My brain has already initiated an auto-destruct program for all neurons containing any information about Mitt Romney’s campaign. It won’t take long for the program to reach completion because Romney ran a campaign about nothing. He was supposedly going to fix the economy because he supposedly was good with numbers. But he wouldn’t give us any details about how he intended to create jobs or fix the budget deficit or anything else. So, really, what is there to remember? That corporations are people?
Because Romney never articulated any plan, and eventually adopted Paul Ryan as his running mate, the Ryan budget plan became official Republican orthodoxy. It’s no surprise, then, that the Republicans don’t have any counteroffer for the president other than the Ryan Plan.
They accuse the president of upping the ante, but they literally have no idea how to respond. They say, “We’re not giving the president what he asked for,” but they don’t know how to come together around an alternative plan. And that is because no one is in charge. It would be bad enough on its own to have their presidential candidate leave the stage defeated. But, when Bush left no heir-apparent, and Romney took no leadership, the party just began to drift aimlessly. The only affirmative things they did were aimed at opposition and obstruction. They built the Tea Party to kill the health care bill. Then they won power, instead. They still control the House of Representatives but they are terrified to suggest anything that the government actually ought to do. And they are also terrified to articulate in plain legislative language any translation of the nihilist ideology they’ve cultivated.
Why? Because people don’t want massive tax cuts for the rich coupled with shittier Social Security and Medicare. They would rather give themselves AIDS than support the Ryan Plan or any conceivable alternative the modern GOP might ralph up on them.
Who is going to pull it all together and make a proposal to the president? John Boehner? Didn’t we learn that John Boehner has no clout with his own caucus during the debt ceiling fiasco?
Seriously. Who is going to step up?
I predict that we are going over the cliff for the simple reason that there is no head on the GOP chicken.
For some reason this you tube kept coming to mind. All I could think of as I watched it was these guys heading out to fetch someone stupid from certain death, but I also was screaming at the screen ‘captain’ hard to starboard you fool!
Rep’s have literally no one in the ranks who can lead them out of this storm. In a Molly Ball piece today she wrote about a Rep meet where the last line is a quote, that the party will return in a thunderous way. In 2016…
Jeb Bush. There is no one else.
Well, to be fair, for all we know it wasn’t safe to turn to starboard till they did — that’s a helluva rocky coast and who knows where the channel out was? I can bet the captain did.
Impressive bit of seamanship there, and hoo boy but those Coast Guard cutters are tough.
True enough. I’m thinking it may have been a Japanese vessel. But regardless, the time when a ship is most vulnerable to waves is when they are hitting her broadside, particularly with a hull as long and narrow as that one. The sight was so extreme it did make me think of how the R’s are exposing their broadside for a long time and without the option of using bow thrusters, or let’s face it ‘knowing the channel’ they are asking to be rolled over.
Japanese, American, whatever nationality — the Coast Guard or similar service, they do an amazing job, generally without receiving the glory and acclaim of the other military branches. That was a brutal enough trip out of that harbor, and it was a sun/clouds day, not a night of lashing rain/sleet/snow.
Been rescued by CG twice and had the distint honor of actually being in the position of rescuing them one time. Their bravery and seamanship legendary, as well it should be. Just one last you tube !
They bet everything on Barack Obama losing in NOvember.
They never had a Plan B.
They never did.
I believe we’re going off the fiscal curb too.
The President is telling them – give me your plan.
Their plan is to defend tax cuts for the rich and gut entitlements. They talked about that bullshyt during the election about it being an election of ideas…
hell no it wasn’t. Because they lied about what they really wanted. The Ryan budget is who they are. And, they didn’t run on it. They ran away from it during the election.
so, off the curb we go.
Only in the last weeks did Romney tout his abilities to “reach across the aisle” and be a more bipartisan president than Obama, when suddenly it seemed like a good idea.
He lost, and they swiftly repudiated him. Now they expect Obama to pick up Romney’s briefly-worn mantle of “bipartisan compromiser”?
I don’t recall Obama EVER campaigning on his successes at building a coalition of wingnuts and Dems. To his credit, he tried harder than I thought he should, but it was a goal at which he failed.
So there is not one single reason why he should be expected to adopt the strategy of conciliation and compromise now. His long game has no room for a scorched earth policy, but that is the landscape, and he knows how to play it better than any of us.
Grimly satisfying. If only because the man told so many lies.
This is too rich:
Did anyone ever consider asking Mitt what he drove after he said that Ann had a couple of Cadillacs?
Terribly inappropriate to compare Mitt and Ann’s acceptance difficulties with that of Al and Tipper considering that Gore won and Romney lost. Plus Gore started at the bottom of elected federal office as a Congressman and worked his way up to the privilege of running for POTUS after twenty-four years.
In defense of the Romneys, nothing wrong with a catered dinner from Boston Market for Thanksgiving. Better food than I’ve had at some home-cooked TG dinners.
Meh.
Corporate turkey seems about right.
Did you buy your turkey from a ranch or from a corporate supermarket? Should we insult all the non-cooks that order their TG meal from Target, Whole Foods, etc? Or had their meal in a restaurant? Have never done either but either would have been preferable to what I’ve seen a few non-cooks go through to serve a bad holiday dinner.
I had my Thanksgiving at my cousin’s house. When I have it at home, I get my bird from the Amish.
No real Thanksgiving dinner – sounds like he and Ann are depressed (too depressed to cut ahead of his kids to get the food)
God to drink those tears. 🙂
“God to drink those tears. :)”
Along with a shot of tequila and twist of schadenfreude for garnish.
yes, Ann misread her destiny!
My favorite part of that was actually Bob Shrum finding a way to get himself randomly involved again. Has he ever, even once in his life, been unavailable or unwilling to give a quote? He must be on standby 24/7.
This may be one of the only stories ever for which Bob Shrum can claim genuine expertise: handling the aftermath of a losing presidential campaign.
Have you ever been to La Jolla? It’s only drawback is it can be hard to get in and out of because of traffic. Other than that, I cannot imagine a better place to recuperate, particularly if you own property there. Some of it’s views are stunning. And La Jolla Cove is a state treasure.
I just don’t see that article like others do. Even the pic of him pumping gas, well…..good for him.
He was not a good candidate, he lost, and now he is gone. No hard feelings Mitt……now go count your money.
.
No hard feelings?
Really?
The man raped the truth and then he sold it to his friends to rape some more.
Really.
He told lies trying to be elected to the highest office in the world. But it’s not his lies that were worst, it’s that he believes, in his heart, he is superior to poor people. But he is not alone in that. He is not even the worst offender. So I more pity him than hold some feelings of revenge or other emotion. Shoot, the rich guy whose house we are remodeling right now feels the same. And trust me, his wife is worse than Ann Romney. Eavesdrops.
Let’s see what he does now. If he removes himself from the stage, and quietly goes back to making money, I’m fine with that. So far so good. No interviews, no comments. Good for him. Maybe I will even be the one that remodels his house (I doubt it, we aren’t Mormons). Grudges should be given sparingly, to those who really earn them. McCain? Now there is a loser that deserves a grudge.
Romney got the worst that can happen to someone like him. He lost to the black guy. Right now, that’s good enough for me.
wasn’t just telling lies. He pioneered the campaign based completely on lies.
Wrong. I just watched Trading Places last night and Eddie Murphy was right. The best way to hurt rich people is to turn them into poor people.
great movie, that!
Kinda tugs at your heartstrings, doesn’t it? Poor guy, I bet he cries all the way to the bank.
Ironically, it doesn’t really how much money one has (at least beyond a certain point). The first $50,000 or so is important. Beyond that, it’s diminishing returns. Mitt has got to be a profoundly unhappy man. To go all across the country, lying as he did, sacrificing one’s reputation, chasing some illusive goal — it speaks to a corelessness.
Obama seems like a man who wants to change the world for the better. It’s not all about him. For Romney, like Bush, it was, is and always will be ALL about him. How sad.
After spending tens of millions attacking Obama for cutting Medicare, the Republicans now demand that Obama present a plan to cut Medicare.
AND NO ONE SEEMS TO NOTICE.
Worse yet, it seems the White House is offering $400B in Medicare cuts to providers.
This is the big Achilles Heel of single payer, the lure of using monopsony power to save money by squeezing the providers. Outside of the cities, it is hard to find a Medicaid provider for this reason. I fear Medicare providers will be hard to find soon. The ACA exchanges hasten this process because providers will have an influx of paying patients offering more money than Medicare patients.
Sounds like yet another reason to live in cities. Increasing density is a good way to mitigate climate change while furthering the economic dynamism of cities that underpins the economy.
OTOH, cities are great places to catch diseases. I believe the infection rate goes by the square of population density?
But in cities you are within reach of medical knowledge and technology to assist you rather than having to be airlifted for 2 hours or something.
The MSM is totally suffering from lack of an identifiable GOP “leader.” Four years ago they were able to continue trotting out McCain and Palin as if they hadn’t lost. After Romney’s “Obama won because he gave stuff to poor people,” he made himself toxic to the GOP and the MSM when along with that. Ryan seems to have been stashed in a secret location.
Last week one of the NPR show had the sleazy fraudster Ralph Reed on as a GOP spokesperson. But mostly they air whatever blather Boehner utters that day.
Probably the same place they hid him during the campaign. Hopefully he will stay there since his idea of economic policy is anarchy and collapse.
Each election the Republican candidates are weirdos Romney and Ryan are two very strange people.
Yep, I agree we will go over the cliff. The forced vote Ms. Nancy has proposed is their only way off the cliff but the GOP has so demonized her….they cannot accept help from her. So, what happened to the defense cuts?
I believe that’s why she offered – their only hope off of the cliff coming from Pelosi, so they have to go off the cliff.
I seem to remember a guy named George W. Bush the MSM talked about so excitedly about years ago.
Maybe Willard could ask that guy for some advice.
not a cliff. Stop using that term.
It’s a total fucking apocalypse. How’s that?
If I hear one more person talk about a bump or a slope, I am going to punch them in the mouth.
Sorry, I refuse to buy into the panic. I’m hoping that no deal is struck.
I’m hoping the GOP is too scared of the cliff to avoid total capitulation.
They screwed themselves — and saved us — when they refused to take “yes” for an answer in 2011. Oh well.