There was a widely-held assumption that once the Republican nominating phase was over, Mitt Romney would, as he's done several times before, simply shed this skin for another. When his chief strategist promised the candidate would shake the "Etch A Sketch," it stuck because it reinforced suspicions: as a general-election candidate, we'd see a whole new Mitt (again).
But it's worth pausing to appreciate just how wrong these assumptions were. There are 85 days until Election Day, and Romney is still pandering to the right as if the Iowa caucuses were right around the corner. There's been no effort to move towards the mainstream at all, and Paul Ryan's appearance on the GOP ticket is a critical part of this dynamic. As Nate Silver explained over the weekend:
Politics 101 suggests that you play toward the center of the electorate. Although this rule has more frequently been violated when it comes to vice-presidential picks, there is evidence that presidential candidates who have more “extreme” ideologies (closer to the left wing or the right wing than the electoral center) underperform relative to the economic fundamentals.
Various statistical measures of Mr. Ryan peg him as being quite conservative. Based on his Congressional voting record, for instance, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.
By this measure, in fact, which rates members of the House and Senate throughout different time periods on a common ideology scale, Mr. Ryan is the most conservative Republican member of Congress to be picked for the vice-presidential slot since at least 1900. He is also more conservative than any Democratic nominee was liberal, meaning that he is the furthest from the center.
There's been some interest this morning on Ryan's incredibly thin legislative resume. After seven terms in Congress, the right-wing Wisconsin congressman has presented plenty of ideas and given plenty of speeches, but when it comes to actually making laws, Ryan has seen only two of his bills become law: renaming a post office and a change to the excise tax on arrows.
And while it's interesting that Ryan is an unaccomplished politician, I still think it's more noteworthy that he's a fiercely ideological politician. Romney very easily could have picked a running mate with broader appeal to voters outside his own base, but he chose not to -- instead picking the most extreme VP nominee, as a quantifiable matter, in modern times.
It's a ticket of, by, and for the right, not even trying to appeal to moderates or Democrats who might be open to outreach. Romney's entire 2012 strategy, it appears, is mobilizing the far-right base and then hoping for the best.
The Etch A Sketch appears to have been thrown out the window.
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You missed something. They are mobilizing the far-right base, supressing the vote in Democratic areas, and hoping for the best.
You beat me to it . Supplanted by a lazy shiftless stenographer corps MSM who through fear will not call a lie a lie .
Romney says earth is flat , Obama killed welfare to work, Obama is killing Medicare, Obama is raising taxes ......etc , etc etc.
Democrats disagree .
Here to argue while frothing at the mouth ...
I give up
They are appeasing the loud mouths who were complaining about the mishandled primary. It was a bad move but they had to try and keep the natives huddled under the tree.
Exactly.
But the strategy of ignoring the "Independents" and the opposition could work for the Democrats. We have a much broader potential base.
If we could only get them to vote regularly. Democrats are well known for their poor voter turnout.
I hope to see a shift to mobilizing our base and not worrying about the sliver of the population called the "Independents".
They discovered that the non-crazy wing of America doesn't harbor the same hatred for the "Kenyan Muslim Socialist usurper" that they've banked on pushing Romney into the WH. Now, they know that the only shot they have at winning is keeping Democratic voters away from the polls and turning out their base.
I think you're right. But Romney's picking a member of a Congress with a 12% approval rating strikes me as extremely dumb; or else he is under the impression that being so unpopular puts them into an 'elite' category?
Two things still working for the Privatize Ryan/Lyin' Sack of Mitt ticket:
1) they've haven't got the Right Wing Noise/Lie Machine humming on all 8 cylinders yet; that'll be getting going pretty soon, and
2) the American public's incorrigible irresponsible inattentiveness and ignorance on matters public
"2) the American public's incorrigible irresponsible inattentiveness and ignorance on matters public"
Not necessarily a plus for the GOP.
Most voters have made up their minds which lever they will pull in November. They made the decision somewhere between going to the polls with Mom and Dad when they were in 6th grade, and 2008.
And the few "undecided" won't pay any attention until after Labor Day. If then. Joe Biden says all politics is personal, which means it is up to US to convince one of those slackers to go vote. And vote Democrat, top of the ticket, to the bottom.
The good news in the Ryan pick, Disgusted, is that whenever Ryan's budget ideas get floated, the public recoils. And those same ideas are the one thing that Catholic bishops and nuns agree on. Ryan is a Catholic, and while he's with the bishops on culture war issues, being out of step with both bishops and nuns on social justice issues is a problem for him. The RC church is to the left of most Democrats on social issues, and so are the laity. Ryan's budget ideas are absolutely toxic to both Catholic progressives and conservatives. Don't expect the bishops to cut Ryan any slack because they're on the same page about culture war issues, because they haven't so far.
Oh, hey Day and MeddlingMonk, I agree. But if you put my two points together, those irresponsible self-back-patting "independents" will be influenced by the odious smells the Republican lie factory is throwing out into the political atmosphere. Democrats' advantage on items they rightly should have advantage on and any knowledgeable citizen understands are negated. That's what bothers me so much. In any reasonable and just world, this race would already be considered a huge laugher, but that's not the world we live in. Half of our country is really down the rabbit hole and the ones who put them there find it advantageous to try and shove a lot more down in that crowded hole.
If the polls hold up for Obama a few weeks out of the conventions, I'll probably start breathing easier, but boy that Ministry of (un)Truth the Republicans employ sure is something to behold because I have absolutely zero faith in my fellow Americans. I really hope to see I'm underestimated a lot of my fellow citizens.
The only way mobilizing the base and hoping for the best works is if the other party's base and independents sit out the election (see 2010). If the Democratic base and independents are just as motivated to show up as the Republican base, then any strategy that abandons the center is doomed to fail. There just aren't enough Fox News fans to win a national election all by themselves.
Paul Ryan's nomination would seem to be a gift to Team Obama to motivate the Democratic base and independents to show up and vote for the President.
To win Romney requires a total Republican victory in voter suppression and complete dominance of the non-Fox mainstream media. If the mainstream media giants like Bob Schieffer were to ask follow up questions about Romney's lying, for example, Romney would be doomed. I take it back, Romney has a chance.
"If the mainstream media giants like Bob Schieffer were to ask follow up questions..."
I don't know of any news/political host that does a good job of getting answers necessary to inform the public, being the purpose of the Fourth Estate. If you have any candidates, please let me know. Good post, thanks.
If the Democratic base voted with regularity then we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with the independents.
Food for thought.
I'd say there's a pretty good reason (cough-Dr. Maddow-cough) why so many pols (most particularly Rape-Public-CONs, but more than a few Dems, too) seem extremely reluctant to appear for an interview on TRMS... and those appearances that do occur typically result in thoughtful and informative conversations.
(please, Mr. Cheney, Rachel's not the only one who'd love for you to come on the show!)
;-)
they never trusted his ass.
plus, in an age of youtube and the internet, folks are much more able to challenge the 'move to the center'.
i.e., look at how he wasn't able to backtrack to 'appeal to Latinos'.
This just in from CNN . Another mass shooting
Several people, including law enforcement officers, have been shot near Texas A&M University, police say.
If only there had been some armed people to stop the assailant
Oh wait....
It was Aggies. No humans were involved.
ok ... that's enough ... i was branded 'democrat' at birth and have lived the very hard life of being one in texas for the past 15 yrs ...
aggies (and longhorns) breath the same air and love their children ...
what you just posted is unconscionable and is something i object to having associated with democrats, progressives and the rest of humanity
If you throw out abortion, Ryan's record isn't even close to the idiotic Bachmann. Someone on another board said he is more Jack Kemp than Joe Scarborough, more supply sider than fiscal conservative and that sounds pretty accurate.
I think Benen is correct though overall that Romney is dobuling down rather than moving to the center and he will almost certainly lose the election unless the economy heads south.
If you remove your sense of smell and taste, poop tastes like chicken.
There's no reason to "throw out abortion" in your comparison because lately, the jobs jobs jobs party has focused on little beyond women's reproductive rights.
It's still poop.
I agree with you that he is against "women's productive rights" as you put it. However there is a wide world of craziness involved with Bachmann, (Muslim hating etc) in which Ryan does not appear involved.
"There's been some interest this morning on Ryan's incredibly thin legislative resume. After seven terms in Congress, the right-wing Wisconsin congressman has presented plenty of ideas and given plenty of speeches, but when it comes to actually making laws, Ryan has seen only two of his bills become law: renaming a post office and a change to the excise tax on arrows."
This idea is both wrong and crazy though. Ryan has 7.5 times as much experience in Congress as Obama had when he declared, plus he is Chairman of the House Budget Committee whereas Obama had literally never run anything in his life once he left college.
Even liberal blogger Dylan Matthews points out that :
"If you’ve heard of Paul Ryan, you’ve heard of Paul Ryan’s budget. But Ryan has been in the House of Representatives for 14 years and has proposed many, many other bills. Looking through the Library of Congress’s records, I counted 71 bills or amendments that Ryan has sponsored 71 bills or amendments and 971 bills that he has co-sponsored. That’s a lot of legislation, and some of it is pretty interesting"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/11/paul-ryans-non-budget-policy-record-in-one-post/
He even points out bills in which Ryan was on the same side as Obama:
"Ryan has repeatedly sponsored proposals (one more!) that would allow the president to veto specific items in bills, especially budgets. It’s a popular idea, across party lines. Congress passed one in the 1990s that was struck down by the Supreme Court, and the House passed a line-item veto proposal written by Ryan and supported by President Obama this February. The new proposal attempts to get around the earlier law’s constitutional issues by forcing Congress to vote on the president’s revised bills after he’s vetoed specific items."
So yes it makes sense to be against him ideologically, no it doesn't to lie about who he is.
"I counted 71 bills or amendments that Ryan has sponsored 71 bills or amendments and 971 bills that he has co-sponsored."
Meh. It's quite easy to co-sponsor legislation. Lots of the critters do it as a matter of course. Actually introducing legislation and getting it through committees, voted on in the chamber and passed is a whole different matter.
So of the 71 bills, Ryan introduced, he got 2 through, one of them renaming a post office.
In light of the fact that Ryan was in Congress for the whole of the six years that the GOP held all 3 branches of goverment (2000 - 2006), why was Ryan unable to persuade his own party of the merits of his ideas and get something more substantive passed than the two bills he did?
sue of all places to find you! LOL
No heres the thing. The blogger this came from is referring only to those bills in which Ryan was the sole sponsor. This is not at all an unusual total. Nobody recruits other members for the Joe Jones Post Office bill. However he has been co-sponsor of other successful legislation usually pertaining to his bailiwick the budget. Had she said sole sponsor she would have been correct but since she didn't it's a lie.
The point of noting that he only sponsored two shows his lack of initiative, originality, and imagination. Seven times as much experience in the chamber of Congress as one representative of the 500 person House vs several years as one senator in a body of 50 Senators spoils your formulation.
he didn't only get two passed. they were just the only ones by him as the sole sponsor.
For instance Obama had a lot of success getting passed a resolution to congratulate the White Sox, and and getting July 12 declared National Summer Learning Day, but unfortunately he needed co-sponsors to get those through.
He introduced a whole boatload of legislation however AFTER he started running for president. Surprisingly, all of it died.
bb is a Ryan supporter. And in other related news, the earth is round.
Voters need to understand that the coming election will set the tone for the future of America well beyond the four year term both Obama and Romney are running for. The Republican Party is setting up a distinct agenda and endorsing a distinct vision for this country, and it is not a pretty sight. Romney is a flip-flopper with a major problem connecting to the conservative base, but he has wholeheartedly embraced the radical agenda of the far-right and the modern GOP. The war on women, birtherism, more giveaways to the super-rich... Mitt backs it all, and so does Paul Ryan. Progressive
sorry, hit the wrong key 6. 5 times not 7.5
Romney has stayed far right and picked Ryan to be even farther right because there is no middle left to obtain. Polling shows that undecideds are down to single digits (something like 7%). That usually doesn't happen until October.
It would appear that the campaign feels they have as much of the middle as they are going to get and are now dependent on massive base turnout.
"Romney's entire 2012 strategy, it appears, is mobilizing the far-right base and then hoping for the best."
Oh, and lying like a rug.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/08/12/foreign-cash-disqualifies-romney-from-presidential-bid/
Do you guys know if this article has any truth to it?
Without a list of donors, it's impossible to say. The only name mentioned, Adelson, was born in Brooklyn.
If you recall, both Clintons had this issue:
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-donors19oct19,0,1359734.story
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/jan-june98/china_5-19.html
still trolling I see.
Funny thing about that Etch-a-Sketch. Turns out you can only shake it if no one's watching. When you draw people's attention to it, you're just stuck with the last ineptly drawn jaggedy thing you scrawled on it.
Paul Ryan got right in step and toed the RoMoney line by restating the lie that POTUS said "you didn't build that" as in you didn't build your business. Then there's this:
Or maybe he could have been a janitor at his school? Ha!
In any case, did he build it or did he have help along the way? Seems that depending on entitlements and "Welfare" didn't hold him down now did it. Oh, wait, it's ok when you are repugnicant.
But now that he had his, his attitude is too bad for you. Let's privatize the whole kit and kaboodle and you can build it yourself. Oh, and we'll help with our "left overs" that trickle down. If you're not too far down the line, you might get a crumb.
I'd say an ad along those lines won't help RoMoney.
And let us not forget the Nuns on the Bus and how they feel about little Paulie and how he relied on his religion to come up with his economic "Plan." Oh, yeah, the nuns will get a piece of him and it won't be pretty. Ha!
If the far right base had willingly gotten in line like they were expected to by the Romney campaign, the Etch a Sketch would have been shaken by now.
That they expected a standard bearer and not lip service per the usual threw Romney for a loop.
That Romney would lie and distort Obama's record for partisan gain is not a surprise. Not even the extent to which he does it. Romney's one bad poll away from "Obama wants to sleep with your daughter...or son!" territory.
That this would represent the entirety of his campaign - lie like a rug, kiss the ass of the base, suppress the vote of minorities and the elderly and hope for the best - is something I think is surprising a lot of people, including Romney.
It was supposed to be easier than this for him. After all, everything up to now has been easier for him than this.
It is evident that Romney simply wants to be president for nothing other than vanity. He has no vision or burning conviction to speak of. He is not going to be affected by any calamity that befalls the general American populace i.e. the middle classes because of his policies- his obvious (and hidden) wealth assures that. So if putting Ryan on the ticket means he continues to tack to the right, he really does not care if that fires up the conservative base and gives him a better chance of winning than he otherwise would have
I so agree! Further I believe that RoMoney would lose interest half way through because it's a hard job - not something he is used to.
He thinks he will just issue orders and folks will just fall in line. However, without the benefit of holding a "bonus" over their heads or some other big pay off for toeing the line, he won't have the same power that a CEO, Chairman & Sole Owner has - because a government is NOT A CORPORATION. Might be a person though. ;-/
I've been thinking something along these lines for awhile now. A nation, a democracy, a government do not resemble corporations at all. As a President, one cannot simply sell off the country, one cannot really do anything without the consent of the governed. We are giving the office our permission to lead for a few years.
I don't think Conservatives or today's Republicans get this. For them it all seems to be about power. Leveraging a company, loading it with debt, self dealing, stealing pensions, and then driving the remnants into bankruptcy may be legally 'accepted business practices'. Not really an option in a representative democracy with 3 separate branches.
Romney is betting the economy is bad enough for people to vote Republican and Dems that are disappointed with Obama staying home. His strategy also includes a lot of money thrown at negative ads. I doubt he has a backup plan if the Ryan budget and/or his tax returns become an major issue.
Ya know, i'm not sure anything the romney campaign has done rises to the level of "strategy." At most, they have put out a series of drafts of a strategy.
The latest in the string: Romney has spent months cozying up to the Ryan budget. Romney announces Ryan - "the ideological head of the GOP" - as his vp pick. The press assumes, quite reasonably, Romney has now fully embraced the Ryan budget. Within an hour after the rollout "presentation" the Romney campaign releases a statement that Romney has a plan of his own and is emphatically NOT running on the Ryan budget.
What the hell are these people doing?
Eventually, the conversation will turn to Romney's proposed budget and where he intends to cut and which tax deductions he will abolish. His numbers do not add up and people are going to ask. Romney is feeding everyone pie in the sky with ambiguity which is a big part of his strategy. He is not going to get specific because he knows that disclosing the specs would lose the election. So the media has to keep pursuing the specifics and Obama will have to do the same during the debates. Romney thinks he can be glib, but a lot of voters will not be fooled.
Which means that Romney is the same place he was last Thursday, i.e. prior to "Romney/Ryan." AND he has selected and then disowned his vp (and what must the now neutered Ryan be thinking --- he has just tanked his career.)
There was an analysis posted yesterday by the Atlantic that concluded that Romney would have paid at an 0.82 effective tax rate under Ryan's plan. It seems to me that this is the direction of the conversation Romney must avoid at all costs. Any specifics he provides will lead down this path. Romney's attitude has been "I don't care what you people want to know. I will decide what information you need. You just nod your heads." As has been said many times, he is behaving as the CEO of a privately held company behaves. Romney is, by breeding and experience, disinclined to provide any further specificity. And he can't provide any because people won't like what he would have to say.
Doesn't the President win just by talking about the Bush tax cuts and the American Jobs Act??
The president can talk about a lot of things in the Ryan plan, but the voters are hearing "Kill Medicare" and that is the most important item to people who are retired or close to retirement. There are a lot of Baby Boomers that are not going to like the idea of killing Medicare because they are seeing private insurance company premiums that are being taken from their paycheck. And that is a lot of money so they are not going to trust the Republicans turning over Medicare to private insurance companies.
i think we're saying the same thing - or just supplementing each others points --
it's way harder to defend the cubbies (my nl favorites) then it is flattening the R-nut nonsense
Heard an internet rumor last week that some of the nuttier wingers want to dump Rmoney at the Convention. And all bias aside, the optics would be too irresistible for the LibrulMedia to not put on the TV machine. Maybe putting Ryan on the ticket will drain the energy out of this brainstorm.
So I see Parade has become another media shill for the Republican Corporate Ho Party. I was witness to a shameless display on Morning Joe (8-13-12). Maggie Murphy, Editor-in-Chief of Parade kept bringing up how Republicans in Kentucky had saved schools by making them energy efficient and green. It looked staged to me the way Joe led into “that High School in California”.
What Morning Joe was talking about was the Belmont Learning Center in Los Angeles. Joe Scarborough insinuating it was Democrats that were to blame for this 280 MILLION dollar waste of tax payers dollars. (actually it was Reagan/Bush era cutbacks in environmental regulation that led to the High School being built on a toxic waste site) I guess Joe missed that…
As rehearsed MS Murphy made sure she mentioned it was the Republicans that engineered the success in Kentucky but she failed to mention the local government got the funds for the solar panels and alternative energy plans from Obama/Biden stimulus.
I guess the rich guys, who control the news media in the USA, decided to continued the blatant effort to make the GOP appear to be he responsible choice for 2012.
©2012 by SPQR spoact.blogspot.com
Your buddy Ed Kilgore has been on this for at least a month, saying that Romney has been forced into an eternal primary by conservatives who don't trust him. His TNR piece today suggests that this is intended to shut them up so he can control his campaign, but if it is, I doubt it will work. I mean, how does he keep Ryan from talking about the Ryan budget, which Ryan believes got him where he is, and which he believes he can sell?
Wow did Rachel ever have her hat handed to her this weekend. I guess we all see the lack of substance now.
Typical winger. You all think that being rude to someone is the same as winning an argument. Nothing got 'handed' to Rachel. All that happened is that a right-wing man or two were typically and mindlessly hostile and demeaning. In other words, nothing bad happened to Rachel. You saw what you wanted to see, period.