Political Theory and Punditry from a native of Flyover Country
The kind of fellow we would have hired at Bain
Bob White, a former colleague of Mitt Romney’s (and an advisor to Romney’s campaign), on Paul Ryan.
This from the same campaign whose candidate said “I have a lot of friends who own NASCAR teams.”
Disconnect much?
(Source: thedailybeast.com)
Mitt Romney’s safe and squishy campaign just took on a much harder edge. A candidate of no details — I’ll cut the budget but no need to explain just how — has named a vice-presidential running mate, Paul Ryan, whose vision is filled with endless columns of minus signs. Voters will now be able to see with painful clarity just what the Republican Party has in store for them.
Seems the New York Times has either:
1) Not actually read Ryan’s plan, which is unlikely; or
2) Conflated Ryan’s long-term plan (which takes decades to make severe cuts) for immediate austerity.
Here’s the Ryan plan so you can read it for yourself.
As I mentioned yesterday, Ryan’s not a good choice for the GOP in 2012 — precisely because laughable editorials like this will be coming.
(Source: The New York Times)
Reëlected Presidents often enjoy a brief respite after their second campaign. The new Congress isn’t sworn in until January, and the interregnum is used to hire new members of the Administration and plot out a fifth-year agenda. But the aftermath of the 2012 election will be unlike any other transition in memory. Election Day is November 6th. Fifty-five days later, on New Year’s Eve, the size and the scope of the federal government are scheduled to be radically altered. Federal tax rates for every income group will shoot up to levels not seen since 2001. Payroll taxes for employees will jump by two percentage points. Unemployment benefits for some three million Americans will be cut off. The Pentagon will start the new year with a fifty-five-billion-dollar budget cut. The budget allocated to everything from the F.B.I. to the Park Service to meat inspections will be slashed by the same amount. Soon after, federal payments to doctors who treat patients using Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, will be slashed by about a third.
Ryan Lizza’s excellent new piece for the New Yorker is a must-read.
(Source: newyorker.com)
My Republican friends often ask me, incredulously, “But don’t you want to beat Obama?”
Beat him with what? A candidate who promises to close the deficit but whose budget plan will only make it worse? A candidate who’s pushing for yet more tax cuts for the wealthy when there’s no evidence that such cuts will spark more or faster growth than they did the last time they were tried? A candidate who compensates for ignorance on foreign policy with pointless bellicosity? A candidate whose general-election victory would at least marginally increase the chances of war with Iran?
No, thanks.
There’s a lot of days I can’t help but share Scott Galupo’s feelings on Romney. Today is one of those days. It’s not fun to identify with the old right and watch your nominee trample all over your core political values.
(Source: theamericanconservative.com)
Considering members of Congress “on an individual basis,” Kerrey says, “you should presume patriotism.” But he thinks congressional rules favor partisan gridlock: “I am campaigning to amend the Constitution to abolish both the Republican and Democratic caucuses. . . . We should not allow Congress to organize by party. How can you work with someone who is raising money to defeat you? The rules of Congress have to change, and they can’t be trusted to rewrite their own rules.
Good luck with that, Bob. (Seriously, this is an admirable idea)
(Source: Washington Post)
Ms. Warren, who checked the “white” box at the University of Texas before getting in touch with her inner Cherokee when she stormed the Ivies, owes it to the people of Massachusetts to make the records of the Harvard Law hiring committee available to voters. Harvard, though a private institution, owes the people of its home state the same. If Ms. Warren’s undocumented claim to minority status did in fact play a role in the law school’s decision to hire her as a professor enjoying a prestigious, middle-six-figures chair, that is a fact of public importance.
As the most prominent Social Justice blogger on Tumblr, I agree.
(Source: nationalreview.com)
Politics is rarely about maximizing the good. The vast preponderance of the time, it’s about minimizing the bad. That’s why I decided in March, after months of vigorous opposition on ideological and philosophic grounds, to support the ideas behind the individual mandate to purchase health insurance.
Not for a second do I believe this policy is the best in terms of incentivizing economically sound behavior or controlling costs across the system. It isn’t, and it won’t. Putting everyone on insurance will most likely continue the creeping increases in cost (which grossly surpass inflation) that have plagued our healthcare system for decades. My world view believes that the best way to control cost is to put that cost directly in the hands of those most impacted by the ability to make choices about their care; consumers. I remain a believer in that idea.
The ultimate problem is that we are no longer discussing this problem in real terms. My political allies speak of things such as individualism and the local togetherness of communities. We love to wax on about soup suppers to fundraise for the sick and neighbors taking care of their own. As someone who grew up in such a community, I can attest to the reality of these stories. They can and do make a meaningful impact on people’s lives.
Unfortunately, as is so well documented in Charles Murray’s latest book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” that America is vanishing before our eyes. With the exception of the upper class and surviving rural and lower class communities, which have resisted such collapse, the America we speak of is disappearing. That’s not a “woe me” statement. It’s empirical fact. The institution of marriage is disintegrating. Social capital is a thing of the past. The very communities we cherish are losing the cohesion and solidarity that makes them so valuable to American life.
If this were 1960, I would vigorously oppose the mandate and related government creep. Unfortunately, as I’ve had to remind my political friends so frequently over the past few years, it’s not. We must adjust our policy options to face that reality.
That means confronting the fact that Americans demand access to care. Our option is no longer to sit on our hands. We are then left with using the state to provide access to care or utilizing markets. That means single-payer (or some variant of it) or forcing markets to provide insurance to all. The latter is hardly ideal, but if you share my general world-view, it’s far better than universal care.
So there. I hate the fact that our society has degraded to the point where we must have this discussion, but we can’t pretend that it hasn’t. As much as I prefer Murray’s cardinal virtues that separate America from other industrialized democracies, those don’t mean what they once did.
Gov. Romney believes a family with one mother and one father is the ideal setting to raise a child. That doesn’t mean adoption by other parents — whether they be single or same-sex — should be outlawed. States have to make decisions that are in the best interests of children, and where possible that should be in a home with one mother and one father.
Since it seems Tumblr is alive with MItt doing mean things today, I thought I’d post something he supports that’s both quite tolerant and politically brave. Romney believes, as I do, that each state should have its own authority to make these own choices. Most of the arguments against gay marriage, gay adoption, etc. will inevitably fade as we see the real thing in action. It’s hard to say gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage when it’s a functioning part of the social fabric in states that have better marriage outcomes than states without gay marriage. The same can be said with beautiful examples like Zach Wahls, who grew up with two mothers and appears more than perfectly adjusted to society.
My belief, as it has been for some time, is to allow society and culture to change the law rather than changing society and culture through law. It’s slower and more painful, but it sidesteps so many of the problems in our legal structures.
(Source: BuzzFeed)
Julia” is not just one person who is going through life dependent on government. I think one of the tricks of the “Julia” timeline is that it allows for the person reading the slideshow to identify other women they know within the timeline.
That’s Noah Kristula-Green writing for David Frum’s blog. In case you’re confused by the reference, “Julia” is a fictional character created by Barack Obama’s campaign to advertise the litany of government benefits they promise if you just vote for him. This is the exploitation of naive people’s self interest at their finest.
Noah warns conservatives that by mocking the idea they’re really just failing to recognize a really good campaign strategy. He’s correct.
I have just one thing to say in response to said strategy.
If you want things that you haven’t earned given to you, vote for Barack Obama. Never mind centuries of a community ethic of hard work and self-reliance. It’s someone else’s money, and you want it now!
(Source: thedailybeast.com)
