Romney Campaign Solves Flip-Flop Problem — For Now
Posted: July 6, 2012 Filed under: Barack Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Affordable Care Act ruling, Arizona Immigration Law, Bain Capital, Chief Justice John Roberts, Eric Fehrnstrom, individual mandate, John Kerry, Joshua Green, Michael Dukakis, Mitt Romney, risk avoidance, SCOTUS 36 Comments
It has been a difficult couple of weeks for Mitt Romney.
First, the Supreme Court struck down the Arizona immigration law that Romney had termed a model for the nation. Romney’s response:
“Today’s decision underscores the need for a President who will lead on this critical issue and work in a bipartisan fashion to pursue a national immigration strategy. President Obama has failed to provide any leadership on immigration. This represents yet another broken promise by this President. I believe that each state has the duty–and the right–to secure our borders and preserve the rule of law, particularly when the federal government has failed to meet its responsibilities. As Candidate Obama, he promised to present an immigration plan during his first year in office. But 4 years later, we are still waiting.”
Romney refused to say whether he agreed with the decision or provide specifics about how he would deal with undocumented immigrants if he were elected.
Next, his former favorite Supreme Court Justice, John Roberts, voted with the liberals on the court, agreeing that the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, including the individual mandate is constitutional. Romney’s response to that one was strikingly terse and even more vague than his statement on immigration:
“What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day,” he said. “I will act to repeal Obamacare.”
Still no specifics on how he would convince Congress to repeal the law or what he would replace it with. And then real disaster struck. Top Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom told MSNBC that, despite Chief Justice Roberts’ calling the individual mandate a “tax,” Romney disagrees–he thinks it’s a “penalty.” Of course this contradicted the latest Republican meme–that the mandate is the biggest tax increase in human history. Ooops! And the next day (ironically it was Independence Day), Mitt changed his mind and said the mandate is a tax after all. Here’s a summary from Chuck Todd and colleagues:
Romney’s verbal gymnastics: When you think about it, Romney never had to truly deal with his fatal flaw on health care. Yes, he gave that health-care PowerPoint speech in Michigan in May 2011. And, yes, he was asked questions about the issue during the 20-odd GOP debates in which he participated. But he never REALLY had to reconcile his health-care law with President Obama’s — with a campaign team capable of going toe to toe with him — until last week’s Supreme Court decision. As for his explanation in calling the mandate a tax, his verbal gymnastics would have impressed even the Russian judges. First, he technically didn’t disagree with Fehrnstrom’s original take; he simply conceded that the Supreme Court called it a tax. “Well, the Supreme Court has the final word, and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it’s a tax,” he said. And then he painfully tried to explain why the federal mandate is a tax, but Romney’s state mandate is a penalty. “Actually the chief justice in his opinion made it very clear that at the state level, states have the power to put in place mandates. They don’t need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional.”
Recent polls show that the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s record at Bain Capital are working–especially in the swing states. But Romney has let those attacks go largely unanswered as he struggled to develop a coherent response to the Obamacare decision.
Over the past few days, there have been stinging critiques of the Romney campaign from conservative media sources. Rupert Murdock tweeted that Romney’s campaign is too insular and they need to shake up the staff and add more experienced people. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board dressed down the candidate and his staff on the editorial page. On the tax/penalty flip flop, they wrote:
For conservative optimists who think Mr. Fehrnstrom misspoke or is merely dense, his tax absolution gift to Mr. Obama was confirmed by campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul, who tried the same lame jujitsu spin. In any event, Mr. Fehrnstrom is part of the Boston coterie who are closest to Mr. Romney, and he wouldn’t say such a thing without the candidate’s approval.
In a stroke, the Romney campaign contradicted Republicans throughout the country who had used the Chief Justice’s opinion to declare accurately that Mr. Obama had raised taxes on the middle class. Three-quarters of those who will pay the mandate tax will make less than $120,000 a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Romney high command has muddied the tax issue in a way that will help Mr. Obama’s claims that he is merely taxing rich folks like Mr. Romney. And it has made it that much harder for Republicans to again turn ObamaCare into the winning issue it was in 2010.
Why make such an unforced error? Because it fits with Mr. Romney’s fear of being labeled a flip-flopper, as if that is worse than confusing voters about the tax and health-care issues. Mr. Romney favored the individual mandate as part of his reform in Massachusetts, and as we’ve said from the beginning of his candidacy his failure to admit that mistake makes him less able to carry the anti-ObamaCare case to voters.
Bill Kristol assailed Romney as the successor to fellow Massachusetts pols Michael Dukakis and John Kerry:
Remember Michael Dukakis (1988) and John Kerry (2004)? It’s possible to lose a winnable presidential election to a vulnerable incumbent in the White House (or in the case of 1988, a sitting vice president). So, speaking of losing candidates from Massachusetts: Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he’s running?
Adopting a prevent defense when it’s only the second quarter and you’re not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign’s monomaniacal belief that it’s about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it’s only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.
As Frank Cannon and Jeff Bell, among others, have pointed out, the economy is not an automatic path to victory. It does provide a favorable backdrop for this year’s campaign. But what are voters to think when they hear the GOP nominee say, as he did yesterday to CBS’s Jan Crawford, “As long as I continue to speak about the economy, I’m going to win”? That they’re dopes who don’t know the economy’s bad, but as long as the Romney campaign keeps instructing them that it is bad, they’ll react correctly and vote the incumbent out of office?
Of course Romney punctuated this criticism by riding around Lake Winnipesaukee on a jet ski, which naturally reminded everyone of the iconic shot of Kerry windsurfing off Nantucket in 2004.
Now, in response the the Vanity Fair article on Romney stashing his money in multiple foreign tax shelters, his campaign has adopted a new strategy: simply repeat the same meaningless response word for word whenever there is a question about Romney’s finances. Twice in one day, two different Romney spokespersons released the exact same unresponsive response to questions from different news organizations. From ABC News The Note:
Here’s Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg’s statement to the press earlier today about reports by the AP and Vanity Fair about Romney’s offshore accounts in Bermuda:
“President Obama’s attacks on Mitt Romney have been proven false time and again. As job growth slows, manufacturing activity stalls, and our economy continues to sputter, President Obama knows he can’t make a legitimate argument for another term in office, so instead he is trying to tear down his opponent. This is just the latest example of President Obama and his political machine saying or doing anything to distract from his abysmal record over the last four years.”
And here’s Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul responding to an interview that Obama strategist David Axelrod gave to ABC News, in which he said Romney is “the most secretive candidate” since Richard Nixon:
“President Obama’s attacks on Mitt Romney have been proven false time and again. As job growth slows, manufacturing activity stalls, and our economy continues to sputter, President Obama knows he can’t make a legitimate argument for another term in office, so instead he is trying to tear down his opponent. This is just the latest example of President Obama and his political machine saying or doing anything to distract from his abysmal record over the last four years.”
We asked the Romney campaign why they’re using the same statements and will update if they respond with another statement about their statements.
In what has to be one of the best pieces I’ve read today, Joshua Green of The Boston Globe addressed Romney’s obsession with avoiding risk.
This has become a familiar pattern: a ringing affirmation of some major policy difference with President Obama, followed by a lot of vagueness about what he would do instead.
Take deficit reduction. Romney has promised to extend the entire Bush tax cut, reduce marginal rates by an additional 20 percent, cut corporate rates, and still bring down the deficit. He’s said he’ll pay for this by closing loopholes and deductions but won’t identify which ones. His campaign initially indicated that it would clarify this once Romney had sewn up the nomination. Months later, the details are still not forthcoming. Yet he routinely gives speeches denouncing Obama over the deficit and promising — somehow — to bring it under control.
Green discusses Romney’s bizarre response to the SCOTUS ruling on Arizona’s immigration law.
His campaign’s greatest obfuscation was its response to the Supreme Court’s voiding much of Arizona’s Draconian immigration law. Romney’s statement was magnificently vague, leaving unclear whether he still supported the law, as he once had. Even more remarkable was the long, circular, and ultimately fruitless exchange between his spokesman Richard Gorka and reporters trying to nail down Romney’s position. Afterward, some fellow press secretaries took to Twitter to marvel at Gorka’s capacity to dissemble.
Romney has plainly calculated that he can win without explaining what he’d do as president, and seems intent on becoming the “generic Republican candidate” that pollsters include in surveys (and that often outperform real Republicans). He seems to be making two assumptions: The country is in such dire shape that simply being against Obama is enough, and his background at Bain Capital is a sufficient qualification to get him elected. His campaign is a sustained exercise in avoiding risk.
Green calls it “the Romney Fog Machine: a great outpouring of words intended to obscure, rather than clarify, the issue at hand.”
As Green points out, the problem with this tactic is that if you don’t give specific answers to questions others will fill in the blanks for you. That is what seems to be happening with Obama’s attacks on Romney’s Bain career. How long can the Romney campaign keep this up? Only time will tell.
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Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
It looks like Romney is going to ease Eric Fehrnstrom out of the press secretary role.
Campaigns are a reflection of the candidate. Those are choice words.
Thought I would share this, sent to me by a liberal friend. It was the postscript to an email sent by her MIL who is a few years older than I am: “I’m doing some phone calls for the Rep Party to get independents to vote, not for Obama. Please consider not voting for Obama (if you have in the past) for one thing he supports abortion and wants to force the Catholic Church (and other churches) to pay for abortions also as well as he HATES America and is destroying our country, we can’t take another 4 years. Just my opinion and request.”
Neither my friend nor her husband are Republicans. It’s obvious to me that the MIL’s brain has been short circuited by listening to the screaming lunatics on Fox Propaganda TV. Oh, I saw earlier today that Brad Pitt’s mother wrote an op-ed urging people to vote for Romney because he’s a Christian & doesn’t support gay marriage (which her son, Brad, does support).
I wont’ relax until all of the votes are counted – there are way too many really whacked out folks out there in America who cannot tell fiction from fact.
Except Romney isn’t really a Christian in the traditional sense.
True, but for the “true believers” apparently he’s more of a Christian than Obama is a real American. Aren’t all those black people Africans, after all? (that last question was full on snark, in case anyone is wondering).
Fox is definitely helping to drive people nuts. Watching it is a bizarre experience for me. Can’t stand much at all.
My brother-in-law and I were talking about how my dad just turns into a Fox news talking points spew all the time. I’ve been trying to send him magazine articles to get him to actually read up on things. Dad’s closing in on 90 though. He watches Greta and Shep so it’s not even the crazy ones and he still just repeats their memes like mantras. It’s spooky.
My son’s mother in law is the same way. Once you get past the talking points, she’s fine but it’s hard to get around the propaganda.
Her father is 92 though and watches the same Fox but is a staunch Democrat and doesn’t believe a word of what he hears from the windbags.
Romney uses a fossil-fuel noisy stinky hog of a machine. Kerry uses a wind-powered board.
Never did understand what was wrong with Kerry boarding. But then I associate windboarding with students or people working low-paid jobs in outdoor gear stores so they can get discounts on gear and who do nothing but boarding in their free time.
I never got the wind surfing thing either. I don’t consider that a wealthy person’s activity. I think at first people just thought Kerry looked silly in the photo and then the Bush campaign pretended it was an elitist sport.
Wind surging is way cool out here on the West Coast.
The Columbia River is a primo wind surfing destination. The are all sorts of apps for cell phones and Droid tablets which predict wind direction etc for many West Coast locations.
The reaction of Kerry windsurfing demonstrates the cultural ignorance and the ability of the media to make a middle class and poor student sports look wrong. DUMB voters can be taken for a ride by the media.
The more I learn about Romney the ickier he becomes. All the photos of him trying too hard — smiling or laughing etc. that merriment never does reach his eyes. His eyes remain dead cold and calculating.
Romney the ickie — I like the sound of that.
When I teach Finance for Global Strategies–which coincidentally I’m doing starting the 25th–I put several books on the reading list for the graduate students interested in this topic.
One book I recommend is “Treasure Islands” by Nicholas Shaxon.
Here’s the jacket blurb:
Another one I use is: Offshore Finance by Hilton McCann
with its blurb:
and the last one is called “Tax Havens” by Ronen Palan
Off shoring activity of money and wealth is a huge problem and all the research shows that its destabilizing. It makes it hard to conduct monetary policy. Most of these things run off of LIBOR based rates which I think it is a NOT a coincidence that there’s cartel-like behavior uncovered on that now (Barclay’s, JPM, Citibank, etc.) and it’s basically price fixing and collusion. Tons of swap stuff is done from these locations. The world’s central banks and the global development banks have a lot of research on these things. A lot of the money is involved with very shady deals. Lots of money laundering of drugs, weapons money, dictator wealth stolen from countries, etc. That first book is the one that’s easiest to read because its not written by an academic but by a financial reporter. I’ve written on this before and that book before. Off shore banking exists to end accountability and traceability of money. All countries have international banks and their branches available. The reasons to go to a bank haven have to do with hiding stuff.
eesh … I guess I should’ve made this a post …
BB you can chop it up if you want.
Shaxon is the guy who wrote the Vanity Fair article. I’m going to get that one!
Yup. He’s written two books on tax havens. He’s the one to read if you don’t want all the mundane finance stuff.
Treasure Islands: Dirty Money, Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole Your Cash by Nicholas Shaxson (Feb 6, 2012) is his other one.
Amazon is gonna get more book money from me 😉
I think there’s a lot of us here that should buy stock in the company!!! Maybe we should try doing a book club once a month on one of these books we all like. Throw in a few good novels too … where’s our resident librarian tonight? Maybe she’d help.
That is a brilliant idea Dak!
Good idea!
I’m a librarian. If you want, I will try to come up with some good novels for a Sky Dancing book club. Or I can compile suggestions from all of you. Then we could vote on which book to choose.
Too hot and tired tonight. I’m going to watch Perry Mason and then to sleep. 🙂
Yup … you are exactly who I had in mind 🙂
It’s been miserable here too. Sleep well!!!
Basically, any one with off shore accounts isn’t just there for ‘good investments’. It’s basically to be invisible and be able to do things that most likely aren’t legal in quite a few countries including your own. Then, there’s the entire tax evasion thing. That’s why the IRS is going after Swiss bank accounts. We lose tons of money to these things and a lot of it goes to cover up huge crimes.
I think most Americans, even those of us who don’t understand finance, especially global or international finance, look at off-shore banking in the Caymans and other places known for dubious financial operations, and know instinctively that something very wrong is happening there. For too long ordinary Americans have been blasted with propaganda that tells us that mega-wealth is a great accomplishment and an admirable goal, completely ignoring the injustice, inequity and the poverty that is driven by the planets money hoarders. When the 5 heirs of Sam Walton (Wal Mart) combined wealth is greater than the assets of the bottom 30% of Americans, we have a problem. The most contentious arguments i’ve had while blogging have been about the difference between illegal and immoral. Poor people go to prison for years for possessing a bag of pot, while the people who destroy jobs and the lives and life savings of millions, float to safety with their golden parachute, then sail away to the Cayman’s. What an F’ed up world.
I learned a bit about off shore accounts — and the lawyers who run them.
Caribbean style banks — as it was explained to me by a Canadian lawyer who was working on an island in the Caribbean. I knew this island was a huge off shore banking haven. Stanford got his start on this island. What Stanford did differently was that he actually built a bank on the island. So where were the rest of the banks — this is where the Canadian lawyer’s story comes in. The Caribbean lawyers were running the banks out of their desk drawers — the lawyers would create the paper work making a new “bank” — with sometimes just one client.
The UK came in and cleaned up the offshore banks in the islands they controlled.
Different island — but same story — Canadian and UK looking into off shore banking fraud. This one is interesting — Paypal seems to be involved. An employee of Barbados bank is spilling the beans.
When I did a web search for offshore banking — Caribbean — there are so many “how-to” do offshore banking – websites. Also the names of banks — I’m wondering how many are scams?
I was under the mistaken impression that due to International pressure that the off shore banking had been cleaned up. Stanford is in jail — but evidently the Independent islands are able to rake in tons of money. What a crooked mess.
As long as the billionaires who shelter their money offshore are the ones funding politicians (and running for Prez — like R guy) is there any hope of cleaning up the corruption?
Meanwhile a whole lot of baby boomers will be retiring and there is a high probability that their pension funds have been looted.
Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers by Ellen Schultz — has been on my to read list for months.
Ye gods. If even some of those $$$ were uncovered, it would bring in enough tax revenue to keep libraries and schools and parks open. Oh, and cover healthcare for all. I’m dreaming, I know.
You’re not the only one that wants those kinds of things … check out this on Jindal’s disappearing favorables and support in LA.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2012/07/06/jindals-slide
You know, I have no idea why any of these jackasses run for office – except to get money. (Of course, Romney has more money than Croesus, but still there’s always more someplace or other, right?) Not a one of ’em gives a lick about you or me – or the unemployed or the poor or the hungry or the sick or the elderly or the miserable wretches we bomb to smithereens all over the world. Not one whit do they care.
When I was 10, my 12-year-old brother told me the only thing that mattered in the world was power. I thought that was nuts at the time and I still do. (Then again, at 15 he broke into the home of a Sunday School classmate of mine and tried to rape her, only to get off because “she was just asking for it.”) I swear to God, these guys are 12 years old. Severe arrested development. Power is all. My dick is bigger than yours. Holy shit. And they’ve completely raped this country. Sociopaths. Psychopaths. Whatever. We’re cooked. (And no one in D.C. seems to care that the planet itself is dying.)
I can’t get up enough interest to go and vote – first time in almost 40 years I’ll be sitting at home watching Seinfeld reruns. Power my ass. I don’t care about Romney. I don’t care about Obama. I don’t care about Republicans. I don’t care about Democrats. They all make me sick.
Here’s another reason why Jindal’s on the short list … he can lie with the best of them
He’s a good match for Romney.
How low can he go???
Suggestion: Consider your local independent bookstore rather than Amazon. I’d rather patronize a smaller company, but that’s IMNSHO.
Luv the Skydancing book club idea!
Problem is that living in a remote rural area the book stores are few and far between. But when we get up to the San Juan — we hit all the Independent book stores and the great used book stores.
I have a favorite independent book store here. A lot of what they specialize is stuff concerning New Orleans or things written by New Orleans writers. They’ve had to specialize to stay in business. I try to patronize them as much as possible. They were way up town but now they’ve opened a branch in my neck of the bayou. I try to buy there when they’ve got the item.
I sell used books on Amazon, and I’m independent and poor. So are plenty of other used booksellers there. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to pay full price for books either.
I buy lots of used books — one of the bright spots in the nastiness of Arizona re the fabulous used book stores. Huge huge stores — larger then some of the well known national new book stores. Bookmans & Hastings are two chains — that sell used books, used CDs, DVD and musical instruments etc.
http://www.economist.com/node/21558281
The LIBOR scandal — easy to read and understand.
Hey Kurt Andrew darling — aren’t these traders from the Yuppy generation, X generation etc. Now these bankers and traders (like Romney) are the ones who are selfish. In all the photos from the financial trading floor — I’m seeing mostly men in their 30s and 40s.