Category Archives: Republican Party

RNC Convention Speakers: Lettin’ the Freak Flag Fly

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Here is the current list of people scheduled to speak at the RNC convention, in no particular order:

  • Rick Santorum
  • Sen. Rand Paul (KY)
  • Gov. Mary Fallin (OK)
  • Jeb Bush
  • Gov. Nikki Haley (SC)
  • Gov. John Kasich (OH)
  • Gov. Rick Scott (FL)
  • Condi Rice
  • Mike Huckabee
  • Sen. John McCain (AZ)
  • Gov. Susana Martinez (NM)
  • Gov. Scott Walker (WI)
  • Ted Cruz, Tea Party whackjob who just won a Texas primary to run for Senate
  • Gov. Luis Fortuno, Puerto Rico
  • Sam Olens, Attorney General of Georgia
  • Pam Bondi, Attorney General of Florida

I’m assuming the worst whackjobs will not be speaking in prime time. However, at least half of these people belong in the character disorder hall of fame.

Conspicuously absent: Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Eric Cantor. I’m predicting that’s the short list for both keynote speaker and veep.

Coming Attractions: The GOP Convention

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The upcoming Republican National Convention could be a train wreck. Instead of the usual perfectly choreographed variety show, we’re likely to see an epic battle between take-no-prisoners baggers and what’s left of the GOP establishment. And then there are Ron Paul groupies, many of which are still fighting to take over state delegations.

For example, this is from yesterday’s New Orleans Times Picayune:

Ron Paul forces in Louisiana were willing to employ “dishonest and disruptive tactics” to manipulate voting at the party’s presidential caucuses and try to “hijack” the state convention to “overrule the will of nearly 200,000 presidential primary voters,” according to a brief filed by the Louisiana Republican Party with the national GOP’s Committee on Contests. The state party is defending the 46-member delegation it is sending to the National Republican Convention at the end of the month in Tampa from a challenge by Ron Paul supporters in the state

The challenge on behalf of the Paul supporters portrayed state party Chairman Roger Villere and the party apparatus as operating in a manner “more characteristic of a North Korean politburo than a democratic American political party that honors procedures and majority votes,” in order to keep the Ron Paul majority at the state party convention in Shreveport in June from working its will.

Similar disputes are ongoing in other states as well. The convention begins August 27.

And then there are the baggers. Nobody seems to know what percentage of the delegates are from the Tea Party, but those that are will very likely insist that the platform and agenda reflect their ideology and only their ideology, or else they are going to get very loud and nasty about it.

Mittens wants the convention to be a five-day ode to his magnificence. Will the baggers behave? Will they refrain from booing and walkouts and otherwise doing whatever they can do to draw attention to themselves? Not likely.

Mitt’s vice presidential pick will either alienate the baggers, causing them to act up; or it will please the baggers, causing general election voters to stamped to President Obama. I don’t see a lot of wiggle room for Mitt there.

In short, this convention could be epic. The GOP will be lucky if it doesn’t turn into a gunfight.

Romney-hood

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First, here’s a powerful ad:

Second — today’s word, boys and girls, is Romney-hood. This may become the center of President Obama’s stump speeches:

On the campaign trail Monday, President Obama debuted a new attack on Mitt Romney’s tax plan, continuing with his campaign’s leveraging of the recent Tax Policy Center study. From a pool reporter following Obama to a fundraiser in Connecticut:

“The entire centerpiece” of Romney’s economic plan is a $5 trillion tax cut, he said.
The president spoke of the Tax Policy Center’s analysis of Romney’s plan again.
“It’s like Robin Hood in reverse — it’s Romney-hood.” The crowd laughed and roared and whistled its approval.

The Romney campaign, predictably, said President Obama is trying to distract people from “the issues.” If Mitt’s damnfool tax plan isn’t an “issue,” I don’t know what is.

Who’s Lying Now?

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The entire Republican Party currently is flopping about in apoplexy over Harry Reid’s claim that someone told him Mitt Romney hadn’t paid federal income taxes for ten years. Why, they have even taken to calling Harry Reid a liar! Imagine!

According to Charles Mahtesian at Politico, it is extraordinary for one party to accuse the other of lying. I mean, really using the “L” word.

The Sunday news shows featured a rare spectacle that at once revealed the decline of civility in Washington and the depth of GOP outrage over Harry Reid’s unproven claim that Mitt Romney didn’t pay income taxes for an entire decade: two of the nation’s top GOP officials flat out called the Senate majority leader a liar.

That’s no ordinary criticism in official Washington.

There are plenty of other ways that pols use to call out their partisan rivals on their statements. Reid’s GOP counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for one, has already said Reid’s charge is “beneath the dignity” of his office.

But the actual term ‘liar’ crosses a line that’s seldom breached, signaling a widespread GOP belief that, even by the diminished standards of contemporary political debate, Reid has violated a code.

Hmm. Well, seems to me I have heard this before. For example, I remember Al Gore repeatedly referred to as a “serial liar” during the 2008, and that was for saying stuff that he never actually said, or if he did say it was actually true, if you looked it up. But let’s go on.

Reid is not backing down.

Reid wasn’t fazed. His spokesman Adam Jentleson responded in the afternoon by vouching for the credibility of the source and inviting Romney to disprove the claim by releasing a series of tax returns. Calling him the “most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon,” Jentleson told TPM: “It’s clear Mitt Romney is hiding something, and the only way for him to clear this up is to be straight with the American people and release his tax returns.”

The allegation irritated the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, which called it “a smear from the fever swamps that say more about Mr. Reid’s ethics than they do about Mr. Romney’s taxes.” But Reid isn’t on the ballot this year; Romney is. And as the Journal argued, “Mr. Romney’s problem is that he can only disprove the charge by releasing his tax returns.”

Reid isn’t up for re-election until 2016, and who knows if he’s going to run again, anyway? So what can the GOP do to him? And there’s a chance someone did tell him that Romney didn’t pay federal taxes for ten years.

Unlike Reid’s unsupported and unverifiable claim, Mittens tells verifiable lies as fast as he can move his lips. So can I hear some Democratic spokespeople use the “L” word, now? Anybody? How about the recent howler that the Obama campaign is trying to restrict the military vote in Ohio?

Mittens and Another Damn Lie

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The facts: Per Judd Legum, “Since 2005, Ohio has had in person early-voting in the three days prior to the election. This year, however, the Republican legislature in Ohio eliminated early voting during this period, except for members of the military.”

The Obama campaign sued the state of Ohio to restore early voting for everyone. Here is the brief. A quote:

A preliminary and permanent order prohibiting the Defendants, their respective agents, servants, employees, attorneys, successors, and all persons acting in concert with each or any of them, from implementing or enforcing lines 863 and 864 of Sec. 3509.03 (I) in HB 224, and/or the SB 295 enactment of Ohio Revised Code § 3509.03 with the HB 224 amendments, thereby restoring in-person early voting on the three days immediately preceding Election Day for all eligible Ohio voters.

The Mittens version of events:

“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage,” he said in a statement posted to Facebook Saturday afternoon. “The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I’m entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.”

The above quote is taken from an article in The Hill.You have to read the article nearly to the bottom to find out what the Obama campaign’s lawsuit actually is about. That liberal media strikes again.

Mitt and Taxes

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I cannot improve on Tbogg’s analysis of the Harry Reid “outrage” on Mitt’s taxes. Do read. I don’t know if Reid really heard what he said he heard; I do know that this has got to be getting under Mitt’s thin and privileged skin.

Meanwhile, House Dems are joining forces to demand that Mittens explain how the amount of money in his IRA came to exceed the GDP of Micronesia.

Romney’s most recent financial disclosure form revealed that his tax-deferred individual retirement account holds upwards of $100 million — an amount that awkwardly showcases his enormous wealth but also raises legal and ethical questions.

IRAs are intended to allow workers to put away modest sums of money each year in order to help finance a middle class retirement. The savings are tax deferred, but there’s a legal limit — now $6,000 — on how much each IRA holder can contribute annually.

Now top Democrats on the Budget, Ways and Means, and Education and Workforce Committees want to know how people of Romney’s wealth can end up with 100,000 times that much money in a single IRA, and how much the tax and investment strategies they employ cost the Treasury in revenue every year.

In a letter Thursday to senior officials at the Treasury and Labor departments, Reps. George Miller (D-CA), Sander Levin (D-MI), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) want to know: Is this legal? How easy is this strategy to get away with? How much does it cost the government every year? And what can be done to end the practice?

“[W]e are alarmed to learn that wealthy taxpayers may be taking advantage of a tax subsidy that is designed to provide for retirement to instead accumulate massive amounts of tax-sheltered assets,” the lawmakers write. “Given your commitment to the rule of law and equitable treatment of taxpayers, we hope that you will evaluate this issue carefully to ensure that a select few are not being provided with a loophole that allows for wrongful tax evasion.”

And the Obama Campaign has published and interactive map to show people how much taxes would go up in each state of Mittens is elected.

I can’t remember a time when the Dems were this coordinated. Praise be.

Romney is promising jobs, jobs, jobs. He’s saying he will create 12 million jobs in his first term, which would beat Bill Clinton’s record in his first term. Well, that sounds grand. But Mittens a little vague about where these jobs will come from. He seems to think his mere presence in the White House is all that’s needed.

How will Romney create 12 million jobs?

Romney economic adviser Glenn Hubbard put out a white paper yesterday explaining the goal, but as the Huffington Post’s Jon Ward notes, “The paper was less actuarial work with raw data and specific numbers, however, and more of an economic philosophy argument based largely on the premise that simply by undoing much of what President Obama has done since taking office, the economy would recover at a faster pace than it has been from the recession that began in late 2008.”

Still, the paper states that “history shows that a recovery rooted in policies contained in the Romney plan will create about 12 million jobs in the first term of a Romney presidency.” Notably, the paper does not provide much historical evidence to support this claim, and where it does look at history, it focuses on unemployment rates, not job creation numbers.

In other words, if we clap our hands and vote for Mitt, the jobs fairy will leave jobs under our pillows. This is so stupid it doesn’t even rise to the level of pandering.

Romney’s Tax Policies Are a Joke

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Typical —

A new study describing Mitt Romney’s tax cut proposals as an average tax increase for 95% of Americans is “a joke,” according to Romney adviser Eric Ferhnstrom. But policy aides offered no indication they plan to offer more details on Romney’s plan in order to clarify how it would be paid for and what they assumed its effects would be.

This goes on all the time in the Mittens camp. Someone will issue a criticism, with supporting data, of a proposed Romney policy and explain why that policy would have bad effects. And the Romney camp will just say “no, that’s a lie,” without offering a counter-argument.

In this case, what counter-argument the Romney camp offers is simply a fantasy.

Mitt Romney’s policy director Lanhee Chen claims that a new study showing 95% of Americans would see a tax hike under Romney’s tax reform plan is “biased” and fails to take into account the explosion of economic growth that will occur under Romney’s administration.

Bring on the Underpants Gnomes.

Very, very simply, Mittens is proposing across-the-board tax rate cut, plus elimination of some taxes that only the wealthy pay, plus increases in the defense budget, because spending more money on defense — whether the Pentagon needs it or not — proves you are Serious. And this will be revenue neutral, they claim, paid for by spending cuts and by eliminating some tax deductions, although he won’t say what would be cut or eliminated.

The Brookings Institute (and I’ve seen this elsewhere) look at this and say that the only way this would be revenue neutral is to eliminate tax deductions that benefit the Middle Class and cut spending on programs that benefit the poor and Middle Class, meaning that it would amount to an effective tax increase on most Americans.

Ezra Klein explains,

The Tax Policy Center bent over backwards to make Romney’s promises add up. They assumed a Romney administration wouldn’t cut a dollar of tax preferences for anyone making less than $200,000 until they had cut every dollar of tax preferences for everyone making over $200,000. They left all preferences for savings and investment untouched, as Romney has promised. They even tested the plan under a model developed, in part, by Greg Mankiw, one of Romney’s economic advisers, that promises “implausibly large growth effects” from tax cuts. The fact that they couldn’t make Romney’s numbers work even when they stacked all these scenarios on top of one another shows just how impossible Romney’s promises are.

The reason Romney’s plan doesn’t work is very simple. The size of the tax cut he’s proposing for the rich is larger than all of the tax expenditures that go to the rich put together. As such, it is mathematically impossible for him to keep his promise to make sure the top one percent keeps paying the same or more. …

… “Families with children currently receive 57 percent of the available tax expenditures examined in this exercise but 23 percent of the revenue reductions. Thus a reform that imposed an across-the-board reduction in tax expenditures would increase taxes much more on families with children than on childless adults.”

It’s obvious the Mittens crew hasn’t worked out how their promises will be filled. In fact, when asked for details, they say that’s up to Congress.

But asked on a conference call whether the Romney campaign would offer up any more details on how they believe their plan would work instead, policy adviser Jonathan Burks demurred, saying it would be up to Congress to help fill in the blanks.

“The governor’s plan essentially lays out the parameters that he wants to achieve: lowering the tax rate by 20 percent, achieving revenue neutrality, and maintaining progressivity and within that he would write a tax plan that achieves those goals,” he said. “So, it’s not a question of ‘today we have a 2000 page tax plan that could be scored.’”

In other words, he’s expecting the help to make it work.

Update: Krugman —

And the Romney people respond with deep voodoo, invoking the supposed fabulous growth effects from his tax cuts. And who could argue? Remember how the economy tanked after Clinton raised taxes? Remember how great things were after Bush cut them? Oh, wait.

Mitt Romney v. Jared Diamond

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Jard Diamond, author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel, says Mittens is misrepresenting his work.

It is not true that my book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” as Mr. Romney described it in a speech in Jerusalem, “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.”

That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it. …

… Even scholars who emphasize social rather than geographic explanations — like the Harvard economist David S. Landes, whose book “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” was mentioned favorably by Mr. Romney — would find Mr. Romney’s statement that “culture makes all the difference” dangerously out of date. In fact, Mr. Landes analyzed multiple factors (including climate) in explaining why the industrial revolution first occurred in Europe and not elsewhere.

Reminds me of …

If Mittens is true to form, he will ignore Jared Diamond and continue to mischaracterize his books.

BTW, I watched Mrs. Mittens’s horse perform in the Olympics just now, on a live stream, and she did pretty well. I have no idea if she’s a contender for a medal, though.

Update: Horse currently in 6th place, in the preliminaries. Update: Finished 13th for the day. In this competition, that is very respectable.

Rememer, Rafalca is America’s Horse. Literally. We’re payin’ for her oats.

Whiplash Mitt and the Swing Voter

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Random thoughts that don’t necessarily hang together to make a coherent essay —

Yesterday I read a number of analyses of Mitt’s Gaffapalooza Tour that decided it would have no impact on the fall election. Most voters, especially “independent” ones, care more about domestic issues and aren’t interested in the Middle East or what gets printed about the candidates in the British tabloids, they said.

While there’s some truth to that, it’s not all-the-way true. First, I question how much issues, foreign or domestic, really factor into voters’ decisions on presidential candidates. Those of us who are politics junkies care passionately about where the candidates stand on this or that issue, but we’re a minority. I think at least a large chunk of voters, especially “independent” ones, vote with their guts and not their heads. They vote for the guy who feels right to them. In the event neither candidate really feels right, they vote against the guy who frightens or angers them more.

IMO in an incumbent, cluelessness is a bigger sin than incompetence. An incumbent whose performance hasn’t been all that great, but who seems to understand how the electorate is seeing things, and who can persuade voters that he “gets it,” whatever it is, probably will be re-elected. IMO Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush failed to win re-election mostly because the electorate got frustrated with them for not “getting it.” On the other hand, George W. Bush could screw the pooch up one way and down the other and still make a lot of Americans feel he was their guy, like it or not.

IMO Romney can’t sing that song. No way, no how. I don’t care how white he is. Except to the ideologically blinkered, Romney is just too much of a space alien, even to white people. Of course, there are plenty of those who would vote for a white space alien over a black human.

Yesterday there was some muttering that Mitt’s foreign tour probably helped him more than hurt him with the Republican base. That’s no doubt true, although it hardly matters. I read another analysis, somewhere, that said Mitt has a floor of between 40 to 45 percent of voters who will vote for him no matter what. I suspect that’s true. About the only way he could attract fewer than 40 percent of the vote is if someone video-recorded him eating a baby. Maybe not even then. Because to between 40 to 45 percent of voters having a Kenyan Muslim foreign usurper communist n***** in the White House just feels all wrong, and any other (white/right-wing) candidate will get their vote. Baby eater or not.

So, anything that ingratiates him even more with that 40 to 45 percent doesn’t concern me, because it’s not going to get him more votes than he will get anyway. Well, unless baggers and wingnuts get a pass to vote twice.

Nate’s got Mittens at 48 percent right now, and he may hang on to that. But that’s unlikely to win the election, especially since Mittens is losing in many of the “big” electoral college states, like New York and California.

And I sincerely believe that once we get past the conventions and more people begin to pay attention to the campaign, Mitt’s social awkwardness and general cluelessness will be more evident to more people. Right now I suspect that at least a small sliver of that 48 percent only knows what Mittens looks like and that he was a businessman who made a lot of money, and that might appeal to them, but they’re not going to stick with Romney when they get a closer look at him.

The gaffes of Mitt’s foreign trip may not register with tuned-out voters consciously, but I do think a steady drip, drip, drip of bad press about a candidate does sink in to the American collective subconscious and impacts how voters feel. That’s what killed Al Gore in 2000, IMO, and allowed the vote to be close enough so that Bush could steal it in Florida. Regular Fox News/Rush Limbaugh news consumers are inoculated, but there aren’t enough of them to give Mittens a win by themselves.

Also, I think if Mittens’s foreign tour had gotten him some good press, or even better, cheering crowds such as Obama got in 2008, that would have given Mitt a big boost, and swing voters possibly would feel more comfortable with him. That would have been significant. However, he didn’t get that.

So, while the foreign trip may or may not have a direct impact on the election that will show up clearly in polls, I think indirectly it was huge.