Forbes gets scared
by David Atkins
Forbes is starting to get a little desperate, if their website is any indication. Two pieces today, one a frustrated op-ed and the other a strained attempt at faint praise, are trying to rally conservatives to the Romney bandwagon. But it’s a tough sell.
The faint praise:
Mitt Romney’s Vaguely Promising Plan for Entitlement Reform
Yesterday, at a speech before the Americans for Prosperity in Washington, Mitt Romney delivered a significant address on fiscal issues. In the speech, Romney outlined his plans for reforming Social Security, Medicaid, and—most importantly—Medicare. Romney’s Medicare plan is vaguely to the left of Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, both for good and for ill. Critical details are still missing. But politically, the plan allows Romney to justly claim that he is helping to lead the fight against runaway health-care spending. And that, in turn, may help Romney get a second look from the skeptical Republican base.
Sure it will, guys. Sure it will. Especially when the Mittster is saddled with this, from later in the same article.
Romney’s Medicare plan can be simplistically described as the “Ryan plan with a public option.” And that’s both its strength and its weakness.
That will be endearing to the rabid base. But not as endearing, I suppose, as this bit of enraged hectoring:
The Republicans- Party Of Old Money- Are Destroying Their Chances in 2012
I watch dumbfounded as Cain and Ron Paul and Gingrich and Perry– as well as the cackling former Gov. of Alaska– show their lack of character to be President of the US– try to railroad the terrified populace into thinking they have answers for the troubled American economy. They are doing the Democrats job for them– underscoring that the Republicans stand only to destroy Barack Obama and many of the safety net reforms that have been in place for many decades. What’s more, their fierce and strident attacks on Mitt Romney are spoiling his chances in a general election as he ducks and weaves from the bruises and charges.
Romney, just barely, fills the potential bill for a national leader, if he surrounds himself with wise experts on foreign policy, national defense, the threat of terrorism. By next summer, what will the nation decided after seeing these politicians, some of them just clowns pushing extreme positions they could not ably defend in debate. Will America really want to take a chance on them.
Do any of them measure up to Dwight David Eisenhower, or Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan or Teddy Roosevelt? Hardly. Do you think you really understand how the economy will function if any of them become President? Well, you don’t.
Cain not knowing the Chinese have had nuclear weapons for decades, Perry promising an electric fence to keep Mexicans out, Ron Paul promising to get rid of Social Security in its entirety and privatizing it– making it subject to the whims of the financial markets. What enlightened wisdom on economics. I haven’t heard any wisdom from these candidates on how to unfreeze the housing jam, or realistically balance the budget
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Romney’s promising them. But, I have a hunch, the 9.1% that just became 9%, is going to become 8.9%- and then we’ll see. And the other great irony is thsat America’s blue chip household name corporations, whose cash dividends give a higher return than 10 year Treasuries– are increasing their profits. Have a look at Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, Caterpillar, IBM, Colgate Palmolive, UPS- and many others.
I’m not even going to argue the actual policy details with the hacks at Forbes. No, Mitt Romney’s plan doesn’t have a realistic public option, and no, “entitlement reform” is not a good thing. And no, it’s not ironic that blue chip companies are doing well even as unemployment rises. Unemployment is a feature of profitable American companies shipping joes overseas, not a bug.
What’s more important here is the whiff of desperation from the big money base. They want to love Romney. They want the base to love Romney. But not even they can pull off with the accolades necessary to do it effectively. Not that the base would listen anyway.
Romney’s only saving grace is that he has a solid 25% of the Republicans behind him. Unless enough of the rest of the GOP really unites behind Herman Cain, that means that the GOP nomination is still Romney’s to lose.
And that means four more years of an even more embittered conservative base and even more whackadoo Tea Party protests. If Romney is the nominee, Obama will win re-election partly due to the depression of the GOP base, which will blame its 2012 defeat on not selecting a conservative enough nominee. Watch for a GOP candidate to the right of Genghis Khan rise to try to seize the White House in 2016, because all the momentum in the GOP is going to tend ever rightward.
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