Saving Private Romney
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 14th, 2012 11:08 pm by HL
Saving Private Romney
Roger Cohen, New York Times
No sooner had Mitt Romney and his newly picked running mate Paul Ryan of Wisconsin dubbed themselves "America's Comeback Team" than President Barack Obama tweeted: "Romney-Ryan: The Go Back Team."Bring it on! Saving Private Romney is going to involve an ideological battle "” over the size of government, the extent of Americans' obligations to one another, even the soul of the country "” that is no less than the United States deserves. An election should not be about candidates'…
The Real Problem With Fareed Zakaria
Ira Stoll, Reason
Piling on to the story of Fareed Zakaria runs counter to some of my favorite journalistic rules.Never make too big a deal of a plagiarism story, for one thing — given the number of words that pass through most journalists’ computers nowadays, and the difficulty sometimes of remembering exactly where you learned that fact or phrase, it’s a wonder there aren’t more cases.And kick them while they are up, not when they are down, for another thing. My contrarian instincts are summoning me to defend the now-embattled Mr. Zakaria rather than join in the flurry…
A Big Win Now More Likely for Obama
Jamelle Bouie, American Prospect
In terms of demographics, Mitt Romney has one path to victory: overwhelming support from white voters. At the least, he'll have to outperform every Republican since Ronald Reagan, and win 60 percent of their votes. And this is if minority turnout is at its 2008 levels. If it increases, he needs even more whites to make up the difference.Seniors play a key part in this coalition. The New Republic's Nate Cohn puts it bluntly: “Romney's road to the White House runs through seniors.” John McCain won 51 percent of seniors, beating Obama by four percentage points. At the…
Ryan Brings Much-Needed Focus to Race
Romney-Ryan Economics Would Deepen Recession
Ari Berman, Nation
Much has been written in recent days about Paul Ryan’s plans to privatize Medicare, dismantle Social Security, massively cut taxes for the wealthy and drastically redistribute income from the bottom to the top.Yet perhaps the most disturbing feature of Ryan’s budget is that, in the midst of a prolonged recession, it would cost the US economy millions of jobs. Ryan’s 2011 budget plan proposes what the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities calls “the most severe and wrenching budget cuts in US history—two-thirds of which would come from…
