January 23, 2012 -- Moving through this week was like walking through a pasture of high weeds that obscured everything else on the horizon. The G.O.P. race for the presidential nomination accelerated in intensity grabbing our attention , keeping us from focusing on some of the other important domestic activities: Obama putting on hold the Keystone XL oil pipeline to give it more study thereby infuriating many conservatives; the temporary shelving by Congress of the Web Antipiracy legislation after what has been called an on line firestorm of protests (with protection of intellectual property at stake versus freedom of expression we certainly haven’t heard the last of this); Obama had the audacity to make a speech from Disney World which got the FOXers all upset which one would assume they mean to reserve for President Ronald Reagan who did that same thing and did not seem to bother anybody (the speech gave Leno an opportunity to make a shot about it coming from Fantasyland); time to start thinking about the State of the Union speech which the President is to make this Tuesday.
No, this prelude period prior to the primary on Saturday got all of the air time, all of the print space, all f the Web activity. And why not? This is important to all of us, red or blue. Johnny Carson on the old Tonight Show used to do a comic bit employing a big map he used a pointer on to show you how to go down this road then that road until you came to a fork in the road, which on the map was an actual big fork. Like what you hear from most observers on right and left I see the 2012 election as a fork in the road, the most important election of this century, the time when two diametrically opposite concepts of governing collide with the outcome determining how we live our lives, how we interact with one another, what kind of people we are, for years to come. That makes these contestants, one of which could turn out to be the President of the United States and the leader of the next administration so it‘s important to watch and study. Even though it may be about as much fun as being assigned homework in a calculus class.
As the days marched on, debates came and went every person with a keyboard or microphone in hand critiqued the candidates. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post saw this as the way they are viewed as “Romney is portrayed as a mushy, flip-flopping moderate in disguise, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as business-as-usual Washington insiders, Ron Paul as a nutty crackpot.” By this time, Robinson says, their positions are so similar that the “I can beat Obama” line may be the only viable choice.
NYT columnist David Brooks, somewhat reluctantly reporting from South Carolina, who more or less stands on the same political ground as does Romney had this observation: “Mitt Romney is never going to be confused for Pericles on the stump. Every sigh and utterance is prescripted, so watching his rallies is like watching the 19,000th performance of the road show of ‘Cats’.” As for how Gingrich comes across: “The solutions to everything are obvious if only the idiots would get out of my way.” I don’t believe you would get an argument from anybody if you noted that Gingrich is really full of himself.
As a general rule I suppose it’s a cardinal rule that candidates have to blithely switch positions when the moment calls for it regardless of the hypocrisy in doing so. Here are two examples.
Jon Huntsman last week, while still a candidate, called Romney completely unelectable. But this week, as he dropped out and endorsed Romney, called him the “best equipped to defeat Barack Obama” while his Web site and his YouTube channel variously labeled Romney a “pretzel candidate,” an expert at the “backflip” and, most florid of all, “a perfectly lubricated weather vane.” The weathervane crack got a lot of attention as a popular metaphor, Mitt well lubricated spinning around as the wind blows.
In that vane, so to speak, according to Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post we had Newt Gingrich back in May saying “By definition, if you run for president, anything is on the table. Ask Grover Cleveland. Ask Andrew Jackson. Anything is on the table. I accept that, but I don’t have to participate in the conversation.” That was then, this was now: “To take an ex-wife and make it, two days before the [South Carolina] primary, a significant question in a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.” Really? We can ask Cleveland or Jackson, but we can’t ask Marianne Gingrich?
That was the Gingrich response when the debate moderator brought up the matter of the widely publicized interview the second Mrs. Gingrich gave earlier in the week. Her story was that after she was diagnosed with M.S. she went to visit her mother and while there got a phone call from Newt saying he was interested in another woman and would like to have an “open marriage.” Not exactly a “Hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime gal” kind of phone call.
But come Saturday the family values South Carolinians took it all in stride and gave Gingrich a resounding upset win over favored Mitt Romney, 40% to 28%. Santorum was a disappointing third, Paul at the bottom of the heap. This makes it one win for Santorum (Iowa), one win for Romney (New Hampshire), one win for Gingrich (South Carolina), and from the leadership of the Republican Party a bloody mess as the conflict moves on to the Florida primary on January 31st. The Daily Beast had this to say about it today: “Newt’s Victory Strikes Terror in the GOP…Gingrich is back. Undaunted by a fourth-place finish in New Hampshire, the former speaker rode to a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday night, taking 40 percent of the vote over Mitt Romney’s 28 percent. Now it’s on to Florida—which goes to the polls on Jan. 31—and where Gingrich will be working overtime to compete with Romney’s organizational head start.” The Beast says there is a “wave of panic gripping the Republican establishment in the wake of Gingrich’s upset victory over their chosen candidate—and the frenzied effort they’ll make to be sure it doesn’t happen in Florida.” Sounds like they are trashing around like a fish in he bottom of a boat off Biscayne Bay.
Newt blamed the liberal press for bringing it up, as noted above, and the audience cheered and gave him a standing ovation. There is nothing quite like those South Carolina evangelicals so hell bent on morality. When Ron Paul suggested we follow the Golden Rule in our foreign policy he was roundly booed. No Golden Rule for those church going folks.
Open marriage? Gingrich is a big advocate of marriage being between “one man and one woman,” with a little on the side? It was President Warren Harding who had the girl in the broom closet. Well, better sex in the broom closet rather than Harding economics, I say.
It’s funny that the guy in the race with the most wives is not the Mormon. Gail Collins in her Saturday column having the cynical thought that since the randy Gingrich waited until he was up in some years before finding “redemption” that possibly it was less redemption that just being as she put it “pooped out.”
At this point I issue a warning: I am about to vent on the subject of taxes. If you are like I am thinking about taxes is about as exciting as watching toenails grow. I may drop off to sleep here at the keyboard. If you have come this far you might want to skip down to the end for a few words a little more easily digested. But we can’t escape from the importance of taxes which determine the quality of lour lives and how the engine of government performance.
I don’t like to pay taxes any more than I like to pay my electricity bill, but in both cases they are invoices for needed goods and services. Bill O’Reilly said he doesn’t object to paying taxes as long as they money is spent efficiently. I’ll buy that, but the question is what is efficient?
This week the hue and cry was for Mitt Romney to release his tax returns which is traditional for political candidates to do. He consistently dodged the issue, refusing to do so and saying he “probably” would do so in April. No doubt he figured by that time he would have the nomination in the bag so details wouldn't harm him. By holding out like that he just aggravated the impression that they wouldn’t make him look very good.
I don’t know why this man seems to try to fool us into believing he is just an ordinary kind of guy, in what columnist Paul Krugman calls his “dance of the seven veils.” An ordinary guy does not make speaking fees of $374,327 as he did in one recent year, which he called “not very much.” His fees of about $42,000 a pop put him in the top 1 percent for about 12 hours’ worth of work.
We already know he has been very successful, has made an enormous amount of money, and possesses extreme wealth. We shouldn’t beat him up about it. His role as a venture capitalist was legal, and if some aspects of it caused pain and suffering to some people that is not his problem, it is the price paid for enjoying the fruits of the free market system.
Did he take advantage of all of the loopholes and nuances of the tax system? If he didn’t he was out of his mind. Fix the system, don’t fix Romney.
What might his tax returns reveal? He has already said he pays about 15% instead of, say, 35% if he had a job. They might show accounts in the Cayman Islands, or the advantage of the “carried interest” tax break, or other legal ways to game the system. But what would we expect him to do? Like a hooker offering a happy hour just to be a good sport refrain from taking advantage of every legal opportunity to make money?
On Saturday night he announced he would release a return on Tuesday. Two things. Mitt Romney, you should have stopped with the slight of hand and released your tax returns before now and there should be several years of them. The rest of us, make the tax codes fair and equitable. Figures from the last year available show that the top 400 wage earners paid 18.1% of their income in taxes. In 2007 it was 16.6%.
When Romney’s father made a run for the nomination he released eleven years of his returns which showed his taxes were 37%. Krugman points out that today we have “ultra-low” taxes—“the lowest since the days of Herbert Hoover,” not the period of American history I would like to revisit. At my age, been here, done that.
There is the question of fairness on taxes on capital gains. Once you have money you can sit back like Romney and draw returns and pay 15% while the guy who goes to work every day pays say 35% for what he works for. Advocates of low or no capital gains taxes claim that would promote economic growth and create jobs but I’m with those that believe history shows that is nonsense. We also say the 2003 tax cuts of the Bush Administration created havoc, not jobs and prosperity and lavished money on those already on the to of the income ladder at the expense of those on lower rungs. As Krugman put it: “unwise, unjust and expensive favors being showered on the upper-upper class.”
If Romney becomes the President what will his economic policies be? We know his favorite economic adviser is the man who crafted those Bush tax cuts mentioned above. His plan is considered to be by and for the wealthiest 1 percent. Millionaire Mitt Romney would give himself a $4 million tax cut, while raising taxes on the middle class and cutting the programs tens of millions of Americans depend on each day. He wants to keep the Bush tax cuts in place, including keeping the capital gains tax at 15 percent, and scrap the Medicare tax.
If you have the stomach for it here is a link that shows tax plans of the candidates:
Here is a brief review of this week’s G.O.P. primary race in South Carolina in limerick form, and why not. If we are to suffer through it, as we should, we might as well have some fun with it.
THIS WEEK’S REPUBLICAN NOMINATION RACE IN LIMERICKS
This week’s G.O.P. primary prelude
Saw candidates in a God awful mood
As the rivals let loose
A barrage of abuse
Like a pack of wild dog fighting for food.
Newt Gingrich went on the attack
Gave Romney a stab in the back
With a video so vile
It forced his denial
“Not me” it’s my darn Super PAC.
Beaten up for the wealth from his hedge
Fund which ruined many lives they allege
There may come a day
Mitt must give it away
And to win take a poverty pledge.
Two heads this week rolled in the G.O.P. race
Tradition has South Carolina the place
Where no longer can hold ‘em
The candidates must fold ‘em
Jon Huntsman and Perry the ones in this case.
Perry counts on Gingrich to win it
Huntsman says Mitt’ll go the limit
But an Iowa recount
Puts Mitt’s sure win in doubt
Santorum says wait just a minute.
South Caroliniansm searching their souls
On Saturday went to the polls
Where they picked a sinner
Newt Gingrich, the winner
So to Florida the conflict now rolls.
Newt, Rick, and Romney will stay
In the ongoing race they all say
Newt’s second ex-wife
Says it’s Newt’s kind of life
His preference she says is a three-way
