7 Comments

David Nickol
August 13th, 2012 | 5:02 pm

Here’s the beginning and ending of Robert J. Samuelson’s column of August 8, titled Romney’s tax plan makes no sense:

There seems to be a Democratic mole inside Mitt Romney’s campaign. Could it be Romney himself? Well, of course not. But considering the campaign’s behavior, it might just as well be. President Obama and his allies have cast Romney as a wealthy fat cat who’s out of touch with everyday Americans and who would use his presidency to enrich the already rich. To counter this damning image, the last thing you’d expect Romney to do is embrace a tax plan favoring the super-rich.

Which is exactly what he has done. . . .

So Romney might have struck a blow for fairness, efficiency, simplicity — and political independence. Instead, he’s made a gift to Obama.

It appears as if Romney is sticking with his own budget and distancing himself from Ryan’s budget. (Romney: “I have my budget plan, and that’s the budget plan we’re going to run on.”) So it looks like Romney is intent on giving this gift to Obama.

Actually, it’s very helpful that Romney picked Ryan but intends to stick with the Romney budget, since I think it is perfectly legitimate to criticize both the Romney and the Ryan budgets now. They may not intend to run on Ryan’s budget, but it is one of Ryan’s major claims to fame, and he certainly can’t claim it doesn’t reflect his thinking.

J.W. Cox
August 13th, 2012 | 5:42 pm

Some other stuff, and in particular something for Mr. Mills and Mr. Reno….

Mark Shea is incendiary in his criticism of Ryan: namely that he’s now lying about the how devoted he was to Ayn Rand, and how influential she was on his thinking, politics, and policy.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2012/08/uncomfortable-truth-dredged-from-the-memory-hole.html

For links and a congruent critique, Shea links to a blogpost at Caelum Et Terra (which I’d never heard of before), by Daniel Nichols, one of the site’s founders. Nichols provides links, including a Ryan youtube video, to show that Rand has always been important to him
http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/ryan-and-rand-and-thomas/

To learn more about C&T, there is this, which their original 1991 founding statement; http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/about/why-caelum-et-terra/

But the one I read (or have read most of) was this one, http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/resurrecting-caelum-et-terra/, which is an essay (VERY long) by Jeremy Beer, originally in now defunct The New Pantagruel; Beer seems to be saying that C&T saw itself in opposition to the neocon/neoliberal “Whig Thomism” mindset embodied by Neuhaus of “First Things” — he goes into some depth about this.

Beer seems to be arguing that Nichol & Co., rightly, see the Whig Thomist mind as one that’s unwilling or unable to subject capitalism in general and American consumerism in particular, to substantive Christian critique.

Beer crystallizes this in his overview of the differing interpretations to John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus (CA), promulgated in May 1991, by Michael Novak/Neuhaus/et al and by a group including C&T and others who “were part of an orthodox Catholic coalition which came together to challenge this interpretation [by Novak/Neuhaus/etal].”

Anyway…it was just a perspective that I’ve not seen before. Thanks.

Joe DeVet
August 14th, 2012 | 6:25 am

1. I don’t think Romney is actually losing. That may be a CNN meme, and wish, but it does not square with what’s really happening.

2. The Romney budget has been characterized by his enemies as pandering to the fat cats, but it does not, in fact, do much to overturn today’s reality that the very richest pay, in both actual dollars and percentages, a disproportionately large share of US taxes. The opposing campaign, which is not rich in truth after all, was going to try to tag Romney with the fat-cat-panderer label no matter what the truth is, and no matter who he chose to run with.

3. Romney is winning even more with Ryan as running mate. The best pick he could have made. Regardless of ultimate budget details, he has aligned himself with the foremost emblem of fiscal responsibility within the Beltway. And fiscal responsibility is the key to this election, as it was the mid-terms of 2010.

publius
August 14th, 2012 | 11:13 am

Romney is not “losing” — according to Scott Rasmussen’s polling, he’s up by three points. Gallup has him tied with Obama.

Ray Ingles
August 14th, 2012 | 2:38 pm

In terms of who’s winning or losing in a ‘horse race’ sense, I’ve found this site to be be pretty useful: http://electoral-vote.com/

The webmaster is partisan, but he’s very open about the sources of his numbers and how he processes them.

There’s also the oppositely-partisan but just as open http://www.electionprojection.com/index.php – which comes to very similar conclusions.

A lot can change between now and November. But as of right now, Romney doesn’t appear have the electoral votes to win.

publius
August 14th, 2012 | 9:27 pm

….And as of this point in 1988 Michael Dukakis was up 17 points over George H. W. Bush. These numbers are meaningless….

Ray Ingles
August 15th, 2012 | 9:48 am

Publius – “Up 17 points” in the general election is what’s meaningless.

It’s the electoral college that matters for the Presidency. The all-or-nothing nature of individual state elections amplifies small differences in the general election. And that is why we even have the concept of ‘battleground states’. And why looking at the polling on a state-by-state basis gives a more accurate picture of where the Presidential election stands.

See, e.g. here or here.

As I said, a lot can change between now and November – but at no point in the election so far has the polling data shown Romney having the 270 electoral votes needed to win.