So Romney entered the convention season very slightly behind Obama. Romney got either a modest bounce (in Rasmussen) or a nonexistent bounce (in Gallup) from his convention. Obama got either a modest bounce (in Gallup) or a large bounce (in Rasmussen) from his convention. The result is that, in the tracking polls, Romney leaves the conventions farther behind than he started. So I guess the story of Romney’s dad giving his mom a rose didn’t get it done. People must be more interested in their own lives. Imagine that.
So today Romney had some thoughts on guaranteed issue. One interpretation is that he is going to keep the guaranteed issue provision of Obamacare in place, and that this marks the beginning of Romney’s slow motion surrender on Obamacare. That is what Tyler Cowen thinks. There are more charitable interpretations, but you have to strain to make them. Romney mentions that his “own” plan will include protections for those with preexisting conditions. He mentions his own health care reform plan in Massachusetts as an example. But Romneycare’s combination of guaranteed issue + community rating + health insurance purchase mandate is, along this dimension, virtually the same as Obamacare. Romney might have been thinking of something along the lines of the plan offered by James Capretta and Tom Miller, but there is nothing in the context that would support such an interpretation, and only a tiny fraction of the population even knows that such a plan exists. I suppose Romney could have spared a few moments in his convention speech to explain the principles of his health care policy, but that would have interfered with the endless mentions of his business experience and the story about how he misses his kids. So Romney either told us what he was thinking (that he is basically going to keep Obamacare in place) or he flubbed explaining why his plan would be preferable.
I make fun of the policy shallowness of Romney’s convention speech and how he tried to use personal anecdotes to try to get people to like him without giving any real idea of what he would try to do as president. Part of this is the absurdity of the exercise. What gave Romney the idea that people were going to vote for him based on his ability to emote? That isn’t his strong point. It is like trying to win football games by making Peyton Manning your featured wide receiver. But I think I understand why Romney fooled himself into taking this approach. Does anyone doubt that, if you could offer Romney the presidency in return for keeping Obamacare and ROE, Romney would take the deal in a second? So the policy issues are just a bunch of BS he needs to say to win over subgroups of chumps, suckas, voters. The stuff about loving his parents and kids was real. The problem was that the realness of his love for his immediate family highlighted his cynicism and phoniness on everything else.
September 9th, 2012 | 2:54 pm
I doubt anything Romney could ever say would satisfy you.
A convention speech.is not a policywonk seminar. For a lot of voters it is their first time seriously thinking about him. They need.to be introduced.
September 9th, 2012 | 3:53 pm
Two things:
1) The convention speech did succeed in humanizing Romney, which is important. However, that does not imply it make him look more presidential — some claim it did the opposite.
2) Whether it is a fair characterization or not, the narrative of Romney’s apparent change on Obamacare is going to look like he is merely responding to the polls, which is not a good thing. If media portrayal of him “flip-flopping” on one or two more issues sticks, either as a result of another interview or debate, you can stick a fork in his campaign.
September 9th, 2012 | 4:03 pm
Could have seen this coming a mile away. You can’t win on organization without substance, money without the courage of some conviction, planning without some passion … or pick your platitude.
Raymond: “They need to be introduced”. America is waiting.
September 9th, 2012 | 6:01 pm
sigh.
Pete’s too hard-core in the last four sentences, but I’ll say it again:
sigh.
September 9th, 2012 | 7:52 pm
Raymond, making a non-perfunctory explanation of, and dramatizing how, your favored set of policies will improve living standards isn’t any kind of seminar. It is answering questions people have about their own lives.
Steve, I think that the whole “humanizing” notion is getting in the way of seeing Romney’s problems. People have concerns about him. About zero percent (give or take one percent) of those concerns revolve around how much his parents liked each other or how much he likes his kids. Answering questions people aren’t asking isn’t the way to win people over. Explaining why his approach to the deficit would help the economy while Obama’s would hurt helps some. So does explaining why his Medicare plan is better. Here is the thing: When Romney was talking about real stuff he was doing better and drove the debate. But he gave it up. I wonder if there is a psychological component to all this.
Like Carl says…
September 9th, 2012 | 8:42 pm
Meh. Panicking like this over an alleged two-day “bounce” is beneath you.
Absolutely nothing’s changed. The economy is still a disaster. Most folks still think Obama’s a decent enough failure with no answers. And Romney is still a terrible, terrible, terrible candidate.
Knowing that neither of these jokers has the first clue how to address any of the fundamental problems facing the country can be strangely liberating.
September 10th, 2012 | 12:11 pm
This is, of course, the guy who strapped the family dog to the top of his car while on vacation. Yeah, yeah, I know, he loves his children.
September 10th, 2012 | 4:24 pm
Here is Yuval Levin’s charitable reading of Romney’s comments: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/316381/pre-existing-ignorance-yuval-levin
September 10th, 2012 | 6:40 pm
Jason, so far that fits into the three interpretations of Romney’s remarks that I’ve seen.
1. He is giving up on repealing Obamacare. That’s Tyler Cowen’s view.
2. He did a lousy job of pointing out that he would have his own plan for dealing with pre-existing conditions that he hasn’t really articulated, and this despite Romney’s own reference to Romneycare as an example of Romney dealing with pre-existing conditions which is very similar to the guaranteed issue + community rating + insurance purchase mandate in Obamacare. So Romney was failing to convey that he actually supported a different set of policies that are obscure to the vast majority of the public and that he had taken no time to explain, rather than saying he would keep the guaranteed issue provisions of Obamacare.
3. Both 1 and 2 are wrong and Romney got stuck trying to have it every way simultaneously. I favor interpretation 3.
September 10th, 2012 | 8:42 pm
“Nominee Santorum continued his attack on Obamacare adding to his already strongly worded attack on the abortion centric nature of the Democratic convention.”
One can dream, but this site wanted the milquetoast. The guy who can’t even pander on the issue of leaving god out of the platform. This site would have replaced Judas with the rich young ruler lest the Sadducees get the apostle “off message.”
September 23rd, 2012 | 7:12 pm
[...] Pete Spiliakos has been complaining about Romney’s performance at the Republican convention and about the lack of definition and specification of policy in convention speakers as a whole . It didn’t bother me. I figured that the next week and all through the fall, Romney, Ryan and friends would pound the republican Republican message. Apparently they are not going to do that. I begin to wonder if they will actually engage with reality in the debates, or if all will be soft-focused, smudged lens imagery about Republican intentions. What are they going to do? I am of the faithful and I am no longer sure what they are going to do. I thought the choice of Paul Ryan meant a bold turn. Why take him on if policy talk, which he does so well, was not going to define the campaign going forward? [...]
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