What Mitt Romney Meant

Elias Isquith

Elias Isquith is a freelance journalist and blogger. He considers Bob Dylan and Walter Sobchak to be the two great Jewish thinkers of our time; he thinks Kafka was half-right when he said there was hope, "but not for us"; and he can be reached through the twitter via @eliasisquith or via email. The opinions he expresses on the blog and throughout the interwebs are exclusively his own.

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36 Responses

  1. Murali says:

    Elias, I’m not sure that you are the best placed person on the political spectrum to comment on other people’s radicalismReport

    • Elias Isquith in reply to Murali says:

      I actually think I’m a pretty milquetoast left-liberal; but even if not, it takes one to know one!Report

      • Murali in reply to Elias Isquith says:

        Yeah, in some ways, I will admit to myself that I am fairly extreme about certain things. For example, I think value neutrality is really really important and that commits me to certain policies that are outside the mainstream of both my own and American society. But on the other hand, I also know that you have fairly strong value judgements that commit you to fairly trenchant criticisms of what seem like mainstream beliefs to me.Report

  2. Art Deco says:

    Team Romney’s 200-day plans included immediate, 5% cuts to public spending excluding security and social payments (though more money for defence), a weakening of the rules that Republicans say favour trade unions, a squeeze on public-sector jobs and pay, and a global push for free trade. Mr Romney would also have proposed lower income- and corporate-tax rates, offset by closing loopholes. Abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency, a conservative dream, was not on the cards. But “personnel is policy”, notes Glenn Hubbard, Mr Romney’s chief economic adviser. Those chosen to regulate energy and tackle climate change would have weighed costs against benefits minutely. A long-term squeeze on welfare and health spending was a priority: wholesale immigration reform was not.

    That’s your idea of a ‘radical’ program? You need to get out more.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Art Deco says:

      That was my thought too. And some of the other ideas – “He would grapple with the deficit; expand domestic energy production” – are embraced by Obama.Report

      • Will Truman in reply to Stillwater says:

        I’m kind of scratching my head here, too. Judging by the lead-in, I was expecting something like “He planned to eliminate the capital gains tax entirely, abolish the EPA, and we’d have invaded Iran by now.”Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

        I heard that Romney was going to use drones to kill American citizens abroad without a warrant (or so much as a trial!) and create the world’s largest repository of email, telephone calls, and associated metadata… IN UTAH (spooky Mormon music).Report

      • Chris in reply to Stillwater says:

        Jay, that can’t happen in America, unless we reelect George W. Bush.Report

      • zic in reply to Stillwater says:

        OK. So we have Murali suggesting Elias is ‘radical’ for his liberalism in the first comment and then the suggestion that Republicanism is not radical today for a followup comment.

        I’v got a problem with this framing; radical liberals and traditional conservatives is not the status quo.Report

      • Chris in reply to Stillwater says:

        To a large extent there is no radical left in American politics (there may be radical leftists in America, but they have no real effect on politics). There was once a fairly active and at least moderately influential radical left here, but that’s a thing of the past.

        To be fair, I don’t know that the truly radical right has much of an influence on politics, either. Perhaps some of the fringier “pro-life” groups, because they are not entirely disconnected from the less fringy “pro-lifers.”

        I worry that “radical” in these discussions has come to mean something like “not in or directly adjacent to the center,” which would be disturbing.Report

      • Murali in reply to Stillwater says:

        @zic
        I’m not Art Deco, Maybe there are republicans who are extreme, but some of Romney’s plans are milquetoast, some of Romney’s plans are just stupid and some are things that need to be done.

        It is not a question of whether democrats are the only extreme persons. America’s tax code, for example is horrendously complicated. The average person should be able to file his own taxes online in just one night. Hell, in Singapore, most people can pay taxes can do that in under 15 minutes. Just Login, look through everything and press okay.

        I still maintain that Obamacare is bad policy and will have long term consequences that harm the worst off. Rolling back Obamacare is not extreme either. I wouldn’t increase spending on defence, hell, like most people here I’d cut it in half. You know what’s really radical?
        Demolishing all current welfare programs and instituting a universal basic income.
        Halving the corporate tax.
        Eliminating corporate gains.
        Introducing a VAT
        Reforming the social security system (and the payroll tax) into an individual retirement and medical savings account system with an opt out possibility.
        Devolving all economic regulation to the states (or alternatively centralising the whole shebang. This half and half thing is just schizophrenic)
        And to throw a bone to the left, single payer insurance for catastrophic care.
        Setting up a business should be quick and easy

        By the standards of what needs to be done, Romney is nowhere near there. All he has is boilerplate. Boilerplate is going to tend to be stupid at times, but not always. If you were to call me a radical, I wouldn’t object too much. Romney is just re-arranging deck chairs.Report

      • zic in reply to Stillwater says:

        @murali, you are not artdeco; and thankful I am of that.

        My complaint (or my observation, perhaps) is that there are frames here of radical liberal vs. steady conservative that do not reflect reality. Recognizing them as stereotypes that obscure rather then illuminate matters if we want to have worthwhile discussion.Report

      • Will Truman in reply to Stillwater says:

        I think it’s interesting the extent to which “radical” is taken as a normative rather than descriptive assessment. Is that an American thing? Sometimes I get the impression that it is, though I have an American’s understanding of the rest of the world sometimes (which is to say, less-than-stellar). Perhaps it pertains to my own (lower-case “c”) conservative instincts, that I sometimes enjoy the cases where I am out of the mainstream or where my ideas would represent a significant jolt or even overhaul of the system.Report

      • Chris in reply to Stillwater says:

        Will, that’s part of what I was trying to get at, but you said it better. I mean, “radical’ has, at least as far as I can tell, always had a normative component for most people, but it also had a descriptive one once upon a time. I don’t know that it really has the descriptive component anymore. At least, if it does, it has nothing to do with the meaning of the word “radical.”Report

      • Kim in reply to Stillwater says:

        Murali,
        The average non-home owning person can file their taxes in one night. At least in PA, where I live.
        If taxes are fubar (which they are) it is in Cali/NY/NJ. Round here we have a flat state tax. And it’s low.Report

      • zic in reply to Stillwater says:

        @murali — this:

        America’s tax code, for example is horrendously complicated. The average person should be able to file his own taxes online in just one night.

        I don’t know this for fact, but I’ve often read that Democrats wanted to simplify tax forms and filings, and were not allowed to by Republicans in Congress because they wanted complicated filings to reinforce the notion that taxes are bad. That’s pretty radical.Report

      • Murali in reply to Stillwater says:

        @zic
        If they indeed do that, it goes beyond radical into rank insane stupidity. I attribute this to people playing politics instead of doing what they’re supposed to.Report

      • Kim in reply to Stillwater says:

        zic & murali,
        1040EZ is an easy form (and freely available online to submit)
        Unlike Schedule K…Report

      • Murali in reply to Stillwater says:

        But it is only 1 form out of a number of alternatives. You still have to know whether that is the correct form for you to use. As a whole, it is not a user friendly system. American bureaucracy is not the most efficient. In fact, it is the worst that I have encountered.*

        *Admittedly said experience is limited.Report

      • Kim in reply to Stillwater says:

        Murali,
        Now I’m wondering how much time you spent bribing the bureaucracy.Report

      • Murali in reply to Stillwater says:

        You’re supposed to bribe them?Report

  3. Michelle says:

    Reading this piece once again makes me happy that Mitt lost. As much as I think Obama is too much in the pocket of big corporate interests, Mitt is ten times worse. I fear he would have made the country even more of a corporately owned subsidiary than it already is. Not that the rest of his party is any better.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Michelle says:

      Sure, I agree with that. But were his proposals “radical”? I mean, he was either a liar of ignorant regarding most of his own policy proposals, but when I look at them they don’t appear radical to me. Except for Medicare. His Medicare proposals struck me as radical since that constituted a moreorless wholesale dismantling of the current system.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

        Every cut is “draconian”.
        Every advisor is “extreme”.
        Every proposal is “radical”.Report

      • Chris in reply to Stillwater says:

        They were totally radical, far out, and like, gag me with a spoon.

        OK, maybe not the last one.Report

      • Michelle in reply to Stillwater says:

        Radical? Probably not. At least by the standards of modern Republicanism. The problem I had with Romney (aside from the feeling that he was basically soulless) is that he refused to provide a scintilla of detail about his plans. His basic stance was “trust me.” Plus, it seemed like his foreign policy would be Bush II on steroids.Report

  4. Mike Schilling says:

    It’s interesting that this is a purely economic agenda. His transparent phoniness as a social conservative was completely genuine.

    Anyway, the beauty part is that before it became clear that all those things did was increase misery and spike the deficit, he could break the US up and sell off the pieces.Report

  5. Barry says:

    “Success was to be measured by bosses releasing cash they were hoarding when Mr Obama was president, and rushing to join a Romney-led American revival.”

    Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht.
    Romney’s entire life has been based on the idea that ‘success’ is having more cash in *your own* account.

    “Actually, it’s a testament to four things. The fourth?”

    Five things – the fifth being the raw BS arrogance of The Economist.Report

  6. BlaiseP says:

    Politicians are the product of their times. Examining the nature of belief is the province of theologians and philosophers, not politicians. They understand two things: people fall in love for the damnedest reasons — and America has been afflicted with Promised Land mentality since its inception. It’s hardly surprising the politicians couch their rhetoric in messianic terms: that’s how anyone gets elected in America.

    It’s pointless asking what politicians believe. Nor, for that matter, should we ask any intelligent person that question. They all leave a Post-It note on top of the Settled Matter reading “For further examination.” We all know our personal vision of truth is woefully incomplete and every intelligent person since Roger Bacon accepts this fact. The truth is only as good as the experiment which proves it. Never trust a politician who wants to “Change Washington.” The only change they propose is to add their names to the lists of powerful persons and remove their opposition from that list.

    Mitt Romney represented, I suppose he still does represent a particular mindset for curing America’s ills. He understands how much money is sitting on the sidelines, trillions of dollars. Getting that money off the sidelines and into the market was his job. And he’s not wrong in pointing out how profoundly markets are influenced by fear and uncertainty. I used to have a fish tank. It got kinda nasty and I cleaned it Real Well. Killed all the fish in that tank, with the exception of a few feeder guppies who thrived thereafter. Government can do as much harm as good in Fixing Things. Best to implement changes on a gradual basis, come to terms with the consequences of each such step.

    And that’s where Romney failed. He wanted to Clean the Fish Tank Real Good. Most people hated the idea. People liked Obamacare. However dimly, ordinary people came to terms with the fact that health care in this nation is a mess. If Obamacare disturbs the status quo and made enemies in Big Healthco, people hate the insurance firms’ bureaucracies even more than they hate government bureaucracies.Report