Ruth Marcus — Not Shrill Yet, but Mighty Peeved

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Even Ruth Marcus is dropping her usual “both sides do it” position and says Mittens is out of line and owes somebody an apology.

After all, the Republican presidential nominee wrote a book in 2010 premised on, and titled with, the false notion that Barack Obama has been going around the world apologizing for America….

…Romney repeated this falsehood in his acceptance speech in Tampa, claiming that Obama launched his presidency “with an apology tour.”

Oddly enough, Romney’s evidence for Obama’s alleged apologizing is bereft of certain words — like apology, or sorry, or regret. To Romney, apologizing means never actually having to say you’re sorry.

Oh, snap, Ruth.

So when the U.S. Embassy in Cairo released a statement condemning “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims,” Romney was predisposed to see it through the distorted, if politically convenient, lens of apology.

Ruth Marcus goes on to explain what had actually happened and why Mitt’s interpretation of events held no water. Then she said,

As irresponsible as Romney’s behavior Tuesday night, even worse was his move to double down at a Wednesday morning news conference, following word of the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other American diplomats in Libya. Tuesday night, before the killings were known, was amateurish. Wednesday morning was unconscionable.

“It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values,” Romney said, apparently believing that the embassy should have been able to foretell the attack before it occurred. In the space of three sentences, he criticized the administration for standing by the embassy statement and accused it of sending “mixed signals” by disavowing it.

The question and answer session was even worse. “Simply put, having an embassy which . . . has been breached and has protesters on its grounds, having violated the sovereignty of the United States, having that embassy reiterate a statement effectively apologizing for the right of free speech is not the right course for an administration,” Romney said.

Leaving aside his flawed timeline — later tweets from the embassy combined criticism of anti-Muslim bigotry with condemnation of the attacks — Romney’s interpretation of what constitutes an apology is once again far off-base. …

… There is something disgraceful happening here, but it doesn’t involve a comment by an obscure embassy spokesman. It is Romney’s cynical, dishonest effort to take advantage of this national tragedy for his own political ends.

I read through the whole thing looking for the “both sides do it” shoe to drop, and it didn’t drop. Of course, Ruth probably will follow this up with a column criticizing Obama for something and conceding that Romney has a point, somehow.

But, Mitt, when not even Ruth Marcus will cover your ass, you are in big trouble. David Broder must be spinning in his grave.

Update: Mitt issues a statement nearly identical to the one issued by the White House that was supposed to be an “apology.” Spine of marshmallow, or what?

The Entire Bleeping GOP Is Stuck in 1980

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First, at Nate Silver’s place (“now-cast” tab, right hand column) it says that if the election were held today, Mittens would have an 8.2 % chance of winning. That’s down 24.1 percent since September 6.

The forecast for November 6 is a little tighter (Mitt has a 21.4 % chance). And keep in mind that Mitt has a ton of money left. The swing states are going to be absolutely saturated with anti-Obama ads from now until the election. The numbers could swing quite a bit before we’re done.

But having money is one thing; knowing what to do with it is something else.

At Salon, Alex Pareene treats us to A Children’s Treasury of Conservative Commentators Pretending It’s 1980. Most of the Right is flogging the “Obama = Carter” meme for all it’s worth. And I say that horse died a long time ago, if it was ever even alive.

First, I suspect Jimmy Carter as a character in right-wing mythology is not the same Jimmy Carter perceived by the non-ideological electorate. Most voters under the age of 40 or so may think of him as just a nice old man who used to be President. Most voters old enough to remember the Carter Administration may not consider him to have been a great President, but he doesn’t inhabit the same Hall of Shame that features Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. So, outside of the right-wing echo chamber, I doubt the name “Jimmy Carter” evokes as much negativity as the Right assumes it does.

Second, it appears Barack Obama is perceived as strong and competent by most people who are not baggers or wingnuts. Get this: An Esquire/Yahoo News poll found that voters think Obama would beat Romney in a fistfight, 58% to 22%. Yes, it’s a silly question, but I think it says something about who the voters think is cool and tough and who they think is a prissy rich boy who wears mom jeans.

But yes, GOP, please do spend your gazillion dollars on ads comparing Obama to Carter. If you think it’s such a good idea, go for it. Please.

(And, one more time, this is showing us how the raid to take out bin Laden really was a political risk for Obama and really did change the trajectory of the campaign. If that had failed, the Obama = Carter meme might have some traction.)

Mittens Personality Disorder Watch: A Romney adviser is saying that if Romney were president, the attacks in Libya would not have happened. The sheer gloriousness of having Mr. Romney in the White House would cause the rest of the world to fear and respect us once again.

Mom jeans, say I.

Romney Stuck in 1980

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Truly, the more I try to fathom where Mitt Romney keeps his head, the more I suspect he really does think it is still 1980, and he is Ronald Reagan running against Jimmy Carter.

As I remember, Ronald Reagan’s main shtick in 1980 was —

  1. Jimmy Carter’s alleged foreign policy ineptness (e.g., Tehran, Moscow)
  2. Voodoo economics
  3. Evil welfare Cadillac queens

Plus there was some stuff about Carter being bad for the oil industry, and Carter supported the Equal RIghts Amendment while Reagan opposed it.

Today, Mittens is running on

  1. Barack Obama’s alleged foreign policy ineptness (e.g., Tehran, Moscow)
  2. Fantasy economics
  3. Barack Obama as the king of evil welfare Cadillac queens. Or maybe it’s Volt queens now.

Plus, Mitt says President Obama is bad for the oil and coal industries, and there’s the war on women. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Mitt is only about four years older than I am, and I’ve managed to keep up with the times. Well, I don’t have a smart phone. But at least I’ve figured out it’s not 1980 any more.

There is new violence in the Middle East today; protesters are storming the American embassy in Yemen. I don’t believe Mittens has made any new foreign policy statements today; maybe the criticism he got from Republicans yesterday penetrated his thick skull.

Seriously, his judgment on matters such as the attack on the Libya consulate and refusal to release any details of his economic policy, never mind his tax records, has been so abysmal I wonder for his mental health. He doesn’t seem to be living in the same time-space continuum as most of the rest of us.

It’s possible events in the Middle East will unfold in a way that favors Mitt, but so far he’s made the President look better by comparison. He wants the election to be a referendum on President Obama, and he’s making it into a referendum on himself. He wanted to portray the President as alien to America. I think we should demand Mitt’s birth certificate to be sure he’s from planet Earth.

Via Kevin Drum, Andrew Sprung writes,

You do not have to be expert in anything to assess the merit of Romney’s reaction — or his fitness for the presidency. You need only be a social mammal of the human species.

In response to everything Obama does or says — or, for that matter, anything his primary opponents did or said — Romney’s reaction is so knee-jerk condemnatory, so extravagantly worded, so predictably self-serving that the instinctive response for most listeners or readers not themselves besotted with hatred for the target has got to be, “this guy is faking it.” His condemnations have the rote extravagance of a Soviet communique.

At the very least, Mitt appears to be very, very bad at “reading” people and situations and responding appropriately. And this points to something very deficient in basic socialization — I started to say “character,” but it’s something even deeper than character. I don’t know if there’s a name for what Mitt’s problem is, but he appears to be miswired somehow.

Libya Crisis; Big Mitt Fail

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I understand at least 50 Marines are on their way to Libya to provide additional security for the U.S. Embassy. It always worries me to read that U.S. troops are being sent anywhere; I hope the situation doesn’t escalate.

This brings us to Mittens, who politicized events in Libya even as they were unfolding. Here is a timeline of who said what, and when.

Although I am sure there are righties defending Mitt, others usually in his corner are distancing themselves. Other Republicans are issuing statements condemning the attacks but not mentioning President Obama. Steve Benen writes,

Mark Halperin, a barometer of the political establishment’s attitudes, called this the “most craven” and “ill-advised move” of the 2012 campaign.

It’s just remarkable to see Romney unravel like this. Within hours of learning that a respected U.S. ambassador had been killed by a violent mob overseas, the Republican’s first instinct was to launch a partisan campaign attack against the president. It came after a dishonest smear of the president last night — on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, when Romney said he’d refrain from such attacks.

The nine-minute clip is well worth your time. Just two minutes in, Romney condemned messages from officials under attack in the U.S. embassy in Cairo, falsely accusing them “apologizing for our values.”

Romney noted that the White House distanced itself from the same messages, which only made this morning’s statement that much more misguided — Romney was, simultaneously, saying the White House is wrong, the White House is right, and the White House is sending “mixed signals.”

This is the video Steve Benen is referring to:

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You hear Mittens getting basic facts wrong; he still thinks that the Embassy’s original statement came after the attack on the embassy, and not before. And it’s a real hoot to hear Mittens criticize the Obama Administration on foreign policy, after one of Mitt’s adviser’s called foreign policy a “distraction.”

Howard Kurtz is signalling Mittens to zip his lip.

By slamming the Obama administration as the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in Libya, the Republican nominee has given the appearance of exploiting an international tragedy. Whether his criticism is warranted or not, the timing seems insensitive—as if Romney is more interested in scoring political points than mourning the deaths of U.S. diplomats.

Ya think? I say this is going to wound Mitt’s campaign.

See also Steve Konarcki, “Mitt’s Shameful Libya Statement“; Josh Marshall, “When You Learn They’re Not Ready“; James Fallows, “Three Quick Points on the Libya Killings.”

One more thing — I’m seeing a lot of sentiment that we must stand up for the right of free speech, which I assume means the ignorant yahoos who made the video defaming Mohammad are above criticism. Well, they certainly are above arrest. They didn’t do anything illegal. Whatever it was they produced should not be subject to censorship by the government.

However, freedom of speech doesn’t include a freedom from criticism. I would like to exercise my free speech rights by speaking my mind, except that there are no words for now disgusted I am with the filmmaker-flamethrowers. They should be ashamed.

The 9/11 Truth the Truthers Helped to Hide

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Must. Read. Kurt Eichenwald, “The Deafness Before the Storm.”

Executive summary: In the spring and summer of 2001, the Bush Administration was given a lot more intelligence about bin Laden’s pending terrorist attack than has been brought to public attention so far. The infamous August 6 “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” brief we do know about was only one of a string of briefs that provided much more intelligence about bin Laden’s intentions. The Bushies ignored this largely because the neocons who had taken over the Pentagon believed that bin Laden was trying to create a diversion from the real evil being concocted by Saddam Hussein. Seriously. Middle East experts who tried to explain that it was absurd to think that fundamentalist bin Laden and secularist Hussein were in cahoots were simply ignored. Although the Bushies did not know the time, place, and specific targets of the pending attack, it’s not unreasonable to think that if they had been on higher alert the 9/11 attacks could have been stopped.

I’m not going to excerpt the article because the whole thing needs to be read and digested. This ought to be bombshell stuff, although it probably won’t be. But I want to talk about the role of the truthers in shutting down inquiry into what the Bushies did, or didn’t do.

I began this blog in July 2002, after a number of news stories came out about how many warnings the Bush Administration had received about a pending terrorist attack. Even then there was much evidence the Bushies had been given a boatload of warnings from the retiring Clinton Administration and from U.S. intelligence that something huge and horrible was about to happen, and the Bushies ignored it.

Time went on, and George W. Bush was mythologized as the Rock of 9/11 who somehow deserved glory and honor for standing up to terrorists, even though he didn’t. I was frantic to have the events of 9/11 thoroughly investigated, and for the Bushies to be forced to answer basic what did they know, and when did they know it questions.

People may have forgotten how hard the Bushies fought to prevent the congressional hearings that eventually did happen, and that happened because some dedicated 9/11 widows didn’t give up. I thought the eventual 9/11 commission report was only a preliminary step, however. Unfortunately, political support for Bush prevented any follow up investigation, and the truthers helped the Bushies get away with this.

By Bush’s second term, the truthers and their ridiculous conspiracy theories had so muddied the waters that questioning how much Bush may have known before 9/11 branded one as an unserious crank. Liberals who told pollsters Bush knew about a pending terrorist attack before it happened were lumped into the same boat as people who still believe President Obama was born in Kenya. Van Jones was forced out of the Obama Administration because it came to light that in 2002 he had agitated for a congressional inquiry into 9/11 — you know, like the one that finally happened — and the Right rose up and called him a truther. Even to ask questions about how much the Bushies knew before 9/11 marked one as a lunatic.

Thus it was that truther craziness has stifled serious inquiry into what really happened on 9/11. This was something the late ALexander Cockburn, at least, saw clearly. I thought Cockburn was a crank himself, on many issues, but he’d been around the block enough times to have seen other wild-ass conspiracy theories create cover for the establishment and allow significant events to go uninvestigated.

I ran into a truther recently, on Facebook, who was still promoting the idea that one must either believe 9/11 was an “inside job,” the planes millions of people saw were really missiles, and that the World Trade Center towers fell because of a stealth controlled demolition job, or one must be a dupe accepting the “government version” of events. I really cannot abide truthers. I just hope I live long enough to see the whole story laid bare, in spite of the truthers.

A New Age of Liberalism?

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The Republican National Conventional appears to have turned voters off. That’s the result of a CNN/ORC poll that asked, “Does what you saw or read of the Republican National Convention in Tampa make you more likely or less likely to vote for Mitt Romney?” The “less likelies” were ahead of the “more likelies” by ten percentage points.

It’s too soon to know how much post-convention bounce went to President Obama, but all indicators so far point to some kind of bounce. And the Dems put more unapologetic liberalism on display at that convention than I have seen in a long, long time. Some rightie blogger wrote that it was the most liberal convention since McGovern’s, and he may have been right. Of course, I see that as a feature, not a bug.

Yes, the 1972 convention probably hurt McGovern more than it helped him, but that was 1972. This is 2012. A lot has changed in 40 years. Most notably, 1972 was the all-time peak year for real wages for working Americans; wages have been on a long, wavering decline ever since.

Since at least the late 1970s and 1980s Republicans have been pushing the snake oil of tax cuts, deregulation, and slashing “entitlements” as the cure-all for whatever ails the economy, and it seems to me that scam has about run its course. Even people who don’t follow politics all that closely are catching on, it appears. And after years of right-wing ideology dominating our nation’s political discourse, the Dems talked about citizenship, for pity’s sake, and it was a breath of fresh air.

At Daily Kos, Laurence Lewis wrote about the Republican death spiral.

The Republicans have no future. From climate change to national security to the economy to social justice and human rights, the list of issues on which the Democrats and public opinion are moving forward while the Republicans are stagnating if not attempting to move backward is endless. They can’t win on the issues. They can’t win on their freak show personalities. They can’t win using the principles of democracy and republic. The only hope for the Republicans is to lie, cheat and steal, and they are attempting exactly that. And to a party that now is habitually and congenitally opposed to basic scientific realities, lies aren’t incidental to their political strategies, they are in fact the basis of their world view. To a party that is openly bigoted against the diverse demographics that the rest of the nation not only celebrates but has become, voter suppression and the undermining of democracy isn’t but a political means to an ends, it is the inevitable desperation of the soon-to-be extinct. Their last and only hope is that they can buy a last election or two, and encode into law, and legislate from the bench into the Constitution an end to democracy itself.

This is right, which is why we cannot be complacent. The November election could still be close. A lot of states will remain snowed under by ultra-conservative legislatures and governors. A shrinking minority of right-wingers could very well keep progress in check for several years to come.

But the Buddha said — his last words, in fact — all compounded things will decay. It’s clear to me the wave of “movement conservatism” that picked up momentum from Goldwater and Reagan is now in its decaying phase, even as its takeover of the Republican Party is complete. Were it not for the media-“think tank” infrastructure keeping it alive, it probably would be gone already.

Now the Republican Party, which has bet all its chips on “movement conservatism” living forever, is in big trouble. It is being bankrolled by a small pool of mega-wealthy cranks and led by ideologues who cannot think, see, or feel outside of a very small box. And those two factors will prevent the GOP from adapting gracefully to a changing political ecosystem.

In short, we may soon see the dinosaurs die off and be replaced by scrappy little mammals.

Again, I don’t expect wingnutism to disappear in a puff of smoke the day after the November election. But by 2022, IMO, the GOP will have either shoved “movement conservatism” back to the fringe, or it will be dissolving into history to join the Whigs. And if one of those two things hasn’t happened, it will mean that today’s Republicans were successful in scuttling democracy itself.

Update: See also “For the Romney campaign, it’s forever 1980.”

Obama Pulling Away?

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Nate Silver says it appears the President is pulling further ahead of Romney in the polls. It’s not time to uncork the champagne bottles yet, but it’s looking hopeful. See also the BooMan.

The Right is genuinely baffled as to why their guy isn’t winning by a mile. Those of you with a morbid fascination with psycho-political pathology might get a kick out of some of their arguments today — see Power Tool John and Andrew McCarthy, for example. It’s beginning to dawn on them that they could lose. They are still hopeful that some reservoir of undecided voters will break to Romney at the last minute, but now they are entering the second-guessing phase. Have they been too “conservative,” or not “conservative” enough?

Although we may never solve the mystery of why Mitt Romney wants to be President, I am getting the impression that he, and much of the rest of the Right, thought this election would be easily winnable. All they had to do was present a candidate who looks like he could play a President on teevee, and all those folks disappointed in President Obama would flock to him. And it isn’t happening. And they are so lost inside their own echo chamber they have no idea why.

What I think is that the Democratic convention reflected what the electorate actually thinks and feels right now, and the Republicans missed that by a mile. The cut taxes/deregulate to create prosperity gag is old, and tired, and no one outside the rightie echo chamber believes it any more. And every local, state, and national candidate for office for the past several election cycles has been promising jobs, jobs, jobs, and the promises don’t cut it. Without a credible, clearly articulated plan, they might as well promise fairy dust and unicorns.

With two months to go a lot can happen, but I’m feeling pretty good about the election, and America, right now.

Did Mitt Get a Negative Bounce?

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According to the Princeton Election Consortium, Mitt actually got a negative bounce out of his convention. The data also show that the Bain/taxes attacks were hurting Romney, while the “you didn’t build that” blather hasn’t helped him.

Other polls also show that President Obama has widened a small lead over Romney.

Although I don’t want to be complacent about Obama’s election chances, I hope this means the Democratic message is resonating with people.

Nuts and Dolts

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Click only if you have the stomach — Mark Steyn responds to Sandra Fluke’s speech at the DNC with some misdirected verbiage suggesting that the oppression of women is necessary for the good of the economy.

Ann Romney wants you to know that reproductive and marital rights are not what this election is about, so you people had better stop asking her about it.

Ann Romney also wants you people to know that her husband is just oozing with goodness. No, Queen Ann, those are lies. Way different.

We now know that the Romney campaign is targeting eight states — Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire. Per Nate Silver, the only one of those currently leaning toward Romney is North Carolina. Jonathan Chait writes,

The reason this looks worrisome for Romney is that he’s pursuing an electoral-college strategy that requires him nearly to run the table of competitive states. The states where Romney is not competing (and which aren’t obviously Republican, either) add up to 247 electoral votes. The eight states where Romney is competing add up to a neat 100 electoral votes, of which Romney needs 79 and Obama just 23. If you play with the electoral possibilities, you can see that this would mean Obama could win with Florida alone or Ohio plus a small state or Virginia plus a couple small states, and so on.

Unless I’m missing something badly here, Romney needs either a significant national shift his way — possibly from the debates or some other news event — or else to hope that his advertising advantage is potent enough to move the dial in almost every swing state in which he’s competing.

IMO the targeting makes sense if you have been following Nate Silver’s data. Polling in most states is remarkably lopsided, heavily favoring one candidate over the other. Even if you had all the money in the world to burn, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to advertise in those solid red or blue states. In less than 60 days, barring some unforeseen event, no way the needle is going to move that much.