A Presidential candidate still pandering to his base in August, when he ought to be moving to the center, is a Presidential candidate in trouble.
A Presidential candidate still pandering to his base in August, when he ought to be moving to the center, is a Presidential candidate in trouble.
Footnote One of Frum’s speculations is especially worrisome: that Romney had to appeal to his donors even at the cost of losing some voters. We really need to get a handle on campaign finance.
Update Ross Douthat and I agree on something. That’s so rare an event as to be worth noting.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
You can call it a worrisome “Frum’s speculation” but it goes straight to the bottomline.
Romney had to pull Ryan out of his top hat because America’s billionaires have declared open warfare on the middle class and poor.
Up until now the oligarchs have waged their class war by a thousand “paper” cuts to all remembrances of FDR…
Now they feel strong enough, or arrogant enough, or greedy enough, or think the population is stupid enough, to enjoin the battle up front.
We’ve got class warfare in America: plain and simple and very vanilla.
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You know, it’s far from obvious to me how the plutocrats make any real money from the destruction of Medicare, other than as a bulwark to defend their existing tax rates (and maybe some additional cuts, although that’s hard to cost out.) I mean, it’s already a fine cash flow out from the government towards providers etc. The real prize, it seems to me, has to be SS: that’s a serious river of cash that some folks think they ought to be dipping their buckets into. Is Medicare reform a feint or a precursor?
(I’m not saying plutocrats can’t be ideologues, just that it’s always better to start by following the money.)
The Ryan plan uses the proceeds from the destruction of Medicare to pay for eliminating taxes on the plutocrats. That’s really it.
Thirty-odd years of Republican social and economic policy in one line:
“My, what big pile of seed corn. Let’s eat it.”
I know it’s fun to bash Republicans and all, but let’s not forget that this is essentially the history of humanity. History provides us with a long list of societies that have done exactly the same thing: what a nice forest, what a nice lake, what a nice ocean, what a nice oil pool, what a nice coal bed…
This is what Malthus was all about. And as far as I can tell, it is considered a weirdo minority position, somewhat worse than loving Ayn Rand, so actually point this out in public. Sure, sure, those older societies collapsed when their forests ran out, but, damn, oil will be with us forever. And if it isn’t, well solar and wind and “the right entrepreneurial incentives” will solve all our problems. Don’t confuse me with your numbers.
The problem with Douthat is that he thinks the economic wing of the party should do all the sacrificing. Suggest that the party should moderate on abortion or gay rights and he will give you all sorts of excuses why that cannot be done.
The problem with Douthat is that he is living in a fantasy of 1950s America – and shows no capacity for confronting either current reality or fact-based history. What he really needs is someone to take a hammer to his philosophical and religious idols.
Well sure, but he also sees himself as a reformer who wants his party to address the economic anxieties of the
non-rich. And he is right about this.
The point is those are not the only concerns that people have about the GOP. They also are concerned about the party being captive to the religious right and its opposition to women’s rights and gays and lesbians. And Douthat does not have an answer to that.
Well sure, but he also sees himself as a reformer who wants his party to address the economic anxieties of the
non-rich. And he is right about this.
The point is those are not the only concerns that people have about the GOP. They also are concerned about the party being captive to the religious right and its opposition to women’s rights and gays and lesbians. And Douthat does not have an answer to that.
Douthat:
“What’s more, [Ryan]’s accomplished all of this while representing, not a safe-as-houses Republican seat, but a blue-collar district that went for Barack Obama by four points in 2008.”
It would be fun for Democrats to target recovering this seat. Imagine the headlines following the GOP defeat.
More Douthat:
“…Romney’s most glaring policy weakness ….. is the (understandable) fear among hard-strapped voters that Republican policies will benefit the rich more than the middle class. Ryan’s association with entitlement reform is at best orthogonal to that weakness, and at worst it exacerbates it substantially.”
My italics. Jesus Christ on a pony, what does Douthat think Ryan’s entitlement
reformchainsaw massacre is all about?