Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Conservatives calling out Romney for lack of substance

Romney's been getting killed in the polls.  FiveThirtyEight.com is now projecting around an 80% chance of an Obama victory.  Several prominent conservatives in the media have been attacking Romney in the last day for failing to propose specific policies.  They seem to be under the delusion that doing so would help him electorally, but regardless, it's nice that my pressing Romney for specifics is picking up steam.

4 comments:

TableTopJoe said...

I fervently with that Romney would detail his proposals for us. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that he never will. Therefore, when he gets crushed in 56 days, the younger members of the Republican party (see Cantor, Christie, Rubio, Ryan, et al) will attribute his defeat not to the fact that the modern Republican party is bat$hit crazy, but to the fact that Romney was "insufficiently conservative" and didn't "articulate conservative principles clearly enough."

Accordingly, if you think the Republican party has a bad case of the crazy right now, just wait until 2016.

On a personal note, most of my "conservative" family and neighbors (Indiana) is approaching unbearable at the moment. I may have to go into exile for the next cycle.

Val said...

I'm fairly certain that if Romney loses, regardless of what he said during the campaign, the Republicans are going to brand him a flip-flopping Massachusetts moderate so fast you'll head will spin. All the red meat and policy specifics in the world won't be enough to convince anyone that Mitt's a true believer at this point.

nyb said...

Thing is, he *is* a flip flopping Massachusetts big-government republican. He's trying to brand himself as not one, and failing. Modern Republican governance is just right-wing versions of left wing policies. Medicare part D, NCLB, etc. Bush wasn't conservative on much of anything, but since he was insufficiently progressive on social issues, he was branded an evil small government conservative. Clinton was wrong - the era of big government was only temporarily put on hold until the republicans figured out that people want free stuff. They claim they'll cut government, but they never do.

TableTopJoe said...

NWest, you are absolutely right. Modern Republican governance is just right-wing versions of left-wing policies. The thing is, though, that at least Democrats campaign as the moderately liberal politicians they are. Republicans, however, campaign as conservative class and/or cultural warriors and then do nothing once in office except divert public resources into the pockets of their rent-seeking donors.

And as to your discussion of "free stuff", it comes in more forms than merely tax breaks or the EITC. What about labor laws that enable casino moguls to crush the unions in the casino capital of america? I can't imagine that Sheldon Adelson has that in mind when he cuts 8 figure checks to politicians. Or what about oil and gas leases at rates that were set during reconstruction? That can't possibly be why Exxon and BP are pouring massive amounts of money into American politics, right? What about the carried interest rate exception, among so many others, that Wall Street bankers enjoy?

My point is that we have one party that is bought and paid for by the well-to-do, and another party that is mostly owned by the well-to-do. One party has no concern for, and even openly denies the existence of, the "national interest." The other party at least pays lip service to it, both in campaigns and in governance.