Debate Recap and What's to Come

In the debate on Wednesday Mitt Romney came with his A game and Barack Obama brought his C game.  The result was, as most viewers saw it, a definite win for Romney.  The average of flash surveys of viewers showed that about 50% saw Romney as the victor while 25% thought Obama outduelled his challenger. 

Romney was clearly the better prepared, the most animated and the most focused.  His points were sharp, and often surprising.  Time and again, he appeared to flummox Obama by asserting and sticking to outright fabrications.  A few of these included such statements as these: that his tax cuts were revenue-neutral, that his health plan covers people with pre-existing conditions, that Obama's stimulus package spent $90 billion a year on green energy, and that Obama's health plan took $716 billion away from Medicare recipients but that his own plan did not.  (The truth on these Health Plan numbers is that first, these numbers are over 10 years.  Second, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, got insurers to agree to cut that much from the cost of their services in exchange for all the extra customers they are going to get when the plan's provisions activate in 2014.  So it is pure savings for the program.  The Romney-Ryan Plan, in contrast, simply reduces Medicare by that much to the recipients as they take their vouchers out to try to buy insurance. So it is all taken from the consumers.) The President tried to rebut some of these points, though not all, and often with reasonable and factual but lengthy and complicated explanations that no doubt often confused or bored debate viewers.

I feel the Obama team planned to try to run out the clock on an opponent who has been trailing in the race and causing most of his own problems.  They did not want Obama to seem "unpresidential" by too harshly attacking his opponent.  They committed the dangerous mistake of underestimating their foe and taking the match for granted.  They did not spend nearly as much time in preparation as did Romney and his team, and it showed.  While Obama was more "cool" and delivered some humor, which Romney did little of, these small personality advantages were likely at least offset by Romney's earnestness and superior sense of engagement in the process.

For the president, the first debate represents a huge lost opportunity.  He was clearly pulling ahead and had nearly locked up an electoral vote stranglehold on the election.  Republican Party supporters were vocally berating the Romney campaign.  There were murmurings that big money donors were going to start pulling their support from a losing proposition to concentrate on down ballot candidates and issues.  With a strong debate Obama could have effectively ended the Romney candidacy.  Instead, it is now game on. 

You can expect to see a very different Barack Obama on October 16 when the two meet again in Hempstead, New York.  Expect Obama to have ready and devastating ammunition when Romney talks about his budget, health plan or how much he cares about the average American.  Expect him also to have winning defenses of the Administration's accomplishments, along the lines so successfully laid out in Bill Clinton's Convention speech.  If this doesn't happen the President will find himself in serious trouble down the stretch.  You can also expect to see this counteroffensive start with Joe Biden coming at Paul Ryan very hard this Thursday in the Vice Presidential debate in much the same way Dick Cheney blasted away at and largely flattened John Edwards in 2004 after John Kerry got the better of George W. Bush in their first debate of that year.  It should get plenty lively from here on in. 

Debate Watch Event

I would like to invite everyone to join me in viewing the upcoming presidential debate this Wednesday and having a discussion afterward.  The Tulare County Democratic Central Committee has asked me to moderate their debate watch, and if you are in the area you are welcome to come.

The first of three debates between President Obama and Governor Romney will take place on Wednesday the third at 6:00 P.M. Pacific time.  The Central Committee's campaign office has a 60-inch flat screen set up for the debate which is scheduled to last 90 minutes.  When it ends at 7:30 I'll give my own recap and analysis and then invite questions or comments from the audience.  I plan to ask those who wish to contribute to keep the language clean and the demeanor appropriate for a gathering of respectable citizens.  I anticipate wrapping things up by 8:00.

The Central Committee's office is located at 1616 W. Mineral King Blvd. in Visalia, about two blocks east of Marie Callendar's Restaurant.  They have some free campaign materials and others (particularly the Obama items) for purchase, and will gladly accept donations.  There will be free hot dogs, and light refreshments for those like myself who will  be missing dinner to attend.  If you can make it I hope to see you there!

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Presidential Race: States to Watch

The average of recent national polls between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney has the president ahead by four percent.  However, the national vote doesn't mean anything in an American presidential election.  What matters are the separate elections in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia.  The winner of each state will win its electoral vote (EV), a number equal to the size of the state's congressional delegation, which includes the number of its members in the House of Representatives, plus its two Senators.  (D.C. gets three votes, the same as the smallest states.)

The total number of EVs at stake in the election is 538, and it will take 270 to win.  In this Electoral College election there are only eight states that really matter in 2012, and you will see the candidates and their running mates returning to them time and again in the next five and a half weeks.  Their residents will also be bombarded with broadcast advertising.   

The reason only eight states matter from here on is that 42 of the 50 states, along with Washington, D.C., are already safely in one or the other candidate's columns.  Obama has comfortable leads in 19 states plus D.C. worth a total of 247 EVs.  Romney has sewed up 23 states worth 191 EVs.  That leaves eight closely contested states worth exactly 100 EVs that are still up for grabs.  To win reelection Obama needs 23 of these remaining 100 EVs.  To unseat him Romney needs 79 of them.  This makes it clear that Obama has much the easier task.  Here are the close states and the pertinent statistics.

West
Colorado (9 EV) Obama leads in recent polls by an average of 3 percent. 
Nevada (6 EV) Obama is ahead by 4. 

Midwest
Ohio (18 EV) Obama leads by 5. 
Iowa (6 EV) Obama is up by 4.

East
New Hampshire (4 EV) has Obama ahead by 3. 

South
Florida (29 EV) Obama leads by 3.
North Carolina (15 EV) Obama is up by a slim 1 percent.   
Virginia (13 EV) Obama is ahead by 4.

All these states are close but you will notice that Obama leads in every one of them.  He can win the election by winning Florida alone, even if he loses the other seven.  Winning Ohio and any other state bigger than New Hampshire would also reelect the president.  Or he could take North Carolina and Virginia, or North Carolina and Colorado, Virginia and any two other states, in short, anything that adds up to 23 or more.  He has many paths to victory.

Romney, on the other hand, has less margin for error.  He has to win Florida, and more or less has to win Ohio too.  (If Romney loses Ohio and New Hampshire but wins the other six both candidates would wind up with 269 EVs.  The tie would be settled by the House of Representatives.)  In any case, Romney has to keep Obama from winning any combination of these states adding up to 23 EVs or more. 

Now you know what to look for in the coming weeks.  You can play around with the arithmetic yourself and try out the various combinations.  And remember, a survey that tells who is leading in Iowa, Colorado or any of these states is a lot more important than one indicating who has the most votes nationwide.

Who are Romney's 47 Percent?

In my last post I discussed how, earlier this month, Mitt Romney made big news when a video recording released by Mother Jones magazine showed him disdainfully dismissing the 47 percent of the American people who do not pay federal income tax.  Romney told a small gathering of wealthy donors he feels "it's not my job to worry about" such people who "think of themselves as victims" and who "have no concern for their own lives."  Romneys' remarks created a furor by expressing the commonly held conservative view that a huge proportion of the American people are lazy moochers living off the hard work of the rest.  Today in the blog I will present the numbers on who these 47 percent really are.

See the pie chart below.  This is reprinted from BusinessInsider.com, though you can find it in many other reputable places as well.   As you can see, 46.4 percent do not pay federal income tax, making


Romney's 47 percent figure only a slight exaggeration.  Of that number, almost all of them were not paying income tax because they are either old or poor.  Most of the non payers (28.3%) are employed and are paying federal withholding tax for Social Security and Medicare.  The next largest group (10.3%) are senior citizens, most of them on Social Security.   A smaller slice (6.9%) is made up of people earning less than $20,000.  These working poor are frequently part of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a bipartisan program passed with considerable Republican support to make sure gainful employment pays more than "welfare" in order to get people off public assistance.  Only a tiny fraction (0.9%) are those who do not pay income taxes and are neither elderly nor poor.  And some of these, (an estimated 35,000 in 2009), were not stereotypical "poor moochers" but more like rich avoiders, people earning over $200,000 who took advantage of shelters and deductions to avoid paying.

As often occurs with conservative scapegoat references, the facts and numbers simply do not substantiate Mitt Romney's erroneously skewed stereotypical references.  Sadly, I have seldom seen the truth  persuade people of his world view to change their biased preconceptions.  For those of you amenable to reason, however, you now have the facts to refute the common plutocratic and Tea Party picture of what nearly half the American people are like.  

Romney's 47% Remarks

Mitt Romney's done it again.  I've commented before on the Republican nominee's tendency to let his plutocratic Thurston Howell III inner self show through in unguarded comments.  See my February 2, 2012 post "Romney's Not Very Concerned About the Poor."  You remember the kind of statements I'm talking about.  He "likes being able to fire people."  He's "not very concerned about the poor."  He thinks "corporations are people, too."  He offered to make a little friendly $10,000 bet on the stage in a nationally televised debate.  When asked about the jobless he quipped, "I am also unemployed!"  He characterized the $370,000 he made in speaking fees last year as "not very much."  He thinks those who believe the wealthy should pay a greater share in taxes are "motivated by envy."  He advises those who want to start a business to just ask their parents for the money.  Well, why not?  It worked for him.       

But this time he has really outdone himself.  He was captured on video telling a $50,000 a plate crowd at a Boca Raton fundraiser that 47 percent of the American people do not pay income tax and will vote for President Obama no matter what because they feel they are victims to whom the government owes a living.  He further opined that such people do not care about their own lives, and that, for himself, "My job is not to worry about those people."  Watch the actual recording here.  If you have not yet seen or heard it prepare to be dumbfounded. 

The disdain and contempt encapsulated in these remarks are delivered with feeling by a clearly energized and peeved Romney.  As with his earlier above-referenced series of "gaffes," he follows a well-trod path of condescension and contempt toward those below his socioeconomic level.  The arrogance and enmity of these attitudes are exceeded only by his lack of comprehension of how most people really live.  Americans are among the hardest working people on earth.  Most of those who pay no income tax are senior citizens on Social Security who did pay income taxes for forty to fifty years.  Most of the rest are the working poor, who already pay withholding taxes for Social Security and Medicare but who make too little to pay income tax.

Rather than try to explain he didn't mean to insult and demean nearly half the American people or call them all lazy parasites, today Gov. Romney doubled down on his rhetoric.  He admitted his words might have been "inartfully expressed" but he stands behind his characterization of nearly half the  population of the country.   To hear such remarks from a major party nominee is remarkable.  It's strange for such a high-profile candidate to be so politically clueless.  Even if one holds such views, an astute politician must always presume everything said will be recorded and reported on.  An astute politician would recognize the folly of demeaning nearly half the electorate.  A citizen who had rubbed elbows with everyday people would have understood how inaccurate and unfair a stereotype such pejorative attitudes are.  But Mitt Romney isn't, isn't and hasn't.  It is getting more and more difficult to identify a more poorly suited major party nominee for the office of president within living memory.    

Democrats Win Battle of the Conventions

Now that both major party conventions are over, it's time for a bit of reflection on how they did.  Nowadays a convention rarely chooses the party's nominee.  That is what the grueling primary process is for, and it usually does its job of winnowing things down to one candidate who will bear the standard.

There are two true purposes of the modern convention, one internal and the other external.  The internal purpose is to excite and energize delegates from all over the country to go back home and work hard for the party in the campaign.  The external purpose is to showcase the party's members, views,  leadership, and most of all its presidential and vice presidential candidates in the most favorable light possible for the nation's voters.  And in this most crucial contest there can be no doubt the Democrats at their convention gave President Obama a huge boost going forward into the home stretch of the campaign.

The Republican Convention in Tampa was certainly presentable, but it wasn't electrifying.  When it was all over, Mitt Romney got a one percent "bounce" in the polls.  Keynote Speaker New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was flat.  Florida Senator Marco Rubio, speaking to introduce Governor Romney's acceptance speech, impressed me as an excellent speaker, the best I saw in the GOP fold.   Both, however, unfortunately talked more about themselves than their party's nominee.  It seemed more they were positioning themselves for 2016 than addressing themselves wholeheartedly to the full-throated support of the 2012 ticket.  Vice Presidential pick Paul Ryan came across as a regular guy, but his remarks included so many factual inaccuracies they became the focus of the coverage.  Prospective first lady Ann Romney did a good job with a weak speech.  See for yourself.  Clint Eastwood embarrassed himself and the party with a rambling conversation with an empty chair meant to symbolize President Obama.  It derailed things right before the nominee himself took the floor.  Finally came Mitt Romney himself.  I felt he gave the best delivery of a speech I have even seen from him.  That means it was average.  See Romney's speech here.  It was not memorable, however, and included, like most of the other speakers' remarks, hardly anything of firm substance that he would do as president.  He made quick reference to a 5-point plan for the country in about fifteen seconds, then went back to generalities.

The Democratic Convention in Charlotte was, in the eyes of most longtime observers, the best in memory.  The clearest evidence for this is President Obama polling a post-convention seven percent bump in his approval rating.  Michelle Obama easily out duelled her counterpart talking about her man in her First Lady speech.  Bill Clinton gave what was likely the strongest address in either convention, taking on virtually every Republican objection to Obama's outlook and policies in impressive fashion.  He made the kinds of defenses of Democratic policies the Obama administration has been largely fumbling with during most of its tenure.  This was followed on the final night by Obama's acceptance speech, one of his customary stem winders that had the audience in tears and on its feet throughout.  It definitely helped the Democrats to go second, as they had clearly tailored their remarks to rebut earlier GOP points and pounce on Republican missteps.  Obama came off as confident yet caring, immersed in policy yet still imbued with the optimism and idealism that launched his election four years ago. 

This time it was the Democrats who put their social issues (gay rights, immigration, women's issues) front and center while the Republicans tried to avoid discussing them.  This time it was the Democrats who were on top of foreign policy while their rivals scarcely brought it up.  Obama gave detailed solutions while Romney avoided specifics altogether.  There are still eight weeks left in the campaign and a lot can happen.  But the strong edge the Democrats gained in the Battle of the Conventions puts Obama in the driver seat at this point.  To win, Team Romney will have to come from behind to make up a good deal of lost ground.      

Romney's Economic Plan: Would it Work?

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is running for the highest office in the land mainly based on his claim that he can work wonders with the economy.  To see what he has in mind to bring this about, I went to the Romney campaign web site to see what his plans are.  There I discovered  the most remarkable characteristic about the former Massachusetts governor's platform is how strongly it resembles the formula laid out by the most recent Republican president--George W. Bush.  Yes, that's right; the very policies Bush enacted that led to financial collapse and recession are the same ones Mr. Romney wants to bring back and says will restore prosperity this time.

The first has to do with the elimination of regulations.  In particular, Romney wants to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulations requiring oversight, transparency, shareholder involvement and consumer protections against risky secret hedge and derivative funds.   The above link will take you to an excellent synopsis of what it does.  Romney would have us go back to the unsupervised, casino-trading operations that put millions out of work and led to $1.5 trillion in bailouts for the "too big to fail" institutions.  Morgan Chase's recent $2-$3 billion debacle shows how little the giants have learned their lesson and how closely they still need to be supervised.  Romney would remove even the semblance of a brake on these high-stakes high-risk operations.  Leave these federally-insured investors free to take whatever wild ventures promise to make the highest short-term profits.  If it entails enormous long-term risk, no problem.  The taxpayer's dime will be there to bail them out.

The second part of the Romney program is a reprise and indeed an extension of the Bush tax policy.  The 2001 Bush tax cuts reduced the marginal rates about 3% for most payers, though 4.6% for the top earners.   Another round of Bush cuts in 2003 raised the brackets about 2%, effectively cutting taxes again.  See a detailed treatment of both cuts here.  Though the conservative Heritage Foundation forecast the plan would eliminate the deficit by 2010, what they actually did was turn a $230 billion yearly surplus from the Clinton years into a $450 billion deficit under Bush.  In fact, the Congressional Research Service finds that the Bush tax cuts have cost $2.9 trillion in deficits plus an additional $600 billion in debt interest payments since their enactment.  

For his part, Romney's site advocates another 20% income tax cut, across the board, along with the elimination of the estate tax.  The corporation tax on profits would fall, after expenses and deductions, by 29%.  Once again the wealthy would reap the lion's share of the reduction, while the middle class and poor would suffer the bulk of the pain.  That is because of the third facet of the Romney plan.

The third part is the spending side of the ledger.  Again, as with Bush, domestic spending would be slashed while military spending would skyrocket.  Romney would accelerate military spending even though we have disengaged from one war and are winding down another.  His plan calls for cutting $500 billion a year, though that would be greater for domestic priorities because of the augmentation for defense.  I was only able to identify $264 billion of cuts from the web site.  But much of it would come from enacting the "House Republican (Ryan) Budget" which would privatize Medicare.  Another part of the plan would make Social Security recipients wait until they are older to collect benefits. 

As usual, average people would be asked to do without so richer people could be given lower taxes, under the view that this would encourage growth and balance the budget.  The persistence of this ideology is rather astonishing, given its failure to produce either a balanced budget or increased broad-based prosperity any of the times it has been tried in past economic downturns, whether under Hoover, Reagan or either Bush.  Yet this is precisely what Romney would try again if he is given the chance.  Among other things, the success of the Romney campaign hinges on the American people having extremely short memories. 





     

2012 Endorsement: Re-Elect President Obama

The Presidential nominating contests are now over.  In the past few days President Barack Obama has officially kicked off his re-election campaign with rallies in the battleground states of Virginia and Ohio, and challenger Mitt Romney has seen his last serious opponent withdraw from the Republican race.  With both nominations now assured at the respective major party conventions, it is time to go ahead and make my endorsement.  The choice for 2012 is clear: President Obama deserves a second term and should be re-elected President of the United States. 

The president who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2013 will confront a host of problems.  Domestic policy, including the economy, will be at the forefront of these.  Yet the nation also faces serious challenges in foreign policy.  Beyond this, the next administration will also be called upon to navigate a number of serious and inherently divisive social issues as well.   On all three counts, President Obama is the best choice for the American people.

Obama has the right prescription for what ails the American economy.  He entered office during the worst recession in 80 years, a downturn caused by the reckless irresponsibilities of a financial industry that in creating a housing bubble and risky investment instruments, brought the global financial structure to the edge of collapse.  This had been abetted in government by a diffident philosophy that gave irresponsible fast buck operators free rein to operate without serious regulatory accountability.  President Obama acted on that with Wall Street Regulatory Reform and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  He also stopped the free-falling economy with a $787 billion stimulus package that stopped the job losses and has produced job gains every month for over two years now.  See these graphs. 

In contrast, Romney wants to return to the lax regulatory stance of the Bush years and supports the Paul Ryan budget plan of tax cuts for the wealthy and budget cuts to the infrastructure and human needs of the rest of society.  Analysis shows that the Romney budget would actually increase the deficit by cutting revenues so sharply.  Beyond that, its cuts in domestic spending would follow the "austerity" path the European nations adopted and that now is leading them into a double-dip recession.  Spending cuts are working no better for them in a recession than they did for Herbert Hoover, and for the same reason.  Yet Romney hews to the discredited party line.

Obama has also excelled in foreign policy, ending the Iraq War and now in the process of successfully winding down the Afghan War.  His drone strikes despite Pakistani protests have eliminated two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leadership and his decisive action in ordering the Bin Laden raid rid the world of its greatest terrorist menace.  He demonstrated admirable deftness in dealing with the Arab Spring, including the insurgency against Libya's Qaddafi.  He is handling the Korean and Iranian situations with the perfect balance of diplomatic incentives and sanctions.  As a result, under Obama's leadership the U.S. is once again respected and even liked in the world. 

In Romney's case, on world affairs he appears disengaged and uninformed.  He relies on many of the same interventionist neocon advisers left over from the ruinous Bush-Cheney administration.  He is still living in the Cold War, saying that "Russia is public enemy number one" in one memorable statement.  As if we haven't had enough problems with open-ended wars, he joined the rest of the Republican candidates in advocating starting a new war against Iran.  He is clearly out of his depth in foreign affairs, a shortcoming that could be highly damaging were he to become the leader of the free world.  

Obama is similarly the better of the two on social issues by far.  In supporting the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, ending Don't Ask Don't Tell in the military, supporting the Violence Against Women Act, leaving women's questions such as abortion and contraception up to them, supporting the DREAM Act and standing strong for college Pell Grants and low student loan interest rates, the President continues to serve the causes of fairness and equality in society.  Romney, on the other hand, has stood with the extreme right-wingers in his party on all these issues except for his belated support for the student loan interest rate matter.  He campaigned on being the most opposed to comprehensive immigration reform, is against gay rights and has supported all the recent restrictions Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted against permitting women to make their own choices.  It is no coincidence Romney trails the President 70-14 with Latinos and 55-39 among women.

After Alabama and Mississippi: The Road Ahead

Results are now in for today's Republican presidential primaries in Mississippi and Alabama.  In both races, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum came in first, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich came in a close second and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney came in third, a few percentage points back.  Representative Ron Paul finished far back in fourth place with single-digit percentages of the vote in both states. Look up the specific numbers here.

Here's what it means: For Rick Santorum, it is great news.  He has now firmly assumed the role of the main conservative alternative to Romney.  For Newt Gingrich, the air has officially left his balloon.  If the Southern regional candidate cannot win in the South, then what is his rationale for going on?  He was close, but in his home region he needed better.  Gingrich announced he would stay in the race but we are likely to see his numbers rapidly deflate in upcoming contests.  For Mitt Romney it was another opportunity lost.  He remains the front runner, but also remains vulnerable.  Wins in both Southern states would have basically locked up the nomination for him.  A win in one would have put his opponents on life support.  Instead, the fight will go on.  For Paul, the handwriting is on the wall as he slips into irrelevance.

Even if Gingrich stays in the race, his power to siphon votes away from Santorum, now the Un-romney, will have been severely weakened.  Santorum will get a better shot at a true one on one against him next Tuesday in Illinois.   A Romney victory would once again fire up his inevitability train and could well lead to putting the nomination effectively in his pocket by mid-April.  Romney will outspend Santorum by several magnitudes to one, but the Pennsylvanian will have the heart of the social conservatives.  It will be a real showdown on March 20.  If Santorum can win, expect panic in the GOP establishment.  He came close in Ohio and Michigan, so this is a real possibility with fewer anti-Romney votes being split with Gingrich.   

A Santorum victory in Illinois is a real possibility and could well lead to either a wild race to the finish between the two or even a war of attrition in which neither secures the necessary delegates to hold a majority when the party convention opens in Tampa.  The first brokered convention since 1952 would certainly be a sight to see, and not one for the squeamish.

Romney's Not Very Concerned About the Poor

There's something just not quite right about Mitt Romney. It's true he has been governor of a state and did a good job running the Salt Lake City Olympic Games. He made a lot of money at Bain Capital. He reads a script well and has a handsome smile, but when he speaks off the cuff he tends to reveal an astonishingly deaf ear and callously dismissive attitude about those who don't move in his upper crust circles. He talks a lot about regular Americans but doesn't seems to have the slightest comprehension of what being one is really like. Yesterday he committed another huge "gaffe." This is the latest in a now lengthening succession of such verbal missteps. It seems to me when someone keeps saying the same kinds of things over and over it's not an exception or an aberration; it's how a person really thinks.

Yesterday's stunner was, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." The rich are doing "just fine" and the poor have a "safety net" that he will attend to if it needs some fixing, but that's apparently about it. He wants to focus on being president of the middle class, he said. Even Newt Gingrich quickly shot back that he looked forward to being president and looking after the needs of the whole American people. Today at the National Prayer Breakfast President Obama spoke of the Sermon on the Mount and how Jesus's commands to help the plight of "the least among us" motivates much of his policy thinking. Even Rush Limbaugh lectured on the sheer political stupidity of Romney's remark, of making himself a caricature of the "stereotypical rich Republican."

This follows a string of comments all hitting the same note. One was told jokingly, "I should tell my own story, I'm also unemployed!" The son of the president of an automobile manufacturer who later became governor of a state, Romney implausibly purported to have "worried about getting a pink slip" during one campaign stop. Then there was his challenge to bet Rick Perry $10,000 during a debate, a figure seemingly meant to signify a small friendly wager to him. He commented that his income from speaking fees last year was "not very much." It was $370,000, or seven times the income of the average American. He famously said he, "likes firing people" who provide services to him. He made major headlines by opposing tax hikes on corporations at one event by opining that, "Corporations are people too, my friend." He can't seem to comprehend how anyone could think his 13.9% tax rate on his largely investment-derived income was unfair compared to the 35% rate many pay on money earned actually working at a job. He has ascribed such a perspective to "envy."

While Obama was at the prayer breakfast discussing the New Testament's injunctions to serve those in pain and need, Romney, as if to underscore his plutocratic pedigree, was today in Las Vegas receiving the endorsement of none other than Donald Trump. Mr. Romney can't seem to help coming across as a "swell," a rich kid who has never had to interact with regular folks very much and has very little clue what it's like to actually be one. And that's likely because, well, that's who he really is.

Republican Candidates Hit Romney

Things have gotten lively in New Hampshire the last couple of days.  In the Republican primary there tomorrow Mitt Romney is widely expected to win (see New Hampshire polling info) in a state that borders Massachusetts, where he once was governor.  The rest of the field is angling for second place.  Still, the unRomneys have taken a break from savaging each other and are now turning their fire on the frontrunner.

Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry have all lashed out at Romney.  Word is out that Gingrich's "unaffiliated" Super PAC has received a $5 million gift from Las Vegas tycoon Sheldon Adelson to hit Romney for destroying jobs during his days as CEO of Bain Capital.  Romney didn't help himself any on this score by today declaring, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."   

The real dynamics of this may play out in South Carolina, where Romney currently polls about 10 points ahead of Santorum and Gingrich.  For the conservatives to have a chance, they really need to narrow the field.  Huntsman doesn't figure to be much of a factor in South Carolina and it will likely be Perry's last stand.  If Romney can hang on there, winning against a crowded field with 30% of the vote, his inevitability campaign may well start to run the table and effectively lock things up in February.  On the other hand, if Perry, Huntsman and one of the others drops out after that, the survivor might have a chance to get Romney in a one on one and start to come up with a win here and there.

Either way, it certainly is interesting to see conservative Republican pols smacking a fellow GOPer for being a heartless businessman willing to sacrifice the livelihoods of regular workers to pad his own profits.  If this seems a productive line of attack for them to take in a Republican primary campaign, just imagine what nominee Romney would likely face from the Democrats in a national campaign. 

Republican Field: Can Any of Them Win?

Saturday night six Republican hopefuls met in Des Moines for their latest debate.  You can read the full transcript here.  There will likely be only one more such encounter before the Iowa caucuses, the first official test of strength in the nomination process, are held on January 3, 2012. 

Newt Gingrich, as the new front runner in the polls, came under attack from his fellow competitors, as did Mitt Romney.  See polling data here.  Though he lied several times to obfuscate his former record of support for such measures as climate cap and trade and an individual mandate to buy health care, and drew belly laughs trying to explain his eight-figure K Street lobbying haul as simple "private sector free enterprise," most observers felt Gingrich held his own well enough to retain his late momentum toward victory in Iowa.  See the Fact Check report on instances of untruthfulness in the debate here.  Suffice it to say this field did not win any awards for accuracy last night.

What stands out more than anything at this time are the glaring deficiencies of all the remaining Republican candidates.  One-time front runners Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, along with Rick Santorum, have sought to appeal to the conservative Evangelical Christian vote.  Yet Bachmann's and Perry's stumbles have evaporated their following, while Santorum has yet to be able to generate any.  None of these three gives evidence of being ready to assume the office they seek.

Jon Huntsman, a fellow who tries to talk sense, suffers the handicap in the Republican electorate of being a former appointee of the Obama Administration as Ambassador to China.  Though he is actually quite conservative, the former Utah governor also suffers from sounding far too reasonable when GOP primary voters are howling for red meat rhetoric.  Huntsman also gets stuck with being identified as the second-fiddle "other Mormon" in the field behind Mitt Romney.

That leaves the two current leaders, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.  Romney's Achilles' heel is certainly his reputation as a serial flip-flopper.  Gingrich and the others have zeroed in on this, and were he to win the nomination you can rest assured the Obama campaign would have a field day on this score.  He is competent to be president, but comes across as rather a patrician wimp, strangely reminiscent of the forty-first president, George H. W. Bush.  He might be the most electable general election candidate in the GOP primary field, but he is viewed as too moderate by the typical Republican primary voter. 

Newt Gingrich assuredly knows enough to be president, and now has a sizable lead among likely GOP voters in all the national polls.  Yet he too has major weaknesses.  He has reversed course on the issues perhaps even more than Romney, if that is possible.  He is mean and shoots from the hip like a talk radio pundit, making outrageous statements often at odds with reality.  His ethics lapses are the stuff of legend.  And Gingrich has made over $100 million as a K Street Washington lobbyist for firms the Tea Party excoriates for "crony capitalism."  This has all come after he was drummed out of the House Speakership and fined $300,000 by an ethics committee run by his own party in 1998.  As Joan Walsh of Salon writes of Newt, "even his baggage has baggage." 

Though President Obama should be regarded as vulnerable given the slow recovery of the economy, this field of GOP challengers will be challenged indeed to beat him come next November.  And their biggest obstacles might well be themselves.





    

How McCain Won

Last summer John McCain's campaign was left for dead. Today, after taking the winner-take-all Virginia Primary, along with Maryland and the District of Columbia, he stands on the verge of gaining the Republican nomination for president. The venerable candidate, so short of funds he had to mothball his spacious motor home for a van, and whose senior brain trust had begun fleeing his sinking campaign in droves, will soon eliminate his last remaining serious challenger and lead his party into the general election. It's one of the great political comeback stories in recent memory. How it happened can be summed up in four words: Thompson, Huckabee, Giuliani and time. The great might-have-been is Mitt Romney.

Romney was a formidable candidate. He had good looks and an unbroken record of effectiveness in private business, the Olympic Games and as Governor of Massachusetts. There has never been the slightest hint of personal scandal about him. On top of that he had nearly limitless funds to commit to the race. Romney crafted a winning strategy against the projected field. He would run to the right of McCain and Rudy Giuliani and slightly to the left of Bible Belt social conservatives Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee. McCain and Giuliani would split the moderate vote to his left. Thompson and Huckabee would split the conservative vote to his right. Romney would have the 35% of moderate conservatives in the middle all to himself while the other four came in at 15% each. Ron Paul and arch-conservatives Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo would siphon up the rest. It was a good strategy. Then everything fell apart for him and into the waiting arms of John McCain.

McCain's first break came with the entry of Fred Thompson into the contest, if it can be characterized as such. After waiting so long to get in that much of the early enthusiasm for drafting him had dissipated, Thompson proved an absolute flop on the campaign trail. With his lackluster performances and paucity of message he could have been dubbed the Sominex candidate.

This opened the door for Huckabee. With no competition for the social conservative vote, Huckabee quickly gobbled up the lion's share of it and won the opening round at the Iowa caucuses. Speaking like the affable Baptist preacher he once was, Huckabee could relate to born-agains in the images and terminologies they knew and loved. He not only absorbed the predicted Thompson vote but ate into Romney's right flank. Romney began repositioning himself as a true dyed-in-the-wool conservative to fend off this encroachment.

McCain's next break was the implosion of Rudy Giuliani. Leading in national polls into early December, Giuliani's support proved to be of the "mile wide and inch deep" variety. Though hurt by allegations of spending city funds for the security of his then-mistress, Giuliani's difficulty was more basic than that. His real problem was that the more voters saw him the less they liked him. The abrasive New Yorker seemed to rub everybody the wrong way. His numbers dropped faster than a Buffalo thermometer in January. With no competition for the moderate vote, McCain grabbed Rudy's will o' the wisp adherents. With Romney's fire directed now at Huckabee, McCain began making unopposed inroads into Romney's left flank as well. McCain won the New Hampshire Primary. Romney was now trapped between the unified left and right wings of the party. Faced with a Faustian choice, he decided to take out the upstart preacher first and go after McCain once that was done. He never got the chance. Huckabee's bloc had solidified and could not be budged. Once Romney's moderate support began defecting to McCain he went after the Arizonan, but by then it was too late. On Super Tuesday Huckabee ran wild in the South and McCain swept California and the big states of the Northeast. Romney's success in Massachusetts and the Mountain West wasn't enough. He was done.

McCain's last ally was time. Enough of it had elapsed to take the sting out of some of the pre-campaign positions he had taken that rankled conservatives. Conservative anger based on his voting against the Bush tax cuts, supporting McCain-Kennedy-Bush immigration reform and McCain-Feingold campaign reform had receded just enough that Huckabee couldn't stop him far from the South. Enough of it had elapsed to make his support for the Iraq surge seem providential to most Republicans. And too little of it remained for the cash-strapped Huckabee to overcome the delegate lead McCain had amassed in his big winner-take all victories.

Thus reads the remarkable story of John McCain's improbable march to the nomination in 2008. He may go on to make history as the oldest president elected to a first term. But whether or not he does he has already made history in a primary season the like of which may not be seen again.

Romney Out; What's With Huckabee?

As predicted here on January 30, Mitt Romney failed to sufficiently slow the McCain train and bowed out two days after Super Tuesday. Romney is to be commended for bowing to the inevitable; he would have needed 88% of the remaining Republican delegates to win the nomination, an impossibility in practical terms against two opponents.

The larger question now becomes why Mike Huckabee is staying in. Huckabee's odds are even longer. He would need to claim 93% of all yet to be determined Republican delegates to be crowned the party's standard bearer at the convention in St. Paul. While it's true he faces only one major opponent (apologies to Ron Paul), that's a practical impossibility too. So what is he up to?

Well, for one thing he's certainly campaigning in earnest. Today he began an extensive trek through Kansas and he's expected to go next to Virginia and do the same thing. Huckabee is also basking in today's endorsement by Focus on the Family founder and Christian conservative icon Dr. James Dobson. Does Huck really think he can still win the nomination?

No, he's far too smart for that. You don't win six statewide elections in a swing state without being able to read the electoral math. He knows very well he has no chance. Instead, two things are most likely on his mind: pushing McCain to the right and just maybe setting himself up as running mate.

By challenging McCain in socially conservative states Huckabee is trying to impress the Arizonan with the need to tack to the right instead of back to the center as usually happens in a general election campaign. If Huckabee can win in such states or lose closely enough to embarass the presumptive nominee, he hopes to force McCain to adhere to the positions the political and social right holds dear. "Don't take the base for granted" is the message. Many prominent right wing print and radio pundits are incensed at McCain's success and predict doom. "John McCain as the nominee would be the destruction of the Republican Party!" bloviates Rush Limbaugh. At the Conservative Political Action Conference today McCain was met with boos and jeers when he brought up the subject of immigration. So part of Huckabee's staying in is to try to force McCain to take conservative positions he won't be able to abandon if he wins the White House.

The other message in Huckabee's decision to continue is revealingly set forth by his own statement, "I've proven I can win in the South. A Republican who can't win in the South won't be president." Implicit in Huckabee's quote is that if he continues to prove McCain is weak with the base then that shows McCain needs help there-and Huckabee is the one who can deliver that help. Mike Huckabee knows full well he won't be the nominee. But he's left his calling card on John McCain's doorstep.