Romney’s pandering during the primaries was legion, starting with his calling himself a severe conservative. I understand there are ointments for that. The most blatant example was his contortions with regards to health care reform. This was repeated so much that it just became background noise, but honestly his position was silly. America has some long run budgetary problems connected with spiralling health care costs: the former is insolvable without health care reform. Period. And yet Romney runs away from his own plan, designed by Jonathan Gruber, also one of the key architects of Obamacare. We didn’t get Obamacare: that had a public option. Instead we got Romneycare. Which Romney promises to dismantle. And he will: otherwise the unanimity of his base will destroy his Presidency.
Romney makes his major speech on foreign policy. Doesn’t mention Al Qaeda. His approach seems to be based upon not going on an “Apology tour” that never happened. The guy just hallucinates stuff out of whole cloth. It’s loony.
America has serious problems and the Republican Party has shown absolutely no hint of trying to grapple with them. Ezra Klein: At the end of the day, the GOP will nominate somebody for president. And that individual is likely to have supported some policies that are now associated with President Obama. There will be some groveling, but eventually, Republicans will forgive such youthful indiscretions. The bigger problem will be if that individual wins.
At that point, they’ll need actual solutions for the problems facing the nation. But the Republican Party has ruled out an individual mandate to help with health-care reform, a cap-and-trade program to mitigate global warming and speed the development of renewable energy options, tax increases to help reduce the deficit, and stimulus to help boost the economy. That leaves a potential GOP president with a lot of problems to solve, but few workable policies with which to solve them. Young earth creationism, birtherism and appeals to conspiracy theories are ways of reassuring morons: they have little policy impact. The problem is that the Republicans have undergone an entire primary season with not even a nod towards sanity. The fact-based wing of the GOP has essentially disappeared. Back during the election of George Bush Jr., the hope was that with Paul O’Neill in Treasury and Alan Greenspan at the Fed, a deal could be struck whereby some of the tax cuts could be “Postponed” if the budget deficit hit a certain benchmark. That could have turned an unsustainable and irresponsible policy into a conservative but manageable one. Now that didn’t happen: GWBush declared that he wasn’t going to negotiate with himself. But there was reason to hope that it could in 2000. But now? Nothing.