Dan Kennedy: Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney

Dan Kennedy: Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney:

I come neither to bury Mitt Romney nor to praise him. Instead, I hope to persuade you that you should be rooting for Romney to win the Republican nomination for president. And yes, by "you" I mean liberals who are planning to vote for Barack Obama in 2012.

Now, I realize this proposition is counterintuitive. However reluctant Republicans seem to be about getting behind their supposedly inevitable standard-bearer, most Democrats and independents understand that Romney is by far the strongest of a remarkably weak Republican field.
If Obama's re-election is all that matters, then of course it would be better for the president to take on a divisive figure like Newt Gingrich, the latest anti-Romney flavor of the month among conservative Republicans. Needless to say, Obama supporters would be beside themselves with joy if the Republicans were to nominate an even more flawed candidate like Herman Cain (who could be gone by the time you read this), Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann.
Romney, unlike most of his Republican rivals, is a credible candidate with real management experience in both the private sector and in government. You can picture him as president without breaking into a cold sweat. As governor of Massachusetts, he was a competent leader who did some good things (most notably on health care, as you may have heard) and some bad (demagoguing against same-sex marriage). Until he started running for president midway through his sole four-year term, he was moderate, pragmatic and results-oriented -- everything today's Republican Party is not.

I realize this is not a good week to try to make a case for Romney. His lying ad about Obama was repulsive in its cynicism -- but no more so than his flogging of Perry for taking pretty much the same position on immigration that Romney himself did a few years ago.

Yet if Romney fails to win the nomination, it could be disastrous for the country, for the Republican Party and even for the Obama presidency. Let me take these one at a time.

1. It would be bad for the country. Nearly three years into the Obama era, the economy is still in miserable shape. With Europe collapsing as a result of the debt crisis afflicting Greece and Italy, and now spreading to other countries, we could very well be heading into another recession in 2012.

Obama's bold-if-not-quite-bold-enough steps in 2009 -- the stimulus package, the bailout of the financial and auto industries and related measures -- may very well have averted a 1930s-style depression. But that's of little comfort to millions of Americans who are out of work, stuck with bad mortgages and angry. Obama could lose his re-election bid even to the likes of Gingrich or Perry if things get worse. If they get much worse -- well, would you want to bet against Bachmann or Ron Paul if the unemployment rate hits 15 percent?

My point is that Obama could lose no matter who his Republican opponent turns out to be. Given that obvious fact, do you really want to take a chance on Obama's losing to anyone other than Romney?

2. It would be bad for the Republican Party. The party of Lincoln -- not to mention Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush -- has become a destructive force in recent years, wedded to discredited ideas such as tax cuts for the wealthy and climate-change denialism. Above all, today's Republicans are devoted to destroying Obama, echoing their sex-obsessed persecution of Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

In the long run, the implosion of one of our two major parties benefits no one. The American form of representative democracy works best with an effective governing party and a responsible opposition. If Republican voters nominate Romney, it would send a signal to John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell, as well as their Tea Party allies, that they're sick and tired of their relentless, self-serving obstructionism.

3. It would be bad for the Obama presidency. Despite my fears that even a fringe candidate could beat Obama if the already-ailing economy collapses, it is more likely that the president wouldn't have to break a sweat in dispatching Gingrich, Perry or Bachmann. And that wouldn't bode well for a second term, as Obama wouldn't earn a mandate so much as have one handed to him.
Given Romney's incessant pandering, I may be too optimistic in hoping that an Obama-Romney contest could play out as a serious conversation about our country's future. But a boy can dream, can't he?

Romney currently finds himself in an impossible position: he's widely described as the inevitable nominee, yet the Republican Party's right wing -- its dominant wing -- loathes him. This week the New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed Gingrich -- no surprise, but a complication for Romney given how crucial the Granite State is to his chances.

The prospect that the president may face an extreme, supposedly unelectable Republican may seem enticing to those hoping for a second Obama term. As always, you should be careful about what you wish for.

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM:

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM

Submitted by:

DavidJ3d

Sen. Harry Reid: Affordable Care Act Helps Women

Sen. Harry Reid: Affordable Care Act Helps Women:

When I was a kid, I thought I was a lot tougher than I was. My mother taught me that if you acted like you could handle yourself, then you could. But sometimes that meant enduring unnecessary pain.

My family could not afford to see a doctor and had to confront health needs alone.

Several families like mine have endured illnesses simply because they could not afford medical evaluations, making early detection or prevention of them difficult.

A report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finds last year's health insurance reform is already changing this.

Preventative care has become much more affordable. For Medicare beneficiaries, the cost burden of services -- such as mammograms, colonoscopies and blood pressure checks -- has been lifted entirely.

This year, more than 17 million seniors have received preventive measures they desperately needed, without copayment, deductibles or coinsurance, according to HHS. And an additional one million seniors have received free wellness visits.

This is particularly great news for women. More women have struggled with chronic illnesses than men.

In 2009, the Commonwealth Fund found that more than half of women delayed or avoided preventive care because of cost concerns. Even moderate co-pays for preventive services such as mammograms or pap smears have deterred women from visiting a doctor.

Yet chronic diseases, which account for 75 percent of the nation's health spending, are often preventable. The Affordable Care Act is helping women -- young and old -- avoid the onset of illness and improve their quality of life.

In its report, HHS announced new guidelines that will ensure women of all ages receive preventive health services at no additional cost. HHS's announcement follows a report by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine that included fundamental preventive services are a basic health need of all women.

Starting in 2012, new health insurance plans will not only put money back in the pockets of women, but they will cover a wider net of preventive care services, such as Human Papilloma Virus DNA testing, HIV screening and counseling, FDA-approved contraception, breastfeeding support and domestic violence screening and counseling.

Too many women like my mother lacked the preventive services they needed to stay healthy because of cost concerns. It's up to us to make sure today's women know about the benefits available to them.

HealthCare.gov is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more. And the Department of Health and Human Services Web site provides great guides, too.

In a country as great as ours, no one should be forced to struggle without medical coverage because of an illness that could have been detected and treated.

This blog comes from MomsRising.org and CustomFitWorkplace.org and presents innovative ideas to strengthen 21st Century American families through public policy, business practice, and cultural change.

James Peron: F.A. Hayek Against the Conservative

James Peron: F.A. Hayek Against the Conservative:

Glenn Beck told his audience that Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom was the "best thing you can read." The book shot up the Amazon bestseller list instantly as Beck's cult-like followers rushed out to buy it.

Beck was unaware that Hayek's friend, and sometimes sparing partner, John Maynard Keynes, also called it a "grand book" and said he found himself "in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement." The New York Times said this book, by the Nobel Prize winning economist, is one of the staples of the conservative Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party and Glenn Beck would do well to educate themselves as to Hayek's actual view in his essay, "Why I Am Not a Conservative." Conservatives concentrate on Hayek's opposition to state socialism, but have little understanding of his radical classical liberal ideas and ignore his opposition to conservatism. Hayek saw himself as a liberal, in the classical sense of the word. And, while Keynes differed greatly from Hayek's views on economics, Keynes saw himself in the same ideological camp as his friend. Hayek was "not averse to evolution and change" and said that when "spontaneous change has been smothered by government control, it [liberalism] wants a great deal of change." This, he argued, was in conflict with the "conservative attitude" which was a "fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such." Hayek said his position "is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead." Conservatives focus on Hayek's distrust of centrally imposed, top-down change. Meagan McArdle, for instance, invoked Hayekian theory to claim, "changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage... might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning." This confuses Hayek's opposition to imposed change with opposition to all change. Hayek's view was that for a new social order, or social rules, "To become legitimized... [they] have to obtain the approval of society at large -- not by a formal vote, but by gradually spreading acceptance," much the way that same-sex marriage has gained support. This is particularly true when the change recognizes a "conflict between a given rule and the rest of our moral beliefs." Then we "can justify our rejection of an established rule." For example, when denying same-sex couples the right to marry conflicts with our acceptance of equality of rights before the law, we can justify changing the laws on marriage according to Hayek's insights.

Hayek warned that conservatives, however, "are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rates to whatever appeals to the more timid mind."

Another difference between Hayek and conservatives is he saw order emerging from voluntary interactions of people, while "Order appears to the conservative as the result of the continuous attention to authority." The conservative, he said "feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change 'orderly.'" Hayek believed in the rule of law, with government powers strictly limited to general rules of social order. Contrast this with a conservative who "does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not be too much restricted by rigid rules." Hayek warned that the conservative is "less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them" and said "he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people."

Hayek saw conservatives as lacking principles but not "moral conviction." He wrote, "The conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions," but "has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions." Hayek's liberal social order allows people of differing convictions the freedom to pursue their own values. The joking response to conservatives, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married," actually encapsulates Hayek's view of a liberal society, which allows people of different views the freedom to pursue their own values. Those who oppose erotica are free to NOT buy it, those who oppose abortion are free to shun abortions, those who oppose gay marriage don't have to get gay married!

It is here that Hayek's liberalism is most clearly in opposition to both conservatism and socialism. "I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion."

Conservatives invoke supernatural claims to justify intransigent opposition to change, not so with Hayekian liberals.

"The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face [human] ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic -- but it seems to require a certain degree of diffidence to let others seek their happiness in their own fashion and to adhere consistently to that tolerance which is an essential characteristic of liberalism."

Hayek's wrote, "What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different spheres which ought not to be confused."

Hayek never feared evolutionary change in society, nor believed religious values sufficient reason for using power of the state to prevent change. Hayek, the intransigent opponent of socialism that Beck and conservatives admire, also saw himself equally opposed to their conservative agenda, something conservatives ignore at their peril. More confusing for these so-called admirers of Hayek would be the fact that Hayek opposed their conservative agenda for precisely the same reasons he opposed socialism. But that, I suspect, is a brew too strong for the so-called Tea Party.

Paul Abrams: "Before the Next Election": The Overlooked Phrase in Perry's Treason Accusation

Paul Abrams: "Before the Next Election": The Overlooked Phrase in Perry's Treason Accusation:

Rick Perry (R-TX), the Republicans' flavor of the day before they embrace the more marbled beef of Chris Christie (R-NJ), told Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that he would be committing "treason" if he "printed money prior to the next election," and that, if he dared come to Texas after committing such an act, he would be treated "ugly."

While the Beltway was, properly, taken aback by the not-too-subtle physical threat to Bernanke by a sitting governor who aspires to be president, they all overlooked Perry's time qualifier, "before the next election." That ought to dispel any doubt that the Republican Party will prevent an economic recovery so that they might win the next election.
Presumably, if Bernanke launched QE3 (the means to expand the money supply) after the election, it would not be treason, and Bernanke could go to Texas without fear for his life or health.So, what was Perry really getting at? It seems clear that Perry was warning Bernanke not to improve the economy before November 2012 because it might help President Obama's re-election chances. That is, they will prevent 14 million Americans from getting jobs. They will make millions more family members suffer. And, they will express outrage that anyone even suggested that that is what they are doing. It was one of these authentic, unscripted moments in which the candidate said what he really believed. Indeed, he began his answer to the voter question about the Federal Reserve by stating he did not want to address it. But, could not stop himself. Robert Gibbs is absolutely correct. The Republican Party will keep millions of Americans from having jobs, a payroll tax cut, and unemployment insurance so that the economy will suffer, just so the President will have a more difficult time winning re-election.

Their frontrunner just said so. There is no other plausible (or implausible) explanation for qualifying his outrageous accusation and implied physical threat against Chairman Bernanke with an election-related timeframe.

So, Mr Gibbs, you have the "smoking gun." Use it as evidence. Use it often.