Category: Presidential Politics

What Romney Considers to be "Better"

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Mitt Romney - The Shake-N-Fake Candidate

By Flickr User DonkeyHotey

1. After sweeping the Tuesday once known as “super”, and effectively all-but-securing the Republican nomination for President, Mitt Romney took out his Etch-a-Sketch and made his first attempt to erase Mitt Romney as “Severe Conservative” and create Mitt Romney as “Paternal anti-Socialist Optimist.” His campaign theme, which until Tuesday had been, “I am just as insane a right-winger as Santorum, and just as unscrupulous a corrupt Washington insider as Gingrich” switched to “A Better America”. 

Aside from being a rip-off of the prospective hopefulness of the Obama 2008 campaign, imagine the right-wing response had Obama selected that phrase for his slogan. “Better?! N0bama thinks America is no good!” and other disingenuous cries echoing jingoistic American exceptionalism.

After all, no other post-industrial market economy with a pluralistic representative democracy exports jobs, votes against their own interests, coddles millionaires, and becomes bogged down in Asian quagmires like the United States of America. 

Romney has barely uttered a word about what he’d do as President – not publicly, anyway. Suffice it to say that a guy who’s never been in the middle class has absolutely no idea how to fix the problems ailing America’s middle class, nor does he likely care. The middle class don’t cut massive checks to friendly SuperPACs or max out to the Romney campaign.

So, now that it’s already been revealed that the Romney plan is going to be a rehash of the policies of George W. Bush, here’s the shorter version of the Romney campaign and how it intends to bring about a “better America”: 

a. A war in Asia with numerous anticipated but unplanned-for complications, and subsequent occupation; 

b. Tax cuts for millionaires; 

c. A renewed effort to voucherize or expressly privatize Social Security and Medicare; and

d. Revocation of Obamacare, which would return us to the days of lifetime maximums, denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, revocation of policies to cover kids up to age 26 on their parents’ plans, and continuation of the fiscal nightmare whereby the uninsured routinely go bankrupt in the face of medical bills, and government foots the bill for primary-care-by-emergency room. 

Romney’s support among the Republican faithful is a mile wide and 1/16th of an inch deep. The only motivator that will get true believers out will be a hatred of Obama. 

2. Apparently, Carl Paladino did for Newt Gingrich in New York in 2012 what Carl Paladino did for Carl Paladino in New York in 2010. 

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What Romney Considers to be “Better”

Leave a comment
Mitt Romney - The Shake-N-Fake Candidate

By Flickr User DonkeyHotey

1. After sweeping the Tuesday once known as “super”, and effectively all-but-securing the Republican nomination for President, Mitt Romney took out his Etch-a-Sketch and made his first attempt to erase Mitt Romney as “Severe Conservative” and create Mitt Romney as “Paternal anti-Socialist Optimist.” His campaign theme, which until Tuesday had been, “I am just as insane a right-winger as Santorum, and just as unscrupulous a corrupt Washington insider as Gingrich” switched to “A Better America”. 

Aside from being a rip-off of the prospective hopefulness of the Obama 2008 campaign, imagine the right-wing response had Obama selected that phrase for his slogan. “Better?! N0bama thinks America is no good!” and other disingenuous cries echoing jingoistic American exceptionalism.

After all, no other post-industrial market economy with a pluralistic representative democracy exports jobs, votes against their own interests, coddles millionaires, and becomes bogged down in Asian quagmires like the United States of America. 

Romney has barely uttered a word about what he’d do as President – not publicly, anyway. Suffice it to say that a guy who’s never been in the middle class has absolutely no idea how to fix the problems ailing America’s middle class, nor does he likely care. The middle class don’t cut massive checks to friendly SuperPACs or max out to the Romney campaign.

So, now that it’s already been revealed that the Romney plan is going to be a rehash of the policies of George W. Bush, here’s the shorter version of the Romney campaign and how it intends to bring about a “better America”: 

a. A war in Asia with numerous anticipated but unplanned-for complications, and subsequent occupation; 

b. Tax cuts for millionaires; 

c. A renewed effort to voucherize or expressly privatize Social Security and Medicare; and

d. Revocation of Obamacare, which would return us to the days of lifetime maximums, denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, revocation of policies to cover kids up to age 26 on their parents’ plans, and continuation of the fiscal nightmare whereby the uninsured routinely go bankrupt in the face of medical bills, and government foots the bill for primary-care-by-emergency room. 

Romney’s support among the Republican faithful is a mile wide and 1/16th of an inch deep. The only motivator that will get true believers out will be a hatred of Obama. 

2. Apparently, Carl Paladino did for Newt Gingrich in New York in 2012 what Carl Paladino did for Carl Paladino in New York in 2010. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

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Vote Your Ass Off, Kevin

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County Legislator and Canisius Political Science Professor Kevin Hardwick told the Buffalo News that being a Republican voter and waiting for primary day is like being in line for concert tickets, and the window closes just as you reach the front.

The Daily Show got a hold of that line and recruited Hardwick to help them do this great piece (the “next logical conclusion” line is fantastic):

Artvoice Primary Day Coverage

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Today is Primary Day here in New York! 

This post represents our wall-to-wall coverage of New York Republicans get to stay home in the bad weather or cast their protest votes for Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul. 

With 0% of precincts reporting, Artvoice is projecting that Willard Mitt Romney (R-Severe) will win the New York primary. 

If Romney receives over 50% of the vote statewide, it’s a winner-take-all proposition for him. If he receives less than a statewide majority, it’s a proportional system, and the delegates are split among the four candidates on the ballot (Gingrich, Romney, Santorum, Paul). The delegate breakdown for New York is 10 at-large delegates, 3 delegates for each of the 27 Congressional Districts (district-by-district, it’s winner-take-all), and one “bonus” delegate.  To earn a proportional share of delegates, a candidate must break through a 20% threshold of votes. 

Artvoice also predicts that the sole Democrat on the primary ballot – President Barack Obama – will win that party’s primary. 

Newt Gingrich: Incredibly Disliked

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Today, Carl Paladino will host a campaign rally for all-but-dropped-out Newt Gingrich. Gingrich is the preferred choice of the right wing of the Republican Party who can no longer vote for theocratic lunatic Rick Santorum. 

A recent poll shows this about Gingrich: 

That’s a close match with George W. Bush’s final favorability rating of 25%. In other words, about the same number of people who like Gingrich still liked Bush as the world financial meltdown of 2008 was underway. True believer right-wing Obama-hating people who probably forward loads of false “N0bama” chain emails that they didn’t first run through Snopes. 

This sounds less like a campaign stop – because really, there’s no campaign left – and much more like a paid personal appearance. And no one ever voted for Newt Gingrich ever again. The end. 

Palin's Crosshairs Revisited

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A few weeks ago, Santorum SuperPAC sugardaddy Foster Friess said he hopes President Obama’s “TelePrompTer is bulletproof”. He says he meant it figuratively, as part of a context whereby Santorum and Romney had now “trained their barrels” on the President, rather than each other.

This week, a Michigan gun fetishist whose most prominent kill was his own music career, Ted Nugent, said, “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” Nugent has endorsed Mitt Romney, who actively sought it. 

(It’s a common tactic among the right commentariat that whenever a leftist says something idiotic, that every Democrat is assumed to support it unless they expressly condemn it, and are routinely called upon to denounce something someone said. This tactic, fortunately, works in two directions.) 

When Hilary Rosen said something rude about Ann Romney, the White House immediately and unequivocally repudiated her words and sentiments. 

When Ted Nugent and Foster Friess suggest that President Obama be killed, you get absolute silence from almost the entire Republican establishment – most notably Romney, who merely said we should all be “civil”, which misses the point that no one should be suggesting or hoping for anyone’s assassination in domestic politics – it’s beyond the pale. 

Nugent’s never seen a gun he didn’t want to have sex with, and he’s never seen a thing he didn’t want to shoot – except the Viet Cong – so, the Secret Service is taking his threat rather seriously. The Republican mainstream’s lurch to the right has it coddling insane lunatics far more dangerous than any ACORN activist or other Fox News bogeyman. 

Maybe someday the Republicans will walk back their tacit (sometimes vocal) support of nihilist terroristic statements from lunatics living on the right’s fringes, but apparently that day isn’t today. 

Palin’s Crosshairs Revisited

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A few weeks ago, Santorum SuperPAC sugardaddy Foster Friess said he hopes President Obama’s “TelePrompTer is bulletproof”. He says he meant it figuratively, as part of a context whereby Santorum and Romney had now “trained their barrels” on the President, rather than each other.

This week, a Michigan gun fetishist whose most prominent kill was his own music career, Ted Nugent, said, “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” Nugent has endorsed Mitt Romney, who actively sought it. 

(It’s a common tactic among the right commentariat that whenever a leftist says something idiotic, that every Democrat is assumed to support it unless they expressly condemn it, and are routinely called upon to denounce something someone said. This tactic, fortunately, works in two directions.) 

When Hilary Rosen said something rude about Ann Romney, the White House immediately and unequivocally repudiated her words and sentiments. 

When Ted Nugent and Foster Friess suggest that President Obama be killed, you get absolute silence from almost the entire Republican establishment – most notably Romney, who merely said we should all be “civil”, which misses the point that no one should be suggesting or hoping for anyone’s assassination in domestic politics – it’s beyond the pale. 

Nugent’s never seen a gun he didn’t want to have sex with, and he’s never seen a thing he didn’t want to shoot – except the Viet Cong – so, the Secret Service is taking his threat rather seriously. The Republican mainstream’s lurch to the right has it coddling insane lunatics far more dangerous than any ACORN activist or other Fox News bogeyman. 

Maybe someday the Republicans will walk back their tacit (sometimes vocal) support of nihilist terroristic statements from lunatics living on the right’s fringes, but apparently that day isn’t today. 

//

Occupy the Senate

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Had the Occupy movement not captured headlines, and had its messages not engendered sympathy from a middle class that has been systematically harmed by the axis of money and politics, then it’s possible that the Buffett Rule – a change to the tax code that would ensure that millionaires whose income comes largely from investments pay taxes on that money at a rate similar to that earned on other income, like business profits or regular wages. It’s named after Warren Buffett, the billionaire whose income comes largely from his myriad investments, who lamented that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he. 

Last night, the Senate took up this change to the law, and it never made it to a vote. A single Democrat voted to block it, and a single Republican voted to bring it to the floor.  The Republicans filibustered, and the Democrats didn’t have the 60 votes needed to pass this legislation. (It’s high time to abolish the Senate filibuster, because the Constitution has been systematically circumvented – by both sides – to require that every legislation receive a supermajority for passage. This is unconscionable.) Without the threat of filibuster, the Buffett Rule would have passed the Senate 51 – 45. 

The bill would impose a minimum 30% effective federal tax rate on those with adjusted gross incomes above $1 million, although it phases in for those making between $1 million and $2 million.

Taxpayers subject to the Buffett Rule would still get a break for charitable deductions and could count both the income and payroll taxes they paid when calculating what they would owe

There’s nothing about that plan that should make Republicans reject it. Frankly, it makes sure that the wealthiest Americans don’t avoid paying taxes through an impossibly large, byzantine system that is specifically geared to lend loopholes to those who can afford them. 

The Buffett rule isn’t even controversial. 

It’s supported by 72% of Americans; of those, 53% of Republicans back it, and 70% of independents do, too. Unfortunately, it’s supported by only 2% of Senate Republicans; it’s only controversial among those whom the 1% have paid to oppose it. 

Americans don’t think the rich should get special breaks that regular folks don’t get, yet the Republicans in congress have made class warfare – by the rich against everybody else – a platform plank, and they’re shouting “socialist” at anyone who points it out. Problem is, it’s not working, and they’ve just selected someone who directly benefits from the failure of the Buffett Rule to be their nominee. 

This should be fun. 

Happy Birthday, Romneycare!

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Six years ago, Massachusetts’ then-Governor Mitt Romney signed the Commonwealth’s universal health insurance act into law. Try as Romney might, there is no doubt whatsoever that Obamacare directly descends from Romneycare – it is the Massachusetts plan writ large and federalized. Six years is the half-life, apparently, where a conservative path towards universal coverage becomes socialism. 

But Romneycare has resulted in an almost 100% coverage rate in Massachusetts, and though not perfect, has been dubbed a success story. 

Yet the 2012 model of Mitt Romney has nothing whatsoever to say about Romneycare on its sixth anniversary in the middle of a Presidential campaign. It’s his most significant and marketable achievement, and he’s painted himself into a rhetorical corner to avoid drawing attention to the similarities between Romneycare and Obamacare.  They’re almost identical. 

Romney’s argument in 2012 is that he’s proud of Romneycare, but disagrees with the notion that every state be required to follow one particular model. It’s the cowardly Republican’s disingenuous argument – when in doubt, go with state’s rights. The problem is that the crisis – really the shame – of uninsurance and underinsurance is a national one, one that requires a national response. The problems of medical bankruptcies (handled exclusively in federal courts), and of the uninsured using emergency rooms for primary care, the cost of which is then shunted onto taxpayers are national, federal issues. 

If Mr. Romney even believes these things to be problems needing solving, he should present a plan to fix them. If he wants to be true to his supposed 10th Amendment feelings, the federal government could simply mandate that states reach universal health insurance coverage, and let them each come up with their own ways to do so. 

I eagerly await President Obama to call Mr. Romney on this particular bluff. 

Well, Happy Birthday, Romneycare. Thanks for setting up the system that the federal government modified to apply to the entire country!

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZK0spa1yI]

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