John Nichols

Paul Ryan's 'New Reagan' Speech Positions for Romney Implosion

John Nichols on February 10, 2012 - 12:19pm ET

At a point when the Republican presidential race is veering off course once more, the party’s most prominent Congressional star, Paul Ryan, could have used his featured speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference to talk up the remaining contenders.

Didn’t happen.

Instead, the House Budget Committee chairman gave a Thursday night speech that suggested Republicans are running the wrong race this year, and that none too subtly positioned him as the party’s man on a white horse. And if the message was not blunt enough, he compared his approach and his vision to that of conservative icon Ronald Reagan.

“We only have nine months to defeat Barack Obama—nine months to reject his agenda of debt, doubt, and decline. And while defeating this president is necessary to getting America back on track, it is hardly sufficient,” declared Ryan, who spoke at the Washington, DC, conference where a chastened Mitt Romney (the “front-runner” who has lost more states than he has won), Rick Santorum (the latest “Anyone-But-Romney”) and Newt Gingrich (Moon colonist) will try to get traction with conservatives.

But Ryan wasn’t helping anyone get moving toward the nomination. Except, perhaps, himself.

Though Ryan regularly says he is “probably not” a prospect for a place on the GOP’s 2012 national ticket—as a vice presidential candidate or even the choice of a brokered convention—he was not giving as assist to Romney or any of the other last men standing in the Republican field.

The man, whom more than a few conservative pundits continue to tout as a potential convention alternative to a field of failed contenders, was preening and positioning before a worried crowd of the nation’s most influential conservatives. And he got some notice. Indeed, the full text of the congressman’s CPAC speech was posted within minutes of its delivery on the website of the conservative National Review magazine. And video of the speech was everywhere on the web by Friday morning.

“Put simply,” said Ryan, “Americans deserve a choice—and it is our responsibility to offer them one. They deserve an opportunity, not just to divert from the president’s path to decline but to affirm a reform agenda that restores our bedrock of founding principles.”

At points in his well received speech, Ryan was explicit in expressing disappointment with his own party’s unfocused message.

We know that this election cannot be just a referendum on President Obama’s failed leadership.

“Americans deserve a choice—a choice between two dramatically different visions for our country’s future. As conservatives, we owe Americans that choice,” declared Ryan. “Look, I know there are people in this town who are terrified at the prospect of an election with real alternative visions at stake. ‘Make it a referendum. Win by default,’ they say. Just oppose—we can win that way. Don’t propose bold ideas—that’s too risky. I’ll admit, the easy way is always tempting. But my friends, if that’s all we stand for, then what are we doing at here CPAC—the place where so many giants of our movement came to advance their boldest ideas?”

As he has for months, Ryan argued that there’s “a moral case for going bold” on issues like replacing Medicare with a voucher scheme and beginning the process of privatizing Social Security.

“But,” he added, “there is also a strong political case for going bold.”

And this is where Ryan went for the gold.

“The times call for leaders who understand the depth of the problems we face, and who offer far-reaching reforms equal to the challenges. In 1980, Ronald Reagan offered supply-side economics at home and a rollback of Soviet Communism abroad,” said the budget committee chair, whom The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes keep pushing as a potential “solution” candidate for Republicans who thought Romney was a loser even before he started losing.

“The challenges this time? They’re different. But the moment calls for the same kind of boldness,” continued Ryan. “Everybody knows this is politically risky territory. Republicans have their battle scars on entitlement reform. That’s why some argue that we should downplay bold agendas and simply wage a campaign focused solely on the President and his party. I firmly disagree. Boldness and clarity offer the greatest opportunity to create a winning coalition. We will not only win the next election—we have a unique opportunity to sweep and remake the political landscape.”

Is Paul Ryan really the candidate who can “remake the political landscape”?

Not by most logical measures. Polling suggests Americans associate him with threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

A lot of Americans have started to recognize that, as Esquire’s Charles Pierce so gently explains it: “Paul Ryan is…a remarkably accomplished bullshit artist.”

But that’s not a spoiler for the CPAC crowd.

In fact, Ryan recognized that he was talking to a crowd that has a taste for nonsense—especially when it is served up by political players who are better looking, more articulate and more unyielding in their beliefs than the alternatives.

Hence that reference to Reagan and the announcement that “the moment calls for the same kind of boldness.”

Make no mistake: Paul Ryan was not suggesting that Mitt Romney is going to deliver that “boldness.”

Everything about Paul Ryan’s speech suggested that he was trying to get the crowd hear the name “Reagan” and think “Ryan.”

'Anybody But Romney' Wins Everywhere, as GOP Turnout Tanks

John Nichols on February 8, 2012 - 10:26am ET

Campaign signs for Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are seen along a road in Dallas County, Iowa, December 24, 2011. REUTERS/Joshua Lott

The big winner Tuesday? Anybody But Romney.

After eight states have held Republican primaries and caucuses, the ordained front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination has lost the majority of contests. Mitt Romney has won three races (New Hampshire, Florida, Nevada) but he has now lost five (Iowa, South Carolina, Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota).

Here’s the even more unsettling fact for those who would make Romney a nominee: Rick Santorum, who was supposed a footnote to the 2012 contest, has won more states than Mitt Romney. But let’s not succumb to Santorumania just yet.

Yes, yes, of course, the sweater vest had a good night. But the big deal is that Republicans rejected the empty suit.

Rick Santorum may have won beauty contests Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, but he won’t even be on the ballot for delegate-rich contests in states such as Indiana and Virginia. He’s still running for vice president, or maybe a cabinet post.

Santorum is a story. But he is not the story.

The story is the fact that Mitt Romney lost so very miserably in three battleground states.

Romney finished second in Colorado and Missouri and, remarkably, barely mustered a third-place finish (behind Santorum and Ron Paul, barely ahead of Newt Gingrich) in Minnesota.

But the place on the list is less telling than than overwhelming levels of opposition to Romney.

In Colorado, 65 percent of Republican caucus-goers voted against the man who started the week as the all-but-declared nominee of their party.

In Missouri, 75 percent of Republican primary voters backed someone other than Romney.

In Minnesota, 83 percent of Republican caucus-goers rejected Romney. That’s particularly striking, as Romney won Minnesota in 2008 with 41 percent of the vote.

In many Minnesota counties, Romney finished fourth, behind Santorum, Paul and Gingrich. Some of the former Massachusetts governor’s worst losses were in collar counties around the Twin Cities, an essential base for Republican presidential contenders in the fall.

Several Minnesota counties recorded less than 5 percent support for Romney. In western Minnesota’s Norman County (Red River Valley), no one caucused for him. Mitt got 0 percent.

His finishes in the Republican heartlands of rural Missouri and Colorado were almost as bad.

Even more unsettling for the Republicans has to be the fact that, despite intensive campaigning in the three states, turnout collapsed.

In Missouri, a classic bellweather state, there was a stunning drop in primary participation. In 2008, GOP primary turnout was 589,289. In 2012 ,GOP primary turnout was 251,496. That’s way less than half the turnout just four years ago.

In Minnesota, caucus turnout four years ago was 62,828. This year, it will be under 50,000. That’s an almost 20 percent dropoff.

In Colorado, 70,229 Republicans caucused in 2008. This year, turnout was 64,000. That’s close to a 10 percent dropoff.

Of course, there were some differences between the 2008 contests and the 2012 contests in these states. The Romney people want you to know that this year’s races were “non-binding beauty contests.” But isn’t your likely nominee supposed to be attractive enough politically to win beauty contests? And isn’t this supposed to be the year when conservatives are all excited to pick a nominee and go after the dreaded Barack Obama?

Something isn’t adding up here for Mitt Romney.

But that other candidate, Anybody But Romney, is going from strength to strength.

So, too, it would seem, is the prospective Democratic nominee, if Barack Obama is lucky enough to get Mitt Romney as an opponent.

In Missouri’s Republican primary on Tuesday, where all the attention and campaigning was focused, Romney secured 63,826 votes.

Running essentially unopposed in the extraordinarily low-profile Missouri Democratic primary, Obama won 64,405.

John Nichols’ new book on protests and politics, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street will be published next week by Nation Books. Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising>

The Post Office Is Not Broke

John Nichols on February 7, 2012 - 9:46am ET

Republican leaders in Congress are talking about dismembering the US Postal Service by cutting the number of delivery days, shuttering processing centers so that it will take longer for letters to arrive, closing thousands of rural and inner-city post offices and taking additional steps that would dramatically downsize one of the few national programs ordained by the original draft of the US Constitution. At the same time, supposedly “centrist” US Senators Tom Carper (D-DE), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Scott Brown (R-MA) are trying to build a “bipartisan consensus” for a death by slower cuts.

Their “21st Century Postal Service Act,” a supposed compromise now being weighed by the Senate, would still force the postal service to close hundreds of mail processing centers, shut thousands of post offices, cause massive delays in mail delivery and push consumers toward most expensive private-sector services. It is, says National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando, “a classic case of ‘killing the Post-Office in order to save it.’ ”

Their rationale for making the bloodletting, much discussed in the media, holds that radical surgery is necessary because the postal service is in financial crisis.

The postal service, we are told, is broke.

There’s only one problem with this diagnosis.

It’s wrong.

The postal service is not broke.

At the behest of the Republican-controlled Congress of the Bush-Cheney era, the USPS has been forced since 2006 to pre-fund future retiree health benefits. As the American Postal Workers Union notes, “This mandate is the primary cause of the agency’s financial crisis. No other government agency or private company bears this burden, which costs the USPS approximately $5.5 billion annually.”

Now, however, we learn that the pre-funding requirements have taken so much money from the USPS that—according to the postal service’s own inspector general—it has “significantly exceeded” the level of reserved money that the federal government or private corporations divert to meet future pension and retiree healthcare demands. “Using ratepayer funds, it has built a war chest of over $326 billion to address its future liabilities,” acknowledges Postal Service Inspector General David C. Williams.

That, argues US Senator Bernie Sanders, puts “the rationale for postal cuts in doubt.”

Sanders, who has taken the lead in challenging cuts to the USPS and who requested the assessment by Williams, says that on the basis of information contained in the assessment, the Postal Service should be released from the “onerous and unprecedented burden” of being forced to put $5.5 billion every year into its future retiree health benefits fund. Sanders’s office explains that “even if there are no further contributions from the post office, and if the fund simply collects 3.5 to 4 percent interest every year, that account will be fully funded in twenty-one years.” At the same time, the senator suggests, the postal service should be allowed to recover more than $13 billion in overpayments it has made to a federal retirement systems.

That’s not the end of the debate about the future of the postal service. Along with Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Sanders is working with key Senate Democrats—and, the group hopes, some Republicans who represent rural states—to develop amendments, and potential alternatives, to the “21st Century Postal Service Act.” Not only would they get the accounting right, they would remove barriers to the USPS so that it can compete and grow.

“I believe the Postal Service will find more and more senators and representatives standing up here in Congress to prevent rash and irreversible decisions, until USPS can present a cogent strategy for growing in a new era of mail,” says Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “A scorched-earth strategy, focused only on the short-term horizon, is a strategy for failure. It is a race to the bottom. The Postal Service needs a plan not only to survive, but to thrive. To do that the Postal Service must listen to its customers, understand its market, and play to its strengths, not trade its strengths away.”

John Nichols' new book on protests and politics, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, will be published next week by Nation Books. Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising

Ad Policy

Chrysler Super Bowl Ad Edits Out Wisconsin Union Signs

John Nichols on February 5, 2012 - 11:56pm ET

The one truly stunning ad on Super Bowl night was a moving two-minute Chrysler commercial featuring actor Clint Eastwood. Aired at half-time, the ad hailed the renewal of the American automobile industry and featured images of union firefighters and factory workers,

At the fifty-second point in the ad, images from last year’s mass pro-union protests in Madison, Wisconsin, were featured.

But something was missing: union signs.

The images from Madison were taken from a historic video by Matt Wisniewski, a Madison photographer whose chronicling of the protests drew international attention and praise. Wisniewski’s work went viral, and was even featured in a video by rocker Tom Morello.

Chrysler used Wisniewski's award-winning video with permission. But the union presence—and some Wisconsin history—was lost in translation.

Wisniewski’s original video, from an evening rally at the King Street entrance to the Wisconsin Capitol, features images (at the two-minute, seventeen-second mark) of signs raised by members of Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI), the local education union that played a pivotal role in the protests. One sign features the MTI logo, another reads: “Care About Educators Like They Care for Your Child.”

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

In the Chrysler ad, the MTI logo is missing and the “Care About Educators…” sign is replaced with one featuring an image of an alarm clock. Several other union signs are simply whited out.

The Chrysler ad also disappears the identification on a statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg, the Wisconsin Civil War hero who rallied a Scandanavian unit to fight for the union with the cry: “Norsemen…the government of our adopted country is in danger. It is our duty as brave and intelligent citizens to extend our hands in defense of the cause of our Country…”

Heg became a reference point for the hundreds of thousands of protesters who rallied at the Wisconsin Capitol in February and March of 2011, and who linked their activism to a tradition of answering the call to defend basic rights and ideals. Many of the largest rallies at the Capitol were held on the grounds where Heg’s statue stands, including the rally featured in the Chrysler ad.

Why Is Paul Ryan So Angry About Reduced Unemployment?

John Nichols on February 3, 2012 - 4:50pm ET

For the past several years, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has complained that the US economy has been growing at too slow a rate.

Now, as unemployment rates drop and job creation seems finally to be accelerating, Ryan is suddenly fretting about the prospect that the economy might grow too quickly.

Why?

The answer has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with politics.

Despite the steady—make that unrelenting—opposition of Ryan and other leaders of the Republican-controlled US House, the Obama administration can now point to a pattern of monthly decreases in the unemployment rate. While the administration’s response to the unemployment crisis of the past three years was less than it should have been, a combination of stimulus policies and investments, as well as the determination of the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, appears to be working. For the fifth straight month, unemployment has fallen. The rate now stands at 8.3 percent—down from 10 percent in October 2009.

The official unemployment rate is now at the lowest point since the first months of Barack Obama’s presidency.

But it is the pattern of decrease that matters politically.

Consider this historical detail. At the start of 1984, after several years of brutal hard times, unemployment had fallen to 8.3 percent. The economy was still unsteady, especially in the manufacturing towns of the Great Lakes region and much of the South, but there was little question that the unemployment rate was falling. As more people got jobs during 1984, the rate continued to decline. It was this pattern that Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign pointed to in television advertising that celebrated “morning in America.” The sense that the country was on the right track—even if it had not arrived—contributed mightily to Reagan’s landslide re-election win that fall.

Could Barack Obama be headed for the same sort of improvement in his political fortunes? In 1983, Reagan’s approval rating in Wall Street Journal polling had dipped below 40 percent, and at the start of 1984, it was hovering in the low mid-40s. Obama’s approval rating never went as low as Reagan’s, and it now is 48 percent in the WSJ/NBC News polling.

If unemployment continues to decline, Obama would seem to be well positioned to run his own “morning in America” campaign this fall.

That’s good news for Obama, and perhaps for the Democrats aligned with him. That’s not such good news for the Republican opposition.

Washington Republicans, who have blocked the president’s economic initiatives over the past year (even going so far as to threaten extensions of unemployment benefits), had been planning to run against Obama and the Democrats with a 2012 campaign claiming that current policies are not working.

But what if they are working?

Perhaps this explains Paul Ryan’s sudden objection to maintaining the current policies of the Federal Reserve.

Over the past year, Ryan has been an increasingly bitter critic of administration economic policies, painting the president and his aides as inept—or worse—and arguing aggressively that they must be removed from power in order to spur growth

Now, Ryan is changing his tune.

Instead of worrying about slow growth, Ryan is suddenly fretting that things might start going a little too well.

Complaining about the threat—at least in his head—of inflation, Ryan’s urging the Federal Reserve to stop implementing policies that are designed to decrease unemployment.

The Federal Reserve has, as part of its historic charge from Congress, a responsibility to address and fight unemployment. Too frequently over the years, the Fed has disregarded tha charge, and erred overwhelmingly on the side of Wall Street bankers and speculators rather than working Americans.

The Fed remains a troubling player.

But, to his credit, Fed chair Ben Bernanke has been more respectful than his predecessors of that charge and fiscal common sense. He has done so by working reasonably closely with the Obama administration to hold interest rates down. The hope has been that, by doing so, the Fed could encourage economic growth in a country where many regions continue to experience a recession and where some major cities suffer with unemployment rates that have edged toward Depression-era levels.

The strategy appears to be having some success.

And that seems to have upset Paul Ryan. When Bernanke appeared Thursday the Ryan’s House Budget Committee, the Republican congressman from Wisconsin announced that he feared that the Fed was loosening its standards on keeping inflation low as part of its push to bring down unemployment.

This, Ryan warned, was unacceptable.

The Budget Committee’s stance is remarkable. A House Budget Committee chair is pressuring the Federal Reserve to let interest rates rise at a time when many states are still struggling to create a sufficient number of new jobs.

At the same time, other Republicans on Ryan’s committee are attacking the Fed for trying to address the mortgage crisis.

In other words, after more than a year of obstruction by a Republican-controlled US House that has refused to act to address unemployment and underemployment, and that has rejected sound proposals for addressing the mortgage crisis, Ryan and his allies are attacking the Obama administration, Bernanke and the Fed for trying to do something.

That’s bizarre enough.

But even more bizarre is the fact that the attacks have come as fresh jobs figures confirm a pattern of improvement under policies put in place by the administration and the Fed.

Ryan’s new tack of attack may excite those Republicans who would sacrifice job growth and economic improvement for their own political gain. But it’s a stunning stance for the representative of a Congressional district that has been battered by factory closings in its major cities and some of the highest patterns of unemployment in his state. Unemployment rates for cities in Ryan’s 1st Congressional district remain among the highest in Wisconsin, as cities such as Kenosha and Janesville struggle to fill the void created by the closures of auto plants in recent years.

To be sure, Ryan is a rigid partisan. No one seriously expects him to cheer news that goes against the interests of his party and his own political ambitions.

But it is unsettling, indeed, that the representative of an industrial district that took a brutal hit with the collapse of the economic house of cards constructed by the George W. Bush administration and Congressional Republicans such as Ryan would conjure up a new attack just as things appeared to be taking a turn for the better.

The sad fact, confirmed again and again, is that Paul Ryan is more interested in playing politics than he is in improving the fortunes of working Americans—even the working Americans he is supposed to represent.

How Scott Walker and ALEC Plotted the Attack on Arizona's Unions

John Nichols on February 2, 2012 - 12:58pm ET

Two days after Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected Governor John Kasich’s anti-labor agenda by a sixty-one to thirty-nine margin in a statewide referendum, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker jetted to Arizona to launch the next front in the national campaign to attack union rights.

After meeting with former Vice President Dan Quayle, Walker was whisked over to the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, where he briefed a thousand Arizona conservatives on how they could attack “the big-government union bosses.”

“We need to make big, fundamental, permanent structural changes. It’s why we did what we did in Wisconsin,” declared Walker, who at the annual dinner of the right-wing Goldwater Institute said that compromising with unions was “bogus.”

Comparing governors who have been attacking the collective-bargaining rights of public employees with the founders of the American experiment—“just like that group that gathered in Philadelphia”—Walker told his listeners: “We need to have leaders not just in Wisconsin but here in Arizona…”

If anyone missed the point, Walker said: “Tonight, you might say I’m preaching to the choir with a bunch of fellow conservatives.… I preach to the choir because I want the choir to sing. So tonight I’m asking you to sing. Tell the message in Arizona and all across America that we can do things better.”

The crowd was listening.

This week, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer—fresh from pointing her finger in the face of President Obama—and her allies in the Republican-controlled state legislature announced that they would try to outdo the anti-labor initiatives of Walker and Wisconsin’s Republican legislators.

And they did so in conjunction with the very people Walker has consulted with, spoken to and urged on in November: The Goldwater Institute.

Indeed, as Arizona’s anti-labor initiative was launched, the Goldwater Institute’s website featured an image of 2011 protests at the state Capitol in Madison and a headline that read: “Bigger Than Wisconsin? Reforming Government Unions Will Save Taxpayers Billions.”

But the Goldwater Institute is not proposing reforms. Documents linked to the “Bigger Than Wisconsin?” headline outline plans to “[ban] government sector unions from collective bargaining and entering into collectively bargained contracts.” Indeed, they suggest, “Statistical analysis shows that if states prohibited all forms of collective bargaining, they could reap a total of nearly $50 billion in savings for state and local taxpayers across the country.”

Even if the argument were valid, its totalitarian premise begs the question: How much more money could be saved by taking away other human rights.

But, urged on by Walker, Arizona Republicans are putting those questions aside and racing to implement a militant anti-labor agenda modeled on legislation enacted last year in Wisconsin—and promoted by national groups such as the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC’s model legislation, recealed by the joint Nation/Center for Media & Democracy project “ALEC Exposed,” provides conservative legislators in the states with preapproved bills and resolutions for attacks on collection bargaining in particular and organized labor in general. And the group has worked closely with Brewer and many Arizona legislators, including recently oused Arizona Senate President Russell Pierce.

Indeed, Brewer began outlining the Arizona plan at an ALEC meeting in December, when she declared her intention to “reform the state’s personnel system” in order to make it easier to hire and fire public employees

That inspired speculation about Brewer wanting to be “the Scott Walker of the West.”

In fact, Brewer and her allies are, as the Goldwater Institute suggests, going even further than Walker did.

The legislation introduced by the governor’s allies in the state Senate would, according to the Arizona Republic:

—Make it illegal for government bodies to collectively bargain with employee groups. Public safety unions would be included in the ban.

—End the practice of automatic payroll deductions for union dues.

—Ban compensation of public employees for union work.

“Wisconsin’s collective bargaining law enacted last year made unions effectively irrelevant by limiting issues that could be bargained by a government and an employee group. Arizona’s bills would do away with collective bargaining entirely and also go beyond Wisconsin law by including public safety unions,” the newspaper explained. “Coupled with Gov. Jan Brewer’s plan to do away with civil-service protections for state employees, the new legislation could make Arizona ground zero for union protests during this election year.”

That was a fair assessment. “In Arizona, we believe that the political will exists to do even more comprehensive reform,” the Goldwater Institute's Nick Dranias said. “The environment, the climate that we face in Arizona is much more receptive to these kinds of reforms than Wisconsin is.”

With that in mind, Brewer and her allies are rushing to pass the anti-labor legislation—just as Walker’s allies did in Wisconsin.

Arizona is a so-called “right to work” state, where protections for private-sector workers are weaker, and Republican legislative majorities in Arizona are bigger. Both those factors may make Brewer’s work easier than Walker’s in Wisconsin.

But, for all the talk of how Arizona is “more receptive” to assaults on collective-bargaining rights than Wisconsin, the states have one thing in common.

Like Wisconsin, Arizona allows for the recall of the governor and members of the state legislature. Indeed, Arizonans recently used that power to vote Republican Senate President Russell Pierce, the architect of the state’s draconian anti-immigrant legislation, out of office.

In Wisconsin, more than one million voters have signed petitions supporting the recall and removal of Walker. Another 850,000 have signed petitions to recall and remove his lieutenant governor. And close to 100,000 more signatures were on petitions to recall and remove the Republican state Senate majority leader and three key legislative allies of Walker.

Just as Walker guided Arizona conservatives toward a more militantly anti-labor agenda even than that of Wisconsin, so the coalition of labor, farm and community activists that has formed the Wisconsin recall movement can guide their Arizona compatriots toward a proper response. If Brewer and her legislative allies persist in trying to out-Walker Scott Walker, then Arizona progressives may find that they too will spell relief: R-E-C-A-L-L.

For updates on this story, follow John Nichols on Twitter at @NicholsUprising

Tom Paine Would Not Have Approved of Mitt Romney

John Nichols on February 1, 2012 - 1:53pm ET

Readers of Tom Paine’s The American Crisis will have a hard time finding the line referenced by Mitt Romney in his Florida victory speech: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

A very hard time.

I’ve lectured on Paine at major universities, keynoted Paine commemorations across the country and written books that review and analyze his writings, and I never came across Romney’s quote in my examinations of the pamphleteer’s essays or letters. But, just to be sure, I contacted my friend Harvey Kaye, the great biographer of Paine, and asked him whether he was familiar with Romney’s “lead, follow…” line. Kaye’s response: “I never read anything by Paine that sounded like that—doesn’t even sound like him.”

The same responses came from other Paine scholars and enthusiasts.

No surprise there. Anyone familiar with Paine’s canon knows that the greatest of the founding fathers did not peddle empty platitudes of this sort.

But there was Romney misattributing the line to Paine, as part of his primary night attack on President Obama.

“In another era of American crisis, Thomas Paine is reported to have said, ‘lead, follow, or get out of the way,’” chirped the Bain Capitalist. “Mr. President, you were elected to lead. You chose to follow, and now, it’s time for you to get out of the way.”

If Romney cannot get his recollection of the past right, it is hard to take his assessment of the present seriously.

Of course, it should not be all that shocking that the candidate who has never been able to shake the trappings of aristocracy that so offended Paine would neither known nor understand the author of American revolution.

If Toryism has a contemporary face, it is that of Mitt Romney.

Everything about this millionaire son of privilege says he would have chosen the security of King George III and the British Empire over a dangerous alliance with the radicals who rejected the divine right of kings and declared “all men are created equal.”

But even if Romney had strayed into the revolutionary camp, it is a safe bet that he—like the effete John Adams—would have been ill at ease with real revolutionaries like Tom Paine. Unlike the “sunshine patriots” that he decried in The American Crisis, Paine was not satisfied with the casual reordering of society.

And that reordering would not have favored vulture capitalists.

It was Paine who argued, in his last great pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, that taxation of the rich with an eye toward redistributing wealth should be seen as “an act of national justice.”

“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained,” explained Paine. “All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Romney Still Can't Clear 50 Percent Hurdle

John Nichols on January 31, 2012 - 12:25pm ET

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, celebrates his Florida primary election win at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Mitt Romney is the least appealing front-runner for a Republican presidential nomination since Herbert Hoover convinced an appropriately skeptical Grand Old Party to renominate him in 1932.

And Hoover, for all his faults, was a far more commendable figure than the Bain Capitalist will ever be.

Romney has scant personal appeal, as polling and anecdotal evidence confirms on a daily basis. After pondering several options for the most ironically absurd headline of the week, the editors of the satirical newspaper the Onion chose for their current edition: “Romneymania Sweeps America.”

Romney, pro-choice before he was anti-choice, pro–healthcare reform before he was anti–healthcare reform, has no ideological appeal to a party of purists.

And Romney, now fully identified as the poster boy for crony capitalism, rapacious greed and tax avoidance, has an increasingly limited appeal as a potentially electable Republican nominee in November. As former Florida Governor Charlie Crist said after the former Massachusetts governor won Tuesday night's Florida primary, the Republican fight so far -- and the fight from here on out -- "has to have a negative impact" on party unity and Romney's ultimate prospects.

Even with Tuesday night's Florida win, Romney has yet to show that he has what it takes to unify a majority of Republicans behind his candidacy. He has not done that in any of the primary and caucus states that have voted thus far; nor is he anywhere near doing that in national polls. This explains why the candidates who got the majority of Florida votes -- Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul -- will stay in a race where 95 percent of Republican National Convention delegates are still to be chosen.

On Tuesday night, Gingrich backers, as enthusiastic as ever, held up signs that read: "46 States to Go!" Promising a "people power" versus "money power" race through the rest of those states, Gingrich portrayed himself as the "conservative alternative" to Romney, "the Massachusetts moderate."

That is not an unrealistic frame for the remainder of the Republican race. Florida Republicans are far more moderate and pragmatic than Republicans in many of the primary and caucus states to come. So while the overall Florida results are comforting to Romney, the voting patterns among Republicans who approve of the Tea Party and among core conservatives provide comfort for Gingrich -- and, to a lesser extent, for Santorum and Paul.

Of the two-thirds of Florida primary voters who told exit pollsters they support the Tea Party movement, 60 percent rejected Romney. Among the almost 70 percent of Florida primary voters who identified as conservatives, the overwhelming majority rejected Romney. Indeed, the frontrunner only beat Gingrich among self-identified conservatives by 4 points. And, among the one-third of Florida primary voters who identified themselves as "very conservative," Gingrich won 43 percent to just 29 percent for Romney.

As conservative commentator Erick Erickson -- who suggested Tuesday night that the Republican race is far from settled -- said: "Mitt Romney is not closing the deal with conservatives."

But don't cry for Romney. He may not have much in the way of genuine appeal to the Republican base.

What Romney does have is money. Lots of it. More money in campaign accounts and Super PAC cash flows than the rest of the candidates combined. And he is spending it, wildly. Even before today’s Florida primary, it was reported that Romney was outspending his closest rival, former House Speaker Gingrich, by roughly $12 million.

Specifically, the Romney campaign spent $6.9 million to air commercials on the state’s broadcast and cable channels as of Monday morning. Romney’s Restore Our Future Super PAC spent a reported $8.5 million on the same channels. Total: $15.4 million.

For Gingrich, it was $1.6 million in spending by the campaign and $2.2 million by his Winning Our Future Super PAC. Total: $3.8 million.

Romney spent unprecedented amounts for a primary, while his opponents did not. That explains Romney’s win in Florida, not his modestly more muscular debate performances. Indeed, if the quality of debate performances mattered, Rick Santorum, whose recent appearances have been his strongest, would have won the state. But Santorum did not have the money. Neither, realistically, did Gingrich. And Ron Paul never really played in Florida; having decided weeks ago to place his bets on caucuses in Maine and Nevada.

When the final accounting is finished, it is entirely possible that Romney spent more than all the other candidates on the Florida GOP primary ballot.

But he did much more than that. Romney spent at historic levels in Florida.

Consider this: in 1960, according to the Federal Communication Commission, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon spent a total of $10,052,322 on political commercials during the course of the entire campaign. Romney and his Super PAC overshot that by at least $5 million.

Money matters in politics. And it bought Romney a little “love.”

But not a majority.

In Florida Tuesday night, Romney was winning 46 percent to 32 percent for Gingrich, 13 percent for Santorum and 7 percent for Paul.

So far, Romney has not gotten anywhere near 50 percent of the vote in any caucus or primary state.

Indeed, 75 percent of Iowa caucus goers rejected Romney.

In New Hampshire, 61 percent of primary voters rejected Romney.

In South Carolina, 72 percent of primary voters rejected Romney.

And in Florida, after record spending, Romney still was rejected by 53 percent of Republican primary voters.

The Romney rejection rate in Florida tells the real story, not just of what happened in the Sunshine state but of where this race is headed.

At this point in the race, and with his advantages, Romney should be breaking the 50 percent barrier. In 2000, for instance, George W. Bush hit the 50 percent mark after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, with a 51 percent finish in Delaware and a 53 percent finish in South Carolina. And Bush maintained majority or near-majority support from there on out. As the party’s nominee, Bush won the 2000 election—with an assist from Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and family friends on the US Supreme Court.

In contrast, in 1996, it took Bob Dole eleven primary and caucuse contests before he broke the 50 percent level. As the Republican nominee, Dole lost, overwhelmingly.

Similarly, in 2008, John McCain went through the better part of a dozen caucus and primary states before breaking the 50 percent mark. As the Republican nominee, McCain lost, overwhelmingly.

Appealing to the majority of caucus and primary voters early on matters, particularly in Republican races. Unlike the Democrats, who are more familiar as a party with drawn-out nominating processes, the Republicans have to work very hard to pull together a “coalition” of billionaires and under-employed opponents of abortion rights. They need time to make this happen.

So the Florida results provide important indicators regarding the 2012 race.

But they weren't the indicators Romney claimed in a "victory" speech that still followed on a contest where most voters opposed him.

Referencing exit polls from Florida, Erick Erickson noted that: "Fifty-seven percent of Republican voters said they want a different choice. That does not spell excitement or unity headed into November."

Romney is likely to be the Republican candidate against Barack Obama. But, despite a Florida "win," he still cannot present himself as the candidate who a majority of Republicans are willing to accept (however grudgingly) as their nominee.

To get there, Romney is going to have to spent a lot more of his money. His SuperPACs are going to have to spend a lot more of their money. And core conservatives are going to have to overcome a lot more of their reservations about the least appealing frontrunner in the modern history of the Republican Party.

Sarah Versus the 'Stalinists': Palin Targets Republican Politburo

John Nichols on January 30, 2012 - 2:30pm ET

Oh my, it looks like Sarah Palin might not be speaking at this year’s Republican National Convention.

Either that, or she will be the keynoter.

The party’s most recent vice-presidential nominee is now officially at war with Mitt Romney and Republican establishment figures—epic losers like Bob Dole and John McCain, epic spinners like Peggy Noonan and Ann Coulter—who have rallied to save the campaign of the fumbling frontrunner.

The former governor of Alaska has for days been doing everything in her power to aid the campaign of Romney’s chief challenger, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But Palin’s petty sniping has proven insufficient to derail Romney. So, now, she has dropped the rhetorical equivalent of a nuclear bomb on the GOP’s political and pundit powerbrokers, dismissing them as “Stalinists” and acolytes of the one figure more reviled by conservative base draggers than former Soviet strongmen: anti-poverty campaigner Saul Alinsky.

Palin has now given a sort-of endorsement to Gingrich, telling Fox News: “if for no other reason to rage against the machine vote for Newt, annoy a liberal. Vote Newt. Keep this vetting process going, keep the debate going.”

But, despite the silly “annoy a liberal” line, the machine Palin is raging against is the Republican establishment.

“We have witnessed something very disturbing this week,” Palin writes in a broadly circulated Facebook post. “The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.”

Palin savages Romney as “a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days.”

Palin hails Gingrich as the candidate who “brought the Reagan Revolution into the 1990s.”

But Palin reserves her real fire for Republican insiders who have attacked Gingrich as somehow out-of-synch with the Reagan legacy:

“We know it because none other than Nancy Reagan herself announced this when she presented Newt with an award, telling us, “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.”

What’s Palin’s play here?

She is not going for a top spot on Mitt Romney’s Christmas-card list.

But she may be going for something bigger.

By positioning herself as the champion of the party’s grassroots in a battle with an aging and out-of-touch establishment, Palin is staking a claim on the party’s heart and soul. It is she, not Gingrich, and certainly not Romney, who may be best placed to come out of a bitter nominating fight as the favorite of the delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa and of Tea Partisans who will need to be energized if Republicans are going to be viable in the fall.

Even as she attacks the likely GOP nominee, Palin makes herself the essential Republican. That translates into talk of her as a convention keynoter, a vice presidential prospect or a Cabinet member in a new GOP administration. Palin would take the keynoter gig, in a heartbeat (high-profile, few risks), but don’t think that she would casually lower herself to accept another second spot on a crashing Republican ticket.

Whatever the specifics, Palin is establishing herself as someone Romney is going to need. Indeed,if the eventual nominee does not bow to the Alaskan’s demands, it will be hard to unite an increasingly factionalized party. So Palin gets the upper hand, even if Gingrich loses.

And if Romney loses in November, well, then it is Palin who will be able to say “I told you so”—as she stokes speculation about a possible 2016 campaign.

—Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising

Wisconsin Recall More Popular Than GOP Presidential Candidates—Combined

John Nichols on January 28, 2012 - 9:31am ET

America is almost four weeks into the voting stage of the Republican presidential race. The candidates are debating. The media is covering the competition 24/7, and in such minute detail that Rick Perry’s quitting of the contest was treated as news. And Republicans in three states have caucused and voted in numbers that party leaders, pundits and the talk-radio amen corner tell us are significant.

Yet at the same time, those same party leaders, pundits and radio talkers continue to dismiss the movement to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as a false construct with little real hope of prevailing.

Fair enough, let’s compare.

Since January 3, Republican caucuses have been held in Iowa (with an electorate of 2,231,589), and Republican primaries have been held in New Hampshire (electorate of 998,799) and South Carolina (electorate of 3,385,224).

That adds up to a total electorate of 6,615,612 in the trio of first- (and second- and third-) in-the-nation states.

Turnout for the Iowa caucuses is now pegged at 121,479. Turnout in the New Hampshire primary was 248,448. Turnout in the South Carolina primary was 601,166.

That adds up to a total turnout of 971,093, or about 14.5 percent of the possible voters in the three states.

And what of Wisconsin?

The state has an electorate of 4,170,501.

The United Wisconsin petition drive to recall anti-labor Governor Scott Walker collected significantly more than 1 million signatures.

Rounding to a million, that’s about 23.9 percent of the possible voters in the state.

So here’s what we know:

1. If you add up all the caucus and primary votes that have been cast so far for Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, the former Rick Perry, the former Jon Huntsman, the former Michele Bachmann and the eternal Buddy Roemer, they still have not attracted as much support as has the drive to recall Scott Walker.

2. If you compare the percentage of the electorate in the three caucus and primary states that has expressed support for all the Republicans who would be president, it is dramatically lower than the percentage of the Wisconsin electorate that wants to recall Scott Walker.

3. If you add the total number of names on petitions filed January 17 to recall other Republicans in Wisconsin—Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, state Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald and three of Fitzgerald’s colleagues—the total number of signatures filed in support of the recall of Walker and his cronies is close to 1,940,000. That figure is just about double the number of votes cast in all the Republican presidential contests for all the Republican presidential candidates so far this year.

Conclusion: if the Republican presidential race is a serious endeavor, the Wisconsin drive to recall Scott Walker, Rebecca Kleefisch, Scott Fitzgerald and their compatriots is doubly serious. And far, far more popular with the available electorate.

For more on the recall movement and politics in general, follow me on Twitter: @NicholsUprising