Five Republicans who are not democrats

Leave aside for a moment the favored policies of the ten Republican presidential candidates in the prime-time debate and the seven in the second-tier happy hour debate.  While there were very few actual policy differences, at least five candidates expressed startling contempt or disregard for the core structure of U.S. government, democratic constraints on the executive, international law, or the most basic standards of evidence for assertions made in public. 

Here's a quick look at five violations of the norms of democratic government as understood in the U.S. and internationally.

1. International law banning torture is not "brain surgery." Here's neurosurgeon Ben Carson responding to a question from Megyn Kelly: "As president,....would you bring back waterboarding?"

Alright. You know, what we do in order to get the information that we need is our business, and I wouldn't necessarily be broadcasting what we're going to do.(APPLAUSE)

We've gotten into this -- this mindset of fighting politically correct wars. There is no such thing as a politically correct war. (APPLAUSE)

Fallows builds up Romney the debater

Positing that in an election this close, debates are likely to be decisive, James Fallows has done the Obama team the service of seeking to spark in them a salutary fear of Romney's debate prowess -- while also highlighting the structural hurdles that any sitting president faces in debate, especially when defending a poor economy.

Going to the tape from 1994, 2002, and 2011-12, Fallows builds a well-supported portrait of Romney's strengths and weaknesses: he is intensely prepared, on message, willing to attack, and generally comfortable on stage -- but also weak on policy substance and often vulnerable when caught by surprise and forced to go off-script, at which moments he can be either weasely or tonally off-key (I"ll bet you ten thousand dollars"...).

I think Fallows missed an aspect of Romney's debating, however, in which I (as an Obama partisan) place great trust: his untrustworthiness, which I think is apparent to viewers of all political persuasions.  I therefore disagree somewhat with the overall assessment of Romney's 2011-12 primary debate performance that Fallows presents as both his own and that of experts:

Romney Rule #14: You are responsible for your side's Super PAC; I'm not for mine

No one could improve on Greg Sargent's exposure of the fathomless hypocrisy behind this demand by Mitt Romney that Obama repudiate the Priorities USA ad blaming Bain for an uninsured woman's death from cancer:

“You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad,” Romney said on the radio. “They were embarrassed. Today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.”

As Sargent points out, "fact checkers have called out his ads as wrong, inaccurate, misleading or false again and again and again and again and again and again and again. If Romney pulled any of those ads, I’m not aware of it."

I would just add a supplement: Romney has been very specific about the extent of a candidate's responsibility for Super PAC ads that support his candidacy.

On January 16 of this year, Fox's Juan Williams, posing questions in a GOP primary debate, invited Santorum to follow up on a prior attack on Mitt's mendacity:

Brainstorming for Santorum

High-profile "conservatives" think that Rick Santorum is losing because he hasn't been bold enough.  Strategist Richard Viguerie told ABC's Michael Falcone that supporters recently met with Santorum to "come up with a list of  'big bold ideas to grab control of the narrative and turn the campaign around.'”

Being of a bold nature, I want to help! After a visit to ricksantorum.com, I am bursting with ideas. My efflorescence (effluvia?) below.

Strengthen families

• Institute an individual mandate requiring heterosexual marriage for all adults over 30.
  
  
•  Provide tax breaks for regular church attendance. 
  
  
• Present every American newborn with a Bible, a drill and a gun (alternative: make the presentation as soon as conception is confirmed).
  
  
• Launch a real War on Pornography; authorize and train Citizens' Watch Groups to mine data captured by the NSA, and arm and empower them to arrest their offending neighbors.

Strengthen education 

• Provide every home-schooling parent with a salary and benefits comparable to those procured for teachers by the local teacher's union.
  
  
• Revamp school curricula to ensure that no learning material implies that the United States government, people or armed forces ever committed an unselfish, immoral or imprudent act.

In defense (a little) of Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney is regarded pretty much across the political spectrum as the most malleable and opportunistic of candidates, willing to say anything to get elected.

If, however, you accept the premises that a) Romney has the ability and skill set to be a good president,  b) his only path to the presidency is the Republican nomination, c) he would make a better president than any other Republican candidate, and should therefore seek the nomination, and d) to win that nomination, he has to adopt many positions that he would not otherwise adopt, then it is true, as Romney has protested, that "I've been as consistent as human beings can be" (btw, I always found it telling that he pluralized that, effectively confessing to multiple personalities).

Romney's core positions sound like Republican orthodoxy. But generally, they are not only less extreme than those of his rivals, bu also vague enough to leave him room to tack back to the center, particularly if the Democrats retain at least one house of Congress or at least a filibuster firewall.  For example:

In Mesa, Santorum completes his demolition of Romney's false Romneycare/Obamacare contrast

One GOP debate story has unfolded in installments. Over the course of several debates this year, Santorum has serially picked apart Romney's faux contrast between Romneycare and Obamacare. He hammered home one more key point last night, in Mesa AZ.

In the fall debates, Romney's rivals couldn't or wouldn't do this. Pawlenty famously chickened out. Perry tried, but he was apparently too ignorant of the core elements of each plan to drive home the fundamental similarities.   Santorum perhaps didn't have enough air time when there were eight on the stage and he was out on the wings

But since his strong showing in Iowa it's been different. On January 19 in South Carolina, he started in on Romney's insistence that while he created a free private insurance exchange in MA, the ACA imposes government-run healthcare -- never mind that the subsidized exchanges created by the ACA are essentially identical to the Massachusetts system. Santorum insisted on the equation:

92% of people in Massachusetts had health insurance, and Romneycare just expanded that to be full subsidized by the state of Massachusetts. Romneycare did not create a marketplace. It is a very prescriptive program. He is arguing for and defending a plan that is top down. It is prescriptive in government and was the basis of Obamacare.

 On January 26 in Florida, Santorum zeroed in on the individual mandate:

The race for fearmonger in chief

What soul-weariness it is to try to begin to fathom the evil spoken by the thugs and frauds seeking the Republican nomination in tonight's CNN debate in Mesa, AZ.  Gingrich, Santorum, Romney.  When the discussion turns to foreign policy, there is nothing these three won't say to inspire the fear and hatred they think will push themselves past their rivals for the nomination and ultimately tear down Obama. Nothing. Romney says that Obama caved to the Russians -- in negotiating a treaty that six former secretaries of state and George H.W. Bush supported as a fit renewal of the START treaty.  Santorum asserts that Obama could have made the Green Revolution in Iran a success, when the merest hint of concrete U.S. support for any group in Iran is toxic. Gingrich tells the audience "you live in a world of total warfare" at a time when a lower proportion of humans is dying by violence than ever before in human history.  Santorum builds Iran into a global threat of supersoviet proportions. Gingrich justifies a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran -- with unstinting U.S. support -- purely on the basis of what Israelis might "think" Iran will do if it ever gets a nuclear weapon.

Gingrich, finally, always one to take the crown in demagoguery, delivers the coda: under Obama, "as long as you're an enemy of America you're safe." And Romney, outdone as usual in potency of demagogic phrasing but never behindhand in his will to smear and lie, immediately agrees.

Gingrich, Santorum, Romney. They are in different degrees and proportions liars, frauds and fearmongers (with an admixture, in Santorum's case, of sincere fanatic Islamophobia). One of them could be president. One of our two national political parties is degenerate. We are in peril.

Falstaff for president

Not really much of a point here -- just a rhythmic rhyme triggered by "listening" to Mitt Romney on the printed page. Here he is explaining why he's not concerned about the poor:

We have a very ample safety net, and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. But we have food stamps. We have Medicaid. We have housing vouchers. We have programs to help the poor.

And here is that old fraud Falstaff, puffed up by momentary good fortune and the victorious young Prince Harry's favor, invoking the 'safety net' circa 1400 (or circa 1600, in Shakespeare's England):

What! a young knave, and begging! Is there not wars? is there not employment? doth not the king lack subjects? do not the rebels need soldiers?  (Henry IV part 2, I.ii.)

Given Romney's mindless foreign policy posturing, his actual provision for the poor may have something in common with Falstaff's, as well as his unconcern.

It's interesting too that Romney thinks that the 90-95% of Americans he credits with being middle class have no concern with food stamps (45.8 million recipients, approximately 15% of the population) or Medicaid (48.6 million people, 15.9%, including one third of all U.S. children -- and 60% of nursing home residents).  No indication of any awareness of the connection between education and poverty, or housing segregation and poverty, or even, cf. Santorum, cultural habits and poverty.

Go tell the Democrats: the golden Newt-goose is dead

Newt was tamed and shamed tonight -- not only by Romney but by Wolf Blitzer. It was fascinating to see him reach for an old trick -- one that brought him glory just a week ago -- and find his hypocrisy stripped so bare that an attentive eight year old could catch it.

Immediately after attacking Romney's investments, Gingrich was asked by Wolf Blitzer if he was satisfied by Romney's release of his tax returns (for 2010, with 2011 promised). Gingrich's response, according to a partial transcript:

Cook little pot, cook!

Don't wake me...if you'd told me two months ago that the Republican presidential candidates would be tearing Mitt Romney apart like this, I would have dismissed it as wishful thinking. A Rolling Thunder Review of early primary season:

You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and making $20 million for no work, to have some fantasy [Romney's immigration policy] this far from reality” (Gingrich, 1/25).

When Mitt Romney invented government-run healthcare, Romney advisers helped Barack Obama write the disastrous Obamacare...Romneycare sent premiums spiraling out of control, hiking premiums, squeezing household budgets...Now, desperate to save his failing campaign, Romney promises to repeal Obamacare. How can we trust him? Think you know Mitt? Think again. (Winning Our Future, ad, now running).

The difference between Gingrich and Romney distilled

Andrew Sullivan takes a crowbar to the political scientists' notion of a Republican "party establishment" and bends it into its new shape: a 'leadership" captured by Limbaugh and Fox, bound to adopt rhetoric and policy that runs on demonizing the opposition -- by means that Gingrich pioneered.

Reading Sullivan's precis of Gingrich's speech, it struck me that the difference between Gingrich and Romney is embedded in one phrase:

Listen to Gingrich's victory speech. It was completely, fundamentally, organizationally Manichean, if you'll pardon the expression. He limned a familiar battle between independence and dependence, pay-checks vs food stamps, America vs "Europe", the American people vs elites "forcing people" for 35 years not to be American, the traditional America vs the "secular, European style socialist bureaucratic system". There is no gray here. There is no nuance. And there is the imputation to the other side of malign motives, secret agendas and foreignness that has been Gingrich's hallmark since the very beginning, when he assaulted the traditions of the Congress until that institution eventually had to repel him (emphasis guess whose).

Santorum promises universal daycare!

Igor Volsky relays the historic announcement live:

Santorum: "This is an election about whether you're going to leave your children free. Period.

Santorum double-blind

The core of Rick Santorum's domestic policy and governing philosophy is to boost the two-parent family. That's his anti-poverty program. Here he is in today's debate in New Hampshire:

And I believe that there’s one thing that is undermining this country, and it is the breakdown of the American family. It’s undermining our economy. You see the rates of poverty among single- parent families, which are -- moms are doing heroic things, but it’s harder. It’s five times higher in a single-parent family.

We -- we know there’s certain things that work in America. The Brookings Institute came out with a study just a few -- couple of years ago that said, if you graduate from high school, and if you work, and if you’re a man, if you marry, if you’re a woman, if you marry before you have children, you have a 2 percent chance of being in poverty in America. And to be above the median income, if you do those three things, 77 percent chance of being above the median income.

Socratic Santorum sidetracks students

Rick Santorum laid a bit of a trap yesterday for some indignant college kids who confronted him about gay marriage at a student convention in Concord, NH yesterday.  David Corn recounts:

Two students asked Santorum how he could justify this opposition with his opening remarks that focused on the guarantee, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that no American shall be deprived of the "pursuit of happiness."

"So anyone can marry several people?" Santorum asked. "What about three men?"

 

Santorum...asked the students to justify gay marriage. When one said, "How about the idea that all men are created equal and [have] the right to happiness and liberty," Santorum asked, Are you saying that everyone should have the right to marry anyone?

The student said yes. And Santorum quickly retorted. "So anyone can marry several people?"

No, the student said.
But what if someone can only be happy if he or she was married to five people? Santorum asked her.

Others in the crowd starting jeering him. "That's not the point," one shouted.

But Santorum, who kept cutting off the students, stuck to this argument. When the students talked about equal rights, he repeatedly interrupted, "What about three men?"

"That's irrelevant," one of the students said.

"No, it's not," he said.

"That's not what I'm talking about," she said.

With a smile, Santorum said, "If we're going to have a conversation based on rational, reasonable thought…if people say it's okay for two, then you have to say why it's not right for three."

Santorum was diverting the students (with some success, it seems; I can't find a full transcript).  He was suggesting that their argument was that the state has no right to regulate or define marriage.   The question is on what basis the state excludes some relationships from marital status. For Santorum, it comes down to God's law:

GOP debate: Santorum misquotes Lincoln

In the GOP debate tonight, Santorum took a shot a Romney after Romney, defending the healthcare reform bill he passed in Massachusetts, asserted that the individual mandate is in accord with the Massachusetts Constitution but not with the U.S. Constitution. Santorum said, roughly, what's wrong is wrong, regardless of written law. Then: "Lincoln said, states have no right to do wrong."

Coincidentally, I just wrote about Lincoln's First Inaugural today, noting that Lincoln not only affirmed the Southern states' right to maintain slavery undisturbed, but said that he would not object to a Constitutional amendment codifying that right.  So I looked up Santorum's cite, which is from the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Lincoln did suggest that in an ultimate sense, the states have no right do to wrong, insofar as no one has a right to do wrong (the actual quote was with reference to Douglas: "he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong." Full context below.)  But in the very same passage, he first affirmed the Southern states' legal right under the Constitution to maintain slavery, and asserted that Republicans would not interfere with that right.