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September 20, 2012 9:52 AM Is Mitt “Getting Specific?”

By Ed Kilgore

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In a presidential campaign development that appears to have been thrown off for a week or so by the candidate’s own past and present utterances, Team Mitt is allowing as how it might be a good time to let voters in on the secret of what the man would do to turn the economy around if he wins—you know, other than brightening the sky, emboldening investors, and making the world a more peaceful, stable place by his very presence. Here’s what they are saying according to an O’Keefe/Rucker rundown for WaPo:

“We do think the timing is right to reinforce more specifics about the Romney plan for a strong middle class,” Romney campaign senior adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters Monday, saying the campaign has reviewed polling data that suggests voters are eager to hear more details from the campaign about what policies Romney would adopt as president.
Gillespie called the shift “more of a natural progression” than a campaign overhaul.
“There are a lot of Americans out there who are just really starting to lock in and starting to look for more information and now is the time for us to provide that for them,” Gillespie said.

Mighty nice of them, eh? The Romney campaign has actually spent the months since the primaries fighting with fanatical determination against any discussion of the domestic agenda Mitt committed to in order to talk conservative activists into accepting him as the GOP nominee. Its official line, day after day and week after week, was that the election was not a choice of policy agendas, but instead a referendum on the failed economic leadership of Barack Obama. Hell, it got to where conservatives were as upset about this Chance the Gardner message as progressives.

So nobody’s really buying the argument that the Romney campaign has decided that in the fullness of time and the natural order of things, it’s time to dumb down Mitt’s policy brilliance for the handful of swing voters who don’t fall neatly into the maker or taker camp. He hasn’t closed the deal with those voters; he’s under constant attack from the left and the right for his Nixonian stealth about his intentions in office; and he obviously hasn’t been doing that well just winging it over the last couple of weeks.

But the important thing to understand now, as I tried to explain earlier in the week before the Boca Moment took over all discussions, is that the “five-point plan” the Romney campaign suddenly wants to talk about right now is a Potemkin Village version of the agenda he practically signed onto in blood during the primaries. Sure, the stuff about abandoning any regulation of the fossil fuel industry, evil as it is, is a real policy specific, I’ll give them that. So, too, in theory, is the proposal to turn federal K-12 education aid into “backpack vouchers” (you know, you strap the money on the kid’s back and it follows him or her wherever the parents say), though there are all kinds of slippery details that depend on varying state laws, and there is zero chance the campaign will get to that level of details. Beyond that, you’ve got all kinds of self-contradictory demagoguery about expanding trade while launching a global trade war, and then the real guts of the “five-point plan,” described breezily as (a) attacking the budget deficit and (b) reducing the burden of taxes and regulations on small businesses. These little simple-sounding items happen to represent the Ryan Budget and the vast restructuring of national priorities it would involve.

Some of you might remember a scene in the old movie Moonstruck where the Cher character is in a confessional, and tells the priest: “I used the Lord’s name in vain twice; I-slept-with-my-fiance’s-brother; and I bounced a check at the liquor store.” The priest says: “That’s not a sin unless it was deliberate…what was that middle part, again?”

Any voters wanting to understand the Romney agenda had better emulate that priest and instead of agreeing the evaluate the candidates in terms of where they stand on the Keystone XL pipeline or trade sanctions on China, ask some follow-up questions about what Romney and his party actually think we need to do to create a smaller government and make life easier for small businesses. It’s basically what conservative activists have wanted to do, in good economic times and bad, since 1964: take America back to those salad days before the New Deal and Great Society turned the country in a dastardly, European direction.

Ed Kilgore is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly. He is managing editor for The Democratic Strategist and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. Find him on Twitter: @ed_kilgore.
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Comments

  • T2 on September 20, 2012 10:06 AM:

    "eager to hear more details" uh, I think it's more like "eager to hear any details"....
    but the problem for Romney, of course, is that people won't like the "details".
    Poll after poll has shown this. If the "details" are using the Ryan Plan -which Romney has endorsed/rejected depending on the hour of the day - to kill Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, well that won't go over well. If the "details" are raising taxes on the Middle Class to cut taxes on the Rich, well that won't go over well either.
    If the "details" are to balance the budget by cutting every useful government program that exists, well that won't go over too well.
    So I say to Ed Gillespie - bring on the details, baby.

  • martin on September 20, 2012 10:13 AM:

    Ed, am I beginning to hear a certain amount of exasperation with in your writing voice, or are you just feeling cranky?

    Either way, keep it up.

  • Peter C on September 20, 2012 10:15 AM:

    Republicans don't do 'details'. Mitt will lower his own taxes to near zero and fudge the rest as he goes. By helping himself, he'll have helped everyone (at least everyone that he cares about).

  • stormskies on September 20, 2012 10:16 AM:

    here is a headline you will not read in any of our media ... click on the link to read

    The World from Berlin
    'Who Wants an Amateur in the White House?'

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-reacts-to-romney-s-comments-a-856751-druck.html

  • bigtuna on September 20, 2012 10:21 AM:

    There will be no details. This will be what happens:

    1. Romney's team will say - - "look at all the specifics! He has specifics! I am specific! More specifics@/

    after some weeks of this, one could ask the few undecided voters, "what do you think of the ROmney plan? "

    answer - "well, he sure is specific."

    followup - can you give me one example of a real specific - ie, what is the plan, exactly?

    answer - "umm... well, not really, but it is specific !"

  • c u n d gulag on September 20, 2012 10:24 AM:

    The Romney/Ryan Budget Plan:
    Upper Class:
    You get to sit down.
    Enjoy your tax cuts with some VSOP Cognac, lobster and steak.

    Middle Class:
    You get to bend over.
    You have a choice of one - broken glass, granite, or razor shards, inserted in your rectum.

    Lower Class/Working Poor/Unemployed & Other Parasites:
    You get to bend way over.
    You get no choices - it's all three. AND a sulphuric acid enema.

    Hmm...
    I wonder why he doesn't want to spell that out for the voters?

  • boatboy_srq on September 20, 2012 10:36 AM:

    Shorter Romney plan for the middle class: all pain, no gain.

    Shorter Romney plan for the working class: all pain, and all the gains of the last 160 years erased with one stroke of the quill.

  • jcricket on September 20, 2012 10:43 AM:

    If Mitt got specific, he'd lose the 'base' vote, as the republican base is hardly independently wealthy. As a matter of fact, a good number of them are on social security.


    He's not going there. He'll stammer, and bluster, and point fingers at all kinds of distractions and out of context quotes. But specifics?

    Nah.

  • bkmn on September 20, 2012 10:56 AM:

    It seems as though Mitt thinks he has some kind of "Midas" touch that turns everything he touches into gold.

    In reality, as far as his campaign goes, everything he touches seems to turn to sh*t - I call that the "Mi(tt)das Touch."

  • ComradeAnon on September 20, 2012 10:58 AM:

    So instead of getting "We will focus on the Middle Class", we'll get "We will focus on the Middle Class by doubling down on traditional republican values".

  • BillFromPA on September 20, 2012 11:00 AM:

    Mittens is in an impossible box regarding 'details'. If he the tells the truth about the Romney/Ryan plans for the USA, he loses the mystical 'Middle' that supposedly determines Presidential elections. If his details are grooved to appease the middle, the 'Baggers will slap him back in line, publically and humiliatinglty. I'm going to enjoy watching him squirm.

  • biggerbox on September 20, 2012 11:01 AM:

    The Romney Campaign Extremely Specific Guide on how to play the clarinet:

    1. Hold the pointy end to your lips.
    2. Blow.
    3. Move your fingers up and down on the shiny bits.

    That's it.

    This should convince you that Mitt Romney knows exactly what to do to play the clarinet, and, if elected, he will be producing swinging tunes just like Benny Goodman.

  • Josef K on September 20, 2012 11:03 AM:

    Wonder what would happen if, in a burst of complete and depraved hubris, Romney actually goes ahead and suddenly starts talking specifics somewhere, does so completely spontaneously before any of his handlers can shut it down. This guy is just arrogant enough to think he's the one in charge of this campaign, and that his agenda (such as it is) has popular support.

    What happens then?

  • ClearEye on September 20, 2012 11:20 AM:

    It is frightening that Republicans have so muddied the ''debate'' that the decline in revenues over the past 30 years is never mentioned.

    As personal income tax rates have gone down, social insurance tax rates have gone up to the point that they were essentially equal by 2010 as sources of revenue. Virtually all working people pay payroll taxes, income taxes fall more heavily on the upper quintiles, and then there are people like Romney.

    Taken together, Federal revenue from personal income taxes and social insurance taxes total less, as a % of GDP, under Obama than at any time in the past 30 years:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/q1exyzigw03pp28/Tax%20%25%201981%202011.pdf

    But remember, we have ''a spending problem.''

  • Ron Byers on September 20, 2012 11:26 AM:

    I think it is time we had a debate on the specifics. For too long elected Democrats and their advisors have hid in the corner everytime some Republican yahoo made some silly Randian argument about takers and makers, ashamed of the Democratic approach to government. I guess they were overwhelmed by Ronald Reagan or the Democratic excesses of the 1960s, but for whatever reason the 3rd way Democrats have stood silent in the shadows hoping Republicans would just grow up. They haven't and they won't. As a result of Democratic silence, people like Romney and Ryan have been emboldened to attack our social contract and the social safety net that results from that social contract.

    The 47% comment seemed natural to Romney because the people of his base, the $50,000 a plate donors in that room, believe it. Why shouldn't they believe it when a lot of Democrats don't push back. It is time to push, loud and proud. At some point every American needs governmental help. The help should be delivered efficiently and should be kept to a reasonable minimum, but we all, Republicans included, need our governments assistance at some time or other. We shouldn't pretend otherwise.

  • alwaysiamcaesar on September 20, 2012 11:30 AM:

    As a figurative grandchild of the King of Swing , yeah !

    As a highly shiny (I hope it aint sweat) reader of the "Kilgore Tribune" Let me commiserate with the shiny and less shiny . Mr. Kilgore in his divine presence is suffering through a near record stint , sequence , or non ignorable plait of "trivial" complaints . Minor issues requiring tissues , tend to magnify the moments in a day , albeit , moment by scintilating moment .
    The world has not seen the likes of the tiny violin afforded to the pen of our dear Kilgore ... , but let me , please , say when one little thing after another attacks you and it is yourself as the indefatigable attacker it may be a bitter tea that seemed so bright and sweet one pounding moment ago .

    I relinquish the violin ...

  • Severian on September 20, 2012 11:32 AM:

    +1000 for the "Being There" reference. Like Chance the Gardener, I too "like to watch"...Mitt Romney's campaign collapse under the weight of its own hypocrisy and hubris!

  • Joe Friday on September 20, 2012 12:10 PM:

    Willard got plenty "specific" in the Boca video.

  • bdop4 on September 20, 2012 1:33 PM:

    "It’s basically what conservative activists have wanted to do, in good economic times and bad, since 1964: take America back to those salad days before the New Deal and Great Society turned the country in a dastardly, European direction."

    The hilarious part is that Europe followed OUR lead following WWII a la The Marshall Plan. But that requires thinking from a historical perspective.

  • cwolf on September 20, 2012 4:34 PM:

    ...he’s under constant attack from the left and the right for his Nixonian stealth about his intentions in office;...

    Well,,,
    Romney is not as likeable as Nixon.