To Reiterate
I remain baffled by the number of people who are convinced that the superficially moderate Romney who was governor of Massachuetts is the “real” one who’s just pretending to be a wingnut to get the Republican nomination. If you look at the less visible parts of his record in context, I think it’s much more likely that he’s substantially more intrinsically conservative on social issues than any Republican nominee in decades. It doesn’t matter since he’ll govern as a wingnut no matter what he “really” believes, but I suspect he’s more Santorum than Nelson Rockefeller.
Grover Norquist famously explained that the only thing the Republicans needed from a president was the ability to hold a pen and sign his name.
Romney won’t be setting the agenda. He’ll have things like the Ryan budget submitted to him for signature, and he’ll sign them.
Romney is indeed the perfect Norquist candidate. He doesn’t want the job, he just wants the job title.
Bingo.
Righty-o–like W, his only discernible motivation for wanting to be president (aside from being rich and bored) is to do Daddy one better. He was willing to play moderate to become governor of Massachusetts, and if he has to go full wingnut in order to appease the sort of people who would consider Reagan a commie, he’ll do that too.
He was a Mormon bishop. Anyone who is surprised that he’s socially conservative has not been paying attention.
Lots of people are Mormon Bishops. It is a lay person position. You get called and you serve.
Well, but he was Stake President for the Boston Stake, not just a mere bishop.
Besides, you can leave out the word “bishop” and the point remains.
I think he’s an ultradouche, but I don’t need to connect that to any particular group.
Since I was attending a ward in his stake for some of that time, I’m going to say that be was a massive dick in that role.
Romneys genuine beliefs only matter if there were some plausible scenario that could arise wherein he has a chance to act unconstrained from external factors or if he turns out to be an actor on the margin whose action or inaction make the difference on a matter of substance.
Neither of those things seem real likely to me.
SO we agree.
Indeed we do, and I realized only after posting “Oh. Wait. I just basically re-stated Scott’s position. Well, that’s a bit silly of me, isn’t it?”
I mean, you and I have very real differences on how much a politicians actual beliefs, as opposed to their expedient ones, matter, but man, Mitt Romney? That ain’t one of those times.
It doesn’t matter since he’ll govern as a wingnut no matter what he “really” believes, but I suspect he’s more Santorum than Nelson Rockefeller.
I was going to write that I don’t believe it because Santorum has convictions, but I think I assume too much about Santorum.
Perhaps it wasnt the politician being referred to
Santorum has convictions. Loathsome medieval era convictions, sure, but I can’t see how someone could pretend to be that vile.
Santorum has convictions?
I hadn’t known he’d even been charged, yet.
I would say that this is the big difference between Romney’s and Santorum’s social conservatism. Depending on the political context, that could actually matter. I’m not certain that Romney will be completely constrained on social issues and judicial nominations-if he thought it would politically benefit him, he could pick a pro-corporate Souter. Romney, like the national Republican party, cares a lot more about tax-cuts and increasing the economic power of the top .1% at the expense of all else.
Now, the most likely political context is that Romney will support social conservatism in all important respects (specifically, Judicial nominations). But, unlike Santorum, it will actually depend on political context. And, the political context is not going to be simply satisfying the Republican party.
I don’t think that the Massachusetts Romney is more “real,” but the fact that he was pro-choice ten years ago does show that he just doesn’t care very much about these issues. Can you imagine the Democrats nominating a presidential candidate who had been anti-choice less than ten years ago?
Based on stories I’ve heard about his time as a Mormon Bishop, I’m not sure that I believe this. I’ve read stories of him trying to bully a pregnant woman who needed an abortion to avoid some horrific complications and whose unborn child was almost certainly doomed. So I think he cares about these issues a great deal. He just cares about his political ambitions more than anthing. We’ll never have a chance of seeing his “true” convictions until he’s no longer running for something. I sorely hope that 2012 will not move him four years closer to that weird position of ex-President who can’t even run for the school board.
I think he is clearly a social conservative, it is pretty much the rule for practicing Mormons, but that is not hi primary motivation and passion. He cares far more about pampering the wealthy and corporations and cutting their taxes than anything else.
I’d point out that as someone who lived in MA at the time, Romney governed far more rightwing than what he pretended to be when he ran. His reelection hopes were non-existent, which he understood, and his chosen successor got crushed.
This belief in his moderation seems to stem from Romneycare, but before Romneycare was socialism it was the Heritage Foundation’s dream solution to the healthcare crisis.
That really is the bitter irony of the current situation. Until the Democrats took up the issue, the main drivers for healthcare reform along the lines of ACA were the business community and conservatives. Rapidly rising medical insurance costs were killing the corporations. Of course then a lot of them decided not to offer it any more, so it was not as much of a problem.
Dude, that was all a red herring. They didn’t MEAN it.
Of course they meant it. Don’t you remember the passage of the Universal Private Insurance Subsidy Act of 2003?
I think at least some of them were serious about it. Then they figured out cheaper ways to cut costs by shifting cost onto employees, eliminating health coverage altogether, or just shipping the jobs overseas where people work for a lot less and workers have fewer rights and protections.
Indeed, even in the completely implausible “divided government” scenario… if there any issues I don’t think President Romney rubber stamps it’s those in regards to LGBT rights. This is an area on which his conviction has never wavered.
Also on abortion and women’s rights generally.
I also expect him to come out in favor of some type of national version of Romneycare and fight for Planned Parenthood funding like he did in Massechusettes.
That’s fine, but your bafflement, as I understand it, is merely your perception against another person’s perception, you’re not really backing it up with facts. Romney was once governor of Massachusetts, and religion aside, he seems to me like a technocrat more than anything else. He just got through a primary that demanded some hard-right positioning, and the party he’s hoping to drag across the finish line in November is as conservative as it’s been in a long time, as Mann and Ornstein recently confirmed. I think the statement about Santorum is just silly, whatever his positions are, his disposition and campaigning techniques are not very similar to Santorum’s, and your saying it doesn’t make it so. Didn’t this very blog run a photo about a week ago of a pro-gay rights poster he issued as governor of Massachusetts? Santorum would never do that.
We all seem to agree that as President, Romney will be a doormat for the party anyway, so it’s kind of moot. IMO the main reasons to oppose Romney as president are (a) his party is batshit crazy, and would control at least one of the two houses of Congress, and (b) the man can’t say two paragraphs about foreign policy without revealing his ignorance and reflexive alarmism, plus his Bushian bias towards state actors, even outdated ones like Russia, and (c) on economics, he would exacerbate the GOP tendency to lower tax rates on the rich and everything that goes along with that (i.e. he endorses Ryan). His positions on social issues don’t crack the top 3. Personally I think that social issues of this type don’t animate him much, and while he may have retrograde views on social issues it’s just not that relevant. He’s a Republican, that’s conservative enough, and his religion and background suggest the possibility that he’s even more conservative than that. But we don’t really know.
Given that, I can’t see the importance of the stakes you’re raising here. You don’t know, and I don’t know. If Romney is the most socially conservative candidate the GOP has ever run, that’s only because the last two guys they ran didn’t really run on social conservatism of the type you’re describing. Neither Bush nor McCain cared very much about gay marriage and things like that, IMO. So it’s a default position. Basically Romney fits the mold of a GOP candidate whose positions on social issues are prima facie mainstream, which is what the GOP does, they don’t nominate the guys whose views would embarrass the Washington Post.
Romney promised what he needed to to get elected in MA, then he tried to do enough not to have a track record of complete fail. Once President, that is his goal- there is not a goal after that except maybe being president twice, so he’s going to do what he needs to do to get elected again, and since he’s the GOP candidate and that is his path to the nomination a second time if elected, how is he not locked into the path of the cobag?
Right, so we agree, he’s an opportunist and a pragmatist broadly defined, not an ideologue. Scott’s saying there’s an ideologue in there for whom the word “moderate” cannot apply.
That’s not what Scott’s saying. There is no question that Romney is an opportunist. The question is whether Romney is deep down a moderate who is pretending to be wingnut to get elected, or a wingnut who once pretended to be a moderate to get elected. Scott is saying that the latter is more likely.
So it’s like the Buddhist parable: is Romney a wingnut dreaming he’s a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he’s a wingnut?
This I think is exactly true.
I’m not 100% sure that Romney dreams, as I’ve yet to see even a smidgen of evidence that he has an inner life of any significance.
McAllen: Interesting point. I think I disagree with that conclusion, but it’s possible the categories are blocking me from that possibility.
2 quick points: For five years we’ve been making fun of Romney because he’s a spineless twat who’ll do whatever the given audience wants. Now we’re supposed to believe that that’s all wrong, he’s really a wingnut. He MAY be a wingnut, but that position requires jettisoning the opportunistic weasel thesis to some extent. I don’t see any reason to do so.
The other thing is that if you asked me to free associate on Romney outside of an argument context like this one, it would be quite a while before I got to anything about social issues. Weasel, check. Clueless, wealthy CEO type, check. GOP fiscal conservative, check. Reckless ignoramus on foreign policy, check. Odd upbeat affect and inability to connect with voters, check. The social issue thing just isn’t a salient part of the mix IMO.
The point Scott is making, as I see it, is that (a) Romney is a spineless cloaca when it comes to visible issues for which he’s politically accountable, and (b) is a wingnut when it comes to social issues that are less visible.
For five years we’ve been making fun of Romney because he’s a spineless twat who’ll do whatever the given audience wants. Now we’re supposed to believe that that’s all wrong, he’s really a wingnut.
To state the obvious, these are not mutually exclusive categories.
McAllen: Re-reading your post, I think I can concede that the moderate thing was just as much of a pose as anything else. I think he’s internalized the habits of “moderate-politics-in-quotation-marks” to the point that it’s as “real” as anything about him. This is a little like asking how many wingnuts can dance on the head of a pin. I have no interest in what Romney “really” believes, which is a position I believe Scott has voiced a number of times over the years. It’s not a fruitful path of argument.
He is “moderate” in the sense of risk-adverse and “playing it safe” In 30′s Germany, the safe bet was to side with Hitler. GODWIN!!
What I mean is that he will play to the the center of his party. If the Republican center were Gereld Ford, he would be a Gereld Ford Republican; if he had a HUGE Democratic majority (unlikely)he would govern with it; since his party is batshit, (if elected) he will govern as batshit.
Neither. Romney is an opportunist. Period. A rose is a rose is a rose and there is no deep down down there.
Scott is saying that the latter is more likely
I thought Scott was saying that it’s completely irrelevant.
Isn’t what Scott is saying is that he can’t believe that a somewhat large number of people think Rmoney is superficially moderate? Maybe if he qualified this to only include people who pay close attention to current politics it might make sense. Scott’s very, very likely right it won’t make a difference, but that people that don’t pay attention don’t have much of a clue doesn’t seem that surprising.
I don’t really buy this. It isn’t that Romney was incensed a being officially associated with a gay pride event. I’m sure we’ve all seen the bright pink flyers from 2002 that Romney didn’t get around to disavowing until 2012. Romney was incensed that a moderate position that he had carved out for himself had become untenable.
eld and Romney both had to work blue to get anything done. The lowest CPVI in Massachusetts is what, D+5? Creating/sustaining a commision that focuses on preventing teen suicide could easily be framed to republicans and conservatives as a pro-family, pro-child position. There was more to lose that to be gained by opposing it which is why Romney doubled the funding for it in 2006.
In 2005 conservative activists tried to change the payouts (as the cool kids say) and were unsuccessful because they failed to reframe the issue. That changed in 2006 after they tied the commision to LGBT pride events.
When Weld setup the commision it was a still an early stage for GSSA’s. There weren’t hundreds of chapters in high schools accross the country like there are today. In the same way that conservative activists weren’t yet pushing hard to rid textbooks of evolution, they also weren’t going after GSSA’s. They were too busy trying and failing to boycott Disney for providing domestic partner benefits.
By 2006 conservative activists had a case to make that Romney was allowing the state commision to use state funds to provide the LGBT movement with the next generation of LGBT activists. Romney didn’t care about blowback from courting the LGBT vote in 1994 or even involving himself in some sort of gay pride event in 2002. Conservative activists made him care in 2006 because they had gone to war with the LGBT movement on these issues.
What probably incensed Romney, if anything, came from a feeling of betrayal at the commision for not serving his political needs above its own mission. All of this tracks with what happened next:
Romney’s reaction did the following:
1. He was able to placate the conservative activists who wanted the commision ended by threatening to end it and picking a fight with democrats.
2. It allowed him to accuse the democrats of being unreasonable when he tried to “de-politicize” the commision’s mandate.
3. Once the democrats setup an independent commision over his objections, Romney was then free to actually end the commision without worrying about it coming back to bite him on the ass by framing it as “redundant”.
I don’t know what this says about Romney except that he and his advisors probably have to spend a bit more time than most candidates deciding which position to embrace next and how best to do it without getting married to it.
To be fair to Romney, getting out of the Massachusetts Republican fishbowl and diving into an ocean dominated by red state social conservatives and winning the nomination was no easy task. Just look at what Jesse Helms did to William Weld’s career.
i remain unconvinced romney is more than a hollow shell of a human being. the only thing he’s consistently displayed any actual conviction in is making money, by whatever means necessary, as long as it doesn’t (literally) involve him getting his hands dirty. he wants to be president so he can add that certificate to his wall, not because he has any original thoughts. there is no such thing as an “original” republican thought, they’ve been recycling the same ones since the days of hoover.
POTUS would look good on his resume though.
He’d get his choice of planets in the afterlife for Pete’s sake.
At heart, Mitt has no heart.
He is, though, a very handsome man.
And if he wins, this handsome man will make a fine figurehead for the forces of Christian religious intolerance, and American Fascism, as defined below:
http://www.favreau.info/misc/14-points-fascism.php
This will be a ‘tipping point’ election.
And a Mitt victory is a loss for 99% of the American, and the worlds, people.
And don’t think the 1% don’t know, or want, that.
There are huge profits to be made in religious Holy Wars, during a time of dwindling natural resources.
Huge!!!
And the damage will all be purely collateral…
I don’t find him all that handsome, but then again I’m only attracted to humans.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mitt looks like the kind of actor who gets hired to play the President in B-movies that can’t afford Martin Sheen.
Wow. Nice and spot on.
He is, though, a very handsome man.
he smiles like the Alien. I keep expecting his mouth to open and a second set of fangs to come shooting out.
I’ll need to know what it means to govern like a wingnut.
I’m not sure republican presidents have a strong record of wingnuttery when they aren’t an “opposition party”.
I’ll need to know what it means to govern like a wingnut.
Here is a handy chart.
That kinda reinforces my belief that republican wingnut rhetoric doesn’t match their policy.
We are all pretty well aware that republican wingnuttery is a cover for regulatory carve-outs and encouraging tax avoidance amongst the wealthy. Spending on regulatory admin and infrastructure skyrocketed under Bush. The positions were just stacked full of cronies and lobbyists.
I would absolutely expect Romney to go regulation crazy as well in order to protect his buddies and interests. Spending will increase at a faster rate than Obama as well.
Spending on regulatory admin [*] and infrastructure [*] skyrocketed under Bush.
* Let’s carve our bullshit War on Terra spending from that. Because regulators of real problems – FEMA, the SEC, the FDIC, the DoL, the DoA, and so on, all saw regulatory activity plunge during that period. Yes, we spent a lot on security theatre. Lumping these under “regulatory admin” is a bullshit move. Also, spending a shit-ton of money on “terror-proofing” office buildings, while letting bridges literally collapse, is only “increased infrastructure” to someone who is willfully making category errors.
DoA would be DoE, except I lacked coffee. I blame excess government regulation for the error.
To paraphrase Ben Franklin, we must all support the DoE or we will assuredly all be DoA.
Yes, but reality will only fit Brad’s fantasies if he twists it into a pretzel.
No, Bush increased financial and bank regulation outlays from $1.9B to $2.3B.
The Comptroller of the Currency saw significant increases in budget and staffing.
The budget of the SEC increased by 76% over the Bush years, and Bush oversaw the biggest SEC budget increase in its history:
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jan/12/nation/na-sec12
Cherry picking again, are we? How about this and this. When we talk about regulation we are talking about actual enforcement.
Evidently you do not remember the period 2000-2008.
No, I just know that wingnuts tend to nominally (ie pretend) to be very dissatisfied with Bush’s domestic policies (after the fact, of course).
You mean, ‘after the dividend check’s cleared.”
yeah, after those policies cratered the world economy only four years ago. and romney’s policies are even worse than w bush’s, so i guess wingnuts either never learn, or are all bullshit, because nearly half this country is going to vote for this automaton.
He’s white, isn’t he? Let’s not over-think this.
I think the question comes down to what will the Democrats in Congress oppose? The Ds were down with deregulation and tax cuts and avoidance, but checked the Rs a bit on social issues. Maybe they will keep doing that
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