Although Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is not as clear on the matter as former Minnesota senator Norm Coleman, Snyder may be giving consideration to running for the GOP presidential nomination.
Coleman is going around saying that Rick Snyder has, in fact, made up his mind. “I met with Rick Snyder yesterday. He’s running. He’s running.”
So far, nothing so clear from Snyder himself, but who needs confirmation when you have rumour?
Snyder, who was recently re-elected for a second term, is a business-oriented and comparatively socially moderate Republican. A former president and chairman of the board of the computer company Gateway, he won a Republican state primary in 2010 as a first-time candidate and underdog who ran as “One Tough Nerd”.
In office, Snyder has pushed legislation to put Detroit under emergency bankruptcy management and signed a controversial “right to work” bill that greatly restricted the ability of unions in Michigan to collect dues from members.
Coleman's enthusiasm notwithstanding, Snyder spokesman Jarrod Agen tells a different tale.
Governor Snyder is traveling the country to tell the remarkable Michigan comeback story. The country can learn from the historic reinvention of Michigan and the governor is helping change the perception of the state nationally.
[...]
The governor indicated that he’s watching the presidential race closely and hoping a common sense problem solver emerges, but he has not made any decisions about entering the field at this time.
What does it say when someone like Snyder starts to look at running? It may say that there is so much uncertainty in the process that the ultimate winner could in fact come from outside the current crop. You get a relatively popular governor and he's bound to look in the mirror, read the daily press clippings, and at some point and say, "Why not me?"
But the other possibility, mentioned in a Politico story, is that Snyder is "just trying to raise his national profile [and realizes] he would face long odds."
Of course, these reasons could be related. Because there is so much uncertainty in the GOP nomination process, someone with a legitimate bio like Snyder is bound to try for and get a some media attention, which no politician is going to turn down.
What's going on: I saw this one on CNN's ever-moronic morning show yesterday. I could tell it was CNN because the hosts were going on about how clever the ad is, which, given how stupid the ad is, is what you would expect from CNN.
As gentle piano music plays, Land starts off by saying "Congressman Gary Peters and his buddies want you to believe I'm waging a war on women." Incredulous, Land asks, "Really?", then insists: "Think about that for a moment." The music shifts to a peppier, almost annoying trope that signifies "waiting around" as Land takes a sip of her coffee, looks at her watch, shakes her head ... and says nothing at all for 12 seconds.
Then, thinking she's the cleverest lady ever, Land finally breaks her silence and declares, "As a woman, I might know a little bit more about women than Gary Peters."
Are we really supposed to believe that the mere fact there are female politicians and candidates in the GOP means we therefore cannot have a substantive policy debate about how Republican policies adversely impact woman? Is that the point? If so, and I'm afraid it is, it's a stupid point. Again, Kos nails it when they write that "[a]nyone swayed by this kind of 'argument' is almost certainly already very hostile to Democrats—the sort of conservative who declares, "There's no 'War on Women' because Monica Lewinsky!" For the record, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin's decision not to run again has made this race competitive. Land, a former Michigan Secretary of State, will be running for the Republicans and U.S. Rep. Gary Peters for the Democrats. Polling done as recently as March and April has it close, which is likely how it will remain.
Grade: As you can see, I don't think much of this cringe-making ad, which obviously wouldn't move any vote and might even alienate some who actually think for themselves. D-
Detroit, the cradle of America's automobile industry and once the nation’s fourth-most-populous city, has filed for bankruptcy, an official said Thursday afternoon, the largest American city ever to take such a course. The decision to turn to the federal courts, which required approval from both the emergency manager assigned to oversee the troubled city and from Gov. Rick Snyder, is also the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in American history in terms of debt.
New York magazine notes optimistically that "a bankruptcy proceeding will allow the city to shed some of the billions of dollars of liability it has and get something close to a fresh start" -- and so maybe this is the start of a long rebuilding process that will see the city prosper once again. Or maybe not. After all, where is the money for rebuilding supposed to come from? What would the source of any future prosperity be? Will businesses ever return in significant numbers? Will people ever return? And if not, what do you do with a large and largely dilapidated city that has passed the point of no return? Would it just go the way of the cities of antiquity, falling ever further into ruin, one day perhaps a destination for historians and archeologists? Whatever the case, Detroit's demise, like the demise of industrial America generally, is a sad thing. And if you want to know how it all happened, watch this video:
I've always liked former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. I thought she might take a look at running for the Senate seat made available by Sen. Carl Levin's decision to retire. Alas, it was not to be.
As is becoming common these days, she rejected the idea using new media, writing on her Facebook page:
Friends, thanks for all of the encouragement on the Michigan Senate seat, but I’m not going to run. I appreciate all of the outreach I’ve received; for several reasons it’s just not right for us (it’s a family decision). My best to all the contenders — Levin’s US Senate seat will stay blue!
According to Roll Call, Democrats are indeed in a strong position to hold the seat given the way things have gone in Michigan recently.
Potential Democratic candidates include Debbie Dingell, the wife of longtime Rep. John D. Dingell, and Reps. Gary Peters and Dan Kildee.
On the GOP side, Reps. Mike Rogers and Justin Amash, former GOP Chair Saul Anuzis and former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land are mulling runs.
Roll Call is reporting that Scott Romney, Mitt's brother, is giving some thought to running for the senate seat that will be vacated by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). According to the piece, Romney is a "Harvard-educated corporate attorney at the Detroit-based law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, LLP."
Scott Romney is not exactly a political high flyer, having once run unsuccessfully for the Republican Party nomination to become Michigan Attorney General and having lost an election for a place on the Michigan State Board of Trustees.
Whatever. I guess if your last name is Romney you think you're are just naturally qualified to do anything.
As for the Democrats:
Rep. Gary Peters told The Detroit Free Press editorial board that he is “going to seriously consider” running. Peters, who ended 2012 with nearly $500,000 in cash on hand, is considered the Democrats’ top recruit.
Levin's recent announcement that he would not seek re-election in 2014 has set things in gear in Michigan on both sides of aisle.
This should be a hold for Democrats, but it's still a concern that so many are choosing not to run in 2014.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has decided to veto a bill that would have allowed concealed weapons in such places as schools, day care centers, sports arenas, bars, places of worship, hospitals, dorms, and casinos. The bill had been passed by the legislature the night before the massacre in Connecticut.
That might have had something to do with his decision to back away from the bill.
The approval rating of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is in the gutter, according to a poll released Tuesday, the strongest evidence yet of the political perils associated with the right-to-work legislation he signed into law last week.
According to the latest automated survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, only 38 percent of Michigan voters approve of the job Snyder is doing, compared with 56 percent who disapprove. In PPP's previous survey of Michigan in November, Snyder's approval rating was 10 points above water: 47 percent of voters approved of his performance as governor, while 37 percent disapproved.
The right-to-work bill, signed by Snyder amid mass protests, appears to have changed the political climate in the Great Lake State. Fifty-one percent of Michigan voters oppose the bill, which made Michigan the country's 24th right-to-work state, while 41 percent support the legislation. Moreover, Snyder trails every Democrat in hypothetical matchups of the 2014 gubernatorial election.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, nothing focuses the mind like impending political oblivion.
Laura Conaway at The Maddow Blog has a good summary of the rush by the Michigan legislature to pass right-to-work in the state where the modern labor movement was born:
What's all the more interesting is that up until about twenty minutes
ago, Gov. Rick Snyder had no interest in passing right-to-work and he
was bragging about how well the state was doing in terms of the economic
recovery (i.e., GM and Chrysler's rebound). Now all of a sudden the
economy is on the edge of going under unless this law passes.
If, as the Republicans are always telling us, the labor union
movement is dying and has no power left to wield, why do they suddenly
need this kind of legislation in the first place?
I'm thinking of starting a weekly rundown of the best writing I find online, because a lot of it doesn't get mentioned here because I have nothing to add. That is very much true of John Nichols at The Nation who manages to write brilliantly on the local and national level. This evening, he wrote an article that gave me a little bit of hope about Michigan, "GOP, Koch Brothers Sneak Attack Guts Labor Rights in Michigan."
As you have likely heard, the Michigan senate managed to ram through a right-to-work bill and it is certain to be passed by the house and signed by Governor Rick Snyder. Unfortunately -- and I think this is a big part of its power -- most people are confused about what right-to-work means. It certainly sounds like a good thing; who could be against more rights?! But as with similarly Orwellian phraseology like the Clear Skies Act, it is bad. Nichols suggests the term "no-rights-at-work."
I wonder if Romney will just lie now about having said we should let Detroit go bankrupt? I'm waiting for it.
Latest news is that GM is announcing the creation of 2,000 new jobs in Michigan, beginning with up to 1,500 at a new information technology center in Warren.
It's unclear where GM would add the other 500 jobs, but the state says the innovation center is the first of three projects the company will announce.
GM will invest $300 million combined for the three. The state said GM plans no major investment spending on the information technology center; it will be housed in an existing building undergoing renovation on the Warren Tech Center campus.
The center will hire 1,500 new employees within four years and will add to information technology employment already in Warren, Randy Mott, GM's vice president of information technology and chief information officer, said in a Friday interview.
If you haven't seen perhaps the best political video of the season, that's about to change.
Bridget Mary McCormack is a candidate for Michigan's State Supreme Court. Her sister, Mary McCormack, is an actor who just happened to play Deputy National Security Advisor Kate Harper on the "West Wing."
McCormack, who launched her bid for office in March, told her sister about a common problem on many state ballots: People vote for the party candidates, but often skip the non-partisan portion where judicial candidates are listed. For years, people have been trying to get the word out, without much luck.
Lightbulb moment! Mary called Janney and Whitford, her closest friends from “West Wing,” and asked them to do a campaign video. “They said ‘sure’ and it spiraled from there,” said McCormack. Others signed on to reprise their old roles: Richard Schiff, Joshua Malina, Janel Moloney, Lily Tomlin and Melissa Fitzgerald. “I think it’s a testament to their good will and good friendships,” the candidate said.
As the Post writes in their lead:
Trying to get your campaign video to go viral? How about getting the cast of the “West Wing” to reunite?
Yes, I'll bet that would work. The other thing is that this little clip reminds me how much I miss the "West Wing." What a show.
From here on out the polls are going to come very quickly. It'll be hard to keep up. Just to give you a sense of how things look at the moment, yesterday Political Wireaggregated a bunch of swing state polls. In one sense, it's close, but things are starting to move:
A new USA Today/Gallup Poll of twelve swing states shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney by just two points, 48% to 46%
You like me! You really like me! (Uh, no, not really.)
No, it's not an Onion headline. It's all quite real. Perhaps all too real for one Willard Mitt Romney.
According to a new PPP poll, the voters of one of Mitt's home states, the one of which he was a one-term governor, the one where I went to college... yes, that would be Massachusetts...
According to this poll, Massachusetts voters don't much care for Mitt. Obama's ahead 55-39. And that's not the end of the bad news for Mitt:
Romney does not have a good image in Massachusetts. Only 39% of
voters have a favorable opinion of him to 56% with a negative one. When
they reflect on Romney's tenure as Governor, only 40% say they approve
of the work he did to 46% who disapprove. That represents a downturn
since 3 months ago when voters in the state approved of his time in
office by a 48/40 spread, suggesting that the Obama's campaigns attacks
on his tenure are having an impact.
Massachusetts voters don't even really regard Romney as one of their
own despite his time as Governor -- only 25% say they consider him to be a
Bay Stater, while 65% say they do not. There doesn't seem to be a state
that wants to lay claim to Romney -- when we polled Michigan last month,
only 24% of voters said they considered him to be one of their own to
65% who said they did not.
Now, Mitt (or any Republican in any presidential race) never really stood a chance in Massachusetts. Nationally at least, it's a solidly Democratic state.
But one might expect a former governor and one-time moderate, a business-oriented Republican, to be doing at least a little better there. Or at least to have a higher approval rating, to have a better reputation, to be more widely respected, to be more popular, more liked... even by Democrats.
But no. Not at all.
And so it seems, if you take how he's doing in Massachusetts and Michigan, two states that have had some experience with him, that the more people know of him the less they like. (Which is something Richard and I have been saying for a long time now.)
Of course, Utah knows him as well, what with his Mormonism and work on the Salt Lake Olympics, but that's a right-wing state, more to the right than Massachusetts is to the left, that would prefer any Republican to any Democrat (and likely any Mormon versus any non-Mormon). It doesn't refute the point, as it's an outlier.
Ultimately, the election will come down to swing states like Ohio and Virginia, not Massachusetts or, likely, Michigan. But what holds true in the latter two will likely hold in the former two. Romney will have a tough time overcoming himself, and voters, more and more, will not like what they see in him, from him, or about him.
A male Republican House leader in Michigan silenced two female Democratic state legislators on Thursday after the pair tried to advance a measure that would have reduced access to vasectomies.
While discussing a bill that would erode the availability of abortion, Reps. Barb Byrum and Lisa Brown introduced an amendment to apply the same regulations to vasectomies that GOP lawmakers wanted to add to abortion services. The debate grew heated, as Republicans sought to gravel down the women. Byrum was not permitted to speak in favor of the measure and Brown was repeatedly interrupted. "I'm flattered that you want to get in my vagina, but no means no," she said. The next day both were silenced.
*****
Ari Adler, spokesman for House Speaker Jase Bolger (R), said the women "will not be recognized to speak on the House floor today after being gaveled down for their comments and actions yesterday that failed to maintain the decorum of the House of Representatives."
"Decorum," huh?
Translation: Women should just shut the fuck up and do what we say. They're lucky we even tolerate their presence outside the kitchen and bedroom. Who says we don't have a God-given right to Viagra and vasectomies? For fuck's sake, no one's telling us what we can or can't do with our penile instruments of patriarchy! Certainly not a couple of stupid bitches.
It's helpful when Republicans expose themselves for what they really are, isn't it?
Well, for Republicans it's either that or get Romney and his gang of rich douchebag prep school toughs to go beat up undesirable voters (i.e., those more likely to vote Democratic) one by one.
Much easier just to fuck democracy, and rig elections, by effectively disenfranchising people en masse.
As much as we all sorely wished that the recall effort in Wisconsin
would succeed, I don't know many people who were actually shocked when
it failed on Tuesday. The odds against winning were formidable. The
recallers gathered thousands more signatures that they would ever need
and it looked like that fact alone might carry them along to success,
but Big Money fought the recall,
turning the image of valued public employees into thoughtless
money-grabbers at a time when belts had to be tightened. They
portrayed Scott Walker as a tough, savvy, pro-business leader who was
willing to take on the union-heavy public institutions responsible for
dragging the state down. That was the story, and the voters bought it.
In Wisconsin, the recall effort was an actual election, pitting Governor
Walker against his 2010 gubernatorial opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom
Barrett, who seemed like a nice guy with a compelling promise to bring
fair, honest governance back to that state but who, in the end,
couldn't make the case broadly enough.
The word on the street the morning after the election was that voters
thought recalls should be used against more egregious actions by a
sitting governor. Killing the chances at collective bargaining for all
public workers apparently didn't fit the bill. The word on the street
was that nobody cares about unions anyway, and good riddance to them.
The word on the street was that Wisconsin is and always has been an
unpredictable state and that this was a colossal waste of money and effort,
no matter how many signatures were gathered and no matter how worthy the
message. (Not much mention of the tens of millions of dollars Walker's
buddies threw into the race to keep his regime going.)
Michigan Rising, an organization working to gather signatures for Governor Rick Snyder's recall, announced on Wednesday that it is calling off the recall challenge. An effort to gather
enough signatures fell embarrassingly short, and the loss in Wisconsin
became reason enough to end it.
We know now that recalls aren't the best way to protest. The fact that
only two governors in our country's entire history have ever been
recalled, and that Scott Walker was only the third to ever have been
challenged, says something about the chances for success. The chances
were pretty much nil from the start.
We liberal activists are getting used to failure, and getting used to
failure is not a healthy thing. It's demoralizing and it's way too easy
in the aftermath to just give up. It isn't that our hearts aren't in
it, or that we don't take the fight seriously. It's that we've never
run into such concerted, committed opposition before, and we don't have a
clue about how to handle it. We're fighting a vast faction with a
mighty war chest bent on taking over this country by making our own
government work against us. The proof is out there, practically in neon
lights, that Republican governors of many of our states have signed up
for the takeover.
They follow an agenda set out for them by right-wing organizations fully
capable of fighting the battle for the states all the way to the end,
and they're determined not to stop there. They've forced nearly every
single Republican politician to sign a pledgenever to raise taxes or their funding will dry up as quick as dung in the desert sun. It's the Grover Norquist plan, and even though Grover Norquist has no real credentials, he is the
frontrunning Republican rule-maker and nobody in his party ever seems
to wonder who died and made him king.
The diabolically clever part of the "never raise taxes" plan is
that it can be used to effectively kill any program the Republicans are
against. Any social program, any essential safety net, can die an
unnatural death by defunding, underfunding or outright abolishing,
thanks to the new rules set in place by the likes of Norquist, ALEC, the
Koch cabal, the Supreme Court Citizens United decision, and
various Tea Party newbies in the House who have promised to shed real
red blood if necessary in order to honor the edicts of the monied right wing.
Occupy Wall Street
enthusiasts can camp out on the sidewalk and conduct their exquisitely
egalitarian group discussions. Anarchists can gleefully smash windows at
Bank of America and Starbucks. Union members can set up phone banks and
carry picket signs. But as long as elections are there to be bought, a
handful of billionaires will have a far louder voice in who runs the
country than all the activists on the left combined.
As a country, we've dug ourselves into a hole so deep daylight is but a
distant dream. The news from Wisconsin is not good but it can't be the
end. We liberals and progressives can win this thing if we work
together and build our own formidable counteracting factions. (See Bernie Sanders.) It's our only chance and we can only get it done if we set aside our
differences and work together with one goal in mind: That saving our
country is a cause worth fighting for.
There is a truly frightening enemy out there and it isn't us. Not any of us.
It does not appear President Obama will have much difficulty carrying Michigan in the fall, at least not according to recent polling by Public Policy Polling (PPP), which found the president leading Mitt Romney by a margin of 54-38 percent.
As for anything that might count as home-field advantage, Romney doesn't have much of that as only 24 percent of voters consider him a Michigander as opposed to 65 percent who do not. His favourability rating is 35/57 percent in the wrong direction.
According to the PPP poll, it isn't just that Romney is so unpopular in the state. Obama's approval ratings are strong with a 53/41 in the positive direction.
Perhaps the most telling number is that 55 percent of voters think Obama is better for the automotive industry compared to 31 percent who think Romney is better. Maybe Mitt shouldn't have taken such a public stand to let Detroit go bankrupt. Bet he wishes he could have that one back.
Here's something interesting. Mitt Romney has ties to three states that have been called "home states" for the presumptive GOP nominee: Massachusetts, Michigan, and California. He was born in Michigan and his father was governor. He was the Governor of Massachusetts. And he has an ocean-front home in California and numerous family connections there.
Unless something dramatic happens, he's going to lose all three to President Obama in the fall. I'm not saying it means anything as such, but it can't feel good to be so poorly regarded in states where you've spent so much time. I guess it adds further proof to my claim that to know Mitt is to dislike Mitt.
Mitt Romney does a lot of Romneying, and I've been calling him a privileged rich douchebag for some time now, but let's not forget, on a more serious note, that he made his money as a vulture capitalist who destroyed jobs and ruined lives, and that, not to put too fine a point on it, he's basically an insensitive asshole.
Sure, he can joke around with Leno when the questions are the softest of softballs, but every once in a while, and actually rather frequently, we get to see what sort of person he really is. Take what he said yesterday, as reported by New York's Alex Klein:
Mitt shared some of his connections to the state of Wisconsin on a conference call.
One of most humorous
I think relates to my father. You may remember my father, George
Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors... They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha,
Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And as the president
of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all
the production to Wisconsin. Now later he decided to run for governor
of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and
moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him,
for his campaign.
The joke is laying off working-class factory workers. The punch line is screwing over Michigan, the state in which he was born.
Hilarious, eh? And so very Romney. This is who he is.
(Another installment in our "Behind the Ad" series.)
Who: Mitt Romney in an ad called "Growing Up."
Where: Michigan.
What's going on: In the ad, Romney is driving around in a car on a street somewhere in Michigan. He is narrating himself as various scenes are shown depicting the Detroit auto show, workers at a Chrysler plant, and the General Motors tower in downtown Detroit.
Mitt Romney clearly wants to remind Michigan voters that he grew up there and his ad, the first one designed for the state's Feb. 28 primary, is an explicit home-town appeal. He reminisces about his father, a popular former governor and auto executive, name-checks the renowned auto show and uses imagery designed to remind voters of the Motor City's glory days. If that's not enough, he concludes by asserting that the state's fate is "personal" for him.
The ad comes at a delicate time for Romney. While he recovered somewhat by winning Maine's caucuses last weekend, he's still nursing wounds from Rick Santorum's sweep of nominating caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, and Missouri's non-binding primary. Santorum's momentum has pushed him ahead of Romney in a handful of national polls and in early Michigan surveys. If Romney is to regain momentum before the potentially decisive Super Tuesday primaries on March 6, when 10 states vote, he badly needs to win in Michigan.
But the part about the ad that really stinks is the strong suggestion that President Obama is somehow to blame for Detroit's woes.
Again, The Washington Post:
He also implies that Obama's policies played a role in the auto industry's collapse, which is not the case. After noting the industry's decline in one breath, Romney then says Obama "did all these things that liberals have wanted to do for years." Regardless of the merits of Obama's policies, they didn't bring about Detroit's ills. The auto industry in general, and Chrysler and General Motors in particular, were collapsing before Obama took office in 2009. The decision to continue the bailout of GM and Chrysler, which Romney doesn't mention, was one of Obama's first major decisions in office. Romney publicly opposed the bailouts and reaffirmed his stance this week in an opinion piece published in The Detroit News.
I don't know if I should give the ad grudging respect for creating a grossly false impression without actually lying or if I should be disgusted by yet another example of bullshit coming out of Romney's mouth to support his run for the GOP nomination.
Well, actually, I do do know. This is pathetic.
Hard to believe that anyone could actually lower the level of political discourse coming from the right, but Mitt Romney has.
Mitt Romney was wrong about the bailout of the auto industry -- he was against it, and therefore in favor of the industry collapsing, and it's been a rousing success -- and yet continues to be riding the wave of his own failure.
In an op-ed in yesterday's Detroit Newt, Romney argues that the bailout was a bad idea, notes reluctantly that there has been some "indisputable good news" (i.e., GM and Chrysler still in business -- he doesn't mention all the jobs that would have been lost, all the lives ruined, all the families destroyed), and then shifts course and blames President Obama for mismanaging the bailout, apparently because criticizing the bailout itself is now ridiculous.
And for what specifically does he blame Obama. Well, it should come as no surprise that Romney plays the ever-popular-in-GOP-circles union-bashing card and blames him for not "standing up to union bosses," specifically Democratic and pro-Obama union bosses. And also for giving "American taxpayers," through the Treasury Department, a share of GM:
This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. The president tells us that
without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe
that without his intervention things there would be better.
Instead of a bailout, Romney preferred "managed bankruptcy." In other words -- surprise, surprise -- he wanted the banks to win, not the union -- not, that is, the workers.
By the spring of 2009, instead of the free market doing what it does
best, we got a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style.
Thus,
the outcome of the managed bankruptcy proceedings was dictated by the
terms of the bailout. Chrysler's "secured creditors," who in the normal
course of affairs should have been first in line for compensation, were
given short shrift, while at the same time, the UAWs'
union-boss-controlled trust fund received a 55 percent stake in the
firm.
Confused? (Sure, it's complicated.) I'll let emptywheel's Marcy Wheeler explain:
He's complaining, of course, that VEBA (the trust fund run by
professionals that allowed the auto companies to spin off contractual
obligations – retiree healthcare – to the unions) got a stake in Chrysler
while Chrysler's secured creditors took a haircut.
So, in part, he's basically complaining that the bailout preserved
the healthcare a bunch of 55+ year old blue collar workers were
promised. He’s pissed they got to keep their healthcare.
He's also complaining that banks took a haircut, as would happen in any managed bankruptcy.
But it's more than that. He's complaining that a bunch of banks that
themselves had been bailed out had to take a haircut. He's complaining,
for example, that JP Morgan Chase, Chrysler’s largest creditor at the
time and the recipient, itself, of $68.6B in bailout loans, had to take a haircut on $2B in loans to Chrysler.
When Romney says he wants the free market to do what it does best, he must be referring to the sort of vulture capitalism over which he presided at Bain Capital, the sort of capitalism that rewards banks and investment firms will billions upon billions in profit with no regard for the human toll of their actions.
In the editorial, Romney, whose former company profited
from a government bailout, called on the government to sell its shares
in GM and return the profits to taxpayers. In other words, Romney is
fine with destroying the company when it isn’t succeeding, but then
wants to seize its profits if it turns around.
Meanwhile, he continues to ignore the success of the rescue plan he criticizes. Chrysler posted its first profit more than a decade in last year and expects those profits to continue growing in 2012. It has added 9,400 jobs
since its rescue and plans to add 1,600 more at a plant in Illinois
this year, and the success of Chrysler and General Motors has helped
American automakers control more than half of the industry's market share.
The industry has hired enough workers to make up for all those laid off
during the recession, and American and foreign automakers plan to add 167,000 jobs at American plants this year.
Now, the demerits (and privileged rich douchebaggery) of his argument aside, what of the politics of his positioning? Surely this will kill him in Michigan, where he's currently trailing Rick Santorum, no? Er, no. As David Dayen notes at Firedoglake, "This isn't quite as suicidal as it looks. Romney needs to win Michigan, and Michigan Republicans actually don't support the auto rescue,
in true what's-the-matter-with-Kansas fashion. So though this looks
like the opposite of pandering, that's what it is, playing to the
conservative lizard brain conception of greedy unions." Mistermix makes the same point at Balloon Juice:
We all know that Santorum is toxic as a national candidate, but the
problem for Romney is the only way to beat Santorum is to adopt the same
anti-gay, anti-woman and anti-progress positions in the primaries and
bet that he can somehow reverse course this Fall. The longer the
contest draws out, the more Romney has to pander, and the more he turns
himself into the Goldwater-like candidate that the Republican
establishment is desperate to avoid. There are two more debates before Super Tuesday and Mitt's going to have to be pretty fucking severe if he hopes to keep up with the new front-runner.
But of course it is suicidal in the long run, assuming he wins the nomination and finds himself up against Obama for real. Dayen again:
For the state as a whole, however, it's a really dumb double-down,
especially when it can be so easily characterized as Romney favoring
banks over people's health care. Not to mention the fact that
Michigan's unemployment rate has fallen precipitously, led by
manufacturing. Romney's lament about managed bankruptcies and union
trust funds sounds like a fan whose football team has won 35 games in a
row complaining about the new trim on the uniforms.
Well, it sounds much worse than that. It sounds like a privileged rich douchebag with a plutocratic sense of entitlement (as I've been writing for some time now) who got it terribly wrong but who is lashing out at Obama, advocating for the interests of the super-rich at the expense of everyone else (and at the expense of the economy, which he needs to be in bad shape to have any hope of winning in November), steadfastly refusing to acknowledge his own errors, and shamelessly pandering to the extremist base of his party.
Basically, what else is new?
The problem, for him, is that in doing and saying whatever it takes to win the Republican nomination, now more of a challenge with Santorum posing such a serious threat, he's effectively destroying whatever hope he has of winning in November. And the longer this remains a tight race, the longer Santorum keeps up the fight, the worse it will be for him.
Survival now, suicide later. Or, rather, survival through suicide. Isn't it ironic?
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For more on all Romney's attack on the auto bailout, see Steve Benen at his new home at The Maddow Blog, where he posts this clip from last summer -- Romney being so very, very wrong, and certainly not someone who should be trusted with the presidency:
A blog on politics, philosophy, science, sports, and the arts -- featuring news, commentary, and analysis by Michael J.W. Stickings and the Reaction team.
