Associated Press
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) isn't fully invested in his party's 2012 ticket.
Even before the race for the Republican presidential nomination effectively ended, many of Mitt Romney's most notable supporters expressed deep misgivings about him. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for example, said a day after endorsing the former governor, "There are a lot of other people out there that some of us wish had run for president -- but they didn't."
On Capitol Hill, the dissatisfaction is considerably more acute. More than a dozen far-right House members chatted yesterday with reporters, and as Sahil Kapur reported, the group had "a hard time finding anything praiseworthy to say about their party's presumptive presidential nominee."
Fourteen GOP conservatives sat together Tuesday on a Capitol Hill panel to field questions from a few dozen reporters and other attendees about the political issues of the day. When asked, predictably, to provide their thoughts about Mitt Romney, they turned decidedly lukewarm.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) summed up the conservative mood with a joke that won laughter from the audience, but might have hit too close to home for many in the GOP.
"Whether you're liberal, whether you're very conservative," he said, "you ought to be excited [about Romney] because he's been on your side at one time or another."
Ouch.
All of these conservatives were resigned to their fate -- they're loyal Republicans, and Romney will be their nominee -- but none of them could muster the will to say something nice about the guy. They hope he wins, not because they believe Romney would be a good president and a strong leader, but because they hate President Obama.
In response to a question about whether he feels any excitement about Romney's candidacy, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the hyper-conservative Republican Study Committee, said, "[W]e're excited about the opportunity to beat Barack Obama."
Let's not lose sight, however, of the larger context. It's interesting that House conservatives still aren't comfortable with their party's 2012 nominee, but the broader significance is that House conservatives also have fairly specific expectations about Romney's role in government in the event that he wins in November.
In short, far-right Republican lawmakers believe Romney will work for them, effectively becoming little more than an auto-pen for Congress.
The New York Times had a fascinating item the other day on this.
As Congress was set to reconvene on Monday, House Republicans said Mr. Romney could go his own way on smaller issues that may help define him as separate from his Congressional Republican counterparts. But, they said, he must understand that they are driving the policy agenda for the party now.
"We're not a cheerleading squad," said Representative Jeff Landry, an outspoken freshman from Louisiana. "We're the conductor. We're supposed to drive the train."
Traditionally, especially in Republican politics, a president, in addition to his official duties, heads his political party and takes the lead in shaping its policy agenda. Lawmakers from his party are expected to follow the president's lead and share his priorities.
This crop of congressional Republicans, fueled in part by their mistrust for Romney, expect to turn this model on its head -- they're in charge; they're in the lead; and it will be President Romney's job to do as he's told to do.
There have been signals on this front for much of the year. In February, for example, Grover Norquist explained at CPAC, "We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go.... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate."
Romney, as far as many in his party are concerned, will be a bystander if he's elected. And who knows, maybe Romney is comfortable with that -- he seems to seek power for the sake of having power, and may be satisfied following whatever instructions his party gives him.
Either way, there's a power play underway in GOP politics, and 201 days before the election, it's already on public display.
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I doubt that Norquist is worried about Romney being anything other than an auto-pen, but other than policies that benefit the most wealthy, Romney has no principles. He'll always look for the easy way.
The surrealistic pillow that is the right wing confounds and bemuses. Are these guys for real or are they mere delusions brought about by mushroom tea and marijuana brownies served up at Koch parties where Knight-marish crusaders applaud their imprisonment brought about by their own device.The nuts run the asylum and a nation cries.
That's the kool-aid acid test, isn't it?
It seems more and more obvious that the Republican Party is well on its way to becoming merely a shell corporation operated by the "conservative" movement, and that brings with it the danger that political structures will go the same way. We see it in the states controlled by Republicans in that the laws they pursue are, by and large, written not by state legislators, but by ALEC which serves as a kind of shadow national legislature--unelected, unaccountable, and uncontrollable. Should the right gain complete control, the formal institutions of politics and government will only be for show.
#1. WHY are the Gohmerts of the world so arrogantly assuming they will be re-elected with enough of a majority to treat the putative 'President' Romney as an autopen? Please, my friends, excuse the capital vehemence: this is ALL ABOUT THE DOWN BALLOT RACES! GET THE ARROGANT, POWER-GRABBING GOP/TEA OUT OF CONGRESS AND OUT OF YOUR STATE HOUSES!
#2. I am currently reading Bill Presser's "The Obama Hate Machine" and the chapter(s) on the Koch Brothers bring the entire, ugly conspiracy together: they have the billions, the fringy, rightwing politics; they fund everything from ALEC to CATO to George Mason University and they have lit all the Tea Party fires on BOTH sides (tax protesting Libertarians AND racist oldies) of the antiObama backlash. They are ubiquitous and they don't care what the 'great unwashed' do as long as there are no financial or environmental regulations to hamper the CORPORATIONS THEY OWN AND AS LONG AS THEY DON'T HAVE TO PAY TAXES!
I hope Romney reads that they'll treat the putative 'President' Romney as an autopen...maybe he'll see just how shallow Republican loyalty really runs. This is just another addendum to the Rovian Permanent Republican Majority, or GOP Single Party Rule, or whatever else you want to call the deliberate destruction of a free republic for the cause of greed.
Why should he care? He gets to have his picture taken in the Oval Office, on Air Force One, and it's on the front page pretty much every day somewhere.
I don't think he's like Bush -- Romney actually likes power, not just the appearance of power. That doesn't mean he won't sign onto numerous disastrous conservative policies, but he'll do it if it's good for him politically, not just because congressional Republicans order him to.
Romney "little more than an auto-pen for Congress."
And wouldn't it be hi-larious if congress went Democrat(ic) in November!
Or even mid-term. It would be disastrous for the country, but great for comedians.
Ann Romney gave away the secret at that posh Palm Beach fundraiser when she said, "It's our turn to live in The White House." I suspect that's all Mitt and Ann really want: The symbol of "leadership" and one more house with a nice, well-manicured yard and access to a private plane.
The problem with Grover Norquist's comment and the attidue of the House Republicans is that being president involves a lot more than robo-signing tax cut bills. Things like, oh, setting foreign policy objectives, deciding how and when to use the military, negotiating tough treaties, dealing with other governments that don't see the world in quite the same way as does the US. Mr. Romney has shown no interest in any of this stuff, nor does he show any signs of understanding the actual job of the presidency.
The US media might let Mr. Romney get away with flip-flops, lies, evasions and made-up facts, but the rest of the world won't.
If I hadn't already known you were speaking about Romney, I would have sworn you were referring to george junior. That's some deja vu too scarey to contemplate.
I think an auto-pen president is exactly what Romney will be. The man just keeps providing instances of how programmed he is by wealth and church. We've already been down this road with a puppet in the White House, only 4 years ago and look where it landed us. Worse, Romney has the same father-son old business hang-ups that Little Bush had which got us into war with Iraq.
Romney has not proven that he is anything but another cookie cutter Republican unable to make decisions independent of the GOP/wealth/church rule books, with an uncomfortably heavy emphasis on his strange church. All the right's hypocritical screaming about loss of Christianity is dead in the water if they vote for Romney. It'll finally prove that winning trumps everything, even their so-called faith.
Didn't WE already try the "Manchurian Candidate" experiment with George W. and Darth Chaney pulling those strings? And see how well that worked for US....Vote them out come November 2012!
What is most interesting about the GWB presidency is that after the economy collapsed, the deficit went out of control and two wars, the Republican position was that W was not a real conservative. Can we expect the same from a Romney presidency when it turns into a disaster? Of course, because Republicans do not want to take responsibility. Every Republican who voted for W's policies has been allowed to disavow them without consequences. And the party faithful refuse to recognize that they created the disaster. Dems should have been calling the mess the Bush Depression from the beginning so that by now even the media would be calling it that name. I don't think people would hear or believe Republicans "job creators" anymore.
Hah Zora you beat me to it! I was just going to say this! We've already done this. The last time a Republican POTUS stood up to his party and actually did something good for the country was w/ George Bush the first. POTUS George Bush sr. had enough sense to say you know what tax cuts and deregulation only lead to destabilization and to bad economics. It's voodoo economics he called it. And then how did his party reward him?
They voted him out of office
Because a Republican who isn't a complete ditto head (at least, and unfortunately, in today's modern Republican Party) is not a true Republican.
Q: What happens when you cross an auto-pen with an Etch-a-Sketch?
What is it exactly that Republicans don't like about President Obama? Does anyone know?
He's a Democrat and he's black.
What specific policies are they talking about when they speak against the President?
This isn't about "policy" - that's too complex an idea. Just go with he's a democrat and he's black - it's simple, fits on a bumper sticker, easy to understand, that works for them.
Actually, Zora, there are specific policies that Republicans object to: and they are every single policy that Obama has championed, including the ones originated by Republicans. It's Politics Without A Cause. "What are you campaigning against?" "What have you got?"
(I do actually agree that their objections are based on race and political tribalism, but I wanted to have fun with it.)
If Mitt Romney were to be elected he would follow policy the same as Reagen, and both Bush's, that being lies, deciet, secrecy and fill the pockets of the ultra rich while destroying the rest of us.
Whether you're liberal or conservative, that's just funny.