In the 2012 campaign, which Mitt will we get? – The Washington Post

By Eugene Robinson, Monday, April 16, 6:28 PMThe Washington Post

It’s all over but the shouting — or, in this case, the polite applause: Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican presidential nominee. But which Mitt Romney? Will it be Mitt One or Mitt Two?

This is not an inconsequential question. Mitt One is a fiscally conservative, socially moderate, Wall Street-style Republican who believes in compromise to get things done. Mitt Two is a far-right zealot who accuses Democrats of trying to impose godless socialism and claims that what hangs in the balance this fall is nothing less than liberty itself. …

The presidential debates shouldn’t be much of a chore for Obama this fall. He can just stand by while Romney argues with himself.

In the 2012 campaign, which Mitt will we get? – The Washington Post

Sharon Kayne wrote a great response to a narrow(-minded) gripe about the government. The whole thing is worth your time

ABQJournal Online » As Usual, There’s a Big Picture To See by Sharon Kayne

One of the things I hate most about this kind of “big” government complaint is the whole us-them dynamic. As if the government is some nebulous collective out there – some disembodied “them.” Our government is us. It’s how we accomplish things collectively that we could not accomplish as individuals. It’s how we look out for the common good. It’s how we manage the big picture when it comes to issues like natural resources, air pollution and ever-rising health care costs. If Mr. Davis still has trouble seeing this big picture, I suggest he find a more efficient light bulb.

ABQJournal Online » As Usual, There’s a Big Picture To See

Hat tip to Pat Lyford.

Enter Mr. Ryan, an ordinary G.O.P. extremist, but a mild-mannered one. The “centrists” needed to pretend that there are reasonable Republicans, so they nominated him for the role, crediting him with virtues he has never shown any sign of possessing. Indeed, back in 2010 Mr. Ryan, who has never once produced a credible deficit-reduction plan, received an award for fiscal responsibility from a committee representing several prominent centrist organizations. …

Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and the principal author of the last two Congressional Republican budget proposals, isn’t especially interesting. He’s a garden-variety modern G.O.P. extremist, an Ayn Rand devotee who believes that the answer to all problems is to cut taxes on the rich and slash benefits for the poor and middle class.

The Gullible Center – NYTimes.com – Paul Krugman

The right’s stealthy coup – The Washington Post

By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: April 1The Washington Post

Right before our eyes, American conservatism is becoming something very different from what it once was. Yet this transformation is happening by stealth because moderates are too afraid to acknowledge what all their senses tell them.

Last week’s Supreme Court oral arguments on health care were the most dramatic example of how radical tea partyism has displaced mainstream conservative thinking. It’s not just that the law’s individual mandate was, until very recently, a conservative idea. Even conservative legal analysts were insisting it was impossible to imagine the court declaring the health-care mandate unconstitutional, given its past decisions. …

A brief look at history suggests how far to the right both the Republican Party and contemporary conservatism have moved. Today’s conservatives almost never invoke one of our most successful Republican presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who gave us, among other things, federally guaranteed student loans and championed the interstate highway system.

Even more revealing is what Robert A. Taft, the leader of the conservative forces who opposed Eisenhower’s nomination in 1952, had to say about government’s role in American life. “If the free enterprise system does not do its best to prevent hardship and poverty,” the Ohio Republican senator said in a 1945 speech, “it will find itself superseded by a less progressive system which does.” He urged Congress to “undertake to put a floor under essential things, to give all a minimum standard of decent living, and to all children a fair opportunity to get a start in life.”

Who can doubt that today’s right would declare his day’s Mr. Republican and Mr. Conservative a socialist redistributionist?

The right’s stealthy coup – The Washington Post

From Paul Krugman 3/19/12:

The solution — originally proposed, believe it or not, by analysts at the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation — is a three-legged stool of regulation and subsidies. As in New York, insurers are required to cover everyone; in return, everyone is required to buy insurance, so that healthy as well as sick people are in the risk pool. Finally, subsidies make those mandated insurance purchases affordable for lower-income families.

Can such a system work? It’s already working! Massachusetts enacted a very similar reform six years ago — yes, while Mitt Romney was governor. Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who played a key role in developing both the local and the national reforms (and has published an illustrated guide to reform) has surveyed the results — and finds that Romneycare is working pretty much as advertised. The number of people without insurance has dropped sharply, the quality of care hasn’t suffered, and the program’s cost has been very close to initial projections.
Oh, and the budgetary cost per newly insured resident of Massachusetts was actually lower than the projected cost per American insured by the Affordable Care Act.

Given this evidence, what’s a virulent opponent of reform to do? The answer is, make stuff up.

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GOP has embraced extremism as a virtue – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

One is tempted, in the spirit of moral equivalence, to ascribe blame for this polarization to both parties, but that is simply untrue. For all their sins of ineptitude, infighting, cynicism, and even occasional name calling, it is not the Democrats who have gone off the ideological deep end.

The party has not championed same sex marriage or gun confiscation, much as some of its constituents might want it to. It compromised on healthcare and the Bush-era tax cuts, much as some of its constituents wish it had not.

No, it is the GOP that has abandoned the center and embraced ideological extremism as a virtue. It is telling to hear its candidates use “moderate” as an epithet and argue over who is the most “conservative,” as if the word contained some pixie dust of common sense and moral rectitude. It is sobering to realize that Ronald Reagan, patron saint of modern conservatism, would be unelectable by the standards thereof: He raised taxes and was known to compromise with political opponents — not “enemies” — to get things done.

That was then. His party has since engaged in a 30-year flight from the center that reaches its nadir — at least, let us hope it’s the nadir — in this era of tea party incoherence, faith-based policy, fear mongering and tax pledge tyranny. This era when compromise is both lost art and dirty word and some Americans see other Americans as enemies — an era in which there is something lonely and foregone about pleading with an angry nation that this is not how it is supposed to be.

GOP has embraced extremism as a virtue – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

Worth the read. A few names I didn’t recognized.

Handicapping Romney’s potential running mates – The Washington Post – Eugene Robinson

I think of Christie as the “fasten your seat belts” choice. He has credibility as a conservative Republican, yet manages to survive in a state where appealing to independents is crucial. And no other potential vice presidential candidate would fill the traditional “attack dog” role with more gusto.

But Jersey-style bombast wouldn’t necessarily play well in many parts of the country — the places where people are, you know, polite ….

Handicapping Romney’s potential running mates – The Washington Post