Thursday Open Thread [9.13.12]
“Mitt Romney has picked a big fight fraught with political risks amid an ongoing foreign policy crisis with heartbreaking and murderous consequences for the U.S. diplomatic corps. And by the end of the day on Wednesday he walked straight into a forearm shiver from the commander-in-chief – one that may leave a mark and intensify scrutiny of Romney’s foreign policy qualifications.”
Steve Erickson says that Mitt Romney has a “character problem:”
Romney’s current troubles don’t stem from miscalculation or even a duff convention in Tampa but are manifestations of his own political character as heard and witnessed over the past half-decade. This is a man who has altered his positions—not modified, not tailored, not hedged, but utterly transformed—on every single issue from abortion to climate change to the health-care reform that he signed as governor in Massachusetts. Now he runs a campaign that doesn’t want to talk about his record as governor or as a financier and that refuses to put forth an economic alternative of any detail beyond building the Alaska pipeline and lowering taxes for people like himself, even as at the same time he won’t show us what he pays in taxes now or whether he pays taxes at all. His adamant hostility to revealing anything that resembles an authentic belief or credible strategy for accelerating the recovery is not only losing Romney the choice part of the election but the referendum part as well, as the Democrats succeed in making this a referendum on Romney, not Obama. Romney’s selection of Ryan was meant both to reassure the party’s base and bathe the presidential candidate in the glow of the vice-presidential candidate’s reputation as a man of integrity and candor. As evinced by the ticket’s appearances on this past Sunday morning’s news programs and Ryan’s speech at the Republican Convention, when he blamed Obama for a plant that closed during his predecessor’s term and for a Medicare cut that Ryan himself supports and for not embracing a debt-commission report that Ryan himself opposed and for the country’s credit downgrading that Ryan himself brought about as much as any single individual, it is truth-teller Ryan who bathes in the glow of Romney’s irrefutable standing as the phoniest nominee of our lifetime.
“This year, the major economic indicators are headed in the right direction, albeit slowly. We’ve been adding jobs, though not enough. We’ve been growing, though not particularly fast. We’ve seen the unemployment rate drop, though partially because workers are leaving the labor force. All in all, it’s not an impressive record. But it’s weak growth, not a new recession. And the political valence of that weak growth is unusually hard to discern, as voters continue to place more blame for our current economic troubles on George W. Bush than on Barack Obama.”
Ambers is not concerned with the post-convention polls, but is more interesting in the enthusiasm gap:
Until the last three weeks before the election, you can safely skip the top-line numbers for every poll you read. That’s why I’m less impressed by the president’s post-convention “bounce,” a term that implies that whatever is up shall come down. Generally, what’s more striking is that the president’s enthusiasm deficit among self-described independents who tend to vote Democratic has been erased. Those voters are moving (back) into his corner, and they’re providing his buoyancy.
Nate Cohn notices more enthusiasm among non-white voters, who heavily favor Obama.
“Mitt Romney began the 2012 anniversary of Sept. 11 by calling for a suspension of politics. ‘There is a time and a place for that, but this day is not it,’ he said at a morning National Guard gathering in Reno, Nev. Just hours later, Romney could no longer resist… He saw an opportunity to tie his claim that Barack Obama apologizes for American greatness to the news cycle…”
“In the final weeks of a campaign of this scale, there are very few moments that really count. But when they matter, they can reshape the race. A day that began with Romney calling for national unity before politics in the face of terrorism ended with just the opposite. Voters will now get to decide if the shift revealed Romney as a statesman displaying the courage of his convictions or a politician seeking advantage in a time of turmoil.”
I didn’t think that anyone could damage the Republican brand more than George Bush.
It wasn’t obvious at first but the GOP went into a death spiral when they ceded control of the party to the Tea Party and other assorted nuts. A party that puts Michele Bachmann on the freaking Intelligence Committee is doomed.
Boehner had his chance to put on the mantle of the sane Republicans, kick Grover Norquist to the curb, and form a coalition with Democrats instead of with the teabaggers.
But the farther out on the rightward limb they go, the thinner the branch gets. And they aren’t even thinking about climbing back.
Regarding Romney’s embassy comment, they have become accustomed to winning by adopting an attitude of contempt for the President, an attitude that goes back all the way to Reagan’s “There you go again!” Now it’s worn thin and it is so ingrained, they can’t stop it even when it is wildly inappropriate.
I heard on the radio Rove is running an ad in Nevada with an Obama audio clip saying “You don’t go and blow your money in Vegas” when the full clip wasn’t about Vegas but was some kind of analogy aimed at the middle class: “You don’t go and blow your money in Vegas when you are saving up for your child’s college education.”
The maddening thing is, Boehner almost put on that mantle of the moderate Republicans and smashed the Norquist pledge. In 2010, Boehner said “I guess I’ll have to vote for the middle-class only tax cuts, if that’s the only choice. ”
Boehner literally told Obama how to win. So what did Obama do? Seizing defeat from the jaws of victory, he gave Boehner another choice. Obama is damned lucky to have another shot at it. We’re not so lucky to have lived under Bush economic policy for two needless years.
He’s got nothing to lose. He’s calling in artillery on his own position.
Fed to buy mortgages until employment improves:
About effing time. $40 billion of mortgages per month! Indefinitely! This is an FDR-level move. I guess it’s going to mostly bail out bankers who didn’t learn their lesson, so to make it even better it needs to be accompanied by additional regulations to keep them from dragging us down the same rabbit hole again. The tie to employment is what makes it a good deal.
Puck: I would think that casino workers might be especially understanding of the admonition “you don’t go and blow your money in Vegas.”
Bernanke press conference at 2:15. We’ll get to hear the details of QE3 and see if it benefits people as well as bankers.
My guess is QE3 will boost the economy before Election Day. I bet the bastards held off until it was clear Romney was toast.
Now it’s a race for downticket Republicans to distance themselves from Romney. Dem Congressional candidates should start hanging Romney and his gaffes and his policies around Repub necks. Speaker Pelosi, anybody?
Sussex County Council has reached an agreement with the people who sued to stop the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer to open meetings. The new prayer is the 23rd Psalm.
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120913/NEWS02/309130074/Sussex-agrees-recite-23rd-Psalm-meetings?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CHome&nclick_check=1
They agreed on this one because it comes from the Old Testament, which is important to Jews as well as Christians. No mention of the article about any other denominations. I’m waiting for an atheist or Muslim to challenge this agreement.
Why they feel there is a need to open with a prayer is still beyond me. There is no reason why any member of the council could not pray silently to him or herself 5 minutes before the meeting begins.
From the Outsourcer in Chief:
Also, Obama picks up the coveted Snoop endorsement, with memorable language.
“Why they feel there is a need to open with a prayer is still beyond me.”
Because the nature of their particular Christianity requires demonstrative public prayer, ideally with a large audience in order to validate to others that they are indeed Christian thus providing a counter balance to their often unChristian-like behavior in their daily lives and their politics.
Bernanke live now: http://www.c-span.org/Events/Ben-Bernanke-Meets-With-Media-Fed-to-Increase-Bond-Purchases/10737434048-1/
What’s going on in front of the Wilmington Trust Building in Rodney Square? the signs say food drive? the yelling says protest. I can’t figure out what’s going on.
The Snoop endorsement is an instant classic.
This is small potatoes compared to the other news of the day, but I thought some might find it interesting that the sign outside the Hudson management building that used to sport the “Repeal Obamacare” and other nonsense messages is gone. I don’t mean the letters, I mean the entire sign is gone. I suspect we may have a bigger better way to spew Tea Party propaganda coming, as it looks like maybe they’re preparing the area for something new. Of course maybe Mr. Hudson ripped down the sign in a fit of pique, given that every candidate who he had backed by displaying their campaign signs lost on Tuesday.
From the JCC debate: Pires is beyond crazy, can’t wait to see the 400 page dossier on Carper though. Wade is a total Ahole and Sher is even more phony in person;)