For Romney, winning old-style was never enough
A lot has been said and written in recent days about what parts of Mitt Romney’s struggles — now verging on death throes — are the candidate’s fault, the fault of the campaign, or the fault of the modern Republican Party.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, to be sure. I’ve followed politics professionally for a quarter century and Romney-Ryan 12 is slotting in somewhere in the range of Mondale and Dukakis for sheer ineptness.
(See footnote below for why I’m talking about Romney in the past tense.)
The difference though is that nobody really truly expected those guys to win.
In 2012, a lot of pundits — and the GOP’s conservative base — thought they had an opportunity to kneecap a newly minted Democratic icon. After the 2010 mid-terms, the tea party tide seemed like a national correction.
It turns out not so much. And the time has come to look with a cool head at what portion of woe Mitt Romney has and hasn’t brought upon himself.
First, it’s only fair to point out that Romney is doing just fine among the voters who used to lift Republican candidates into office. He’s winning rural voters, whites, white men, middle class families, older voters, and military veterans, often by handy double-digit margins.
According to the latest Politico-George Washington University poll, Romney holds a commanding 15% lead voters in middle class families. We noted yesterday that a poll shows him up by similar, blow-out margins in rural parts of battleground states.
Romney also appears poised to capture at least two states – Indiana and North Carolina — that eluded John McCain in 2008, and he may well take several other states McCain couldn’t rally, including Colorado or Florida.
So give the guy credit.
The problem, of course, is that winning “old-style” isn’t good enough any more for Republicans.
Since the 1980s, the GOP’s foundational voting bloc has made up a smaller and smaller subset of the overall voting population. Which means that year by year, whopper states that were competitive — like, say, California, Illinois, and New York — have slipped out of reach.
Even safe-base states such as North Carolina and Virginia are tilting more and more purple, and may even be shading blue.
It’s not just that American demographics are changing, though that’s the biggest driver — those constituencies that lifted Reagan just aren’t enough to lift Romney to victory, unless they vote in really high numbers with nearly perfect discipline.
Also significant is the fact that modern politics are increasingly tribal, increasingly ironclad.
In their respective wins, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter both built interesting coalitions of open-minded voters.
Carter merged Northeastern moderates, blacks and southern Whites. Reagan cobbled together a weird coalition that won New York and California but lost Minnesota and West Virginia.
Romney clearly hoped to do something similar, hoping to expand the GOP’s southern and Midwestern base with wins in places like Colorado, Ohio and Wisconsin. He took a stab at chipping away the Democrats’ lead among women and Hispanics.
It just didn’t happen. And probably wouldn’t have happened, even if Romney ran a much smarter, better campaign. In fact, what would have been needed is a brilliant campaign, an over-the-top campaign. A second Ronald Reagan. A second Bill Clinton.
But you can’t run a political movement on the “Great Man” theory, hoping for a savior every four years.
So give Romney credit for doing about as well as Republicans have done over the last quarter century with roughly the same groups that powered the Bush clan to victory in three different elections.
This time around, it looks like Romney will be left holding the bag for a formula that may no longer be politically viable.
(A lot of national political journalists – folks several pay grades above me — are still arguing that this is a competitive race. Unless something unforeseen happens, I can’t find facts to support that narrative. Real Clear Politics concludes that Obama has 247 electoral college votes in his column now, and that’s without Ohio, Nevada or Virginia where the Democrat leads by more than 4 points and perhaps as much as 8 points among likely voters. Obama is also leading now in every battleground state, including North Caroline. There is also not, as some journalists have suggested, “an eternity” left in the campaign. There are 42 days. In an electorate that has budged only stubbornly all year, 42 days is exactly what it looks like…not much time.)
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I agree with all your points and would add the following.
For me, Romney seems to have one main reason for running for president. He just wants to be president. I don’t see any honest vision other than that.
I think the Tea Party has hurt the Republican Party. Just saying no is not good government.
One good thing about calling the race now is that Romney will have the time to perfect his concession speech and deliver it gaffe-free.
On a sad note, it means that Brian will be forced to bring a quicker-than-expected end to his “100 Day Sprint” series.
Whatever shall we talk about now?
Brian – yes Obama is mostly a 4 to 1 favorite now but there is still a chance for Romney to pull it out. (The debates).
But the interesting question that you bring up is how can the Republican party avoid complete eclipse. Im sure something will happen, but its hard to say what. They seem to be trying voter suppression as a stop-gap measure. If your base is over 80 and their base is under 30, you are in trouble from a future perspective. George Bush, to his credit, tried to open up the Hispanic vote by pushing for immigration reform, but his party wouldnt go along. Now the fastest growing demographic group is 75% Democratic.
Yeah the demographics are just not working for the Republicans anymore. Hispanics are not the only issue, although it would make a huge difference if Romney could get 50% of that vote, as Bush did in his first election. But it also comes down to youth, working lower income people and the elderly.
I think you may see a re-alignment in the making, there is a huge difference right now in the Democratic Party between the moderates and conservatives and the Left wing of that party. That may become the new dividing line with the Republican Party becoming a strong and influential third party, but not a viable contender on the national stage.
It looks as if Texas is going to be purple or possibly blue in the next 20 years, when that happens you can win all of the battle ground states you want and it won’t matter for the Republicans.
It is sad to think that the voting part doesn’t matter. I am glad that we have pundits that can do all the work for us these days. The message here is don’t bother to vote. This could be good for the which ever candidate has strong support from older voters. The ones that vote no matter what Real Clear Politics tells them the result already is.
“Just saying no is not good government.”. I agree. I suspect that is exactly what the democratic senate would have done if Romeny had “won” the election.
“I suspect that is exactly what the democratic senate would have done if Romeny had “won” the election.”
Unfortunately, Democrats just are that strongly held together and we have blue dogs.
Reagan wasn’t up against Carter until the week before the election, and he pulled off a 489-49 vote count.
I don’t imagine all of the newsmen Carter-predictors were fired from their jobs, either.
They just quietly went on, making more wild guesses based on fallible polls.
JDM – do you really think Romney is the new Reagan?
Well voting for President in NY does not really matter on an individual basis Paul you are correct. However voting does matter as a raft of local issues where every vote matters is also on the ballot. In addition given that the electoral vote is already set in NY I usually vote for a third party candidate to help them gain the needed votes to make it on the ballot next cycle, I feel that my vote actually makes a difference in that case.
Not at all. I don’t expect a 489-49 blowout, either.
I’m not in the news business. But if I was, I would qualify my comments on polls like this:
Polls are weighted toward 2008 turnouts. If you believe the same people who were eager to turn out this year will likely be the same this year as in 2012, the results would be ….x….
It seems that the Obama sizzle has long faded. It seems that the anti-Obama motivation is higher.
Therefore, polls that weigh in on the Obama-sizzle factor are 4 years out-of-date.
JDM – re polls. The pollsters are well aware that this isnt 2008 and have adjusted for what they expect for 2012. They may be wrong – and you probably hope so – but they arent stupid. They also get paid for being right, so if they blow it badly, they wont be hired in the future (except by partisans).
I think the difference from Reagan besides the basic personal differences as a candidate; is that we are living in a different country than we were in 1980.
The voting demographics are a lot different today, I think that is the point of this topic.
Another big difference is that Romney is nothing more than warmed-over Bush II. We have cut taxes and cut taxes and cut taxes again, and look where it put us. The only thing that ever trickled down was decidedly not money.
I can’t for the life of me see why anyone would think that a return to a supply-side/voodoo economics/tax-cuts-forever/magic-of-the-marketplace administration would be any less disastrous this time than it has the last three times. It’s the definition of insanity.
JDM – the betting line at Intrade is 72% for Obama. If you right that the polls are wrong and all the bettors have their money on the wrong horse, you should place a big bet on Romney. You could make a lot of money.
C’mon Brian, you’re writing the post-mortem before the election! There will be plenty of time for gloating afterwards.
1980 was an interesting (and tragic) election. The polls weren’t wrong, its just that Reagan one over a lot of converts after the first (and only) debate in late October, and so the race shifted. Carter apparently had a sub-30 approval rating. Very different from the present race. Here is the scoop: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2008/10/reagans_comeback.html
I remember going to a Reagan speech (where he ranted about polluting trees), and being angry about Carter’s military buildup and his support of dictators (including hostile policies against the Sandinistas). Really. I saw the two parties as a case of two evils. I voted for John Anderson.
Walker, you can argue about other tax rates but every time gains taxes has been cut it lead to increased revenue for the government. Not insanity at all. Folks that cash in on investments and realize gains are almost always putting that money back into some other investments. It might be to pay Knuck for a camp job or to start a company or to buy a house all of which stimulates the economy without increasing the debt.
The markets have priced an Obama win so I think that there we are in pretty good shape. The “fiscal cliff” is a tricky one. That will probably whack the market hard and kick most middle class 401Ks and union pension plans in the butt again. Too bad.
Here are the kind of facts that journalists should be reoporting forget about polls. From the Washington Post:
” The facts
After hearing from sources in the intelligence community that President Obama was not attending his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis, I asked researchers at the Government Accountability Institute, a nonpartisan research group headed by Peter Schweizer (who is also my business partner in a speechwriting firm, Oval Office Writers) to examine at Obama’s official schedule. We found during his first 1,225 days in office, Obama had attended his daily meeting to discuss the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent.”
“Folks that cash in on investments and realize gains are almost always putting that money back into some other investments. It might be to pay Knuck for a camp job or to start a company or to buy a house all of which stimulates the economy without increasing the debt.”
Says who? I’d say they’re more likely to buy more stock– big deal. Besides, it may lead to a modest windfall in revenues now, but it’s robbing from future revenue: if I sell now because rates have fallen, my gains will be smaller when I sell next. And in any case, the government is giving up on the income provided by a higher rate.
Besides, you’d get just as big or bigger a bump if you announce a future increase in tax rates: people will sell now to avoid the higher rate that they know is coming.
In any case, you’re really reaching here– this is fairy dust stuff!
what if the polls are wrong? Sometimes they are. Which is why I hate horse race analysis stories. Why not just let people vote?
Warm up the bus.
Here are the kind of facts that journalists should be reoporting forget about polls. From the Washington Post:
Since media has to have it both ways these days, here is a link to the other “facts” about Obama attending intelligence meetings. It sounds to me the way to go is to read the briefings and then ask questions if necessary. Or, you could listen to the intelligence briefings and hear only what they want to tell you, like some other president who didn’t like to read (obligatory “Bush bashing” here).
All this capital gains tax ranting is a crypto-socialist attack on capital as is the constant agitating for increased taxes. People who don’t pay taxes, or who pay very little, are always interested in seeing them raised. Let’s call it what it is: jealousy. You want some? Go out and get your own.
How is hearing only what they want to tell you different from reading only what they want you to read? PNElba, I understand the need to deflect the focus from Obama’s shortcomings but surely you can do better than this.
I wouldn’t warm up the bus yet as this is far from over IMO……
Ah, who knew that Ronald Reagan was a crypto-socialist:
At least Reagan cared about the fact that his tax cuts had worsened the deficit, and he raised taxes to try to offset the failure of the “Laffer Curve” fiction. This was, of course, before Grover Norquist convinced Republicans that the deficits resulting from huge, tax cuts just the ticket for shrinking government: “Oh dear, look at that monster deficit! We’d better cut social services immediately!”
What Larry said: These polls are crypto-socialist math.
Interesting conversation. But one point-of-order must be called:
In what seems like an endless appetite for equivalency, several posts allude to the likelihood that a Democratic Congress would have resisted a President Romney just as the Republicans have resisted Obama.
There is, however, little to support that notion. The historical fact is that, under Bush, members of Congress — with significant support from both parties — accepted his initiatives on education, on tax cuts, and on war. They allowed him to ban stem cell research, to suspend rational regulation on oil drilling, and to reduce taxation on capital gains. And when this country was attacked, politicians of both parties stood with him, shoulder-to-shoulder.
The fact is that the GOP strategy over the past four years to oppose any and every position of the Obama administration — no matter how recently they had embraced the same position, no matter how dire the economic risk or immediate the terrorist threat — is unprecedented.
No equivalency whatsoever in past performance. We have no historical basis to predict such continuous and implacable behavior from the Democratic Party. We can only hope that American voters will deliver a decisive message that the Republican performance must not be repeated.
“What Larry said: These polls are crypto-socialist math.”
Actually, OA, what Larry said was “…this capital gains tax ranting is a crypto-socialist attack on capital…”
I didn’t know there was a branch of mathematics called “crypto-socialist math”. How does that work?
New In Box challenge: Find a sentence in which “crypto-socialist” is a positive adjective, without employing irony.
–Brian, NCPR
Easy:
A lot of liberals would like Obama better if he acted a little more like a crypto-socialist.
“Says who? I’d say they’re more likely to buy more stock– big deal. ”
The history of economics says so.
But investing in the market (buying stock as you say) is a big deal and the markets play a huge part in the economy. I know that many people like to think this isn’t the case but the capital markets are what everything in the economy hinges on.
But I think that even folks that pretend this isn’t the case understand that. Apparently for some Wall Street is only capable of bringing down the economy. Why do you think that they have the ability to do that Walker? Could it be that they have the ability to bring the economy up? Of course they can. You are delusional if you think they can only bring it down.
Paul, where do you get the idea that I think Wall Street can’t help the economy? In a major sense they are the economy.
Trouble is, what’s good for the economy isn’t always good for the country.
If 47% of the population was unemployed and going broke (just to pick a number) and the next 51% were just scraping by, while the wealthiest 2% was raking it in hand over fist at such a rate that it more than made up for the luckless half, that would be “good for the economy.”
“How is hearing only what they want to tell you different from reading only what they want you to read?”
Well Larry, it’s pretty simple. There may be a well written briefing with lots of nuances and counterviewpoints.
Then there can be the oral briefings where the person(s) doing the briefing stress what they believe and leave out other “minor” facts that might be in the written brief. Facts that might lead to questions from someone who actually read the briefing. I believe this was one way the war in Iraq got started based on presentation biased information.
“The history of economics says so.”
Paul, apparently you missed my September 25, 2012 at 5:23 pm? Or at least this part of it: “In the printed copy of his Congressional testimony, Burman has a chart that plots the ups and downs of the economy since the 1950s with changes in the capital gains rate. There is no correlation between the two. The idea that a lower capital gains rate spurs economic growth is one of the enduring myths of conservative thought.”
See the original post for context.
Walker, I did not say that the capital gains tax rate controls the economy, obviously there are many other factors.
Charting the economy versus one thing like gains taxes is silly.
Like I said if you look specifically at revenue associated with capital gains tax you will see a positive correlation with lower rates and higher revenue. It isn’t a myth.
So tell me are you one who ascribes to the idea that Wall Street can bring down the economy but that it has no positive effect? That is a real myth of some that I hope you don’t buy.
Walker here is the chart you should be looking at. You will see that at each point that gains taxes are lowered the revenue from the “elected” tax goes UP. There are small spikes in revenue when rates are initially raised as folks elect to pay the lower rate before the changes kicks in but historically the trend is very clear.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577241513296604128.html
Explain how this is some kind of “conservative myth”? As I understand the presidents new tax policy he is proposing (he want to raise the rate) will lower gains tax revenue if history is any sort of guide. It may make some people feel all warm and fuzzy (stick to the rich, spread the wealth!) but in the end it will have an undesired effect.
Gee, Paul, that’s a pretty fun chart!
After the 39.75% rate was cut to 28% there was virtually no change in the tax revenue for three long years. At which point it was cut to 20%, half the original rate, and the revenue climbed slowly for the next five years until Reagan, the tax cut champion, restored the 28% rate because the deficit was climbing alarmingly. OK, so revenue falls somewhat for five years and then it starts climbing steeply for the next ten years, in the middle of which the 20% rate is restored with no appreciable effect on revenue!
Then the revenue falls steeply in 2000 for two years, and then starts back up sharply a yearbefore the rate is dropped to 15%. At this point we begin the dramatic rise attributable to the bubble, the popping of which in 2008 is the start of the Great Recession.
I’m sure your reading of this chart would be different than mine. But would it be more accurate? If we ever find a one-handed economist, maybe we’ll know. Until then the best advice would be to be careful what conclusions you draw from nice graphs.
“So tell me are you one who ascribes to the idea that Wall Street can bring down the economy but that it has no positive effect?”
Asked and answered: September 26, 2012 at 12:41 pm
No I think your reading of the chart is about right. What in that makes you think that raising the capital gains tax rate will have a positive effect on revenue??
Your claim that there is a “conservative myth” regarding the effects of gains tax changes doesn’t make sense to me based on the facts.
Thanks I missed that comment above. I get the first point but I miss the point of your hypothetical. In your hypothetical if the first point were true (47%) there would be no 51% scraping by or 2% raking it in. We would all be in the toilet.
Did I say that raising the capital gains tax rate would have a positive effect on revenue? I don’t think so.
But I do think that there is no good reason to tax capital gains at lower rates than ordinary income, and that lower rates encourage the kind of speculation that leads to bubbles.
And it’s not as if the investor class is hurting for money to invest, is it? Also low capital gains rates contribute to the transfer of the nation’s wealth to the wealthiest, which is, I think, not a good thing. If cutting taxes for the wealthy works, why we in such bad shape now?
Conservatives are always claiming that taxes are redistributing the nation’s wealth, despite the fact that wealth is moving relentlessly in the opposite direction.
There are other opinions on effects of capital gains tax cuts.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3837
http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/01/26/media-myth-that-cutting-taxes-boosts-revenue-re/186569
” In your hypothetical if the first point were true (47%) there would be no 51% scraping by or 2% raking it in. We would all be in the toilet.”
Well that’s probably true (which is a reason why the wealthy should themselves be concerned about the ever-increasing concentration of wealth).
But my hypothetical is too extreme. I worry that, thanks to globalization, the wealthy can keep hauling in the rich rewards (and making “the economy” look healthy) while an increasing fraction of the nation’s population go on the skids. Heck, look at the way the banks milk foreclosures and stick exorbitant fees on anyone foolish enough to bounce a check– there’s good money to be made off of poor folk!
PNELBa, thanks. But I just can’t get around the problem that the data show that raising the rates does not increase revenue and lowering it has. The point of taxation (even an elective tax like this) in the end is to raise (as in collect) revenue for the government. I will have to look in detail at the first link maybe they will explain how that works.
Walker, I share that concern. And I think you make a good point. It is globalization that makes the economy a complicated animal. The loss of manufacturing jobs in the US is a major reason that so many folks are on the skids as you say. If we cannot be competitive we will lose more to the skids. We should be making these 5 or 10 million new iPhone 5s here in the US but Apple knows that it can’t do that and be competitive.
PNElba, you just can’t give an inch to any conservative, can you, even on a subject as patently ridiculous as the difference between written and oral briefings? Youre going to keep bashing Bush, no matter the topic. The tit-for-tat chirping adds nothing to the debate beyond making you look silly. You can drop the condescending tone as well; you’re really not entitled to it. If, on the other hand, your objective is to stir the pot the congratulations; you’ve succeeded admirably.
“Your claim that there is a “conservative myth” regarding the effects of gains tax changes doesn’t make sense to me based on the facts.”
It was my September 25, 2012, 5:23 pm post that included that quote from the New York Times piece, “Romney and the Forbes 400”
So it was the consequences of capital gains tax cuts on “economic growth,” not tax revenue, that was being held up as a conservative myth. And PNE’s first link contains the chart referred to (“Burman has a chart that plots the ups and downs of the economy since the 1950s with changes in the capital gains rate. There is no correlation between the two.” But you have to load the pdf version here. It’s on p. 13. The full, 26-page paper is a worthwhile read if you really want to get a handle on this topic.)