Tag: mittmentum

It is as if the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination was about to fall into the hands of Paul Wolfowitz. What happened?

Jonathan Chait contemplates the seemingly quite favorable strategic position Mitt Romney (suddenly?) finds himself in despite being an occasionally outspoken pro-choice Mormon tightly associated with Taxachusetts and “Romneycare” and yet working to curry favor from an increasingly lunatic “base” that seems quite willing to start Civil War II over any and all of those issues.

Most important MSM/Serious Person fact about Romney: he once strapped a dog, inside its carrier, to the top of the family truckster. So you know.

Pity the Poor Corporations

jeffmiller:

“Romney is absolutely right. And this means that taxes on corporations are taxes on people. I’m not getting at the subtle point—and I don’t think Romney was either—that if capital is highly mobile internationally, a national government can’t make capital bear much of the burden of taxes and so the incidence is on laborers and consumers. No, I’m making the simple point that a tax on corporations is a tax on people. I remember that in addressing the issue in the 1980s, the late Herb Stein said that it’s as if people think that if the government imposed a tax on cows, the tax would be paid by the cows. Romney’s passion and clarity on this are admirable. And until now, I’ve found little to admire in Romney. Now, the next step for him—which a patient in a wheel chair tried to help him see but he couldn’t see—is to see that just as taxes on corporations are taxes on people, the war on drugs is not really a war on drugs: it’s a war on people.”

— Are Taxes on Corporations Taxes on People?, David Henderson | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

Wonderful and so very thoughtful. But, by all means, let’s make corporations full citizens. It’s high time they were subject to the full tax burden of an individual; they should therefore be subject and required to pay an individual’s tax rates, which, let’s face it, will almost always be the top marginal rates: 35%. Good news there! They should have no problem with this change, as they are now American citizens and because it’s just exactly what they claim they are paying right now. Win/win for Our New Corporate Citizens.

Likewise, any time a person dies or is injured at the hands of a corporation, it can be tried for murder or assault and, if found guilty, this personification of the corporation can be executed or incarcerated (barred from doing business in these United States) for a period of years. Or, if they prefer, the corporate board can stand for the sentence. It all makes perfect sense. After all, corporations are people too! I’m sure they’ll welcome these changes.

You don’t want these candidates moving so right in the Republican primary that it becomes impossible for them to win the general election, because it will become a self-defeating message in the primary.

People want to win. They don’t want somebody who goes so far to the extremes of either party that they lack a chance to carry a victory off in November.

Karl Rove, old turd blossom hisself, opining on the GOP Presidential primary field.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, Karl, but the “sensibility” ship has sailed, been round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames, and subsequently was no-bid auctioned into a second career as a part-time riverboat gambling operation for KBR executives.
John Huntsman even put his hand up on the “10:1 cuts/revenue is a non-starter deal” question and he’s only running for 2016 positioning. There is no one in the field even trying to be the slightly more sensible, slightly more center-far-right candidate of today’s GOP. Mittmentum, the man made to take up that role abandoned it in 2008. His strong showing then has sensibly pushed him even further to the right now. That ought to fix his issues. If the GOP can’t win the general election from a far right stance, they almost can’t win in 2012. And if the economic headwinds were a bit more predictable, we could drop the “almost” qualifier right now.
But the last thing The Democrat would want to do is start making the GOP take stands against job creation. People just don’t want to hear about that stuff right now. Shrill. Better take a “non-confrontational approach,” get into the defensive crouch, and hope for the best. And this is why they fail.

Mittmentum!

Mitt Romney in GOP debate: [Obama] didn’t create the recession, but he made it worse and longer.
Mitt Romney in NH on Monday: The people of New Hampshire have waited long enough. They want to see good jobs. They want to see rising incomes. They want to see an economy that’s growing again, and the president’s failed. He did not cause this recession, but he made it worse.
Mitt Romney when challenged on veracity of “worse”: I didn’t say that things are worse.

What Ezra Said

Mitt Romney: We have all been distressed by the policies that this administration has put in place over the last two years. We have seen the most anti-investment, antigrowth, antijob strategy in America since Jimmy Carter. The result has been it’s harder and harder for people to find work.
Ezra Klein: By any measure, this is absurd. Taxes are at a 50-year low. The Dow has staged a roaring recovery. Business profits are near record levels. And the economy has gone from losing 780,000 jobs a month to gaining about 160,000 jobs a month. That is to say, it’s getting easier and easier for people to find work, even if it’s not nearly easy enough.

If you look closely at [Bruce] Keough’s rationale [for leaving the Romney:2012 campaign], it’s absurd. he claims he wants someone attached to “a certain set of political ideals,” but the only evidence he supplies of Romney changing those compared to 2008 is that he’s talking more about the economy and appearing more frequently sans necktie.

Jonathan Chait. Perhaps Romney is privately attributing his previous problems to an overly tight necktie?
After all, as overlord, all will kneel trembling before Romney and obey his brutal commands. End communication.

Birther Boogaloo: You Tell Me

Reality Check: Okay, now, what are the specific requirements in the [TN Ballot Access] bill?
TN State Senator Mae Beavers: That they have to have the long-form birth certificate.
RC: What is the long-form birth certificate?
Beavers: Now, you’re asking me to get into a lot of things that I haven’t really looked into yet.
RC: […] Are you aware that a lot of states now only give the short-form birth certificate?
Beavers: No, I only know about Tennessee, and I was born in Alabama. So I only know what I have seen.
RC: What if someone was not born in a hospital? It wouldn’t have an attending physician signature, so they wouldn’t be eligible to run in Tennessee if this bill passes. Is that correct?
Beavers: But they would have a birth certificate.
RC: Sure, but your bill doesn’t say birth certificate. It says “an original long-form birth certificate that includes date and place of birth, name of the hospital, the attending physician, and signatures of the witnesses.”
Beavers: And that’s normally what’s on a long-form birth certificate.
RC: It used to be, but as a matter of fact, the state of Hawaii, where President Obama was born, for people born since, I believe, around 2001, only gives the time of birth, the name of the parents, and the place of birth. Are you aware of the section of the Constitution called the full faith and credit clause? It’s in Article 4, Section 1.
Beavers: Yes.
RC: Well, do you know what it says about state documents?
Beavers: You tell me.
RC: It says that any state is required to accept the documents from another state. So that basically means that Tennessee has to accept a valid birth certificate from Hawaii or any other state.
Beavers: I have no knowledge of short-form birth certificates in Hawaii.
RC: […] Mitt Romney may not be eligible under this bill. Are you aware of that?
Beavers: No, I wasn’t.
RC: Well, George Romney, his father, was born in Mexico. Mexico confers citizenship by jus soli, which is place of birth. So he was born with dual citizenship, and it also passes down. Unless George Romney somehow gave up his Mexican citizenship, Mitt Romney has dual citizenship.
Beavers: Obviously you’ve studied this whole thing.

Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on the government is not libertarian.

Mitt Romney (when governor of Massachusetts) saying the sort of thing that makes him unelectable in 2012. Sad but true.
But he gets at the real “fix” for the individual mandate: simply opt out of guaranteed care for some defined period and pay a fine to get back into it with no guarantee against taking yet another hit for any preexisting conditions. In other words: Go die in the streets; we won’t lift a finger. The GOP and their Tea Klan enablers can certainly get behind that, as it’s the basis for their entire worldview. I’m sure they’ll all be rushing to get in on that particular filing deadline…