Winning Progressive

In a scathing editorial this past weekend, the economically conservative magazine the Economist took Multiple Choice Mitt Romney to task for failing to consistently explain what he believes or detail what he would do if he were elected President:

But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind.

. . . . . .

A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?

While those portions of the editorial are spot on, the Economist then goes off track by claiming that this week’s Republican National Convention provides Romney with “his best chance to say what he really believes” and an opportunity “to show America’s voters that he is a man who can lead his party rather than be led by it.”  This refrain that the Convention provides the Romney with a chance to define himself and his campaign to the American people is a popular one among the chattering classes.  But it is also flatly wrong.

The reality is that we already know who Mitt Romney is – an out-of-touch politician who is either unable or unwilling to stand up to the rabid reactionaries who have taken over the GOP.  No amount of pandering, speechifying, slick videos, or pretending to be a moderate is going to change that reality.

Some moderates and even a few too many progressives continue to try to convince themselves that Romney would govern as a moderate.  But their only support for that belief is Romney’s time as Governor of Massachusetts, where it would have been impossible for Romney to win or govern if he had not acted like a moderate.  Once he left the Governor’s seat in Boston, Romney saw the writing on the wall that his party was taking a sharp rightward turn.  Rather than fight for the moderation that he needed to pursue in Massachusetts or the reality-based centrism that had been championed by his father George Romney in the 1960s, Romney time and time again joined in and encouraged the level of craziness that define today’s GOP.

As we’ve detailed previously, during the Republican Presidential primaries, Romney abandoned all sense of moderation and threw his lot in with the reactionaries.  For example, he supported Paul Ryan’s “marvelous” Austerity Budget, vowed to “get rid of” funding for Planned Parenthood, supported the Blunt Amendment, echoed the false claims of climate deniers’, explained that he wished that Robert Bork were on the Supreme Court, embraced the support of conservative firebrand Ann Coulter, declared Arizona’s harsh anti-immigration law to be a “model” for the nation, promised to veto the DREAM Act, signed the 2012 pledge of the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage, and vowed to abolish ObamaCare on day one of any Romney Presidential Administration.

Since it became clear that Romney would be the GOP’s nominee, some in the media continued to surmise that Romney would move to the center.  But the move never happened.  Romney hasn’t backed away from the positions he took during the primary, nor has he stood up to any of the out-of-the-mainstream groups that make up the base of today’s GOP.  Instead, the Romney campaign has refused to provide virtually any policy details because they believe that doing so would be suicidal.  But Romney did give a speech to the NRA that fed into that organization’s ridiculous conspiracy theory about President Obama’s non-existent threat to the Second Amendment, and gave the commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University which does not allow LGBT students and teaches creationism.   And most significantly, Romney granted the wish of conservative activists by picking Paul Ryan, whose reactionary attempts to abolish Medicare and privatize Social Security are matched by his social extremism, to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Over the past year, Romney has shown that either: (1) Romney is a “severe conservative” who truly believes in the retrograde economic, social, and foreign policy views promoted by the reactionaries who have taken over the GOP, or (2) Romney is so lacking in principles and convictions that he is unwilling to stand up to those reactionaries.  Either way, the result is the same.  A Romney Presidency would be doing the bidding of the climate deniers, NRA conspiracy theorists, birthers, anti-immigrant nativists, anti-LGBT bigots, Medicare and Social Security privatizers, and peddlers of the failed economic and foreign policies of George W. Bush who have taken over today’s GOP. No amount of slick packaging or moderate talk during the final day of the Republican National Convention will change that reality.

If you want to make sure that Romney is never in a position to do the reactionaries’ bidding, please write a letter to your local newspaper editor about the real Mitt Romney, and sign up to volunteer for President Obama’s re-election campaign.

(By Fay Paxton, cross-posted at The Pragmatic Pundit)

At the conservative “Defending the American Dream Summit” in Washington, Grover Norquist, the Republican tax-cut Svengali said about Mitt Romney:

“All we have to do is replace Obama. …  We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go…. We just need a president to sign this stuff….Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States…. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”

The summit was sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a front group started by oil billionaire David Koch of Koch Industries.   The AFP funds the “Tea Party” and special interest groups that work against Democratic initiatives, opposing protections for workers, the environment, labor unions, health care reform, stimulus spending, and cap-and-trade legislation.

Regarding the “legislation that has already been prepared”,  perhaps you also remember ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council).  The corporate funded organization that rewrites the laws that govern our lives.  Through ALEC and the model legislation written by the organization, corporations have a voice and a vote in our daily lives.  You didn’t really believe Citizens United was an accident did you?

The Ugly Duckling

How and why do you suppose a candidate who was so poorly thought of became the celebrated nominee?  Here’s what leading Republicans have said about Romney:

Rick Santorum: “”We need someone who’s bold and courageous, someone who’s willing to go out and say, ‘I’m for these things because they are my convictions,’ not because I put a finger in the air and that’s where the public is today…..Why would we pick someone who’s had a record that is as a liberal governor of Massachusetts to lead our country at a time we need fundamental change?”

Gingrich:  “This is a campaign of people power versus money power…. He understands a lot about finance, but finance is not the free market, and Wall Street is not Main Street, and giant businesses are not small businesses.”

Michele Bachmann:  “If you look at Mitt Romney, he…has been very inconsistent on his positions. He has been on both sides of the abortion issue, on both sides of the issue of same-sex marriage.”“They (voters) want to know what’s the truth. They’re not interested in a chameleon.”

Rick Perry:  “I happen to think that companies like Bain Capital could have come in and helped these companies, if they truly were venture capitalists, but they’re not…..They’re vulture capitalists.”

Rush Limbaugh: “ Mitt Romney is not a Conservative….Romney is a flip-flopper like John Kerry was; he’s gonna be saying one thing here when he gets to the White House is gonna turn into a moderate. I can think of things, like 2006 or 2007, Romney in Massachusetts says, “I’m not a conservative Republican, I’m a moderate.”

“The Massachusetts healthcare law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed in 2006 includes a program known as the Health Safety Net, which allows undocumented immigrants to get needed medical care along with others who lack insurance.  Uninsured, poor immigrants can walk into a health clinic or hospital in the state and get publicly subsidized care at virtually no cost to them, regardless of their immigration status.”

Mike Huckabee:  “I think a lot of people are deceived, and you have to ask do people want to elect a president who has been dishonest in order to get the job and said things about his opponents that simply aren’t true?”

Sarah Palin:  Romney should both release his tax returns and substantiate his claim that Bain Capital created 100,000 jobs.

Senator Marco Rubio:  “There are a lot of other people out there that some of us wish had run for President, but they didn’t.”

Sheldon Adelson:  “He’s not a bold decision maker…”

Former GOP Virginia Rep. Tom Davis:  “He may not be Mr. Personality, uh, you know, this is a guy who gives a fireside chat and the fire goes out.”

Rudy Giuliani:  “I’ve never seen a guy change his position so many times, so fast, on a dime.”

Former Reagan OMB Director David Stockman:  “I don’t think that Mitt Romney can legitimately say that he learned anything about how to create jobs in the LBO (leveraged buyout) business. The LBO business is about how to strip cash out of old, long-in-the-tooth companies and how to make short-term profits. All the jobs that he talks about came from Staples. That was a very early venture stage deal. That, you know they got out of long before it got to its current size.”

David Frum:  “…..the problem is that Romney hasn’t shown backbone to stick with his positions.”

George Will:  “Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate… Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis…”

And last but not least:

John McCain:  compiled a 200 page Romney opposition research book which is available online thanks to BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski.

Now they all support Romney for President?  Flip-flopping must be contagious. But then again, like Grover Norquist said, “….We just need a president to sign this stuff….a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen…. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”

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Credit for Photo of Grover Norquist, head of the Americans for Tax Reform – NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP / Getty Images

Last week, President Obama and Multiple Choice Mitt Romney both gave speeches to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (“NALEO”) in which they addressed economic and immigration issues.  In his speech, President Obama outlined the economic issues at stake in this election, explained the importance of his new DREAMers immigration policy, reiterated his call for Congress to pass the DREAM Act, and explained why we need immigration reform and a Congress that will stop obstructing such reform.

Multiple Choice Mitt, meanwhile, was in full-bore Etch-a-Sketch mode.  Romney did reiterate some of his anti-undocumented immigrant policies, saying that he would:

re-double our efforts to secure the borders – that means both preventing illegal border crossings and making it harder to illegally overstay a visa.  We should field enough border patrol agents, complete a high-tech fence, and implement and improve exit verification system.

But gone was much of the anti-immigration rhetoric that Romney spewed during the GOP primaries.  In its place was praise for legal immigration and a softer tone on undocumented immigrants.   Romney also promised a “long term solution” for DREAMers but, outside of a promise to provide a “path to legal status” for anyone who serves in the military, he offered no details as to what that “solution” would purportedly involve.

What Multiple Choice Mitt did not address in his speech is whether he still supports the reactionary anti-immigration positions that he has long espoused, or whether he is willing to support sensible and humane policies to address the status of the approximately 11.5 million undocumented immigrants who are hard-working, taxpaying residents of the US.  So, in this edition of Questions for Mitt Romney, we ask:

* Does Romney support President Obama’s DREAMers policy?  It has been more than a week since that policy was announced, and Romney still refuses to give a straight answer as to whether he supports it, though a campaign adviser says he thinks Romney would repeal it.

* Does Romney still believe that the DREAM Act should be vetoed because it is a “magnet for illegal immigration”

* At a time of limited budgetary resources, does Romney believe it is good policy for the US government to be spending an average of $23,148 of taxpayer money to deport each DREAMer?

* Does Romney support the decision of the office of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Romney’s 2008 Arizona campaign chairman to arrest a six-year-old girl on suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant?

* Does Romney still support the strategy of “self-deportation,” which seeks to make life in the US so hard for undocumented immigrants that they “voluntarily” choose to leave the country?

* Does Romney still believe that Arizona’s harsh anti-immigration law is a “model” for the nation.

* Is Kris Kobach, the virulently anti-immigrant Attorney General of Kansas who crafted the self-deportation strategy, still an adviser to the Romney campaign on immigration issues?  What role would Mr. Kobach play in a Romney Administration?

The simple reality is that Mitt Romney has a long track record of taking extreme reactionary positions on immigration issues, and during the GOP primary Romney espoused views that led blogger Steve Benen to justifiably declare Romney “the the most right-wing candidate on immigration of any competitive presidential hopeful in generations.”  Nothing about Romney’s speech to NALEO last week changes the reality that, when it comes to immigration, a Romney Presidency would be marked by extreme anti-immigration policies of self-deportation, not the sensible and humane policies demonstrated by the DREAM Act.

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Earlier editions of this series include Questions for Mitt Romney on health care reform, the NRA and guns, Jerry Falwell and Liberty University, Robert Bork, and Ann Coulter.

You can tell a lot about a political candidate by the people and organizations that they choose to align themselves with.  And for Mitt “Severe Conservative” Romney, few things tell us more about his inability and unwillingness to stand up to the reactionary extremists that have taken over the GOP than his embrace of Ann Coulter.

Coulter, of course, is the conservative firebrand who regularly launches vitriolic attacks on Democrats, liberals, and others in her regular appearances on television and through the eight books published under her name.  Coulter endorsed Romney’s Presidential campaigns in both 2008 and 2012, regularly speaks up for his campaign in her weekly column, and promoted Romney’s 2012 campaign in her speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee (“CPAC”).

Now a political candidate cannot and should not be held responsible for everything that everyone who claims to be a supporter says or does.  But in this case, Romney has embraced Coulter’s support, even launching a commercial in Iowa during the primaries that included a clip of Coulter speaking favorably about Romney.  As such, it is appropriate to ask Romney just how many of Coulter’s beliefs and statements he agrees with.  For example, does Romney agree with Coulter that:

* “Science . . . completely discredited Darwin’s theory of evolution“

* “It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact.“

* ”They’re [Democrats] always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let’s do it. Let’s repress them. Frankly, I’m not a big fan of the First Amendment.”

* “We just want Jews to be perfected … That is what Christianity is … that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews.”

* “I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.”

* “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building”

* “Way too many people vote. We should have fewer people voting. There ought to be a poll tax to take the literacy test before voting.”

* “The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man´s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet – it´s yours. That´s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars – that´s the Biblical view.” 

* ”The Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats’ behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle. They fill the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.”

Today’s Republican Party has been taken over by reactionary extremists, such as Ann Coulter.  As we’ve explained previously, Mitt Romney has plainly decided that rather than try to bring the Republican Party back to some semblance of rationality, he is more than willing to cheer on the crazy in a desperate attempt to become President. With Romney’s embrace of Ann Coulter, we have seen yet another example of the type of severely conservative viewpoints Romney would promote, rather than stand up to, if he were to become President.

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Earlier editions of this series include Questions for Mitt Romney on the NRA and guns, Jerry Falwell and Liberty University, and Robert Bork.

For this weekend’s reading list, we have stories about some of Mitt Romney’s billionaire sugar daddies, the impact of markets on our society, wrongful convictions in the US, progressive economics, and tips for evaluating the accuracy and validity of polls.

Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney – an overview of some of the key billionaires who are financing the SuperPACs behind Romney’s Presidential campaign, and what those billionaires are expecting to get from their campaign investments.

How Markets Crowd Out Morals – a forum about the impacts on society of the expansion of markets into virtually every aspects of our lives, and an evaluation of what the proper role of markets should be.

Exonerations in the United States – 1989-2012 – A report issued by the National Registry of Exonerations describing the 873 known exonerations of wrongfully convicted prisoners between 1989 and 2012, and identifying the key factors that likely led to the wrongful convictions to begin with.  At the Registry website, you can also find out details about each of the 873 exonerations that have occurred over that time period.

The Origins and Evolution of Progressive Economics - an interesting discussion of the origins, bases, and values of progressive economics, defined as an effort to strike “a proper balance between private and public action to ensure greater stability and equitable growth in the economy and better achieve national goals.”  This is part seven of the Center for American Progress’ seven-part Progressive Traditions series.

20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results - with much of the media obsessed with “horse race” type coverage of politics, we are sure to be flooded with a plethora of often conflicting poll results about campaigns and policy issues.  This handy guide provides some good suggestions regarding how to evaluate such polling results for accuracy, validity, and importance.

For this weekend’s reading list, we have an in-depth investigation showing that Texas almost certainly executed an innocent person, a report on how a stable middle class encourages economic growth, an article uncovering other organizations promoting corporate conservative state legislation, how Mitt “Severe Conservative” Romney is a servant of the right wing, and how profit-making has led Louisiana to have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man – an article about the Columbia Human Rights Law Review’s 436-page article Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution which demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that Texas executed an innocent man, Carlos DeLuna, in 1989 for a murder that he did not commit.  The book and all of its supporting documentation are available online at thewrongcarlos.com

The American Middle Class, Income Inequality, and the Strength of Our Economy – a report by the Center for American Progress about the latest economic research demonstrating that a strong middle class is critical to economic growth, while inequality tends to undermine growth.

Mitt Romney, Servant of the Right – an essay arguing that Romney, were he to become President, would not govern as a moderate and instead would do the bidding of the right wing.   Winning Progressive has been making a similar argument, and we have started a new page of questions for Romney about the extreme views of the advisers and organizations that Romney is surrounding himself with.

Louisiana is the World’s Prison Capital – an in-depth assessment of how Louisiana’s system of for-profit prisons and local sheriffs who profit off of them have created an incarceration rate in Louisiana that is twice that of the US as a whole, triple the rate in Russia, and five times higher than the rate in Iran.

Uncovering the Other ALECs – a look at how state government “trade associations” such as the Council of State Governments and the National Conference of State Legislatures work to promote a corporate conservative legislative agenda on issues like school privatization, fracking, tort reform, and other issues