Atrios thinks Romney-Ryan will get points from establishment media for saying they’ll screw the middle-class:
My prediction is that the election narrative from our Villagers will coalesce around the question that voters care about most of all: which candidate (and party) will make the electorate suffer the most?
America 2012. It’s just one big laboratory for the S&M fantasies of the Villagers.
I hope he’s right. Because screwing the middle-class may send a tingle up Chris Matthews’ leg but it’s a losing proposition politically. If Cokie and David Gregory and Jon Mecham and the rest giddily agree that Romney-Ryan will put the middle-class back it its proper subservient place, that’s a win for Obama. If it’s a few Villagers grimly nodding along about hard sacrifices in the background, that helps Romney, but if it’s Sunday morning public S&M, it hurts.
But I don’t think that’s what will happen. Let’s check in with the man who is always wrong, Mark Halperin:
Mitt Romney just held a short press availability in Florida and completely dodged the question of which parts of the Ryan budget he disagrees with.
[…]The White House and much of the media are going to stay on this issue for a good long time. Instead of playing rope-a-dope, Romney should stand and answer.
Romney should not stand and answer, he should bob and weave. Neither wingers nor pundits care about details. Unless the Obama campaign hits him hard on vouchercare — which I think they will — Romney can use sadomasochism and WOLVERINES! to give the right and the Village four hour erections without telling the public that he plans to make them eat cat food in their old age.
There’s no way that Romney can win the battle of vouchercare. But maybe he can get points for “tough decisions” from sociopaths without alienating that many normal people. Maybe. But I doubt it.
Baud
Just like he should release his tax returns. But he won’t, because he knows it’ll be worse for him if he does.
Southern Beale
Well, Cokie and Matthews have already recoiled in horror, though it’s still early. They may “get the memo” soon.
I just don’t see this happening. Screwing the middle class isn’t the same as hippie punching, something which I’m sure Villagers wish were an Olympic sport.
Bailey
In this instance I think it’s unfair to lump Chris Matthews into any group of villagers that cheers for sticking it to the middle class. His disdain for Romney and in particular for Ryan’s plan has been pretty clear on a regular basis.
Todd
I like to think that cooks and waitstaff routinely spit in the food they serve to Villagers.
JGabriel
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McKayla is not impressed with Paul Ryan.
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Roger Moore
@Todd:
I suspect it depends a lot on how well they tip. Tip generously, and you’ll be treated well unless you’re a complete ass to the wait staff. Be a skinflint, and you’re unlikely to be so lucky.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve never heard Matthews preach austerity, and today he was pretty much raling against the Ryan Anti-New Deal platform. I saw a tweet that his talk iwth Sununu was pretty testy, but I missed it. Cokie Roberts back when I used to pay attention to her was big on mocking Democrats for practicing “Mediscare” politics. Even among Villagers, that idiot stands out for self-congratulatory smugness. She’s the face that comes to my mind when I think of Josh Marshall’s observation that Villagers find it vulgar and somewhat embarrassing that people, Democrats, bloggers, “hippies”, actually think the effect of politics on people’s lives matters.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m Ryan’ed out. How long we got to go?
The Queen of Bithynia
I still can’t get over how dumb Romney is. I guess our galtian overlords spend too much time masturbating to Ayn Rand and not enough reading Sun Tzu.
I have disagreed with a ton of shit that Clinton and Obama have done, but during their elections, I never once doubted whether we were putting our best general on the battlefield.
The Ryan pick might be the dumbest move made by oligarchs since the Roman Oligarchy convinced Pompey the Great to engage Julius Caesar in a pitch battle at Pharsalus.
EconWatcher
Blue-collar Joe Biden will have this trust-fund boy Ryan crying for his mama before this is over.
BGinCHI
Bold Prediction: during the debates Romney will have to lie his ass off instead of choosing to lie his ass off. Because if he tells the truth (Ryan Budget) he’s fucked.
He’s going to look like a Mormon millionaire in the headlights.
DougJ
@EconWatcher:
That’s my thinking too.
jl
Most of the corporate media are self satisfied innumerate debuached wealthy fools, who form an artificial aristocracy. They are lost in degraded foolish and cruel trivality. They are casual and callous thoughtless sadists, who care about nothing but their status. They are Masters of the Horse. John Adams nailed the artificial aristocracy over almost exaxtly two hundred years ago. Nothing new in their vicious drivel.
Boudica
I heard a clip of Romney saying he was all about protecting Medicare. What I wish is someone would ask him “why?”
Walter Homple
For your amusement, from The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/admit-it-i-scare-the-everloving-shit-out-of-you-do,29160/
BGinCHI
@DougJ: Biden = experience
Ryan = Company Man
Remind me how popular Congress is again?
Thoughtcrime
RMoney/aRyan 2012
Now for a campaign slogan that can capture both Romneyhood and White Supremacy…
General Stuck
I think Romney, by picking Ryan, drop kicked for a field goal from his own 20 yard line. He just better hope for a plague of flesh eating locusts to descend and devour the elderly before election day. Cause I don’t think there is any way in hell he can escape the Ryan Plan, he has endorsed and doubled down by picking a VP that is the walking death panel for medicare.
JC
You know, I’m still a bit agog about this pick.
I’m spinning out all these conspiracy stories in my head. A couple for ya:
a. Neutralizing the rightwing, by picking Ryan (thereby giving him some space so that rightwingers stop squawking. Have Ryan pissing out, rather than pissing in, as someone said.)
b. Romney is writing off the election (barring circumstances such as European meltdown or crisis in the Middle East which raises gas prices), and setting up Ryan for 2016.
c. A desire to shift the conversation AWAY from taxes. (which it has, at least temporarily.) Now the conversation will be about ‘ryan’s plans’ rather than “Mitt’s taxes”. Basically, there is something IN Mitt’s taxes that is SO INCREDIBLY TOXIC, that Romney will do anything to move the attention away – and both conversatives, and liberals, the “ryan budget” is a pretty good shiny object.
As seen by 4 days of 24/7 Ryan posts.
I’m most fascinated by option C. What the hell could be in those tax returns?
DougJ
@JC:
Could it really be worse than vouchercare? I’m skeptical. If it is, then he never should have run in the first place.
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
Romney doesn’t choose to lie any more than he chooses to have white skin or a really creepy voice; they’re all just part of his nature. That’s why he constantly lies about stupid stuff he doesn’t need to lie about, like his first name.
Will Reks
CouponCare… cause seniors love coupons.
Lojasmo
@efgoldman:
I literallyy think O has ads for the entire season (at least the background ads) stocked away. Vulture/voucher are toast.
It will be beauteous.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JC: If Our Willard had really written off this election, which I don’t for a moment think he ego and sense of entitltment would let him do, I think he would’ve picked Jodi Rell or Chris Shays and tried to lose nobly as a principled, old school moderate, have a glowing reputation of a noble loser like his pappy. I think this pick was part panic and a lot of ‘C’.
I would also note that those who say that Romney picked someone he would’ve hired as a Veep at Bain are on to something, and also the old chestnut that Pappy Bush picked Quayle because the dim trust fund baby reminded him of his own kids. Ryan is talk dark and almost handsome, obnoxiously entitled, ruthlessly ambitious, self-righteously rigid in his politics…. Our Willard couldn’t pick Tagg, Bagg or Sagg, so he got the next best thing. The Sixth Mittlet.
JC
@DougJ: Oh, I agree. But when has that ever stopped people (John Edwards) who shouldn’t have run, from running?
It’s all conspiracy though, and probably wrong. I still think Romney might have been one of those given a special dispensation to ‘make good’ on their taxes, back in 2009, for monies in offshore account.
Not to mention the several million in the IRA.
In any case, Harry Reid and taxes are off the radar for the moment – new shiny object in front of the media.
Calouste
@DougJ: We know Romney is entitled and deluded. I think he seriously thought that his taxes wouldn’t be an issue. McCain got away with only releasing two years, so why wouldn’t he?
gbear
@Just Some Fuckhead:
How long does it take to make toast?
Roger Moore
@JC:
My theory: Romney is so tired of getting kicked in the nuts that he wants somebody else to take the heat off him. The only way to do that was to pick a VP who sucks even worse than he does who will take all the punishment for him.
ETA: In case this isn’t clear, this differs from your “C” in that it isn’t limited to the thing about taxes. It includes everything else that Obama is hammering him about.
JC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That could be, the whole “I’m comfortable with this guy, and I’m the nominee”.
But usually strategy outweighs those calls. What did McCain know of Palin, really?
Kerry Reid
@jl: You are far too cynical! Why, they’ve been known to generously give a helping hand to a poor lad with no connections!
mamayaga
It may have been writing off this election and setting up 2016 for Ryan, not by Mitt, but by his rightwing masters. If they threatened to cut off funding or else, Mitt might have acquiesced in the hope that he could still pull it off. What I’m still looking for is why he picked such a bad time to announce — Saturday morning during the Olympics, with very short notice. What was the rush?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@DougJ: Our Willard’s a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one of them. He may have been so arrogant it looked like stupid when he thought he wouldn’t have to release his returns, but he’s smart enough to know that his tax returns make an absolute shambles of his only real platform plank, cut taxes to free up job creating wealth. Charts and graphs and statistics about household assets and income are too abstract for the sort of people like the woman I haerd on NPR the other day, saying primly she wanted to hear more about what the candidates stand for! She’s just too dumb to know they’ve been telling her that for a year or more. Seeing actualy figures that Mitt Romney never made less than 10 million a year in the worst economy since the early thirties, that he never paid more than 13.5% in federal income taxes [I am of course wildly yet responsibly speculating], that he used all kinds of shady (and perfectly legal) tricks to pay so little, that he funnellled a hundred million to his overgrown spoiled brat sons, tax-free, above and beyond the 250 million he’s got for himself. Those individual numbers are easy to understand, even to the people who can’t distinguish between net worth and annual income (a pet theory of mine, which is what it is and which is mine and which I own), much less marginal tax rates and they make Obama’s case and shatters Romneys.
rikyrah
not just VOUCHERCARE,but their credibility is even further shot because they have the Zombie-Eyed Granny Killer as the point man for Dubya’s scheme to Privatize Social Security….which folks already know was attempted
the ads write themselves.
rikyrah
as for those who suggested that the Dems slide away from Vouchercare and start calling it COUPONS, Patrick Gaspard of the DNC did exactly that today on tv .
Thoughtcrime
@Roger Moore:
Ryan’s Saving Romney’s Privates?
phillygirl
I think you’re great, Doug, but how did Chris Matthews get on your shit list? Every five minutes he’s talking about awful things that Republicans are doing to folks in rowhouses in Philadelphia. Hey, even I’m getting sick of it.
rikyrah
@Calouste:
McCain, like Kerry, had released years of statements WHILE AS A Senator.
THAT is the difference.
El Cid
Romney should bob and weave because the media have signaled him to do so: Ryan is said by the major billion dollar press and its hired lackeys to have “crunched the numbers” when he has done nothing but written made up numbers down.
Thankfully NASA didn’t just write down a bunch of awesome yet sweetly disciplinarian numbers on getting Curiosity to Mars’ surface; they actually crunched numbers, and verified the results, and checked them again and again and all the rest of it.
But the talking heads have signaled — nay, jumped up and down and screamed while waving signs — that Romney can do whatever he want (as far as they’re concerned) just by making up this bullshit about how Ryan “crunched the numbers”.
Any one of us would be at serious risk of being flunked out of a middle school class for just making stuff up like Elected Demi-God Paul Ryan has done, and claiming that we ‘crunched the numbers’ in our faked research paper with missing pages and no work shown.
mamayaga
@rikyrah:
Also different is that we know pretty well exactly where McCain got his money…
rikyrah
@JC:
Here’s my list of what’s in the tax returns
1. Willard is not worth 250 million. He’s worth at least 3 times that much
2. Willard paid zero taxes for any number of years
3. Those years that he did pay taxes, if he came close to a rate of 10%, I have a bridge to sell you
4. How he got the 100 million dollar IRA.
5. How he gave his sons 100 million TAX FREE
6. He had many more foreign accounts
7. Maybe your parents never told you, ‘you are the company you keep’. Well, I’ll put it forth that Willard’s money is the company that it keeps. The IRS says that only three types of folks have money in the Cayman Islands:
a) tax cheats
b) criminals
c) terrorists
With the revelation that 40% of Bain start up money came from people responsible for the El Salvadorian Death Squads, do you have any doubt that Willard’s money has been mixed up with shady characters?
8. Willard’s connection to the Mormon Church. I’ve told folks for awhile that the only thing I don’t think is in the tax returns, is that Willard didn’t tithe. Oh yes, I believe he tithed. In fact, I believe it’s all in the tax returns that he did all sorts of deals with the Mormon Church and used their TAX EXEMPT STATUS to avoid paying MILLIONS in taxes. Yes, try and explain that. I believe this even more after the article about Mormon, Inc.
9. The SON OF BOSS scam that didn’t work makes me believe that Willard’s on that AMNESTY LIST. Will say it again: don’t nobody who does shyt LEGAL need AMNESTY. AMNESTY is only for those who BROKE THE LAW.
10. The mystery ‘ retroactive’ years at Bain. Not only would we find out that the salary given Willard during that time exceeded 100k, we would probably find out that it was in the 8 figured FOR EVERY YEAR IN QUESTION. Not only that, there will be NO RECORD of him REPAYING BACK SAID ‘RETROACTIVE’ salary.
The ENTIRE GOP stance on taxes has been that we can’t punish the ‘ job creators’.
It has always been bullshyt, but never ever has our side had such a prime example.
Job creator my ass.
Mofo is rich; doesn’t pay any taxes; ships jobs overseas; doesn’t even have enough patriotism to keep his money on shore
and HE needs a tax cut?
I don’t believe one or two of my guesses is in the tax returns…I believe 80% are in there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mamayaga: Speaking of Cindy, Michael Scherer of Time for reasons passing understanding saw fit to re-tweet this uninteresting observation from the thoroughly uninteresting Mrs McCain
Republican Lady of Leisure whines about media! Stop the presses!
I also like to point out whenever I can that Cindy may have been richer than her husband by magnitudes, but the McCain’s have a long tradition of marrying money. McCain’s mother and grandmother were oil heiresses, and he was as much an entitled rich boy as Dumbya or Mittens.
AA+ Bonds
Ahhhhh I love it when Krug advances my line
Easily the most honest liberal on Earth
Jim, Foolish Literalist
GAH Wild rogue apostrophe! and it won’t let me edit! Karmic payback to my OCD.
Elliecat
Just have to remark that it’s been 40 years since I watched “Carousel” with my mom who disgustedly pointed out that line and warned me to never, ever, ever fool myself that a hit could feel like a kiss.
I never stop being amazed how many people do.
burnspbesq
Ryan is attending a fundraiser at the Sands in Vegas later this week. As if there weren’t enough live ammo strewn around, he’s inviting us to shoot Sheldon Adelson’s criminal misadventures in Macau at him.
This is just too easy.
AA+ Bonds
The press have no skin in the race so they pretend to like experiments
The prob Bob is that their experiments are, like, let’s try the 19th century over again
Maude
@rikyrah:
This.
DougJ
@rikyrah:
Sounds about right. But vouchercare is still worse.
AA+ Bonds
Paul Ryan is a gigantic existential threat to liberal democracy, and not the kind I like
AA+ Bonds
Seriously, faux Catholic Randist gym rat? Hitler Junior, may kill us all, etc.
AA+ Bonds
@rikyrah:
Great post – Romney and Bain are one current incarnation of what Adam Curtis called ‘the Mayfair Set’ – rogue capitalists who build their own economic and foreign policy base with the collusion of elites hidden within the state
Hell, Romney visited Mayfair when he went to England – his initiation, so to speak
I’d argue, if you ain’t seen The Mayfair Set (the film), you can’t understand Romney
The plus is that the entire film aired on the BBC so it is available for free in its entirety on YouTube, Google Video and the Internet Archive
El Cid
@AA+ Bonds: Thank you for the reference. I don’t remember having heard of the doc.
Kevin
I was watching an interview on CNN with Soledad O’Brien and some Romney surrogate, and if that’s the best they can do, they are doomed. She kept trying to say Obama stole 700B from Medicare, which O’Brien, to her credit, easily batted away with an incredulous laugh, like she was saying “do you think I’m a fool”.
The beautiful part was after explaining what the cuts actually were, she even went a step further and brought up the fact that Ryan’s plan keeps those same cuts in place, and asked the sensible follow up “are you saying that Ryan-Romney will steal from Medicare too”?
It was funny seeing the contrast with the next interview with Stephanie Cutter, who took the questions about “trying to scare seniors” in stride and not only said how Romney’s plans does hurt seniors (despite the whining from Politifact that it doesn’t, she made the great points about the prescription drug savings in Obama care that they want to eliminate), as well as the excellent point that if the plan was so great, they wouldn’t be desperately assuring seniors that it wouldn’t be for them. If it’s such a great plan, why not give it to everyone?
Anyway, just surprised that someone in the media actually seems to have a BS detector. Too often see John King or Wolf Blitzer, and dear lord are they morons..and don’t even get me started on Erin Burnett…damn CNN…her stupid “it’s been 900 days since we lost AAA, what are they doing to fix it”…
…Nothing. Because they can borrow money at 1%, which is actually a negative rate when factoring inflation, which means the markets are begging the government to take their money, which means the downgrade has been ignored by everyone with half a brain…
S. Holland
@efgoldman: AMEN!!
DougJ
@Kevin:
I fucking hate the OMG we lost AAA thing. I don’t see my complaint as partisan. The bond agency mostly blamed Republicans for us losing it. But it’s still bullshit that they took it away, there’s just not much risk there. If there was, then why is the rate on our bonds so low?
Kevin
@DougJ
it was bullshit that they took it away, but it’s proven that people just don’t care what ratings agencies say. It’s a freaking negative rate for 5 year (maybe 10 year as well). That is insane. Why isn’t the government borrowing to put teachers and police back to work in states?? You can’t pass up these rates.
Irony Abounds
@Bailey: Absolutely. Tweety was ripping Sununu a new one this afternoon. Matthews has been very good this cycle.
tdmcmains
just digging the thrill kill kult quote. nicely done.
cmm
Bah to the S & M comparison. SM has to be agreed to , with mutually agreed upon reasonable limits, by all parties (AKA “safe, sane, and consensual). The Republican /Villager version has none of the above. SM without SSC is…well, assault, battery, and possibly rape depending on what goes down.
Which makes it work as a metaphor for these guys after all. They are like the abusers and the clueless who pass themselves off as “doms” and victimise the newbies and the clueless (or as they say in politics, low-information voters). If a sub (voter) has the nerve to hesitantly suggest that the scene isn’t going well, at least from their perspective, they are reminded quickly of their proper place and role.
mainmati
Ah, you had me with The Motels, I loved Martha Davis and all her various Matthews.
But the VSPs aren’t really controlling the narrative this time. First, we have a colorless, vacuous suit for the Presidential nominee and an extremist for the VP. Ordinary Americans are going to be presented with the flawed but earnestly trying team that they have vs. an extremely rich guy who doesn’t understand them at all and his crazy VP and I think they’re going to go “whoooaa”.
The real issue will be turnout especially in the flip-flop states.