To Iowa and Beyond

I had a post almost completed for today, a civilization question, instead of the political election questions that have dominated here the past month. But I got distracted late last night watching the Iowa returns.

Screen Shot of the Interactive Map*

My son Political Sphere gets off work at midnight, and he wanted to see how it turned out too. We lasted until almost 2:00 central time, shortly after the lead changed from Santorum by 18 to Romney by a few. At that point, Romney was projected as the winner. Either way, both are assigned 11 Iowa delegates. I’m not displeased or surprised by the ending (except maybe for how very close it is). The party has gone through one non-Romney after another. Just before Christmas the non-Romney of the day was Gingrich, and while I much prefer him to Obama, I feel better about Santorum taking that slot.

Santorum gave a nice speech before the crowds in those wee hours, thanking the people who so often told him, “Welcome to Iowa.”  You can see the speech here; it’s about 20 minutes. In there he mentioned his intention to remove all regulations costing over $150 Million a year. Prior to this administration the average number of such regulations was 60; under Obama that has risen to 150—not exactly a stimulus to increase jobs. So I’m with Santorum on that plan.

I’m reminded of an aside about Iowa. We went on a family trip once where we stayed in a vacation home along the Mississippi, across from Keokuk, Iowa. On the coffee table at that house was a funny book about Iowa, trying to convince people that it actually existed. Most people, it said, when Iowa is mentioned, actually picture Ohio, or maybe that western state with the potatoes (Idaho). But Iowa is more or less invisible. We laughed about it, because it’s true we don’t know a whole lot about Iowa. But the primary caucus there, being the first, does get them some attention and respect. And the people there take it seriously. They really do turn out to meet the candidates, and they ask questions and study. If everybody took the process as seriously as Iowa does, we’d have a better electorate. So, thank you, Iowa.

Now, getting into a little of the nitty-gritty, I read something while I was waiting for results, from Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Howard Dean back in the day. It was that campaign that started using online media to connect with voters. He wrote a book I read a couple of summers ago, called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He’s a strategist, and a liberal one. I couldn’t come up with that kind of thinking in my own mind; I don’t think that way. For that arcane expertise, there must be people like him, I guess, along with Karl Rove, Dick Morris, or, more for research than implementation, Frank Luntz.

Anyway, Trippi's article yesterday had some interesting things to look at. He said:

Watch Dubuque: The county in the northeast corner of the state is heavily Catholic and an area Romney scored well in four years ago. If Rick Santorum isn’t winning here it means the Santorum surge isn’t real or isn’t big enough to matter. The state is 23% Catholic—if Santorum, a pro-life Catholic himself, consolidates the Catholic vote in Dubuque and elsewhere, the Iowa surprise could be a Santorum win.

So I did that. I moved my mouse over the interactive map and found Dubuque County. Dubuque went Romney 31% (779 votes), Paul 26% (659 votes), Santorum 24% (601 votes). That eastern point of the state actually went pretty heavily toward Romney. I don’t know if that actually means Santorum’s surge is only temporary. He will, of course, suddenly get an influx of funding, because of his Iowa success. It isn’t likely to give him a win in New Hampshire, where Romney polls very strong (and is the basket in which Huntsman is putting all his eggs). But we’ll see.

Scrolling over the state gave some other info. If I’m not mistaken, at the point when Santorum was up by 18 votes statewide, two counties had not completed their count: Clinton and Keokuk. Then there was a change. Keokuk was complete, but Lee and Kossuth were not. And then Clinton County completed its votes, giving an edge to Romney. The other two remain incomplete this morning; I don’t know the story behind that. Political Sphere suggests that a precinct in each of those counties failed to have a turnout, so the precinct chair hadn’t bothered to turn in a count. They are pretty small. Total votes for Kossuth County are in the 400 range, and total for Lee a little over 600. Going by the percentages uncounted, we estimate there could only be about 20 votes possible from Kossuth and maybe 30 from Lee. Tiny amounts, but in this race enough to be decisive. It is one of those object lessons: every vote counts.

We were amused to notice that in Pottawattamie County, where Romney edged out Santorum by a couple of percentage points, Santorum got exactly 666 votes. Not a good omen. Especially if those voters chose Santorum based on his religion (Catholic), because they were afraid of Romney’s (Mormon). If so (not saying it is), they really needed either one more voter or a defector.

There were exit polls, and we wondered about the name for these, because the data was up well before the results. And this was a caucus, so people don’t come and go all day; they come at 7:00 PM and stay until they’re done, and then leave. So, these are probably “entry polls.” Anyway, Romney did well among middle and upper middle class, older, more educated voters, as well as the less intensely conservative and moderate. Moderate to liberal thinkers, particularly young voters, went with Paul. Tea Party middle income with some education went with Santorum.

According to the map, Romney only won 17 of, I think, 99 counties. He did tend to get the larger population centers (such as they are in Iowa). Santorum may have won more individual counties. But Ron Paul also led in a significant number of them. For people who like politics just for the sport of it, this was an exciting event.

Commentators describe Iowa as a winnowing state, rather than a selector. It looks like Michelle Bachmann, who won the straw poll in Iowa just last August, is out. Iowans liked her then, and her message has remained pretty much unchanged. This is why political science is a mystery to me. As of this writing Perry is still in. I’d like to see him stay through South Carolina at least. We’ll see. Gingrich is certainly in until then. So now, beyond Iowa, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

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* Interactive Map found here.

Measuring Rick Santorum

It’s the day before the Iowa caucuses. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. While I’m mildly interested, I am not one to work out the mathematical and strategic possibilities based on each of these early state primaries. However, polls have been showing a sudden rise for Rick Santorum, and I hadn’t covered him yet, so I thought I’d do that today.

I have always liked Santorum. I’ve read his book, It Takes a Family, which I thought was quite president someday.” He’s thoughtful and intelligent, and consistently conservative.

My hesitation I that his experience is more limited that some of the other candidates (particularly compared to Romney) in successfully persuading people. If he were to be the nominee, I would gladly support him. I don’t foresee that happening this time around, however. So, if I could see a future for him, I’d like to see him in a significant cabinet position, something that gives him experience that would place him in a good position eight years hence. (I’d also like to see more of Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, or even Michelle Bachman, all with more experience down the road.) I wouldn’t object at all to Santorum as VP.

It has been a disadvantage to Santorum in the debates to be behind, and therefore forced to be on offensive against candidates he mostly agrees with. But in the last debate, December 15^th, there was a moment where he shined. His answer was juxtaposed right after Ron Paul for contrast. The question for both was essentially what he would do as president if he received solid intel that Iran had a nuclear weapon. Early last year I had a conversation with a Paul fan. He mentioned that he really didn’t like Santorum, because he was so pro-war under any circumstances. That wasn’t something I’d ever noticed about Santorum, so I’ve paid attention since then. I think my friend would look at this exchange and think Paul makes perfect sense. I, on the other hand, see it as clear evidence of what people say about Paul’s wrong-headedness on foreign policy, and Santorum gives a good explanation of the more accurate view.

You can see the debate here. The exchanges transcribed below can be seen from about 57 minutes in to just after the hour mark.

Brett Baier: Congressman Paul, the question was based on the premise that you had solid intelligence; you actually had solid intelligence [that Iran had a nuclear weapon] as President Paul. And yet you still at that point would pull back American sanctions. And again, as a GOP nominee would be running left of President Obama on this issue.

Ron Paul: Yes. All we’re doing is promoting their desire to have it [a nuclear weapon]. Ehud Barak, the defense minister for Israel, said that, um, that, if he were in Iran, he would probably want a nuclear weapon too, because they’re surrounded, for geopolitical reasons. So that’s an understanding. So, the fact that they are surrounded, they have a desire…. And how do we treat people with a nuclear weapon? With a lot more respect. What did we do with Libya? We talked with them; we talked them out of their nuclear weapon, and then we killed them. So it makes more sense to work with people. And the whole thing is, nuclear weapons are loaded over there: Pakistan and India; Israel has 300 of them; we have our ships there. We gotta get it in a proper context. We don’t need another war.

Brett Baier: Understood. And you make that point quite a lot. I’m gonna…  I’ll try one more time. Iran is reportedly running exercises on closing the Straits of Hormuz, a key passage, as you know, for global trade. Now, what should the US response be if Iran were to take that dramatic step.

Ron Paul: Well, this is…  The plans are on the book. All they talk about is when are we, the West, going to bomb Iran. So why wouldn’t they talk about… They don’t have a weapon; they don’t have a nuclear weapon. Why wouldn’t they try to send out some information there and say, “You know, if you come and bomb us, we might close the Straits of Hormuz down”? So, already the president, I think is wisely backing off on the sanctions, because it’s going to be an economic calamity if you take all the oil out of Europe. So I think that makes sense. He knows these sanctions are overreaching. Sanctions are an act of war, when you prevent goods and services from going into a country. We need to approach this a little differently. We have 12,000 diplomats in our services; we ought to use a little bit of diplomacy once in a while.

Brett Baier: OK…. Senator Santorum, you have a very different thought about the threat from Iran. For several years, according to US military leaders, Iran has provided training, funding, and lethal arms to jihadists killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are those acts of war?

Rick Santorum: They have been continually. They just tried to plan an attack here in this country, killing the Saudi ambassador. They’ve been at war with us since 1979. The IEDs that have killed so many soldiers—they’re manufactured in Iran. This is…  Iran is not any other country. It’s a country that is ruled by the equivalent of al Qaeda, on top of this country. They are a radical theocracy. The principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to President Amadinijad, is not freedom, opportunity; it’s martyrdom. The idea, Ron, that mutual assured destruction, like the policy during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, would work on Iran, when their principle virtue is martyrdom, is…  Mutual assured destruction with respect to Iran would not be a, any kind of, you know, preventing a war; it would be an inducement to war. This is what their objective is; their objective is to in fact create a calamity. This is what their theology teaches. They believe that it is their mission to take on the West. They don’t hate us because of what we do, or the policies we have. They hate us because of who we are and what we believe in. And we need to make sure that they do not have a nuclear weapon. And we should be working with the state of Israel right now. We should use covert activity. And we should be planting a missile strike against their facilities, and say, “If you do not open up those facilities and close them down, we will close them down for you.”

Measuring Mitt Part VII

Up until now almost all of the Measuring Mitt posts (starting here) have been about defending him from various attacks, mostly untrue or skewed. Today this is less defense and more offense—that is, instead of saying why he is not disqualified, saying why he might just be uniquely qualified.

Four years ago, with the economy nearly dropping, and spending out of control under a democrat-majority House and Senate, would have been a good time for a turnaround. Now, in the midst of essentially an economic depression and international “post-American” malaise, a turnaround is a necessity. We are looking for someone who can take on problems, find solutions, and make things happen against the odds. It would be nice if we could elect someone with a track record of doing those very things. It turns out we can.

I cannot guarantee Mitt Romney is the economic and social savior we need, but I am saying his record gives us a better predictor than anyone else’s on the ticket.

Romney came from a successful family, and that helped. But he did not rest on the family laurels; he worked hard. He spent 30 months as an unpaid missionary in France, gaining international experience, and up-close experience with poverty and struggle. During his mission he was involved in a serious accident and was pronounced dead; but in the first of many dramatic turnarounds, he showed there was always hope by waking up very much alive and fully recovering.

He then transferred from Stanford to Brigham Young University, where Ann, his high school sweetheart, was attending. He graduated at the top of his class in 1971, speaking at the College of Humanities commencement. (His writing and communications skills show in his speeches and books.) Four years later, while married with children, he graduated with combined law and MBA degrees from Harvard (cum laude in law, with a scholarship placing him in the top 5% in business). There were no fraternities or other associations for him there; he only had time for study, family, and church—top priorities he has kept as a habit.

Three years later, 1978, he was named vice-president of the management consulting firm Bain & Co. Six years later he founded an offshoot venture capital firm, Bain Capital, which put him in a position to do more than advise, to actually implement his ideas. Staples was one of Bain Capital’s success stories; Romney bought into the idea after nearly rejecting it. He was told by businesses that they spent on average just a few hundred in office supply purchases a year. But Staples founder, Thomas Stemberg, told him, “That’s what they think they spend, not what they actually spend.” So Romney gathered the data (checking actual invoices), found that companies actually spent several times what they believed they spent. A convenient and inexpensive office supply chain was likely to do well. This was a pattern for him, to gather accurate data (and gather it quickly), and then make a decision. Bain Capital made eight times its investment on Staples in three years. Other Bain successes include Domino's Pizza, Sealy, Brookstone, and The Sports Authority.

Besides capitalizing start-ups, it was Bain Capital practice to look for companies that were in trouble, but that could be turned around with better management. Romney turned around companies for a living. This came in handy in 1990. By this point Bain Capital was highly successful, but Bain & Co. was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy because of too much debt. At the request of founder, William Bain, Romney returned as interim CEO for a year. He carefully cut expenses, renegotiated loans, and inspired better morale.

It only took the one year to turn things around. But it was a significant year. Policies Romney put in place continued to be followed, and he is remembered there with great respect. This week Bain & Co. was name Best Employer in America. Incidentally, Romney received only a symbolic $1 for his service as CEO that year.

Then there were the 2002 Winter Olympics. They were mired in deficit spending ($379 million) and unsavory bribery scandals that threatened to take down the Olympic Games completely. Salt Lake City brought in Mitt Romney. With the additional security difficulties the country faced half a year after 9/11, he washed away any hint of scandal and not only overcame the deficit, but made the 2002 games one of the most profitable ever. Romney donated his $1.4 million salary plus an additional $1 million to the games. For a more complete story of this turnaround, you can read his book about it: Turnaround; Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games. Washington, D.C: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004.

When Romney offers “public service,” he means it. He also turned down his salary as governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2006, and has said he would forego a salary as US President. His governorship is another turnaround story. He replaced a scandal-ridden office with an overwhelming budget deficit. Despite having only 15% of either house in his party, he managed to move the state from a projected $3 billion deficit to nearly a $700 million surplus by the time he left office. He did it the old fashioned way: a combination of spending cuts, targeted fee increases (so users bore the costs), and removal of tax loopholes. And he got Democrat buy-in to make those changes.

Romney has a placard on his desk: “America is never stuck.” To have someone who has accomplished what he has, in his own education and family life, in business, in the Olympics, and in the blue-blue Democrat state of Massachusetts—to have him love America enough to offer to do the turnaround we need might be the opportunity we should take.

America is in deep trouble—far from the founding Constitutional principles of free enterprise and guaranteed rights, upheld by a moral people. But, while the scale is larger, the problems are the ones Romney has had a surprising amount of practice in solving.

I still like several of the candidates. (Certainly Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum deserve a day of discussion, and I hope to get to them before long.) All of our candidates would be an improvement over the man who seems intent on digging our hole deeper. But with Romney, because of his unique experience, combined with his optimism that it can be done, I think he might be just the person we need to get us out of the mess. If you’ve been thinking he was the “lesser evil” that “the establishment” was pushing on us against our will, consider the possibility that he’s in the position he’s in because he’s done a lot of things right for a very long time, and enough people have noticed that he has real support from many people who love America and want her return to what we know she can and should be.

If I choose Romney (and I’m definitely leaning that way, leaning more the more I learn about him), it will be because, as I look over the candidates for the job, I find him the most qualified. And I’m pleased to say more than, “I guess he’ll do.” I think it’s possible he was made and prepared for such a time.

Measuring Mitt Part VI

We’re finally getting around to dealing with the albatross of health care. If there is one single concern people have about Mitt Romney as president it is, how can we trust that he wouldn’t keep socialized medicine at the federal level when he implemented socialized medicine at the state level? It’s a valid and important question. When I looked at his candidacy in 2007, that was my main concern.

He has answered the question. And answered it again, and again. Still it comes up in every debate, and practically every conversation about him. Early in that last campaign, I heard him do a radio interview (not sure now where it was, but it may have been on Hugh Hewitt’s show, which led to my reading Hewitt’s book on Romney).

I am not a health care expert; I am just a regular citizen, involved in health care just as a regular consumer. I have some heath issues that have led me to be very distrustful of anyone making my health care decisions except for myself. So I am maybe more against central planning than average. But my discussion here is just my thoughts on how I have worked through this issue.

First let’s start with a review of the situation in Massachusetts. Romney was governor there 2003-2006 (he ran for only one term). When he came into office, the state was in dire straits—due to overspending and bad management, the very things you see in the wake of liberal administrations everywhere. The health care situation in Massachusetts was somewhat similar to other states, a combination resulting from federal mandates and cultural deficiencies. It is a desire of a civilized people to succor those in need; if someone comes into a hospital with an urgent need, they should be cared for, regardless of ability to pay. But when the federal government mandates how caregivers must give that service—without a way to be recompensed—then two things happen: state and local governments must pay the expense, or the costs will have to be spread out on those who are paying patients, raising costs for all. Usually it's a combination of these. 

And with higher costs, there is a tendency for more people to claim they can’t pay. Add to that the tendency for insurance (a third party) to do the paying, which has also contributed to rising costs. State and federal laws interfere with free market insurance sales and take medical services out of the mindset of market decisions, so it’s not surprising states face the difficult task of paying the bill for patients who get services without paying.

States with more illegal aliens and higher poverty tend to notice the problem more than others, so it might be that we have less sympathy for Massachusetts. Nevertheless, in their near bankrupt economy, they needed a way to stop the outflow of money to medical care. One thing they identified was that people who had income to buy insurance were opting not to buy insurance, because they knew the state was required to allow them to get care. So getting people who could buy coverage to get coverage was a goal, with the purpose of decreasing unnecessary state spending. Romney brought in many sources to help come up with solutions; among these was the reliably conservative Heritage Foundation, which approved of the final version as the best that could be gotten under the circumstances.

There are various ways of persuading people to buy insurance (a way of saying, in today’s medical economy, pay for medical services). Romney’s preference was an incentive—a subsidy or discount for those who made the choice the state preferred. But he was working with a very Democrat legislature (85% Democrat, only 15% Republican); they disallowed that option in favor of a penalty for failure to buy—because Democrats generally prefer using the power of the state to coerce. Romney countered with a compromise, a carrot and stick approach—an incentive for choosing to buy insurance, a penalty for failure to buy insurance. The Democrats rejected the compromise. In order to stem the flow of money to health care, Romney gave in to what is now referred to as the mandate. It was neither his idea nor his preference, but he has stood by it in loyalty to those who worked together to develop Massachusetts Care.

Besides the penalty for failure to buy insurance, the state does provide subsidies to help those who had previously been unable to purchase insurance. They work with private insurance companies to help lower income people to be able to afford insurance. Additionally, there are efforts to make insurance portable when a person changes employers—something most people see as a positive direction for insurance. I think there were also efforts to make insurance more easily purchased across state lines, another good thing. There was no state health care insurance, in competition with free market sources; all insurance was purchased from private, existing companies.

Did this program cost the state? Yes—but not as much as it was costing to pay for people who were essentially sending their medical bills to the state. It was a net gain economically for the state—among a number of policies Romney implemented that brought the state from deep in the red to fully in the black.

The Massachusetts health care bill was 70 or so pages, and specifically limited. While it included the mandate (penalty for failure to purchase), and we lovers of freedom find that offensive, the mandate did not violate the Massachusetts constitution. There were a number of changes made to Massachusetts Care implemented by Governor Duval Patrick, Romney’s successor, which raised the costs beyond initial estimates. But, even so, the citizens of Massachusetts (a highly Democrat populace) still approve of the program and want to keep it.

How does Massachusetts Care compare to Obamacare? Obamacare was a monstrous 2700 pages, with tentacles reaching into schools (clinics set up in schools that could dispense birth control without parental knowledge or consent), additional taxes on home sales, and multiple other intrusions that don’t have anything to do with health insurance and don't have support among the population.

Obamacare adds taxes, penalties, and fees, placing a greater burden on businesses during economic times that already discourage economic growth. There is incentive for businesses to stop offering health insurance as a benefit to employees, and just let employees fend for themselves or go into the national socialized system. The federal insurance (and medical insurance, in the form of Medicare and Medicaid, has never been anything but an economic drain) is in competition with private insurance—and Obama has admitted that this is an incremental approach to converting to eventual total socialized medicine, as you see in Europe or Canada. Always that means costs rise, care decreases, innovation is discouraged. And those who have other than standard needs often fail to get care. Also people tend to pay in time and inconvenience in exchange for higher costs. And government gets to make decisions that have previously been made by patients and their doctors.

Doctors are already on the verge of refusing to participate in government-required care, such as for Medicare patients; it isn’t cost-effective for them to offer the service. In a free country, they cannot be forced to give care for no pay, so if the government tries to require that, doctors will leave their practices, retiring early or changing careers.

Obamacare was implemented without any bipartisan consultation. With control of Congress and the Senate, Democrats could push through whatever they wanted without a single Republican having a say—and that was their approach. But they couldn’t even get all Democrats on board, because the program was so unwanted among the American populace. They had to resort to bribing a number of legislators to get their vote, and they had to do it using shady, unethical technical procedures, over a weekend, because an honest straightforward vote was unwinnable.

The federal mandate is at the heart of the bill; there was no attempt to persuade people without coercion. But the US Constitution is limiting; the federal government is only given certain enumerated powers—absolutely not including the power to force citizens to make a purchase simply because they have been born. The 11^th Circuit Court ruled the entire bill unconstitutional earlier this year, so there is hope that through legal and legislative means it will be ended before too many of the insidious tentacles take hold. (See Heritage Foundation, Impact of Obamacare.)

Is there a similarity between the two health care programs? A very small and limited similarity, plus another 2630 pages of dissimilarities. Romney has frequently pointed out that Massachusetts Care was a specific state solution to a state problem. It absolutely could not and should not be a federal program. He is consistently and firmly against Obamacare. His approach as president would be to use an executive order on his first day in office to give every state an exemption to opt out. Then he would work with the legislature (preferably a friendly conservative legislature) to repeal Obamacare in total, ASAP. He would then work to find market solutions to health care costs—many of which have been offered by conservative legislators but have been ignored.

Was “Romneycare” a model for Obamacare? No, but it has been used as an excuse. And Obamacare is so widely despised that the very existence of “Romneycare” has made it an effective attack on Romney.

I personally would prefer that Massachusetts Care not be part of Romney’s record. I understand his point of view, the position he was in at the time, and the wide ranging powers granted to states that are not granted to the federal government. But I would prefer looking at Romney without the challenge of having to defend anything even remotely socialist.

While I think I understand enough about the whole of Massachusetts Care that it is not disqualifying to Romney as a conservative presidential candidate, I would like to sit down with him and ask a couple of specific questions. I would like to know he has read Bastiat’s The Law, and/or Benson’s “The Proper Role of Government,” and then I would like to be reassured that he agrees—that, even though states are not prevented from acting in ways they can set up for themselves, that he believes there are things states simply should not do. I think, from other things I’ve heard Romney say, that he understands limited government philosophically, heartfelt. But I would like to hear it in language that is clear and unequivocal.

So far almost all we’ve covered on Romney has been to debunk attacks. It will be a pleasure to spend the next post covering his unique qualifications.

Measuring Mitt Part V

As you can probably tell, I’ve been leaning toward Mitt for a while. I have a lot of respect for most of the other candidates, particularly Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum—the ones I haven’t yet covered in this Measuring the Candidates series. (I also like much about Rick Perry, but I did spend a day covering him back in June, here and here. Ron Paul probably deserves a day as well.)

So I was in something like stunned confusion yesterday. I was watching Glenn Beck’s Christmas episode from the day before, and the news segment announced that Mitt Romney had said he was a moderate and a progressive. This week? When people are starting to see that side (and the various other concerns) of Gingrich? Why would he say such a thing? I thought I may need to totally rethink considering my endorsement.

But the first thing I did was do a search online to find the actual quote. I found it, and it does sound bad—but it’s from 2002, not this week.

Think about what you knew about progressivism in 2002. I’m fairly aware of words, and sometimes I notice when meanings change. For example, when I was 18 I was given a journal and started writing in it. I began by describing myself, and I included an assessment of myself as “liberal.” But this wasn’t a political statement. At that point in time, and in my life, the word meant “open-minded” or “generous.” I was going into a “liberal arts” field; the word was positive and unrelated to politics. In addition, while I have always been somewhat conservative in dress and daring, and politically what we now call “conservative,” at that point in my life “conservative”—meaning “stuck on the status quo and unwilling to change and grow”—was not how I would have described myself. Some 20 years later, as I went back and read that first journal, I added a sticky note pointing out that the meaning of the word had changed, and I had never been politically “liberal.”

It bothers me that the opposition so frequently hijacks words that I previously found useful. “Progressive” is one of those. It was around 2001 when my homeschooling children and I went through a history book that enlightened us about the seriously negative turn the country took in the first couple of decades of the 20^th century. I had known very little about the inception of the income tax (that was never supposed to go above 7% for even the most wealthy), the Federal Reserve, and government intervention by Woodrow Wilson and others. I didn’t learn much more about Wilson until maybe 2006 or so, at which point I became aware of the Marxist use of the word “progressive.” So it was only shortly before candidate Hillary Clinton used the word  that I became aware of the alternate meaning. It had always meant what you’d expect: making progress, moving forward, positive movement. Suddenly it was code for Marxist socialist policies.

But back in 2002, even though experts who had read Wilson’s actual writings from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries may have known the code meaning, most of us used the word “progressive” in its traditional positive sense. I can’t be certain how Mitt Romney defined the word in 2002, but my guess is that, to the liberal but politically uneducated Massachusetts constituency he was speaking to, it wasn’t socialist code. When Hillary used it, she intended the Wilsonian meaning, but used the word knowing her audience was unaware of the Marxist connotations; she was taking advantage of the positive connotations people were familiar with. And that was at least five years after Romney is accused of using the word with the current nefarious meaning.

Similarly, the word “moderate” didn’t really have its negative meaning until McCain’s candidacy four years ago. Although this word began gaining baggage over a longer time, it mostly meant “not extreme.” The Tea Party didn’t exist for another seven years . “Extreme” meant something very different from “wanting low taxes and adherence to the Constitution,” which isn’t extreme in reality but gets labeled that way; back in that day, “extreme” meant anti-government wackos like Timothy McVeigh or KKK members. I’m not acquainted with anyone in the GOP that qualifies as that older definition of “extreme,” so in 2002 we were all “moderates.” So, to a liberal Massachusetts audience in 2002, Mitt was probably saying, “You don’t need to worry about me doing anything completely at odds with your will; I’m just here to fix the state budget problems.”

Of course, I could be wrong. But when you look at everything Romney said during the last campaign—all conservative (using our current definition)—and at his record, which qualifies as conservative (with the proviso that we discuss health care, which we’re about to do), then you can see he is neither a stealth nor overt “progressive” by current definition.

I’m wondering who put forth the 2002 clip as “news,” and I wonder what agenda those outlets that ate it up are admitting to. The actual story was, “Back in 2002 Mitt Romney used the words ‘progressive’ and ‘moderate’ in describing himself, using the definitions they held back then.” The story was not, as purported, “Mitt Romney admits he is ‘progressive’ and ‘moderate’ after spending a career speaking and acting as if he is ‘conservative.’”

My intention had been to cover Massachusetts health care today, which is the biggest concern for most people (including me). But I felt like we had to cover that “definition” thing first, so we can go in with an open mind—what we used to call a “liberal” mind.

So I’m seeing two more posts in this Measuring Mitt series: Massachusetts care, and then a day on Romney's specific skills. I think I can get these out tomorrow and Monday. I’d still like to give the other candidates their due, but Christmas is coming, so no promises about regular posts for a couple of weeks.

Measuring Mitt Part IV

Here’s what we’ve covered while measuring Mitt Romney so far:

·        Part I identified the main general arguments against Romney (but didn’t actually cover them yet—the rest of the post briefly covered Huntsman).

·        Part II looked at the problem of believing the media and opponent stories, with examples of their inaccuracies.

·        Part III looked at character issues, where even enemies have to admit Romney is exemplary.

Today and tomorrow I’d like to cover two more topics: the flip-flopping accusation and Romneycare.

Flip-Flopping and Other Distortions

The flip-flopping argument itself got traction back in the 2004 election. It was used—accurately—on John Kerry, who proudly proclaimed, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." There was a long list of Kerry waffles. He tried to appeal to both sides of various issues, managing to appeal to neither side.

So when the flip-flopping charge was brought against Romney, people thought they knew what that meant—it meant an unprincipled politician who would say anything to any audience and not even bother to keep track of his viewpoints.

Romney and Kerry are from the same state, but they’re very different people. As far as I can tell, every flip-flopping charge, as well as other differences from conservatives, stems from the previous presidential race. No one claims any change from the conservative positions Romney took then. He has been consistently supporting and expressing conservative ideas since his last candidacy, and he was recognized as the conservative among top contenders McCain and Huckabee at that time. So let’s look at some of those specific accusations, made mainly by the McCain campaign in 2007, and what was true.

·        In 2005 Romney supported McCain’s immigration bill as “reasonable” but then opposed it in 2007. In actuality Romney clearly rejected the 2005 bill. Romney remained steadfast in his anti-immigration policy, even when various bills in Congress changed.

·        Governor Romney failed to support Bush’s tax cuts. In reality, at the time he was asked, he was involved in trying to pass a state budget through a liberal legislature that would cut taxes and spending to bring the state back into the black from drowning deficits; at that time, under those pressures, he said he was focusing on the state and staying out of the national political debate. It would be quite a stretch to suggest, however, that staying out meant he was against cutting taxes—the very thing he was accomplishing at the state level against all odds. He remains consistent on this issue, and now that he is involved in the national debate, he is very much in favor of extending those very same Bush tax cuts.

·        Taxes went up under Romney in Massachusetts. Not true. Romney cut state taxes; cities raised taxes, as is their prerogative, whether wise or stupid.

·        Fees went up, and fees are essentially taxes. Not really. Fees cover costs for a special good or service, so they affect only those using the good or service. Fees went up not because Romney raised them, but because he reduced taxpayer subsidies of fees, so that those costs would be borne by the beneficiaries of the goods or services.

·        Illegal aliens were given sanctuary under Romney’s governorship. Not exactly. Certain cities granted sanctuary status on a city level, outside Romney’s influence. A state legislature could act to punish cities for failing to uphold immigration laws, but Massachusetts’s legislature was 85% Democrat, so they had no intention of acting to correct cities on that issue.

·        Romney claimed to be for gay rights and then stood against gay marriage. Not exactly a flip flop. When asked in 1994 whether homosexuals should have the same rights as other citizens—to work, to have access to courts, to be as free from harassment and harm as any citizen—then he said yes, they should have those rights. When, during his tenure as governor, a rogue court decided to “find” a “right” to redefine marriage so that it no longer meant one man and one woman who would engage in the act that could result in procreation and who would commit to a permanent and exclusive bond (an interest of the state as a whole)—then he fought against giving homosexuals that special power over the rest of us. He remains firm on that issue and has testified of the need for a national solution (constitutional amendment and upholding the DOMA law) so that such contracts made in one state will not impose the change in marriage definition on all other states. While it is no longer possible to use the phrase “I support gay rights” to mean supporting their citizenship rights rather than their radical agenda, when he said it in 1994, people knew what he meant. And his stance hasn’t changed. It is essentially the same stance I hold.

·        Romney is against capital punishment. Not true. Massachusetts has no death penalty, but Romney pressed to institute it.

·        Romney was against the NRA and then joined. Hmm. Not exactly. Romney has always been in favor of 2^nd Amendment rights, and although he has never been in lock step with every NRA policy, he has signed on as a member. The main discrepancy is probably on waiting periods; he favored them and then opposed them. But that is because of a change in technology, not policy. Romney favors background checks, so that guns aren’t given to criminals and terrorists. It used to be that a background check took a few days—thus the waiting period. Now that technology makes them almost instantaneous, Romney is against the waiting period.

·        Romney lied about his father marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. Actually, George Romney did participate in King marches. And the elder Romney, former Governor of Michigan and one-time presidential candidate, personally led a march of 10,000. MLK, who was a Republican, spoke in favor of George Romney’s presidential run. It is possibly worth noting that it was Republicans who pushed for civil rights legislation in the 1960s; it was “conservative” Democrats (i.e., in favor of conserving their status quo) who opposed civil rights legislation.

·        Romney provided $50 co-pays for abortions in his Massachusetts healthcare bill. No. The abortion co-pay was not part of the bill, but was later court mandated. When Romney speaks of the importance of choosing strict constructionist judges, rather than activist judges, he speaks from experience with them.[1]

The point of today's post is that, now that it's 2011, maybe it's time to stop allowing the McCain campaign (or any other of Romney's enemies and opponents) to define Mitt Romney.

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[1] I have paraphrased and added my commentary, but this list comes from a post by Ryan Larsen, January 31, 2008, 7:50 AM, from www.redcounty.com/orange-county/2008/01/california-debate-mccain-remin/, no longer available online.

Measuring Mitt Part III

I watched Saturday’s debate, eventually. My assessment was that all of the candidates had done fairly well, while the moderators showed themselves to be attempting to accomplish something other than the rest of us. Then, afterward, pundits decided to tell us what we had heard—and their assessments differed from mine.

The story at the end of the debate was that Romney had a terrible night. I heard a number of excellent answers, and no terrible gaffes. Since our current commander in chief is a condescending “um” repeater without a teleprompter, and his VP is indeed more likely to speak a gaffe than a sensible sentence, it seems rather disingenuous to claim this performance was any less stellar than the debates of the past half year, let alone that it was disastrous.

What was the media’s story of disaster? It related—yet again—to Rick Perry’s inaccurate claim that Mitt’s book claimed the individual mandate of Massachusetts Care would be a good pattern for national health care, and that a later edition of the book took out the phrase. Not so. There’s a more thorough discussion of that here. And it was discussed, covered by politifact.com and others before. So Perry was using the issue disingenuously, and Romney was forcing him to face it.

I would bet (if I were to bet—maybe $.25) that Romney is not a betting man. He intended no bet with Perry. It was an expression of, “If you really believe it, then prove it.” Why the concern? Because $10,000 is a lot of money, and most people in today’s economy couldn’t risk that—so the story is he’s out of touch with mainstream America, sort of like when Obama bemoaned the rising cost of the designer lettuce, arugula.

And the story of the pundits was that Newt had had a brilliant evening. Newt often does well in debates. I actually agreed with Santorum that both Newt and Mitt were expressing their points well, but that in the end Mitt’s point held more weight. (It was on some comment Newt had made about Palestinians having no historical right to their land—a historically accurate statement, but not carefully stated in perilous times for Israeli allies.)

If Newt had done so well, then there would have been no call for the attack Monday on Romney’s wealth—spewing the liberal line that his wealth was ill-gotten, and he was an evil capitalist because he had laid people off.  We can talk about Bain & Co. and Bain Capital another day, but I don’t believe Newt believes that attack; he was just spouting off in frustration. But I would measure it a worse offense for Newt to attack Mitt’s success at capitalism than for Mitt to have proposed a $10,000 bet on something he knew he couldn’t lose.

Character Matters

What I really want to cover today is some of the character issues about Mitt. Both questions about character (related to marital fidelity) and understanding of economic struggle came up in the debate.  I don’t know if a campaign can actually control this kind of thing, but there have been a couple of positive pieces about his character lately. Last week’s Parade Magazine piece was surprisingly positive, mainly about Mitt the family man, one who grew up doing chores and earning money. It showed him to be human—and like people I know.

Then December 10^th there was another piece, specifically about his personal economy, called “Two Romneys: Wealthy Man, Thrifty Habits,” that details his innate thriftiness. A quintessential story was of a time in the 90s when his company had just handed out some very lucrative bonuses, and an employee gave him a spin in the $90,000 Porsche 911 Carrera he had bought with that windfall. Romney, as the story goes,

was entranced by the sleek, supercharged vehicle: at the end of a spin around downtown Boston, he turned to the employee, Marc Wolpow, and marveled, “Boy, I really wish I could have one of these things” Mr. Wolpow was dumbfounded. “You could have 12 of them,” he recalled thinking to himself. But Mr. Romney had frequently driven an inexpensive, domestic stalwart that looked out of place in the company parking lot—a Chevrolet Caprice station wagon with red vinyl seats and a banged-up front end.

Ann Romney is a woman of many talents; one is haircutting. She cut hair for the five boys and Mitt until the last boy left home. Then she said, “That’s enough. You can go pay someone to get a haircut.” By then he was governor of Massachusetts. The nearest place was a block from the capitol, so he went there, even though it irked him to have to pay $50. (I pay that; it gives me a similar pang, but I don’t think it’s over-the-top extravagant.)

His father, George Romney, had grown up poor. It says something for the family that he was wise enough to avoid the pitfalls of many who become rich. He insisted that his kids work. Mitt couldn’t go join friends on a Saturday until his chores were done. And he had part-time jobs through high school and college. It is also telling that Mitt made these same kinds of requirements of his own sons—all of whom are married, educated, and gainfully employed. It’s a good track record for any family in today’s world, and particularly for an extremely wealthy family.

He does spend extravagantly on a few things: his houses are large, with swimming, tennis, and other recreation attached. The purpose of a home or vacation home is to provide a place where the family can gather and enjoy being together. If you’ve got money, that’s something worth buying. He has been known, however, to rent a U-Haul to move from one vacation home to another.

He also spends big bucks on the horses Ann rides as part of her therapy for MS. Speaking of her MS, she tells the story of Mitt reacting to that news. When they realized something was very wrong, they went for testing. ALS was a possibility, and terminal. When it wasn’t that, he assured her they could get through anything. He stayed by her side; he told her the only thing that was important was having her with him. And they count it as a daily miracle that she has enjoyed such a long remission. If he becomes president, someday they'll make a movie including this story, and critics will say it's too sweet to come across as real. But it's real for Mitt and Ann.

There’s one other story I came across a while back, attesting to his character. It was a story by a neighbor in Belmont, Massachusetts, a young, liberal non-religious woman. The story was in response to attacks on Mormonism; she said she would not vote for Romney, never had. But if a person’s reason was his religion, that was just wrong-headed bigotry. I’ve written on that before, but what I liked from her story was this anecdote. When they moved to the area, one of her first friends was a Mormon neighbor who invited them to church. They didn’t have a church, or really felt like they were seeking one; but they did respond to the friendly invitation, and to the warmth the felt in the meetings, so they attended occasionally for some time. This was during the time Romney was governor, but he attended church the same as her other Mormon neighbors:

Even though he was Governor at that time, we still saw plenty of him at Sunday services and elsewhere. Whenever I encountered Mitt and his family at church services, I was struck at how accessible he was, how friendly. In fact, when my then-toddler threw her sippy cup across the chapel, it was Mitt who crawled under a pew to retrieve the cup. We even have a rug—it’s in our living room now—from Mitt’s son Tagg. And all the Mormons were generous and friendly like that.

A complaint I often hear about Romney is that he seems too slick, too nice, too unlike real people. But not to me. Other than the extreme wealth part, and being better at what he does than just about anybody, he seems like many people I have known. Mr. Spherical Model would be just the kind to reach under a pew for someone’s sippy cup. In fact, he once rescued a mom whose son threw up on the bench in front of us—took the child while she went to get towels. That’s heroic beyond the threshold of my generosity (I don’t do well around throwing up). My brother-in-law is successful, with a very nice house—designed with the idea of family and friends coming there to spend enjoyable times. He owns a boat and spends much of his free time driving it around the nearby lake towing the kids and their friends behind on tubes. I saw a video of Mitt and family, last time around, showing a scene that looked to me just like our extended family.

 A man I grew up near owned a hotel chain; I didn’t know he was wealthy until he offered his small yacht for our youth group to use on a trip to Lake Powell. I recognize as very real the kind, generous family man who might also happen to be wealthy. That seems much more normal to me than, for example, Gingrich’s somewhat complicated family life. If Romney doesn’t seem real to you, then what does that say about your world? And, truthfully, would it be such a bad thing to have someone who lives this kind of life be in a position of example?