Posts Tagged ‘
Mitt Romney ’
Friday, May 27th, 2011
Tom Eland
Tom Eland is a researcher with Americans for Campaign Reform, a bipartisan group chaired by former Senators Bill Bradley, Bob Kerrey, Warren Rudman, and Al Simpson. He is a 2010 graduate in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Worcester College, Oxford.
by Tom Eland
In recent weeks Mitt Romney has been seeking to bolster his claim to be the mainstream establishment candidate capable of beating Barack Obama in the general election. It’s a logical enough claim for any candidate to seek to make, except that his most compelling argument has had more to do with dollars than ideas.
Last week, the Romney campaign arranged for more than 400 activists to travel to Las Vegas to participate in a telethon that the campaign claims raised $10.25 million in a single day. Two events in Boston later in the week were reported to have raised $2 million.
By June 30, the date on which donations from the last quarter will be published, the Romney campaign is hoping to be able to comprehensively demonstrate financial dominance over the rest of the field. Romney’s staff is keen to emphasize its fundraising prowess, not as a means to articulate Romney’s arguments about issues, but as an argument in and of itself.
Following the latest fundraising effort, the Romney campaign posted an article on their website claiming, “When it comes to money, President Obama and Mitt Romney occupy a plateau far above everyone else”. The message is clear: it doesn’t matter if you really like Tim Pawlenty or Ron Paul or any of the several other respected Republicans in the race: Mitt Romney is the only candidate with the cash to win.
Arguments about fundraising power and the supposed credibility that it gives a candidate are ubiquitous in primary campaigns. Newt Gingrich has already felt this bite: One of the key ideological moments in the GOP contest so far was perhaps Newt Gingrich’s apparent flip-flop over Paul Ryan’s budget plans for Medicare. The moment may well have made support for the budget a shibboleth for conservative voters, while the attention given to Gingrich’s misstep will make it harder for candidates to evade the issue.
Amidst the furor, however, one of the key arguments made by Gingrich’s detractors was that it had damaged his campaign’s ability to raise funds. Much was made of the fact that within 24 hours of his comments on ”Meet the Press”, 13 out of 18 co-chairs for Gingrich’s Florida fundraising effort dropped out. A ‘veteran Republican strategist’ was widely quoted as questioning whether Gingrich can “even make it to July 4th, because his fundraising is going to dry up.”
Primary elections are a vibrant part of American democracy. They contrast favorably with systems in most other democracies where the selection of candidates that the electorate chooses between is still largely controlled by party bosses.
Therefore, it’s tragic that the opportunity to have open discussions about ideas within America’s two great ideological traditions can be drowned out by questions about fundraising. This focus not only distracts from important issues, but also maintains the role for party elites that primary elections were intended to abolish.
Thirteen Florida co-chairs are supposedly able to hail the demise of Newt Gingrich’s campaign, while a small group of Romney fundraisers send a dramatic message to party activists and primary voters that, arguments over issues aside, his is the only campaign capable of defeating Obama’s formidable electoral machine.
There is currently legislation before Congress that would mitigate the oppressive effect that money in politics can have on the vibrancy of American democracy. The Presidential Funding Act would provide $4 for every $1 raised by candidates from small donations of $200 or less. Participating candidates must accept limits on the size of donations they are able to receive.
Such reforms would make candidates who inspire widespread support, but lack access to the tiny proportion of wealthy donors who contribute the majority of campaign finance funds, to be competitive. That would allow primary campaigns to be more about issues and less about money and organization. By negating “I can raise the most” as an argument it would enrich and broaden public discourse and keep our democracy lively and strong.
To find out more about the damaging role of money in politics please visit http://www.youstreet.org/ or go to Americans for Campaign Reform (ACR) on Facebook.
photo credit: las – initally
Tags: Americans for Campaign Reform, fixing our broken politics, fundraising, Mitt Romney, money and politics, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, youstreet.org
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Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Presidential politics was again the focus of Wingnut World last week, as conservative opinion-leaders took the opportunity to savage Mitt Romney for his adamant defense of the Massachusetts health reform plan, while mulling over the decision of controversial fellow-traveler Mike Huckabee to stay on the sidelines in 2012.
Romney took the calculated risk of delivering a self-hyped “major speech” on health reform at the University of Michigan, apparently in hopes that a definitive statement on the subject would flush out and eventually diminish conservative anger at him on the subject before Republicans actually begin voting next year. It certainly flushed out negative opinions on the Right. Even before the speech was delivered, Romney took a pounding from the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which rightly predicted he would refuse to back down on the wisdom of backing a state reform plan that included an individual insurance purchasing mandate and other features associated with “ObamaCare.” The title of the op-ed says it all: “Obama’s Running Mate.”
The speech itself was a hodge-podge of arguments and rationalizations. Romney alternated between what progressive health wonk Jonathan Cohn called an “inspiring” defense of his reasoning in signing the Massachusetts law, and less-than-compelling claims that the law had no implications for national health policy. The conservative commentariat has long since rejected as inadequate his “federalism defense” that “RomneyCare” was a system designed for Massachusetts only, which is unsurprising since the individual mandate is the specific target of a host of state lawsuits aimed at overturning ObamaCare. Moreover, the proto-candidate’s effort to change the subject to what he would propose as president after a theoretical repeal of national health reform legislation drew virtually no attention, probably because he simply endorsed every conventional conservative gimmick of recent years—a tax credit for the purchase of individual insurance policies, preemption of state regulation of private health insurance via interstate sales, and medical malpractice reform.
Only time will tell if Team Romney is right that hostility to RomneyCare will burn itself out, much as John McCain’s many past heresies against conservative orthodoxy were ultimately forgiven in 2008, leaving Republican elites to focus on his superior “electability.” But Romney’s not off to a very good start. Among his tormenters after the speech were the editors of National Review, who gave him a crucial endorsement in 2008. After rejecting Romney’s federalism argument that an individual mandate was acceptable at the state level, his one-time fans at NR made this brutal assessment of the political thinking behind the speech:
We understand that Romney does not feel that he can flip-flop on what he had touted as his signature accomplishment in office. But if there is one thing we would expect a successful businessman to know, it is when to walk away from a failed investment.
This is in synch with the advice Romney has been receiving from Sen. Jim DeMint of SC, another key 2008 supporter who is vastly more influential today.
Later in the week, conservative chattering class attention was diverted to Romney’s 2008 nemesis, Mike Huckabee, who stage-managed an announcement of non-candidacy on his Fox show Saturday after touching off an orgy of confused speculation about his plans by issuing a variety of mixed signals.
His Saturday show was quite a spectacle. It included a derisive panel discussion of Romney’s health care speech, a bizarre interview with right-wing rocker Ted Nugent—who discussed his proposal to unleash the Navy Seals to “secure” U.S. borders with mega-violence—who then took the stage to perform “Cat Scratch Fever” with Huck on bass, followed by a videotaped benediction from Donald Trump. Near the end of the show, Huckabee faced the cameras and detailed all the reasons he should run for president, before divulging that God had persuaded him otherwise via prayer.
For all the hype and the alleged divine intervention, Huck’s decision was precisely what the conventional wisdom had long predicted, mainly because of his palpable reluctance to give up the Fox show and a new-found personal wealth to go trudging through the pot-luck dinner circuit of Iowa once again. At fifty-five, Huckabee is also young enough to consider running in 2016 or even later.
Assessments of the impact on the 2012 race of Huckabee’s non-candidacy have been mixed, but there’s a general consensus that it provides an opening for other outspoken social conservative in Iowa, while limiting the southerners in the field to the not-very-southern Newt Gingrich and African-American Herman Cain. In both respects, this could be very good news for smart-money favorite Tim Pawlenty, who is by all accounts out-organizing his rivals in Iowa and is clearly acceptable to the Christian Right and can now seriously contemplate a breakthrough in southern states beginning with South Carolina.
Speaking of Tim Pawlenty and South Carolina, a fascinating subplot in the presidential contest has been unfolding after Gov. Nikki Haley demanded that all the candidates side with her in attacks on the National Labor Relations Board, which has at least temporarily stopped the relocation of jobs by Boeing from Washington to SC in the wake of disputes with the machinists union. Haley, it should be noted, has trumped the usual conservative bashing of public-sector unions by arguing that private-sector unionism is incompatible with economic growth (she appointed a “management” labor attorney as her state labor department chief with the explicit mission of keeping unions out of the state to the maximum extent possible). Pawlenty won the race to first kiss Haley’s ring on the Boeing issue, though the other candidates are quickly following. This helps reinforce the impression that Pawlenty’s strategy—ironically, much like Mitt Romney’s in 2008—is to supplement his “moderate-governor-of-a-blue-state” background with an effort to do whatever he is told by conservative activists. He hasn’t turned them down yet.
Tags: 2012, Ed Kilgore, Jim DeMint, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, niki haley, Ted Nugent, wingnut watch
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Monday, March 7th, 2011
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
It’s not exactly Sophie’s choice, but you have to admit there’s something a little poignant about Mitt Romney’s dilemma. To win the GOP nomination for president, he’s being forced by Tea Party types to distance himself from his greatest public achievement – making Massachusetts the first state in the union to achieve universal health care.
To mask this abject act of self-repudiation, Romney is attacking Obamacare with unwonted ideological zeal. “Obamacare is bad law constitutionally, bad policy and it is bad for America’s families,” he assured a group of New Hampshire Republicans over the weekend. Ladling on the conservative boilerplate, he added, “The federal government isn’t the answer for running health care any more than it’s the answer for running Amtrak or the Post Office.”
The problem for Romney – as his presidential rivals gleefully keep reminding conservatives — is that Romneycare is the policy template for Obamacare. It has the same basic architecture: a menu of competing private health care options (“exchanges” in the federal law, the “Connector” in Massachusetts), public subsidies for those who need them, and an individual mandate requiring all adults to buy medical coverage. The biggest difference between the two approaches, ironically, is that Obamacare is a lot tougher on containing health care costs than the Massachusetts law.
Nationally, about 15 percent of Americans (roughly 45 million) lack basic health care coverage. Thanks to Romneycare, it’s less than three percent in Massachusetts. Romney says he’s proud of that accomplishment, but Massachusetts may have to file a paternity suit to get him to own up to the individual mandate.
Romney’s disingenuous attempts to disavow the obvious similarities between his approach and the President’s aren’t doing much for his reputation for intellectual honesty. Given conservatives’ fanatical loathing for the President’s bill – “Repealing Obamacare is the driving motivation of my life,” avers Minnesota Republican and Tea Party pin-up Rep. Michele Bachmann – Romney evidently feels the bill he hammered out with Massachusetts Democrats poses an existential threat to his candidacy.
So the GOP front-runner is seeking refuge in federalism: “One thing I would never do is to usurp the constitutional power of states with a one-size-fits-all federal takeover,” he said in New Hampshire. Let me get this straight: it’s OK for states to adopt a “socialist” approach to universal coverage, including the heartily despised individual mandate, as long as it’s not foisted on them by Washington?
Maybe Romney will find a way to persuade conservatives to forgive him for governing effectively in a deep-died blue state. But at what cost? Let’s face it, Romney is basically a pragmatic problem-solver, not a right-wing ideologue. Pretending to be otherwise will cast further doubt on his authenticity as a candidate, even if it’s the only way to run in today’s radicalized Republican Party.
Tags: Healthcare, Mitt Romney, Obamacare, presidential race 2012, republicans
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Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The Obama-McConnell tax deal is expected to head from the Senate to the House today, with the big question being whether House Democrats have the temerity to amend the bill and risk a wholesale Republican abandonment of the process.
Senate defections on the key cloture vote were pretty limited: Ten Democrats (Bingaman, Brown, Feingold, Gillibrand, Hagan, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Sanders, Udall) and five Republicans (Coburn, DeMint, Ensign, Sessions and Voinovich). Steny Hoyer is hinting that House Democrats will be given an opportunity to support an amendment making the package more acceptable to progressives, but that a majority will be there for the original deal.
The estate tax provisions seem to be the real flashpoint for opposition from both sides, with Republicans objecting to the return of the “death tax” (even though under current law it’s due to resurrect itself at 2001 levels) and Democrats objecting to a relaxation in rates and exemptions benefitting a handful of the very rich without generating any positive impact for the economy. This is the sort of very basic difference of perspective on which compromise is probably impossible.
Meanwhile, two new public opinion surveys indicate pretty strong support for the deal across party lines.
According to Pew, 60 percent of Americans support the tax deal, while 22 percent disapprove. More interesting, an above-average 64 percent of self-identified conservative Republicans and 65 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats support the deal. A WaPo/ABC survey shows respondents favoring the package by a 69-29 margin, with support rising to 75 percent among self-identified Republicans and 68 percent among both self-identified Democrats and indies.
Interestingly, this survey shows narrow majority popular support for three enumerated parts of the deal—the UI extension, the two-year extension of the Bush income tax rates, and the new estate tax rates and exemptions—but 57 percent opposing the payroll tax holiday, generally considered the provision most likely to stimulate the economy. Breaking down these elements by party ID, the UI extension is the only provision gaining majority support among Democrats, Republicans, and indies, though the increase in the estate tax exemption comes close (with support from 52 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of indies). The whole package is generally more popular than its parts, which might indicate some support for bipartisan action as an end in itself.
Elite opinion is clearly on a track of its own. Aside from the strong opposition to the deal among many progressive opinion-leaders, which has resonated with House Democrats, conservative opinion is split, especially in the ranks of potential 2012 presidential candidates. Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich—two candidates who have most emphasized cultural as opposed to economic issues—have endorsed the deal. Mitt Romney, who has been burnishing his credibility with conservatives by taking a strong stand against ratification of the new START Treaty, came out against the tax deal today, arguing that temporary tax cut extensions would not reduce investor “uncertainty” and also calling for an overhaul of the entire UI system. Sarah Palin also expressed opposition to the tax deal, but without elaboration other than an attaboy for Jim DeMint, whose own opposition was motivate by the “unpaid-for” UI extension and the very existence of the “death tax.” Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer, and RedState’s Erick Erickson have also been outspoken opponents of the deal, mostly on grounds that this is not time for cooperation with Obama and Democrats. It’s probable that some conservatives privately oppose a deal on the additional grounds that the deadlock prevents congressional action on DADT and START until the new Congress takes office.
Right in the midst of this saga, conservatives have been significantly distracted by a federal district court ruling in Virginia that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Two other federal district judges have ruled otherwise in parallel suits, and it’s obvious the whole issue will have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. But conservatives are greeting the decision with high hosannas, presumably wanting to burnish the credibility of their arguments for a radically scaled-back interpretation of federal powers under the Commerce Clause. If the High Court does indeed embrace this interpretation, progressives will have a broader set of problems than the demise of ACA’s individual mandate; the constitutionality of a whole range of existing federal programs could be called into question.
Photo credit: Phillip Ingham
Tags: ACA, Affordable Care Act, Bingaman, Brown, Bush income tax rates, Charles Krauthammer, Coburn, Commerce Clause, conservative opinion, DADT, death tax, DeMint, Elite opinion, Ensign, Erick Erickson, Feingold, Gillibrand, Hagan, Jim DeMint, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, new estate tax rates and exemptions, Newt Gingrich, Obama-McConnell, payroll tax holiday, Pew, Rush Limbaugh, Sanders, Sarah Palin, Sessions, START, Steny Hoyer, Tax Cut Deal, U.S. Supreme Court, Udall, UI extension, Virginia, Voinovich, WaPo/ABC
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Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
As we head into the Thanksgiving weekend, the preeminent public concern with government appears to be TSA airport screening, with polls showing a majority of Americans supporting new and more intrusive security measures, but with a very unhappy minority, including more frequent travelers making a lot of noise (Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight has a very detailed breakdown on polling data, trends, and past experience with tightened airport security). Opponents of full-body screening are probably not going to help the popularity of their cause by slowing down TSA operations during tomorrow’s so-called Opt-Out Day.
Meanwhile, prospects for a harmonious lame-duck session seem as remote as ever. While some observers perceive an increased possibility of a consensus proposal by the Deficit Reduction Commission, acceptance of any such proposal by Congress still remains extremely unlikely. The one bipartisan deficit-reduction idea that is gaining steam at the moment is an effort led by Tea Party favorites Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, in conjunction with environmentalists, to block extension of tax subsidies for ethanol production, a proposition that will create problems for Republican presidential wannabees who will soon be spending a lot of time in Iowa. Meanwhile, more and more conservatives appear to be eager to sign onto a “no” vote on increasing the public debt limit, which could force an government shutdown early next year.
Another contentious issue hanging fire is the pledge by Republicans in both chambers of Congress to pursue a repeal of health reform legislation. Ezra Klein has a succinct summary of the political and substantive problems this effort will run into:
For now, Republicans have been talking about which policies to repeal. They want the 1099 tax gone, or the individual mandate reversed. But when they actually have to repeal anything, they’re going to have to talk about what functions they want repealed. Repeal the individual mandate, for instance, and you make it possible for the irresponsible to freeload on the system, and impossible for the responsible to get insurance at low rates. You also make it impossible to end discrimination based on preexisting conditions. And do Americans really want that repealed?
The answer lies somewhere between “no” and “hell, no.” And as Klein notes, Republican claims that they have other ways to protect the uninsurable (mostly involving the old chestnut of state-run high-risk pools, which typically offer bad policies at very high premiums) may not look too good when fully explained. Meanwhile, absent some national policy on pre-existing condition exclusions, another Republican hobby-horse, allowing interstate sales of insurance products, could actually erode existing state protections by creating a “race to the bottom” of insurers to low-regulation states.
Indeed, whatever else happens, the repeal effort could produce the sort of public awareness of the realities of health reform that pro-reform education efforts have so far failed to generate.
Three weeks after Election Day, the 2010 cycle refuses to end. Joe Miller continues to seek a way to block a formal declaration of victory for Lisa Murkowski in the Alaska Senate race, even as Republicans begin to pull the rug from beneath him. Tom Emmers lost a key court battle in his fight to prevent final certification of Democrat Mark Dayton as winner of the Minnesota gubernatorial race. And the number of unresolved House races is now down to four (two in CA and two in NY); if the current leaders win those races, the final count of House GOP gains will be 63.
Turning to the 2012 cycle, the University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics web page has unveiled a study demonstrating that party control of governorships has (at least since 1968) had virtually no impact on which party wins a given state in presidential elections. The write-up of this study is amusingly sprinkled with election-night quotes from media pundits claiming that Republican gubernatorial wins would have a massive impact on the outcome in key states in 2012.
And for those who can’t wait for the presidential election to get fully underway, I’ve done a fairly elaborate piece for TNR on the GOP presidential landscape coming out of the midterms. Long story short, no prospective candidates did that much good for themselves during the midterms, with the main impact being the erosion of conservative activist willingness to accept candidates they don’t like on electability grounds. This could be bad news for Mitt Romney, or for any establishment cabal determined to pre-select a nominee or veto someone like Sarah Palin.
Speaking of Palin, tonight we will learn if her daughter, Bristol, will win the annual competition on the top-rated network TV show Dancing With the Stars, despite relatively low marks from the show’s professional judges, thus creating a brouhaha over Republican ballot-box-stuffing and probable cries of persecution from both Palins and their fans.
Tags: Alaska, bipartisan deficit-reduction idea, Bristol, CA, consensus proposal, Corn, Dancing With the Stars, Deficit Reduction Commission, Election Day, environmentalists, Ezra Klein, FiveThirtyEight, Health insurance, individual mandate, Iowa, Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, lame-duck session, Lisa Murkowski, Mark Dayton, Minnesota, Mitt Romney, Nate Silver, NY, Opt-Out Day, Politics of Travel, Sarah Palin, security measures, smart politics, Tea Party, Thanksgiving, TNR, Tom Emmers, TSA airport screening
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Friday, November 19th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
“High risk” seems to be the consensus term for President Obama’s decision to push for ratification of the new START Treaty during this year’s lame-duck session. That’s understandable; hardly any Republicans senators are on board, and Republican senators-elect are complaining that no treaty votes should be taken until they have been sworn in (of course, they are complaining about the very existence of a lame-duck session, so that’s not a terribly distinctive argument). The administration needs 67 votes for ratification, and once Mark Kirk obtains his early swearing-in just after Thanksgiving, there will only be 58 Democratic senators.
But fewer voices are asking if Republican obstruction of START carries any political risks. There is virtually no evidence that foreign policy had a significant partisan impact on the midterm elections, even amongst the Republican-tilted November 2 electorate; no one can credibly claim any conservative mandate on arms control or other defense policy controversies. The President has consistently obtained some of his strongest approval ratings on foreign policy and defense issues. He has a glittering array of distinguished Republican backers for START representing past GOP administrations. And the argument being made for delay on START by the most visible GOP senators—the treaty needs to be held hostage to higher defense spending (for nuclear modernization)–strikes a discordant note with GOP and nonpartisan demands for immediate reductions in federal spending, not to mention the desire for bipartisanship wherever possible.
Moreover, it’s not clear that Republicans have their own internal act together on defense and foreign policy; there are a host of potential rifts, some left over from the Bush administration, some dating back to the Cold War. Perhaps the threat to delay START ratification is more of a bluff, and if the administration doesn’t call it, progress on any other legislation during the lame duck session could prove impossible. The politics of this fight will now become clearer now that the White House has refused to back down.
The big overriding question, of course, is whether bipartisan cooperation will prove possible on any significant issue, with Republicans making full extension of Bush tax cuts and a drive to repeal health reform their top priorities. There’s some interesting new political science data on the extent to which the midterms increased polarization in Congress (or at least in the House). According to Adam Bonica, who is using the standard measurement for the ideological positioning of Members of Congress:
77 percent of freshmen Republicans in the 112th Congress will locate to the right of the party median from the 111th. In other words, nearly 8 in 10 incoming House Republicans would have been on the right wing of the party in the 111th Congress.
The problem for Republicans is that their “conservatism” does not necessarily dictate clear positions on many defense policy issues, or on the larger conflict between deficit reduction and other policy goals. But ideology by no means disposes the GOP to cooperate with Democrats, and particularly with the President whose defeat in 2010 is, according to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, their paramount goal.
On the public opinion front, pollsters are beginning to shift from retrospective looks at 2010 voters towards efforts to measure the likely 2012 electorate, which will be much larger, younger, less white, and less conservative. The shift in perspective can sometimes be dramatic. Public Policy Polling caused a stir by releasing a large batch of state polls of likely 2010 voters showing President Obama trailing a “generic Republican” in all of them, some by big margins. Then PPP released a poll of Virginians who voted in any of the last three elections, and measured Obama against named potential GOP opponents, and the picture was very different: Obama not only had a positive (50/45) job approval rating in the Old Dominion, but led (or in the case of Mitt Romney, was tied with) all the Republicans who might run against him. And this was in a state where on November 2 Republicans knocked off three Democratic House members and nearly beat a fourth. It’s all about who gets asked, and how the questions are framed.
Tags: 112th Congress, Adam Bonica, Bush tax cuts, Cold War, defense issues, defense policy controversies, Democratic Senators, Foreign policy, Generic republican, high-risk, Homeland security, Lame Duck, Mark Kirk, midterm elections, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, PPP, President Obama, Public opinion, Public Policy Polling, republicans, START, Virginians, White House
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Friday, November 12th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The post-election interpretive wars have continued and even intensified, but with current and future events very much in everyone’s mind.
Voices of self-restraint among Republicans are very rare. Highly typical is this take from University of Virginia professor of politics James Ceaser:
Of all the recent mid-term elections, 2010 is the closest the nation has ever come to a national referendum on overall policy direction or “ideology.” Obama, who ran in 2008 by subordinating ideology to his vague themes of hope and change, has governed as one of the most ideological and partisan of presidents. Some of his supporters like to argue in one breath that he is a pragmatist and centrist only to insist in the next that he has inaugurated the most historic transformation of American politics since the New Deal. The two claims are incompatible. Going back to the major political contests of 2009, beginning with the Governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey and to the Senate race in Massachusetts, the electorate has been asked the same question about Obama’s agenda and has given the same response. The election of 2010 is the third or fourth reiteration of this judgment, only this time delivered more decisively. There is one label and one label only that can describe the result: the Great Repudiation.
Ceaser goes on to attack any Republicans who would urge a future course that eschews the sacking and burning of Obamaism in all its aspects.
So the triumphalist strain of conservative post-election interpretation is closely linked to a maximalist prescription for Republican behavior now. That helps explain why Republicans have been generally negative about the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction proposal that was released earlier this week, even though it was clearly tailored (with its heavy emphasis on spending reductions and its crafting of revenue-raising measures in the context of rate-reducing “tax reform”) to appeal to them.
One conservative reaction was especially revealing: that of James Capretta in National Review, which trashed the Bowles-Simpson report for failing to embrace the repeal of health care reform, and indeed, for building on some of the health care cost containment measures in that legislation. The short-term goal of repealing “ObamaCare,” it seems, is more important to conservatives than the long-term goal of reducing deficits and debt.
But Capretta’s reaction illustrates another problem that will bedevil any bipartisan effort on spending and taxes: the Republican rejection, which began during the Bush administration but became endemic during the health reform debate, of neutral “scorekeepers” like the Congressional Budget Office, which enraged conservatives by accepting some of the cost containment claims of “ObamaCare.”
Among Democrats, as noted in the last political memo, those deducing major lessons from the midterms agree that the Obama administration should change its strategy and its public message, but sharply diverge along the usual ideological lines about which direction Democrats should take. There is genuine alarm on the Left, on both substantive and political grounds, about the White House’s apparent decision to reach an accommodation with Republicans on an extension of the Bush tax cuts, and strong hostility to the Bowles-Simpson recommendations (for which the President is held accountable, even though he has not embraced the proposals). For the first time, there is talk, though not that serious yet, of a protest candidate running against the President in the 2012 primaries.
Centrist Democrats seem divided between those who favor a decisive “move to the center” and support the Bowles-Simpson proposals pretty much as drafted, and those with more modest suggestions for changes in Obama’s approach to the opposition and to the major issues.
Aside from impending debates on taxes, health care, and the budget, the 2012 election cycle is already getting underway. It is beginning to sink in for Democrats that there are structural aspects to the congressional landscape in 2012 that limit possibilities for a “rebound,” even if the economy improves and the expected change in turnout patterns occurs. Two-thirds (23) of the 33 senators facing re-election that year are Democrats (by contrast, half (19) of the 37 Senate races in 2010 involved Democrat-held seats). Large Republican gains in control of state legislative chambers means that the House landscape will be significantly tilted in the GOP’s election through redistricting; some estimates of the impact are as high as 25 seats.
The presidential landscape, however, is another matter entirely. The ultramontanist mood among conservatives right now is not conducive to any trimming of ideological sails in the pursuit of a White House victory in 2012. There is considerable talk of an Establishment conspiracy to block any nomination for Sarah Palin, which indicates how seriously Republicans take her prospects if she decides to run. Another antagonist of said Establishment, Mike Huckabee, is in excellent position to once again win the Iowa Caucuses if Palin does not take the plunge. Mitt Romney remains haunted by his Massachusetts health reform effort, a problem that will grow worse during the upcoming conservative drive to repeal “ObamaCare.” And time is not on the side of the various dark horse possibilities (Daniels, Pence, Barbour) who may be famous in Washington but not so much in Des Moines or Manchester.
All in all, the impact of the midterms may fade faster than anyone expected as the future needs of the two parties, and of the country, take hold.
Tags: 2010 midterm election, 2012 Campaign, 2012 presidential election, Barbour, bipartisan, Bowles-Simpson, Bush tax cuts, Campaigns and elections, centrist, Congressional Budget Office, Daniels, Deficits and debt, Democrats, Des Moines, Establishment conspiracy, Great Repudiation, health care reform, ideology, Iowa Caucuses, James Capretta, James Ceaser, left, Manchester, Massachusetts, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, national referendum, National Review, New Deal, New Jersey, Obama, Obamacare, Obamaism, Pence, pragmatist, Republican, Sarah Palin, scorekeepers, tax reform, ultramontanist, University of Virginia, Virginia, White House victory
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Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Elbert Ventura
Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He formerly served as the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Elbert Ventura
The smoke has cleared; only the maimed and the dead remain on the battlefield. They are, for the most part, Democrats. The job of carting them off will take weeks; the post-mortems will take even longer. And yet progressives — we with our fetish for soul-searching — should reject a new, indulgent round of autocritique, or at least recognize that there is only so much to reflect on. The electorate’s rejection of Democrats is a lot of things, but a referendum on the quality of our ideas it isn’t.
How can that be? Isn’t a rebuke of this magnitude by definition a rejection of a party’s ideas? Well, it is if the ideas were carefully inspected and considered by an informed electorate. But sobriety has been hard to come by this election season. And what we tend to forget is that, before our discourse got sucked into the Fox-powered Tea Party vortex, our ideas were actually popular across the spectrum. Far from dogmatic and divisive, the policies that progressives have pushed in recent years have been sane, sensible fixes that have drawn support from left, right, and center.
Take cap-and-trade. Only the truly delusional still think that climate change and our voracious consumption of fossil-based fuels are nothing to worry about. Cap-and-trade was an innovative solution to the problem, harnessing the market — and eschewing command-and-control regulation — to bring about a reduction in carbon emissions.
Or take health care reform. Despite cries from left and right, the Obama administration got reform generally correct, setting us on a path to cutting costs and increasing access, all while leaving a system that Americans had grown accustomed to intact.
Or infrastructure. Economists of all stripes believe that we need more stimulus to spur economic activity. Every American who uses our roads, bridges, and water supply knows that our infrastructure is crumbling. In light of those needs, President Obama pushed through billions in infrastructure spending and just recently proposed a new $50 billion infrastructure bill.
All of these are good ideas that have achieved a certain degree of consensus, or at least support from moderates. An original version of cap-and-trade was co-sponsored by John McCain and was backed by moderate Republicans in the prelapsarian days before the Tea Party’s rousing. Health-care reform: As Jonathan Cohn noted, “Obama’s plan closely mirrors three proposals that have attracted the support of Republicans who reside within the party’s mainstream” — the most prominent of whom is Mitt Romney, whose health-care legislation in Massachusetts is a fairly close sibling of the national reform passed this year. As for infrastructure, money for more spending on the nation’s backbone was supported by Republican senators like Kit Bond and George Voinovich (both retiring – no coincidence) in an earlier jobs bill vote.
In all these cases, an urgent public problem was identified, and sensible, pragmatic solutions were proposed. But we no longer have politics that can accommodate the sensible and the pragmatic. The same John McCain who co-sponsored cap-and-trade now rails against it. Romney and Republicans who supported previous iterations of the Obama health plan have nothing but calumny for reform. Meanwhile, the only news of conservatives dealing with infrastructure is when they shrink from the challenge, like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey backing away from a proposed, and badly needed, tunnel to New York.
Over and over again, progressives have come up with solutions to our problems that can be embraced by the moderate middle. But in these last two years, we’ve seen that no matter how good and moderate the ideas are, it doesn’t seem to matter.
In this dilemma lies the priority for the pragmatic progressive in these next two years. The fact is our ideas are good. They are sound. Progressives of the Obama era have brought an innovative, reformist sensibility to government that prizes empiricism and problem-solving above all. Yet the party across the table has pulled back and shown little interest in engaging. They want us to keep coming to the table with more concessions — while hardly offering any concessions of their own. If we keep whittling down our ideas to meet their whims, our ideas will be hardly worth enacting at all.
We must, of course, never slow our indefatigable search for new ideas – it is what defines progressivism. But the paramount challenge, for these next two years at any rate, is finding a new politics. The calls for a new radical center are all well and good, but we need to remember that that’s where our ideas already are. It’s the right that has abandoned that center. The consensus ideas of yesterday have become the Marxist plots of their 2010 campaign. And sensible ideas have little chance of growing in political soil parched of sense. Will the part of the conservative movement that still cares about fiscal responsibility, fact-based argument, and good-faith dialogue resurface? Will they make their voices heard against the know-nothings and the ideologues who have taken over their party?
No doubt progressives should continue to be on the lookout for all who are sober and serious about solving our nation’s problems. Challenges must be issued and coalitions of the willing must be sought. But we shouldn’t allow the emergent faction of hysteria and irresponsibility to sway us from a core conviction: that when one already occupies the reasonable center, standing one’s ground is the reasonable thing to do.
Tags: Cap-and-tade, center, Chris Christie, Climate change, consensus, cutting costs, dogmatic, Environment, fossil-based fuels, Fox, George Voinovich, health care reform, independents, information, Infrastructure, John McCain, Jonathan Cohn, Kit Bond, know-nothings, left, Marxist plotsfiscal responsibility, Mitt Romney, moderates, New Jersey, New York, Post-Election, President Obama, progressives, radical center, right, Tea Party, Transportation
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Friday, August 13th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
When you add it all up, Tuesday produced four gubernatorial general election contests—three in states currently controlled by Republicans—in which the Democratic candidate is, at the moment anyway, the front-runner. Quite a tonic for distressed donkeys everywhere.
In Colorado, The Republican gubernatorial primary was a messy affair in which the “winner” – little-known, underfinanced, and rather kooky Tea Party activist Dan Maes – will now come under sustained pressure to fold his campaign and allow the state party to pick a more suitable candidate (possibly Jane Norton), in hopes of also squeezing Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo out of the race. If GOPers don’t pull off this gymnastic series of maneuvers, Democratic nominee John Hickenlooper will be a heavy favorite in November.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic senatorial primary, appointed Senator Michael Bennet survived what was beginning to look like a political death spiral. He dispatched former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff by an eight-point margin, with especially robust performance in the Denver suburbs in what will be perceived as a victory for the White House. He will now face district attorney and Tea Party favorite Ken Buck (R), who has shown a distinct proclivity for self-inflicted verbal wounds. Buck defeated former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in the Republican primary mainly by piling up large margins in his home turf near Ft. Collins.
In Connecticut, an odd role reversal occurred in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Former netroots idol Ned Lamont ran a campaign focused on imposing fiscal discipline and improving the business climate and lost rather dramatically to former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, who has a “centrist” background but ran as something of a populist. Malloy will face former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley, a conventional conservative who held off Lt. Gov. Michele Fedele.
These two contests were also something of a test for Connecticut’s strong system of public financing of campaigns: Malloy and Fedele received public financing, while Lamont and Foley self-funded. Unfortunately for Malloy, the portion of the Connecticut law that provided for “triggering” larger grants for candidates facing self-funders has been invalidated for the general election. But according to the polls, Malloy will be the favorite in November.
In Minnesota, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton continued his political comeback by narrowly winning the gubernatorial nomination against party-endorsed State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. Dayton is the early favorite over Republican nominee Tom Emmer, who is probably too conservative for the state, and will also likely lose votes to Independence Party nominee Tom Horner.
And in Georgia, the vicious GOP gubernatorial runoff, in a mild upset, went to former congressman Nathan Deal, who is both a conservative ideologue and the candidate of the state’s GOP establishment. Deal defeated self-styled “conservative reformer” Karen Handel, by just an eyelash.
This contest featured a lot of national intervention, with Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee campaigning for Deal and Sarah Palin campaigning for Handel (Mitt Romney also did robocalls for the loser). Handel’s quick concession and endorsement of Deal provided some hope among Republicans that the party would unite after the bitter primary and runoff, in the face of a challenge from former Gov. Roy Barnes, who’s been running more or less even with the various Republican candidates in the polls.
Next Tuesday, Washington State (with its unusual system in which the top two primary candidates regardless of party proceed to the general election) and Wyoming are holding primaries. The much-higher-profile Florida and Arizona primaries follow on August 24.
In the Florida, the initial appeal of the two hugely self-funded candidates, Democrat billionaire Bob Greene and Republican billionaire Rick Scott, seems to be fading as the primary approaches.
In the Democratic Senatorial primary, a Feldman poll taken for congressman Kendrick Meek shows him edging ahead of Greene after a week or so of very bad publicity about the billionaire’s personal life.
Meanwhile, in the Republican gubernatorial primary, both Mason-Dixon and the Tarrance Group have new polls showing previously left-for-dead Attorney General Bob McCollum moving ahead of Rick Scott, a former hospital chain executive. Mason-Dixon also shows that the savage competition between the Republicans has lifted Democrat Alex Sink into the lead in the general election.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine
Tags: Alex Sink, Andrew Romanoff, Bob Greene, Bob McCollum, Dan Maes, Dan Malloy, Jane Norton, John Hickenlooper, Karen Handel, Ken Buck, Kendrick Meek, Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Mark Dayton, Michael Bennet, Michele Fedele, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Nathan Deal, Ned Lamont, Newt Gingrich, Primaries, Rick Scott, Roy Barnes, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, Tom Emmer, Tom Foley, Tom Horner, Tom Tancredo
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Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
This is the busiest primary day since the June 8 blockbuster, with three states (CO, CT and MN) holding primaries and a fourth (GA) holding a runoff. So there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Colorado
A factor in all the Colorado races is that most counties in the state went to an all-mail-ballot system this year, which could boost overall turnout but will definitely affect the timing of votes (though Colorado’s had heavy early voting for a while now).
Colorado’s Senate races have become very competitive in both parties coming down the stretch. Appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (D) got hit with a controversial (in its timing) New York Times piece about his involvement in an unsuccessful investment by the Denver public schools, which immediately generated an attack ad by his opponent, former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff (D), who has been pounding Bennet for weeks as someone too close to Wall Street. Late polls show a very close race, with Survey USA indicating Romanoff has moved ahead while PPP shows Bennet hanging onto a small lead.
On the Republican side, polls also differ as to whether district attorney Ken Buck has maintained his lead over former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, despite his recent gaff-a-thon. Norton surprised a lot of observers by inviting John McCain into the state to campaign with her at the very end; we’ll see if she knew what she was doing. While both candidates are quite conservative, Buck’s the preferred candidate of the Tea Party folk and the national conservative chattering classes, so if he wins they will claim another Establishment scalp.
The ongoing meltdown known as the Colorado Republican gubernatorial contest is also ending with no clear leader; one poll has Tea Party activist Dan Maes narrowly leading; the other shows former congressman Scott McInnis narrowly regaining the lead. As you may have heard, McInnis’ campaign imploded in July when the Denver Post revealed that a wonky series of columns he “wrote” as part of a lucrative think tank contract were heavily plagiarized. But Maes has been hounded by campaign finance violations and poor fundraising, and also earned heavy derision by claiming a popular bike-sharing program in which Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper was involved is in fact part of a United Nations plot to take over Denver. You really can’t make this stuff up.
The “winner” of this primary will immediately be under heavy pressure to drop out and allow the state party to choose a more electable candidate, and also to beg former congressman Tom Tancredo to close down his campaign on the far-right, theocratic Constitution Party ticket, which polls indicate would split the GOP vote in half and guarantee a Hickenlooper victory.
Georgia
Rivaling Colorado in inter-Republican drama has been the gubernatorial runoff in Georgia, which polls show as coming down to a real nail-biter between primary first-place finisher Karen Handel and former congressman Nathan Deal. Continuing her effort to cast herself as a “conservative reformer” taking on the corrupt “good ol’ boys” of the Republican establishment, Handel has continued to attack Deal’s ethics record and Washington associations. Deal, probably hoping for a very low turnout dominated by ideologues, has pounded Handel for alleged “liberal” heresy on abortion and gay rights. Both campaigns are in danger of being overshadowed by their supporters, with Sarah Palin making a very conspicuous last-day appearance alongside Handel in Atlanta (Mitt Romney is also doing robocalls for Handel), while Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee have campaigned for Deal. Deal also has a massive endorsement list of Republican state legislators owing to Handel’s many attacks on their integrity as a group.
The runoff has become so nasty that Republicans are already planning “unity” events; Democrat Roy Barnes waits in the wings, raising money.
There are two Republican congressional runoffs that will affect turnout patterns; one is for Deal’s old seat in North Georgia, where special election runoff winner Tom Graves will face former state legislator Lee Hawkins for the fourth time in three months. The other is in Handel’s base area, in north metro Atlanta, where longtime conservative congressman John Linder (R) is retiring. His former chief of staff, Rob Woodall, is expected to defeat Jody Hice, a Southern Baptist minister and radio gabber whose billboards feature a reference to the president with a hammer-and-sickle replacing the “c” in the word “change.” Nice.
Connecticut
In Connecticut, both parties have competitive gubernatorial primaries involving self-funded candidates facing challengers who are receiving pretty generous public financing under the state’s Clean Elections system (which is under attack in the courts in the aftermath of the Citizens United decision). Among Democrats, wealthy cable station owner Ned Lamont, famous for his left-bent challenge to Joe Lieberman in 2006, has run a surprisingly “centrist” campaign focused on the state’s many fiscal and economic problems. His challenger, former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, who narrowly lost the gubernatorial nomination four years ago, has been pounding him in a populist vein, while fending off allegations that he helped give a company that did work on his home a no-bid contract as mayor (not something you’d want to do in this state, since that’s what brought down former Gov. John Rowland). Malloy has closed the gap with Lamont in the stretch run, and either candidate could win.
The Republican self-funder is former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley, and the publicly-financed challenger is Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele. This race has also featured personal attacks, mainly involving Foley’s ownership interest in a Georgia textile plant that closed, throwing workers out of jobs. Late polls show exceptional instability in this race, but indicate that Fedele is rapidly gaining on Foley.
Meanwhile, former wrestling exec Linda McMahon, who beat former congressman Rob Simmons at the state GOP convention for the official party endorsement, will face Simmons (who reentered the race after dropping out for a while) and Tea Party activist Peter Schiff, but isn’t expected to have much trouble winning.
Minnesota
In Minnesota, the DFL (Minnesota’s unique version of the Democratic Party) gubernatorial primary features the official party candidate (as selected in a state convention that some candidates skipped), state House Speaker Mary Anderson Kelliher, and two wealthy self-funders, former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton and former state legislator Matt Entenza, both of whom have put about $3 million into the race. Dayton has held a steady if not spectacular lead over Kelliher, who hopes to pull a ground-game-driven upset in what could be a very low turnout election. All three Democrats lead certain Republican nominee Tom Emmer in general election polls, partly because the likely candidate of the Independence Party (still around more than a decade after Jesse Ventura’s election), Tom Horner, is pulling a lot of Republican votes. The DFL hasn’t won a governor’s race since 1986, but this could be the year the drought ends.
If you want more details, I’ve done previews of Colorado, Georgia and Connecticut/Minnesota over at FiveThirtyEight.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Photo Credit: brettneilson’s Photostream
Tags: Andrew Romanoff, Dan Maes, Dan Malloy, Jane Norton, Jesse Ventura, Jody Hice, Joe Lieberman, John Hickenlooper, John Linder, John McCain, John Rowland, Karen Handel, Lee Hawkins, linda McMahon, Mark Dayton, Mary Anderson Kelliher, Matt Entenza, Michael Bennet, Michael Fedele, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Nathan Deal, Ned Lamont, Newt Gingrich, Peter Schiff, Primaries, Rob Simmons, Rob Woodall, Roy Barnes, Sarah Palin, Scott McInnis, Tom Emmer, Tom Foley, Tom Graves, Tom Horner, Tom Tancredo
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Friday, August 6th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Yesterday J.P. Green did a post on the Missouri “ObamaCare referendum,” noting its rather tilted character and echoing Jon Chait’s endorsement of a progressive way around the unpopularity of an individual mandate for the purchase of health insurance, as designed by Paul Starr.
But there’s another aspect of the Missouri vote that ought to be mentioned: the individual mandate that was the target of the the state law ratified by Proposition C wasn’t just a feature of “ObamaCare.” It was also a central element in RomneyCare, Massachusetts’ pioneer health reform effort. And amidst all the rationalizations that Romney has offered in an effort to distinguish RomneyCare from ObamaCare, he hasn’t repudiated his support for an individual mandate.
Even if you don’t think the Missouri vote was a fair representation of overall public opinion in the Show-Me State (and it’s dubious on that front, given the low turnout and the 2-1 Republican tilt among priimary voters), it was sure a good measure of how politically active Republicans feel. And a shudder had to shake Romney when he heard about it, since it’s very unlikely the 2012 Caucus-goers in next-door Iowa are going to feel any warmer towards the individual mandate seventeen months from now, when they once again pass judgment on Mitt’s presidential ambitions.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist
Photo Credit: nmfbihop’s Photostream
Tags: J.P. Green, Jon Chait, Mitt Romney, Paul Starr
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Friday, July 9th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
When a presidential hopeful like Mitt Romney signs a Washington Post op-ed attacking the president for an arms agreement with Russia, there’s a tendency among Democrats to shrug and ignore it. Mitt, we all understand, is a former governor with no foreign policy experience who needs to burnish his credentials in this area, even if it’s only by bloviating. And Mitt, we know, is vulnerable on his right flank, partially because the GOP has decisively moved in a more conservative direction since Romney posed as the “true conservative” candidate in 2008, and partially because his sponsorship of a Massachusetts health reform initiative that’s hard to distinguish from the hated ObamaCare is going to be a constant problem for him in 2012.
So you read Mitt’s op-ed and maybe laugh at the extraordinary retro feeling of it all — you know, all the Cold War hostility to the godless Russkies — and note the many right-wing boxes he checked off, from the ancient conservative pet rock of missile defense, to the ill-repressed desire for war with North Korea and Iran, to the ritual denunciations of Obama for his alleged fecklessness in negotiating with bad people. But initially, few if any Democrats had anything to say about it.
That certainly changed Wednesday, when Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) took to the same WaPo pages to pen a devastating riposte to Romney for getting, well, just about all the facts wrong. After tearing Romney apart on missile defense, on MIRVs, on what the treaty would and wouldn’t let the Russians do, and on the bipartisan support for what Obama’s done, Kerry concluded with this well-placed jab:
I have nothing against Massachusetts politicians running for president. But the world’s most important elected office carries responsibilities, including the duty to check your facts even if you’re in a footrace to the right against Sarah Palin. More than that, you need to understand that when it comes to nuclear danger, the nation’s security is more important than scoring cheap political points.
As it turns out, Kerry was nicer to Romney than was foreign policy wonk Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate:
In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and–let’s not mince words–thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney’s attack on the New START treaty in the July 6 Washington Post.
Whether or not Romney’s efforts to display conservative ferocity on foreign policy work with the GOP base, he could pay a price down the road in terms of the impact on people who aren’t hard-core conservative ideologues. Talking to progressives, you generally get the sense that while they would fight Mitt Romney like sin itself if he’s the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, they basically think the man’s sane and relatively competent, and wouldn’t threaten the foundations of the Republic like some possibilities they could name. But a few more rabid op-eds on world affairs like Romney’s latest effort will definitely undermine any latent tolerance for Romney in center-left precincts, and will also provide some target practice in case the endlessly flip-flopping former governor’s act gets him to a general election.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Photo credit: marcn’s Photostream
Tags: Barack Obama, Cold War, Democrats, Foreign policy, Fred Kaplan, GOP, Iran, John Kerry, Massachusetts, missile defense, Mitt Romney, North Korea, Russia, Sarah Palin
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