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 So Much for a Populist GOPPosted on Jan 18, 2012
AIKEN, S.C.—Members of the tea party insisted they were turning the GOP into a populist, anti-establishment bastion. Social conservatives have long argued that values and morals matter more than money. Yet in the end, the corporate and economically conservative wing of the Republican Party always seems to win. Thus was Mitt Romney so confident of victory in Saturday’s South Carolina primary that he left the state briefly on Tuesday for a fundraiser in New York City. And why not? The power of big money has been amplified in this campaign by the super PACs let loose by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and lax regulation. You cannot watch the morning news shows in this state without confronting an intricately confusing blitz of ads, some paid for by candidates, others by the supposedly independent PACs. One kind is indistinguishable from the other. And the nature of the ads shows why it would be a major upset were Romney to lose here. Although Romney’s opponents direct some of their fire his way, they are spending a fortune tearing each other apart. Rick Perry’s backers take on both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Ron Paul assails Gingrich and Santorum, too. Romney’s supporters have piled on with ads against Gingrich. Gingrich flicks aside Santorum and Perry with faint praise in his speeches, as he did here on Tuesday night, maintaining that “the only effective vote to stop Mitt Romney is Newt Gingrich.” And it does seem, from the polls and the buzz, that Gingrich is the only option whose momentum gives him at least an outside chance of getting by Romney. But Santorum and Perry are not giving way, which is why Romney could afford his side trip to Manhattan. Advertisement Bob McAlister, who served as the late Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell’s chief of staff, said a Romney victory would be the result of the conservative split, “not because Romney is so strong or well-liked by South Carolinians.” The confusion was obvious at the well-attended event here for Gingrich. Interviewed as they stood in line to shake hands with the candidate, voter after voter said they mistrusted Romney—Scott Gilmer, an engineer, saw Romney as “a whole lot like Obama”—but many expressed indecision between Gingrich and Santorum. What’s remarkable is that Romney seems to be closing in on a victory at the very moment when he is painting himself as the anti-populist and a tone-deaf economic elitist. Not only did he suggest on Tuesday that he pays a low 15 percent tax rate (because most of his income derives from investments); he also dismissed the money he made from speaking fees as “not very much.” It turned out that over the year ending February 2011, speeches earned him more than $370,000. That’s not chump change for most folks. Think about Romney’s rise in light of the overheated political analysis of 2010 that saw a Republican Party as being transformed by the tea party legions who, in alliance with an overlapping group of social and religious conservatives, would take the party away from the establishmentarians. If I had a dollar for every time the new GOP was described in those days as “populist,” I suspect I’d have more than Romney made from his lectures. Certainly some of the movement’s failures can be attributed to a flawed set of competitors and the split on the right, especially Ron Paul’s ability to siphon off a significant share of the tea party vote. That has made a consolidation of its forces impossible. (Romney may owe Paul an appointment to the Federal Reserve.) But there is another possibility: That the GOP never was and never can be a populist party, that the term was always being misapplied, and that enough Republicans are quite comfortable with a Harvard-educated private equity specialist. “Romney is as establishment as they come,” said McAlister. For many conservatives, he added, a fall campaign between Romney and President Obama could thus be a choice between “which of the two establishments do you hate most.” That’s not where the tea party’s promoters said we were headed.
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Say ‘Hi-Ho!’ as They Strip-Search You
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Copyright © 2012 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
By Don, January 20 at 6:10 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Willard Romney deserves scrutiny. Bain Capital group is the tip of the Romney
Report this“iceberg”. Look closer before signing on to the right’s love affair with this
charlatan !
By karl radek, January 19 at 10:14 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
You have been penned in, kettled, assaulted and
Report thisarrested. You have had your protest broken up, your
occupation invaded, your picket line disbanded. Now
you’re facing something called ‘Total Policing’.
Wherever you try to organise, you confront the state
as the constant factor in your disorganisation.
Whether ‘personated’, as Marx puts it, by the riot
cop, the senior civil servant, or the coalition
minister, you find it is always there, resourceful,
organised, centralised, almost always one or two
steps ahead, almost always with a monopoly on
political initiative. Of course, the state represents
itself as a popular, democratic institution,
upholding the general will, maintaining law and order
as the condition for the full participation of each
in the political community. Yet your experience
suggests that something else is at work, and you have
to ask: what sort of thing is the state? Is it even a
thing? Is it an autonomous power over and against
society, or does it ‘represent’ sectional (class)
interests within it? Is it an ‘instrument’ of the
powerful or a venue of contestation? What are its
boundaries? Where are its weaknesses? How does its
power accumulate, and disintegrate?
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2012/01/state-of-18th-
brumaire.html
By James M. Martin, January 19 at 5:37 pm Link to this comment
I just heard Rumney put down the U. S. Postal Service. This is like the new Wisconsin governor robbing voters of collective bargaining: blaming labor for the sins of the ultra-rich, the 1%. Our postal service is the envy of every country on earth, and as the carriers like to point out, the main reason the Service is in the red all the time is that congress robs their coffers to fund things like earmarks. I depend on the Service in my business and I receive all my mail there and at home with efficiency and swiftness of foot. Lay off my Postal Service you dweeb.
Report thisBy Bill Desmond, January 19 at 3:06 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
If for no other reason, you just cannot elect a man President whose name is Willard. Nope, sorry, just can’t.
Report thisAnd besides, a Mormon named Willard? Do you have any idea just what those folks believe? You want one of them in charge of nuclear weapons, magic underpants and all?
Sheeesh.
By felicity, January 19 at 12:43 pm Link to this comment
May I suggest that Republicans give serious thought
to the candidacy of the Italian (that fact can be
fudged) ship captain who ‘explained’ how/why he
deserted his ship with the perfectly logical
explanation that it was because he had “tripped” and
landed in a life boat that landed him on shore.
Surely, if Republicans are willing to buy Newt’s
Report thisexplanation of his 5 1/2 years of infidelity was
because he was working extremely hard (due to his
passionate love of his country) which had led to 5
1/2 years of screwing a woman other than his wife at
the time, Republicans should have no problem with the
trip-prone captain.
By bpawk, January 19 at 9:27 am Link to this comment
It’s splitting hairs when discussing Dems and Repub ‘differences’. Neither party speaks for the populace, however because nobody speaks up for themselves the elites take the silence as approval and do what they want. But why identify with the rich? That’s what’s wrong with America - citizens don’t identify with their own economic class - they reject social democracy prefering instead a sort of caesar for a president (not quite godlike but certainly celebrity material). That is the average America’s downfall - not speaking up and rejecting social democracy. Elites love a quiet populace, no matter which ‘party’. We need to take all these comments on blogs throughout the internet and send them to government officials via email. Let’s see if they notice it?
Report thisBy Marian Griffith, January 19 at 1:37 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
@robespierre
yes, we know you hate the democrats and E.J.Dionne with the passion of a jilted lover.
But this particular editorial was about the republican party, not about the many failings of the democrats.
Report thisBy Lafayette, January 18 at 11:52 pm Link to this comment
NOW!
That’s all goodness.
The Corporate Right must be shown clealy and starkly for their colours. Meaning the harm that blind corporatism/elitism/plutocratism (take your pick, they are all the same) has done to our country.
The trickle-upwards of income which is prompted by the present policy of low marginal and capital gains taxation must end. Reckless Ronnie was wrong and stupid to bring tax rates plummeting to the ground.
They had been above 60% more or less since before - see the info-graphic here.
Note also in that graphic how in the period before 1925 when they had dropped greatly - only to promote the Great Depression. We put them back up and the US prospered despite high tax-rates on the rich. Note also how they dropped to the bottom once again after Reckless Ronnie’s arrival in the Oval Office. And what happened?
The subprime mess and the Great Recession of 2008/2009 - from which we are yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And the corruption of Congress with the Right’s headlock on unlimited electoral funding.
Note finally the green-line at the bottom, which is National Debt and how it spikes upwards under Reagan’s tenure in office and is still climbing.
What more evidential proof do we, the sheeple, need?
MY POINT
We must, in this upcoming election, begin to elect progressives to congressional office. It is the Only Way that we can embark upon a profound, fundamental remake of America - from taxes to health-care to educational achievement for all.
From stopping the expensive wars to eradicating the incarceration in abject poverty at the bottom. From renewing America’s infrastructure to stopping the price gouging of oligopoly markets.
From fixing the idiocy of the Robert’s Supreme Court in the matter of electoral funding to ridding Congress of the BlueDogs and retaking control of the HofR.
And that remake will take decades. So the time to start is NOW!
Report thisBy Outraged, January 18 at 11:23 pm Link to this comment
A video almost as creepy as Herman Cain’s ad, only this time of Romney’s “spontaneity”, from TPM:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/mitt-romney-lives-for-laughter-video.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
Have you ever seen anything so abhorrently fake? It’s creepy.
Report thisBy Robespierre115, January 18 at 7:48 pm Link to this comment
“Yet in the end, the corporate and economically conservative wing of the Republican Party always seems to win.”
Wait, so the same wing in the Democratic Party never wins? Shut the fuck up Dionne.
Report thisBy NapalmShield, January 18 at 7:10 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Where’s the democracy? It should be impossible to write an article like this without mention of the lack of democracy in this system. I feel reality has been left out when it needs us to remember it most. If people didn’t believe in this ridiculous example election, it would disappear. We need the lobbyists out of the room while we clean up our government. Let’s see something about Buddy Roemer’s attempt at a candidacy!
Report thisBy mrfreeze, January 18 at 6:03 pm Link to this comment
There are only a couple of simple questions that expose Mr. Romney as someone who has no “business” being President:
1) He isn’t one of us. Not in social class, not in wealth, not in upbringing….not even close.
2) He shelters his wealth in offshore accounts. This is tantamount to placing his “economic” if not his very American interests in the hands of foreigners for personal gain. To whom is he truly loyal?
3) He runs on a “job growth” platform but repeatedly comes out and says “government” doesn’t create jobs. If he’s so amorous of capitalism and enterprise, he would do well to run for CEO of the National Chamber of Commerce where his “skills” can be maximized.
4) Anyone who listens to him long enough knows that running for President is a “hobby” for him. Does anyone really believe he’s serious about being President? He hates government. He hates the poor. He hates our safety nets. He has absolutely NO understanding of “life in America.”
And the most ridiculous thing of all: He’s not even the kind of guy “you can have a beer with” because he’s a f**king Mormon. How could we elect a president who doesn’t even know what a good glass of wine tastes like or who’s slammed a few back with friends????????
Report this