Boxed into a corner

That's what the GOP, and particular Romney, have done to themselves. Here is a list of campaign issues they can't talk about:

1. The impending end of Bush tax cuts
2. The impending sequester
3. Long-term plans to reduce the deficit
4. Short-term plans to reduce the deficit
5. Details of the GOP jobs plan
6. Tax reform
7. The replacement for Obamacare
8. Entitlement reform
9. American workers
10. Abortion
11. Supreme Court nominees

These leaves some topics, but not many neutral ones where the GOP takes a turn presenting its proposals, and the Dems take their turn. To be fair, the Dems can't talk about their jobs plan very much, tax reform, or much about entitlement reform either.

Here are a bunch of neutral topics where the Dems have a good chance to win the round:

1. The Bush tax cuts
2. Short-term plans to reduce the deficit
3. Social Security
4. Health insurance in a jumpy economy
5. The fiscal cliff

Here are some neutral topics that the GOP might win:

1. Energy policies
2. Government regulation
3. Government workers

 Better cards

It looks to me like the Dems are holding the better cards. They may not be face-cards, but the GOP's cards look like deuces for the most part. If one party talks mostly about:

• energy policy and drilling,

and the other party talks about:

•  deficit reduction, who keeps their tax cuts, and healthcare security,

the audience is going to gravitate to the more important, sexier, or scarier topics, and it ain't gonna be oil rigs and smokestack scrubbers.

Of course the GOP would love to avoid neutral topics altogether, and focus on blaming Obama for all the ills of the country. But that doesn't seem to be working, even after the dismal jobs reports this summer. Today, Gallup has Obama topping Romney 48% to 43%.

 Can't make it stick

It's not as though Obama is suddenly the teflon president (guffaw). Actually, there never was such a thing. It's just the frustration of opponents that more people aren't buying their arguments. Probably most people have decided how much Obama owns the bad economy, and it's going to be hard to convince many people that he deserves a heap more blame.

I think I've run the speculation steeple chase as far as I can. Does this theorizing stand up at all? You tell me.

 Image: whotalking.com

By the way, here are the negatives that will keep the GOP from talking about those 11 topics:

1. If the rich lose their tax cuts, you'll lose yours. Fair is fair.
2. We can't cut defense--anything or everything, but not defense!
3. We'll grow out of the deficit by the great year 2050.
4. Yes, we'll cut the deficit, we just can't tell you how yet.
5. Oil jobs, gas jobs, more oil jobs, and a huge spurt from deregulation.
6. Yes, we'll make the tax code fairer, we just can't tell you how yet.
7. Replace? Who said replace?
8. Yes, we'll reform entitlements, we just can't tell you how yet.
9. Workers, pay no attention to the man who did the auto bailout. He's not your friend.
10. Don't worry, we won't touch abortion for the middle class. Promise.
11. We need more justices like Roberts (the cute one), Scalia (the angry gnome), and Thomas (the mummified black conservative).
12. What did I skip? Real issues, no propaganda allowed.

The shrinking campaign battleground

Perhaps readers think that my jeering at Romney means that I have abandoned my moderate demeanor, and I'm turning into a Democrat partisan, and maybe always was.

I suppose it's a possibility, but I don't think so. I've always felt that people need to deal with the consequences of their actions, and Romney is reaping what he sowed.

Limited Battleground

Romney could have made this a campaign on issues and plans with honest analysis of where the country is, how it got there, and what to do in the future. Instead he chose to say that Obama knows nothing about the economy, but he does. Furthermore, Romney chose not to present a specific detailed plan that could be the focus of his campaign, but to run on his experience as a businessman. He has narrowed the ground on which this campaign will be fought, and now he has to deal with it.

So, how about Mitt? Are you ready to open up this contest and talk about economics and fiscal policy and real budget numbers, or do you want to fight on the narrow strip you've laid out?

Of course Romney would rather have the whole campaign revolve around Obama's mishandling of the economy, and Obama's high unemployment numbers, and Obama's budget deficit.

Well, he can't run a campaign as the invisible man or some mystical anti-Obama, because the Americans who still think don't believe in magic. The same problems are going to there on Day One of the next presidential term. If Romney wants to be in that office, he needs to show what he'll do and convince us that it will be better than what Obama is offering.

That isn't too high a bar--show us you're better than the other guy. Don't just say it. SHOW. US. Something.

At this Romney has been a failure. He still has time to reverse that failure, but I don't see the signs that he'll do it. On the other hand, his strategy might be enough to win him the office. But what a threadbare victory it would be.

Come on, Mitt, Show us something.

Is Romney even in this campaign?

Image: mikepesh.com

Extra: For a longer list of don't-go-there topics, see this post.

Short: Election ping-pong

So, the Obama campaign released an H-bomb ad slamming Mitt Romney on outsourcing jobs and having overseas accounts--you know, stuff we already knew about. I don't know why it's made such a big splash, but it has.

Romney's rejoinder:

“He sure as heck ought to say that he’s sorry for the kinds of attacks that are coming from his team.”

Obama's rejoinder:

“No, we won’t be apologizing... Mr. Romney claims he’s Mr. Fix-It for the economy because of his business experience, so I think voters entirely legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience.”

It sounds like Obama was ready with an answer and Romney wasn't.

Image: digitaljournal.com

Pot, meet kettle

You know it's not good when a campaign has to fall back on a blanket defense, such as "that's unAmerican" or the current Romney defense "he's lying about my [Bain] record."

Come on, we all know that outraged claims of ‘lies’ are just the pot calling the kettle black. I’m not going to vote for one candidate over the other because I think one lies and the other doesn’t. I’m not 7 years old. Most adults and all presidential candidates lie to a certain extent. We can't precisely measure the extent of the lying, so it has to be a whopper to move the needle. Is there anyone who doesn't recognize that this is the reality of campaigning? If so, cast the first stone.

When it comes to pointing fingers at who is the bigger outsourcer, Romney is going to lose. He certainly isn’t the pioneer of outsourcing, but Bain, like lots of companies, did a great deal of it.

It sucks to lose a news meme. The GOP has lost this cycle, and will need and want to come up with a winning line soon. I wonder what it will be…

Maybe it's all recycled from previous campaigns...

Image: asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com

Update 7/15/12. I just remembered a relevant point. Obama kept a lot of jobs in the US with the auto bailout. Yep, the one Romney was against. This line of campaigning is only going to get worse for Mitt.

The end of candidate moderation

Is this the first  presidential campaign where we don't see any candidate moderating his position for the general election? It appears that way to me.

In 2008, McCain became a bit more conservative, but Obama didn't become more liberal. In this election, it seems that neither Obama nor Romney have moderated their positions. Of course, from my moderate viewpoint, this development sucks.

Why isn't this truism operating in this election? My guess is that neither party feels that moderation has been a net positive for them. The Republicans blame moderation and accommodation with those dang liberals for the ballooning deficits during the Bush presidency (and they ignore minor stuff like the wars and tax cuts). The Democrats found out that moderation didn't bring the Republicans to the bargaining table or voters to the polls in the midterm elections. Moderation just hasn't had a good track record for the last, oh, 12 years.

I stick with moderation because... uh, temperament... because zealots are a bunch of wackos who spout extremely stupid arguments? That's probably close to the truth. I can't bear to be a zipperhead repeating idiotic talking points and trying to make facts fit the preconceived argument. I'll leave that to everyone else in the US if I have to, and be a lonely moderate banging on my keyboard and waiting to see if these zealots make as big a mess as I think they will. Sigh.

Injustice from the justices

Phew. I think this will be my last post on the Obamacare ruling. I've worked through the vast majority of my ideas. There were a lot: 

• The strangeness of Roberts not voting with the conservatives
• The appalled reaction of conservatives
• The reasoning of the ruling and the dissent

This post is about the reaction from the close colleagues of Chief Justice Roberts. 

Departure from normal standards

The Supreme Court is an insular institution. The justices don't have the electoral pressures that require most politicians to communicate with the public and explain their actions. Also, leaks of insider information from the Court are rare. So this case is a major exception, which adds another layer of oddity to this decision.


The leak was made to Jan Crawford, a CBS reporter who's scored important interviews with several justices. Her first article told about how Roberts initially agreed with the four conservative justices to strike down the health insurance mandate, but during the course of writing the opinion he found grounds to uphold it, thus siding with the liberal justices.

 Is this inside report credible? Yes.

I don't automatically credit this article as factual. However, some of the reporting is backed up by information in the Court's 193-page ruling. Ms Crawford writes:

And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're on your own." The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed...

This is absolutely borne out by the ruling. Roberts writes how the mandate cannot be upheld under the Commerce Clause. The four conservative justices agree, but express that opinion separately instead of in a concurrence with Roberts. 

Determining the Viewpoint of the Leak

Since the report passes at least one test of credibility, I'm inclined to believe that it's an accurate report. However, it's a report that comes from a particular viewpoint. Considering that it gives details about the interaction of the conservative justices among themselves and with Chief Justice Roberts, it evidently came from a conservative justice or sources close to conservative justices. 

The article contains speculation (whose we don't know) that Roberts was influenced by outside pressures, not only considerations of law and constitutionality:

Over the next six weeks, as Roberts began to craft the decision striking down the mandate, the external pressure began to grow. Roberts almost certainly was aware of it... Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the court when issues are pending... But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public.

Does this information come from John Roberts himself? I doubt it. It sounds like someone's analysis of his actions and motives, not his own self-explanation. The article is filled with observations from the viewpoint of one or more conservative justices:

At least one conservative justice tried to get him to explain it, but was unsatisfied with the response, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation.

Note the view here is from one of the conservative justices. It's not Roberts' viewpoint of the incident, or that of a liberal justice, nor it is likely to be the report of an unbiased fly-on-the-wall. One last example:

"He was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very engaged in this." ...Roberts then engaged in his own lobbying effort - trying to persuade at least Justice Kennedy to join his decision so the Court would appear more united in the case. There was a fair amount of give-and-take with Kennedy and other justices, the sources said. One justice, a source said, described it as "arm-twisting."

Anger of the Right(eous)

In another, shorter article, Ms. Crawford writes about the anger of the conservative justices:

If Roberts had been with the liberals from the beginning, sources tell me that would have been one thing; but switching his position - and relatively late in the process - infuriated the conservatives. ...Of course it's unclear why he switched. He may have been focused solely on the law. But that is not what some of his colleagues believe.

The picture that emerges is one of intense anger clothed in restraint. Restraint is certainly to be expected from the highest judges in the country. However, the level of anger is surprising. Why can't the conservative justices accept this as a good faith difference of opinion?

The level of their anger is indicated by their refusal to formally concur with Roberts' opinion on the limits of the Commerce Clause. He went against their view, so he received the force of their righteous anger: if you're one of us, you better stay one of us. No allowance for difference of opinion.

The next court term could be mighty interesting if these justices continue behaving this way. Let's hope they cool off during the summer, because they are stuck together in these lifetime appointments. Beyond that, I personally hope to see continued independence from Roberts. I'm rooting for anyone who'll break out of the armed-camp mentality of the politics in this country. 

 Image: chickaboomer.blogspot.com

Short: A conservative gives up on Romney

I don't know B-list conservatives from C or D-listers, so maybe this guy is a complete crank. However, he wants "to see Mitt Romney spat out of the body politic, once and for all." Yet, he doesn't name whom he rather have as Republican nominee. When you don't have an embarrassment of riches, sometimes you end up with just the embarrassments.