PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH AMERICA IN ONE STORY
There was a story in The New York Times today about state programs that offer tax credits to people who donate to private (mostly religious) primary and secondary schools. It's a long story ,and you may have skipped over it, but I'd like to recommend it to you, because so many of the most infuriating things about America happen as a result of these laws.
First of all, the laws are an end run around legal restrictions on the funding of religious schools. The people who support the laws claim that they're constitutional because no tax money goes to religious schools, but if you get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donating to a religious school, as the story says you do in Georgia, that's indirect funding of religious schools by means of diverted tax money -- but, of course, wingnut-dominated courts don't see it that way, so the state laws are routi8nely upheld.
According to the story, the laws exist ostensibly to set up scholarships that help needy kids escape bad public schools, but, in fact, what generally happens is that families raise the money from friends and relatives, then send their own kids to the schools -- needy kids never get scholarships. Or parents who send their kids to these private schools already pretend to enroll their kids in public school, then get this money to divert the already diverted kids. Or the money is raised to get some hotshot football player into a particular private school.
Much of the money goes to religious schools, some of which have appalling views. One headmaster says:
"Not only do we teach the students that creation is the way the world was created and that God is in control and he made all things, we also teach them what the false theories of the world are, such as the Big Bang theory and Darwinism. We teach those as fallacies."
Elsewhere,
An economics book used in some high schools holds that the Antichrist -- a world ruler predicted in the New Testament -- will one day control what is bought and sold.
Oh, but Mammon will be served as well as God -- groups have sprung up to collect and administer the scholarship money (so even if you believe access to these schools is good for kids, there's less money for scholarships than meets the eye). Lobbyists get involved: they control some scholarship money and consult with lawmakers on who should get it; you can imagine the likely back-scratching. Lobbyists from dubious industries (e.g., the fracking industry in Pennsylvania), make contributions to these schools, and thus curry favor with legislators.
Oh, did I mention that ALEC is involved in promoting these schemes?
This may not be everything that's wrong with America, but it's close to everything.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
VOTERS ON ROMNEY'S BRILLIANT BUSINESS CAREER: MEH
Major-media East Coast journalists whose greatest joy in life is rubbing elbows with Wall Street Masters of the Universe are telling us that Kenyan commie Barack Obama made a huge mistake by attacking Bain Capital. They're doing this for a simple reason: they're terrified (or at least their fat-cat friends are terrified) that such attacks might actually strike a chord with voters.
Could they? So far that's not clear, but one thing that seems to be clear is that Mitt Romney's strategy -- saying next to nothing about his record as governor of Massachusetts and putting all his chips on his tenure at Bain -- doesn't seem to be working.
I'm looking at the numbers in the new (pre-Cory Booker) ABC/Washington Post poll, specifically the numbers on one question in particular, and I'm amazed at how little benefit Romney's getting from his business career (which, after thirty-plus years of corporatist, Reaganite propaganda, would seem to be a terrific selling point for middle-of-the-road voters):
Q: Is Romney's work buying and restructuring companies before he went into politics a major reason you to (support) that candidate, a major reason you to (oppose) that candidate, or not a major factor in your vote?
Here are the results:
Major reason to support 21%
Major reason to oppose 21%
Not a major factor 54%
No opinion 4%
A wash -- an absolute wash. And subgroups you'd think would be impressed by Bain aren't impressed. Whites? A mere two-point advantage for "Major reason to support," with the majority indifferent. Southerners? A four-point advantage, with the majority indifferent. White evangelical Protestants? A mere seven-point advantage -- you'd think Romney would be killing with this group -- and most people indifferent. Really, Romney's only big advantages are with Republicans, conservatives, and conservative Republicans.
Not being the incumbent in a tough economic period is what's keeping Romney in the race. His big "I'm a job creator!" selling point isn't working.
****
And there's this question:
Q: What do you think is the bigger problem in this country - (unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy), or (over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity)?
Results: 56% think unfairness is a bigger problem; 34% say over-regulation. That's not good for Romney.
I think one problem Romney has is that he's being hoist on his own party's petard. For years, the GOP and the right have tried to distinguish "elitists" from "extremely rich people," with great success -- "elitists" are to be recognized, according to right-wing propaganda, by cultural touchstones (hybrid cars, organic food, stereotypical places of residence, lack of "common touch," etc., etc.). The GOP's last three presidents were two nth-generation preppies who faked ordinariness, preceded by a Hollywood millionaire who faked it even better. But Romney can't fake it. He talks elitist, he dresses elitist, and even his specific path to wealth sounds elitist. Private equity -- what could sound more elitist than that? It's not like drillin' a damn oil well.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
Major-media East Coast journalists whose greatest joy in life is rubbing elbows with Wall Street Masters of the Universe are telling us that Kenyan commie Barack Obama made a huge mistake by attacking Bain Capital. They're doing this for a simple reason: they're terrified (or at least their fat-cat friends are terrified) that such attacks might actually strike a chord with voters.
Could they? So far that's not clear, but one thing that seems to be clear is that Mitt Romney's strategy -- saying next to nothing about his record as governor of Massachusetts and putting all his chips on his tenure at Bain -- doesn't seem to be working.
I'm looking at the numbers in the new (pre-Cory Booker) ABC/Washington Post poll, specifically the numbers on one question in particular, and I'm amazed at how little benefit Romney's getting from his business career (which, after thirty-plus years of corporatist, Reaganite propaganda, would seem to be a terrific selling point for middle-of-the-road voters):
Q: Is Romney's work buying and restructuring companies before he went into politics a major reason you to (support) that candidate, a major reason you to (oppose) that candidate, or not a major factor in your vote?
Here are the results:
Major reason to support 21%
Major reason to oppose 21%
Not a major factor 54%
No opinion 4%
A wash -- an absolute wash. And subgroups you'd think would be impressed by Bain aren't impressed. Whites? A mere two-point advantage for "Major reason to support," with the majority indifferent. Southerners? A four-point advantage, with the majority indifferent. White evangelical Protestants? A mere seven-point advantage -- you'd think Romney would be killing with this group -- and most people indifferent. Really, Romney's only big advantages are with Republicans, conservatives, and conservative Republicans.
Not being the incumbent in a tough economic period is what's keeping Romney in the race. His big "I'm a job creator!" selling point isn't working.
****
And there's this question:
Q: What do you think is the bigger problem in this country - (unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy), or (over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity)?
Results: 56% think unfairness is a bigger problem; 34% say over-regulation. That's not good for Romney.
I think one problem Romney has is that he's being hoist on his own party's petard. For years, the GOP and the right have tried to distinguish "elitists" from "extremely rich people," with great success -- "elitists" are to be recognized, according to right-wing propaganda, by cultural touchstones (hybrid cars, organic food, stereotypical places of residence, lack of "common touch," etc., etc.). The GOP's last three presidents were two nth-generation preppies who faked ordinariness, preceded by a Hollywood millionaire who faked it even better. But Romney can't fake it. He talks elitist, he dresses elitist, and even his specific path to wealth sounds elitist. Private equity -- what could sound more elitist than that? It's not like drillin' a damn oil well.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
Shareholder Value Is the Enemy
Following up on Steve's takedown of Brooks, I wanted to highlight another bit from that Mitt Romney clip. His complaint about the Obama ad includes this line (at about 1:35):My effort at Bain capital as you know was in every case designed to try and make the enterprises we invested in more successful.The thing is, I think he's entirely sincere when he says this. I think he really did try to make the companies he bought more successful, as he understands the term.
And the problem is that Mitt Romney understands the term the way the whole financial industry understands it (along with David Brooks): "more successful", "leaner, quicker, and more efficient", means more money for the shareholders.
See, for example, this criticism of the Bain ads:
Private-equity firms aren't supposed to create jobs; they're supposed to make money for their investors, which typically include pension funds and university endowments. The companies in which they invest are often on the brink of failure to begin with, and are likely to go bankrupt without outside help.Well, yeah: that's the problem. Maximizing what the shareholders get necessarily means limiting what other stakeholders get. And given that the top 10% own 81% of all stock1, maximizing "shareholder value" isn't some benign or neutral process that occasionally goes horribly wrong; it is inherently an upward redistribution of wealth.
But in the little-understood world of private equity, Obama has seized upon a basic formula -- Romney and Bain plus companies equals some lost jobs and millions for Romney -- to argue that he's unfit for the Oval Office. [emphasis added]
So the argument against Romney isn't so much that he did bad, bad things that make him unfit for office. The argument, as the President articulated it yesterday, is that his expertise is in doing the exact opposite of what good governance does (i.e, promote the general welfare):
While Obama said he felt private equity was a “healthy part of the free market,” he said that firms’ first priority was not job creation, but “to maximize profit,” a goal that can be damaging when applied to public service....We are where we are today because of the supremacy of "shareholder value", and the Republican nominee is the embodiment of that ethos. That's why it has to be at the center of the campaign, and that's why they're going to fight like hell to make the whole subject taboo.
“When you are president as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits,” he said. “Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who get laid off and how are we paying for their retraining.”
1As of 2007; see Table 9 on page 52. It's probably worse today, but this is the most recent information I could find. And yes, that includes pension funds and IRAs and such (as "indirect ownership"); counting direct ownership only, it's worse.
A WINGTIP IN THE FACE FOREVER
His column doesn't have the visibility of an infinitely reproducible Cory Booker video clip, but David Brooks, Mitt Romney's principal voice on the New York Times op-ed page, is not exactly an ideal surrogate. Here's what he published today as a paean to the glories of private equity, and a rebuke to that evil socialist Obama:
Research from around the world clearly confirms that companies that have been acquired by private equity firms are more productive than comparable firms.
This process involves a great deal of churn and creative destruction. It does not, on net, lead to fewer jobs. A giant study by economists from the University of Chicago, Harvard, the University of Maryland and the Census Bureau found that when private equity firms acquire a company, jobs are lost in old operations. Jobs are created in new, promising operations. The overall effect on employment is modest.
Oh boy -- private equity is a zero-sum game! And it doesn't really increase employment! Gosh, where do we sign up?
This is a potential problem from Romney -- his side sings the job-creating praises of his work at Bain, his opponents talk about job losses ... and folks like Brooks who purport to be objective observers in the middle say: well, actually, on balance we don't lose jobs or gain jobs as a result of private equity. The winners win, the losers lose. The real winners, of course, are the people (like Romney) who work the levers.
For ordinary Americans, this is supposed to be an improvement on the status quo how exactly?
But to Brooks -- he of the newly purchased $4 million house -- this actually should be enticing to ordinary Americans:
Forty years ago, corporate America was bloated, sluggish and losing ground to competitors in Japan and beyond. But then something astonishing happened. Financiers, private equity firms and bare-knuckled corporate executives initiated a series of reforms and transformations.
The process was brutal and involved streamlining and layoffs. But, at the end of it, American businesses emerged leaner, quicker and more efficient....
The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government....
In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation...
Yes, I simply can't imagine why a party wouldn't want to identify itself with a "brutal" process that "involved streamlining and layoffs" and has an "overall effect on employment" that's "modest." It's baffling!
And Brooks knows just where Mitt's going to look for efficiencies if he's president:
While American companies operate in radically different ways than they did 40 years ago, the sheltered, government-dominated sectors of the economy -- especially education, health care and the welfare state -- operate in astonishingly similar ways.
The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government.
Um, how would that work exactly? Are capitalists going to buy underperforming schools, fire the teachers, sell the buildings and football stadiums at a profit, and outsource the 3 R's to Mexico?
His column doesn't have the visibility of an infinitely reproducible Cory Booker video clip, but David Brooks, Mitt Romney's principal voice on the New York Times op-ed page, is not exactly an ideal surrogate. Here's what he published today as a paean to the glories of private equity, and a rebuke to that evil socialist Obama:
Research from around the world clearly confirms that companies that have been acquired by private equity firms are more productive than comparable firms.
This process involves a great deal of churn and creative destruction. It does not, on net, lead to fewer jobs. A giant study by economists from the University of Chicago, Harvard, the University of Maryland and the Census Bureau found that when private equity firms acquire a company, jobs are lost in old operations. Jobs are created in new, promising operations. The overall effect on employment is modest.
Oh boy -- private equity is a zero-sum game! And it doesn't really increase employment! Gosh, where do we sign up?
This is a potential problem from Romney -- his side sings the job-creating praises of his work at Bain, his opponents talk about job losses ... and folks like Brooks who purport to be objective observers in the middle say: well, actually, on balance we don't lose jobs or gain jobs as a result of private equity. The winners win, the losers lose. The real winners, of course, are the people (like Romney) who work the levers.
For ordinary Americans, this is supposed to be an improvement on the status quo how exactly?
But to Brooks -- he of the newly purchased $4 million house -- this actually should be enticing to ordinary Americans:
Forty years ago, corporate America was bloated, sluggish and losing ground to competitors in Japan and beyond. But then something astonishing happened. Financiers, private equity firms and bare-knuckled corporate executives initiated a series of reforms and transformations.
The process was brutal and involved streamlining and layoffs. But, at the end of it, American businesses emerged leaner, quicker and more efficient....
The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government....
In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation...
Yes, I simply can't imagine why a party wouldn't want to identify itself with a "brutal" process that "involved streamlining and layoffs" and has an "overall effect on employment" that's "modest." It's baffling!
And Brooks knows just where Mitt's going to look for efficiencies if he's president:
While American companies operate in radically different ways than they did 40 years ago, the sheltered, government-dominated sectors of the economy -- especially education, health care and the welfare state -- operate in astonishingly similar ways.
The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government.
Um, how would that work exactly? Are capitalists going to buy underperforming schools, fire the teachers, sell the buildings and football stadiums at a profit, and outsource the 3 R's to Mexico?
Monday, May 21, 2012
LIBERAL FASCISTS THREATEN NEIGHBOR'S GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO SHOOT GUNS ALL DAY AND NIGHT
Johnston County, North Carolina, is one of the fastest-growing counties in America. County commissioners thought it was getting a wee bit too crowded for unrestricted use of firearms, so they crafted an ordinance that limited how and when firearms could be discharged.
They didn't count on James Whitlock III:
...Since they first complained to the county board in March, residents of Oak Ridge subdivision ... say James Whitlock III's shooting habits haven't changed. The neighbors have started counting shots, with 3,000 logged in the past 60 days and nearly 200 on a recent Monday alone.
... Commissioners promised in March to look for a solution. Sheriff Steve Bizzell sent deputies to Whitlock’s home on numerous occasions. But they found his shooting was legal under the county's ordinance, which bans shooting after dark, under the influence or alcohol or "carelessly and heedlessly" with bullets crossing onto a neighbor's property.
Several neighbors have said they've found evidence of gunfire on cars and on a backyard trampoline. But sheriff's deputies say the evidence is not enough to issue a citation to Whitlock....
An article from March tells us more:
... Oak Ridge residents said they were concerned about stray bullets, and one said he had found bird shot on his car. "Our grandchildren are telling us that they're scared to come over," Joe Heil said.
They said the shooting is taking place at 121 Oak Ridge Drive, a 1.1-acre property owned by James S. Whitlock III.... shooting isn't allowed between two hours after sunset and one hour before sunrise.
Neighbors said Whitlock is firing up until 11 p.m. and leaving traces on nearby vehicles....
It's amazing that any ordinance was passed at all, given opponents like this blogger:
Tonight, the second meeting of the "Good Neighbor Firearms Ordinance" (how Orwellian of them) working group is scheduled to take place at 6:00pm...
I got the impression that a goodly portion of the calls the Sheriff's office was getting were from new residents of the county who came from anti-gun bastions like New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, who were uncomfortable with the sound of guns. I told Carver that, to be frank, whenever I hear the phrase "let freedom ring" it is near impossible for me to not think of the sound of guns. The sound of gunfire is the sound of freedom....
Mr. Whitlock, it will not surprise you to learn, is threatening to take the county to court if he's denied his God-given right to shoot off an average of 50 rounds a day and as many as 200, all day and well into the evening. And while I can't find much about him, I suspect he wouldn't live up to any dumb-hick stereotypes you might have: his wife seems like a fairly sharp-witted lawyer:
Mr. Whitlock is just a modern right-winger, who thinks Jesus and the Framers wanted him to have everything he's ever wanted -- and believed you're the totalitarian if he's not allowed to have it all.
Johnston County, North Carolina, is one of the fastest-growing counties in America. County commissioners thought it was getting a wee bit too crowded for unrestricted use of firearms, so they crafted an ordinance that limited how and when firearms could be discharged.
They didn't count on James Whitlock III:
...Since they first complained to the county board in March, residents of Oak Ridge subdivision ... say James Whitlock III's shooting habits haven't changed. The neighbors have started counting shots, with 3,000 logged in the past 60 days and nearly 200 on a recent Monday alone.
... Commissioners promised in March to look for a solution. Sheriff Steve Bizzell sent deputies to Whitlock’s home on numerous occasions. But they found his shooting was legal under the county's ordinance, which bans shooting after dark, under the influence or alcohol or "carelessly and heedlessly" with bullets crossing onto a neighbor's property.
Several neighbors have said they've found evidence of gunfire on cars and on a backyard trampoline. But sheriff's deputies say the evidence is not enough to issue a citation to Whitlock....
An article from March tells us more:
... Oak Ridge residents said they were concerned about stray bullets, and one said he had found bird shot on his car. "Our grandchildren are telling us that they're scared to come over," Joe Heil said.
They said the shooting is taking place at 121 Oak Ridge Drive, a 1.1-acre property owned by James S. Whitlock III.... shooting isn't allowed between two hours after sunset and one hour before sunrise.
Neighbors said Whitlock is firing up until 11 p.m. and leaving traces on nearby vehicles....
It's amazing that any ordinance was passed at all, given opponents like this blogger:
Tonight, the second meeting of the "Good Neighbor Firearms Ordinance" (how Orwellian of them) working group is scheduled to take place at 6:00pm...
I got the impression that a goodly portion of the calls the Sheriff's office was getting were from new residents of the county who came from anti-gun bastions like New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, who were uncomfortable with the sound of guns. I told Carver that, to be frank, whenever I hear the phrase "let freedom ring" it is near impossible for me to not think of the sound of guns. The sound of gunfire is the sound of freedom....
Mr. Whitlock, it will not surprise you to learn, is threatening to take the county to court if he's denied his God-given right to shoot off an average of 50 rounds a day and as many as 200, all day and well into the evening. And while I can't find much about him, I suspect he wouldn't live up to any dumb-hick stereotypes you might have: his wife seems like a fairly sharp-witted lawyer:
Mr. Whitlock is just a modern right-winger, who thinks Jesus and the Framers wanted him to have everything he's ever wanted -- and believed you're the totalitarian if he's not allowed to have it all.
EVERYBODY SKATE COUNTERCLOCKWISE NOW: STRAIGHT-TALKING WHITE HEARTLANDERS NOW VIOLATE "DECENCY" (BECAUSE THEIR TARGET IS A REPUBLICAN)
What is it about campaign-trail journalists that makes them incapable of resisting any forcefully promoted meme (which usually means any meme promoted by the right-wing noise machine)?
Case in point: this post by Michael Shear at the Caucus blog of The New York Times, which cites the Cory Booker comments about Bain Capital, then criticizes pro-Obama ads that refer to Bain:
In Obama-Romney Trash Talk, What's Fair and Where's the Fine Line?
Is President Obama asking tough questions about Mitt Romney's record or unfairly attacking the Republican candidate?
...the episode involving Mr. Booker suggests that Mr. Obama is walking a fine line as he tries to make Bain Capital a central issue in the presidential campaign. Both candidates are eager to attract independent voters who may be turned off by attacks they think cross a line of decency. And Mr. Romney has jumped at the chance to argue that the president has done just that.
Stop right there: A candidate for president had a job for many years, and is citing his work at that job as his principal qualification for the presidency, and when his opponent harshly criticizes the performance at that old job, that crosses a line of decency? If that's the case, then what the hell can you possibly say about any candidate that's in any way harsh and wouldn't "cross a line of decency"?
Ah, but then we learn what's so horrifyingly indecent: the pro-Obama Bain ads use mean words about Romney ... as a person!
But the campaign ads and conference calls are frequently platforms to question Mr. Romney's personal qualities.
A video released Monday by Mr. Obama's campaign highlights an office supply company whose workers were fired when it was bought by a Bain company. In the ad, the workers deride Mr. Romney’s personal ethics.
One says that Mr. Romney "did not care about us as workers." Another says that Mr. Romney "takes from the poor and the middle class and gives to the rich. He's just the opposite of Robin Hood."
A third says flatly: "You can tell by the way he acts, the way he talks. He doesn't care anything about the middle-class or the lower-class people."\
... That message is being echoed in "super PAC" ads on the campaign's behalf. An ad by Priorities USA Action concludes with a worker saying that Mr. Romney "promised us the same things he's promising the United States. He'll give you the same thing he gave us. Nothing. He'll take it all."
Apart from the fact that there's nothing unusually harsh about any of this, the people quoted aren't in politics at all -- they're ordinary Americans. They're ordinary blue-collar Americans. Most of them are ordinary white blue-collar Americans.
Aren't these precisely the people we're all supposed to give deference to? Aren't they the plainspoken Americans whose workboots we milk-fed, metrosexual elitists aren't fit to resole? Aren't they the Tea Party voters and the Palin/Joe the Plumber voters and the Hillary beer-and-a-shot voters and the security moms and the NASCAR dads and the Reagan Democrats?
When did it become a violation of decency for these Regular Americans to speak their minds?
Oh, yeah, right: when their anger was directed at a Republican, and was deployed on behalf of a Democrat. Sorry, I should have known that.
****
UPDATE: I fear Digby is right:
What is it about campaign-trail journalists that makes them incapable of resisting any forcefully promoted meme (which usually means any meme promoted by the right-wing noise machine)?
Case in point: this post by Michael Shear at the Caucus blog of The New York Times, which cites the Cory Booker comments about Bain Capital, then criticizes pro-Obama ads that refer to Bain:
In Obama-Romney Trash Talk, What's Fair and Where's the Fine Line?
Is President Obama asking tough questions about Mitt Romney's record or unfairly attacking the Republican candidate?
...the episode involving Mr. Booker suggests that Mr. Obama is walking a fine line as he tries to make Bain Capital a central issue in the presidential campaign. Both candidates are eager to attract independent voters who may be turned off by attacks they think cross a line of decency. And Mr. Romney has jumped at the chance to argue that the president has done just that.
Stop right there: A candidate for president had a job for many years, and is citing his work at that job as his principal qualification for the presidency, and when his opponent harshly criticizes the performance at that old job, that crosses a line of decency? If that's the case, then what the hell can you possibly say about any candidate that's in any way harsh and wouldn't "cross a line of decency"?
Ah, but then we learn what's so horrifyingly indecent: the pro-Obama Bain ads use mean words about Romney ... as a person!
But the campaign ads and conference calls are frequently platforms to question Mr. Romney's personal qualities.
A video released Monday by Mr. Obama's campaign highlights an office supply company whose workers were fired when it was bought by a Bain company. In the ad, the workers deride Mr. Romney’s personal ethics.
One says that Mr. Romney "did not care about us as workers." Another says that Mr. Romney "takes from the poor and the middle class and gives to the rich. He's just the opposite of Robin Hood."
A third says flatly: "You can tell by the way he acts, the way he talks. He doesn't care anything about the middle-class or the lower-class people."\
... That message is being echoed in "super PAC" ads on the campaign's behalf. An ad by Priorities USA Action concludes with a worker saying that Mr. Romney "promised us the same things he's promising the United States. He'll give you the same thing he gave us. Nothing. He'll take it all."
Apart from the fact that there's nothing unusually harsh about any of this, the people quoted aren't in politics at all -- they're ordinary Americans. They're ordinary blue-collar Americans. Most of them are ordinary white blue-collar Americans.
Aren't these precisely the people we're all supposed to give deference to? Aren't they the plainspoken Americans whose workboots we milk-fed, metrosexual elitists aren't fit to resole? Aren't they the Tea Party voters and the Palin/Joe the Plumber voters and the Hillary beer-and-a-shot voters and the security moms and the NASCAR dads and the Reagan Democrats?
When did it become a violation of decency for these Regular Americans to speak their minds?
Oh, yeah, right: when their anger was directed at a Republican, and was deployed on behalf of a Democrat. Sorry, I should have known that.
****
UPDATE: I fear Digby is right:
Judging from cable news Booker got the job done.There is now great "unease" about Bain crit, so no more talk of Vulture capitalism in 2012.
— digby (@digby56) May 21, 2012
IS THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE'S DONOHUE WORRIED ABOUT BLASPHEMY OR GIRL COOTIES?
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is still trying to milk a five-week-old Jon Stewart sketch that mainly focused on Fox News (which is appalled at the term "war on women" but is always eager to talk about a "war on Christmas"). The joke that set Donohue off wasn't specifically aimed at Catholics; what Stewart said was that, since Fox is apparently comfortable with "war" terminology when the "war" is on Christmas decorations, maybe women can get the war on women taken seriously at Fox by blocking state-mandated pre-abortion transvaginal ultrasounds using a "vagina manger" placed at the crotch.
(Sorry -- I really killed that joke by trying to explain it, didn't I?)
Today, Donohue has an ad on the op-ed page of the print New York Times; you can read the ad at the League's Web site. What I find amusing is this line from the ad:
Had a conservative host made fun of President Obama's abortion policies by putting a depiction of the Obama family between the legs of a naked woman, those who think it's cute to mock The Holy Family wouldn't be laughing.
Does Donohue think this would outrage us? After all the vile imagery and vitriol we've seen directed at Obama and his family -- Barack and Michelle depicted as monkeys, guns aimed at the president's head, and so on? Why on earth would we care about seeing the Obamas in front of a woman's crotch? It would be an odd way of attacking the president, but, um, Bill? We don't think women's bodies are repulsive. We don't think they're inherently grotesque or unclean or abhorrent.
Apparently you disagree.
Yeah, I understand having a particular set of religious beliefs, and finding that what Stewart did mingles the sacred and profane in an unacceptable way. But -- unless you think we worship the Obama family (which may be the case) -- it seems you imagine that we'd be repulsed at seeing anything we think is good in close proximity to a vagina.
That's not a healthy attitude, Bill.
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is still trying to milk a five-week-old Jon Stewart sketch that mainly focused on Fox News (which is appalled at the term "war on women" but is always eager to talk about a "war on Christmas"). The joke that set Donohue off wasn't specifically aimed at Catholics; what Stewart said was that, since Fox is apparently comfortable with "war" terminology when the "war" is on Christmas decorations, maybe women can get the war on women taken seriously at Fox by blocking state-mandated pre-abortion transvaginal ultrasounds using a "vagina manger" placed at the crotch.
(Sorry -- I really killed that joke by trying to explain it, didn't I?)
Today, Donohue has an ad on the op-ed page of the print New York Times; you can read the ad at the League's Web site. What I find amusing is this line from the ad:
Had a conservative host made fun of President Obama's abortion policies by putting a depiction of the Obama family between the legs of a naked woman, those who think it's cute to mock The Holy Family wouldn't be laughing.
Does Donohue think this would outrage us? After all the vile imagery and vitriol we've seen directed at Obama and his family -- Barack and Michelle depicted as monkeys, guns aimed at the president's head, and so on? Why on earth would we care about seeing the Obamas in front of a woman's crotch? It would be an odd way of attacking the president, but, um, Bill? We don't think women's bodies are repulsive. We don't think they're inherently grotesque or unclean or abhorrent.
Apparently you disagree.
Yeah, I understand having a particular set of religious beliefs, and finding that what Stewart did mingles the sacred and profane in an unacceptable way. But -- unless you think we worship the Obama family (which may be the case) -- it seems you imagine that we'd be repulsed at seeing anything we think is good in close proximity to a vagina.
That's not a healthy attitude, Bill.
CORY BOOKER KNOWS: DON'T HOLD BUSINESS EVEN MINIMALLY ACCOUNTABLE IF YOU WANT TO BE PRESIDENT
In the wake of previous financial crises, even Republican administrations demanded some accountability of savings and loans and of Enron.
But that was many years ago. After a far worse financial collapse, the Obama administration has handled the banks with kid gloves -- and yet he's hated by the banks. Obama runs an ad about Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital that's no worse than what was said by every Democrat who ever ran against him in the past, not to mention what a couple of Republican opponents said in this year'a primary campaign --and the combined result has dried up Obama's super PAC contributions:
Obama super PAC slump continues
The pro-Barack Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is still struggling to keep up with GOP super PACs preparing to unleash millions of dollars in independent advertisements.
Priorities USA Action raised $1.6 million in April, according to federal records released late Sunday. It's the smallest haul the group has pulled in since the meager $59,000 the group raised in January.
The group raked in $3 million less than the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future raised in April, even as the GOP group reported its worst fundraising month so far this year.
The bulk of Priorities USA Action's cash in April came from labor groups....
Why do you think Cory Booker -- an ambitious guy who seems as if he'd like to be president himself one day -- was on Meet the Press yesterday sandbagging the president?
Appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press" on Sunday, Newark, New Jersey Mayor and Obama surrogate Cory Booker said he was "uncomfortable" with the Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's record with Bain Capital.
"It's a distraction from the real issues," Booker said, of both attacks on Bain and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "It's either gonna be a small campaign about this crap, or it's gonna be a big campaign about the issues the American public cares about."
"I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity," Booker added. "If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses -- to grow businesses. And this to me, I'm very uncomfortable."
In the future, if you're a politician with big ambitions, that's the maximum amount of business accountability you're going to be allowed to support: none whatsoever. Business accountability is going to be like gun control: speak in favor of it and your career is over.
Someday Cory Booker may be an ersatz-Democratic president. But in a Citizens United world, Barack Obama will be the last president even vaguely recognizable as Democratic in the post-FDR sense of the word. He's going to be the last president we'll ever have who even pays lip service to accountability for business.
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UPDATE: And no, Cory, you can't walk it back. You were far too definite and far too specific. You said it was "nauseating" ever to criticize private equity funds; saying you're sorry now isn't a walk-back, it's a flip-flop, of Romney or Gingrich proportions.
In the wake of previous financial crises, even Republican administrations demanded some accountability of savings and loans and of Enron.
But that was many years ago. After a far worse financial collapse, the Obama administration has handled the banks with kid gloves -- and yet he's hated by the banks. Obama runs an ad about Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital that's no worse than what was said by every Democrat who ever ran against him in the past, not to mention what a couple of Republican opponents said in this year'a primary campaign --and the combined result has dried up Obama's super PAC contributions:
Obama super PAC slump continues
The pro-Barack Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is still struggling to keep up with GOP super PACs preparing to unleash millions of dollars in independent advertisements.
Priorities USA Action raised $1.6 million in April, according to federal records released late Sunday. It's the smallest haul the group has pulled in since the meager $59,000 the group raised in January.
The group raked in $3 million less than the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future raised in April, even as the GOP group reported its worst fundraising month so far this year.
The bulk of Priorities USA Action's cash in April came from labor groups....
Why do you think Cory Booker -- an ambitious guy who seems as if he'd like to be president himself one day -- was on Meet the Press yesterday sandbagging the president?
Appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press" on Sunday, Newark, New Jersey Mayor and Obama surrogate Cory Booker said he was "uncomfortable" with the Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's record with Bain Capital.
"It's a distraction from the real issues," Booker said, of both attacks on Bain and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "It's either gonna be a small campaign about this crap, or it's gonna be a big campaign about the issues the American public cares about."
"I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity," Booker added. "If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses -- to grow businesses. And this to me, I'm very uncomfortable."
In the future, if you're a politician with big ambitions, that's the maximum amount of business accountability you're going to be allowed to support: none whatsoever. Business accountability is going to be like gun control: speak in favor of it and your career is over.
Someday Cory Booker may be an ersatz-Democratic president. But in a Citizens United world, Barack Obama will be the last president even vaguely recognizable as Democratic in the post-FDR sense of the word. He's going to be the last president we'll ever have who even pays lip service to accountability for business.
****
UPDATE: And no, Cory, you can't walk it back. You were far too definite and far too specific. You said it was "nauseating" ever to criticize private equity funds; saying you're sorry now isn't a walk-back, it's a flip-flop, of Romney or Gingrich proportions.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Your Inherent Goodness Will Not Redeem You
The most widely played sound bite from Romney's tepid 'repudiation' of the proposed all-Wright-all-the-time anti-Obama ad campaign is the part where he said "I stand by what I said, whatever it was". And with good reason: that + Etch-a-Sketch = ad that writes itself.
But there was another bit that leapt out at me, beginning at around 2:06:
The purpose of the President's ads is not to describe success and failure but somehow to suggest that I'm...not a good person, or not a good guy. And I think the American people will know better than that, if they don't already. [emphasis added]Sound vaguely familiar? Wondering where you might have heard something like that before? I'll tell you: you heard it from everyone who ever thought he/she was being unjustly accused of doing or saying something racist. Or sexist. Or homophobic.
It's a classic dodge, shifting focus from your conduct (which others can observe and evaluate) to your character (which only you know, and what you know is that it's good). The thought process works like this: I'm not a bad person; therefore, I'm not a racist; therefore, what I said can't have been racist. Or in Romney's variation, I'm a good guy; therefore, I'm not a heartless bastard; therefore, I can't have hurt those people. The point being that one's inherent nature far outweighs anything one actually does.
It's not an exclusively conservative tactic--I've seen plenty of liberals (or more often, 'liberals') use it to try to wiggle off the hook (there's even a specifically lefty variant, commonly known as "I can't be racist, I'm a progressive!")--but the underlying worldview ('character' > conduct) is a powerful strain in modern conservatism.
Thus, the President's record of governing as a centrist Democrat is irrelevant, because at heart he's really a Kenyan socialist Muslim anti-colonialist metrosexual. (The Wright pitch, e.g., is 100% about Obama's character and 0% about his actual record.) Nothing Bush did mattered, because he was always the steely-eyed rocket man (until he wasn't, and then it did). I had a lengthy Twitter exchange with Victor's favorite wingnut (more about that tomorrow) in which he claimed the WaPo story about Romney's bullying was a 'smear'--not because he disputed any of the conduct it described, but because he believed it was an attack on his character.
And I think I know where this comes from.
The modern conservative worldview is dominated by evangelical fundamentalism. (Glibertarians and plutocrats may deny it, but the reality is that they've absorbed much of a worldview they like to think of as on the fringes of conservatism.) Evangelical fundamentalism is, of course, hardcore Calvinist. Calvinism preaches predestination--the idea that God decided ages ago who would be saved (the Elect) and who wouldn't, and that's how it is and nothing anyone can do can possibly change that.
So there are people who are saved, and people who aren't. End of story. And if you believe someone is saved, then anything bad they do is an aberration (and won't affect the outcome anyway) while any good is emblematic of their essential character; conversely, if you believe someone isn't saved, any good they do can be dismissed as phony and any 'bad' they do is evidence of who they really are.
That's where we are today. That's the dominant worldview in one of the two parties that rule this country. The country is divided over the issue of whether conduct even matters. And that, of course, is why we can't have nice things.
Friday, May 18, 2012
ROMNEY AND THE CRAZIES PLAY DULL COP, CRAZY COP
TBogg makes an interesting point:
I'm scanning the list of attendees and I'm not sure if there's a strict correlation between attendance and a recent increase in crazification, but it sure is interesting to me that Romney met with these folks and now we're seeing a huge overall crazification uptick on the right, at precisely the moment when we were told by the mainstream press that Romney would pivot to the center.
Romney hasn't really pivoted to the center; he's pretty much stayed where he's been all through the campaign, which is a bit to the left of crazy right. But now I suppose he may look (to centrist voters) as if he's pivoted to the center precisely because there's so much crazy on the right (see, e.g., threats to keep Obama off the Arizona ballot, from which Romney can now high-mindedly distance himself).
I suppose that's the plan: the crazies motivate their fellow crazies, Romney reassures centrist voters by keeping his distance from the crazies, and the GOP wins. I've been vacillating on whether the crazy stuff is upsetting Team Romney or is merely the dark side of his campaign, but I'm leaning toward the latter.
****
UPDATE: I guess I missed the fact that Breitbart's Dana Loesch has been suggesting on Twitter that this, more or less, is the strategy. Charles Johnson and Tommy Christopher think there may be something to this.
TBogg makes an interesting point:
Probably a coincidence that so many of the conservative bloggers who met with Romney back on 5/2 have gone birther. #crazytrain
— TBogg (@tbogg) May 18, 2012
I'm scanning the list of attendees and I'm not sure if there's a strict correlation between attendance and a recent increase in crazification, but it sure is interesting to me that Romney met with these folks and now we're seeing a huge overall crazification uptick on the right, at precisely the moment when we were told by the mainstream press that Romney would pivot to the center.
Romney hasn't really pivoted to the center; he's pretty much stayed where he's been all through the campaign, which is a bit to the left of crazy right. But now I suppose he may look (to centrist voters) as if he's pivoted to the center precisely because there's so much crazy on the right (see, e.g., threats to keep Obama off the Arizona ballot, from which Romney can now high-mindedly distance himself).
I suppose that's the plan: the crazies motivate their fellow crazies, Romney reassures centrist voters by keeping his distance from the crazies, and the GOP wins. I've been vacillating on whether the crazy stuff is upsetting Team Romney or is merely the dark side of his campaign, but I'm leaning toward the latter.
****
UPDATE: I guess I missed the fact that Breitbart's Dana Loesch has been suggesting on Twitter that this, more or less, is the strategy. Charles Johnson and Tommy Christopher think there may be something to this.
EDWARD KLEIN APPARENTLY SURPRISED THAT 70-YEAR-OLD BLACK MAN DIDN'T TRY TO KILL HIM
This is a couple of days old, and I still haven't actually watched the video, but I just spotted, over at Fox News Insider, a preview of Sean Hannity's recent interview with Edward Klein, author of the Obama-bashing book The Amateur, which includes excerpts of an interview with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I couldn't help noticing this:
Regarding his meeting with Rev. Wright, Klein told Hannity, "It wasn't what I expected to tell you the truth because the guy who I met did not look like the guy on the videotapes ... He was very quiet, very polite, very measured, and talked about his academic credentials, very proud of the fact that he had a Ph.D., and answered all my questions ... there was no sense that this guy could go off the deep end."
Jeremiah Wright is a minister. That means that Jeremiah Wright speaks at the top of his lungs for a living -- just like a lot of white people who are ministers. I sincerely doubt that Edward Klein would expect a shouting, pulpit-thumping white preacher to shout at him in a one-on-one meeting, much less "go off the deep end" -- especially if Klein interviewed the preacher in the year the preacher turned seventy. But, well, you know those black guys -- they're crazy, right?
This is a couple of days old, and I still haven't actually watched the video, but I just spotted, over at Fox News Insider, a preview of Sean Hannity's recent interview with Edward Klein, author of the Obama-bashing book The Amateur, which includes excerpts of an interview with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I couldn't help noticing this:
Regarding his meeting with Rev. Wright, Klein told Hannity, "It wasn't what I expected to tell you the truth because the guy who I met did not look like the guy on the videotapes ... He was very quiet, very polite, very measured, and talked about his academic credentials, very proud of the fact that he had a Ph.D., and answered all my questions ... there was no sense that this guy could go off the deep end."
Jeremiah Wright is a minister. That means that Jeremiah Wright speaks at the top of his lungs for a living -- just like a lot of white people who are ministers. I sincerely doubt that Edward Klein would expect a shouting, pulpit-thumping white preacher to shout at him in a one-on-one meeting, much less "go off the deep end" -- especially if Klein interviewed the preacher in the year the preacher turned seventy. But, well, you know those black guys -- they're crazy, right?
TAMMY BRUCE: OBJECTIVELY PRO-STARVATION
Tammy Bruce on Twitter:
Click on the link and you learn that she's not only objectively pro-starvation, she's also illiterate:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday said the United States has a "moral imperative" to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition in Africa despite shrinking national budgets around the world.
Obama announced $3 billion in private sector pledges to help boost agriculture and food production in Africa. He said the U.S. and other donor nations would continue to make "historic investments" in development, though he offered no new American government pledges....
No money is being "squeezed out of us."
Then again, Bruce has long made it clear that she hates black people -- among other things, she's written that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King showed a "preference for deceit in the pursuit of power," and she's said of the Obamas, "We;'ve got trash in the White House" -- so maybe that's her problem with aid to Africa.
Tammy Bruce on Twitter:
Now?! He won't rest until every last dollar is squeezed out of us "Obama touts $3B in pledges to help feed Africa" bit.ly/JcHJJA
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) May 18, 2012
Click on the link and you learn that she's not only objectively pro-starvation, she's also illiterate:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday said the United States has a "moral imperative" to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition in Africa despite shrinking national budgets around the world.
Obama announced $3 billion in private sector pledges to help boost agriculture and food production in Africa. He said the U.S. and other donor nations would continue to make "historic investments" in development, though he offered no new American government pledges....
No money is being "squeezed out of us."
Then again, Bruce has long made it clear that she hates black people -- among other things, she's written that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King showed a "preference for deceit in the pursuit of power," and she's said of the Obamas, "We;'ve got trash in the White House" -- so maybe that's her problem with aid to Africa.
EVERYTHING: STILL YOUR FAULT --BROOKS
Today, David Brooks publishes his eight thousandth column blaming everything that's wrong with the world on the depraved appetites of ordinary people. Political leaders are to blame only to the extent that they indulge our depravity:
The people who pioneered democracy in Europe and the United States had a low but pretty accurate view of human nature. They knew that if we get the chance, most of us will try to get something for nothing. They knew that people generally prize short-term goodies over long-term prosperity. So, in centuries past, the democratic pioneers built a series of checks to make sure their nations wouldn’t be ruined by their own frailties.
... Leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it.... Give the customer what he wants. The customer is always right.
Having lost a sense of their own frailty, many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements. They become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs. Like any normal set of human beings, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay.
The consequences of this shift are now obvious. In Europe and America, governments have made promises they can’t afford to fulfill. At the same time, the decision-making machinery is breaking down....
And so European citizens demand "great lifestyles without long work hours." American citizens demand all those horribly indulgent things in the Obama campaign's "Julia" ad. (Small Business Administration loans! How self-pampering!) It's all their fault! Politicians should know what wallowers in sloth humans are and just start cracking the whip!
You know what ordinary people really want? We want not to have the rug pulled out from under us. We're all born into a society we never made; without thinking too much about it, we grow up into that society, and that society, if we live in the First World, tells us that certain expectations are reasonable -- and we get upset not because we can't have every luxury imaginable, but because at times our society tells us we suddenly can't have things it told us we could reasonably expect.
You take an assembly-line job at an auto plant in 1955 because you need a job, and they tell you it comes with a pension and generous retiree health benefits. You stay till you're old, and all the while you arrange your life as if the benefits they promised you will be there -- not because you're slothful and indulgent, but because they were promised. Of course you get upset when they're taken away. In Europe, more is promised, but you can't blame people for taking those promises literally, and being angry when they're broken.
And people are willing to give back if the giveback isn't sudden and wrenching. They're willing to pay more taxes, too. Consider the fact that the least popular president of the past thirty years is the one who never raised taxes. The current Congress has approval ratings lower than those for flesh-eating bacteria, and it never raises taxes. People took tax increases from Clinton, from Poppy Bush, even from Reagan. They'd do it again in the right circumstances (i.e., a truly recovering economy).
You know who wants everything they've ever imagined wanting, and feels persecuted when that doesn't happen? Not ordinary Europeans. Not most Americans. Two groups: U.S. right-wingers and (most important) the extremely rich, particularly those in the financial sector (globally) and the energy sector (in this country). The rest of us will make reasonable adjustments when necessary, and do with less. Those two groups raise holy hell when they're asked to do that. They're the big problem.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
Today, David Brooks publishes his eight thousandth column blaming everything that's wrong with the world on the depraved appetites of ordinary people. Political leaders are to blame only to the extent that they indulge our depravity:
The people who pioneered democracy in Europe and the United States had a low but pretty accurate view of human nature. They knew that if we get the chance, most of us will try to get something for nothing. They knew that people generally prize short-term goodies over long-term prosperity. So, in centuries past, the democratic pioneers built a series of checks to make sure their nations wouldn’t be ruined by their own frailties.
... Leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it.... Give the customer what he wants. The customer is always right.
Having lost a sense of their own frailty, many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements. They become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs. Like any normal set of human beings, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay.
The consequences of this shift are now obvious. In Europe and America, governments have made promises they can’t afford to fulfill. At the same time, the decision-making machinery is breaking down....
And so European citizens demand "great lifestyles without long work hours." American citizens demand all those horribly indulgent things in the Obama campaign's "Julia" ad. (Small Business Administration loans! How self-pampering!) It's all their fault! Politicians should know what wallowers in sloth humans are and just start cracking the whip!
You know what ordinary people really want? We want not to have the rug pulled out from under us. We're all born into a society we never made; without thinking too much about it, we grow up into that society, and that society, if we live in the First World, tells us that certain expectations are reasonable -- and we get upset not because we can't have every luxury imaginable, but because at times our society tells us we suddenly can't have things it told us we could reasonably expect.
You take an assembly-line job at an auto plant in 1955 because you need a job, and they tell you it comes with a pension and generous retiree health benefits. You stay till you're old, and all the while you arrange your life as if the benefits they promised you will be there -- not because you're slothful and indulgent, but because they were promised. Of course you get upset when they're taken away. In Europe, more is promised, but you can't blame people for taking those promises literally, and being angry when they're broken.
And people are willing to give back if the giveback isn't sudden and wrenching. They're willing to pay more taxes, too. Consider the fact that the least popular president of the past thirty years is the one who never raised taxes. The current Congress has approval ratings lower than those for flesh-eating bacteria, and it never raises taxes. People took tax increases from Clinton, from Poppy Bush, even from Reagan. They'd do it again in the right circumstances (i.e., a truly recovering economy).
You know who wants everything they've ever imagined wanting, and feels persecuted when that doesn't happen? Not ordinary Europeans. Not most Americans. Two groups: U.S. right-wingers and (most important) the extremely rich, particularly those in the financial sector (globally) and the energy sector (in this country). The rest of us will make reasonable adjustments when necessary, and do with less. Those two groups raise holy hell when they're asked to do that. They're the big problem.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
Thursday, May 17, 2012
MITT ROMNEY: MARRIED TO THE RIGHT-WING MOB
Here's the official narrative of today, as Mitt Romney would like you to understand it: a rogue rich guy was planning to unleash a distasteful, racially tinged attack on Barack Obama. Mitt Romney and his campaign (a) were surprised and horrified to learn of this gutter-level independent effort or (b) were the folks who secretly told The New York Times what was going on. Result: gutter campaign nipped in the bud. The effort to defeat Obama will remain high-minded from now on.
Except that, if Romney really doesn't want attacks of this kind to take place, stopping them is not going to be that easy. There are just too many crazy right-wingers with too many crazy ideas, and some of them have lots of money and/or media sense.
Even as this attack was prevented, we had a birtherite Breitbart post of a literary agent's brochure from 1991 that -- as the result of a then-assistant's mistake -- declared that Obama was born in Kenya. We had the Murdoch media's current pet author, Edward Klein, hinting that Obama was a Muslim when he met Jeremiah Wright. We had another GOP congressman going birther. And that's just in one news cycle -- months before the general election campaign gets under way in earnest. Does the Romney team think this is just going to stop?
Do you seriously think every right-wing gazillionaire has been cowed by what happened today? Here's something Josh Marshall wrote today about the thwarted plan to use Jeremiah Wright to beat Obama:
...the key is the strategist's claim, quoted in the Times, that the plan would "do exactly what John McCain would not let us do."
This is an old saw that's been going around for almost four years now. And I cannot tell you how many GOP operatives I've heard it from.
... If only the campaign or the RNC had prepped a few dozen commercials featuring Obama in a foot-wide-brim pink fur hat, maxing around with Jeremiah Wright and Weather Underground terrorists about to send his race army of ill-tempered rappers to shake down a few good white folk, the thinking goes, he would have just come apart at the seams.
That's most of what is behind the continued, and, in some ways, really passionately believed mantra on the right that Obama was never really 'vetted.' If we’d only said Kenya a few more times we could have done this thing!
You think that's over? It's not over. There are going to be Joe Ricketts-style attacks from now to November. And if Romney thinks they're going to be counterproductive, or at least a distraction, well, tough -- he signed on for this. This is what the GOP is now, and he wanted to be its nominee.
Will it hurt him? I'm not sure. The right is good at getting its base to believe that every liberal and Democrat is part of one huge hydra-headed beast, but Democrats never do that with the right, so Romney might be able to distance himself from the crazies well enough to win swing voters.
But even if Romney wins in November, he's never going to be rid of these people. If he's president, they're going to demand such lunacy -- arrests of outgoing administration members (including the president), torture of any terrorism suspect we capture, banning of all Muslims from commercial airliners ... who the hell knows what they'll demand? And even though I'm sure he's going to pursue extreme measures a la Scott Walker and the other 2010 Republican governors, I think he still might not be extreme enough for the crazies. And God help him if he ever gets thwarted or outmaneuvered by Democrats.
If he wins, I think he'll be held to such a high standard of wingnuttery that he'll almost certainly have a serious primary challenger backed by much of the looney-right establishment in 2016. Until then, he'll be like John Boehner, always protecting his right flank. And it will never be enough.
Here's the official narrative of today, as Mitt Romney would like you to understand it: a rogue rich guy was planning to unleash a distasteful, racially tinged attack on Barack Obama. Mitt Romney and his campaign (a) were surprised and horrified to learn of this gutter-level independent effort or (b) were the folks who secretly told The New York Times what was going on. Result: gutter campaign nipped in the bud. The effort to defeat Obama will remain high-minded from now on.
Except that, if Romney really doesn't want attacks of this kind to take place, stopping them is not going to be that easy. There are just too many crazy right-wingers with too many crazy ideas, and some of them have lots of money and/or media sense.
Even as this attack was prevented, we had a birtherite Breitbart post of a literary agent's brochure from 1991 that -- as the result of a then-assistant's mistake -- declared that Obama was born in Kenya. We had the Murdoch media's current pet author, Edward Klein, hinting that Obama was a Muslim when he met Jeremiah Wright. We had another GOP congressman going birther. And that's just in one news cycle -- months before the general election campaign gets under way in earnest. Does the Romney team think this is just going to stop?
Do you seriously think every right-wing gazillionaire has been cowed by what happened today? Here's something Josh Marshall wrote today about the thwarted plan to use Jeremiah Wright to beat Obama:
...the key is the strategist's claim, quoted in the Times, that the plan would "do exactly what John McCain would not let us do."
This is an old saw that's been going around for almost four years now. And I cannot tell you how many GOP operatives I've heard it from.
... If only the campaign or the RNC had prepped a few dozen commercials featuring Obama in a foot-wide-brim pink fur hat, maxing around with Jeremiah Wright and Weather Underground terrorists about to send his race army of ill-tempered rappers to shake down a few good white folk, the thinking goes, he would have just come apart at the seams.
That's most of what is behind the continued, and, in some ways, really passionately believed mantra on the right that Obama was never really 'vetted.' If we’d only said Kenya a few more times we could have done this thing!
You think that's over? It's not over. There are going to be Joe Ricketts-style attacks from now to November. And if Romney thinks they're going to be counterproductive, or at least a distraction, well, tough -- he signed on for this. This is what the GOP is now, and he wanted to be its nominee.
Will it hurt him? I'm not sure. The right is good at getting its base to believe that every liberal and Democrat is part of one huge hydra-headed beast, but Democrats never do that with the right, so Romney might be able to distance himself from the crazies well enough to win swing voters.
But even if Romney wins in November, he's never going to be rid of these people. If he's president, they're going to demand such lunacy -- arrests of outgoing administration members (including the president), torture of any terrorism suspect we capture, banning of all Muslims from commercial airliners ... who the hell knows what they'll demand? And even though I'm sure he's going to pursue extreme measures a la Scott Walker and the other 2010 Republican governors, I think he still might not be extreme enough for the crazies. And God help him if he ever gets thwarted or outmaneuvered by Democrats.
If he wins, I think he'll be held to such a high standard of wingnuttery that he'll almost certainly have a serious primary challenger backed by much of the looney-right establishment in 2016. Until then, he'll be like John Boehner, always protecting his right flank. And it will never be enough.
MEANWHILE, IN FAIL...
Jonah Goldberg's last book, Liberal Fascism, entered the New York Times bestseller list at #10, went to #3 the following week, and went to #1 five weeks later.
His new book? Well, it came on the list at #24. And I've seen the new list, which will appear on the Times Web site this weekend, and it's rocketed all the way up to ... #23.
If you're the publisher of this book, for which you paid a reported million-dollar advance, this is not good. If you're the author, who gets to keep that advance, well, you're failing all the way to the bank.
Did Goldberg get sidetracked by bad reviews? By that story about his inflated claim of two Pulitzer nominations? I doubt it -- his audience doesn't take all that "liberal media" hate seriously (or sees it as a badge of honor). I think it's just that The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas is a far less blood-stirring title for wingnuts than Liberal Fascism. Or it could be that the wingers actually read Liberal Fascism and thought it was a ridiculous, implausible hack job.... Nahhh -- impossible. I'm going with the title.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
Jonah Goldberg's last book, Liberal Fascism, entered the New York Times bestseller list at #10, went to #3 the following week, and went to #1 five weeks later.
His new book? Well, it came on the list at #24. And I've seen the new list, which will appear on the Times Web site this weekend, and it's rocketed all the way up to ... #23.
If you're the publisher of this book, for which you paid a reported million-dollar advance, this is not good. If you're the author, who gets to keep that advance, well, you're failing all the way to the bank.
Did Goldberg get sidetracked by bad reviews? By that story about his inflated claim of two Pulitzer nominations? I doubt it -- his audience doesn't take all that "liberal media" hate seriously (or sees it as a badge of honor). I think it's just that The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas is a far less blood-stirring title for wingnuts than Liberal Fascism. Or it could be that the wingers actually read Liberal Fascism and thought it was a ridiculous, implausible hack job.... Nahhh -- impossible. I'm going with the title.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
OH, FOR CRISSAKE
The video report at the link isn't objectionable, but check out the headline for a story about a rich right-wing guy's attempt to bring Jeremiah Wright into the 2012 race:
The right engages in 24/7 back-alley thuggery, then piously declares, over and over and over again, that Team Obama is the real criminal gang in politics, using precisely this term, "Chicago-style politics." And minds at "liberal" NBC News have been so colonized that they just cough up the right-wing meme without thinking.
(X-posted at Balloon Juice.)
The video report at the link isn't objectionable, but check out the headline for a story about a rich right-wing guy's attempt to bring Jeremiah Wright into the 2012 race:
The right engages in 24/7 back-alley thuggery, then piously declares, over and over and over again, that Team Obama is the real criminal gang in politics, using precisely this term, "Chicago-style politics." And minds at "liberal" NBC News have been so colonized that they just cough up the right-wing meme without thinking.
(X-posted at Balloon Juice.)
DO BLOFELDS RUN OUR COUNTRY?
As a kid in the 1960s, I never really understood the apocalypse-plotting-evil-zillionaire archetype (which I knew less from James Bond movies than from cartoons and MAD parodies and episodes of Get Smart that were invoking the James Bond stories). I didn't get why you'd want to bother destroying the world if you were an evil zillionaire -- you're a zillionaire! You're surrounded by luxury! Speedboats! Beautiful women! Your own island fortress/compound! Why not just kick back and enjoy it all?
But now I'm living in an ALEC/Citizens United world, and it's obvious that Blofelds are real. Case in point:
A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the "super PAC" era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
Timed to upend the Democratic National Convention in September, the ... plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr....
"The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way," says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics....
Mr. Ricketts believes he can personally blow up the race. Like so many of these guys, he doesn't just want a result, he wants to be the guy with the power to bring it about and destroy the status quo. He's a Bond villain.
However, he's less clever than most Bond villains. I don't see how it's possible that anyone could have missed all the Jeremiah Wright coverage four years ago. I don't see who the hell could watch the same damn Wright clips we all saw and suddenly decide to vote for Romney after previously planning not to. Plenty of whites won't vote for Obama who might have voted for a different (white) Democrat, but those votes are lost already. How the hell would this change anything?
Ricketts thinks he'll get cover on racism charges if he has Townhall/FrontPage Magazine/World Net Daily columnist and right-wing radio host Larry Elder as window-dressing, along with some right-wing black businessmen. Yeah, right, that'll work.
And it's odd that our Blofelds think like basement-dwelling, Cheeto-chomping Freepers:
The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an "extremely literate conservative African-American" who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."
Why do right-wingers continue to be obsessed with the concept of "metrosexuality," long after the rest of us have stopped talking about it? They still throw the word incessantly at every winger site I've ever lurked at.
****
Ah, but here's a twist: the Romney campaign apparently doesn't want this to happen -- and it's possible that a Romneyite leaked this plan in order to stop it:
A copy of a detailed advertising plan was obtained by The New York Times through a person not connected to the proposal who was alarmed by its tone....
Should the plan proceed, it would run counter to the strategy being employed by Mitt Romney's team, which has so far avoided such attacks. The Romney campaign has sought to focus attention on the economy, and has concluded that personal attacks on Mr. Obama, who is still well liked personally by most independent voters surveyed for polls, could backfire.
I read that as Romney people, not evil liberals, leaking this, because they don't want to go there. Unless (and now I'm getting dangerously conspiratorial) they do want it out there but they want to position themselves as appalled that it's out there. (Maybe the Romney camp just wants to outsource the wet work.)
And possibly whoever leaked this wants it out there now. Maybe this leak is the real attack, or at least part of it.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Edward Klein, the sleazebag whose book about Obama is all over the right-wing media, is also talking about Wright. You know about Klein's claim that an Obama confidant offered Wright a bribe to keep quiet in 2008. Well, yesterday, on Sean Hannity's radio show, Klein went a step further and played the Muslim card:
KLEIN: ... in fact, the Reverend Wright told me on tape that Obama came to him and said, "I need some spiritual advice. I don't know exactly who I am." And the Reverend Wright said -- and this is on tape -- "Well, we know your Islam background, and you have that, but what you need now is some coaching on Christianity." And I asked the Reverend Wright, "Did you convert him from being a Muslim to a Christian?" And he said, "Well, I don't know if I could go that far, but I can tell you that I made it comfortable for him to accept Christianity without having to renounce his Islamic background."
Of course Hannity's main employer and Klein's principal publicist is the ultimate Blofeld threatening America -- Rupert Murdoch.
****
UPDATE: Yup, it's been decided somewhere in the fever swamps of Wingnuttia that it's the right time for Wright time:
As a kid in the 1960s, I never really understood the apocalypse-plotting-evil-zillionaire archetype (which I knew less from James Bond movies than from cartoons and MAD parodies and episodes of Get Smart that were invoking the James Bond stories). I didn't get why you'd want to bother destroying the world if you were an evil zillionaire -- you're a zillionaire! You're surrounded by luxury! Speedboats! Beautiful women! Your own island fortress/compound! Why not just kick back and enjoy it all?
But now I'm living in an ALEC/Citizens United world, and it's obvious that Blofelds are real. Case in point:
A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the "super PAC" era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
Timed to upend the Democratic National Convention in September, the ... plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr....
"The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way," says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics....
Mr. Ricketts believes he can personally blow up the race. Like so many of these guys, he doesn't just want a result, he wants to be the guy with the power to bring it about and destroy the status quo. He's a Bond villain.
However, he's less clever than most Bond villains. I don't see how it's possible that anyone could have missed all the Jeremiah Wright coverage four years ago. I don't see who the hell could watch the same damn Wright clips we all saw and suddenly decide to vote for Romney after previously planning not to. Plenty of whites won't vote for Obama who might have voted for a different (white) Democrat, but those votes are lost already. How the hell would this change anything?
Ricketts thinks he'll get cover on racism charges if he has Townhall/FrontPage Magazine/World Net Daily columnist and right-wing radio host Larry Elder as window-dressing, along with some right-wing black businessmen. Yeah, right, that'll work.
And it's odd that our Blofelds think like basement-dwelling, Cheeto-chomping Freepers:
The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an "extremely literate conservative African-American" who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."
Why do right-wingers continue to be obsessed with the concept of "metrosexuality," long after the rest of us have stopped talking about it? They still throw the word incessantly at every winger site I've ever lurked at.
****
Ah, but here's a twist: the Romney campaign apparently doesn't want this to happen -- and it's possible that a Romneyite leaked this plan in order to stop it:
A copy of a detailed advertising plan was obtained by The New York Times through a person not connected to the proposal who was alarmed by its tone....
Should the plan proceed, it would run counter to the strategy being employed by Mitt Romney's team, which has so far avoided such attacks. The Romney campaign has sought to focus attention on the economy, and has concluded that personal attacks on Mr. Obama, who is still well liked personally by most independent voters surveyed for polls, could backfire.
I read that as Romney people, not evil liberals, leaking this, because they don't want to go there. Unless (and now I'm getting dangerously conspiratorial) they do want it out there but they want to position themselves as appalled that it's out there. (Maybe the Romney camp just wants to outsource the wet work.)
And possibly whoever leaked this wants it out there now. Maybe this leak is the real attack, or at least part of it.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Edward Klein, the sleazebag whose book about Obama is all over the right-wing media, is also talking about Wright. You know about Klein's claim that an Obama confidant offered Wright a bribe to keep quiet in 2008. Well, yesterday, on Sean Hannity's radio show, Klein went a step further and played the Muslim card:
KLEIN: ... in fact, the Reverend Wright told me on tape that Obama came to him and said, "I need some spiritual advice. I don't know exactly who I am." And the Reverend Wright said -- and this is on tape -- "Well, we know your Islam background, and you have that, but what you need now is some coaching on Christianity." And I asked the Reverend Wright, "Did you convert him from being a Muslim to a Christian?" And he said, "Well, I don't know if I could go that far, but I can tell you that I made it comfortable for him to accept Christianity without having to renounce his Islamic background."
Of course Hannity's main employer and Klein's principal publicist is the ultimate Blofeld threatening America -- Rupert Murdoch.
****
UPDATE: Yup, it's been decided somewhere in the fever swamps of Wingnuttia that it's the right time for Wright time:
Just offered Jeremiah Wright $150k for truth about Barack Obama. No Spin #whatsinthebox sj
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 17, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
MY FAVORITE ASPECT OF THE FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS STORY
You know what I love most about the story recounted in a new loony-right documentary, which purports to tell us how Barack Obama has concealed the identity of his real father? It's this:
"Dreams From My Real Father," a 97-minute film narrated by an Obama impersonator, weaves the narrative that Obama's grandfather wasn't a furniture salesman but an undercover CIA agent who convinced Barack Obama Sr. to marry his teenage daughter to hide the fact that she was impregnated by a 55-year-old communist named Frank Marshall Davis.
So wait -- the makers of this film believe Ann Dunham's father was a CIA agent? And at a time of extreme tension in the Cold War -- 1961 -- she was impregnated by a communist and her CIA agent father arranged her marriage to a guy every wingnut now regards as a Euro-bashing socialist? Hunh? And then later on Frank Marshall Davis was hanging around the Dunham house anyway, imparting his evil communist wisdom to young Barack right under CIA Grampa's nose?
And speaking of noses, that's my second-favorite thing about this film: the desperate attempt to prove the Davis-as-father thesis by comparing facial features that aren't all that similar. Check out the bit starting approximately 17 seconds in, from the Talking Points Memo highlight reel:
Do you see an astonishing resemblance between Davis's features and Obama's? No? Me either. As I've pointed out in the past, I do see a strong resemblance between Obama's features and those of his grandfather:
Related to this discussion of facial features is (at 1:18 in the clip) the bizarre claim that Obama had a nose job just before one of his political campaigns -- which is accompanied by a "before and after" picture in which the noses look exactly alike:
The Davis story has been kicking around since before the '08 election. It won't go away on the right, ever.
I shouldn't be surprised about that CIA detail, though. Anyone the wingers can portray as strange and sinister is inevitably believed to be compatible with anyone else perceived to be strange and sinister. That's why Obama can be regarded as both a communist and a Nazi. That's why he's condemned as a capitalism-hater and also condemned for corporate cronyism. That's why wingers think Soros is both a capitalist sleazebag and a communist agent, an evil Jew and a Jew-haing Nazi collaborationist. That's why some wingers think being pro-gay makes you pro-sharia. Whatever they hate is related to whatever else they hate, in their minds.
You know what I love most about the story recounted in a new loony-right documentary, which purports to tell us how Barack Obama has concealed the identity of his real father? It's this:
"Dreams From My Real Father," a 97-minute film narrated by an Obama impersonator, weaves the narrative that Obama's grandfather wasn't a furniture salesman but an undercover CIA agent who convinced Barack Obama Sr. to marry his teenage daughter to hide the fact that she was impregnated by a 55-year-old communist named Frank Marshall Davis.
So wait -- the makers of this film believe Ann Dunham's father was a CIA agent? And at a time of extreme tension in the Cold War -- 1961 -- she was impregnated by a communist and her CIA agent father arranged her marriage to a guy every wingnut now regards as a Euro-bashing socialist? Hunh? And then later on Frank Marshall Davis was hanging around the Dunham house anyway, imparting his evil communist wisdom to young Barack right under CIA Grampa's nose?
And speaking of noses, that's my second-favorite thing about this film: the desperate attempt to prove the Davis-as-father thesis by comparing facial features that aren't all that similar. Check out the bit starting approximately 17 seconds in, from the Talking Points Memo highlight reel:
Do you see an astonishing resemblance between Davis's features and Obama's? No? Me either. As I've pointed out in the past, I do see a strong resemblance between Obama's features and those of his grandfather:
Related to this discussion of facial features is (at 1:18 in the clip) the bizarre claim that Obama had a nose job just before one of his political campaigns -- which is accompanied by a "before and after" picture in which the noses look exactly alike:
The Davis story has been kicking around since before the '08 election. It won't go away on the right, ever.
I shouldn't be surprised about that CIA detail, though. Anyone the wingers can portray as strange and sinister is inevitably believed to be compatible with anyone else perceived to be strange and sinister. That's why Obama can be regarded as both a communist and a Nazi. That's why he's condemned as a capitalism-hater and also condemned for corporate cronyism. That's why wingers think Soros is both a capitalist sleazebag and a communist agent, an evil Jew and a Jew-haing Nazi collaborationist. That's why some wingers think being pro-gay makes you pro-sharia. Whatever they hate is related to whatever else they hate, in their minds.
MATH IS HARD! THAT'S WHAT VOTERS THINK, AND REPUBLICANS TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE
I recommend Jonathan Chait's analysis of Mitt Romney's demagoguery on the debt and deficit. I want to comment on one part of it:
Not only does Romney elide vast swaths of established facts about the deficit, it's fairly clear that he does not operate within the mainstream understanding of the term "deficit" at all. As Jonathan Bernstein has repeatedly explained, modern Republican behavior and even language in relation to the deficit is completely nonsensical if you understand "the deficit" to mean the gap between revenue and outlays. Republican use of the term only makes sense if you define "the deficit" to mean "spending Republicans don't like." That's why Republicans consider it impossible to believe that one could simultaneously extend health insurance to the uninsured while reducing the deficit.
Look at Romney's terms to describe deficits, and it's pretty clear he has adapted himself to his party's conceptualization of it. His speech includes the following phrases:
Well, of course Romney treats "debt" and "spending" as if they're interchangeable terms -- ordinary Americans struggle to understand the national debt and budget deficits, and, being a Republican, Romney's certainly not going to make understanding these concepts any easier, is he? Much better for the GOP if Romney takes advantage of the fact that the public already confuses debt and spending; it's much better for the party if Romney reinforces that sense of confusion, which the GOP has spent years trying to induce. The right has the American people just where it wants them -- misunderstanding these things in precisely this way, and thus blaming all debt and deficits on the spenders. Romney's just carrying on the right's existing work, which has borne great fruit for the party.
Democrats compound the problem because they're afraid to say that there are good government programs that voters clearly want, and therefore those programs need to be funded, and therefore taxes are necessary, which means the important thing is to take in an appropriate amount from an appropriate mix of taxpayers, not to just look for spending cuts. Democrats will never, ever say this outright -- even though everyone now knows that the public wants the rich to be taxed more, and even though people often say they'd pay more in taxes to pay for popular programs -- because Democrats never want to remind voters that government exists.
So Mitt deceives voters on how budgets work, even though we know he (unlike a lot of Republicans, including officeholders) knows better. But we knew he was a cynic, didn't we?
I recommend Jonathan Chait's analysis of Mitt Romney's demagoguery on the debt and deficit. I want to comment on one part of it:
Not only does Romney elide vast swaths of established facts about the deficit, it's fairly clear that he does not operate within the mainstream understanding of the term "deficit" at all. As Jonathan Bernstein has repeatedly explained, modern Republican behavior and even language in relation to the deficit is completely nonsensical if you understand "the deficit" to mean the gap between revenue and outlays. Republican use of the term only makes sense if you define "the deficit" to mean "spending Republicans don't like." That's why Republicans consider it impossible to believe that one could simultaneously extend health insurance to the uninsured while reducing the deficit.
Look at Romney's terms to describe deficits, and it's pretty clear he has adapted himself to his party's conceptualization of it. His speech includes the following phrases:
a financial crisis of debt and spendingIn Romney's telling, the terms debt and spending are essentially interchangeable. When presented with Obama's position -- that the solution to the debt ought to include both higher taxes and lower spending -- he rejects it out of hand.
Washington has been spending too much money
out-of-control spending sprees, or to piling up massive amounts of debt
This is why I do not, for one moment, share my opponent's belief that our spending problems can be solved with more taxes.
Well, of course Romney treats "debt" and "spending" as if they're interchangeable terms -- ordinary Americans struggle to understand the national debt and budget deficits, and, being a Republican, Romney's certainly not going to make understanding these concepts any easier, is he? Much better for the GOP if Romney takes advantage of the fact that the public already confuses debt and spending; it's much better for the party if Romney reinforces that sense of confusion, which the GOP has spent years trying to induce. The right has the American people just where it wants them -- misunderstanding these things in precisely this way, and thus blaming all debt and deficits on the spenders. Romney's just carrying on the right's existing work, which has borne great fruit for the party.
Democrats compound the problem because they're afraid to say that there are good government programs that voters clearly want, and therefore those programs need to be funded, and therefore taxes are necessary, which means the important thing is to take in an appropriate amount from an appropriate mix of taxpayers, not to just look for spending cuts. Democrats will never, ever say this outright -- even though everyone now knows that the public wants the rich to be taxed more, and even though people often say they'd pay more in taxes to pay for popular programs -- because Democrats never want to remind voters that government exists.
So Mitt deceives voters on how budgets work, even though we know he (unlike a lot of Republicans, including officeholders) knows better. But we knew he was a cynic, didn't we?
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