Last week, President Barack Obama addressed the Associated Press editors. He built on his policy suggestions from the State of the Union Address, but he also critiqued Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s plans to give over $4 trillion more to the rich, while stripping health care from a minimum of 14,000,000 people. The next day, Mitt Romney spoke less than half the time, offered no economic plans, and blasted Obama for never making concrete economic proposals. Romney repeated his many unsupported campaign claims against Obama and grouped them around another unsupported claim that Obama refuses to offer specific economic plans and has some secret program to transform America after he is elected. He talks about some sort of Trojan Horse, but he did not identify what even that might be.
Romney appears so plastic and inauthentic that Richard Nixon, by comparison, appears to be a real person. No candidate in recent memory can come anywhere near him in flip-flops. There is no way of knowing what he really believes. In today's political climate, he does not have to account for his flip flops. Whereas one explainable flip flop sunk John Kerry in 2004; not they are irrelevant.
Obama was right to say that Romney had embraced the views of political "radicals." The president limited his comments to the new Social Darwinism of the Republicans and their desire to revert to the social and economic poloicies of the late 19th century and 1920. The president should have also noted that Romney is appealing to other kinds of radicals. He dair not raise the race question, but he can show how Romney appeals to the paranoic and irrational political fundamentalists.
Clearly, Willard "Mitt" Romney has learned that any wild claim he makes about Obama will be accepted by a large number of voters. He lacks the skill to make clear economic proposals and hold an audience. For one thing, even his Republican audiences mave deep doubts that he has any deep beliefs.
Miott Romney has no choice but to play the fear and wild charges game. He is so butoned down and wooden that it is hard for pundits to see that is trying to be a respectable fire-brand or rabble rouser. But that is his irresponsible game.
Willard Romney is assuming that the anti-Obama coalition of 2010 will sweep him into the White House. Part of that coalition is based on people who are either racists or soft-racist, that is the many people who think there is something wrong with African American culture. To get them to turn out and vote, he has to continue the sweeping, false claims. Not one of those people will check the facts. Then there are all the Tea Party political fundamentalists, who are in a deep panic about their futures and that of the nation. They have already demonized Obama as a Muslim socialist born in Africa. The evangelicals among these have some problems with his Mormon religion, but enough fear-mongering will bring them to the polls in November.
Unlike some of the other Republican candidates, Romney has not appealed directly to the Birthers. Moreover, he usually refers to “President” Obama. Other candidates sometimes said things that could mean there was something wrong with African American culture. He avoided all of that. On the surface, he seems to be taking the high road. But he mentions the president so frequently, and makes so many clearly false claims, that it is hard to deny that his whole camping rests on reigniting the fires of 2010.
No one, even David Axlerod, can keep track of all of Romney's lies. Here are just a few that he deploys regularly and are rarely challenged.
1. His take on the economic-financial breakdown of 2008 is that George W. Bush rescued the economy with his TARP. Then he blames Obama for creating all the unemployment and says Obama created no jobs. He complains about the size of the Obama stimulus, but a look at his well-credentialed economic advisors makes it clear Romney will have a stimulus package if elected.
2. We all know that Obama was heard telling the current Russian president that he would have more flexibility on missiles after the election. Romney converted that to mean that Obama would have more flexibility on the economy after November and that he had some secret plans to transform America.
3. During the primaries, he repeatedly said that Obama set out to “consciously” damage the American economy. He offered no proof whatever. He soulded as though he almoss believed this, suggesting his departure from rationality matched those of the Tea Party folks and those who objected to Obama's culture and race. This was a constant refrain. Now he has changed it to piggyback onto far right-propaganda that Obama delayed spending stimulus money so it can be spent just before the election. Romney says Obama “delayed the recovery and made it anemic.” This stuff is crazy and inconsistent. The people on the far right are supposed to believe that stimulus spending doesn't work anyhow. Romney is having it both ways.
4. Now he is saying Obama will “end Medicare as we know it....” There is not a word about Romney's agreement with House Republicans that Medicaid as we know it must be shut down soon. He backs Ryan's plans to gradually dismantle Medicare, but he repeats wild claims that Obama is shutting down Medicare, destroying it as we know it. The fact is that Affordable Health Care reformed Medicare, giving it another decade or more of sustainable. Romney repeats the 2009 claims that Obama took $600 billion out of Medicare, reduced services, and raised the cost of Medicare supplements. The simple fact is that Obama saved $450 billion, cut no benefits, and slightly reduced the costs of supplemental care.
It is possible to dismiss the ravings of Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin as the babbling of people who lack gravitas, learning, and good minds. Romney has a good mind and an excellent education but he refuses to engage in serious, nuanced discussion of the issues. He clearly is aiming to retain the support of the 2010 anti-Obama coalition and to pick up a majority of the undecided 9%, so-called undecided independents. They are people who usually do not follow politics carefully, and they want instant results. They are the “swing” vote, and in 2010 they opted to punish Obama for not working economic miracles. There are many more "Independents" than that, but the others lean one way or another. In 2010, most decided to lean right, and unfortunately they remain there today. Some thinmk the remaining 9% will be put off by all the Republican lies and rage, but that view is probably tied to the discredited notion that the Independents are really in the dead middle and are close observers and totally rational. Maybe Karl Rove was correct there when he said there no longer is a real middle.
Romney will have the assistance of a bevy of super-PACS that can air all sorts of unsupported attack advertisements. Our highly partisan United States Supreme Court in the Citizens United Decision gave them the right to collect untold amounts from corporate donors. American Crossroads alone has $200 million to spend. In the end they could spend as much as a billion dollars demonizing Obama, blaming him for high unemployment, and stoking the kind of irrational political currents that cannot be good for democracy.