"During the 2012 campaign, I, like every liberal writer whose job it is to comment on politics every day, wrote many unkind things about Mitt Romney."

"Much of the time I found him more sad than despicable; politicians who nearly reach the pinnacle of their profession while being manifestly awful at politics are a rare and curious breed."

Writes Paul Waldman at The American Prospect in a post titled "New Documentary Threatens to Make You Like Mitt Romney."

Here's the trailer:

Finally some attention to my suggestion that Mitt Romney is the man to fix Obamacare.

I said it back in October.

Picked up today by Ben Domenech and Hot Air.

"Back during the campaign they lied and said that Mitt Romney cut off a woman with cancer."

"Now they’re lying about the woman with cancer that they cut off. Fraudulent, indeed. But lashing out at critics won’t stop the rot."

"Rot" is a good word. Mitt Romney himself was on TV last Sunday saying: "And whether you like the model of Obamacare or not, the fact that the president sold it on a basis that was not true has undermined the foundation of his second term. I think it's rotting it away."

Meade and I have been catching up on the old TV series "Breaking Bad," and we're somewhere in Season 2. The main character has discovered dry rot in the wood floor of his house and — attempting to fix it himself — he opens up a hole in the floor and then he's down in the crawl space under the house, finding the whole foundation rotten. The oblivious wife and son live in that house that is contaminated and slowly collapsing, while dad is down there, underneath, replacing a timber here and there. At one point, he stumbles over to their breakfast table in his hazmat suit and pulls off his respirator to chomp down a little toast, and their dependence on care from their father figure is such that they never say anything like: "Uh, Dad, if you're wearing that, shouldn't we get the hell out of this house?" They just keep eating their breakfast, like this is home and Daddy will provide. 

It's funny to see the lefties in the mindset of conservatives, attempting to shore up a rotting structure, rebuilding at the same time people are forced to keep using it. This is where we are, and Daddy is fixing it. Meanwhile, the righties are the radicals, eager to rip down the whole house even if there's no new place in move-in condition.

Mitt Romney says the foundation of Obama's second term is "rotting" away.

On today's "Meet the Press":

But the key, I think, that has really undermined the president's credibility in the hearts of the American people is that he went out, as a centerpiece of his campaign, and as a centerpiece of Obamacare over the last several years, saying time and time again that fundamental to his plan was the right people would have to keep their insurance plan. And he knew that was not the case....

And whether you like the model of Obamacare or not, the fact that the president sold it on a basis that was not true has undermined the foundation of his second term. I think it's rotting it away.

And I think the only way he can rebuild credibility is to work with Republicans and Democrats and try and rebuild a foundation. We've got to have a president. We've got to have a president that can lead. And right now, he's not able to do so.

Thought experiment: To fix Obamacare, Obama should bring in Mitt Romney.

Yes, the arguments against this rush to mind:

1. Romney is a member of the opposition party... but that's also a plus: We could have a real show of bipartisanship and of genuinely wanting to make this legislation work for the benefit of the American people, not just to make it look good at the right times and in the right ways to bolster the power of the Democratic Party.

2. When he was running for President, Romney said he wanted to repeal Obamacare...  but he was working with the preferences of the GOP base and needed to win the nomination. He distanced himself from his history of making Romneycare work by saying he'd been Governor of Massachusetts, working with the preferences of the people of Massachusetts. This suggests that he's a practical, able man who understands the task he's been assigned and sincerely applies his expertise.

3. Romney wouldn't want to help Obama, who defeated him in the election... but Romney's image is of a public servant who wants to do good works for the benefit of all. He isn't — or at least shouldn't — want to seem like a guy with a grudge.

4. Romney should stand clear of the spectacular collapse of Obamacare. Really? Isn't this like his signature achievement, saving the Olympics? The magnitude of the disaster and the importance of avoiding it are exactly what should attract Romney. "He saved the Olympics and he saved Obamacare" — wouldn't he want that legacy?

5. Obama wouldn't want Romney showing up on the scene now as the savior. Obama is too narcissistic, too peevish to call out to the older man for help. Maybe. But Obama would be the President, and he could look very magnanimous and wise. He could finally seem to be doing what a lot of us thought he was about when we voted for him in 2008 — bringing us together.

6. Everyone, right and left, would cry out in horror or at least puzzlement. And what a distraction that would be.

"What Is Mitt Romney Hiding in His New House's Hidden Room?"

"You can see the room in the blueprint at right. It's a little over 50 square feet, twice as long as it is wide. The document marks where the 'hidden door' will be built in to shelving in the adjacent study. It's next to the 'powder room' and the 'coat room," which many people would call a 'bathroom' and 'closet.'..."

"Conservatives need to stop playing by the rules set by the left. With creativity and a little innovation, we can redefine the debate on our terms."

Writes Scott Walker, in his new book, which, we are told, criticizes Mitt Romney.

Walker writes that Republicans in 2012 didn't run on their principles, didn't criticize Obama enough and did a "lousy job of presenting a positive vision of free market solutions to our nation's problems in a way that is relevant to people's lives."

The book — "Unintimidated" — won't be out for another month, but you can pre-order it here.

"Mitt Romney Voted Against 2012 Run In Family Poll."

"Over the Christmas break of 2010, Mitt Romney and his family took an internal poll on whether he should run for president once more...."

"MIT’s incoming class hacked the Harvard 2017 website Sunday night..."

"... by replacing all the pictures with Mitt Romney’s mug."

Nice socks.

Via Mitt Romney.

ADDED: It's a thing.

"Speak English" rhetoric that you'd better not try unless you're a Democrat.

1. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg: "I’ve said this a thousand times, if you don’t speak good grammar – English with good grammar – you’re not going to get the kinds of jobs that you want.... If there’s a lot of jargon, double negatives, and things like that, they hurt your career prospects... People think its cute to jive, and it may be for entertainment, but ya just still have to have great command of the english language."

2. U.S. President Barack Obama: "This bill would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are already in this country illegally--a pathway that includes passing a background check, learning English, paying taxes and a penalty, and then going to the back of the line behind everyone who's playing by the rules and trying to come here legally."

3. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich: "We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and so they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto... Second … we should establish that citizenship requires passing a test on American history in English."

4. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney: "And Reagan would have never offended Hispanics as Gingrich did when he said Spanish is the language of the ghetto."

"Anybody who is a Republican who goes into politics and thinks they're going to get a fair shake from the mainstream media is obviously missing some IQ points."

"You go into it knowing you're going to have a tough road with the media and if you're not willing to deal with that, don't get into the race."

Why didn't Romney... why didn't the Republicans... root out these Obama scandals before the last election?

Why wasn't the opposition party oppositional enough? Where was the supervision? Why did Romney crumple mid-attack in the second debate? Where was the vigilance? Where was the vigor? Where was the outrage? The American people were deprived of a fair election, and the Republicans — who presumably wanted to get the President's hands off the machinery of power — didn't see what was being done or they didn't want to talk about it or — to voice the last and paranoid-sounding option — they were complicit.

Here's a list — to be lengthened — of things that might have happened:

1. The President's machinations were so devious and brilliant and that it was just too hard for the Republicans to uncover them in time to enlighten the voters.

2. The Republicans had good reason to believe that the American people resisted thinking ill of the famously likeable President and so they pursued campaign strategies that allowed people to maintain this treasured belief. Their idea was: He's a nice guy but it would be good to switch to this other person who's also nice and will do an even better job. That's lame, we can see in retrospect, but it was the decision at the time.

3. The Democrats' theme was the meanness of Republicans, and muckracking and mudslinging would have risked reinforcing that theme. It seemed like a better bet to stay clean, especially once the scrappier candidates — Gingrich and Santorum — lost out to the gentlemanly Romney.

4. Obama's prime target was the Tea Party (which had crushed him in the 2010 midterms), and the establishment Republicans were at odds with the Tea Party movement. I'm not saying I believe this, but sober reflection tells us we need to redraw the line between paranoia and vigilance. The theory is that establishment Republicans appreciated the suppression of the Tea Party.

"Still, Cruz and Christie possess a key similarity: an abundance of old-school manliness."

"Sure, one is a twangy Texan with that shit-kicking, boot-wearing thing going on (despite being a double-ivied, cosmopolitan kind of guy). The other is a Jersey bruiser, with a (much-discussed) physique reminiscent of Tony Soprano after a doughnut bender. But both are delivering a booster shot of testosterone to the GOP in a way few have managed to pull off of late...."

Writes Michelle Cottle in The Daily Beast (erasing Cruz's Hispanicity and Christie's stomach surgery).

Despite the centrality of this image to the GOP, however, precious few of its high-profile players now are apt salesmen for the manly brand....

As for the current team ... Mitt Romney: too much of a doofus. Paul Ryan: ditto, despite the washboard abs. Eric Cantor: too twitchy (manly men do not visibly vibrate with nervous energy). Marco Rubio: too boyish. Jeb Bush: too soft and measured. With his retro Mad Men groove, John Boehner has the potential to be a Don Draper kind of manly man, but he’s too darn weepy.

ADDED: I looked up "shit-kicking" in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary. It means, "In early use: worthless, contemptible. Later: designating or characteristic of an unsophisticated person from a rural area; (also) tough, belligerent; cf."

1953   J. Harvey Salt in our Wounds vi. 87   You low-life..shit-kicking..useless bastard.
1972   J. Thomson in J. Malley & H. Tokay Contemporaries 189   A beer drinkin finger poppin shit kickin red neck.
1978   Jrnl. Folklore Inst. 15 264   Shit-kicking villagers wearing whatever it is that villagers actually wear these days.
1987   W. Styron Tidewater Morning in Esquire Aug. 88/2,   I, a shit-kicking Carolina yokel who, when I first met you, suspected you of being a neo-abolitionist.
1992   Playboy Nov. 111/1   He told me not to worry, in that shit-kicking drawl of his.
1998   Esquire May 42/1   This woman is one hot, shit-kicking feminist babe.
2002   L. Coady Strange Heaven i. 6   A pack of g.d. shit-kicking yahoos.

How does that relate in any way to Cruz?

"We do find that apologies do make apologizers feel better..."

"... but the interesting thing is that refusals to apologize also make people feel better and, in fact, in some cases it makes them feel better than an apology would have.... When you refuse to apologize, it actually makes you feel more empowered.... That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth."

When you think of not apologizing, what are your first 2 associations? Mine were:


1. "And I'm not sorry/It's human nature...."

2. Mitt Romney's book title: "No Apology." (Looking up that link, I'm noticing that Barry Goldwater wrote a book called "With No Apologies.")

Without revealing my associations, I asked Meade for his. He spouted 2 famous aphorisms, the first of which is not about not apologizing, the second of which is the no-apologies aphorism:

1. "It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission."

2. "Never apologize — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway." Actually, Google seems to think this aphorism is "Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."

I enjoyed that Google search, which led me to this line from "Paths of Glory" (written by Stanley Kubrick):

I Pity YouPaths of Glory at MOVIECLIPS.com

Did Romney say anything interesting at CPAC?

I really don't see how he could.

Ted Cruz's office says "in the mid-1990s, the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of 'critical legal studies'..."

"... a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism – and they far outnumbered Republicans."

That's in response to a New Yorker article quoting something Cruz said in a speech 3 years ago. (What Cruz said back then, at an Americans for Prosperity conference, was that when he was at Harvard Law School "There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.")

The Cruz spokesperson called it "curious that the New Yorker would dredge up a three-year-old speech and call it 'news.'"

Curious... there's a noncommittal word. I don't see anything wrong with digging stuff out of old Cruz speeches. He's a new character on the national stage, so it's not like old territory is being reworked. It was an inflammatory statement, and he needs to stand by it (and back it up), defend it as hyperbole, or concede he was wrong.
The New Yorker writer, Jane Mayer, was following up after Barbara Boxer had compared Cruz to Joseph McCarthy. That was pretty inflammatory too (as I said at the time). What Boxer said made it a valid line of inquiry for Mayer and not odd at all. What you say to your base will be heard by the outsiders too, and any politician needs to be prepared for that. Republicans hoping for a new star better not forget how badly Mitt Romney faltered when he had to deal with the 47% remark he'd used on the insider group. This Cruz quote is the same kind of thing. Don't minimize it.

Mayer talked to Charles Fried, the Harvard lawprof who was probably the one Republican referred to by Cruz. Fried says:

"I have not taken a poll, but I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government".... Fried acknowledged that "there were a certain number (twelve seems to me too high) who were quite radical, but I doubt if any had allegiance or sympathy with anything called ‘the Communists,’ who at that time (unlike the thirties and forties) were in quite bad odor among radical intellectuals.” He pointed out that by the nineteen-nineties, Communist states were widely regarded as tyrannical. From Fried’s perspective, the radicals on the faculty were "a pain in the neck." But he says that Cruz’s assertion that they were Communists “misunderstands what they were about."

Clearly, it was rhetoric to call the Critical Legal Studies professors "Marxists" who believed in "Communist" revolution, and Cruz chose to do that at a particular place and time. Cruz is accountable for that. It's a shibboleth of the right to rely on the words "Marxist" and "Communist." It wasn't the way the lefty lawprofs of the time talked about themselves. I have a vivid memory of saying to a CLS lawprof — a very good friend, during a casual conversation — "I'd like to know about the connection between CLS and Marxism." She snapped: "There's none." I got the message: You sound right wing. It was understood that to sound right wing was to become toxic.

Here's a useful passage from the classic 1983 CLS book by Harvard lawprof Duncan Kennedy, "Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System":

Left-liberal rights analysis submerges the student in legal rhetoric, but, because of its inherent vacuousness, can provide no more than an emotional stance against the legal order. The instrumental Marxist approach is highly critical of law, but also dismissive. It is no help in coming to grips with the particularity of rules and rhetoric, because it treats them, a priori, as mere window dressing. In each case, left theory fails left students because it offers no base for the mastery of ambivalence. What is needed is to think about law in a way that will allow one to enter into it, to criticize without utterly rejecting it, and to manipulate it without self-abandonment to their system of thinking and doing.

This gun control controversy is a real gift to Republicans.

It got them out of the morose election postmortem. Now, they're in their zone. Guns! — such invigorating shift from having to talk about Mitt Romney.

Righties should be sending thank you notes to Joe Biden.

ADDED: Biden actually said: "There is nothing that has pricked the consciousness of the American people (and) there is nothing that has gone to the heart of the matter more than the image people have of little 6-year-old kids riddled - not shot, but riddled, riddled - with bullet holes in their classroom."

Like it's all a matter of the capacity to visualize gore.

If we picture a bloody mincemeat of fetuses, then do we get to take away abortion rights?

Paul Krugman is "feeling so despondent."

Why? "Because of the way Obama negotiated" the fiscal cliff deal.

He gave every indication of being more or less desperate to cut a deal before the year ended....

He did? Funny, Rush Limbaugh kept saying Obama wanted to go over the cliff. It was his preference. The idea was to get rid of the hated Bush tax cuts and the cliff was there as a device to make it possible to blame the GOP. Back to Krugman:

The only thing that might save this situation is the fact that Obama has to be aware just how much is now riding on his willingness to finally stand up for his side; if he doesn’t, nobody will ever trust him again, and he will go down in history as the wimp who threw it all away.

The wimp?! Hey, remember when they were calling Romney a wimp?



That was back in July. Was Romney "just too insecure to be President"? Meade and I were just talking this morning about exactly that. There were 2 crucial points when Romney failed to stand his ground. He crumpled under intimidation. One was when the 47% video leaked out. Romney went beta, instead of doubling down, getting hardcore. The other was during the second debate, when he was going big on Benghazi, and Obama and Candy Crowley performed their check-the-transcript routine, and Romney deflated into oh, am I wrong?

So, anyway... is Obama just too insecure to be President?

A conversation for the end of the year.