Romney and Ryan tout a
comprehensive "Five Point Plan" for taxes, education, trade,
budget-balancing and replacing Obamacare with "something which will help encourage job growth in this country."
The only detail given in the entire Five Point Plan is to "crack down on
cheaters like China." (See "Passing
and punting on the trail" below.)
A moment's scrutiny reveals "no there there" in R&R's "No Detail
Campaign."
In the absence of a real
plan, many citizens content themselves with foggy "bullet points,"
assuming there must be a Real Plan "behind them."
Surely there's more substance than the sound bites emblazoned on an Etch-a-Sketch.
Lamentably, there
can be "no" details for Romney and Ryan because their proposed budget is designed to be
bogus, designed to hurt "the little guy."
The Romney-Ryan budget piles on national debt
while cutting a pound of flesh from essential social programs.
Against this platitudinous
backdrop, Romney and Ryan propose tax cuts that favor the wealthy -- coupled with "no new taxes" as a sop to "commoners" -- even though tax hikes
are an inevitable component of eventual recovery.
Bruce Bartlett, senior
adviser to Reagan and George H.W. Bush, notes: "The reason that
unemployment is high clearly has nothing to do with taxes... There is
simply no evidence that cutting taxes at the present time will do anything to
raise employment."
Romney and Ryan are playing a shell game.
Under the flapping banner of Impossibly Pure Principles,
they have secretly removed every "pea" from the table so their grandiloquent theories -- the empty shells -- stand in splendid isolation.
Romney and Ryan present no
details because every detail consistent with their "principles" will
spotlight the ticket's essential fraud.
When pinned down, Romney and
Ryan will stammer, temporize and perform sleight-of-synapse.
In the midst of relentless bafflegab, notice the absence of any substantive revelation about real budget
cuts, practical debt abatement or the nitty-gritty of job creation.
On the other hand, you will hear a lot about
expunging "fat," "cutting pork" and lowering taxes to loosen the purse
strings of "job creators."
In the end, this empty chatter is "Principled Pomposity" - promising the moon while delivering lunar
desolation.
The devil is in the details, and in the absence of details,
the devil -- as always -- feeds on the void.
A steady diet of starchy
platitudes serves the nation no better than jejune principles serve Know-Nothing
fundamentalists and their paramilitary hate groups.
If the GOP's platitudinous
approach to politics proves effective in November, Mitt will hit the fan.
Conservative economist
Niall Ferguson is refreshingly frank: The Republican ticket's central dogma is "a plan to
wreck the country." http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/11/daily-dose-112611-niall-ferguson-dogma.html
- Dana Milbank
- Opinion Writer
Passing and punting on the trail
“Gosh, I feel like I’m almost a New Hampshire resident,” the winner of the state’s Republican primary told the crowd at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. “It would save me some tax dollars, I think.”
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- Weigh In
- Corrections?
D’oh! Does Mr. Thirteen Percent really want to remind everybody how determined he is to keep his tax returns private?
Maybe so. The Republican standard-bearer seems to take a stubborn pride in his refusal to cough up details. My colleague Greg Sargent argues that Romney seems to be running a “just trust me” campaign that extends beyond 1040s and into the policy realm. It’s an intriguing observation, and so I kept an ear out for specifics as I listened to Romney and Paul Ryan hold their joint town hall meeting at Saint Anselm. Sure enough, they spoke and fielded questions for about an hour but deftly avoided detail.
“I’m going to do five things when I’m in Washington,” Romney announced. This was a promising start.
“Number one, we’re going to take advantage of our energy resources,” he offered. Excellent! Drilling? Pipelines? Nuclear? Romney did not say: Just trust him.
“Number two, I’m going to make sure that our schools are second to none,” Romney said. “We need our kids to have the skills to succeed. That’s number two,” he went on. Thus ended the education-policy segment of the program.
“Number three, I want trade that works for America,” Romney said. The closest he got to specifics here was to say he would “crack down on cheaters like China when they play on an unfair basis.”
“Go, Mitt!” somebody shouted.
Mitt did go — right to No. 4, to “show America that this team can put America on track to a balanced budget and stop the deficit spending.”
“Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, Mitt!” the audience chanted.
He moved on to No. 5: reducing regulations. And here he had a specific, sort of: “I want to make sure that we get Obamacare out of the way and replace it with something which will help encourage job growth in this country.”
Replace it with . . . something?
Of course, Romney is hardly the first presidential candidate to avoid specific commitments and promises. His opponent, President Obama, was caught on a hot mike telling Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev to wait until after the election for a new Russia policy.
The difference with Obama, though, is he has already established a track record in office. By declining to put meat on the bones of his policy proposals, Romney wouldn’t have any mandate from the voters if he does defeat Obama. In policy speeches, he’s somewhat more specific than he is at typical campaign stops, but even then there’s nothing resembling a comprehensive plan for budget balancing, job creation or tax reform.
Romney and Ryan, in rolled-up sleeves and open collars, took the stage at Saint Anselm to the orchestral tune “Tryouts,” from the college-football film “Rudy.” This was appropriate, because the two men were about to pass and punt on issue after issue.
Ryan, the policy wonk of the pair, teased the crowd with the prospect of specific proposals (“We’re going to win this debate about Medicare!”) but then floated the idea of letting younger Americans, when they retire, “have a choice of guaranteed coverage options, including traditional Medicare.” That is a specific policy — but it hasn’t consistently been Ryan’s; he got the House last year to approve his plan phasing out traditional Medicare.
Still, that was apparently enough detail for one day. “I won’t go into all the things that we’re proposing to do to get jobs back, because I want to leave something for Mitt to talk about,” Ryan said. “The point is, we’re offering you solutions.”
Just trust them.
In fact, Romney didn’t furnish the promised proposals, and his foreign policy didn’t get much more elaborate than “American strength is critical.”
The audience members were friendly, but they wanted more details. His plan to reduce the debt?
“We want to grow this economy and cut federal spending.”
His tax plan? “I will not raise taxes on the American people.”
His Afghanistan plan? “Bring our men and women home, and do so in a way consistent with our mission.”
His plan to reduce student costs? “Make sure that when you graduate, you can get a job.”
Just trust him.
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