TPM has a piece up about why Mitt Romney’s crazed rambling on Issue Two in Ohio matters, and it’s fine as far as it goes, for the GOP primary race. Mitt Romney doesn’t have any real positions or convictions and that’s (supposedly) a problem for the GOP base.
But what Romney’s inane babbling means to me is this: they’re finally telling the truth about this law. Issue Two was never about belt-tightening or the budget. It was about destroying organized labor in Ohio. Public sector unions were an easy target, low-hanging fruit, but the next step after public sector union employees are sufficiently demonized and loathed is to move directly to targeting private sector union workers. We’re seeing the same thing play out in Michigan, and we saw it in Indiana.
I don’t have to go far to find this out, either. I can simply listen to national conservative leaders:
“I believe in unions. I believe they have a place,” Kasich said, standing on stage with Toledo Mayor Mike Bell.
John Kasich’s national conservative supporters, Mr. Huntsman and Mr. Perry:
Here’s a shocker: Romney flip/flopped on supporting Gov. Kasich’s union-busting laws. From being in solidarity in June to unable to take a position in October. To put it mildly, most conservatives are a little upset.
“Mitt Romney’s finger-in-the-wind politics continued today when he refused to support right-to-work reforms signed by Ohio Governor John Kasich – reforms Romney supported in June.
Right to work? Union busting? How can this be? John Kasich and his media allies have been telling us for months this has nothing to do with collective bargaining or their ideological opposition to organized labor and was simply a budgetary matter. This was presented as the ordinary, run-of-the-mill “shared sacrifice” without the “shared” part that media and conservatives have been demanding we accept since the finance sector took down the economy.
It was always a lie, and I’m grateful to Romney for blundering into forcing them to tell the truth. This morning on the way in I heard a local (wingnut) radio personality refer to Issue Two as the “anti-union law”. Nice that they’re finally admitting it, two weeks out. This would have been a much more straight-forward and honest debate had they told the truth right from the start.
cleek
sure, but where’s the upside in that?
Kane
There is actually a call center busy working to take away rights from people. Think about that. And the existence of such a call center and where the money is coming from to fund such a call center isn’t even a story. It’s all become so acceptable.
And it’s considered acceptable and good politics for a republican presidential candidate to visit an anti-worker call center where they are busy trying to strip away collective bargaining rights, but it’s considered outrageous for democrats to offer their words of support to the Occupy Wall Street protesters who are seeking fairness and accountability. Go figure.
kay
@Kane:
I think it’s a really good point. If a (nationally prominent) Democratic governor had been accused of having a hidden “pro-union” agenda, and he denied it, and then national Democrats came out and screamed that he wasn’t sufficiently pro-union-agenda enough, we’d be hearing about it, under the banner of “Democrats and their secret agenda:exposed!”.
Kasich is talking about privatizing the turnpike today. He’s going to skate completely on lying to the people here for nearly a year. Shouldn’t he be asked if he’s “union busting”? Because that isn’t what he said he was doing.
Legalize
Moderator: Governor Romney, do you have a position on issue X?
Mittens: Probably!
geg6
@cleek:
Heh.
What I love about this OH stuff and the earlier WI stuff is how it has laid bare for all to see how the Kochsuckers are trying to screw us all. And how two of the most anonymous, shadowy figures behind the 40 year effort to turn this country into a banana republic are suddenly being dragged into the light for all to see. It has to just piss them off royally that even some of the low information dimwits now know that the Koch brothers are fucking up the whole country.
kay
@Legalize:
It’s not going to matter a bit for the general, unfortunately.
Ending the war in Iraq got, what, 24 hours of half-assed, slightly bored coverage?
Romney will say whatever he has to say in Ohio and Michigan and elsewhere, Kasich will continue to be portrayed as Brave and Bold, although he’s been lying his ass off since the day he took office, probably by next week, and this whole event will be down the rabbit hole.
Steve
@kay: Asked by whom? All the pro-union newspapers in Ohio?
Jason T.
Uh, public sector workers are actually being targeted after private-sector unions have already been destroyed, or at least marginalized.
NAFTA and especially our trade policies with China have virtually wiped out American manufacturing — and with it, American trade unionism. (And it’s hard not to argue that destroying the labor movement was one of the goals of moving manufacturing out of the United States — besides enriching the 1 percent and circumventing safety and environmental laws by pillaging the developing world.)
The building trade unions are hanging on, but by their thumbnails. The only real growth in unionism has been organizing health care workers and the public sector, which is precisely why SEIU and other service-oriented unions represent a threat.
Signed,
Member, National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981
kay
@Steve:
Hah! I used to think they got snowed by Mr. Fox News, they were dazzled by his ENERGY and BOLDNESS, and all that slick marketing, and Strickland was, after all, an old man that they all loathed mostly because he was so old and yucky, but I don’t think that anymore.
They knew who and what they were backing.
rikryah
I’m with geg6
cleek
@Jason T.:
as of 2/2011, America was still the #1 manufacturing country in the world. we outproduce China by 40%, by dollar value of goods produced.
our problem is that we produce big, very expensive things (jets, heavy equipment, machinery) that don’t take a lot of people to produce. we’ve lost the low-tech, low-dollar production because we just can’t compete with SE-Asia on cost. and a lot of that cost is … labor.
jwb
@geg6: On the other hand, for all the attention Walker has received in WI, his poll numbers are surprisingly robust and it’s not at all certain that he will lose the recall even if his opponents manage to collect the signatures to put it on the ballot. This all in a political environment where you can no longer claim that the people simply don’t understand what Walker wants to do. Walker’s approval numbers remain in the high 40s, and that’s just fucking depressing.
Duane
i thought they were up front about the union busting out of the gate…when like in WI they assumed everyone thought that way…then when they found out how bad it resonated with the public…it became all about the budget and saving money…blah blah blah……..cracks are starting to resurface again now…..i mean how can it be about the budget when u throw 15 million away on ridiculous 2nd primary….
kay
@Jason T.:
It’s a good point, and I generally agree, but I feel as if the trade argument shouldn’t be the trump card that ends debate, and causes us all to throw up our hands.
You say yourself that service workers can and will organize. There’s nothing unique about manufacturing that goes: “trade deals have made manufacturing less viable as a higher-wage employer, therefore there will be be fewer organized workers”.
I’m not even sentimental or nostalgic about “unions” as a concept. It’s just I have yet to see any other organizing principle or mechanism that gives workers a strong, unified voice in the political system and a seat at the table appear to replace unions. I’m open. What do you got? I’m not willing to rely on the inherent sense of “fairness” of political or business leaders. That doesn’t seem to be working out so great :)
PeakVT
@cleek: And if we take defense out of that how do the numbers look?
Amir Khalid
@Legalize:
I took the liberty of making a minor correction.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: And an astute correction it was.
JCT
Mittens! For Pete’s sake — stay on message for once.
/snark
Triassic Sands
Romney’s got a real problem — he doesn’t actually believe anything, except perhaps that a dog’s place is on the roof and he ought to be president. He seems fundamentally flexible, i.e., he doesn’t care what the policy is, he just wants to live in the White House. This creates a real dilemma for the poor guy, because he’s a member of the thoroughly ideological GOP and they have a narrow range of acceptable positions on most issues.
Every time someone asks him a question, he has to weigh his answer and decide whether it will hurt or help him in the primaries and/or general election. So, he never sounds sure of anything. Whenever I see Romney, he gives me the creeps, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone (outside of a mental institution) with so little idea of who he is and what he believes. As such, he is probably utterly unfit to be president, where flexibility may be useful, but core convictions are critical.
Generally, objective commentators regard Romney as the “safest” Republican candidate, but I’m not sure that’s true. If Republicans hold the House and retake the Senate next year, and Romney wins, he will be fed a constant diet of disastrous right wing legislation. With no core convictions, he’ll simply sign everything put in front of him, which will be exactly what Cain, or Perry, or any other Republican lunatic will do. How is that an improvement?