Romney says he likes being able to fire people. Huntsman and Perry pounce, at least a little bit.
It’s pretty amazing when you think about it, that Republicans are about to nominate a gaffe-prone bankster who passed a a landmark big gubmint health care bill in a country that hates banksters in a party that obsessively hates big gubmint health care. How on earth can the rest of his opponents be so inept that they weren’t able to make hay of this?
I have to agree with Chunky Bobo that Huntsman screwed up by sucking up to the Morning Joe crowd too much. I personally find it troubling that the Republican base doesn’t believe in evolution, but I don’t see how it’s an important issue in this primary or how it’s good politics to stick the 27 percenters’ nose in it like that.
And I guess Huntsman is the only one of the non-Romneys who may not be a complete idiot (the jury’s still out, IMHO). So maybe this isn’t so surprising.
John Dillinger
The best part about the newfound energy with which his rivals are attacking Romney is that it is too late to matter. If they had brought these things up earlier, they might have drawn the contest out, ala Obama and Clinton. But no, they waited to long, so when Romney runs the NH-SC-FL table, the game is over. And we get months of stories about buyer’s remorse among Republicans.
jonas
Well, they can’t pounce *too* much, lest they look like hippie-loving WATBs. Just like it takes balls to execute an innocent prisoner, it also takes balls to fire a bunch of people and then cash a huge paycheck for it *and* brag about it later over scotch and cigars.
Montysano
Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital is an opposition researcher’s dream. Gingrich is already making hay with it, so it should be a fat, slow target for the Dems.
Great post title also, too. As a middle aged white dude, I’m not a huge rap fan, but that song absolutely rocks.
Villago Delenda Est
“Believing” in evolution isn’t the issue.
Rejecting the evidence that overwhelmingly supports it, however, is.
Just like they reject the evidence that the “job creators” do nothing of the sort. Just like they reject the evidence that “market based” solutions will do nothing to reduce health care costs. Just like Glenn Greenwald stupidly buying into Ron Paul’s “libertarian” marketing slogan when the evidence says he’s a neo-feudalist.
It’s about reality…accepting it, dealing with it, working with and around it.
The 27% reject that in favor of children’s fairy stories.
Mnemosyne
Honestly, I don’t think any of them really wanted it, except maybe Santorum or Huntsman. They just wanted some cool publicity and a chance to pontificate.
Romney’s the guy because he’s the only one the big money boys can trust not to quit in a fit of pique in July like Newt would, or make a gaffe so huge that the public demands his withdrawal like Perry would. Of the clown car denizens, he’s the only one who may actually be able to make it all the way to November without flaming out.
Calouste
@Villago Delenda Est:
The evidence there of course is that there is one developed country with “market based” health care and insurance and that that country spends about twice as much on health care as all the other developed countries.
Southern Beale
“The 27 percenters” — I like that. I’m going to start using that.
Good reminder to the nation that these idiots are a fucking minority not the
“silent majority” they like to pretend they are.
MacsenMifune
Ugh, Morning Joe, I really wish Stephanie Miller had taken that spot.
Mark S.
Perry’s quip was actually good:
The Dangerman
@John Dillinger:
In retrospect, it was always going to be Romney and there was never a viable opponent (and I’d be far from shocked if someone more viable, like for example Palin, were bought off to stay out). It was all Kabuki.
I pity the Republicans when Romney loses; their radical base will take a walk afterwards when that happens.
gaz
If the Koch brothers really wanted to carry 2012, maybe they should have bribed Paul Ryan with several million to run.
Not that he’s not smart, sociopathic, and utterly evil. It’s precisely these qualities that I think would have made him a threat. The american electorate has shown itself to be remarkably adept at getting hoodwinked by smooth talkers – regardless of what positions they are shilling.
Citizen_X
@Mark S.: Yeah, I’m surprised he didn’t fuck up the delivery.
Waldo
Huntsman is the Forrest Gump of the Republicans. He runs for no apparent reason, and he’s too dumb to realize the crazy chick is never going to fall for him.
Hunter Gathers
Huntsman has to kiss the ass of every member of the press corps that he runs across and play the part of ‘conservative willing to piss off the base 27%’ or he’d be Buddy Roemer. Nobody truly gives a shit about his candidacy except for the press, his kids and maybe 15% of New Hampshire primary voters. He can’t raise a nickel to fund any ads, his debate performances are snooze-worthy and he’s stupid enough to wrap both arms around Ryan’s CouponCare scheme. Let’s face it : Huntsman is just Romney with slightly better software; he’s less likely to flash the Blue Screen Of Death at you when asked a question his handlers haven’t polled yet. But he’s got his Daddy’s money to fall back on so there’s no reason to feel sorry for him.
amk
tundra twit’s hubby has endorsed newtie. willard is toast.
rob!
Slightly OT, but I had to laugh when I got to the very end of this quote:
Gallup finds 40% of American self-identify as independents, the highest percentage Gallup has ever measured since it began keeping track. Democrats are a distant second with 31%, with Republicans third at 27%.
…OF COURSE that number is 27%. Amazing.
Legalize
Not for nothing, but the wingnut blogs I frequent (while sufficiently Jameson-infused so as to not pick up infections) are all EXTREMELY quiet lately. There appears to be a lot of depression over Mittens’ inevitability.
While it’s true that Mittens might wrap this thing up by the end of January, isn’t it also true that he still has to go through the rest of the primaries? Maybe the wingnuts can’t prevent his nomination, but they can sure as shit express their disapproval all the way to the convention. The Kenyan won’t have to get his hair mussed re Mittens until like, August or September. Meanwhile, if the economy keeps chugging slowly upward, and he stays on message re middle-class-champion, things could go pretty well.
It’s almost like the Kenyan knows what he’s doing or something ….
RSA
@Citizen_X:
According to TPM, here’s what he actually said:
So not as surprising as we might think…
someofparts
It was probably always a fool’s game anyway to run against Obama, hence the bizarre pool of non-entities silly enough to make the attempt this year. I worry about Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush in 2016.
Brachiator
The problem is that too many goobers don’t believe in evolution, science or rationality.
And it’s hard to see any good that comes from suggesting that you have to be kind to the willfully ignorant. Yeah, I guess it’s bad politics, but that ain’t sayin’ much.
Because they also are morans.
daveNYC
I have no idea what Huntsman was thinking when he decided to run. If he’d run a 100% sane campaign, then maybe I could see an assumption that the 2012 Republicans would implode and he would attempt to setup for 2016. Instead he’s split between sane and loopy, which instead of winning the base and keeping the non-nutters, seems to have not impressed the base and the non-nutters aren’t liking the pandering.
Dude should have kept his day job.
Paul in KY
@Mark S.: That is a good line. Will have to borrow that one.
thingsbreak
This is the best post title ever.
MattF
Romney is as good as they’ve got and he’s not so good, to put it mildly. And now that the Clown Car (TM) is starting to empty out, the audience is hearing echoes of “Is That All There Is?”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe9kKf7SHco
ChrisNYC
I’m watching tv. NBC is doing a segment on Rock Center about Romney’s Mexico relatives. Eeek. Romney is going to have a terrible ten months. I just don’t see how you go from entitled guy who got the nom by default, Bain, general weirdness, NO CORE and then family in Mexico because … polygamy to Presidential victory.
wrb
Because they agree with him on those issues. His bankster background is a plus, something to be minimized by competitors who haven’t made big money in the “real world.
They went after his weaknesses- his history of moderation, support for health care, indications that he might sometimes believe in science, etc.
I doubt he’ll lose many votes from those to his right in a contest against a blah academic.
Here’s betting that he’s a tougher opponent for Obama than those who think a bankster background is a disadvantage assume.
pseudonymous in nc
Amazing that Perry can turn an obvious one liner — “Worried about pink slips? More like worried about running out of them for all the workers he fired.” — into something that clunks and farts its way to a conclusion.
Mike Goetz
Romney is no better as a candidate than he was four years ago; it’s just that there is no candidate (even) as good as McCain for him to lose to this year. And let’s remember that McCain was a supremely awful candidate in his own right.
Huckabee would have waxed Romney effortlessly. But who wants to be cannon fodder against Obama? Nobody with a shred of dignity. Thus, Romney.
Spiffy McBang
What thingsbreak said. Great title.
Huntsman is not a stupid person. Bachmann is stupid, Santorum is stupid. Gingrich is… cunning, which is not necessarily on the smart/stupid axis. Romney is stupid in every way that doesn’t involve making money. Huntsman is not stupid. He just- in my opinion- has way too much of a gap to bridge between his own sanity and making enough of the Republican base like him enough to tag him on a ballot, so he winds up sounding like a dip much more than he otherwise would.
But not-stupid people do stupid things, and his was entering the race for 2012. He’s probably destroyed any chance he may have ever had to be a plausible presidential candidate, in a year when he had to try and take down a decently popular incumbent after scrambling past the idiot list of primary candidates. If he’d waited until 2016, he would at least have been making a much more logical run at the nomination, given that if he won he’d be on relatively equal ground with the Democratic candidate.
Mike Goetz
@pseudonymous in nc:
At least he didn’t say “From the standpoint of pink slips…”
dogwood
Oh Mittens, you really are tone deaf.
Like I said yesterday, a candidate without a compelling or even half-way interesting personal narrative is in big trouble. Looks like Mitt’s enemies on the left and right will create the narrative for him.
feebog
@ChrisNYC
And yet Dog on Car keeps talking about the 3000 year “tradition” of marriage between a man and a woman, as if the fact that HIS OWN GRANDFATER was a polygamist is of no concern. Funny how none of the “Christian” candidates has mentioned this little tidbit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike Goetz:
That’s the thing. Even with an economy that is, at best, in the doldrums, Obama is the incumbent. That advantage is huge. Plus, you’re running against him under the brand that torpedoed the economy in the first place. Presidential election years are different than off year Congressional contests, and that also makes a huge difference in your calculations, regardless of what happened in 2010…and in the wake of it, with the idiots installed in 2010 leading the way at taking their best shot of putting another torpedo in below the water line, it’s not pretty.
Zifnab
They have and did. Gingrich is going full-bore. Santorum and Paul have been more than happy to label Romney as a big government crony capitalist. And, subsequently, Romney can’t capture more than 20-30% of the vote in most states.
But the GOP is fractured. If NotRomney was a candidate, he’d be winning. Unfortunately, of the folks *actually* running for GOP Nominee, half are guilty of the exact same sins and the other half are either way out of line with conservative religious doctrine or “unelectable” for random personal issues.
Waldo
@pseudonymous in nc:
Heh. Perry’s campaign in a nutshell.
eemom
A year from now we will be preparing for Obama’s inauguration and all of these clowns will be relegated to the dustbin of history where they belong.
So just keep pissing away Daddy’s fortune, Willard, you disgusting parody of a human being. Unlike McCain, you won’t even have a Senate seat to be a vindictive asshole from, nor a regular gig on the Sunday bobblebot shows.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: x2
gaz
@eemom:
In other words, they’ll all end up being Fox “News” pundits. Just like good ol’ Ollie
Mary G
I think Huntsman is playing to the middle. He wants to be the “Americans Elect” candidate or whatever the banksters call it, hoping to siphon off enough votes from both Dems and [email protected]rob!: The 40% in the middle.
All of the Village is ready to fall in love with him and push it as an end to their fantasy narrative of “both sides do it.”
It worries me.
ChrisNYC
@feebog: Santorum did his best. He changed his gay marriage argument from “what next — marrying animals?” to “what next — polygamy?” Not subtle that supertwerp Santorum.
ericblair
@ChrisNYC:
Hispanic outreach. “!Mis hermanos!” Or maybe not. What do the preached-at usually think of Mormons, anyway?
FlipYrWhig
I think Huntsman ran because he saw an opening to be the thinking man’s Republican. For the punch line, see under Stevenson, Adlai.
jonas
As Kevin Drum just pointed out, Romney’s comment was taken out of context, in the sense that he was talking about how he likes to “fire” people — in this case a health insurance company — who don’t give him good service. I’m sure he’s lovely to wait on in a restaurant.
It’s really his conception of the way health care works that’s the bigger source of concern here — despite having implemented an Obamacare-style reform in Massachusetts as governor, he still thinks that getting health insurance is like shopping for a car. If one model is too expensive or has features you don’t like, you can just get a different one (or, in Mitten’s case, gleefully “fire” the salesman). I don’t know on what planet health care and health insurance works like that, but it ain’t this one.
Laertes
The headline made me laugh out loud. Nice work.
Mike Goetz
@eemom:
Amen to this. And the conservative base will be (litotes alert) not pleased.
I am anticipating so many weeks of solid blog-reading pleasure starting the morning after the election.
Calouste
@Mike Goetz:
The airwaves in Iowa would have been flooded with ads about Maurice Clemmons if Huckabee had ran.
eemom
oh no it’s not. He’s a disciple of a still more complete idiot, Paul Ryan, and a subscriber to the plan to destroy Medicare.
How many times does anyone have to tell you people, there IS NO SUCH THING in today’s world as a republican who is not toxic to the public good.
So fuck that shit. The gavel’s gone down, the jury’s gone home, and the case is CLOSED.
gaz
@ericblair:
/grabs the popcorn.
This is delicious – the more Romney tries to pander to Latinos* by talking about his Mexican heritage the more he risks bringing on the polygamy bomb. Besides, I know a lot Mexicans – the ones I know who are aware of the Mormon influx into mexico think polygamy is creepy and that the mormons are “weird”. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were more off-putting to them than even than many folks in the US…although my knowledge of the issue as it appears to actual Mexicans is anecdotal, and the only Mexicans I know who have made issue of it at all are “middle-class” Chilangos who follow politics (both Mexican and American)
* In my neck of the woods, that’s the PC term – heh. I hear the east coast is different, YMMV
Southern Beale
Wish all the gazillionaires would bankrupt themselves on the primary but I’m guessing that won’t happen.
Villago Delenda Est
@jonas:
If you’re a quarterbillionaire, you can do those sort of things, because, frankly, money is not an object for you.
Unlike the 99% who have to live on a budget, and have to make serious tradeoffs in every purchase they make.
Romney’s lack of empathy and understanding of how the 99% has to deal with a reality he has no knowledge of undercuts him again.
Sentient Puddle
@jonas:
In which case, the use of the word “fire” is still highly questionable. This just isn’t how most people talk.
retr237
I think it’s time for Gingrich’s PAC to edit that movie, and insert a clip of Romney saying “I like to fire people” before every interview of the laid-off workers . . . .
GregB
By the way, the latest poll on party identification nation wide had the GOP at the magically golden 27%.
The Democrats were at 31%.
We may have reached peak wingnut,
Mike Goetz
@Mary G:
“I think Huntsman is playing to the middle. He wants to be the “Americans Elect” candidate or whatever the banksters call it, hoping to siphon off enough votes from both Dems and Repubs.”
I think the Americans Elect people are so jonesing for Huntsman to run on their platform you can smell their pheromones from space. There probably is a 33% utterly servile “Billionaire, save us!” constituency out there. All Huntsman has to do is show a modicum of viability in New Hampshire.
ChrisNYC
@ericblair: I have no personal experience with Mormons, except one weekend in SLC for work and the time I saw two missionaries on the subway BUT I’ve read a bunch about them. Fascinating. They say they are growing hugely in Latin America. Also, they are supposedly super appealing to African Christians (race history notwithstanding) because the prim and proper missionaries play really well there.
SenyorDave
@Mary G: The thing is that Huntsman’s policies are for the most part standard boiler-plate GOP policies. he even has a tax plan that exempts capital gains from income tax. That would play great with Middle America. I think Huntsman would be a worse eneral Election candidate than Romney, because Romney has bee smart enough to not offer up an economic plans.
Svensker
@jonas:
In rich man’s world, it does. See, if you were working harder and making the money that you should be making, you’d know that, too. Why are you so lazy?
rb
@pseudonymous in nc: Exactly! Reading that I was thinking: seriously, they couldn’t punch it up a bit?
Warren Terra
At the Saturday debate, Romney took Huntsman to task for serving the Obama administration, and Huntsman decided to reply by being irrelevant in Mandarin, because being irrelevant in English wasn’t getting him anywhere. It was only when Romney made the same dumb attack to Huntsman’s face a second time in twelve hours that Huntsman realized the correct response was that he loved his country more than he hated Democrats. Doesn’t speak terribly well for Huntsman’s brains – though teeing it up twice in twelve hours says even less for Romney’s.
Still, if you want to point out new Romney gaffes, I’d argue this one might be more important than the “firing people” gaffe; at least people can empathize with wanting to fire their incompetent plumber, but fewer can accept rich people who let the poor foot the bill:
catclub
@Mike Goetz: “Huckabee would have waxed Romney effortlessly.”
Huckabee would have to do it with no money. Might involve a little effort. The big money guys hated him in 2008. Grover Norquisling had a particular hate on.
ChrisNYC
OT — TPM says Richard Daley is leaving as Chief of Staff. What’s that about? The book?
The Moar You Know
Look at them, for chrissakes. I marvel that those particular batch of losers are able to breathe without instructions.
rb
@ChrisNYC:
supertwerp
Love it! OED, call your office.
catclub
@pseudonymous in nc: “Worried about pink slips?”
Yeah, running out before he gets his bonus.
jonas
@Sentient Puddle: Exactly. It was a very odd — and telling — choice of words.
Ed Drone
@thingsbreak:
I’m waiting till the Republican’ts get down to only two, when our choices will be between:
A Winger and a Prayer!
Ed
eyelessgame
Huntsman may be angling to be this year’s John Anderson. Scary thought.
Warren Terra
@SenyorDave:
This.
I like a lot of things about Huntsman. Of all the Republican candidates, he’s the only one who defers to reality on select issues. But he’s not a moderate, and his economic plan – which is worse even than you say – would have been rejected for its obvious lunatic extremism by any Republican of a generation ago.
Huntsman wants to eliminate taxes on capital gains, on dividends, and on estates – thus ensuring that the truly wealthy pay no tax at all. He wants to slash income tax rates at all levels – thus ensuring a huge tax break for the moderately wealthy, and huge deficits. And he wants to eliminate deductions and tax credits, a change that would more than counter his rate cuts to cause swingeing tax increases for lower-middle-class families and for the working poor. It’s a plan that would offend Snidely Whiplash’s sense of decency, and it’s a plan no moderate would use to wipe their nether regions.
ornery_curmudgeon
Wow awesome, DougJ … I had no idea what Ross Douthat had written today.
eyelessgame
@GregB:
The Democrats are at pi, and the Republicans are at e. That’s … well, the numerologists will have a field day. But they’re all irrational.
Corner Stone
@ChrisNYC:
Probably because he was awful at it and just a brutal choice.
Maybe Charles Keating is available?
wrb
@SenyorDave:
not true
Satanicpanic
What’s the point of ranking Republican candidates in terms of decency, relationship to reality, etc.? If any of them wins we’re screwed.
Allen
Should read the Guardians article about Mitt counter-protesting the Vietnam war. While deferred from the war. Bring back the chicken hawk charges. One must remember that deferments weren’t automatic, you had to apply for them.
Roger Moore
@Zifnab:
It’s the same way that Obama is doing worse against Generic Republican than he is against any of the people actually running for the nomination. Generic candidate never has the same kind of baggage that any specific candidate has. NotRomney might be ahead in the polls, but he’s not on the ballot, so it doesn’t really matter.
WereBear
Behold: the American version of the Upper Class Twit of the Year (as in the Monty Python sketch)
http://youtu.be/TSqkdcT25ss
Honestly, I think huge wealth plus Mormon rectitude has created a Perfect Storm candidate. I don’t think it’s possible for Mitt Romney to understand these perfectly simple facts:
*He didn’t get rich because he’s so freakin’ smart. He got rich because he started with the considerable advantage of Oodles-o-Bucks.
*His wife has a chronic illness. He’s never priced health care for her because he never has needed to. Someone should do so; and let him know what the monthly cost might be.
*He has no self-censor because his entire life he’s been surrounded by suckups. His own children are suckups!
Dr. Frankenstein himself couldn’t have engineered a potential candidate more full of FAIL in the year of OWS, deep recession, and people living in their cars.
Go, Mitt, go!
ChrisNYC
@Allen: And that picture!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/exclusive-mitt-romney-student-protester
It looks exactly like the bad guys in Animal House.
Laertes
@Spiffy McBang:
I thought the story on Huntsman was that he was always running for the ’16 nomination. Entering the ’12 race seems like a smart move. It buys him a lot of name recognition that’ll serve him well next time around. If you get the nomination and lose, then (at least since ’72) you’re done for good. But people who tried and failed to get the nomination often come back strong four years later. (cf. Romney in 2012, McCain in 2008, and Reagan in 1980, among surely many others.)
Huntsman’s real problem is that he’s (incorrectly) viewed as a moderate, and if Romney is the nominee and loses, the GOP primary electorate in 2016 is going to be in no mood to nominate another moderate. It’s a bad break for Huntsman that Romney’s gonna get the nomination. He really needed one of the proud ignoramuses like Perry or Bachman or Palin to get it.
patroclus
I’m thinking that, regardless of the context, the “I like being able to fire people” quote is going to be used in 30 second ads this fall. It epitomizes his entire experience at Bain.
MattF
@Roger Moore: Hmm. I’ll bet Mitt has wondered if he could run as NotRomney.
Vote for Romney!
I’m not me!
I never was
And will never be.
Mike Goetz
@Corner Stone:
True enough. Daley was very bad. I think Jack Lew (OMB director) is the new guy.
Warren Terra
@MattF:
Ask, and ye shall receive.
(Well, receive an excellent cartoon version from Tom Tomorrow, anyway).
Rafer Janders
@jonas:
he still thinks that getting health insurance is like shopping for a car. If one model is too expensive or has features you don’t like, you can just get a different one (or, in Mitten’s case, gleefully “fire” the salesman). I don’t know on what planet health care and health insurance works like that, but it ain’t this one.
Planet Multi-Millionaire.
stannate
Hut one, hut two, hut three, HUT!
Old Romney Bastard, live and uncut…
Roger Moore
@MattF:
Hey, Romney can honestly claim not to be Mitt Romney; he’s actually Willard Romney.
tomvox1
@Laertes:
This.
When the GOP crashes & burns in 2012, Huntsman will be seen as a viable moderate to guide the party back to sanity and success in 2016. He’ll be pulling a sort of opposite-Reagan with same kind of timing: where St. Ronnie ran as a conservative outlier in 1976, his challenge and Ford’s failure pulled the party rightward and was he able to capitalize on that transformation in 1980. In Huntsman’s case, I think the long game favors him capitalizing on a GOP move towards ostensible “moderation” after being whipped by embracing too much crazy in 2012. Plus, the press will be jonesing for change for change’s sake by then and Little Johnny H. will be their new broom to sweep clean the ennui of too much Democratic competence and certainly inferior-to-Obama Dem candidates.
Roger Moore
@tomvox1:
Not if he tacks too hard to the right trying to win the nomination in 2012, since that would burn his centrist credentials. And not if Romney tacks unsuccessfully back toward the center after winning the nomination, since that will convince the wingers they haven’t gone in hard enough for the crazy. And certainly not if the wingnuts decide that Romney is too Mormon.
jonas
@Corner Stone: Daley was brought in because Obama wanted to appease banksters like Jamie Dimon who were bitching and moaning that his Wall Street bashing (! yes, really) was hurting their fee-fees and that the administration needed a more “business-friendly” face. Good riddance. Jack Lew should be a good replacement.
pseudonymous in nc
@jonas:
It’s Planet Rich Fucker, where you can order a few peasants to be bled if you need a transfusion.
I have no objection to Rich Fucker Healthcare, but I have a lot of problems with a national healthcare “system” built upon that foundation.
pseudonymous in nc
@patroclus:
And the context of the context is that Willard likes the fact that he’s rich enough and powerful enough to order people around like the 21st century robber baron he is. He’s the Red Queen in magic longjohns.
jonas
@tomvox1: I think Laertes’ point was that a Romney nomination is *bad news* for Huntsman. His game plan was to jump in this year when the Tea Party was in full swing and would nominate someone like Bachmann or Cain, see them get their asses handed to them in the general, and then come back in 2015 as the level-headed savior of a chastened GOP. Now Romney, whom many Tea Party-types see as a closet Massachusetts liberal, will probably get the nomination, lose to Obama, and lead to an even nutsier primary in four years. Huntsman’s definitely screwed then.
Paul in KY
@ChrisNYC: Mitt Romney is Greg Marmalade. That’s his GF in front with the sign. I think she may be wearing her special gloves in the picture.
Paul in KY
@Laertes: Running the campaign he has, he’s in the wrong party.
Yevgraf
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thank you. The coupling of “belief” with evolution has been at the root of the massive framing errors of American social discourse. From there, it was an easy segue to “I don’t believe in global warming”.
Next stop, entropy.
Sly
@Mary G:
Just because 40% of Americans are not members of a political party does not mean that those same Americans are in some sort of objective center of the political spectrum. The truth is far from being that simple. The political moderate is, for the most part, a manufactured identity. Most independents are actually loyal partisans who, for a variety of reasons, do not wish to be identified as such, and only about 10% of the electorate are genuinely independent in the non-partisan sense.
Yevgraf
@Calouste:
Ultimately, that decision consigns all of those who profit by or employed in those firms to devoting their efforts to increasing their earnings from that service.
Of course, this is at its heart, a societal decision to allocate resources, management skill and creative talent to a field which has only scant advances at the fringes. Imagine a different world in which the US allocates fewer resources to medical management and marketing, and greater resources to energy efficiency.
srv
@ChrisNYC: Michelle gets rid of another Chief of Staff!
On her own, or is she having seances too?
Probably because he wasn’t as good a hippie puncher as his Daddy or Rahm.
Roger Moore
@Sly:
The worst part is that a lot of those partisan “independents” then turn around and criticize the system because they don’t like the choice of candidates in the General election. Fuck that. If you want to help pick the candidates in the General, join one of the parties that has the role of nominating them. They’re just one step above the losers who refuse to vote and then complain about our lousy elected officials.
Laertes
@Paul in KY:
His campaign may not suit his party, but he does. He’s an arch-conservative with a governing record to match. He’s got the demeanor of a Democrat, but the substance is pure GOP.
ericblair
@jonas:
Agreed, and considering the ideological death spiral the goopers are in, even having a Santorum crash and burn in the general election would mean that the goopers weren’t conservative enough. At most, they were the wrong faction of conservative. This would never work unless the GOP has a total top-to-bottom clear-eyed reassessment of its existence, which, um, yeah right.
Unless things really change, the GOP is heading toward being a regional minority party, with the South and some Western states until demographics kicks their asses there. I’m thinking that they could end up the American equivalent of the Bloc Quebecois, which is a regionally-based party whose function is to bitch about their cultural status within the country and get minority concessions out of the federal government. However, the BQ just got their asses handed to them, mainly because Quebeckers kinda noticed that all the BQ accomplished by sitting around bitching was a lot of bitching and not much else. I’m thinking this is a pretty common pattern in other countries with culturally-distinct regional minorities, but am too tired to do my damn homework on this.
Sly
@Roger Moore:
I’d wager most of those partisan independents just don’t think politics matters much to them, but they are more likely to vote for one party because the other party is perceived to be against their interests. In this respect, independent partisans can be divided into “Not Democrats” and “Not Republicans.”
I also have a strong suspicion that there is significant overlap between true independents and people who always vote for the incumbent regardless of party, but I can never seem to find any research on the latter.
gocart mozart
@FlipYrWhig:
“Yes, but he needs a majority.”
Huntsman has the thinking conservative vote locked up. Hence the low single digit poll numbers. (rimshot)
Paul in KY
@Laertes: Agree about his positions. He does acknowledge reality, however, and (IMO) that makes him completely unacceptable as a GOP candidate (to the GOP primary voters).
It will be the same in 2016.
Roger Moore
@Sly:
I doubt it. I suspect the true independents (AKA swing voters) are the ones who tend to go with the incumbent when things are going well and want to kick the bastards out when they aren’t. Sometimes they’ll go for the guy who seems like he’d be good to have a beer with or has a nice looking family or produces slicker commercials, or they’ll stick by a President in wartime because they don’t want to switch horses midstream. IOW your classic low-information voter. Here’s hoping they’ll be smart enough to recognize it was the Republican who have fucked everything up, and the Democrats are the ones trying to fix them.
jonas
@ericblair: The Italian Lega Nord (Northern League) and the Belgian Vlams Blok (Flemish Bloc) spring to mind as well — but these kinds of parties can flourish in a parliamentary system. Our two-party system requires some kind of national presence/appeal. Whether the GOP can sustain that, especially as their base is increasingly restricted to their Hover-rounds, is certainly questionable. Regular GOP identification among people under 30 barely registers (conservative youth are all Paulites now).
The Ancient Randonneur
As Mark Kleiman noted yesterday it was Huntsman who landed a solid blow on Romney in yesterday morning’s debate in New Hampshire.
Kleiman has the video embedded if you want to watch. That is the kind of stuff that resonates with the GOP base. Don’t be surprised if Huntsman takes second in New Hampshire and Romney underperforms (<40%).
Huntsmania baby!
gocart mozart
If the G.O.P. continues on the crazy path, I can see Hunstman running in ’16 on some sort of 3rd party ticket that combines sane Republicans and conservadems. This would push the Dems to the left and the Reps to the even more crazy. This could be interesting and may even cause the Republican party to Whig out so to speak.
Calouste
@ericblair:
The Scottish National Party as actually pretty successfull. They ran an minority government in Scotland from 2007-2011, and got 45% of the vote and a majority in Scottish parliament in 2011. They haven’t translated that to any significant presence in the British parliament though.
gocart mozart
@The Ancient Randonneur:
There is a chance that Huntsman could get the high teens. Some polls have him at 15+. I’m rooting for a long shot of Romney <30. A boy can dream. Clusterfuck 2012!
WereBear (itouch)
the mills of the gods grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.
WereBear (itouch)
@gocart mozart: Ive been thinking that is the way it will go. But when?
Chuck Butcher
I think Huntsman mistook the ability to connect with UT voters with an ability to have national appeal. I wouldn’t vote for any of them, not even if Joe LIEberman were the D candidate, but I tried to give Huntsman the benefit of “the sane one” and look at him with as little prejudice as possible.
I can’t see how he connects with voters. There doesn’t seem to be anything there, nothing to get a grip on. It is like watching a film of a canned lecture from a professor you don’t care about on a subject you think you ought to care about.
If Mittens takes a stomping in the GE, the ’14 & ’16 GOPer candidates may be really interesting. We were failed by being insufficiently conservative, not because we’re conservative. That was one of the ’10 drivers of the GOPers and I don’t see how that lessens if Mittens “under-performs…”
Sly
@Roger Moore:
Low-information voters look for certain cultural cues to prompt their support for certain candidates; occupational background, family life, comfortable personality traits, etc. Is the candidate sufficiently folksy? Does he or she come from a working-class background? Does he or she go to a particular church? Did he or she ever own a business? Is the candidate a white man over the age of 50?
In this respect, they’re more in the “partisan independent” category than anywhere else, because they’ll look for traits that more often than not signify a like-minded, quasi-partisan outlook. This will trigger the in-group support reflex and necessitate casting the political rival as among the out-group.
I don’t know about that Obama… there’s just something foreign about him.
Now, I’ve seen the numbers for people who always (and I do mean always) vote incumbent fall somewhere in the 5-10% range, with definitive numbers being hard to pin down. From a technical perspective, these people are genuine independents; they will vote for any candidate regardless of party provided that the candidate is running for the office he/she currently holds. Given that the number of genuine independents isn’t much higher than 10%, I’d wager that the always-vote-incumbent population makes up a significant chunk of it.
And if anyone has a hard time believing that upwards of 10% of the electorate will purposefully always vote for the incumbent; when you think about it, it really isn’t the most shallow of criteria for voting out there. It certainly isn’t any more shallow than only voting for a member of your own religious sect.
Canuckistani Tom
@ericblair:
The BQ never had goals of becoming the dominant party in the Canadian parliament, or any sort of belief that they were the party with the mandate of heaven. The BQ wanted out of confederation. The GOP at this point is not dedicated to an independent Jesusland.
If the GOP begins to collapse down to the ‘27% and that’s it’ level, turning into a party that has some congressional districts, a few governorships and senate seats, but no chance at the white house, I don’t think they will go quietly. Some of these people are so deep inside their bubble that they think Obama will lose worse than Mondale. I’m actually worried what these people will do on Nov 7th when Obama wins.
Jay C
@jonas:
Jeez, even given that Romney’s “I like firing people” line is likely to/probably will be taken and cited out-of-context, even in context, it reads astonishingly tone-deaf and disconnected from reality.
Does Mitt Romney actually believe that many (still less most) Americans think of their health-insurance carriers in the same way as, say, a housecleaner who doesn’t mop up to one’s liking, and can be so casually replaced? Yes, “shopping” for health insurance is always a good idea – but, given the realities of healthcare in this country today, few of us even have the ability to “shop”; that the astronomical costs of the underlying healthcare system that insurance is supposed to subsidize make HCI such a prohibitive expense that (many?most?) families really don’t have much of a choice in the matter. And for those that do, I’m not sure what provisions of the PPACA that Mitt and the GOPers are so avid to repeal would interfere with that in any case.
“Out of context”? Maybe: but when the context is framed as “elitist rich-guy cluelessness about real life” it makes a little more sense….
ericblair
@Canuckistani Tom:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the PQ was much more concerned about independence, however after the last referendum support for independence cratered and the parties were more concerned about getting what they wanted within Confederation. As you say, the BQ never wanted to run the country, and is far more culturally clear-cut than the goopers are; however, if the goopers’ purity purges keep going I think it will end up a very white Southern party wanting an independent Jesusland (CSA version 2). It’s still not a great fit, since there’s a lot of rural gooper support in all sorts of blue states.
Personally, I just hope they implode as a party. Don’t worry about one-party rule if that happens: the Dems count for about five parties by themselves.
WereBear
@Jay C: Especially since Mrs. Romney has MS, a chronic illness. Show me the health insurance companies competing for her business, Mitt!
Ruckus
@Laertes:
This
Potheads or war is always wrongers can get behind Paul because they are blinder wearing one issue voters, and Huntsman doesn’t sound crazy on the surface. But scratch either one the tiniest bit and whoooa!, you just found how easy it would be to spread political plague upon everyone. All of the current rethuglican candidates are old, white, crazy conservatives and I say that sitting here 2 1/2 of those 4 things. I would be a far better president than any conservative, even the ones running, and I would never consider myself qualified, because I hate neckties. They have much bigger problems.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Here’s hoping they’ll be smart enough to recognize it was the Republican who have fucked everything up, and the Democrats are the ones trying to fix them.
I doubt they would/will recognize this. If they didn’t know this before now, what’s going to make them start?
Zifnab
@Canuckistani Tom:
You know, people keep saying this. But we did 8 years under Bush and the liberals didn’t try firebombing anything. Yes, the conservatives are crazier. But they’re also mostly way older, less tech savvy, more fractured, and WAY less competent.
I’m much less worried about what a bunch of aging angry entitled white suburbanites plan to do and more worried what guys like the Koch Brothers or Murdoch or some CEO at BoA is planning if they can’t get their way. The conservative “people” don’t scare me. It’s the leadership that is frightening.
Calouste
@Jay C:
For a lot of Americans the only realistic choice between health insurance providers is the choice their employer gives them. And sometimes, there is no choice at all.
Ruckus
@Zifnab:
It’s the leadership that is frightening.
This is almost always the problem. Leadership/management screws up, and everyone else pays. In business it’s the workers and customers who pay, in politics it’s the majority of the population. Rarely does anyone at the top pay and of course in today’s world the top get rewarded handsomely for screwing up.
ETA IOW, If one gets rewarded for being an asshole, there is no incentive to not being one.
eyelessgame
@Warren Terra: Ask, and ye shall receive.
I blush, since that’s me in the margin of that strip. But the mighty Tom came up with the punchline. I just suggested the possession spirit.
Canuckistani Tom
@Zifnab:
Exactly.
I’m not worried that at 7 am on Nov 7 Fox news broadcasts ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as the signal to start the second civil war. I’m worried about the lone nuts who pick up a few of their guns and go shoot up a daycare, repeated a few dozen times.
A Conservative Teacher
Moron. He said “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.”
Do you seriously reject this statement? You run a company or hire workers or are in a position of responsibility to provide a service to customers, and the person you hire does a bad job and provides poor service- and you reject that they should be fired? What do you want to do with people who you employ who provide bad service to customers- give them a raise?
Morons.
Mnemosyne
@A Conservative Teacher:
You can’t “fire” a company that you hired to do something for you. You can stop using them, but I didn’t “fire” Kaiser Permanente when I switched my health insurance to Cigna.
I don’t run Kaiser Permanente. Therefore, I cannot fire anyone there, even if I stop using them as a healthcare provider. But nice try at completely changing the subject and bringing in an unrelated and irrelevant topic.
I know that understanding this requires knowing how the world actually works, so there’s no point in explaining it to you further, but it is impossible for me to fire a company. How insane would it sound if I claimed that I had “fired” the Los Angeles Times because I canceled my subscription? I’d sound as looney as Romney does if I said that.
eyelessgame
Even from the standpoint of “terminating my relationship with” a company (which you could call “firing” it), there’s no way in hell I can do that to my insurance company, unless I plan to quit my job.
And since I’m not independently wealthy, if I were in Mitt’s other shoes* and had the misfortune to have a spouse with MS, there’s no way in heaven, hell, or Kolob that I’d be in a position to dictate a damn thing to any insurance company that was in any way willing to cover me and my family – I’d bend over and take it, and like it, because that’s the only way to get any insurance coverage at all with a chronic condition.
*and underwear
gwangung
Yes.
You only talk like that as a boss, who sees other people as servants to you. With respect to medical service, this is only possible if you have the money to buy any service you like. That’s something that does not apply to 99% of the workers in this country, who have extremely limited choices with respect to health care.
Moron.
dogwood
@gwangung:
It’s pointless to respond to “A Conservative Teacher”. She drops by once in a blue moon, says something stupid, and then runs away. I’m not much for troll wars, but if ACT had the guts to stay and defend herself, I’d gladly break out the popcorn and enjoy the show.