Francisco Franco is still dead, and Mitt Romney is still a lying liar

By Richard K. Barry 

How big was it again, Mitt?

Well, we can't say that Romney didn't warn us. We can't say that he didn't tell us that he would try to lie his way to the White House. But I'm a little surprised by this one, if only by its magnitude.

The man is so desperate to secure the Republican presidential nomination that he is now engaging in Glenn Beck levels of hysterics. Exhibit A is a speech by Romney delivered in New Hampshire last night, and posted earlier today by Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. Here's what Mitt had to say:

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.

The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off.

Here's Jon Chait's take on Romney's turn towards the dark side, although I suspect Romney has always had this kind of bullshit in him.

This isn't just a casual line. In eight sentences, Romney asserts over and over again that Obama wants to create "equal outcomes" and give everybody the "same rewards." This is nuts, Glenn Beck–level insane. Restoring Clinton-era taxes is not a plan to equalize outcomes, or even close. It's not even a plan to stop rising inequality. Obama's America will continue to be the most unequal society in the advanced world — only slightly less so. The alternative proposals accelerate inequality even further.

Steve Benen makes a point, though, that I would like to emphasize, which is that anyone who has even a passing interest in reality or civil discourse needs to be outraged by Romney's statement. If those who imagine themselves in leadership roles in their respective parties aren't even going to make a passing effort at integrity, where does that leave us?

We have all come to expect this kind of thing from Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and even Palin, but from the guy who bills himself as the sober voice of Republican reason?

I know I shouldn't expect any better, but if the general election ahead ends up being full of this kind of rhetoric, this kind of lying, it will be a very dark time for democracy in America.

Hey, PolitiFact, this is what a real fucking lie looks like. And the year isn't even over, so maybe it's not too late to change your mind.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Bully for Teddy

By Capt. Fogg

It's a funny thing, the conservative American mind. Talk about quotidian things, work, the weather, and they can be charming, witty, and companionable, and seem intelligent, but stay away from politics if you don't want to have to discard many friendships. Beneath the mask can lie a morass of anger and ignorance as deep and foetid as hell itself.

I've very often had people express nostalgic longing for a president like Teddy Roosevelt -- a hunter, fisherman, outdoorsman, soldier, adventurer ,and writer of books, a man not afraid to conquer and not likely to apologize for it. A conservative's conservative. Someone who stood square-jawed and well-armed astride the American horizon in a time of unlimited freedom, opportunity, and prosperity, when the lower orders knew their place. Thus are the dreams.

Of course, Teddy was often denounced as a Communist agitator. Today, his opinions would have the Sarah Palins and Joe who isn't a Plumbers flapping in a frenzy like decapitated chickens. He espoused a graduated income tax and more government regulation of financial markets. He advocated more government social programs such as housing for immigrants. Of course, there were no Nazis then to be falsely associated with American progressivism and no way to compare him to Hitler, as today he inevitably would be.

Roosevelt's time had seen the effects of economic booms, panics, and busts in rapid and relentless quick step. Economic inequality was growing, monopolies were tightening their grip on free markets, and massive accumulations of private wealth were threatening democracy. His vision didn't include doing nothing or faith in the power of doing nothing or blind trust of the altruism of the very, very wealthy.

Those who oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism,

said Roosevelt in a famous 1910 speech calling for a "New Nationalism." One wonders what bizarre grotesqueries of accusation would emerge had it been given today. Would people be carrying weapons to his speeches, would he be called a tyrant, would there be hysteria over the way he was "dismantling freedom"? Would they question his citizenship, his patriotism, and accuse him of murder? It's hard to tell, but surely Barack Obama has suffered worse for less radical statements.

Of course, Teddy had to remind his audience after he said,

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration,

that he was quoting Abraham Lincoln ,because he was regularly being called a totalitarian himself, as well as a Communist. Perhaps such things never change, but the perception of an America that's sliding irretrievably down a slope toward the antithetical perdition of Communism and Fascism because sentiments such as those of Lincoln and Roosevelt are essentially "far-left" and "liberal" and we're being assured of it daily by mindless maggots with megaphones.

It seems that the Niebelungs of negativity have been crying wolf for a very long time, but look at how well the average man lives today compared to how he lived a hundred years ago, when poverty consumed most of us and faith-based laws restricted huge numbers to certain neighborhoods, certain jobs, certain levels of education, and certain expectations of justice in an essentially Hobbesian society.

Somehow, I cannot believe that a hundred years of progress toward more liberal goals have made us justifiably disgruntled. We live longer, better, cleaner, and healthier, and have far more freedom to alter our circumstances for the better. The slope has not been slippery, the slope never existed. Progressive income taxation has not stifled entrepreneurship, which has thrived even in times of over 80% top brackets, and in fact it seems to dampen economic cycles. It seems the only wolves that have shown up were wearing conservative clothing and warning us of wolves.

Isn't a new nationalism what we need today? The old kind and the old attitude and the old maxims and the old and vicious, dishonest, and hate-filled rhetoric has never done us any good and have now brought us to the brink.
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Family jewels

By Mustang Bobby

Not to pick a fight with Jane Hamsher, for whom my respect knows no limit, but I don't think she's giving Caroline Kennedy a fair shake on her possible appointment to fill out Hillary Clinton's Senate term.

The woman has never run for office in her life. We have no idea how she'd fare on the campaign trail, or how well she could stand up to the electoral process. She simply picks up the phone and lets it be known that she just might be up for having one of the highest offices in the land handed to her because -- well, because why? Because her uncle once held the seat? Because she's a Kennedy? Because she took part as a child in the public's romantic dreams of Camelot? I'm not quite sure.

I recall that the same arguments were made in 2000 when Hillary Clinton decided to run for the Senate. True, Ms. Clinton is an attorney and she had worked in the Senate before becoming First Lady, but she had never run for office before, either, and she was basically anointed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan to take his seat. And if her name had been simply Hillary Rodham and she hadn't been married to the President of the United States, and had just bought a nice place in Westchester County and decided to pick up the phone and call people, what would her chances have been?

Caroline Kennedy does have one thing going for her that Hillary Clinton didn't have, and it's not just her name or her family connections. She has spent most of her life in New York and she has been involved in, among other things, education reform. She is also an attorney, and her resume is as impressive as anyone out there being seriously considered for the position. I think it's unfair to gloss over her accomplishments and disqualify her just because she is the daughter of a president and the niece of two senators. That may have opened some doors for her, but she's been the one who proved herself, and it's not her that is carrying the baggage of memories of Camelot. I also don't think she's naive enough to think that she will be above it all and not be able to take on the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics in New York or in the United States Senate.

As for the entitlement issue raised by having a slew of family connections in positions of power, I think that it sounds a lot worse than it actually is. After all, we've seen it throughout the history of the country and it pretty much balances out good versus bad (the Roosevelts vs. the Adamses; not to mention rafts of Tafts), and denigrating a potential candidate purely because of pedigree is, I think, a shallow argument. In some ways it can be a curse to be a member of a political family; for example, Jeb Bush's chances for winning the White House are pretty much shot to hell, even if he does become the next senator from Florida. On the whole we have found that family connections don't necessarily mean a lockstep continuation of policy or even political alignments; Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican and FDR was a Democrat.

I don't know if Caroline Kennedy is up to the job of Senator from New York. Then again, no one knows if anyone is, and certainly the names being bandied about (including -- are you ready -- Fran Drescher) are enough to make you wonder what the qualifications are. But she shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because of a pedigree she had no control over.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)