Mitt Romney and the poverty of Republican ideology

This is the only piece I ever had rejected by the Southern Illinoisan. I submitted it in early October 2012 and the editor told me he wasn't printing any opinion columns on the election until the paper had made its endorsement.

The election is still a month away, any number of things could change, and I've long since learned not to make political predictions. But even Mitt Romney's staunchest supporters have to admit his campaign has not been going well of late as he finds himself trailing in polls both nationally and in key states.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Until recently, President Obama appeared to be extremely vulnerable. The country continues to struggle as it recovers from the recession, and unemployment remains stubbornly high. Obama’s stimulus and health care reform plans are supposed to be unpopular. The Democrats suffered defeat of historic levels in the 2010 midterm elections, and the Republicans were certain that was prelude to even bigger gains this year.

Explanations for why these prospects for victory have soured tend to focus on Romney's shortcomings as a candidate. Even Romney's supporters have blamed the candidate himself for his lagging campaign. Writing in The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes begins by pointing to the usual suspects of the liberal media and biased pollsters, but finally concludes that Romney has not presented a good case for himself. Pointing to a series of Romney's and other Republicans’ gaffes, Matt Latimer declares Obama "the luckiest politician alive." And writing in Newsweek, Niall Ferguson argues that this election is about which of the candidates is more likeable. “One thing’s for sure . . . ,” Ferguson concludes, “this time it really isn’t the economy, stupid.”

I'd like to offer another possible explanation for the Republicans' problems. Perhaps the fault lies not with the messenger, but with the message.

Romney has promoted himself as the best candidate on the basis of his business success. He promises a pro-business administration of deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. But Americans need only a short historical memory to see how well that works.

In 2001, when George W. Bush took office, he argued that, as the first MBA president, his business acumen made him the best steward of the American economy. He proceeded to push through Congress a large tax cut for the wealthy, saying it would be the most effective way to create jobs. He also continued the policy, begun under the Clinton administration, of deregulation of banking and other major industries. And he and many other Republicans pushed for further dismantling of New Deal and Great Society programs, including increasingly tying Social Security to the stock market and turning Medicare into a voucher program.

The results are well known. The tax cuts did not create jobs. Deregulation helped lead to the collapse of the banking and housing industries, with the former having to be bailed out at taxpayer expense of $50 billion. Ironically, in the midst of the crisis, when the federal government had to take over the California bank IndyMac in 2008, Bush found himself forced to rely on a New Deal program, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to reassure Americans that their investments up to $100,000 were safe.

Since Obama assumed office, Republicans have stressed the importance of controlling the federal debt, leading them to oppose all job-creation bills. But perhaps voters remember how unconcerned the GOP seemed as Bush’s tax cuts and two unfunded wars turned a budget surplus into record deficits, carrying on a long Republican tradition of spend and debt. As reporter Will Bunch writes, Dick Cheney commented privately in 2002 “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” Thus, many Americans may be unconvinced by the Republicans’ pose of born-again deficit hawks.

              In other words, most voters may be approaching Romney’s platform of lower taxes for the wealthy, deregulation, and budget cutting with the idea that they’ve seen this plan before and did not like the results. And it may well be an indication of the poverty of Republican ideology that in the twelve years since Bush’s first campaign, it can offer nothing different than policies that have utterly failed, both economically and in the eyes of the majority.

            Niall Ferguson to the contrary notwithstanding, perhaps this time it is the economy, stupid.