Tag: 2012 republican presidential candidate

Can Any Republican Still Compete With Mitt Romney?

Again the Republicans debated, this time in Las Vegas, and again the dynamic of their presidential race remained static – a disappointing outcome for all of the candidates except Mitt Romney, who once more dominated his would-be competitors. Blitzed repeatedly on issues from health care to immigration, the former Massachusetts governor not only held his own but asserted his domination, pushing back only as hard as he heeded to, and leaving the rest of the field to bicker, snicker and posture impotently.

Continuing his stiff march toward the nomination, Romney demonstrated why he is the most formidable figure amid a decidedly unimpressive group, a candidate with confidence and intellect that complement his personal wealth, fundraising prowess, and organizational skill. He is a supple debater.

Politely but capably he put down Herman Cain, yet another version of non-Romney, for scheming to raise the taxes of middle-class Americans with that grossly regressive “9-9-9” tax plan. (With luck we’ve heard the last of this scheme, which is just as indigestible as Cain’s cardboard pizza.) Forcefully but calmly, he cut through Rick Perry’s furious assaults on him for hiring illegal immigrants, with the Texas governor still sporting a phony grin even as his severed head hit the ground. Wisely and slyly, he changed the subject when the questioning turned to “Occupy Wall Street” — and the responsibility of investment banks for the national economic disaster. Mr. Bain Capital knows what he doesn’t want to talk about, too.

The shrewd, persistent, dogged Romney slapped down every missile aimed at him, insisting on his time and overpowering even the belligerent Perry, who displayed considerably more animation than in his last lifeless performance. Saying that Romney had “lost all standing” for lying to the American people, the Texan sneered: “You hired illegals in your home and you knew about it for a year,” accusing Romney of scaling “the height of hypocrisy.” But like the exhausted scuffling over health care reform in Massachusetts, this charge too was recycled from four years ago, when the Boston Globe uncovered two alleged instances of undocumented laborers employed at Romney’s home. He replied now as he did then that he hadn’t known about their status, and nobody – or at least not Perry – is prepared to prove that he did.

It is hardly worth discussing any other candidates – the peevish Santorum, who polished his political credentials by disremembering his catastrophic defeat in 2006; the preening Gingrich, who was exposed in dissembling about his own previous position on health care; the excitable Bachmann, whose costume and demeanor were so reminiscent of Evita; and the avuncular Paul, whose radical views on foreign policy and defense are still far outside his party’s mainstream.

Cain seemed to be having a moment in the polls, but that is likely to deflate as his 9-9-9 plan’s flaws become obvious even to the most gullible segment of voters. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, it would raise taxes for 84 percent of taxpayers, with the worst impact felt by poor families earning under $30,000 annually, while reducing taxes on the wealthiest elite. If that doesn’t sweep Cain off the stage, he will surely be diminished by his remark suggesting that he would trade all the Guantanamo prisoners to Al Qaeda for a single US soldier – a gaffe he first tried to amend and later withdrew, saying he had “misspoken” or perhaps “misunderstood the question.”

Only Romney proved ready for prime time, as each of his vaunted rivals falls short. It is true that he consciously (and unconscionably) panders to the far right, as when he said that America should stop distributing humanitarian foreign aid around the world, and leave that to the Chinese. That was a stupid answer and he knows it. It is also true, however, that he can muster a certain gravity, as he did when he dismissed the bigotry of his fundamentalist critics as an insult to the founders and the Constitution. Although he is vulnerable on many levels, from his wooden insincerity to his business profile, none of the Republicans possesses the wit or the boldness to exploit his weaknesses.

“The cake is baked,” crowed Michele Bachmann, playing cheerleader to the angry audience that dreams of defeating Obama. But that cliché more aptly describes her own fate — and the state of the Republican primary — unless Romney stumbles very badly, very soon.

Romney V. Women

Mitt Romney’s public stance on abortion may have changed at least twice in the past 25 years, but his callous approach to women’s rights has stayed the same.

More than 20 years ago, according to a news report published over the weekend, Romney rushed to a Boston hospital and tried to use his position as a lay Mormon leader to intimidate a pregnant woman experiencing complications into rejecting abortion.

Romney apparently said something to the effect of, “Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?”

She chose the procedure anyway. “He was blind to me as a human being,” she says now.

Less than five years later, running against Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney claimed that he was a stronger supporter of abortion rights than the Massachusetts senator. And now he hews to the orthodox anti-abortion line of the Republican Party platform. His willingness to change with the political winds twice over is not a sign of “pragmatism” or “moderation” — it shows that he serves only his ambition, even by pandering to extremism. And that he’ll do whatever the Republican establishment demands.

Here’s a clip from a debate with Kennedy where Romney paints himself as a champion of the right to choose, someone sensitive to the plight of women seeking underground abortions:

Of course, just this month, asked by conservative Christian leader and talk show host Mike Huckabee whether he would be a pro-life president, Romney had a very different story.

“My view is that the Supreme Court should reverse Roe v Wade and send back to the states the responsibility for deciding whether it is legal or not,” he said. “Would it be wonderful if everyone in the country agreed with you and me that life begins in conception and that there’s a sanctity of life that’s part of a civilized society and that we’re all going to agree there should not be legal abortion in the nation? That’d be great. But I don’t think that’s where we are right now. But I do think where the majority of the American people would go is say let the states make the decisions.”

In fact, it would appear the majority of the American people have made clear for nearly 40 years now that they do not want the question returned to the states — and that taking a federalist stance on this issue is really just a way of sugarcoating an approach that ignores the safety and health of women.

Follow National Correspondent Matt Taylor on Twitter @matthewt_ny

All Cain Is Saying Is Give Pizza A Chance

Herman Cain has long been regarded as the folksiest of the GOP presidential hopefuls, from releasing a gospel album to allegedly taking his tax plan from a video game. But somehow, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and current Republican frontrunner has managed to add another serving of quirkiness to his campaign: A viral video shows Cain singing a parody of the famed John Lennon song “Imagine,” dedicated to his favorite food. The clip, from the 1991 Omaha Press Club show, is more Weird Al than Commander in Chief. Will Cain be able to serenade his way into the White House?

On Race And Herman Cain — A Darker Shade Of Wail

This is for those who keep asking what I think of Herman Cain. In particular, it’s for those who want to know what the tea party’s embrace of this black businessman turned presidential candidate says about my claim that the tea party is racist.

I might eat the plate of crow those folks proffer if I’d ever actually made that claim. What I have said, fairly consistently, is something more nuanced: Racial animus is an element of tea party ideology, but not its entirety. As I once noted in this space, the tea party probably would not exist if Condoleezza Rice were president.

Modern social conservatives, in my experience, do not hate black people en masse. To the contrary, there are two kinds of blacks they love. The first is those, like Rice, who are mainly mute on the subject of race, seldom so impolite as to say or do anything that might remind people they are black. The second is those who will engage on race, but only to lecture other blacks for their failures as conservatives conceive them. And that, friends and neighbors, is Herman Cain all over.

“I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way,” he told CNN recently. Had he contended too many African-Americans use racism as an excuse for failure to succeed and even failure to try, Cain would have gotten no grief from me; I’ve made that argument often.

But what he said was that racism is no longer a factor. He surely warmed the hearts of his conservative fellow travelers who swear blacks have the same opportunity to succeed as whites if they’d only get off their lazy so-and-sos and do it.

It is a claim spectacularly at odds with reality, given that African-American unemployment runs twice that of whites, given that the Agriculture Department admits to systematically discriminating against black farmers, given documentation of a “justice” system engaged in the mass incarceration of young black men.

But what made the claim truly bizarre is that two days later, Cain branded himself a victim of racism. Specifically, he said some black people are “racist” because they disagree with his politics. So blacks aren’t held back by racism, but Cain is?

Lord, give me strength.

He thus neatly encapsulates what has become an article of faith for many white conservatives; namely, that it is they, not black and brown people, who are the true victims of bigotry. Mind you, they have not a shred of a scrap of a scintilla of evidence to support this cockamamie idea, but they believe it anyway. And now they find support for their idiocy in this Negro from Atlanta.

One of the least-discussed impacts of the black experience in America is its emotional toll. African-Americans were psychologically maimed by this country, the expression of which can still be seen in the visceral self-loathing that afflicts too many.

Meaning the black child who equates doing well in school with “acting white.” Meaning the famous black man who bleaches his skin. Meaning the famous black woman who rationalizes her use of a certain soul-killing racial epithet. Meaning Herman Cain.

In his diminution of African-American struggle, he comes across as a man profoundly at odds with the skin he’s in. He seems embarrassed he’s black.

For what it’s worth, I suspect black folks aren’t real happy about it, either.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.