Posts Tagged Charles Krauthammer
Presidential election: Mitt Romney may win the race because he ignored conservatives’ advice. – Slate Magazine
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Mitt Romney on November 1, 2012
The Secret of Mitt Romney’s Success
Smile at the conservatives. Then ignore them.
Romney has been sounding notes of bipartisanship since the first presidential debate
Photograph by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.
If Mitt Romney wins the election, it will be because he ignored conservatives. After he won the primaries, many of the most prominent voices in the movement plead with him to run loud and proud as a conservative and to campaign overtly on conservative ideas. He never did that, and he’s ending the campaign on a moderate note, a move his strategists believe will capture the disaffected Obama voters he needs to win the election.
The strategy appears to render a verdict on a long-standing debate in conservative circles over whether candidates can campaign on conservative ideas like privatizing Social Security, offering Medicare vouchers, or drastically shrinking the social safety net. It also gives us some limited insight into the inner heart of Mitt Romney and how he might govern. At least tactically, he’s acted pragmatically, not ideologically.
Starting in the spring and spilling over into the summer, Romney got a regular dose of advice from the most prominent public conservatives: Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They all counseled him that he couldn’t win on a platform of not being Barack Obama. He had to unfurl the conservative banner, and proclaim these bold ideas from the rooftops. When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker survived a recall vote, it seemed to ratify the idea that a person could govern as an unabashed conservative. Walker said that the one lesson from the recall was that he should have been more open about his plans. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels made a pragmatic rather than political case. Unless Romney explained his conservative solutions as a candidate, he’d never have a mandate for governing.
Romney resisted these appeals for weeks—and then he picked Paul Ryan. For a moment, it suggested that he’d been quietly listening to the conservative commentators all along. Ryan was a twofer. He had put conservative principles in practice and he was a leading advocate of the loud and proud approach. He had been a member of the Romney advice chorus before he was picked. In 2004, when President George Bush pushed for private Social Security accounts, many Republicans thought the idea was toxic. Ryan, however, campaigned on it, arguing when he won that if you bravely backed the idea voters would reward you.
But picking Paul Ryan was not the same as running on Paul Ryan’s programs. The Romney campaign boasted that selecting Ryan meant that Romney was making tough decisions and backing conservative solutions, but there was very little evidence that Romney and his campaign were actually going to campaign on those solutions. Medicare is a good example. Romney distanced himself from the details of the Ryan plan—absolving himself of the tricky math questions by arguing that private-sector competition would solve the problem of maintaining quality care while reducing cost. But then he never really ran on the idea itself. Giving a speech in which you savage the president for cutting Medicare is not the same as running on your ideas for the program.
In fact, Paul Ryan seems more changed by running with Mitt than the other way around. How transformed is Ryan? (Politico called him Mini-Mitt) He recently gave a speech on income inequality. That’s a far distance from running on conservative principles. This isn’t to say that conservatives are not concerned about income inequality—Ryan talked about it before he was a national candidate—but income inequality is not an issue conservatives consider in their wheelhouse. It is often the case that conservatives think that talk of income inequality is an attempt to pit one class against the other. Indeed, Mitt Romney thought this; he once said that talk of income inequality should be confined to “quiet rooms,” and not the campaign trail. When Democrats raised the issue of distribution of wealth and inequality, he claimed they were practicing the “politics of envy.”
Wisconsin Gov. Walker rendered the final verdict on the watering down of Paul Ryan. “I was enthused when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan because I thought that was a signal that this guy was getting serious, he was getting bold,” Walker told a local radio host. “I just haven’t seen that kind of passion I know that Paul has transferred over to our nominee.” Walker believed that Romney was in synch ideologically with Ryan, but that he wasn’t being vocal enough about it. “They need to have more of him rub off on Mitt, because I think Mitt thinks that way but he’s gotta be able to articulate that,” he said.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed. The Weekly Standard reporter Stephen Hayes said the Romney campaign has reverted to the pre-Ryan moment. Bill Kristol also called for more brio. But now no one is making too big a fuss because Romney’s moderate Massachusetts strategy has improved Romney’s standing. It’s conventional Republican wisdom that Romney succeeded in the first debate because voters—particularly married women voters—found him to be a likeable, moderate fellow. The campaign has been running with this ever since. Previously Romney had been downplaying his conservative positions. Now he is either running away, or, in some cases—like his position on legislation to allow companies to deny employees contraception coverage—actively changing them to a more moderate posture. (If the election were held on New Year’s Day, he might come out for Obamacare.)
This leads to some head spinning conversations with Romney strategists and surrogates. More than once they have boasted that what people are now seeing is the true Romney. They remind you that their candidate had to withstand all of those accusations that he was “Moderate Mitt” during the primary season. That’s proof that he’s always been the far more reasonable, centered candidate. What makes you reach for the Dramamine is that when Romney was being called “Moderate Mitt” he and his campaign were steadfastly rebutting the label. It was about this time that Romney started calling himself “severely conservative.”
In the end, all of this shape-shifting leads to confusion about what Mitt Romney will govern. Will it be the fellow who was trying to court conservatives in the primaries or the one who is appealing to moderates now? Or, will he be pragmatic, calculating his political positions based on the composition of the Congress and the forces in the larger electorate he’ll still have to appeal to once he’s in office?
Romney has been sounding notes of bipartisanship since the first presidential debate on Oct. 3. The election is all about coming together with Democrats, he says. “I’ve got to make sure and reach across the aisle,” Romney said at a recent campaign stop. “I gotta find, I know there are good Democrats who love America just like we do. I’m going to reach across the aisle to them and work together, put the interests of the people ahead of the politicians. We’ve gotta do this. It’s too critical a time. We can’t change course unless we change the way Washington is working.” It’s another shift in tone and it appears to be working—at least with many of the 200 undecided voters I’ve been corresponding with. It doesn’t seem to be costing Gov. Romney support with conservatives who are banking he’ll return to the fold when he’s in office.
Romney’s new spirit of bipartisanship actually seems in keeping with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies, our most recent example of a big name Republican saying good things about the other side. Christie has been sharing the stage and praising President Obama for his fast response to Hurricane Sandy. It is completely in keeping with Christie’s reputation for calling it as he sees it—even if it might upset Republicans. That’s what works for Christie, as he recently told Esquire:
I caught a guy in high school who went on to play pro ball. His father was this quiet retired Marine drill sergeant. This kid threw a ninety-four-, ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastball. But he also had a good curveball. Freshman year one game, we made a guy look silly on two curveballs in a row — strike one, strike two. I called a third curveball. The kid hit it about 350 feet. That night I went to my friend’s house for dinner. And his father said to me in his quiet way, “Chris, let me ask you something. That third curveball: I couldn’t see from where I was standing. Did you call it or did Scott shake you off to the curveball?” And I said, “No, I called it.” And he put his fork down on his plate — I can close my eyes and still see this guy doing this — and he said to me, “Don’t ever do that again.”
If you’re gonna get beat, get beat on your best pitch.
Mitt Romney has always seemed awkward playing the severe conservative. It’s not his best stuff. He might lose this thing—the polls in the battleground states aren’t looking good—but since Oct. 3 he’s been going with his best pitch. He’s no longer taking advice from the Scott Walkers of the world. He is listening to the more pragmatic Chris Christies. If Romney loses, those will be the battle lines for the next GOP contest.
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Charles Krauthammer: What Wisconsin means – The Washington Post
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Government, Jobs, Law, Opinion, Perspective on June 9, 2012
Opinion Writer
What Wisconsin means
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: June 7
Tuesday, June 5, 2012, will be remembered as the beginning of the long decline of the public-sector union. It will follow, and parallel, the shrinking of private-sector unions, now down to less than 7 percent of American workers. The abject failure of the unions to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) — the first such failure in U.S. history — marks the Icarus moment of government-union power. Wax wings melted, there’s nowhere to go but down.
The ultimate significance of Walker’s union reforms has been largely misunderstood. At first, the issue was curtailing outrageous union benefits, far beyond those of the ordinary Wisconsin taxpayer. That became a nonissue when the unions quickly realized that trying to defend the indefensible would render them toxic for the real fight to come.
So they made the fight about the “right” to collective bargaining, which the reforms severely restricted. In a state as historically progressive as Wisconsin — in 1959, it was the first to legalize the government-worker union — they thought they could win as a matter of ideological fealty.
But as the recall campaign progressed, the Democrats stopped talking about bargaining rights. It was a losing issue. Walker was able to make the case that years of corrupt union-politician back-scratching had been bankrupting the state. And he had just enough time to demonstrate the beneficial effects of overturning that arrangement: a huge budget deficit closed without raising taxes, significant school-district savings from ending cozy insider health-insurance contracts, and a modest growth in jobs.
The real threat behind all this, however, was that the new law ended automatic government collection of union dues. That was the unexpressed and politically inexpressible issue. That was the reason the unions finally decided to gamble on a high-risk recall.
Without the thumb of the state tilting the scale by coerced collection, union membership became truly voluntary. Result? Newly freed members rushed for the exits. In less than one year, AFSCME, the second-largest public-sector union in Wisconsin, has lost more than 50 percent of its membership.
It was predictable. In Indiana, where Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) instituted by executive order a similar reform seven years ago, government-worker unions have since lost 91 percent of their dues-paying membership. In Wisconsin, Democratic and union bosses (a redundancy) understood what was at stake if Walker prevailed: not benefits, not “rights,” but the very existence of the unions.
So they fought and they lost. Repeatedly. Tuesday was their third and last shot at reversing Walker’s reforms. In April 2011, they ran a candidate for chief justice of the state Supreme Court who was widely expected to strike down the law. She lost.
In July and August 2011, they ran recall elections of state senators, needing three to reclaim Democratic — i.e., union — control. They failed. (The likely flipping of one Senate seat to the Democrats on June 5 is insignificant. The Senate is not in session and won’t be until after yet another round of elections in November.)
And then, Tuesday, their Waterloo. Walker defeated their gubernatorial candidate by a wider margin than he had — pre-reform — two years ago.
The unions’ defeat marks a historical inflection point. They set out to make an example of Walker. He succeeded in making an example of them as a classic case of reactionary liberalism. An institution founded to protect its members grew in size, wealth, power and arrogance, thanks to decades of symbiotic deals with bought politicians, to the point where it grossly overreached. A half-century later these unions were exercising essential control of everything from wages to work rules in the running of government — something that, in a system of republican governance, is properly the sovereign province of the citizenry.
Why did the unions lose? Because Norma Rae nostalgia is not enough, and it hardly applied to government workers living better than the average taxpayer who supports them.
And because of the rise of a new constitutional conservatism — committed to limited government and a more robust civil society — of the kind that swept away Democrats in the 2010 midterm shellacking.
Most important, however, because in the end reality prevails. As economist Herb Stein once put it: Something that can’t go on, won’t. These public-sector unions, acting, as FDR had feared, with an inherent conflict of interest regarding their own duties, were devouring the institution they were supposed to serve, rendering state government as economically unsustainable as the collapsing entitlement states of southern Europe.
It couldn’t go on. Now it won’t. All that was missing was a political leader willing to risk his career to make it stop. Because, time being infinite, even the inevitable doesn’t happen on its own.
Charles Krauthammer: What Wisconsin means – The Washington Post.
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The GOP’s payroll tax debacle – The Washington Post
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Economy, Employment, Government, Jobs, Opinion, Perspective, Politics on December 23, 2011
Opinion Writer
The GOP’s payroll tax debacle
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: December 22
Now that Congress has reached agreement on what must be one of the worst pieces of legislation in years — the temporary payroll tax holiday extension — let’s survey the damage.
To begin with, what even minimally rational government enacts payroll tax relief for just two months? As a matter of practicality alone, it makes no sense. The National Payroll Reporting Consortium, representing those who process paychecks, said of the two-month extension passed by the Senate just days before the new year: “There is insufficient lead time to accommodate the proposal,” because “many payroll systems are not likely to be able to make such a substantial programming change before January or even February,” thereby creating “substantial problems, confusion and costs.”
The final compromise appears to tweak this a bit to make it less onerous for small business. But what were they thinking in the first place? What business operates two months at a time? The minimal time horizon for business is the quarter — three months. What genius came up with two? U.S. businesses would have to budget for two-thirds of a one-quarter tax-holiday extension. As if this government has not already heaped enough regulatory impediments and mindless uncertainties upon business.
But making economic sense is not the point. The tax-holiday extension — presumably to be negotiated next year into a 12-month extension — is the perfect campaign ploy: an election-year bribe that has the additional virtue of seizing the tax issue for the Democrats.
When George McGovern campaigned on giving every household $1,000, he was laughed out of town as a shameless panderer. President Obama is doing exactly the same — a one-year tax holiday that hands back about $1,000 per middle-class family — but with a little more subtlety.
Obama is also selling it as a job creator. This takes audacity. Even a one-year extension isn’t a tax cut; it’s a tax holiday. A two-month extension is nothing more than a long tax weekend. What employer is going to alter his hiring decisions — whose effects last years — in anticipation of a one-year tax holiday, let alone two months?
This is a $121 billion annual drain on the Treasury that makes a mockery of the Democrats’ reverence for the Social Security trust fund and its inviolability. Obama’s OMB director took Social Securitycompletely off the table in debt-reduction talks under the pretense that Social Security is self-financing. This is pure fiction, because the Treasury supplies whatever shortfalls Social Security faces. But now, with the payroll tax holiday, the administration openly demonstrates bad faith — conceding with its actions that the payroll tax is, after all, interchangeable with other revenue and never actually sequestered to ensure future payments to retirees.
The House Republicans’ initial rejection of this two-month extension was therefore correct on principle and on policy. But this was absolutely the wrong place, the wrong time, to plant the flag. Once Senate Republicans overwhelmingly backed the temporary extension, that part of the fight was lost. Opposing it became kamikaze politics.
Note the toll it is already taking on Republicans. For three decades Republicans owned the tax issue. Today, Obama leads by five points, a 12-point swing since just early October. The payroll tax ploy has even affected his overall approval rating, now up five points (in six weeks) to 49 percent.
The Democrats set a trap and the Republicans walked right into it. By rejecting an ostensibly bipartisan “compromise,” the Republican House was portrayed as obstructionist and, even worse, heartless — willing to raise taxes on the middle class while resolutely opposing any tax increases on the rich.
House Republicans compounded this debacle by begging the Senate to come back and renegotiate the issue, thus entirely conceding the initiative to Majority Leader Harry Reid. But Reid had little incentive to make any concessions. House Republicans would have taken the fall for 160 million shrunken paychecks. Every day the White House would have demanded, in the name of the suffering middle class, that Republicans return from vacation and pass the temporary extension.
Having finally realized they had trapped themselves, House Republicans quickly caved, with help from a fig leaf contrived by Sen. Mitch McConnell.
The GOP’s performance nicely reprises that scene in “Animal House” where the marching band turns into a blind alley and row after row of plumed morons plows into a brick wall, crumbling to the ground in an unceremonious heap.
With one difference: House Republicans are unplumed.
The GOP’s payroll tax debacle – The Washington Post.
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