How Clinton Damaged Romney-Ryan

Daniel Larison thinks Clinton damaged the Romney/Ryan ticket and they have no one to blame but themselves.

Scott Galupo identifies the main strength of Bill Clinton’s convention speech:

 But the case he made against Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan was devastating.

It was, and it was all the more devastating because Romney and Ryan made no concerted effort to make the case for their ticket and their agenda last week. ........... Ryan was supposed to be the presidential ticket of the “data-driven” manager and his budget wonk sidekick, and between the absence of any significant policy discussion last week and what happened tonight that has lost all credibility. Clinton outperformed both of them in terms of discussing policy details, and underscored just how meaningless the “campaign of ideas” phrase has been. Ryan fans had been convinced for over a year that the election had to be a contest over “big ideas,” and when it came time to engage in that contest their party leaders didn’t even try.

Steven Taylor thinks Clinton was correct when he said:

In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President’s re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.

It appears they are running a Bob Dole rope a dope campaign thinking that not being Obama will be enough.  It didn't work for Dole and it won't work now. Steven Taylor again:

However, the Romney campaign, especially as manifested by the RNC’s messaging, is failing to do two important (and interrelated) things: 1.  Explain how Romney will do better than Obama. 2.  Explain how Romney will do better than Bush. A successful campaign needs, I would argue, to be able to say how he would do better than the incumbent, but he also needs to explain what he would do differently than the last time one of his co-partisans occupied the White House.

The "policy" discussions at the RNC were little more than Republican talking points - very little policy.   Anyone who says they are going to cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Weekend Book Review - Ayn Rand and the World She Made

Commentary By Ron Beasley

With the Ayn Rand cultist Paul Ryan becoming the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate today I thought this might be a good opportunity to republish my reveiw of the Ayn Rand Biography by  Anne C. Heller from 2010.

--------------------------------------------------------

The picture on the left may represent the beginning of the deregulation frenzy that resulted in the current world wide economic disaster. It was taken in 1974 by David Hume Kennerly and pictured are President Gerald Ford, Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, Rand's husband Frank Conner and Greenspan's mother Rose Goldsmith. The occasion was Alan Greenspan being sworn in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The significance of the picture is that Ayn Rand is there next to her disciple Alan Greenspan but to understand the significance you must understand Rand herself and her philosophy. Anne C. Heller helps us do that with her excellent biography of Rand, Ayn Rand and the World She Made.

I recommend this book not because I agree with anything Ayn Rand stands for but because it's a really good read and it's necessary to understand Rand and undererstand how we arrived where we are today. Heller makes it clear that Rand and her life are much more interesting than any of the creations in her fiction and there are times you forget that you are not reading fiction. I am going to concentrate on Rand's early life in this review � it's important because narcissists and sociopaths like Rand are either created early if not born that way.

Alyssa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born in St Petersburg, Russia in 1905 of Jewish parents. While it's often said that it was the Bolshevik revolution that was responsible for Rand's philosophy and world view according to Heller the foundation for Rand's philosophy predates the revolution.

When Rand was five or so, she recalled, her mother came into the children's playroom and found the floor littered with toys. She announced to Rand and Rand's two-and-a-half-year-old sister, Natasha, that they would have to choose some of their toys to put away and some to keep and play with now; in a year, she told them, they could trade the toys they had kept for those they had put away. Natasha held on to the toys she liked best, but Rand, imagining the pleasure she would get from having her favorite toys returned to her later, handed over her best-loved playthings, including a painted mechanical wind-up chicken she could describe vividly fifty years later. When the time came to make the swap and Rand asked for her toys back, her mother looked amused, Rand recalled. Anna explained that she had given everything to an orphanage, on the premise that if her daughters had really wanted their toys they wouldn't have relinquished them in the first place. This may have been Rand's first encounter with injustice masquerading as what she would later acidly call "altruism." Her understanding of how power can be acquired by a pretense of loving kindness would grow only more acute with time.
Perhaps it's little wonder, then, that from the age of four or five onward, Rand developed a keen sense that anything she liked had to be hers, not her mothers, the family's, or society's, an attitude that readers of her 1943 novel The Fountainhead will recognize in the perverse and complicated character of Dominique Francon. As a corollary, she claimed not to care about being approved of or accepted by her family and peers. Since she generally wasn't accepted, the proud, intelligent child appears to have learned early to make a virtue of necessity. In her twenties and thirties, she would construct a universe of moral principles built largely on the scaffolding of some of these defensive childhood virtues.

The second influence in Rand's life came when she read a serial in a French Boys magazine, The Mysterious Valley. It was there that Rand met Cyrus Vance, a handsome and heroic figure and in Rand's eyes a hero in every way. Rand would spend the rest of her life looking for a Cyrus Vance and creating him in her fiction.

Rand herself was an elitist who lived on cigarettes, amphetamines and chocolate. Elitism was also what she was marketing in her novels. Her characters like Galt and Roark were unbelievable because they were little more than abstract principles personified. Her vision of capitalism was simple and had a grade school like quality to it.

But Rand has impacted us all and still does. The principal architect of our current economic crisis, Alan Greenspan was a disciple for most of his life but after looking at the havoc he had created had to recant. (Via Digby)

"I have found a flaw" in free market theory, Greenspan said under intense questioning by Representative Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the Government Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives. "I don't know how significant or permanent it is," Greenspan added. "But I have been very distressed by that fact."

Pressed by Waxman, Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," Greenspan said.

Waxman pushed the former Fed chief, who left office in 2006, to clarify his explanation.

"In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working," Waxman said.

"Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

But she still has her followers in important places today like the Republican's wonder boy, Congressman Paul Ryan.

It's important to know what motivates the enemy and the Rand cultists are still with us.  As Digby notes Rand's followers are passing out free books.  For that reason this is an important read for anyone concerned about how Ayn Rand is still an influence.

Note:

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for this review.

Romney: Stop Hitting Me

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Romney is tired of the Obama campaign being mean to him. He wants his business record and taxes to be off the table during the campaign even though it's his business record he's running on.  

Talking about candidates' personal finances is hardly novel, nor is it irrelevant - how candidates make their money, however much or how little they've earned over the years, is not only fair game but a legitimate line of inquiry. The question of tax returns is also not new (to that end, Romney has said he would also release his 2011 taxes, but has yet to do so, with less than three months to go in the race). 

What is surprising is hearing a candidate say, essentially, "stop hitting me." As the folks at First Read note, this would seem to be something of a concession that the negatives are bothering the candidate, whom a round of new national polls shows running at a deficit that exceeds the margin of error.

In addition to being a rediculous request it is really bad politics. It makes him look weak and voters don't want a weak President and Comander In Chief.

People Just Don't Like Him

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Roger Simon asks a question:  Shouldn't Mitt Romney be ahead by now?  A good question since the economy is still in the tank.  He answers his own question - people just don't like Mitt.

As I have written for years, I have a simple - OK, simple-minded - way of determining who is going to win the presidency: The more likable candidate wins. Not always, but almost always.

On Aug. 2, a survey published by the well-respected Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found Obama was leading Romney by 51-41 percent for the presidency, the eighth time in a row since January that Obama has led Romney by between 4 and 12 percentage points.

But more importantly by my Simple Simon standard of likability, Romney's favorable/unfavorable rating was 37/52 compared with Obama's 50/45. Which means Romney had a net unfavorable rating of 15 points while Obama had a net favorable of 5 points.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post and ABC News released a poll showing 40 percent of voters approving of Romney and 49 percent disapproving. When it came to Obama, 53 percent of voters approved and 43 percent disapproved.

Which gave Romney a net disapproval of 9 points and Obama a net approval of 10 points.

Two different polls don't exactly establish a solid pattern, but the Romney people must be very, very worried.

Romney said in that Des Moines auditorium, "The American people are tired of being tired."

But if the recent polls are correct, the American people also may be tired of Mitt Romney.

(Bold Mine)

Romney's problem is there is not much he can do about.  He is a pompous plutocratic sociopath - that's who is is and to the best of my knowledge there are no personality transplants.  People simply don't like him or trust him.

Update:

The latest FOX News poll gives Obama a 9 point lead over Romney - 49 to 40.

Romney and Italy

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Mitt Romney didn't go to Italy on his European adventure and there is good reason for that - he wouldn't have been welcomed.

That's because Bain Capital, under Romney as chief executive officer, made about $1 billion in a leveraged buyout 12 years ago that remains controversial in Italy to this day. Bain was part of a group that bought a telephone-directory company from the Italian government and then sold it about two years later, at the peak of the technology bubble, for about 25 times what it paid.

Bain funneled profits through subsidiaries in Luxembourg, a common corporate strategy for avoiding income taxes in other European countries, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. The buyer, Italy's biggest telephone company, now has a total market value less than what it paid Bain and other investors for the directory business.

In Italy, the deals have spurred at least three books, separate legal and regulatory probes and newspaper columns alleging investors made a fortune at the expense of Italian taxpayers. Boston-based Bain wasn't a subject of the inquiries, which didn't result in any charges.

Romney himself was heavily involved in the deal and probably made about 50 million dollars on the deal. Bain and Romney may have been winners but the Italian government and Italian investors were not.

An Alternate Universe

Commentary By Ron Beasley

It often seems that The Weekly Standard must be published in an alternate universe.  My favorite example is this quote from Bill Kristol:

"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular." ~Willaim Kristol, April 4th, 2003

And don't forget it was Bill Kristol who was pushing Sarah Palin in 2008.

But Stephen Hayes and Bill Kristol have outdone themselves with their suggestion that Mitt Romney should select Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio as his Vice President.  Paul Ryan is best known for his budget that would throw the elderly and the poor under the bus. His plan is so bad that people refused to believe that it was a real proposal.  He might be a good choice in The Weekly Standard universe but not in this one.

When it comes to Marco Rubio they say this:

An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll released in late July shows Obama with a 67-23 percent advantage over Romney among Hispanics. Last week, a Latino Decisions poll had Obama leading Romney 63-27 percent among Hispanics in five swing states with significant Hispanic populations-Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Virginia.

That's worrisome. But the core of the problem is Florida-a must-win state for Romney. According to Latino Decisions, Romney trails Obama among Latino Floridians 53-37. (Even more, among voters who say they're "certain" to vote for their candidate, Obama leads 49-29.) This kind of margin might well doom Romney. 

In 2010, by contrast, Marco Rubio won 55 percent of Florida Hispanics. Rick Scott, who was probably helped by having Rubio running with him, won 50 percent of the state's Hispanic voters in his successful bid to become governor. Even in 2008, while losing Florida 51-48, John McCain won 42 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 2004, George W. Bush defeated John Kerry among Hispanics in Florida by 56-44 percent. (Those numbers were no doubt inflated because Bush's brother Jeb was the popular governor at the time.)

The bottom line: Mitt Romney almost certainly will not win Florida if he wins just 37 percent of the Hispanic vote there. And Mitt Romney almost certainly will not be president if he doesn't win Florida.

What to do? The Latino Decisions poll offers one possible answer: Pick Marco Rubio as your running mate. Some 31 percent of Florida Hispanics say they are more likely to vote for Romney if Rubio is on the ticket (47 percent say it would make no difference, and just 17 percent say it would make them less likely).

Rubio's appeal goes well beyond Hispanics and well beyond Florida, of course. At a recent appearance in Nevada on behalf of Romney, Rubio drew nearly 1,000 voters to his former elementary school, with lines out the door. His autobiography, An American Son, spent several weeks near the top of the New York Times bestseller list. A recent survey of Illinois delegates to the Republican convention found that nearly half of them want Romney to pick Rubio.

I will leave it up to Daniel Larison to take this apart.

The supposed value of adding Rubio to the ticket is that he will pull voters into the Republican column that would otherwise not normally be there. Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that Rubio would attract these voters, and there never has been. Most Hispanics nationwide know little or nothing about Rubio, and what they find out about him isn't likely to appeal to them. The very things that make movement conservative activists and pundits like Rubio are the same things that limit his ability to appeal to voters outside his party. According to Rasmussen back in March, Rubio's favorability amonglikely Hispanic Floridian voters was 16%, and his unfavorable rating was 64%. Rubio's fav/unfav ratings among likely independent Floridian voters in the same survey was 36/48%. Among likely moderate Floridian voters, they were 33/50%. Rubio's appeal in Florida is already limited mostly to other Republicans and conservatives, so why should anyone believe that it would be any different elsewhere?

This is what happens when you live in an echo chamber in NY or DC.  Among the conservative punditry it really is an alternate universe.

Rasmussen Polls

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Electoral-Vote.com was one of the more reliable sources for election prediction in 2008.  They have this to say about Rasmussen:

After the 2010 elections, the New York Times statistics wizard, Nate Silver, analyzed the polls produced by various polling organizations, including Rasmussen Reports, which is the house pollster for Fox News. Silver's analysis covered only polls taken during the final three weeks of the campaign and compared them to the actual election results. For polls taken much earlier, say in June, no one knows what the true sentiment of the electorate was, so there is no way to tell if the polls were accurate or not. Also, any pollster deliberately falsifying the results for partisan advantage would be advised to reduce the bias as the election neared. After all, no one can tell if a June poll is accurate but everyone can tell if a poll released the day before the election is accurate.

Silver analyzed 105 polls released by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, for Senate and gubernatorial races in numerous states across the country. The bottom line is that on average, Rasmussen's polls were off by 5.8% with a bias of 3.9% in favor of the Republican candidates.

There is much to criticize about Rasmussen's methods. All polls are conducted within a 4-hour window, the person who answers the phone (even a child) is sampled, phones that are not answered are not called back, and much more. All of Rasmussen's polls are done by computer; live interviewers are never used. However, other firms that do robopolling such as SurveyUSA and PPP get much more accurate results with no bias, so the problem is not the robopolling per se.

Just to look at one methodological issue, if no one answers the phone, Rasmussen picks a different random phone number instead of calling back two, three, four or more times as other pollsters do. Why does this matter? Because 20-somethings (who skew Democratic) are often out, whereas 60-somethings (who skew Republican) are often in. By not being persistent in finally getting through to a randomly chosen phone number, the sample is inherently biased towards Republicans because they are easier to reach. This may not have been intentional but it is understandable if you want to finish your survey in 4 hours. Nevertheless, cutting corners in the name of speed and cost don't improve accuracy.

They give their projections both with and without Rasmussen.  When looking at the electoral college vote there is some but not a lot of difference.  But when you look at Senate races there is.

The projections with Rasmussen is Democrats 50, ties 3 and Republicans 47.

 

This is the Senate map without Rasmussen - Democrats 52, tie 4 and Republicans 44.

 

Montana and North Dakota actually flip and Virginia goes from Republican  to tie.  

How Dare The Democrats!

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Doug Mataconis and the right wingers are really upset that Harry Reid and the Democrats are using Karl Rove's play book.

As if doubling down on his unsupported allegations against Mitt Romney weren't bad enough, Harry Reid has taken to repeating those allegations on the floor of the United States Senate:

I don't like this kind of politics but the reality is this has been the MO for the Republican Party since Karl Rove came on the scene.  The only thing that is different  is Harry Reid and the Democrats have discovered  that you can't bring  a knife to a gun fight.

Romney could end this of course by releasing his tax returns but he really can't do that because they are toxic.  I think it's all about the 2009 returns - the year that UBS gave the US 4,000 names and the US offered an amnesty on foreign tax shelters.  Romney knew that not releasing his 2009 taxes would hurt his campaign  but a perk walk would have been worse.

Empty Platitudes - Romney At The VFW Convention

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The Romneybot spoke to the crowd at the VFW convention today.  More empty platitudes and criticism of Obama. It reminds mey of my favorite lines from the 1923 novel, by one of the best wordsmiths Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay, where the main character finds himself "floundering in a quagmire of hypocritical platitudes" - that's Romney's life story.   Daniel Larison:

It was mostly a pastiche of the usual baseless complaints and a handful of bad policy ideas. Remarkably, Romney chose this venue to revisit his Venezuela alarmism and the worn-out criticism of Obama's response to the Green movement protests. These are two of the most discredited objections he could have repeated. On a more substantive note, he said that he would demand that Iran cease all enrichment, which is a demand designed to be rejected by the Iranians. That re-confirms that he has no interest in pursuing a negotiated solution.

I listened to the speech and the thing that struck me was while there was applause it was subdued. Larison again:

Judging from the applause he received during the speech, the convention audience was similarly underwhelmed by a lot of what he had to say. The applause that he did receive was polite, but not especially enthusiastic. Romney delivered the entire speech in that strained, almost incredulous-sounding tone he uses when he wants to convey emotion.

This is how I saw it too.  Obama got a better reception.  Perhaps it's because Romney always comes off as phony or maybe even the VFW is tired of endless war which is the neocon line Romney is pushing.

Romney is taking off on his foreign tour to prove his foreign policy skills.  I predict it will be a disaster.

Mitt Romney - Avoiding the Issues

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Mitt Romney is off on an international tour to prove  his foreign policy credentials.  Of course in Romney fashion he's avoiding most of the real international issues,  

Mitt Romney travels abroad this week to polish his presidential resume. But since Romney will avoid confronting head-on the vicious sovereign debt crisis in Europe that already appears to have engulfed the American economy, the trip may seem more like a vacation.

He does not want to bring attention to the Euro crisis because in doing so would be an admission that the Euro Crisis is responsible for the problems with the US economy.

But Romney will largely steer clear of the debacle that has contributed to sluggish job growth for the past three months in the United States and a 3.72 percent drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May. 

Instead, his itinerary takes him to the United Kingdom and Poland, two countries that because of their currencies-the pound and the zloty-are somewhat removed from the crisis. For a presidential hopeful stumping on his business expertise, it is potentially a squandered opening.

"Candidates do this to show they're ready for the presidential stage, but if you're not talking about the number one issue, it begs the question of what you're doing there," said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at the think tank Third Way.

To enforce his neocon credential he is going to Israel.  That may not work out so well as the Israeli government has no desire to get involved in US domestic politics at least overtly.  

Romney is also avoiding Afghanistan.  He must be hawkish to please the neocons but he reads the polls and a majority of Americans want us out of that quagmire yesterday.  

This road show is ill advised and Romney has nothing to gain and everyting to lose.  So I say go for it Mitt!

Romney Bashing at The American Conservative

Commentary By Ron Beasley

What amazes me is some of the most effective Romney bashing is going on at The American Conservative magazine. Daniel Larison has been bashing his foreign policy with some help by social conservative Rod Dreher. And todayJames Pinkerton and Noah Millman are blasting his economic policy.

Romney - No body likes him

Commentary By Ron Beasley

It's no surprise that those on the left don't like Willard Romney but the folks over at The American Conservative don't dislike him any less.  I have been passing on Daniel Larison's rants on Romney's foreign policy for months but he's not alone.  Social conservative Rod Dreher is not too excited with his foreign policy either, Dubya 2012.  

Scott Galupo:

The Loathsome Romney Candidacy: How Did We Get Here?

This is a milestone moment in American politics. "Fabulously wealthy" presidential candidates are more of a norm than an aberration - witness the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, Ross Perot. But to a man, each of them ran at least in part on the principle of noblesse oblige - the idea that the wealthy must make sacrifices for the common good (yes, even George W. Bush, who promised not to "balance the budget on the backs of the poor).

In contrast, Romney and his ilk are having none of this. They are trying to persuade voters - and for all we know may have persuaded themselves - that, in effect, "As Goes Bain Capital, So Goes America."

I've thought a lot about this question over the last six months. How did this happen? How did we come to this pass, where a man like Mitt Romney - whose candidacy represents a breathtakingly cynical, borderline nihilistic pursuit of power on behalf of a tiny sliver of the population - sits within striking distance of the highest office in the land?

An accident - the last man standing. Perhaps not!

Still, the "accident" narrative only gets you so far. The reality is, Romney slipped through - and there are troubling factors that buoy his campaign. The complete rejection of mainstream macroeconomic theory is one such factor. Cultural animus toward Obama is another. Liberals overstate its extent, but it's undeniably real.

Most decisive is what I've been calling the theological fusion of social and economic conservatism. Too many evangelical Christians seem incapable of even questioning Mammon. Now they enthusiastically welcome the money changers into the temple. Like the Calvinists of old, they glorify market outcomes as a sign of divine favor.  And the cliche "class warfare" has served as a handy tool to shut down any deviation from this new orthodoxy.

The prospect of a second Obama term doesn't excite me. Nevertheless, my overriding hope is to see Mitt Romney spat out of the body politic, once and for all. (Bold mine)

Noah Millman responds and Larison responds to Millman.

Noah Millman makes a good observation, but he seems to be missing Scott Galupo's objection to Romney:

So expelling Mitt Romney will do nothing to change the fact that a critique of the financialization of American capitalism has barely begun anywhere in American politics.

That's correct, but what I believe Scott was saying was that he wants Romney to lose so that we will be rid of Mitt Romney as a political figure. Put another way, a political system that rewards someone like Romney with the Presidency is in extremely poor health, and Scott doesn't want our system to be as far gone as a Romney victory would prove it to be. 

.....

Regardless, the point is that Scott is mostly objecting to what he calls Romney's "breathtakingly cynical, borderline nihilistic pursuit of power." It's the sheer cynicism involved that offends even more than the interests served by that cynicism.

I haven't seen such an effective critiuqe of Romney on any of the progressive blogs or media.

Institutional Locks on policy

By Dave Anderson:

Ezra Klein on democratic accountability and incentives for economic growth versus depression:

Voters do not tend to like parties that aren't able to deliver anything more than a ringing endorsement of crushing poverty at the hands of more powerful countries.

Charlie Cook (via Outside the Beltway) on institutional insulation against policy preference changes:

Using The Cook Political Report's Partisan Voter Index as a measuring stick, our preliminary analysis indicates that the number of strongly Democratic districts-those with a score of D+5 or greater at the presidential level-decreased from 144 before redistricting to 136 afterward. The number of strongly Republican districts-those with a score of R+5 or greater-increased from 175 to 183. When one party starts out with 47 more very strong districts than the other, the numbers suggest that the fix is in for any election featuring a fairly neutral environment.

Oh, I was supposed to be talking about Greece where the institutional feature of a bonus 50 seats in Parliament performs the same function to lock in crap policy....

Quote Of The Day

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Daniel Larison on Romney:

No one has run for presidential office for so long while conveying so little about the reason for doing so as Romney has. The purpose of Romney's candidacy is simply to win the election, which is as dull and ordinary as one can imagine, and there is not really any pretense that Romney's candidacy serves a "larger purpose." People cannot put faith in Romney, because he is thoroughly untrustworthy and prone to saying whatever it is he thinks people want to hear. To the extent that a lot of non-Republicans are willing to give him a hearing, they assume that the policies he is proposing during the campaign cannot possibly be the policies he would pursue once in office. When he says, "I will move for this and this," the common reaction is to assume that Romney will not so move.

Romney is the embodiment of everything Americans claim to dislike about national politics. He is both a fierce partisan and lacking in firm convictions. If Romney does end up winning, that will be a good indication that a majority of voters isn't interested in the meaning or purpose of his candidacy. It will mean that enough voters are dissatisfied enough with the incumbent that they are willing to tolerate just about anyone as a replacement.

 

Pure Politics

Commentary By Ron Beasley

I'm no big fan of Eric Holder - I think a Wall Street lawyer after the economic collapse was a really bad choice for AG.  No banksters have been held accountable.   That said Representative Darell Issa is a witch hunter - a really vile political hack.  A modern day Joseph McCarthy more interested in media face time than truth or justice.  Yes. Fast and Furious was  a case study of  incompetent. And yes, a border gaurd was killed with a "walked weapon".  But Issa doesn't care about that - he is only concerned with Issa face time and politics.   

Romney's Scary and Stupid Foreign Policy

Commentary By Ron Beasley

If you don't read Daniel Larison you should.  He is all over Willard Romney's foolish and scary foreign policy which has been constructed by old cold war warriors and neo-cons.  Today we have this:



When Romney Calls for "Resolve and Strength," He Is Endorsing Recklessness and Aggression

Mitt Romney is still harping on the 2009 missile defense decision:

I think it was an enormous mistake to give them that and what he got in return shows the extraordinary naiveté of a Presidency that does not understand the power of resolve and strength.

Let's try a thought experiment. Suppose that Obama hadn't cancelled the Bush-era missile defense plan, but had gone ahead with it as planned. This presumably would have proven American "resolve and strength" and put the Russians on notice that (horrible) Bush-era Russia policy was going to continue. Apparently, resolve and strength are proven by wasting money on something that doesn't reliably work to maintain the fiction that the U.S. is being protected against an Iranian long-range missile threat that doesn't exist, but never mind that. In fact, the very limited concession on the Bush-era missile defense plan was an essential gesture of goodwill that convinced Moscow that Obama was serious in trying to develop a more constructive relationship with Russia. If Romney had his way, that gesture would never have happened.

Russia is just one example.  For more head over to Larison's place to see what he has written about Romney.

McCain the Maverick

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Romney surrogate, John McCain, is getting all mavericky again. 

Senator and Romney presidential campaign surrogate John McCain (R-AZ) said Thursday that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is indirectly injecting millions of dollar in Chinese "foreign money" into Mitt Romney's presidential election effort.

"Much of Mr. Adelson's casino profits that go to him come from his casino in Macau, which says that obviously, maybe in a roundabout way foreign money is coming into an American political campaign," McCain said in an interview on PBS's News Hour.

"That is a great deal of money, and we need a level playing field and we need to go back to the realization... that we have to have a limit on the flow of money and corporations are not people," he said.

Adelson has said he may pump up to 100 million dollars into the Romney campaign.  Now if Romney is elected he's going to want something for that money and since Adelson is a real Israel first guy we can make an educated guess as to what that will be - more and bigger Middle East wars.  That would be just fine with Romney's neo-con foreign policy advisors.

McCain also took on Citizens United and the SCOTUS.

McCain's comments came in the context of a rant against the unfettered private donations that are now flowing into the political arena due to the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the case Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the doors to unlimited political spending by corporations and invalidated parts of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law.

McCain called the decision "the most misguided, na�, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court in the 21^st Century," and money would be playing a dominant role in American politics for the foreseeable future.

"There will be scandals, there's just too much money washing around Washington today... I'm afraid we're for a very bleak period in American politics," he said. "To somehow view money as not having a corrupting effect on elections flies in the face of reality."

McCain is becoming Romney's Bill Clinton.

 

Quote Of The Day

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The quote of the day comes from Daniel Larison:

Romney has given the public no reason to expect anything but the worst in the conduct of foreign policy by his administration if he is elected.

Romney's foreign policy advisors are the very same people who got us into Iraq and Afghanistan.  The complete and total nut case John Bolton is one of them.  The Obama campaign needs to pick up on this because it will drive libertarians to Gary Johnson.  The Romney Campaign konws this and are trying to keep Jonhson off the ballot.

Daniel Larison is not a libertarian but he is a realist when it comes to foreign policy.  The American people are tired of war.  Romney's irresponsible foreign policy should be an issue.

Thought Of The Day

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The perfect slogan for the Democrats:

If you vote for Obama you will never have to see the Romneybot on your TV ever again.

You know I thought Cheney was a cyborg but Romney makes Cheney look human.

There's Gambling Going On Here?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Dylan Byers at Politico is shocked that there was partisan coverage of the Walker recall election on the cable "news" networks.

If ever there was a political event to lay bare the partisan ideologies of the cable news media, the Wisconsin recall was it.

MSNBC was blatantly rooting for Tom Barrett to defeat Gov. Scott Walker, even sending union champion Ed Schultz to cover an event with no apologies for the dog he has in the fight. (Earlier tonight, Chris Matthews even told Schultz that if he wasn't an MSNBC host, he could be head of the AFL-CIO.) When it became clear that Barrett would lose, Schultz looked almost teary eyed. Not long after, the network's contributors immediately began suggesting that this was, in fact, good news for Obama � who, after all, hadn't even set foot in Wisconsin � and began attacking Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, Fox News was blatantly rooting for Gov. Scott Walker, and the moment it became clear that Walker might win, host Sean Hannity called it "a repudiation of big unions," which did "everything they could do to demonize Scott Walker." Guest Hugh Hewitt then predicted that, five months from now, Romney would follow Walker just "as Reagan followed Thatcher." Fox's Greta Van Susteren later hosted what amounted to a victory celebration for the Republicans.

Given such blatantly partisan coverage, it was absolutely impossible to watch either network and gain any clear understanding of the actual significance of the event, much less what effect it would actually have on the 2012 presidential election.

Please - this is a surprise?  Have you watched any cable "news" in the last 12 years?  Cable 'News" is not news - it's talk radio on a flat screen.