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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"How Mitt would turn America into one big Pottersville"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/07/how-obama-can-really-hurt-the-gop-focus-on-its-radical-economic-plan.htmlHow Obama Can Really Hurt the GOP: Focus on Its Radical Economic Plan
by Michael Tomasky Jul 7, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
The president can sink Romney by trumpeting the details of the ludicrous economic solutions hes been backing. How Mitt would turn America into one big Pottersville.
snip//
Romney is Bush on steroids. His tax plan is far more extreme. He wants to give millionaires an averageaverage!tax cut of $250,000. The same plan would add $3 trillion to the deficit over a decade. Havent we tried this before, and didnt it help leadalong with massive deregulation, which Romney also promises to pursueto the biggest meltdown in 80 years?
The radical tax plan and its affect on the deficit hasnt stopped Romney from backing cut, cap, and balance, a congressional GOP plan that calls for a Balanced Budget Amendment! Imagine that chutzpah. Itd be as if I torched all my neighbors azaleas and then demanded we form a block-beautification committee. Cut, cap, and balance is so extreme, so ludicrous, that 35 GOP senatorsa pretty hardened assemblage, youll agreehavent signed it. Its out there in Tea Party land.
Want more hypocrisy? Glad you asked. Cut, cap, and balance requires gargantuan and immediate cuts to the federal budget. But remember what Romney told Time magazine in May?: if you take a trillion dollars, for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5 percent. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So Im not going to do that, of course.
Then theres the Ryan budget and assaults on Medicare. The fact that Romney has no actual jobs plan beyond letting the free market work its magic... Its just endless. Complete and willful vacuity. Vacuity as a matter of principle. Almost virginal vacuity, as if intercourse with facts were somehow deflowering, leading to a lapsarian state of loss of ignorance. Nothing adds up at all. No attempt is made for things to add up. Except, of course, for those core items that Romney and the congressional Republicans will agree on: cut taxes for the rich, deregulate as much as possible, and re-wreck the economy.
Its so bad its almost hard to believe. I mean this literally. Via Kevin Drum and Jon Chait, I note this nugget from Robert Drapers New York Times Magazine piece coming up Sunday. The Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA Action, did some polling on Romney. Heres one thing they found, and place your hand below your jaw, so you dont hurt yourself as it hits the table: For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget planand thus championed ending Medicare as we know itwhile also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.
Theres some word beyond perverse for thata politician benefiting from the fact that his plans and commitments are so radical that voters simply cant believe hed pursue them. That isnt the only perversity at work here. As Greg Sargent noted on his blog Friday, you might think that when the jobs picture is unsatisfactory, the political debate would be about which candidate has better policies. But instead, its a referendum on Obama. This is dumb, especially when the other guy is running on such a nest of contradictions and obfuscations. But its how life is. I get that. Even so, it shouldnt stop Obama from making it a co-referendum on Romney and the GOP. Obamas Bedford Falls may have problems, but the GOPs Pottersvilleno General Motors, no Chrysler, no health care for 32 million, no public investment at all, no regulation of banks, and all the restis an ugly place where we dont want to live.
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"How Mitt would turn America into one big Pottersville" (Original Post)
babylonsister
Jul 2012
OP
liberal N proud
(60,335 posts)1. marking to read later
4dsc
(5,787 posts)2. We need to be asking every republican if they back the Ryan budget
but something tells me we won't and I just have to wonder why. Republicans are throwing us softballs and we're striking out.
Sirveri
(4,517 posts)3. We should help this occur. Push it through.
Destroy the country, hit the big fat reset button, lose millions of people, burn the damned place to the ground, make everyone figure out why we need a society.