The Mitt Romney who ran in 1994 started out as a political independent. He’s somebody who railed against the Contract with America, which of course was the big Newt Gingrich GOP revolution that year. He was a strong supporter of abortion rights. He was very outspoken in favor of gay rights, even writing this famous letter to the Log Cabin Republicans, a Republican gay rights group, talking about how he could be more effective than Ted Kennedy could be, his opponent, on gay rights.
So you go up and down the line and it’s a very, very different political profile. So I think the one thing ideologically almost that’s consistent from then to now is he’s a pragmatist. And at the time, he was running against a very liberal senator, with an impressive civil rights record and he was in very blue Massachusetts, so he had to be a certain type of candidate to be successful — and to a large extent that continued in his gubernatorial run in 2002. After that, when he starts to run for president, it’s a very different environment and he realizes he has to be someone completely different to succeed in a Republican primary." …
… I was particularly surprised is that it was Mitt’s father, George, who ran for president despite being born in Mexico and did not come to this country until he was 5 years old. At the time, his father’s campaign took some questions about that and it never really came to complete conclusion because George dropped out before the first primary.
But I looked back at newspaper stories of the time and there were serious questions being raised about whether George was qualified since he was born in Mexico and didn’t come here until he was five, whether he could fit the definition of being a native-born citizen and so forth. And their explanation was that George’s parents had lived in the U.S. at a certain time and that he was therefore qualified under that. But I think he’s been particularly sensitive because his father went through some of these same questions when his father ran for president."
As I have written before, Republicans have cause and effect backwards.
The reason for the rise in food stamps, unemployment benefits and other safety net programs is Americans got clobbered in 2008 with the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. They and their families have needed the help.
This isn’t an "entitlement society." Americans weren’t overly dependent before the slump and they won’t be dependent when jobs and income return. But America is still reeling from economic trauma.
If anything, America’s safety nets aren’t strong enough. That’s why the number and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased dramatically since 2009.
The real scandal – which no speaker in Tampa will mention – is only 40% of America’s unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits. That’s because most people who lost their jobs had been working part-time on several jobs before they were let go. Or they hadn’t been working long enough on a full-time job to qualify for unemployment insurance.
In addition, only a small fraction of the nation’s poor any longer qualify for welfare. The 1996 legislation that formally ended the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program provided just five years of aid in a person’s lifetime. But given how deep the recession has been and how long it’s continued, many of the nation’s poor have reached their lifetime limit.
Meanwhile, millions of unemployed Americans and their families have lost health insurance that had been provided by their employers. What’s the Republican answer? To repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act, so 30 million Americans will lose health-insurance coverage.
The truth is America’s safety nets are in tatters exactly when a large portion of America still needs help. And apparently Republicans don’t care.
Medicare has fundamentally transformed the experience of aging in this country by providing a guarantee of health care.
[I]t was Democrats who conceived of Medicare, passed it into law and kept it viable all these years. It was Republicans who denounced the program as “socialized medicine” — and who now want to replace Medicare’s guarantee with a system of vouchers.
Republicans may tell themselves that the GOP is the party of Medicare. But I doubt seniors will be convinced.
By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: AUGUST 26, 8:03 PM ET
In 1964, George Romney, then the governor of Michigan, walked out of the Republican National Convention during Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech. He was protesting his party’s sharp turn rightward and its weak platform plank on civil rights.
This week, 48 years on, Mitt Romney is set to achieve what his father never could. But his great family triumph will not represent a vindication of his father’s principles. Mitt Romney reached the summit not by battling the GOP’s staunchest conservatives but by accommodating them. Nothing better captures the absolute victory of the forces of Goldwaterism than a Romney triumph on the basis of Goldwater’s ideas.
There will certainly be no speeches akin to the one offered by Nelson Rockefeller, the champion of liberal Republicanism. He was booed and hissed by the Goldwater legions who dominated the 1964 gathering.
Scorning the militants of a new right, Rockefeller pronounced their views “wholly alien to the sound and honest conservatism that has firmly based the Republican Party in the best of a century’s traditions, wholly alien to the sound and honest Republican liberalism that has kept the party abreast of human needs in a changing world, wholly alien to the broad middle course that accommodates the mainstream of Republican principles.”
Liberalism cannot speak its name at a Republican convention anymore. And the contemporary figure closest to the liberal Republicanism of old may well be a man named Barack Obama.
Before long, there won’t be anyone alive who has left earth orbit, let alone reached or set foot on the moon, our closest neighbor. That is, unless the Chinese get their act together. We reached for the stars and decided it cost too much. We deserve to be stuck on this rock with each other.
Need we remind you that women have achieved greater success in the sports meritocracy than in the political democracy? Forty years after Title IX, women outnumbered men on the U.S. Olympic team and in the gold medals. Ninety-two years after the 19th Amendment, women occupy only 17 percent of the seats in Congress and have never made it to the White House.
[mjh: For some reason, the Journal cut out the following paragraphs. Read the whole column at the link.]
Now for his pal Rick Santorum. Our boy Rick lost the presidential battle but won the Battle of the Sexes Badge for a pink panic attack. At a bowling campaign event in Wisconsin, Rick stopped a boy from picking up a pink ball, saying "You’re not going to use that pink ball. … Not on camera. … Friends don’t let friends use pink balls." In the pink and blue world of boys and grrrls, he is already behind our 8-ball.
Ah yes, but what about virtual games-man-ship? The annual Booby Prize for Online Sports goes to video game coach Aris Bakhtanians, who trash-talked player Miranda Pakozdi in the "Cross Assault" video game tournament, quizzing her on camera about her bra size and telling her to take off her shirt. For video harassment, we promise to crash his private hard drive.
Now on to the Backward Trailblazer Award. We censure the Census Bureau for its retro view of kiddie care. When Mom does it, according to the bureau, it’s parenting. When Dad does it, it’s child care. For sticking to the old script, we give the number-crunchers an apron emblazoned: Dad is not a baby sitter! …
As for the Romneys, our gal Ann worked not only as a mom but, we now know, also as an anthropologist studying the life of a remote tribe for her hubby. Employer Mitt gets the Patriarch of the Year Award for whining that he does so understand women because Ann "reports to me" on what they think. To Mitt, a pill for tone-deafness.
Mitty has said on other occasions that he decided to run when Ann looked at him and asked, “Can you save this country?”
I despise this apocalyptic vision. DUHbya nearly destroyed the nation, but he didn’t. In four years, with Republicans opposing every move, Obama has “failed” to bring us back from 8 years of damnation. And if we don’t let Republicans do what they have already done, we’re DOOMED. When Mitt loses, then what? Aren’t we DOOMED? Don’t Republicans have to take to the street and spill blood to “save America”? It’s nauseating nonsense that invites lunatics to load their weapons. It’s irresponsible. And it shows no faith in democracy or America.
These folks do not play well with others. They need a long time-out. Vote Democratic in every race.
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams