The Left’s narrative problem:
Because they basically control the mainstream media, and because they have created for themselves a fictional conservative worldview (evident in many an Aaron Sorkin project and Barack Obama speech) rather than confront the actual conservative worldview, liberals are often caught off guard when faced with an actual argument for positions they disagree with. What we’ve seen in the wake of the debate is that some on the Left are so wedded to their imaginary right-wingers that when their actual opponents advance positions or make arguments that are different from those imaginary ones they will call those actual opponents fakes and liars. They believed their own caricature of Mitt Romney, and his unwillingness to play into it strikes them as dishonest. Or put another way: Confronted with evidence of their own dishonesty about who Romney is and what he stands for, they call the evidence a lie.
It’s often been noted that the Left has trouble debating when they get in real debates, where they have to confront real arguments instead of their fantasy straw men. That’s the disaster that comes from cocooning yourself in academia or a news room where your assumptions are never challenged. Even Dana Milbank sees the problem:
Obama has set a modern record for refusal to be quizzed by the media, taking questions from reporters far less often than Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and even George W. Bush. Though his opponent in 2008 promised to take questions from lawmakers like the British prime minister does, Obama has shied from mixing it up with members of Congress, too. And, especially since Rahm Emanuel’s departure, Obama is surrounded by a large number of yes men who aren’t likely to get in his face.
This insularity led directly to the Denver debacle: Obama was out of practice and unprepared to be challenged. The White House had supposed that Obama’s forays into social media — town hall meetings with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the like — would replace traditional presidential communication. By relying on such venues, Obama’s argument skills atrophied, and he was ill-equipped to engage in old-fashioned give and take.
And unfortunately for Milbank, he’s much too optimistic about Obama’s ability to fix it in time to save the next debates, or his campaign.
What I got out of this is that Mitt Romney has been out there saying what his plan and program is going to be, and outside of the people at the such events, no one is listening to him, especially the President.
So there are all of these commercials, unanswered commercials of how Mitt Romney has this half trillion dollar tax cut for “the rich”, and Mitt Romney looks us in the eyes and says, “My plan is to cut rates, across the board by 20%, but to eliminate deductions and ‘close loopholes.’ My plan is a lot like the Simpson-Bowles Commission proposal, the commission the President instituted, only Simpson-Bowles wants to increase revenues whereas my plan is revenue neutral.”
“Mitt changed from a Conservative to a Moderate in the debate!” Um, no, you just haven’t been listening.
“Romney can’t possible make up the 500 billion from rate reduction with loophole closure, he is making all of this up.” Um, so former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and Clinton Appointee Erskine Boyles are also making all of this up?
I was listening when Romney promised in a primary debate to cut taxes for the 1%. And I was listening Wednesday when he promised not to cut taxes for the wealthy. I was listening when he said that his plan covers people with pre-existing conditions, and after the debate when his campaign manager clarified that he meant that his plan doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions.
so former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and Clinton Appointee Erskine Boyles are also making all of this up?
No. Simpson/Bowles explicitly calls for additional tax revenue. Romney promises not to increase taxes. The S/B math makes sense, Romney’s is impossible.
I, for one, am really sick of the canard that we have to both cut government spending and increase government revenue. What I see is that:
1. In my lifetime and longer than that, government spending keeps going up. No matter what. Especially when congress promises to cut spending in conjunction with a tax increase.
2. When (some) people talk about “cutting government” they claim a decrease in the planned increase in spending is a “cut.”
In Europe (and elsewhere) when they talk about “austerity” they mean raising taxes and perhaps benefit cuts. They never mean actually having the government spend less.
I earn a decent living, for which I feel blessed, but I haven’t gotten any increase in salary (especially with a layoff included) in about 4 years which, with inflation means I’m really earning quite a bit less. Why should the government keep spending more and more when people like me aren’t earning more and more?
We’ve fallen for the “spending cuts AND tax increases” line before. Never again. Spending cuts first. If that is really done–and not with an accounting gimmick–then I’ll believe things have changed and we can talk again. I’d actually be pretty happy if we could just keep government spending flat for a while–the economy should eventually grow and catch up if we can keep the government from growing. Government revenue can and should increase due to economic growth without increased tax rates.
I realize entitlements are a huge issue. But don’t claim that increased tax rates have to be a part of the solution when actually cutting government spending or actually limiting government growth has never really been tried. To claim we need to do “both” is just a claim that “we need to raise taxes” until actions actually match up with words.
Remember, Tip O’Neill promised Reagan that the Dem congress would cut 3 $ spending for every $ of taxes cut.
government spending keeps going up
You know what else keeps going up? The population. The median age of the population. The cost of keeping the elderly and disabled out of poverty. The cost of health care for the poor and elderly.
To a first approximation, our government is an insurance company (providing old age, disability, unemployment and health insurance) with an army. We’re insuring more people, with more expensive needs, and we keep finding new reasons to spend more on our military. That’s why government spending keeps going up.
To change the trajectory you need to decide to change what it is we use government for. You have to decide that we don’t want to provide medical insurance to the poor and elderly, or a financial safety net for the elderly, unemployed and disabled. Or that we don’t need a military bigger than the rest of the world’s combined. Anything else is fiddling around the edges.
But it isn’t easy to take away a government benefit. Look at how Romney is running to Obama’s left on Medicare. There’s no way Romney is going to tell voters that we need to scale back our commitment to health insurance for the elderly — it’d be political suicide (see the reaction to Ryan’s first budget). So right off the bat you’ve ruled out changes to the fastest growing part of government.
The American people want a 23-24% of GDP government, but only want to pay 18-19% of GDP in taxes. So we muddle along with big deficits.
To a first approximation, our government is an insurance company
No, Jim, our government is not an insurance company.
The truth of that statement can be proven quite easily.
If the government was an insurance company, the directors would be in jail for fraud.
The people who control the US control the US government are not in jail for fraud.
Ergo, the US government is not an insurance company.
We aren’t keeping old people out of poverty. We are just transferring their poverty onto the federal credit card and bankrupting everybody, including them.
It is not supposed to be the government’s job to put people in or keep people out of poverty. That’s what churches and charities are for. There has always been a safety net in this country. It’s only in modern times that the safety net was provided by the government.
In reality, the government’s job is to repel foreign invasion (federal government) and to keep people from stealing from each other and killing each other (state/local government). Other than that, the government should not be doing a whole lot. Yes, this includes not doing NPR or PBS, or Obamacare, or Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
And no, that doesn’t mean we need a giant bloated military budget. But, it does mean that the military is one of the only things the federal government should be spending money on.
Social security is the biggest scam that has ever been foisted upon us. It is not some investment account. It says an old guy can steal from a younger guy, on the promise that the younger guy can steal from the next guy who hasn’t been born yet. If someone can’t see the evil in that system, I don’t even know where to start.
The government benefits are going to stop one way or another. Either we stop them now in a way that makes sense, or China stops buying our debt once they realize we have no intention of paying them back and the benefits stop anyways, along with a whole lot more.
You know what else keeps going up? The population.
The cost of government has been rising far above the rate of population growth.
To change the trajectory you need to decide to change what it is we use government for. You have to decide that we don’t want to provide medical insurance [blah…]
For a “first derivative” guy, you seem to be troubled with a trajectory that might not point in the right direction. “What we use government for” is not a winning slogan Jim.
And “insurance” isn’t either.
“I was listening when Romney promised in a primary debate to cut taxes for the 1%. And I was listening Wednesday when he promised not to cut taxes for the wealthy.”
Romney said he wants to reduce the tax rates for everyone, not just rich people. This is the same BS the left does on the Bush tax cuts. Others and myself have debunked this claim of yours numerous times and you know how BS it is. For a person so concerned with dishonesty…
The premise, excluding the kooky conspiracy/cheating theory’s, still remains that they believe “The One” just had a bad day or was not prepped well. Nothing could be further from the truth. Without prepared text he is hopeless. Pardon the pun. I think that is why he is so endearing to the press. After all they are just news readers themselves.
Milbank is assuming Obama had any debating skills which could “atrophy.” I’ve never seen any evidence of such skills from him.
The projecting liars of the Benghazi Massacre calling Romney a liar – priceless.
Is Romney’s debate statement about preexisting conditions anything but a lie?
Wow, Jim, you just discovered that politicians lie?
Here’s what you seem unable to understand, Jim. That revelation has less shock value than you believe because everyone hear (except you) knows that politicians lie.
You may believe that liberal politicians are plaster saints, but realists know that *all* politicians are flawed — and vote for them anyway. This is called pragmatism. So, constantly screaming that Romney isn’t a plaster saint, while no doubt pleasing to you, is not an effective form of argument.
Edward,
Jim will accept that politicians lie. He just thinks it the (R ) side who does it.
Obama is out there making jokes about cutting off Big Bird.
But let’s face it…in this day and age of cable, satellite, 500+ channels, internet, netflix, the library…..if you can’t see your way to cutting government funded television channels with the debt at $16 Trillion – hundreds of trilions when you count unfunded liabilities….
with the fiscal cliff looming….
with all the evidence of the EU slapping you in the face….
if you bitch about cutting PBS funds…..
Then you simply are NOT serious about cutting and you will not cut anything.
with the fiscal cliff looming….
You mention the fiscal cliff as if it means a big jump in the deficit. You do realize, right, that it’s the exact opposite, a big drop in the deficit?
“Fiscal cliff” as in the term leftists like yourself used in reference to the debt created during George W. Bush’s 8 years. “Fiscal cliff” as in the term you now try to remove from the national vocabulary so as not to tarnish the image of The One.
Big Bird is part of the 1%, a multi-billion dollar bonanza for the CPB the past couple of decades. So of course he deserves a subsidy.
Besides, aren’t PBS supporters always telling us that the subsidies are just a small part of all the money they get? You’d think they’d be glad to keep the Right Wing Moral Majority types from having subsidies as an excuse for telling them what they can and can’t show.
Jim writes:
“But it isn’t easy to take away a government benefit. ”
Which is why there should never be such things in the first place except for extremely special and limited situations – like if you were injured while on government service (i.e. military service).
Then Jim expostulated:
“You mention the fiscal cliff as if it means a big jump in the deficit. You do realize, right, that it’s the exact opposite, a big drop in the deficit?”
You CANNOT be that thick…can you?
Do you really believe that if taxes go up for everyone (and yes they are scheduled to go up for the middle class too since the Bush Tax rate cuts cut for all taxpayers), in this economic situation, that revenues will go UP?
Do you REALLY believe that?
Really?
With all the evidence of the last 12 years in front of your face?
If you really believe that , then you are utterly clueless.
Yes Greg, he is JUST that dense. Daily, sometimes hourly, he is quite thick in his comments here.
I think we need to give Jim some credit here.
To change the trajectory you need to decide to change what it is we use government for.
Bullseye Jim. Right on target.
The government is trying to be an insurance company. A job it is absolutely, totally and completely ill suited for. See what I just did?* It is a big mess and it will be hard to change. It has to change. Mitt will not be able to change it much in a term or two because so many of the American people don’t understand this as well as you do Jim. But it must be done.
*provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. This whole phrase is about the military. It is not referring to welfare in the modern sense. The federal government has no business being involved in the modern welfare state.