General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"...Romney is operating from the assumption that voters are stupid."
By Steve Benen
Mitt Romney delivered a curious speech in Iowa yesterday, presenting his thoughts on the budget deficit, the debt and debt reduction, which is worth reading if you missed it. We often talk about the problem of the left and right working from entirely different sets of facts, and how the discourse breaks down when there's no shared foundation of reality, and the Republican's remarks offered a timely peek into an alternate reality where facts have no meaning....In other words, the guy who intends to add trillions to the debt gave a speech yesterday on the dangers of adding trillions to the debt.
More importantly, though, Romney presented a vision of the last few years that bears absolutely no resemblance to reality at any level. Jon Chait had a good piece on the remarks.
In the real world, the following things are true: The budget deficit was projected to top $1 trillion even before President Obama took office, and that was when forecasters were still radically underestimating the depth of the 2008 crash. Obama did propose temporary deficit-increasing measures, an economic approach endorsed in its general contours, if not its particulars, by Romneys economists. These measures contributed a relatively small proportion to the deficit, and their effect is short-lived. Obama instead focused on longer-term measures to reduce the deficit, including comprehensive health-care reform projected to reduce deficits by a trillion dollars in its second decade. Obama put forward a budget plan that would stabilize the debt as a percentage of the economy. Obama has hoped to achieve deeper long-term deficit reduction by striking bipartisan deals with Congress, and he has tried to achieve this goal by openly endorsing a bipartisan deficit plan in the Senate and privately agreeing to a more conservative plan with John Boehner, both of which were killed by Republican opposition to any higher revenue.
The story told by Romney is one in which all of these things are either untrue or could not possibly be true.
I don't think Mitt Romney is stupid. I do think Romney is operating from the assumption that voters are stupid.
In Romney's speech, the deficit is responsible for a tepid economic recovery. That doesn't make any sense -- and I suspect the former governor knows that -- but he's counting on you not knowing the difference...In Romney's speech, the deficit can be dramatically reduced magically, even while cutting taxes on the wealthy and increasing spending on defense...In Romney's speech, "spending" has created a "financial crisis" (that's gibberish). In Romney's speech, the size of government has exploded to new heights (the opposite is true). In Romney's speech, the deficit is growing (it's actually shrinking). In Romney's speech, President Obama doesn't care about fiscal responsibility (Obama offered Republicans an overly-generous $4 trillion debt-reduction package, which the GOP rejected). In Romney's speech, Bush-era policies have absolutely nothing to do with Obama-era deficits (ahem).
- more -
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/16/11731503-a-peek-into-an-alternate-reality
FSogol
(45,473 posts)WI_DEM
(33,497 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)Check out this question from the ABC/WaPo poll:
Q: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of Mitt Romney's proposal to cut federal income tax rates by 20 percent?
48 percent favorable (33 percent among Democrats)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/05/16/National-Politics/Polling/question_4754.xml?uuid=4d-dKJ9GEeGMZlBQ1Bnm9A
No details, just give the impression that everyone is going to get a 20 percent tax cut.
Romney's plan actually raises taxes on low income Americans.
Old and In the Way
(37,540 posts)Who doesn't like paying less? A better question might be, "do you like free ice cream, knowing your kids and grand kids will have to finance your free ice cream consumption"?
louis-t
(23,292 posts)bluedigger
(17,086 posts)Thrill
(19,178 posts)to being President
jehop61
(1,735 posts)Rmoney has been speaking to the "base" all through the primary season and has forgotten that some of us can actually read and think.
Old and In the Way
(37,540 posts)he is only 1/2 wrong with his belief that voters are stupid..
robbob
(3,527 posts)...or hope that stupid people can't be bothered voting.
lame54
(35,284 posts)kentuck
(111,078 posts)Calling them stupid is being generous.
ejbr
(5,856 posts)voters ARE stupid!
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)A river in Egypt!
DallasNE
(7,402 posts)But the tone with which he said them. Romney showed a good deal of disrespect, along with the outright lies. He is not someone I would want to have a beer with so no wonder his likeability numbers are in the tank. He is one ruthless mother that will do anything to get his way. No wonder he reminds me so much of Richard Nixon.
kentuck
(111,078 posts)to be a private equity manager. They must, by definition, be ruthless and cruel and not lose sleep over some poor sucker that loses his job and can't feed his family...
RitchieRich
(292 posts)...relating to the statement that the debt and size of government are going down.
This does not reflect the impression I've been left with.
(my doubt of those claims far from constitutes support for Red Team Leader)
EOTE
(13,409 posts)What might be confusing you is the difference between deficit and debt. The debt will continue to grow so long as we run a deficit. However, the deficit (and as a result, the debt) had been growing massively under Bush. It's now on the move downward after some massive increases. As for the size of government, if you read any unbiased sources and ignore the screaming of the far right, you'll see that Obama (perhaps to his detriment) has been shrinking the size of the federal government since he's come to power.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/02/obamas-budget-deficit-getting-a-little-bit-smaller/1#.T7gm01KyOuI
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/business/economy/government-is-getting-smaller-in-the-us-off-the-charts.html
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)I remember in 2008 how effing close the Presidential election was and when wacko Palin was nom for VP it was a sure winner for the GOPs. Of course they didn't have Citizens "Destroyer of Democracy" United in placed, but with the ground and social media, I'm pretty sure that Pres O will win and a strong possibility of Dems taking the House and keeping the Senate. Then finally, just finally we can get this country back in the positive when it comes to jobs and the ecomony.
kentuck
(111,078 posts)we had a press that was doing its job.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/16/485560/romney-flips-back-to-claim-that-bain-capital-created-100000-jobs/
Romney Campaign Massively Downgrades The Number Of Jobs It Claims He Created From 100,000 To Thousands
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002686053
iandhr
(6,852 posts)Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)jerseyjack
(1,361 posts)153 million voted for McChimp.
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)BigD_95
(911 posts)voters are stupid
MineralMan
(146,286 posts)nt
ScreamingMeemie
(68,918 posts)Pakid
(478 posts)are clueless about everything. They may have an opinion but they have no idea of the facts or the truth and lack any desire to learn the truth or to get the facts . So Mitt is right when it comes to his base they are stupid
Quantess
(27,630 posts)quinnox
(20,600 posts)There are a lot of clueless voters out there, look at the election of 2004 for plenty of evidence.
The 2010 election, too, among others.