Tag: mittmentum

Why They Fail

Mitt Romney:

“What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Romney, a GOP presidential candidate, said. “My last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past rather than ordinary income or rather than earned annual income. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”

According to his most recent financial disclosure statement, he earned nearly $375,000 for nine speaking engagements in 2010 and early 2011.

Well, now, this would seem to be a rather rich potential political line of attack. In one simple, straightforward stroke you have a narrative that both weakens Romney and advances important information in the broader sense relative to what’s really been going wrong in America these past ~40 years. Not only does Mitt (unsurprisingly) pay the preposterously low 15% rate on his largely-investment-based income, a rate dramatically lower than most Americans pay on far less income and but also Mitt reveals that this is aside from the entirely trivial, “not very much” money he made doing speaking engagements, itself a value fully 10 times the median income in these United States.

Naturally, The Democrat thinks it’s high time to leave Mitt alone on such issues:

At least one top Obama surrogate is pushing for the party to shift the balance of its attacks on Mitt Romney away from his days in private equity and on to his time in the public sector. […] “Bain is a little complicated for people to follow.”

Of course, of course. Who among us can possibly understand that Mitt pays a fraction of the taxes you do on wealth so fucking inexhaustibly vast that he considers income in excess of 10 times what you probably make in a year to be “not very much.” There’s just no way to play that information such that people can follow it.

A Lot of Young People Here Today

Ron Paul shows up to local diner, hoping to find regular ‘Mericans who, we are informed, actually eat in such places; he is instead greeted by ~97 high school students. From Massachusetts. Whose teacher had reserved the entire restaurant. Circus ensues. Vermin Supreme was even in the parking lot, which was also the location of the (apparently) sole New Hampshire voter:

Karen Heller had come to “fall in love with Ron Paul.” Heller remains undecided. “I really love Jon Huntsman,” she said, “but every year I feel like I’m throwing my vote away.”

Gods help me, some days I love politics. Which we all know ain’t the beanbag.

A Lot of Young People Here Today

I Think He’s Got It!

Dave Weigel points out the lesson from Iowa and, as I read it, the broader outlines of the GOP primary thus far:

Four years ago, a depressed GOP went to the precinct caucuses, very well aware that Democrats had all the energy. The total GOP vote: 119,188. This year, Republicans should be psyched about the chance to uproot Barack Obama. There will be something above 122,000 total votes. An improvement, right? Well… in 2008, 86 percent of the people who chose the GOP caucuses were Republicans. This year, 75 percent of the electorate was Republican, with the rest of the vote coming from independents and Democrats. What the hell happened?

What happened is those independent and non-GOP folks are Ron Paul voters; also, pretty much anybody under 65 in the room. So, in what should be a high voter interest year, in the “early” state with the most potential to generate that largely white, evangelical, “Obama is ruining the country” style fervor that the GOP counts on to win its national elections you get…depressed turnout, most of which has no interest in the frontrunner and a large chunk of which isn’t really even interested in your party, much less your presumptive candidate.

So far, Mitt is right where he was in 2008. That’s your story. If there was a true frontrunner here he would have, again, finished well back and would (again) be poised to under-perform in his “firewall” of New Hampshire. Instead, he’ll under-perform and but also win there. That will soften the inevitable South Carolina blow, keep things just interesting enough for the media circus to stay engaged, and only serve to delay the inevitable “well, I guess we have to nominate him now” triumphant GOP convention moment down the road in Tampa. Mitt Romney, reporting for duty! I can already smell the rising tide of national excitement.

I Think He’s Got It!

The DFS Gingrich Who Stole Mittmas

Disgraced Former Speaker Gingrich: [Mitt Romney] is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC – it’s baloney. He’s not telling the American people the truth. It’s just like this pretense that he’s a conservative. Here’s a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in ‘Romneycare,’ puts Planned Parenthood in ‘Romneycare,’ raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he’s magically a conservative. […] But, let’s be clear, which part of what I just said to you is false? Why is it that if I’m candid in person and I wanted to be honest in person, that’s shocking? If [Romney’s] PAC buys millions of dollars in ads to say things that are false, that’s somehow the way Washington plays the game. Isn’t that exactly what’s sick about this country right now? Isn’t that what the American people are tired of?
Very Serious Person Bob Schieffer: But Mr. [Disgraced Former] Speaker, what you’re saying is ‘Folks, Barack Obama is so bad that we’d be better off electing a bald-faced liar to the presidency, somebody that we would never know if he was telling the truth.’ That is pretty strong stuff
DFS Gingrich: Well, I’ll let you go and check his record, Bob. Look, you’re a professional reporter. Did he support Reagan in the ’80s or not? The answer is no. Did he vote as a Democrat for Paul Tsongas in ’92 or not? The answer is, yes, he did. Did he say that he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan-Bush years in ’94? Yes, he did. Did he run to the left of Teddy Kennedy? Yes he did. Now, why is it politically incorrect to tell the truth?
Lemkin: I’ve seen no evidence that Bob Schieffer is a “professional reporter,” Newt. Why do you lie so much? I’m surprised Schieffer didn’t punch him right in the nose. Shrill, I suppose. Better not to take sides…

In short, the choice in this election is between a candidate who wants to have lower taxes on the rich and either larger deficits or cuts to social programs and public investment and one who prefers higher taxes on the rich and fewer cuts to social programs and public investment. That is the way people not working for Governor Romney would describe the trade-offs. 

Dean Baker describes the upcoming election campaign with typical insight and simplicity. Unfortunately, all that’s left for us is documenting the atrocities. Because the mainstream media is fundamentally incapable of describing the two candidates in language that even approaches this level of clarity and verisimilitude. They see themselves as conduits for warring press releases and little else. Anything else would be “taking sides.”
Source: cepr.net

President Obama is replacing our merit-based, opportunity-based society with an entitlement society. In an entitlement society, everyone is handed the same rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to others. And the only people to enjoy truly disproportionate rewards are the people who do the redistributing — the government.

Mitt Romney, accurately describing the inevitable and country-destroying results of going from a 35% top marginal rate to a 39.6% top marginal rate. Let’s not have anyone ask him about or call him on this issue specifically. Shrill.

I think it’s going to be Obama’s 99% versus the 1%, and Romney sort of represents the 1%.

Joe McQuaid, publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, on why his publication endorsed disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich instead of Mitt Romney. I think he’s right. But let’s not have The Democrat get to messaging this way or anything.
Source: livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com

Americans are hurting across this country, and the president’s out there campaigning. Why isn’t he governing? He doesn’t — he doesn’t have a jobs plan even now.

Mitt Romney, who must be referring to the fact that the GOP minority in the Senate has already filibustered said “jobs bill” to death and plans to filibuster its pieces to death as well. That pretty much means “Obama has no jobs bill,” right? After all, it’s been uniformly reported as “Democrats fail to pass…” and “Obama jobs bill fails” and never, ever the decidedly shrill “GOP blocks…” or even “Republicans outmaneuver Democrats on jobs…”
Note to Anderson Cooper: this is precisely the sort of thing you might mention next time it comes up in a debate amongst the folks vying for the Republican nomination for President of these United States. To quote some future Sam Jackson movie: “You the moderator? Then moderate, motherfucker.” Or we’ll just let Watson do it the next time. Frankly, I don’t see how Our Computational Overlord could do any worse.

Most Republican voters believe, with good reason, that Romney stands a strong chance of winning the nomination and beating President Obama. The question is whether he would put repeal front and center—whether he would emphasize it in the general election campaign, and whether he would go to the mat for repeal once in office. Would Romney’s campaign build enough momentum for repeal to achieve 60 votes in the Senate and defeat a potential filibuster? If not, would Romney be willing to advance repeal in the Senate via reconciliation, the complicated and unconventional process that takes only 50 votes but which would also require a far greater expenditure of political capital?

Jeffery H. Anderson makes me wonder if he’s even been paying attention. If we assume that the posited chain of events occurs: GOP holds some kind of House majority and gains a new but non-60 vote majority in the Senate (and, of course, President Mittmentum) then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to derive the complex psychohistorical formulas for what happens next?!?!?
The GOP eliminates (by simple majority) the filibuster on the first day of the new Congress. The MSM declares this an entirely reasonable, “sensible center” approach to governing. Wholesale dismantlement of the New Deal follows, coupled to and justified by the oncoming tax revenue collapse from a 0% effective tax rate on the rich and consumption-based, maximally regressive tax on everyone else.
It’s what they’ve been talking about for years. They are entirely serious. They mean to do it at the first opportunity, and this would be it. There will be no fiddling with reconciliation or anything approaching “normal order” as we define it in 2011. How many times do they have to say this stuff before someone in the MSM takes them seriously and asks a follow-up or two? Or, for that matter, before The Democrat starts using these positions against them. (Shrill! Class War!!).
The far-right GOP candidates and elected officials are not “blowing smoke” or “providing red meat” for the “true believers.” This is who they are. Everyone else can kindly go die in the streets.

Rick Perry’s candidacy is stuck up to its wheel-wells because he once did something decent for people unlike himself and, when challenged about it, on stage, by the rest of lightweights in his party, he told the truth. If you’re attempting to get the Republican party’s nomination for president of the United States in 2012 — or any time in the future, judging by the Triple-A Ostrogoths currently populating the country’s state legislatures — and if there is anything in your background that indicates that you were once decent to people unlike yourself, you should identify that problem immediately and then lie your ass off for the balance of your presidential campaign.

By the way, have you met Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney?

Charles Pierce, getting it exactly right at his still newish blogging perch.