Lucky us. Mitt Romney seems to be transitioning from a disastrous candidate into a disastrous would-be King maker. GO TEAM!
Daniel Horowitz, Red State:
When conservative candidates lose their bid for elected office, they tend to fade away from public life and are never heard from again. But for Rockefeller Republicans, losing an election is evidently a resume enhancer for them to continue advising and interfering with Republican politics and policy.
Mitt Romney ran as a “severely” conservative Republican in the primary. He pulverized his opponents with an expensive negative ad campaign and won the nomination. Then, as is the case with most moderate Republicans, his truculent attitude in the primary transformed into one of ineptitude and submissiveness in the face of an aggressive Democrat opponent.
Not only did he lose the election to Obama, his status as the grandfather of government-run healthcare completely took the issue of Obamacare off the table for two years – until Senator Ted Cruz and other conservatives were able to bring the issue back to the forefront of political discourse.
Many of us thought Romney would recede back into private life and enjoy his affluent retirement lifestyle and his close-knit family. Instead, he has slowly crawled his way back into public life and is trying to become the kingmaker of the Republican Party. A one-term governor of a liberal state with a moderate record, Romney has never fought and bled for the conservative cause. He has never accomplished anything to earn him the right to play the role of elder statesman in the party.
[…]
Now he is venturing off into policy positions as well. As Democrats face impending disaster this November, and for once, Republicans actually remained united against Obama’s last-ditch effort to demagogue with minimum wage mandates, Romney is calling on Republicans to support Obama:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Thursday morning said he supports an increase in the minimum wage, breaking with many Republicans who have stood against it.
“I, for instance, as you know, part company with many of the conservatives in my party on the issue of the minimum wage. I think we ought to raise it,” the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said. “Because frankly, our party is all about more jobs and better pay.”
Romney’s comments come after Senate Republicans rejected a vote on a Senate bill that would have increased the minimum wage to $10.10. Recently, though, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, both of whom also ran for the Republican nomination in 2012, said they supported some increase in the minimum wage.”
So after Obamanomics has depressed the job market and income levels with interventionist mandates, tightening wage mandates will create jobs?
Isn’t it time to retire, Mr. Romney?
Retire? Why, he’s just now getting started! Losing an election to an obvious socialist isn’t a problem for the consultant class, who simply must embrace you having first built you up as the Only Candidate Who Can Win. To do otherwise would be to admit to their own incompetence and myopia.
But that’s a separate post.
Because of course, unmentioned here — the WaPo, for instance, is Tweeting out that Romney supports the minimum wage, appealing to “authority” in such a way that it hopes to paint the man they worked to defeat as suddenly some wise sage who can help the GOP out of the wilderness — is that Romney has long been a proponent of increasing the minimum wage, at least until he’s had to alter his stance on occasion to appease knuckledragging conservatives and libertarians, and that’s mostly because Romney has long been a statist pretending to be something even remotely akin to a constitutional conservative. That the GOP establishment and its cheerleaders have invited him to join the fold of those committed to the party’s demise is really no surprise. After all, these are the very same folks who supported Charlie Crist, who has now denounced the Republican party, citing “center-rightest” and GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, who likewise seems to dislike the party he’s decided he’s just the person to lead, to justify his rejection of the “anti-woman,” anti-immigrant,” “anti-environment,” “anti-gay,” “anti-science”.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. We are a country with a one-party ruling class. The only competition is over who gets to run the bloated centralized beast in order to pay off cronies and receive perks and kickbacks.
Want to take back the government and return it to one of a representative nature? Well then, as Ripley might counsel, having seen single-minded totalitarian cultures up close on a number of occasions, nuke the current one from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
“I think we ought to raise it [the minimum wage],” the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said. “Because frankly, our party is all about more jobs and better pay.”
The principle has nothing to do with the policy; in fact, they’re at cross purposes. More jobs and better pay come from increased opportunities, risk-taking, value-creation, and general economic activity. Raising the minimum wage accomplishes none of these things.
I don’t care how good your hair looks — you can’t change the fundamentals of economics.
Anything else you want to give the Democrats up front Mitt?
It seems obvious to me this Squid dude doesn’t understand labor unions, or how they prosper.
Probably doesn’t even approve of them. Which means of course,
RACIST!!
Mr. Romney you and the Subway guy can pay whatever you want, no one is stopping you.
he’s just a deeply, deeply strange man
I don’t want to wander off into the weeds here, but, is it even possible to recruit candidates who embrace small government, self-reliance and laissez-faire capitalism from the web of communist wards we call the Mormon Church?
I mean, come on, if Communism is America’s enemy, then red lights and sirens should go off in every patriot’s head when America’s sole check on big government, the GOP, nominates the “chosen one” from a nation-sized commune as its Presidential candidate.
Anyone here ever flip open the phone book for Provo or Salt Lake City or Flagstaff to look up the number for the local Mormon church? You won’t find it. Instead you’ll find page after page after page (after page after page) of Mormon “wards.”
While the image of cloaked wardens overseeing wards full of sinners might be someone’s idea of religious congregation, in my mind it’s too perfect a mimic of the Communists’ various Potemkin campuses, from their administrators penchant for issuing scolds to their assumption that their wards’ require their divine intervention to navigate their daily lives, for me to support.
Shorter: I’m not surprised by Romney’s latest call for government intervention in the labor market.
(BTW, if the minimum wage in the IRS-tracked labor markets goes up, then a couple of other sinister things correspondingly increase. One is the amount of SS withholding dispersed to DC’s hedge-funds in the Boston/NY/Connecticut corridor (none too friendly to America’s constitution of late) to handle. One is the amount of FICA and state income taxes withheld to buttress the exorbitant pensions governments have promised to their claques of advocates in the civil service. And one is the Fed’s claim to income taxes. Increase the minimum wage by 20%, and all of these follow. If you are like me, and think that we need to starve the beast in DC, then you’ll agree that an increase in the state-controlled labor market rates is exactly the wrong move to make.)
You really have to wonder where Romney, Utah and the Mormon Wardens want to lead this country. I’m not ready to walk America down the Green Mile yet.
Mitt, you’re not helping.
@steveaz
WTF??? Let’s leave the logical fallacies to the leftists.
he’s just a deeply, deeply strange man
From you, that is a glowing recommendation.
They say you are what you eat, Parallax.
Similarly, it can be said that who you are stems from where you come from. If you come from Minnesota’s grange culture, then your politics necessarily will follow suit. If you hale from Massachusetts’ ivy-laden university community (just WHO is afraid of Virginia Woolf?), ditto. And if you were steeped in Islam’s tribal communism in a zero-sum oasis surrounded by deadly desert half of your life, ditto two.
And, if you marinated in communistic agrarianism guaranteed by Federal carve-outs, nodding faithfully to the incantations of robed wardens in an inhospitable climate on the shores of a brine-lake, ditto three.
I’m not saying Mormons aren’t good people. Some of my best friends are Mormon (yawn). But…when discussing fitness for national office, I can’t trust that they can subordinate their instinctual pine for redistributed resources and their molasses-like groupiness to the rest of our variegated citizens’ interests.
Is this “logical fallacy,” or an apt surmise based on the public record? You decide. But, be sure to sample Romney’s record in public service before you decide. Capische?
From you, that is a glowing recommendation.
no it isn’t
you stupid
as far as mormons go I only know Huntsman and Reid and Romney and they all suck dick like champion prize-winning dick suckers
there might could be other more better ones to pick
God I would fucking hope so
glenn beck pikachu.
ok and also Glenn Beck
but he’s not really a politician he’s more of a media personality
like kermit the frog or Betty White
you forgot the baracky
Mitt Romney grew up in Michigan, steveaz.
Leigh,
“Mitt Romney grew up in Michigan.”
Although Jeff’s post was about Mitt Romney, my comment generalized about the societies he inhabited in order to explain his socialist predilections in public office. If, in fact, liberal, late 60’s Massachusetts was “home-away-from-home” to his parents, it in no way detracts from my general point.
A dairy cow, no matter how you might squeeze it, will never decant whiskey.
Mormon=socialist is an incorrect conclusion spawned in ignorance and presented without seriousness.
no it isn’t
you stupid
I should have known the comment would be lost on you, so we’ll try again at a slower speed. Someone “deeply, deeply strange”, given your own pathology, would have to be normal.
If you want it even simpler, pot, kettle, &c.
>my comment generalized about the societies he inhabited in order to explain his socialist predilections in public office.<
masshole explained
pots and kettles are how you make tasty pasta dishes
happyfeet says May 9, 2014 at 8:41 pm
Quod erat demonstrandum
happy understands simple Latin no more than he understands simple English. Best to just beat him when he becomes obstreperous.
Lessons punctuated with a few bruises tend to sink in faster.
>I only know Huntsman and Reid and Romney and they all suck dick like champion prize-winning dick suckers<
so mormons are all massholes. yea right. hi di.
you’re overgeneralizing Mr. newrouter you can’t do that, not without promoting misunderstanding
no pickles for you
Reid is a Mormon as Pelosi/Kerry/TeddyK are Roman Catholic.
>no pickles for you<
sorry clausen mini koshers for the win
I’d like to forget Mr. Romney now, please, as well as any kinfolk. And (sorry Di) the Mormons… after Romney and Reid, that faith has taken a beating.
Plus I’d prefer to happily forget any named Bush. And if course any unfortunate Kennedy needs keep their need for public pampering private.
Just run down a list of names currently ‘serving’ and add all of ’em to a “unqualified to run because your relatives have done enough damage already” exclusion list
One good thing about Obama? it’ll be awhile before any in his family tree can again assail our Republic. Small comfort, if we survive his terms.
>He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered
(he world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system.
He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it
together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has
broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the
real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is
naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something
extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer
bas addressed tbe world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the
curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the
truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is
universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything.
There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living
within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies
it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.
This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted
with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie
is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to
expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears,
however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a
lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their allinclusiveness.
And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how
large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in
its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the
system and on its unstable foundations. After all, the greengrocer
was a threat to the system not because of any physical or actual
power he had, but because his action went beyond itself, because it
illuminated its surroundings and, of course, because of the
incalculable consequences of that illumination. In the posttotalitarian
system, therefore, living within the truth has more than
a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent
nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral
dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an
unambiguous political dimension. I f the main pillar of the system is
living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it
is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely
than anything else.<
havel page 40 potp
“I can’t trust that [Mormons] can subordinate their instinctual pine for redistributed resources and their molasses-like groupiness to the rest of our variegated citizens’ interests.” – steveaz
How does senator Mike Lee factor into your analysis?
I can’t trust that [Mormons] can subordinate their instinctual pine for redistributed resources and their molasses-like groupiness to the rest of our variegated citizens’ interests
They used to argue the same thing about Catholics when JFK was running, and I even recall someone making that claim about Quakers when Nixon was running (how can a member of a pacifist religion send soldiers to war?), but they are politicians before they are priests. More’s the pity, but stereotyping is always fun when trying to marginalize entire groups of The Other.
Parallax,
I’ll reflect on Mike Lee’s public service as it develops. He’s a new-comer to the national scene, and I’ll give him all the room he needs to surprise me.
But, for now, this thread is about Mitt Romney’s public record, and it should not be controversial to suggest that his upbringing and social settings influenced (and continue to define) his interventionist politics.
Drum,
Jeff’s blog has labored to point out the contradictory poses of conservative politicians (in addition to lambasting the Left’s idiocy, of course) for many years. And Romney’s instinct to rally behind big government makes him an easy target for Jeff’s rapier-sharp wit.
Taken literally, my stark analysis of Romney’s roots in a search for his statist motivations should serve to challenge those who share his roots to analyze their own reflexive statism. And, on a larger scale, it should serve to nudge his Church (along with its subsidiary committees in state and local government) to revisit its reliance on Federal sanction and to edge closer to Mike Lee’s professed libertarianism.
Is that so bad? I don’t think so…
(Alas, any attempt to analyze general parameters’ effects on personal behavior in adversarial debate always invites an opponent to resort to a personalized, case-study retort. Or, as in your case, to resort to accusations of xenophobia, chauvinism, or marginalization of the general cohort under study. It’s a predictable cascade anymore in American discourse, and it should sound familiar to us “racists” at Jeff’s site.)
steveaz
Had you taken care to confine your analysis to Mitt, as you are now trying to do, and not make sweeping generalizations about all Mormon office holders I wouldn’t have much of an objection.
You didn’t and so I do.
It’s been my considerable experience associating with Mormons that most tend toward the center-right position on the ideological continuum, however there are numerous exceptions, you cite several, but there are others, Harry Reid being the most reprehensible.
I have Mormon acquaintances that were the STHTF would have no problem donning brown shirts, binding the hands of opposition members behind their backs and pushing them off a three-story building if it would help to bring about their enviro-fascist utopia.
OTOH I have Mormon friends who openly advocate for anarcho-capitalism. And there are many more between these two extremes—just like most every other group taken in cross-section in America.
Most thinking Mormons, while appearing from the outside to wallow in a “molasses-like groupiness,” make the critical distinction between freedom and coercion. That is, they themselves freely choose to associate with their church, to offer tithes to build up Zion and other donations which go to help the poor and unfortunate, many make covenants to consecrate everything they have should the need arise.
These same Mormons who would freely give everything they own also fight tooth and nail to prevent government from taking the nominally same measures through coercive means.
This is why: the distinction most Mormons make between freedom systems and coercive systems is a reflection of the patterns used by God and Satan. They believe Jesus in the pre-existence offered a plan for mankind to return to live in the presence of God by giving mankind the “unalienable” gift of free-will. Mankind could choose His path back to him by following His teachings, all glory be to God. Yes, some would be lost along the way, but that was a choice that they themselves could make.
Mormon scripture describes Satan in the pre-existence as then a “favored Son of the morning” who offered an alternative plan; compel all of mankind to act in a way as to qualify to return to live in God’s presence, all glory be to Satan.
A vote was cast and fully one third of the heavenly host sided with Satan and were cast into outer darkness. The rest, us, chose to receive a body in an attempt to make it back to His presence, wiser for the experience.
So what may appear to be the same actions from the outside—giving up ones property and decision-making to a powerful administrative agency—to most thinking Mormons is a critically different activity when performed through free-will or coerced at the point of a gun. The former being charity, the latter being theft.
I hope this helps you to see the error, at least with this issue, in using the logical fallacy of generalization. In any event, all arguments are made stronger by addressing the issue rather than falling back to fallacy.
Or, as in your case, to resort to accusations of xenophobia, chauvinism, or marginalization of the general cohort under study
You mean like accusing all Mormons of group-think (a la “my comment generalized about the societies he inhabited in order to explain his socialist predilections in public office” and “in my mind it’s too perfect a mimic of the Communists’ various Potemkin campuses, from their administrators penchant for issuing scolds to their assumption that their wards’ require their divine intervention to navigate their daily lives”)? That kind of xenophobia, chauvinism and marginalization?
If not, then you need to be more specific about which brand of xenophobia, chauvinism and marginalization you were using, because it’s hard to tell Coke from Pepsi from RC at this range…
(One other thing — simply identifying the kind of argument you used does not mean the one making the identification is using it in turn. Try and keep it straight.)
Drum,
My analysis requires that (1) you be familiar with the Left’s engineers’ purposeful ‘stacking’ of campuses into “organized” constituencies (this is the cultivated army that free citizens must face right now), and that (2) you comprehend that religious wards are simply another form of campus. If you get those two facts, then what you dismiss as xenophobic is actually a precise dissection worthy of more thought, as it only supposes that Mitt Romney is influenced by the campuses he has inhabited.
Socrates said it best, “Man is an accomplice in his own imprisonment.”
If more citizens were made to understand the confinements they endure day-to-day, often obliviously and perversely “by choice,” then they might pare down their exposure to the Left’s imposed campuses and join in the campaign to reign-in government. And Mitt Romney would not be proposing more government controls in the labor market.
(A primer: Campuses range from solid, walled campuses like your local college, your city library, your state-run hospital, or your chapel to wall-less, abstract ones, like Obama-care (the forced induction of “free” citizens into an engineered funding scheme), confining ‘categories’ (like “non-profit,” or “retired”) imposed by the IRS, or your peer-based or religious-based (same thing) “society” (ie. Emerson’s assertion of the real definition of “The Law”). These abstract types substitute social architecture for the physical corrals of solid campuses; their designers incorporated the social tools of coercion, like propaganda, public scolds, mob-violence or officious sanction to campus their charges instead.)
Frankly, I don’t know how actualized citizens can navigate the labyrinths of social organizations, local gangs, and other elective campuses, be they solid or abstract or both, without a basic understanding of the macro-architecture of the disjointed societies they elect to join, or the coercive campus-ing techniques they submit to by enlisting in them.
Good thing I’m here to help!
-S
Your analysis is still nothing more that (as you so ably put it) “xenophobia, chauvinism and marginalization”. I am familiar with what you are talking about, but (as was pointed out to you earlier), those “campuses” still manage to put out wildly divergent political opinions and positions, ranging from one end of the two-sided spectrum to the other, and each and every one of the positions held by one of those points on the spectrum that is different from your allegations against Mitt disprove the very arguments you make.
That is why you are arguing from fallacy, not because you can toss a word salad with any dexterity.
If you have a specific issue to raise, then feel free to raise it with arguments for or against, rather than assuming that you are the only one who understands exactly by which campuses Mitt has been brainwashed, and inaccurately lauding that you are the only one who has managed to escape the very brainwashing under which you insist everyone else is laboring.
You are the one-eyed man, indeed. Trouble for you is, no one else here is actually as blind as you claim.
Parallax,
Thank you for the thoughtful response – there is good, nutritious meat in there, simmered carefully and slathered with spicy paprika sass-sauce, too.
Served hot, this medley is my favorite dish!
I am certain there are variegations in Mormonism, and that these factions may need to duke this out among themselves. So I’ll chew on your response more as my Saturday wears on.
Any organized group can be a campus. What matters is how questions and dissent are handled.
I rather doubt the modern LDS engages in the stormtrooper approach.
I think we can notice some pained if strangely quiet howling abroad in the land on behalf of the abducted girls of northern Nigeria, predominantly lead by preeners and poseurs advertizing to their sympathetic virtue, who yet, oddly enough, can say “Bring back our girls” about those poor Nigerian waifs, so distant and little known to us, while uttering not a single peep on behalf of the tormented Connecticut Pelletier family right here in our midst, whose daughter was abducted by the storm-trooping Family Services apparatus of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Funny how it’s easy to recognize one sort of barbarian and miss another sort altogether, ain’t it?
McGhee,
“I rather doubt the modern LDS engages in the stormtrooper approach. ”
Stormtroopers, no. But Lee Kuan Yew in pennyloafers, yes. The Technocratic Republicanism is strong in them. Public lashings for marijuana possession leave quite a mark.
And, “What matters is how questions and dissent are handle.” You get it, McGhee! You friggin’ get it!
But I have one quibble: whether she is wielding the stick or the carrot to herd her charges, the practiced campus administrator always knows who it is she is campusing.
The problem for the freeman is the bovine obliviousness of the campused to their plight. This’ll be made painfully clear when us taxpayers are taxed to pay-off all those Humanities majors’ student loans under President Clinton II.
Never having been a Mormon I can’t speak to how oppressive they are toward “jack” Mormons.
I can say they’re a damn sight less oppressive toward non-Mormons than campus proggs are toward non-proggs.
Public lashings for marijuana possession leave quite a mark.
I imagine they would. (I use the subjunctive tense, since this has NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED.) Nothing like more xenophobia, chauvinism and marginalization, with a side helping of straw man to wash it down.
I’ve upped my game. Now up yours.
Used to? Still do, don’t they?
At least when the Catholic in question is a Republican.
The purpose of this is to determine just who wears the burqa when the time comes and the Progressives merge with the Islamists.
it always informative to hear about the proggslims
correction: proggslams
McGhee,
Campuses can be roughly divided between voluntary and involuntary types. In voluntary types, you, a fiduciary adult, elect with diligence to join in the rigors of the institution. Involuntary types, like military drafts, slavery or peer pressures, tend to ‘enlist’ the infirm, immature or ignorant who cannot plausibly resist their recruitment appeals.
Its the first type, the involuntary, imposed conscription of free citizens to governmental campuses (like Obamacare), that roils me. Either you still have freedom of association in America, or you don’t.
Drum,
I f I told you I am a “Harvard Man,” what would the label mean to you. How about if I said I was a “Princeton Man” or a “Yale Man” or a “Hoovie” from Stanford. Would the label denoting the campus that matriculated me, or the credentials earned while in school there, indicate anything incisive about me?
What is it about campus logos that gives them such qualitative power in defining campuses’ alumni? Answer that, and you will have joined me in my argument.
if it were easy to take Romney seriously he might would be president today
Would the label denoting the campus that matriculated me, or the credentials earned while in school there, indicate anything incisive about me?
No more than it would indicate your eye color or favorite kind of car. And yet you persist on insisting that Mormons, alone among these alleged “campuses”, manage to inculcate an attitude that controls their political bias. An insistence which is disproved with every instance of deviation from your otherwise unfounded assertion, and you still manage to become offended by me pointing out your stereotyping. (Even to the point of playing the “I know you are but what am I?” argument, which is admittedly quite devastating on the kindergarten playgrounds. Just not here.)
That, on the other hand, proves something quite incisive about you, although not particularly flattering. Just admit that you got this one wrong, and try again.
Mormonism is still a little baby religion compared to all the other ones unless you count climate change.
Which I do.
> unless you count climate change<
that part about:" jesus christ of the later day saints" throws an alsharpton flag
a lot of it is just marketing i think
the cult religion is moedumb. keepin peeps “real” since 700 ad
>a lot of it is just marketing i think<
brute force is "marketing".
so is product placement
like when all the little Teen Wolf characters got the “5” gun symbol tattooed behind their ears
I felt like they all deserved bonus pay for that
oh.
*gum* symbol is what that’s supposed to be
>so is product placement<
like kidnapping 200 christians and selling them as slaves
yes re-image the computer no more pop ups
kidnapping and enslaving christians is what you do when you’re feeling very
very
naughty
or going full moe
Used to? Still do, don’t they?
Yes, they do along with the obligatory chortling about ped0phile priests.
This is when they aren’t taking the low road and blaming everything on the Jews.