If people are good
only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Albert Einstein
Make No Mistake: Romney Is In Trouble
Am I predicting an Obama victory in November? No. But I am saying that the Romney campaign may find a way of losing an election it shouldn't. And I am at a loss of trying to explain it. I think it starts at the top.
Is Romney right? It doesn't matter what Obama says or does: all Romney has to say is (my words):
"During these last 4 years, we've seen the worst economy since the Depression. Household net worth is down by 30-40%. A jobless recovery that feels like a recession. Record long-term unemployment. The lowest labor participation rate is decades. Obama is a nice guy, but he's in over his head. He's a professional politician--he has made his living off the taxpayer dime since 1996. He never previously ran a company, a city, or a state. During the past 4 years, he's doubled the publicly-held national debt. A major credit bureau downgraded US debt for the first time ever. He's run out of ideas on how to fix the economy: his ideas are recycled ones that haven't worked in the past and when he had an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress behind him.
"Obama was elected into office on the promise of being bipartisan; he has been the most divisive President in recent memory: attacking the Supreme Court at the State of the Union address and his predecessors in an unprecedented manner; refusing to compromise on legislation and thus failing to earn a single opposition vote on 3 major pieces of partisan legislation in one or both chambers of Congress, once again unprecedented in American history, and not even endorsing his own bipartisan debt reduction commission's plan. Instead of demonstrating positive leadership and providing win-win constructive solutions, Obama's record has been one of divisive class warfare and petty politics as usual.
"I've spent 25 years building a business from scratch; the government didn't build it for me. I've worked with clients in different industries, some of them starting from scratch, others facing serious financial troubles or business problems. I understand firsthand how government policies affect businesses and their growth, their willingness and ability to take on new employees. I have also had experience running a state--a state where the legislature is 85% Democrat. I know what it takes to get real bipartisan legislation passed--I've done it; it takes more than 'words, just words'.
"People have a choice this November. They can go with an incumbent whose economic record has been abysmal and the worst since the Great Depression and somehow hope that results will turn out better next term with partisan gridlock as usual. Or they can choose someone with a different approach, experience and ideas."The problem is--this is a variation of John McCain's campaign strategy; it's based on individual differences: I'm different from and better than Obama. Romney and McCain's life stories and qualifications, of course, are different, but they have been selling themselves. In McCain's case, he was a former POW, an American hero; he had a reputation for straight talk and an ability to reach across the aisle. A resume is interesting--but people don't vest in resumes; they've heard political promises and rhetoric. They vest in cohesive ideas, visions. If you appear as moderate or unprincipled, you seem like any other suit, saying whatever it takes to get elected.
The American people don't want, like or respect pandering--which is exactly what Obama is doing; they realize that everyone, not just the upper 2%, has to sacrifice. They realize that Obama and Big Government have been throwing tax revenues from future generations at social and economic problems with little to show for it. They have to deal with a household budget; there's no such thing as a free lunch, credit cards have limits, and bills come due at the end of the month. They suspect that that their government-guaranteed retirement benefits rest on a house of cards. They realize what's been going on in Europe and suspect that one day we, too, will face our day of reckoning
Romney felt that to win public office in the deep blue state of Massachusetts that he had to run as a social liberal/moderate. I disagree with that strategy; I don't think that you win votes by running to the left of Massachusetts social liberal Democrats; it's better to run as an independent Republican (like Scott Brown has been doing). You run primarily on economic issues and as the fiscally conservative grownup in the room and constitutional check on a spendthrift Democrat-controlled state legislature; you learn to pick your battles on social policy, given the realities of a socially liberal constituency (e.g., taxpayer funding on abortion).
With an open Presidency for the first time since LBJ withdrew his candidacy for reelection in 1968 (Dick Cheney wasn't seeking election) and a potentially weak GOP field, Romney won a coveted leadership role for GOP Governors, a springboard to a national candidacy. The remaining portion of his term as governor took on a decidedly more conservative tone.
Romney knew that the social conservatives would take issue with statements he made during his two Massachusetts campaigns. But McCain had nearly a quarter century of federal votes and legislation to defend. The conservative activists loathed McCain whom initially opposed the Bush tax cuts (using class warfare rhetoric!) and had co-sponsored campaign reform, which conservatives saw as a violation of basic freedom of expression. The fact that McCain was promoting immigration reform, which many conservative activists saw as "amnesty", gave Romney a political opening to the right of McCain.
After Super Tuesday, Romney saw the writing on the wall and dutifully threw his support behind McCain; he no doubt knew that McCain had an uphill campaign against Obama and was really playing for 2012 as the heir apparent. A funny thing happened on the way to 2012: the Tea Party revolution and ObamaCare, a supersized federal version of RomneyCare.
The latter become a sticky point for Romney because he was using that popular legislative victory as a key item on his resume for electing him President. The individual purchase mandate in particular became politically radioactive.
Romney's response has been defensive and evasive: he's vowed to end ObamaCare; he points out the differences between the state and federal roles; he points out that the conservative Heritage Foundation introduced the concept of a mandate (basically to offset dysfunctional progressive regulations forcing insurers to accept policyholders below their risk-based costs of coverage).
If I had been in Romney's position, I would have framed the issue differently; it isn't so much his policy response, but he has allowed himself to be positioned in a way that makes his position to ObamaCare appear unprincipled and arbitrary. In a certain sense he's been trapped with his own rhetoric, speaking of uninsured "freeloaders", etc.
I think I would have started by explaining that government policies of hospital treatment guarantees, guaranteed issue and community rating and implicit government subsidies of employer-provided health care have distorted the health care sector: these mandates are costs imposed by government, should be paid by government, but aren't, because government doesn't want these costs on its balance sheet, paying for them out of general revenues (passed onto the taxpayer in terms of taxes). So government forces insurers to pass them along to other policyholders in the form of premium increases, which are really an indirect form of taxation.
I would have approached the matter of unpaid bills of government-sponsored care more directly as a debt collection issue. I have issues with the nature and extent of government involvement in the health care sector beyond a guarantee for catastrophic health relief, but putting those reservations aside, I would have looked at the issue of unpaid government-sponsored care as a general revenue issue. As a conservative I would have focused on an equal-protection tax policy and repealing cost-shifting regulations: penalizing people for paying with after-tax dollars artificially high prices for health insurance is a legalized form of extortion, an abuse of government power. If you want to create a government lockbox for sponsored health care expenditures, you could establish a dedicated tax, waived for qualified health care plans and net of an equal protection tax credit.
The reason for this lead-in is because Romney should never have spoken in terms of "freeloaders" and penalties in the first place. From the get-go, he should have addressed free market concerns, the unsustainable growth of government health entitlements and bad cost-shifting policies and benefit mandates, the fact that he had political constraints in negotiating a compromise solution with a progressive Massachusetts state legislature, and that he found a way to retain a private-sector insurance market in Massachusetts. He should have made it clear, if he hadn't from the start, that the tax/penalty was dedicated to health care provider deficits for government-sponsored patients and/or related reserves.
What I and others don't understand is how Romney came away with the ObamaCare and Chief Justice Roberts' rewriting ObamaCare under the tax authority with flipped nomenclature, e.g., tax instead of penalty. This was a no-brainer: Romney needed to find a way of distinguishing himself from ObamaCare from the day it passed. He's a Harvard-trained lawyer: he KNEW that the Obama Administration was EXPLICITLY hedging its defense of ObamaCare on tax authority (in addition to the Commerce Clause, which failed). He KNEW that the people paying the tax/penalty wouldn't be the upper 1-2%. This wasn't unknown to him: Republicans at the time ObamaCare was being debated called it a middle-class tax. And for his campaign to basically argue with Justice Roberts that it's not a tax? What possible political benefit was there for the record in his campaign agreeing with a progressive talking point? It doesn't help contrasting Romney from Obama...
I think it's unfair to Mitt Romney, but quibbling about terminology like calling this a tax or penalty only serves to reinforce the Democratic talking point that Romney will do or say whatever it takes to get elected. (Of course, these hypocrites fail to address Obama's flip-flops and broken promises on everything from Gitmo to an across-the-board extension of the Bush tax cuts.) Romney needs to get away from being defensive and discussing the minutiae of policy that cause voters' eyes to glaze over: he needs to provide a consistent, positive, specific vision.
Mitt Romney needs to provide a broad, understandable vision for America: we have unsustainable government. This money is taken from the private sector: the resources it needs to grow the economy and jobs. We need to focus on using tax resources more frugally just like heads of household oversee their family budget. We should not engage in moral hazard but encourage personal responsibility. We need to stop penalizing success and rewarding failure. No more distractions overseas: let's get our own house in order. We see the future of where Obama's policies, imitating failed European social policies, will lead us in the current European crisis. We need to stop spending the next generations' resources and give them a future with limited, more efficient, more effective government: Obama hasn't delivered on that agenda, and I will.
Hollande and 75% Tax Brackets: Thumbs DOWN!
French Socialist President Francois II, Master Legal Plunderer, has declared class war on the economically successful in France, nearly doubling the current high tax bracket. He assures us that this action is all about erasing the French budget deficit; pay no attention to planned spending increases, of course. Of course, in the US, we've been hearing the Democrats engage in class warfare politics since at least the Clinton Administration. We've been there, done that in the past: increased marginal tax rates never result in projected revenues: they lower the tax base and impair economic growth, absolutely the last things France needs in a tough global economy.
Follow-Up Odds and Ends
- July 21 post: The Guitar Man and Obama's Theory of Business Success: Gibson Guitars CEO Henry E. Juszkiewicz, calling the case the Sword of Damocles (sword hanging over one's head) finally agreed to paying a $300K fine and to make an additional $50K charity donation to resolve the Justice Department
persecutionprosecution under a revised Lacey Law, effectively going after Gibson for using ebony wood harvested in Madagascar (ebony hardwood) related to guitar fretboard. (There was a correlated issue of rosewood hardwood from India.) The Justice Department claims that Madagascar limits harvesting of ebony hardwood and Gibson bought the wood knowing it was from illegally harvested trees. Gibson denies the allegations. Yet another reason to fire the Obama Administration for cause this November.
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, "Can't Take My Eyes Off You"
