SHE WON'T GO!
Mitt Romney is trying his darndest to get Michiganders to love him and not just see him as a blow-dried rich boy with very little actual hands-on experience with their state.
Witness this outstanding performance:
Sweet nothings!
The people of Michigan are a pretty smart group (which isn’t that surprising since Kentucky’s sent a lot of good folks up I-75 over the years), so hopefully we can trust the Pleasant Peninsula to look about them and find… anyone else. They should respect themselves and their state more than this.
Newt is working hard to create an environment in which a Romney Michigan loss means the end of Romney while simultaneously one in which if Romney can keep going, Newt will win his own home state of Georgia and then roll through the South before taking over the Union:
“We actually have a very good chance of doing well here and that gives us a springboard then to go across the whole country,” Gingrich told reporters Saturday at a press conference in Suwanee, Ga. “I think that’s part of what we are counting on.”
“I think a Georgia conservative has a certain advantage across Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, you know, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana — just take the region,” he said.
Newt’s ability to name so many of the states in the American South is impressive, as is his desire to slog this one out until late May when the great Commonwealth of Kentucky finally makes its choice heard.
As goes Kentucky, so goes the nation.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has embraced the argument that President Obama was able to pass every bit of his legislative agenda in his first two years thanks to large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. It’s intended as a counterpoint to the President’s re-election strategy of attacking the congressional GOP as do-nothing obstructionists. But it’s also a revisionist history of the 111th Congress, during which McConnell more than any other Republican in Washington stood athwart Obama’s agenda to great effect.
The White House has “been trying to pretend like the President just showed up yesterday, just got sworn in and started fresh,” McConnell declared Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “In fact, he’s been in office for three years. He got everything he wanted from a completely compliant Congress for two of those three years… We are living in the Obama economy.”
This isn’t a new claim for McConnell, but it’s audacious even by Washington’s lax standards. It was McConnell, after all, who led Senate Republicans in serial filibusters — a record-setting number — successfully thwarting large chunks of Obama’s agenda.
They go on to pick Mitch’s claim apart, piece by piece.
Of course, Mitch’s revisionist history isn’t just an attempt to excuse how he and his GOP colleagues have ground Washington to a halt at a time when the country can least afford legislative stagnation.
Mitch’s revisionist history also seeks to revise the economic reality of America. McConnell insists that Obama, having been in office for three years, is to blame for our fiscal house being in foreclosure.
This is not true.
The Center for American Progress:
The federal budget deficit will again exceed $1 trillion this fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office reported today. That news is sure to trigger another round of condemnations from politicians and pundits who have a political or ideological interest in pinning these deficits on the domestic spending policies of President Barack Obama.
Unfortunately for them, today’s report—along with dozens of other similar CBO reports in recent years—actually proves the opposite—that the current deficit is overwhelmingly the result of two factors: events that occurred before President Obama took office and tax cuts.
In fact, higher spending under Obama accounts for less than 20 percent of this year’s deficit, and nearly half of that was additional defense spending—not domestic spending. Bottom line: The narrative that an “Obama spending spree” caused our deficit problem is utterly false.
It should surprise no one that Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party don’t understand these fiscal facts, after all, they are the ones who led the country toward economic collapse.
At the start of 2007, the CBO projected a 2012 surplus of $170 Billion. By the time Obama took office two years later, they had already readjusted that estimate to a deficit of $264 Billion.
That Bush flip flop came primarily from the onset of the economic collapse. Mitch McConnell and the Republicans can pretend they didn’t cause that collapse, and they can further claim that all its net negative effects ended on January 20th, 2012. They can also claim to be the Party of Lincoln, to love their country, and to be on the right side of G-d.
Claiming stuff is easy, and Mitch is pretty good at it. But again, he’s wrong:
Increased spending prior to 2009—especially on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—also contributed to this year’s deficit, to the tune of $153 billion. That’s because higher spending in 2007 and 2008, mostly relating to overseas military operations, caused the CBO to adjust its assumptions to more realistically project similar spending in 2012.
All told, 35 percent of the swing from a $170 billon projected surplus to a $1.079 billion deficit is directly attributable to events that preceded the current president’s term.
The remainder of the deterioration did happen after 2009, but higher spending wasn’t even close to the main culprit. The real problem was lower-than-expected revenues.
Oh, yes, the continuing gift of the Bush Tax Cuts. Read on.
In an example of why HD television was created, FOX News’ Greta Van Susteren interviewed Mitch McConnell the other day, an 8 minute visual orgy in which the two spoke casually while standing rather than sitting and Greta repeatedly emphasized the words “debt ceiling” with a gangsta-style hand gesture. If only they broadcast this in 3D.
In the interview, and driven home in FNC’s headline, Mitch McConnell again pushes this story that America is about to become the next Greece:
VAN SUSTEREN: You say we are beginning to look like Greece. If the status quo stays where in your mind in terms of where we’re headed, when would you anticipate would be Greece?
MCCONNELL: I don’t know how quickly we’d get there, but we’ll get there a lot quicker than any of us would like. And when you have a debt the size of your economy, when we already do, we begin to look a lot like Greece and western Europe.
You know, the best way to sum up what they’ve done in western Europe, Margaret Thatcher once said the trouble with socialism is that pretty soon you run out of other people’s money. That is exactly what has happened in Europe, and we are on the same path. This administration is leading us down the same path. Unless they are stopped by the people of this country in November, 2012, they will continue to take us down the western European path.
It’s probably for the best that Mitch doesn’t want to predict when, exactly, America will go Greek because then it would be easier for observers to paint him as some sort of false-prognosticator, like that guy who keeps predicting the rapture.
As it happens, Mitch doesn’t know when this certain inevitability will occur, but that won’t stop him from repeating it again and again even after it’s been disproved.
While making his argument against funding firefighters and police, Mitch McConnell predicted the Greecification of America in October 2011, via USA Today:
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, McConnell said the issue is the size of the federal government’s nearly $15 trillion debt, not teachers, police and firefighters.
“They are local and state employees,” McConnell said. “Look, we have a debt the size of our economy. That alone makes us look a lot like Greece. The question is whether the federal government can afford to be bailing out states. I think the answer is no.”
And here’s Mitch in July 2011, from The Hill:
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said Wednesday that the financial state of the U.S. is similar to bankrupt Greece.
Making the case for major spending reductions a day before congressional leaders will meet with President Obama, McConnell said, “We look a lot like Greece already.”
And in March 2011, on FOX News Sunday:
WALLACE: Senator, what does that mean? That there has to be a deal on entitlements and taxes or you are going to vote against extending the debt limit?
MCCONNELL: What it means is this, we have a $14 trillion debt, $14 trillion. That’s the size of our economy, which begins to make us look a lot like Greece.
This pattern from a man who last June famously said, “Well, I think we’ve gotten to the point where we ought to put aside our talking points.”
Repeatedly predicting an impending doom which repeatedly does not happen is troubling enough. But when that prediction is itself predicated on an established falsehood, Mitch’s repetition becomes a series of lies.
Last summer, FactCheck.org politely explained that McConnell “exaggerates” and while the American economy, and its balance between debt and GDP, is indeed in bad shape, “it’s not close to the size of Greece’s debt, which was 142.8 percent of that nation’s GDP as of the end of last year, according to the most recent figures from Eurostat, the official statistical office of the European Union.”
FactCheck.org went on:
Furthermore, McConnell is making an apples-to-oranges comparison. The $14 trillion figure refers to “total debt oustanding,” much of which is money that the government owes to the Social Security trust funds and other governmental entities, not money actually borrowed from the public. The U.S. “debt held by the public” is currently less than $9.8 trillion. That’s the proper figure to compare to what Greece owes, and in relation to GDP it’s currently less than half the Greek level.
Others have been less guarded with their examination of Mitch’s claim.
Last July, after McConnell launched the talking point, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham picked it up… leading Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly to write:
Look, the very idea is just crazy. The U.S. has extremely low interest rates and foreign investor are happy to loan us money; Greece has extremely high interest rates and no one is eager to loan the country money. The U.S. has our own currency; Greece has the Euro. We have a great credit rating (for now); Greece has an awful credit rating. We have a manageable debt; Greece has a debt crisis. We’re a large country with an enormous economy; Greece is a small country with a small economy. We have one of the world’s most stable systems of government (at least until six months ago); Greece’s government structure is a little shaky.
For an elected American senator — and media darling — to tell a national television audience that the United States is “becoming Greece” is a clear signal: Lindsey Graham is not to be taken seriously on these issues.
If Graham sincerely believes his own rhetoric, he has no idea what he’s talking about. If Graham is just playing some kind of cynical game, he’s a hack.
Paul Krugman graphed part of the stark difference between the two countries, and also pointed out that while the rate on US bonds sat at around 3%, Greek bonds were at 16.82%.
Behind Mitch’s erroneous comparison lies Mitch’s agenda. He does not truly believe America is in any way like Greece, he is simply trying to capitalize on the Greek misery in order to scare Americans into believing that the real problem in this country is out of control government spending — Medicare must be demolished and with it Social Security. This has been the Republican Party’s goal since the two social programs were created.
And in that, Greece offers the starkest example of an idea of Europe as a collection of countries that spent their way into economic collapse — Mitch’s argument is that social well-being bankrupts countries and all government programs meant to help people live better lives are fiscally irresponsible.
Here, too, Mitch McConnell is incorrect and here, too, he knows it all too well.
As ThinkProgress pointed out in December:
These charts show that, according to deficits and debt, countries like Spain and Ireland were acting much more responsibly than Germany and France — therefore it can’t have been deficits and debt that caused their problems. As The American Prospect’s Harold Myerson put it, “some of Europe’s current basket cases were actually running budget surpluses in the years before the Lehman meltdown. Ireland and Spain weren’t overspending at all — but the banks and investors speculating on their housing markets most certainly were.” What Europe needed was better regulation of its financial sector and a central bank willing to take the steps necessary to lessen the pain of the Great Recession, neither of which it had.
There is no doubt America faces serious economic challenges, and it’s not ridiculous at all to consider that our economy may well collapse further. But using these realities to dismantle programs that didn’t cause the problem is cynical-verging-on-evil.
Scaring people into believing that this is what happened, that America is like Greece, when clearly it is not, and that the only way to prevent collapse is to remove the President from office and dismantle Medicare… that’s just Mitch McConnell. It’s not true and it’s dangerous.
And while we’re on the subject of GDP… the nation’s economy grew for the tenth straight quarter:
There is still much to worry about, but that picture is going in the right direction and the last thing Mitch McConnell wants anyone to do is notice it, let alone the date at which it started to change.
It’s almost like Mitch McConnell wants America to fail.
Why do you hate America, Mitch? Why do you hate your country?
There was a pleasant story in The Hill yesterday about how the GOP establishment is breathing a sigh of relief as Romney cruises to victory. This news is not likely to surprise anyone — it’s been obvious for months that the Republican Party was re-doing 2008, with Conservatives, Evangelicals, and the Ron Paul illuminati all breaking their own ways while clearing a path for a “moderate” Republican who is sure to disappoint rank-and-file and their crazy activist brethren.
So Mitt Romney’s looking good. Perhaps it’s in his jeans:
[If you've got a Mitt in Mom Jeans fetish, more pix and "tales" here, here, here]
One of Romney’s regular talking points on the trail is that “Washington is broken.”
Not surprising. Or particularly intelligent. He might as well be saying “Washington is built on a swamp.”
But if Washington is broken, why are so many in Washington supporting his candidacy?
In fact, if Washington is broken, and Romney’s candidacy is built upon broken Washington, what does that make Mitt?
As The Hill pointed out, Romney has 63 endorsements from Republican Congressmen and Senators. The rest of the GOP field combined has less than half that.
Mitch McConnell, in his leadership position, says he won’t endorse anyone. Rand obviously gave it up for his dad.
Hal Rogers is a Mitt Romney man. You can’t get much more “broken” than that.
Ed Whitfield is a Mitt Romney man, too, and Ed just announced he’d run for his 8th term… which means Ed Whitfield is one of the guys who broke Washington.
Guthrie hasn’t said yet, whilst Davis is “spending more time with his family.”
According to P2012.org, Romney’s got 4 Republican Governors and thirteen GOP Senators, with 48 GOP House members as of last month.
Maybe it’s not Washington that’s broken after all, but Mitt himself. Like a record. Here’s Mitt in January 2008:
Speaking at an “Ask Mitt Anything” town hall meeting here, Romney continued to hammer home the theme of “Washington is broken and that change can only come from an outsider, not an insider like McCain or Clinton.
“Washington is fundamentally broken and incapable of dealing with the challenges we have.”
On the one hand, you could claim Mitt is cool to stick with the same message as four years ago because he lost that one miserably and that’s why Washington is still broken.
But that would ignore the fact neither his prognosis nor his prescription were correct then, so why expect them to be now?
Furthermore, what has Mitt Romney been doing for the past four years? If Washington is still broken, and he’s known about it this long, shouldn’t he have a clearer idea about how to, you know, put it back together?
Instead it’s just more of the same. The same dumb, simple talking point.
Or has he been too busy putting together a Who’s Who of broke-ass Washington Insiders from the upper echelons of the broken Republican Party?
More important: Will the activists, Conservatives, Evangelicals, and so forth ever fall for this? Something so stupid?
Bonus read: Scroll down on this Mitt-page to read about how Mitt Romney was actually the founding member of the modern day Tea Party.
On the off chance you live under a rock…
I’m a strong believer that you can’t satirize what satirizes itself, but… well, my faith does not transcend all human beings and thus others choose to comment and/or respond.
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