The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Michael Maiello's picture

    Romney Has Learned Nothing

    By Michael Maiello on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 12:27pm | Politics

    Back during the debates about the Affordable Care Act, I complained quite loudly and often that the legislation did not do enough good for people who already have health insurance, particularly through their employers.

    I argued, quite strenuously, my belief that middle class tax payers are getting fleeced on premiums and not getting enough effective medical treatment for what they pay.  I don't recall many people around here disputing it, but I do remember Teresa McCarthy's frequent retort which, borrowing from Carly Simon, went something like, "You're so vain, you probably think this legislation's about you."

    And, it largely wasn't legislation about me.  Though I do benefit in myriad ways, the legislation was really about the uninsured.  It was about people with, in this regard, problems larger than my own.

    Via Talking Points Memo, the lesson that Willard Mitt Romney learned from getting trounced in the election was that Obama bought votes by giving goodies to poor people and minorities.

    "I think the 'Obamacare' attractiveness and feature was something we underestimated, particularly among lower incomes," Romney said.

    You're so vain, Mitt.  I know that Republicans are sustaining themselves on the fantasy that only winning a majority of white male votes matters.  The law doesn't work that way, fortunately.  And if the Republicans can't face that people vote for more complicated reasons than "goodies from the White House," well... that's said, but I'm fine with that.

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    The fact that Romney wasn't getting any of those messages during the campaign--that he needed to consider something as basic as the feelings of minorities or the 47%--shows how little he studied for the duties of the presidency while lusting after the office of the presidency.  

    He just wanted to be president.  All those years of preparation and it turns out that he never thought beyond wanting to be president.  He assumed if he wanted it badly enough it would come true.

    That's just sad.


    by Ramona on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 4:26pm

    Romney and the Greedy Old Party are not going to play Nanny State with mobs of poor Takers, who think they deserve living wages or health care for themselves or their families. Get it!! Why don't they just start hedge funds and make millions in capital gains shipping jobs to China?


    by NCD on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 5:27pm

    Romney essentially says eff you to 47% of the public he sought to represent and now comes back, just kicking himself, or rather, "weself" (invoking the royal "we") for maybe, just possibly "underestimating" the attractiveness of programs such as Obamacare.  Sweet.  Amazing the guy got as many votes as he did.  Election's over, Mitt.  You--and your party--blew it.  You're just another presidential wannabe talking the coulda woulda shoulda game.  Good riddance, a**hole.  Quite evident your party didn't learn a thing from the election results, either.  

    Or, perhaps they did.  They learned that they really have nothing positive to offer our country that anything close to a majority actually wants, so extreme have they become.  With all the bitter infighting it's all they can do to keep their party from imploding.  So might as well go the schadenfreude route and try to bring down Obama a few pegs.  If the country suffers, well, who cares?  No elections for 20 more months so they can always hope the voters forget or they can twist the truth when the next elections near.  

    Just looking for an opportunity to express my outrage along with so many others of my fellow citizens at some peaceful, powerful protest event that I hope will be called and happen soon.  I just hope the different personalities and groups get their act together and call the damn demonstration, or whatever it is they decide to do.  I'm there.  Eff the Republicans.  They're a bunch of unpatriotic traitors, willing knowingly to damage the country with crisis after crisis of their own creation.  They can't win at the polls so they must figure that, like the cornered animal, they have nothing to lose doing what they're doing.

    Please pardon the uncharacteristic, intemperate tone of this comment.  Furious and outraged just begin to describe how I'm feeling at the moment.

     


    by AmericanDreamer on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 8:51pm

    And of course a large percentage of the 47% (including my retired dad*) did vote for him.

    *In his defense, he did put more into the system than he's likely to take out, even considering the fact that longevity runs in our family. Technically, though, he's still part of the 47% as far as Romney is concerned.


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 8:51am

    My father is not part of the 47%, he's been voting for Republicans as long as I can remember, but for the second time he voted for Barack Obama. He told me he was finally done with Republicans because they lack seriousness as a party and they use racism to attract voters. It makes him sick to his stomach. My father employs many people of all races, but mostly brown people, who work their asses off to get ahead in this world, he can't believe that Republicans would continue to diss them like they do.


    by tmccarthy0 on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 9:55am

    Every so often I see a glimmer of hope that my dad will finally come to his senses, but I'm not holding my breath. wink I think I have finally convinced him that climate change is a serious concern, although he's still wanting a global solution to happen before a national one is enforced. I've tried pointing out the folly of this, but I don't think it's getting through. As for labor unions? Family planning? Fuggedaboutit. (I was about to include taking care of the poor, but he is very concerned about that. He just thinks it's the church's responsibility, and he does put his money and time where his mouth is on that one, so I can't really criticize him.)


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 10:09am

    He does realize, right, that the churches by themselves cannot possibly come close to dealing with the extent of poverty that exists--and that many of them are the first to make that clear when they talk to media and others?  And that it's not "either/or" when it comes to churches and civil society more broadly, and government?  It's "both/and".   


    by AmericanDreamer on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 10:27am

    No, not really. I've explained exactly this to him, but he remains unconvinced.


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 10:31am

    Sounds as though you've gotten a lot farther with him than I have with my brother-in-law.  Are you available for holiday season consults?smiley


    by AmericanDreamer on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 10:38am

    :D, that's the thing, this bill, is and was always about people who don't have access to health insurance. This isn't just a Heritage Foundation Bill, this was a negotiated policy that incorporates both "free market" LOL, and the solidly liberal idea of having access to preventative health care for everyone. It's so important not just as social justice issue but as a public health issue. 

    Mitt Romney will never get it, he has never been without access to health insurance, hell, he probably has the best insurance policy in the world. While I am never surprised that the majority of people don't understand the long term policy implications of ACA I am surprised that Mitt Romney is not expected to know something about the government and how to develop policies and why doesn't he have a specific interest in at least one niche policy, and where were the people in his staff who had real expertise in anything other than Republican propaganda of lower taxes, lower taxes and fewer benefits for people.  All he knows is Republican propaganda, people just want a hand out, but it isn't a handout if your paying for it. And isn't it equally a handout to insurance companies who are not being forced out of business or to specialize in supplemental insurances to the public option?

    I am floored over all by the lack of seriousness in the Republican Party as an entity, and I am equally floored by how little depth Mitt Romney has a human being. Wow. 

    Nice blog Mike, nice blog.


    by tmccarthy0 on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 9:07pm

    When you're as rich as Mitt Romney, you don't need insurance. On average, buying insurance is a losing game, otherwise insurance companies would go out of business. The thing is, it isn't about the averages, it's about worst-case scenarios. It's hard to imaging a worst-case scenario where Romney wouldn't have enough money to pay for a treatment out-of-pocket, so to speak.


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 8:47am

    True VA, quite true. But the larger issue is his inability to comprehend the larger implications of universal health care at the policy level, particularly in terms of public health. He really has no issue that he thinks deeply, he  and the entire Republican Party,  have no real deeply developed policies, they simply spout the party line, cut taxes to spur economic growth, which doesn't work, but that it is, that is all they have. Even their so called "policy wonk" Paul Ryan, I know, that made me laugh too, has no real policy ideas nor has he ever advanced any policies, he was just Sarah Palin but he spoke in complete sentences. Otherwise there was literally no difference between them.  Unlike Republicans of the past, all they care about now is stopping and or reversing progress. Moving forward to them means making sure corporations and rich people don't pay any taxes, wow. Lame and it doesn't work. It's very surreal to see a party that lacks seriousness on this level and it is equally strange they continue to rely on propaganda and stereotyping to attract designed to attract white men. They rely on the Southern Strategy, when by and large we are moving on from that time in our history, and while it worked for a while our world has changed and they are unable to see that change. But they continue to use the BS propaganda that brown people and poor people just want handouts. Such utter BS. And how insulting and racist and retro!

    I really do hope, in the long run that the Green Party can begin to run some credible candidates all over the country. If they are serious and step up to the plate, they can take the place of the Republican Party as a major party and Republicans can be relegated to third party status.


    by tmccarthy0 on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 9:49am

    Great piece, MM.   Romney is as shallow a Presidential candidate as has run in my lifetime.  The GOP and Romney will continue to cling to the notion that it wasn't that their policies were bad, they just weren't explained well; so called 'ordinary' people just didn't understand how much better they'd be if the GOP could privatize Social Security and eliminate Medicare, and cut taxes on the rich even further.  Well, they discovered that people aren't as dumb as the GOP assumed them to be.  

    The policies of the GOP are based on 30 and 40 year old models, and that the world has changed dramatically since then and the models no longer are right for the nation.  But the GOP refuses to acknowledge this.  They are still running mostly from Ronald Reagan's 1980 playbook, and they seem genuinely stunned that it no longer works.   

    Sure people want stuff, and why shouldn't they? They've paid into Soc. Sec. their entire lives.  But it's not people wanting stuff that's the problem, it was tinkering with the Government's revenue stream that screwed up the equation.  We'd have the money for social programs if we hadn't spent 30+ years cutting taxes on the wealthy to a rate too low to balance out the social obligations that the government declared by law they would fund.  Now, the GOP wants us to think somehow the problem is with us wanting too much stuff, and ignore that their systematic undermining of the Government's ability to fund legally passed legislation. 

     

     

     

     


    by MrSmith1 on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 10:09pm

    Romney strikes me as a character out of a Rudyard Kipling poem.  His is the mindset of a colonialist in his own country.  What Romney and people who act like he does have to teach is that it is not just ok in 2013 America, but downright admirable, to extract your tens of millions from the wreckage you inflict on the great unwashed.  The latter, where they might otherwise or occasionally raise a voice in protest, simply need to understand and accept their assigned, and also deserved, lowly place in the universe's pecking order.   


    by AmericanDreamer on Tue, 03/05/2013 - 9:52am

    Privilege is the ability to not notice or understand things without suffering the consequences.

    And Romney is as privileged as it gets. So rich that he doesn't need to understand a damned thing about the world around him.


    by Doctor Cleveland on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 1:09am

    That sense of privilege might be a really good excuse if we hadn't already had FDR and JFK, two sons of privilege who moved outside themselves to try and understand the plights of the millions who weren't as lucky. 

    In Kennedy's case he and his siblings were brought up to expect to enter some form of public service.  Not sure about FDR.  It could be that Eleanor was the guiding influence there.  (Somehow, I can't see Ann Romney getting it, either.)


    by Ramona on Tue, 03/05/2013 - 8:00am

    FDR was old money, right?  Kennedy was wealthy but his dadreally had to struggle for it.  But, that's probably all not relevant.  Some people can see beyond their own lives and some can't or won't.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 03/06/2013 - 1:32pm