Month: February 2012

For Obama, No Re-Election Means No Positive Legacy

Buck Banks

If Barack Obama loses this fall, he will forever seem a disappointment: a symbolically important but accidental figure who raised hopes he could not fulfill and met difficulties he did not know how to surmount. He meant to show the unity of America but only underscored its division. As a candidate, he symbolized transformation; in office, he applied incrementalism and demonstrated the limits of change. His most important achievement, helping forestall a second Great Depression, will be taken for granted or discounted in the dismay about the economic problems he did not solve. His main legislative accomplishment, the health-care bill, may well be overturned; his effect on America’s international standing will pass; his talk about bridging the partisan divide will seem one more sign of his fatal naïveté.

If he is reelected, he will have a chance to solidify what he has accomplished and, more important, build on what he has learned. All of this is additional motivation, as if he needed any, for him to drive for reelection; none of it makes him any more palatable to those who oppose him and his goals.

— James Fallows, writing in The Atlantic.

The Myth of Mitt’s Moderateness

Trish

So much for the arguments by independents that Mitt Romney is a moderate.

Mitt is not a moderate, he’s not a liberal, he’s not a conservative. He’s a rich guy doing whatever he thinks he needs to do to claim the power that rich guys feel entitled to.

Mitt is not a moderate, he’s not a liberal, he’s not a conservative. He’s a rich guy doing whatever he thinks he needs to do to claim the power that rich guys feel entitled to. And if that means saying one thing to these people and the opposite to others, so be it.

Addicting Info on Romney’s reaction to the decision by an appeals court that California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in the state, is unconstitutional:

Not long after the ruling was handed down, Mitt Romney, eager to pander to ultra conservative anti-gay hate groups, made a statement, condemning the decision.

[Romney’s statement begins] “Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.” [Romney’s statement ends]

The problem with Mitt’s statement is that the judges did indeed correctly interpret the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about marriage. It does not say that straight couples are the only ones who can marry, nor does it say that homosexuals can’t get married. What the Constitution does say is that everyone has the right to personal liberty, privacy, and equality under the law. Laws that ban consenting adults from marrying violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Constitution. In other words, the judges made the right call. So basically, Romney is promising to appoint judges who will consistently misinterpret the Constitution, which is similar to what Newt Gingrich has promised to do.

The GOP Made Obama So Moderate

Buck Banks

Republicans, however, can and should take partial credit for this. Obama is so moderate in part because the Republicans are so extreme. Politicians are ideological, of course, but they are also opportunistic. And the GOP, in closing ranks against almost every major initiative Obama has attempted, has taken away most of his opportunities to be truly liberal.

Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Post in response to a new study that finds President Obama “is the most moderate Democratic president since the end of World War II, while President George W. Bush was the most conservative president in the post-war era.”

Is Obama ‘Luckiest Man Alive?’

Buck Banks

At the last possible moment to save his re-election, the economy is beginning to hum, as evidenced by Friday’s jobs report. And Obama’s Republican opponents are shaping up to be as formidable as, well, marshmallows. While Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are making each other unelectable, the president is singing Al Green, congratulating Super Bowl winners, playing with science projects, raising obscene amounts of campaign cash and watching his poll numbers soar.

— Dana Millbank, writing in the Washington Post, asserting that President Obama just might be the luckiest man alive.

Santorum Stealing Gingrich’s Thunder

Buck Banks

Because right now, angry and almost broke, Newt is no longer the leading candidate to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. That man is Rick Santorum. And what makes Gingrich especially grumpy is that the man he is losing to was once just a pimply backbencher in the 1994 Republican Revolution… So for now Newt is left broke and unloved, facing the long road ahead with a raised fist. There probably will be better days ahead — Super Tuesday offers southern states, and Newt has already proven his ability to rise from the political dead. But Rick Santorum just had his best night of the campaign. For all his faults, he has none of the personal baggage of Newt that might offend the faithful.

— John Avlon, writing in the Daily Beast, noting that Newt Gingrich’s narrative of a two-man race collapsed under Rick Santorum’s trifecta win last night.