned fiercely against Obama over the past few years, convinced that he’s unfairly targeted them. Booker’s words on “Meet the Press” may have enraged the average Obama supporter, but to the Wall Street class they were probably close to heroic – finally, a big-name Democrat with the cojones to call out Obama on his class warfare!

The Booker calculation, in other words, is probably that the average Democratic voter’s memory of his outburst will fade long before 2014 – but that the average Wall Street donor’s won’t.

I’d imagine Kornacki’s right about Booker’s “calculation.” Rank-and-file partisan’s memories are rather short — especially when having better faculties of recall would force them to acknowledge their lack of real choice. Keep in mind how quickly many of the people who spent most of the past three years assailing the President for being disappointing, weak, conciliatory, and uninterested in challenging the power structure status quo have suddenly found themselves once again fired up and ready to go. By the time Booker’s got to answer to a large Democratic electorate, this’ll be old news.

I do wonder, though, if the leftwing activist types — not quite Occupiers, more along the lines of the Netroots subset — will forget Booker’s foray into Reasonable Centrism. And I wonder if the African American wing of the Democratic Party infrastructure will be so quick to forgive Booker’s equating Rev. Wright race-baiting with criticisms of Bain. (Likely they will, but perhaps only with more placating than usual.) Things may be different by the time it really counts, but at the current moment, I don’t think trotting out a half-baked and rehashed version of Obama’s 2004 DNC address — no Red America, no Blue America, etc. — is what diehards want to hear. Even Obama himself, after all, has given up that particular rendition of Kumbaya.

Still, I really doubt that if their roles were reversed, Obama wouldn’t have said the same thing about President Booker. Even outside the realm of the hypothetical, you know which Party has found itself most often benefitting from the exploits of Bain Capital? The Democrats — and it’s not particularly close. It wasn’t long ago, in fact, that White House officials were, on background, telling Ezra Klein how sad the President was over having to run a campaign like the one we’ve witnessed thus far.

Whether we should be thankful for the reminder or bitter over having reality so artlessly shoved in our faces, there’s one thing Booker’s comments have made clear: Obama and the Democrats’ criticisms of Bain Capital-styled neoliberalism is nothing but kabuki, through and through.

{ 14 comments }

Pin It

Two Audiences

by Elias Isquith on May 18, 2012

Responding to Mitt Romney’s newly unveiled national ad for the general election, Jamelle Bouie writes:

I imagine that the ad will serve its purpose. If you—like most people—haven’t been paying attention to politics over the last year, you would think that President Obama has purposefully kept jobs from the United States, raised taxes on “job creators,” and passed a terrible, ineffective health care bill. And while you don’t know too much about Mitt Romney, he seems competent and concerned with the economy.

This is the impression Obama has to fight if he wants to win re-election in November, and while there are many avenues for attacking Romney, Obama’s middling position means that this will be a difficult undertaking.Bright color scheme and uplifting, vaguely Disney-esque music aside, I’m struck by how fundamentally negative an ad Team Romney’s created here. Not negative in the sense of a focus on the nation’s economic woes — that’s obviously a given — but negative in that its main focus is pointing out, explicitly or implicitly, the bad things the President’s done.

The focus on health care, for example, is curious; I know the bill remains unpopular, but it’s not unpopular in the same way for everyone (a sizable chunk of those who register discontent are mad because they don’t think it did enough and would be opposed to its repeal). And I think it’s fair to say that, no matter where they stand on the bill, Americans are most decidedly not interested in another protracted battle over health care. They care about the economy, full stop.

Similarly, while the implied wave of jobs the Keystone Pipeline will bring is relevant (if mistaken), I doubt most Americans are familiar with the Keystone issue at all — much less consider it high on their ideal President’s to-do list.

Yet even if most Americans aren’t focusing on these issues, the Republican base most certainly is. Support of the Keystone Pipeline has become a rather symbolic gesture for today’s GOP. It’s a shibboleth, at once showcasing the real concern Republicans have for the unemployed while simultaneously revealing the Democrats’ tree-hugging disingenuousness, as well as their utter cluelessness about how an economy “works.”

And, of course, a deeply passionate antipathy for any and everything relating to Obamacare is perhaps the glue that binds today’s GOP coalition.

So what we have here is yet another example of Romney’s base-driven campaign; a general election ad that, on its surface, makes a traditionally middle-of-the-road appeal at the same time as it affirms many of the favored rhetorical and ideological themes of today’s dyed-in-the-wool Republican voter. It’s a finesse move that both campaigns will try to perfect as the year rolls on.

For a first attempt? I’d say this Romney ad is good — not great.

{ 8 comments }

Pin It

On Bases And Bandwagons In Election 2012

by Elias Isquith on May 17, 2012

rombamney

A bit of yesterday’s news, but I’d like to talk about this article from National Journal’s Alex Roarty on voter expectation and November’s election.

Roarty highlights a CNN poll that finds a substantial majority of voters expecting to see the Obamas in the White House until 2017. Maybe not especially surprising, if we take into account that most incumbents win reelection (though whether voters know this is doubtful), but what’s striking is just how few think they’ll be seeing Mitt Romney’s mug in their local post office next year:

A new CNN/ORC International poll released Monday underscored the skepticism an overwhelming majority of voters feel about the putative GOP nominee’s chances against the president. Sixty-one percent of respondents, when asked who they think will win in the fall regardless of which candidate they support, picked the current White House occupant. Only 35 percent thought Romney would claim victory.
The 26-point margin is eye-popping. In early September of 2008, only an 8-point difference separated Barack Obama from John McCain (a race that ended in an actual margin of victory Obama will be hard-pressed to replicate this time around). It’s also a departure from the bipartisan consensus of most of Washington, which predicts a neck-and-neck race between the president and GOP nominee.

Roarty’s not quite right when he implies this result contradicts the bipartisan consensus. Six out of 10 voters might think Obama will win, but that doesn’t mean they all think he’ll win easy. It could be possible that more than half of the poll’s respondents think Obama will walk away the victor by the slimmest of margins. Just saying.

However, I think Roarty is right about why Team Romney should find this poll somewhat worrying:

Romney’s problem… is perception matters. The Republican nominee’s chances would get a significant boost if people are enthusiastic about his cause. I.e., instead of voting, they also volunteer. Instead of only signing up for campaign e-mail updates, they kick in their own money to boost the onetime governor’s fundraising.

Romney’s already unlikely to inspire any conservative on ideological grounds like Ronald Reagan. Odds are, average voters also won’t find him a compelling figure like the war-hero John McCain. Romney’s allure was intractably tied into his alleged electability against a divisive president – but, apparently, people don’t buy that, either. What’s left for voters to get excited about?To answer the parting rhetorical question: Defeating Barack Obama. Not quite Hope’n'Change, I know, but it’s most obviously what will get Romney voters — Mormons excluded — going, rather than anything particular about the man himself. Team Romney definitely gets this. Since day one of the GOP primary, Mitt’s been doing the best he can to answer every question with a variation on “Obama sucks.” Other than his peans to the free market, that’s just about the only thing he says that really hits home with his base.

If Romney wins, though, it won’t be because his voters are fired up. Or, that is to say, while his voters may be fired up, that alone won’t be sufficient to explain his victory. In order for him to win, Romney needs his partisans to be motivated and Obama’s partisans to be demotivated. That was the dynamic that worked to the President’s benefit in 2008, and it’s the dynamic that both campaigns are seeking to force upon the other.

They’ll both continue to do what they’ve been doing already, speaking in a rhetoric they know their diehards will most want to hear. Obama will talk about wealthy interests and fair deals and how Republicans need to mind their own business when it comes to women’s reproductive health. Romney will talk about Big Government and the free market and a “prairie fire” of debt. What I’ll be looking out for is to see not only which side gets more excited, but whether their frenzied state consequently affects swing-voters. Is there a bandwagon effect? 2012′s shaping up to be a great test-case to find out.

{ 5 comments }

Pin It

The Irony Of Mitt Romney, Wingnut

by Elias Isquith on May 15, 2012

Mitt

It took several months and a rogue barracuda, but by the end of the 2008 campaign, John McCain’s reputation for being a “maverick” with centrist leanings was dead as the moose in the Palin living room. There was always more than a little myth behind the McCain-as-maverick story — excepting those moments when he sought to needle George W. Bush, the Arizona Senator was, on the whole, always quite rightwing  — but whatever vestiges of goodwill his apostasy had earned him with the press were long gone by the time Barack Obama swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I’ll be interested to see how long it takes before the myth of Mitt-the-secret-moderate suffers a similar fate. If the speech he delivered yesterday in Iowa is any indication, it won’t be long.

Ostensibly about the nation’s deficit and debt, Romney’s speech was best described by Jonathan Chait, who called it “an amalgamation of free-floating conservative rage and anxiety, completely untethered to any facts, as agreed upon by the relevant experts.” Besides being perhaps oddly in-keeping with the kind of speech one would expect of a candidate still jockeying for position in a rightwing primary, rather than attempting to introduce himself to the mainstream electorate, Romney’s address was also notable for just how poorly written it was.

(For example: the writer/editor in me rebelled, violently, upon reading the tired metaphor and poorly chosen alliteration of “President Obama tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas, along with transparency and bipartisanship.” Emphasis most certainly mine.)

Not only poorly written, the speech was as far away from moderate, centrist, or mainstream as anything I’ve heard from a Republican candidate for President since Rick Santorum’s goodbye. And even if we’re by now used to talking about how far Right the GOP has gone, it’s still worthwhile to note the irony that Mitt Romney — the moderate Republican Governor of that bluest of blue states, Massachusetts; the consummate technocrat and supposed adherent to the objective truths of value and cost that define the free market — seems poised to run a campaign more steeped in rightwing truisms and alternative reality than any perhaps ever. Even George W. Bush never gave an address as suffused with wingnut-speak as this.

Here’s a representative section:

The people of Iowa and America have watched President Obama for nearly four years, much of that time with Congress controlled by his own party. And rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire. He has spent more and borrowed more.

The time has come for a president, a leader, who will lead. I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno. We will stop borrowing unfathomable sums of money we can’t even imagine, from foreign countries we’ll never even visit. I will bring us together to put out the fire!

A lot of people think this is a problem we can’t solve. I reject that kind of “can’t do” defeatist talk. It’s wrong.

If you can explain to me what the hell Romney is talking about when he refers to “countries we’ll never even visit,” it’d be much appreciated. My less charitable inclinations tells me that this is (barely) a dog-whistle to those who’d consider China’s being America’s chief financier to be a blotch of dishonor. My more charitable inclinations tell me I’ve nary a clue. In all likelihood, the answer lies somewhere in between. But I wonder what, exactly, Romney imagined he was saying…

Returning to Chait, I believe his summary of the speech is most on-point. After noting that Romney’s understanding of “deficit” and “debt” seems to be equivalent to “spending on things Republicans don’t like,” Chait concludes:

In Romney’s telling, the terms debt and spending are essentially interchangeable. When presented with Obama’s position — that the solution to the debt ought to include both higher taxes and lower spending — he rejects it out of hand. Naturally, Romney has admitted before that his budget plan “can’t be scored.” It’s an expression of conservative moral beliefs about the role of government. While loosely couched in budgetary terms, Romney is expressing an analysis that resides outside of, and completely at odds with, mainstream macroeconomic forecasting and scoring assumptions.

Close followers of American politics are used to this by now. More than a few people have noted Mitt Romney’s decision to run a campaign more unencumbered by reality than any before in recent memory. Some Democrat-friendly journalists and pundits have taken to calling it the “Etch-a-Sketch” or the “Amnesia” strategy, dependent as it is on the voters suspending their disbelief (or being effectively without prior understanding of their country and their lives to begin with).

But while this may be the most logical strategy for Romney in terms of winning in November — since many reasonable judges of the situation the President inherited and has thus far created are liable to grant him another term — it’s not the road Romney would traverse were he to have any interest in maintaining his Reasonable bonafides. To a limited degree, I’m inclined to give him credit for his relentless focus on winning; if his cause were any greater than his own aggrandizement, he’d be quite the valuable companion. Where things stand now, however, he’s looking considerably less primed for absolution. There’s a difference between losing and losing it all, but it’s not one the former Governor of Massachusetts seems particularly interested in recognizing.

{ 37 comments }

← Previous Entries