I didn’t watch the latest GOP debate. I was out playing the blues, getting on with real life.
[It went well, thx for asking. I’m just a fool for yr stockings, I believe.]
Real people have lives and consider government a necessary annoyance. Those who think government is anything but, well, they vote otherwise.
I’m a conservative and I don’t mind—I love me some Newt Gingrich, who was the first Republican who figured out Congress actually matters, and stole it away from eternal Democrat dominance in 1994.
But Brother Newt has only a second-class mind and a fourth-rate temperament. He’s a dick. I dig me some Herman Cain too on the demagogic level, but the presidency is not an entry-level job.
We just found that out bigtime, electing a 2-year Senator whose ideological flaws are only outweighed by his incompetence. Plus, we’re realizing, he has a really crappy temperament, too.
I knew nothing about Rick Perry, although I was hopeful. A true conservative. Well-qualified as a 2-term governor of a bigass state.
But Rick Perry’s a dick, I think. Probably a bigger dick than the last really massive dick we elected, St. Jimmy Carter. Even his own party came to hate him because he was a dick [and he still is].
Which leaves us with Mitt. The joke is that in every poll, BHO loses to a “generic Republican,” and there ain’t nobody more generic than Mitt.
But in this contentious day and age, and with the American presidency being the hottest spotlight on earth where every word or phrasing is parsed, not screwing up is Job One.
BHO’s record as president is fairly indefensible—it is the economy, stupid—so every public appearance Mitt Romney makes where he doesn’t screw up is yet another electoral victory. Can he run the table over the next 13 months?
It’s a big ask, but this guy has a better shot than any other GOPer. On the emotive level, he’s in control of himself, doesn’t let himself get carried away. And the world is such a complex place that we expect our president to be a Jeopardy! champion, and know not only his Keynes from his Mises, but who the president of Tanzania is.
[I’m a reasonably well-read person and politics freak. I have no frigging goddam idea. Jesus, there are almost 200 UN member states. I can barely make it through the 50 US capitals.]
[OK, let’s test meself—North Dakota—Pierre.]
[Looking it up, Godmmit, that’s SOUTH Dakota. Bismarck’s the other one, OK, I got that one right, sort of.]
For the record, while Mitt Romney was @ Harvard postgrad, he scored his MBA and a law degree simultaneously. Top third [cum laude] in his law school class, top 5% in his MBA program.
As a headhunter, it’s my professional opinion that his record is Not Bad. Atall. You may think him a fool, but he’s no idiot.
Me, the worst thing about American life right now is how we’re at at other’s throats. 51% against the other 49, or 53 against the #Occupiers. This sucks.
President Obama is out campaigning already looking for his 51%. He’s a dick.
Mitt’s taking fire from his right flank, but behaving like a president, president of all of us.
Mitt Romney’s qualified and he isn’t a dick. He has my vote—I don’t ask for much in these difficult times.
Awesome.
Dear Heart!
What is your criterion for being a dick? I am seriously wondering…
I have heard it said, by someone who has psychoanalyzed politicians for a living, that Jimmy was the last president we elected who wasn’t an asshole. And he was a Nice Guy (note: Did I ever say I thought nice guys ought to be president?) Idealist.
Mitt is not a dick? The guy who laughs about scaring his dog half to death (to the point where it was covered in its own shit?). [Not that I’m saying that’s a reason to dq him. I restrict DQ for the absolutely crazy, or the “dumb enough to press the Do Not Press This Button button.”]
Clinton was quite a dick, by all reports, and no, smart guy, I don’t mean the ones we got from Lewinsky.
Clinton was an asshole, but when he thought he was the smartest person in the room, he was often right.
I’m OK with Clinton. When he lost Congress, he worked with them anyway because that’s the president’s job.
I… used to be okay with Gingrich. Because he USED to be a statesman. Together, Gingrich and Clinton made a good team.
I no longer have any confidence that statesmen can prosper on the Republican side, only idealogues. Certainly Gingrich is far from who he used to be.
Acknowledged infra: “But Brother Newt has only a second-class mind and a fourth-rate temperament. He’s a dick. “
But Romney is statesmanlike, more than the other GOPers, more than the Current Occupant. At least that’s my argument.
I’ve never understood Mitt’s lukewarm reception. My wife tries to explain it to me, and the only hard fact is Romneycare. Yawn. I’m not a fan of state mandates, either, but a party that prides itself on federalism ought to respect the difference between a statewide program and a nationwide one.
I’m a dog lover, too, but America’s predicament is dire. If a candidate’s petcare credentials are ever relevant, they’re certainly not in the 2012 election.
@Tim: “I’ve never understood Mitt’s lukewarm reception.”
East coast
*Massachusetts* East coast
Elite
Ivy League
Mormon
Cites stats (which may or may not be correct) vs. appealing to “common sense”
Doesn’t rail about the War on Christmas, Gays, or Sharia Law
That’s my guess, anyway.
This. And unlike other candidates, there’s a long record of Romney pandering to left-of-center people because he was running a political campaign in Massachusetts.
Of the people I’ve seen, talked to, and read who really don’t like Romney, it’s not the health care bill. It’s the flip flops on abortion, gay rights, and other social issues. They can understand Romney did the best he could on that, they don’t understand the flip flop on the ‘core’ stuff.
er….did the best he could on the health care bill.
Mitt Romney is John Kerry with an elephant lapel pin instead of a donkey.
I think Kerry is a bigger dick than Mitt.
But I think the dynamic in the election might play out the same, if Mitt is the nominee; he’ll play Kerry to Obama’s Dubya.
I’d like Mitt better if he acted more like a dickish human and less like a robot.
“I think Kerry is a bigger dick than Mitt.”
Hard to say. What’s all the stuff he says after I’ve fallen asleep?
RIMSHOT!
Ace, RTod. Kerry was the Dems’ Dole, I make it, a credible spacefiller so the downticket didn’t get clobbered too bad. I mean, was there anybody who really into either of them?
No, but he was in to Teresa Heinz. Ba-dum-bum!. Be sure to tip your waitresses, folks, they’re working hard out there.
A week before Lincoln died he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy died he was in Marilyn Monroe! (pause for laughter)
But seriously, folks…
“I’ve never understood Mitt’s lukewarm reception. My wife tries to explain it to me, and the only hard fact is Romneycare. Yawn.”
It’s perplexing for me as well. There’s two things that occur to me.
1. There’s a significant number of constituencies, right and left, who haven’t internalized how much we’ve lost over the last 3-5 years and who are looking for pols who share their emotional hot buttons, which Mitt doesn’t.
2. He represents an odd sort of strikebreaker for the politicians’ union, in that he’s willing to take orders from the sovereignty of the citizens.
That latter part works tremendously in his favor imo.
I was going to suggest a more recent presidential dick, but on reflection that’s not accurate. He was, instead, a bystander who allowed the dicks (notably one named Dick) to create the most dickish administration in US history.
I think jumping on Larry Craig when he was down was dickish. Did we really need to hear that Mitt thinks that having anonymous sex in a restroom is disgusting?
Of course it’s disgusting. That’s the point. If it was wholesome and clean then it wouldn’t be any fun.
I will say this for Mr. Romney: he presents a managerial air.
I don’t think we need a managerial President (we got one now). But I don’t think he’d be bad, necessarily, on that front.
It would be nice to have an actual leader in the seat, but I don’t know that leaders are electable these days.
I suspect exchanging Obama for Romney will be largely indistinguishable except which pundits are freaking out about how non-centrist the guy is.
Except of course, for the Supreme Court, nominations to head various federal agencies and judgeships, and so forth. But other than, completely indistinguishable.
I don’t think Mr. Romney would nomination anyone as far right as Scalia. I suspect he’d pick middle-of-the-road statist supporters.
Mitt is no more a right-wing ideologue than Obama is a left-wing one.
Without picking nits over degrees of far-rightness (is Alito to the left or right of Scalia?), I disagree.
Romney would be under intense pressure to nominate justices as far right as possible, and nothing in his record to date seems to indicate he’d be willing or able to resist this pressure.
And for me at least, there’s no question that this is another, and perhaps the most important, difference between Obama and Romney. The Supreme Court of 2016 could look very different under these two hypothetical administrations.
> Romney would be under intense pressure
> to nominate justices as far right as possible,
> and nothing in his record to date seems to
> indicate he’d be willing or able to resist
> this pressure.
I think this is vastly overselling several things.
People said essentially the same thing about Obama. Who were his hard-left, civil rights-backin’, stickin’ it to the man nominees?
I’m not sure who you saw saying the same things about Obama; most of what I read said exactly the opposite. The structural incentives for Obama were to nominate moderate, center-left justices, which is exactly what he’s done.
Any Republican president will have very different incentives and is much more likely to give us another Alito or Thomas on the court than another Souter.
Whelp, if Elias is correct, you’ll get your nightmare scenario and then we can see what happens.
I bet you $5 it’s not as bad as you now think it will be. Although it might then be as bad as you think then you thought it would be now.
Left-wing justices are purely political creatures: since a “living” Constitution can be plied to any desirable outcome [and is], there is no definable line between policy and constitutional principle. Anything goes, esp on the tough calls. [Justice O’Connor was also known to temporize, mind you. Her calls on affirmative action and “ceremonial deism” come to mind.]
An interesting can of worms, this, and perhaps even more up my blogbrother Kowal’s alley.
It’s commonly assumed that Justices Scalia and Thomas are the two Supreme Court justices who are most likely to vote together. However much that may have been true during Justice Thomas’ first several years on the Court, it is becoming less true over time. This past term, according to statistics collected by the folks at SCOTUSBlog, the two sets of justices most likely to vote together were the Chief Justice and Justice Alito (96.2%), and Justices Sotomayor and Kagan (94%). Perhaps even more surprising, the Scalia-Thomas pairing was not even in the top ten most common pairings.
The data are really worth unpacking
http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/SB_OT10_stat_pack_final.pdf
Despite my initial skepticism, upon further review it does appear to that “center-left” is accurate re Kagan and Sotomayor, esp if we concede that Ginsberg is “hard left.” In the recent term, those two voted with the majority about 2/3 of the time; Ginsberg only half.
Executive experience is important — and I look in particular for executive experience in government. I’m not sure whether I’d prefer a governmental but legislative background to an executive but business background. The closest we’ve ever come to that, Woodrow Wilson, was of middling abilities as these things go. A former or current state Governor is to be preferred to someone who has made his or her entire governmental service career in legislative service.
Romney meets this threshold. (So does Perry. So do Johnson and Huntsman, but they’re pretty much counted out here.)
I dunno, Burt, as time has gone on I’ve become increasingly convinced that actual executive experience in government in the candidate isn’t all that and a bag of chips.
Whoever gets the Oval Office has the best recruiting mechanism in the world. You can get good people to run the ship.
What you can’t get, from anywhere else, is the ability to actually lead. Drive things, make them happen. Of course, most people who can actually do this aren’t electable.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It turns out that identifying who those “good people” are, getting them to agree to be part of your team, convincing them to take your direction, and inspiring them to deploy their individual talents and abilities — all within a system of checks and balances against overreach of power, and in which your political adversaries can be relied upon to snipe at them more or less constantly — is kind of a rare skill set.
Seems to me that skill set is best developed in as similar an environment as possible to the one where it will be used for the highest stakes, and fortunately for us, here in the USA we have 50 such training grounds available at any one time.
This is a good point.
bwahaha. Texas and California, the governor means something. noplace else.
I think obama has a good mind for nominating good competent people.
This seems just as misguided as all the 2000 Naderite nattering about there being no difference between Bush and Gore.
Presidents are very much constrained by their parties, and regardless of what Mitt did as governor of Massachusetts, his agenda as President would be largely set by Fox News, The Weekly Standard, and Rush Limbaugh.
This may, in fact, lead to little practical change in foreign policy other than rhetorically, but domestically it would be a night-and-day difference.
I sure hope so.
So you want to elect a president guided by the agenda of Fox News so that we’re no longer divided against ourselves?
Incidentally, when were we not divided against ourselves? 1984-1992, I suppose.
Sorry, Mr. Drew: When I see “Fox News,” my eyes glaze over and I’m out of there.
I have no illusions about “unity.” Per Mr. Madison, the tension of competing factions is a fact of life, and we are best served leaving them in tension.
Governing by consensus is not only possible, it’s far preferable to majoritarianism, which the Founders rightly feared.
So what are you on about in the post then? Just the character of our contentiousness? You’re s ‘civility’ guy after all?
The point is that Romney’s the only non-dick on the national scene, hence “Make Mine Mitt.”
As Mr. Civility, I do prefer a president who doesn’t put us at each other’s throats to further his own political interests. I’d prefer somebody more conservative than Mitt, but as Mr. Civility, I’m willing to sacrifice some ideology for some statesmanship.
If somebody statesmanlike such as Evan Bayh were running against Rick Perry, there’s a very good chance I’d cross party lines. Because I’m really weary of all this, Michael. BHO doesn’t do a damn thing to ease our tensions with each other, because his political survival depends on fanning them.
I didn’t vote for him either time, but I’m easy on Bill Clinton and thought he did a good job.
“We don’t have (in the United States) a lot of resentment against people who are successful. We kind of like it, Americans do. It’s one of our best characteristics. If we think someone earned their money, we do not resent their success. That’s why there’s been very little class conflict in American history.””
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ bout! Those words are unimaginable coming from BHO’s mouth.
I do prefer a president who doesn’t put us at each other’s throats to further his own political interests.
I’m not sure I understand how you are saying he has done this, or how it has furthered his interests. His stated intentions from the beginning were diametrically different. As you know people on his left believe he repeatedly went way too far out of his way to achieve a cross-ideological partnership. I’m not saying it’s illegitimate for you to have seen things differently, but you never say what it is you saw; you just offer this received characterization of what he did. It has no power, because it has no facts attached to it.
Sorry, Mr. Drew: When I see “Fox News,” my eyes glaze over and I’m out of there.
Simpler just to change the channel.
Mr. Drew, “cinging to guns and religion” substantiated my point. Further illustrations will leave you similarly epistemologically unsatisfied. TVD don’t do epistemological black holes.
Present counterfactuals instead, if you do indeed have a viable argument. Anything like the Bill Clinton quote I cited will do.
I think the President is watching #Occupy and hoping it accrues to his credit. It will not.
You say X; I say, What things in the world make you think X?, and you start using the word epistemology. I guess that’s fair.
The guns & religion moment can’t have been an attempt to divide us since it wasn’t meant for public consumption. It was certainly revealing enough, but I don’t see how it can possibly be seen as intentionally trying to put us at each other’s throats to further his political interests. It was manifestly a gaffe (and one captured on a microphone he didn’t know existed) – one that clearly harmed him rather than advanced his interests, and could only have been understood by him to have been harmful if heard beyond the audience to whom he was speaking. It was an prejudiced, unfair view to express of people he didn’t actually understand, but it can’t possibly have been an attempt to further his interests by an intentional attempt to pit us against each other, because it wasn’t a message he intended for the country at large to hear. Sorry.
I’d say try again, but with your epistemology talk you’ve made clear you think you’re too good to have to actually play the game you started in order to be able to assure yourself you’ve won it.
I mean, what is with the “prove I’m wrong” attitude as to assertions around here lately? Hell, you supported me the the other day in insisting that positive assertions have to be demonstrated, not that they stand until disproved. Now it’s about “counterfactual”s.
“Counterfactual”? You’re not even using that word right. The word you’re looking for is disconfirmatory evidence. But you’re not offering a hypothesis that you’re willing to test yourself against a broad sample of the president’s rhetoric. Rather you’re just seeking for this assertion to stand without argument. That’s just not how it’s going to work around here. I decline to offer contrary evidence because you haven’t even offered any evidence suggesting the assertion can be defended, and as such, until you do, far from simply standing until disproven, it can be disregarded pending evidence.
Mr. Drew, you’re playing epistemological black hole and no evidence will be enough for you. I’m supposed to google and cut and google and paste awhile you play immovable object. A fool’s errand.
“Then you’ve got their plan, which is, let’s have dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance. So far at least, I feel better about my plan.”
Uh huh. Mebbe a valid point about the health insurance, but the “dirty air” stuff is crap and I’m sick of it.
A counterfactual would be something like the Bill Clinton quote that BHO’s ideology would never permit him to say, which I’ve posted twice, neither time leaving the slightest impression on you. So, yeah, you’re right, this isn’t working, but not for the reasons you give.
So stick with your “Fox News” rant. Now there’s a nice piece of evidence-backed argument.
Darren, do you remember President Bush’s first six months in office?
If it weren’t for 9/11, do you honestly think the remaining 3.5 years of his first term would have looked substantially different from his first six months in office? If so, why do you believe this?
President Bush was a non-entity until 9/11. Even most of his agenda railroading was only possible because of 9/11.
Whatever your Presidential agenda is, Fox News and the Weekly Standard have less to do with what comes out of the oval office than what comes out of the Halls of Congress.
> Domestically it would be a night-and-day difference.
What do you think Mitt Romney will do that will be a “night and day” difference between him and President Obama?
What do you think Mitt Romney will do that will be a “night and day” difference between him and President Obama?
Maybe he’ll bust fewer MMJ dispensaries.
Um, in 2001, the Senate was held by Democrats after Jeffords switched parties and the House was led by a much more pragmatic leadership team.
On the other hand, any Romney will win will lead to a House majority filled with Tea Partiers even more emboldened to go hard-right and a Senate Majority with new right-wingers in the Senate to hold hands with Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, and Mike Lee to drive things even farther to the right.
Oh, and not to mention, conservatives trusted Bush. They do not trust Romney. So, he’ll be President, but he won’t be in charge. If Ginsburg retires, anybody to the left of Scalia will be simply not brought up by the Senate.
> On the other hand, any Romney will win
> will lead to a House majority filled with
> Tea Partiers even more emboldened to
> go hard-right and a Senate Majority
> with new right-wingers in the Senate
> to hold hands with Rand Paul, Jim
> DeMint, and Mike Lee to drive things
> even farther to the right.
So you’re saying the Democrats are going to lose 14 Senate seats in 2012? Among the Senate seats up for election in 2012, there are 21 Democrats, 10 Republicans and 2 Independents. The Democrats are going to lose 14 seats and the Republicans will gain those seats without losing any?
There are 242 GOP seats in the House right now. There were 178 in the prior Congress. So all 64 new House GOP members are hard right Tea Partiers and despite the fact that they represent less than a third of the House they’re going to driving things?
Jesse, you’re proposing one of the biggest across the board Red landslides in the history of politics. You think this is a plausible scenario… why?
You are aware that the current Congress is deeply unpopular, right?
I’m saying that if Romney is winning the White House, the Senate is going over to the GOP and the 2012 version of the GOP will happily nuke the filibuster in 5.7 seconds if they need too.
> I’m saying that if Romney is winning
> the White House, the Senate is going
> over to the GOP
So you’re saying if Romney wins the White House, the GOP will also take the Senate?
I will bet you $5 and give you 4-1 that this does not occur. $5 to win $20, my friend.
Pat, I will totally take that bet. In a heartbeat. Not $5 for $5, but $5 for $20? Yeah. The class of 2006 is up.
I don’t think Bush was a non-entity on the domestic front, or that the things he did there were only made possible by 9/11 (OK, DHS, the TSA, etc. were a result of 9/11, but not much else).
With Romney in office you’d instantly see a 180 degree shift on abortion and gay rights, for sure. While Obama hasn’t been great on the drug war or immigration, I’d give big odds that Romney would be significantly worse.
We can obviously forget about any positive action on climate change during a Romney administration.
Despite it’s similarity to his MassCare, Romney would do everything in his power to gut the PPACA and return our health care system to its prior unsustainable state.
Tax policy would return to Bush-era reverse Robin Hood, and I’d be willing to wager the GOP’s current mania for spending cuts to address the deficit and reduce the national debt would instantly disappear on November 7, 2012 following a Romney win.
And that’s just off the top of my head. While you have difficulty thinking of ways Romney would be different from Obama, I have difficulty thinking of a single way he’d be better than Bush.
Sounds good to me.
Which, I agree, would be different from our health care system’s current unsustainable state. Different for better or different for worse? I’m not in a position to make that call.
Your concern about the GOP abandoning its newfound antipathy to debt and deficit spending is well-taken.
We’ll see who the Libertarians run this time around.
Given last time, I wouldn’t be surprised if they pick Dick Cheney or somebody…
“President Obama is out campaigning already looking for his 51%. He’s a dick.”
The current Prez isn’t a dick. He doesn’t get off on humiliating his enemies. He’s too absorbed in his own narcissism to really understand their existence.
Also, you’ve been working this majoritarian angle for a while, but it doesn’t quite fit. It oversells the Prez. For most things he doesn’t have anywhere near 51% percent of anything. What he does do manipulate the levers of power so that he can get by without it, which is far worse.
Mr. Koz, BHO’s style has been majoritarian, not consensus-building. Obamacare passed with the barest of majorities and by high-handed [albeit skillful and legal] manipulation of the legislative process.
And yes, he is a dick. He’s permanently on the stump and his addresses to sympathetic audiences drip with condescension and divisiveness. All the way back to “cling to their guns and religion” in 2008. That’s just not right, and neither is his class warfare ideology. Don’t take my word for it:
Also in the Newsmax interview, Bill Clinton gently unloaded on the newest round of Obamanomics. He said Obama’s approach to the deficit “is a little bit confusing.” Translation: The president has no clue what he is doing.
As for tax increases — even on millionaires — Clinton took a swipe at Obama’s rather blatant play to stir up class envy.
Said Clinton: “We don’t have (in the United States) a lot of resentment against people who are successful. We kind of like it, Americans do. It’s one of our best characteristics. If we think someone earned their money, we do not resent their success. That’s why there’s been very little class conflict in American history.”
Bill Clinton’s Newsmax Interview Was a Smackdown of Obama
http://www.newsmax.com/MattTowery/Bill-Clinton-Newsmax-Interview/2011/09/22/id/411935
… but Mitt’s class warfare ideology is AOKAY?
There are reasons I liken GITS:SAC to our current political system.
Toldja So Dept.:
At the start of a meeting in Kabul, Clinton said Karzai had seen a news clip in which Cain said he didn’t “even know the names of all these presidents of all these countries.”
In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network earlier this month, Cain was asked how he would deal with “gotcha questions” from the media. He replied: “When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say: `You know, I don’t know. Do you know?'”
Karzai chipped in Thursday that Cain was referring to “all the `stans,” a reference to Central Asian countries. Clinton laughed and, gesticulating with her hands, said, “All the `stans places.”
“That wasn’t right, but anyway, that’s how politics are,” Karzai said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_US_AFGHANISTAN_GOP?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
I’m surprised he didn’t just come right out and say “dirka-dirka-stan”.
This is the funniest comment of the week.
This story enrages me. Nearly 1800 Americans (and hundreds of other coalition members) are dead because Karzai is a corrupt incompetent asshole, and the son of bitch has the temerity, the balls, to laugh at our system? Fuck Karzai with a rusty spoon.
(and as a point of fact, when referring to the geopolitical situation around central Asia, most people, including experts, refer to “the Stans” for those countries formerly of the USSR when differentiation between them is unimportant to the point at hand)
They’re all dicks, otherwise they wouldn’t want the power.