Undoubtedly the Republicans will have yet another hissy fit and say this is a manipulative ad designed to exploit the patriotic impulses of God fearing Americans. They should know it when they see it — they’ve perfected the art. And I’m sure they don’t like to see it turned back on them:
Why Republican Contenders’ Views on Social Issues Matter More than their Views on Economic Issues
by David Atkins
On the whole, economic issues interest me more in politics than social issues do. That’s because the culture wars are played out in, well, the broader culture, while the economic wars are fought largely in secret without the public’s knowledge of what is being done to affect their lives in profound ways. As with the New Deal and Reaganomics, it’s possible to change economic laws to dramatic effect almost overnight, whereas laws on social issues tend to change gradually over time, with the most dramatic and rapid changes occurring through the courts rather than the legislative or executive process.
But when it comes to looking at the Republican contenders for the presidency, social issues matter more than economic ones for some very simple reasons. Consider the case of Mitt Romney. Paul Krugman argues that Romney actually understands Keynesian economics and doesn’t kowtow obsequiously before the supply-side gods, but his need to win over the GOP base won’t let him admit it:
Speaking in Michigan, Mr. Romney was asked about deficit reduction, and he absent-mindedly said something completely reasonable: “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.” A-ha. So he believes that cutting government spending hurts growth, other things equal.
The right’s ideology police were, predictably, aghast; the Club for Growth quickly denounced the statement as showing that Mr. Romney is “not a limited-government conservative.” On the contrary, insisted the club, “If we balanced the budget tomorrow on spending cuts alone, it would be fantastic for the economy.” And a Romney spokesman tried to walk back the remark, claiming, “The governor’s point was that simply slashing the budget, with no affirmative pro-growth policies, is insufficient to get the economy turned around.”
But that’s not what the candidate said, and it’s very unlikely that it’s what he meant. Almost surely, he is, in fact, a closet Keynesian…
Beyond that, we know who he turns to for economic advice; heading the list are Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard. While both men are loyal Republican spear-carriers — each served for a time as chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers — both also have long track records as professional economists. And what these track records suggest is that neither of them believes any of the propositions that have become litmus tests for would-be G.O.P. presidential candidates.
Maybe, maybe not. No one should be remotely willing to test that theory when a man with Michigan roots argues that the American automotive industry be allowed to go bankrupt rather than receive stimulative support.
But of course, as Krugman points out, Mitt Romney has no real principles whatsoever beyond getting himself elected, and enriching himself and his friends:
And therein lies the reason Mr. Romney acts the way he does, why he is running a campaign of almost pathological dishonesty.
For he is. Every one of the Romney campaign’s major themes, from the attacks on President Obama for going around the world apologizing for America (he didn’t), to the insistence that Romneycare and Obamacare are very different (they’re virtually identical), to the claim that Mr. Obama has lost millions of jobs (which is only true if you count the first few months of his administration, before any of his policies had taken effect), is either an outright falsehood or deeply deceptive. Why the nonstop mendacity?
As I see it, it comes down to the cynicism underlying the whole enterprise. Once you’ve decided to hide your beliefs and say whatever you think will get you the nomination, to pretend to agree with people you privately believe are fools, why worry at all about truth?
And yet, does any of this matter? It’s all academic, anyway. Grover Norquist is one of the most underestimated political actor in America, and he knows exactly what a Republican President is there to do, economically speaking:
All we have to do is replace Obama. … We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … 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.
Grover’s right. A Republican President–be it Romney, Santorum, Gingrich or even Ron Paul–will basically sign whatever odious economic bills come out of the thoroughly corrupted legislative process. There isn’t a whole lot of executive authority to make big economic changes, because Congress ultimately controls the purse strings.
Obviously, there’s a world of difference, economically speaking, between the two parties in terms of who holds the White House. Veto power alone guarantees that. But there isn’t altogether that much difference between Presidents of the same general worldview. Ludwig von Mises himself wouldn’t be that much more dangerous than Mitt Romney (or Gingrich or Santorum or Paul), because no matter what Mitt or his opponents might think about it personally, none of them wouldn’t veto the Ryan budget if it came to their Oval Office desk. Similarly, a reanimated FDR wouldn’t be able to accomplish that much more on the economic front than Obama has, given the legislative realities at play. Personal ideology, arm twisting and the bully pulpit count for something, to be sure, but not as much as many people think.
No, the biggest differences to consider when evaluating various candidates within a particular political party are on social issues and foreign policy, for it is within these areas that the Executive Branch has the greatest leeway to act independently and follow the President’s personal views. Ron Paul would be an enormously different president from Newt Gingrich in matters of war and peace. Mitt Romney would likely be a very different president from Rick Santorum on social issues. Their Supreme Court choices would likely be significantly different, as would their executive orders and directives.
That’s why as frustrating as it can be at times for economic progressives to find themselves awash in news about Republicans’ views on social issues and foreign policy during primary season, those are actually the policy questions that matter most. From a policy point of view, it’s only when the nominees of each party square off against one another that the economic arguments really begin to matter.
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Your moment of zen
by digby
Santorum shakes Ron Paul’s hand — sort of:
h/t to Buzzfeed, which also noted the rather extreme defensiveness of the Ron Paul followers in the comments:
What type of person would do this to someone as great as Ron? Nothing I can add here!
It makes you want to cry.
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The Singing President
by digby
You know, I wasn’t one of those people who got verklempt over the will.i.am video or all excited when Obama brushed the dirt off his shoulder like Jay Z. I’m just no longer interested in the president as a pop culture icon.
And I’m sure this must be bad and I should be very critical of it. But I like it for some reason. I don’t know why.
And yet, this makes me bilious. Go figure:
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Brent Bozell wants to get in bed with his employees
by digby
So the Media Research Center is now asking its employees to stop using birth control. No, really:
Upon hearing news of President Obama’s regulation requiring all employers to offer contraception coverage without additional cost sharing, Bozell examined his own organization’s insurance policy and was “horrified” to learn that MRC’s plan has long provided contraception (and abortion) coverage. Bozell asked his employees to stop using “contraception/abortifacient/abortion services” and promised to eliminate the benefits at once
That takes some real nerve.
I don’t know how many people work for MRC, but I have to wonder how many of them want this person lecturing them on their sexual habits:
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The GOP is now officially against birth control
by David Atkins
Viewers of the Republican debate in Arizona last night got a chance to see one of the issues on the front burner of the Republican consciousness: does birth control cause immorality, or does immorality cause people to use birth control? No, I’m not kidding:
At 4:59 of the video, Ron Paul generates the following word salad:
As an OB doctor I’ve dealt with birth control pills and contraception for a long time. This is a consequence of the fact that government has control of medical care and medical insurance, and then we fight over how we dictate how this should be distributed. Sort of like in schools, once the government takes over the schools, especially at the federal level, then there’s no right position. Then you have to argue which prayer are you allowed to pray, you get into all the details. The problem is the government’s getting involved in things they shouldn’t be involved, especially at the federal level. [Applause]
And then it gets more surreal:
Sort of along the line of the pills creating the immorality, I don’t see it that way. I think the immorality creates the problem of wanting to use the pills. You don’t blame the pills. I think it’s sort of like the argument, conservatives use the argument all the time about guns. Guns don’t kill–criminals kill! So in a way it’s the morality of society that we have to deal with. The pill is there and it contributes maybe, but the pills can’t be blamed for the immorality of our society.
Watch at 5:40 how Rick Santorum shrugs and smirks uncomfortably when Paul says that the pills don’t create immorality. Rick Santonarola obviously believes otherwise. Right alongside how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, the battle of primacy between immorality and contraception can now take its place among the great theological debates of the 13th century.
Thrice-married Newt Gingrich and Mormon Mitt would rather avoid the question entirely and do their masters’ bidding by framing the issue as one of religious freedom, but neither was actually willing to come out in defense of contraception. Not a single GOP candidate for president was willing to support basic contraception last night. Not one.
This is your modern Republican Party: against not only abortion, but universally against the very idea of birth control as well.
Sweet dreams.
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Fascinating Find
by digby
Students of economic history are in for a treat. An official studying deep in the bowels of the US Treasury library has recently uncovered a prize of truly startling proportions – an 800 page plus transcript of the Bretton Woods conference in July 1944, the meeting of nations which established the foundations of today’s international monetary system.
Bizarrely, this extraordiary manuscript has never before come to light… All previous accounts of Bretton Woods have been second hand, with historians apparently completely unaware that a full, and one must presume faithful, transcript of proceedings, had been taken.
Those who have seen it say it is hard to point to any outright revelation about the talks, in which for Britain, the economist John Maynard Keynes was a leading player. But the level of intellectual debate is said to have been extraordinarily impressive, with exactly the same arguments as to voting rights and undue Western influence at the IMF and World Bank as exist today. The Indian delagation is said to have been particularly outspoken, despite the fact that India was still then a colony of the UK.
I’ll be interested to see if they all spent as much time exchanging compliments and trying to be comedians as the Federal Reserve meeting transcripts do.
Considering that the economics profession is, to put it kindly, in a sate of crisis and austerity policies have been all the vogue, this should be especially interesting to Paul Krugman who has been beating this drum like he’s the reincarnation of Keith Moon for the past four years:
It was at Bretton Woods that Keynes identified one of the key problems at the heart of international economics – that imbalances in trade are next to impossible to resolve in a fixed exchange rate system without surplus countries accepting that they have as much of an obligation to do something about them as the offending deficit countries. As the eurozone is demonstrating all over again, the lessons have plainly not been learned.
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Scamming the Big Money Boyz
by digby
So I’ve been wondering here lately about why these campaigns cost so much more than they did just a few years ago. What are these Super PACs spending all their billionaire contributions on anyway?
The Red White and Blue Fund, a “super PAC” backing the presidential bid of Republican Rick Santorum, paid more than half a million dollars last month to a newly formed direct mail firm.
The owner of that company?
None other than Nick Ryan, a former Santorum aide — and founder of the Red White and Blue Fund.
Ryan’s dual roles spotlight how political operatives behind the super PACs can take advantage of the mammoth donations streaming into the funds and the lack of oversight. Of the $1.5 million that the Red White and Blue Fund spent last month, a third — $570,000 — went to Global Intermediate.
[…]
Winning Our Future, a group backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that has been buoyed by $11 million in donations from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his family, paid its president, Becky Burkett, $206,000 in January for executive management and fundraising services, according to campaign finance reports filed this week. Gregg Phillips, the Austin-based consultant who serves as the super PAC’s managing director, got $90,000.Winning Our Future spokesman Rick Tyler said the super PAC pays its staff for “fundraising successes.” Tyler said the payments Burkett and Phillips received in January included compensation for work they did in November and December, before the super PAC was launched on Dec 13. He said their salaries were determined by the super PAC’s “senior leadership” — which consists of himself, Burkett and Phillips.
What a nice scam. I suppose Adelson and Foster Friess don’t care because, to them, the donations themselves are tip money and this amounts to parking meter money. But still, you’d think that at some point they might balk at being seen for the fools they are. They do have egos.
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Fungible settlement
by digby
Already, three states have announced plans to divert some of their share of the $26 billion foreclosure fraud settlement with the nation’s five biggest banks away from helping homeowners (which is the money’s intended purpose), and towards other parts of their respective budgets. Wisconsin and Missouri are planning to use the money to plug budget holes, while Ohio wants to use the funding to demolish vacant homes.
And those states are evidently not the only ones planning to use the settlement funds for something other than helping troubled homeowners.
Personally, I think they should use the money to give some “tax relief” to millionaires. I can’t imagine why that wasn’t explicitly set forth as a requirement in the settlement negotiations. If we don’t reward the producers, where will we be?
Seriously, is it even possible that they would do this settlement without requiring that the states spend the money to help homeowners? Whaaa???
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The pill doesn’t cause pregnancy, dirty girls do
by digby
Who says this religious liberty hoo hah couldn’t possibly get any traction? Well, I guess it depends on who you’re talking about:
In a ruling that appears headed toward appeal, a federal judge has ruled that Washington state cannot force pharmacies to sell Plan B or other emergency contraceptives.
The state’s true goal in adopting the rules at issue was not to promote the timely access to medicine, but to suppress religious objections by druggists who believe that such drugs can have an effect tantamount to abortion, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton said in his ruling Wednesday.
There you have it. Wingnut federal judges (and there are scores of them since Republican presidents have no trouble getting their appointments confirmed while Democratic presidents either appoint conservatives or none at all) are on board, which means that this “out-of-step” strategy doesn’t depend upon public opinion to succeed.
The GOP presidential candidates certainly didn’t back down in their debate last night. Jamelle Bouie writes it up:
Mitt Romney, whose ancestors were driven from the country by the government for their religious beliefs, began the exchange with an attack on the administration’s birth control mandate: “I don’t think we’ve seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we’ve seen under Barack Obama.” Of course, the public disagrees, in survey after survey, a majority of Americans—including Catholics—voice support for the administration’s decision to require birth control coverage from religiously affiliated employers.
Rick Santorum followed Romney up with an extended discussion of the “dangers of contraception,” which he defined as out-of-wedlock births, single-parent homes, and growing poverty. It suffices to say that this was an…odd discussion. By definition, contraception can’t be responsible for out-of-wedlock births, regardless of how much Santorum would like to believe otherwise. To be fair to Santorum, his comments weren’t as bad as Ron Paul’s, who asked his competitors to save their scorn for the women who use the pill, and not the pill itself:
But sort of along the line of the pills creating immorality, I don’t see it that way. I think the immorality creates the problem of wanting to use the pills. So you don’t blame the pills. I think it’s sort of like the argument – conservatives use the argument all the time about guns. Guns don’t kill, criminals kill.
So, in a way, it’s the morality of society that we have to deal with. The pill is there and, you know, it contributes, maybe, but the pills can’t be blamed for the immorality of our society.
Women voters, take note: If you use the pill, you’re immoral, and basically the same as a gun-toting criminal. And while Ron Paul doesn’t stand a chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination, this basic sentiment was shared by each candidate on the stage. Indeed, Romney was sure to clarify that “there was no requirement in Massachusetts for the Catholic Church to provide morning-after pills to rape victims.” Arizona Republicans might be impressed by this, but I’m not sure you can say the same of women who might need those services.
Actually some of those Arizona Republicans are probably women who might need those services too — not that we would know they even exist. CNN only showed three women on the screen all night long: one screen shot of an older woman, one shot of Rick Perry’s wife and the sole female questioner who asked about education policy. That’s it. Three women on the screen during the entire debate.
But why would they? The word “woman” was never uttered, even once, despite long segments devoted to the subjects of birth control and healthcare. The word “mother” and the word “mom” came up one time each, when Mitt Romney talked about his opposition to gay adoptions. But every one of these important, middle aged and old, white men had strong opinions on contraception, the morning after pill, abortion and sexual morality for the other 50% of the human species that was rendered invisible.
In 1991 I was riveted by the Clarence Thomas hearings, appalled as I watched a panel of befuddled white men ignorantly pontificating about the topic of sexual harassment, stunned that I still lived in a world where a lone women could be brought before Cotton Mather’s tribunal and treated as a harlot. It was a revelation to a fairly young woman who had been living under the illusion that those days were long gone. It’s 20 years later and I’m old now. And it hasn’t gotten much better.
In fact, in 2010 the percentage of women in the House decreased from 17 to 16 percent. It was the first time women had a setback in their raw numbers in the last 30 years. (A setback from an unbelievably low number to begin with.) The US is ranked 71st in the world for percentage of women in elective office — behind Pakistan, center of Wahhabi Islam. Only 49 of the 162 active judges currently sitting on the thirteen federal courts of appeal are female, in a field which now graduates more women than men. (President Obama, to his credit, has nominated a lot of women to the bench. They just can’t get confirmed.) And the pay gap has been stagnant for the past decade, after barely edging up in the 1990s.
Watching that display of manly dominance last night, in which these four men staged an obscene assault on women’s rights with no challenge from the moderator or any women even shown on the screen, made me feel very queasy. I realize it’s hard to believe that a major Western democracy could actually go backwards on this — back in 1991 I fervently believed it was impossible. But it certainly is possible. It’s already happened.
Update: First they came for the Girl Scouts …
Update II: Jessica Valenti in The Nation on the GOP’s long war against women.
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