Presidential political pundits predictions of a razor thin election for president proved terribly wrong. Speculation of what might happen if there were a tie was idle at best. The election ended up with the President getting more than 62% of the electoral votes winning all but one of the “battleground” states. Perhaps compared with re-election wins by LBJ or Ronald Reagan, it seemed razor thin.
Now there are questions as to why the President’s opponent did so poorly. The losing candidate blamed the President’s largesse, giving gifts to certain voting groups like men, women and children. The losing party’s propaganda channel blamed the loss on the fact that America has suddenly changed demographically making it a different country from the one we knew and loved just four years ago. Another group blamed Hurricane Sandy for the challenger’s bitter defeat.
So why did the Republican candidate for President lose his bid amid such difficult economic times?
I think that I know why.
Early on it was clear that anyone wanting the Republican nomination would have to please the extreme right wing of the party. Members of that wing are against abortion for any reason, gay rights, the Affordable Care Act (also known as Romneycare), higher income taxes, government oversight of private industries and illegal immigration. The successful nominee would also have to appeal to Independents, who tend to be much more moderate in their views. Many Independents favor gay rights, abortion, higher income taxes for the rich and corporations, and they want some solution to the illegal immigration problem that does not involve mass deportation.
The person finally selected to represent the Republican party after a brutal primary process against an almost laughable array of competitors, tried to walk the fine line to satisfy both the extreme members and Independents who tended to be much less radical.
The only issue the Republicans had against the incumbent was that he had not fixed the economy that was almost fatally crippled by the previous administration. The challenge was to present an alternative to the President’s “failed” economic policies. The challenge turned out to be too overwhelming.
One possible way of improving the economy would be through taxes while another would be by reducing the cost of government by cutting programs that add to our deficit and therefore retard our economy’s recovery.
The Republican candidate’s solution was to lower taxes on the rich, totally eliminating the capital gains tax meaning that he himself would pay no taxes. He also wanted to increase military spending to a higher percent of the GDP regardless of need. These two ideas would have added $7 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, exactly the opposite of the stated goal. The theory was that this would create jobs because the rich would not send all their money to Swiss banks and offshore island accounts. The top two percent of income families have been named “the job creators” disregarding the fact that the other 98% create jobs by consuming products and services. You can’t get rich without customers.
The challenger then promised to make up for the cuts by closing tax loopholes and deductions. When accused of shifting the tax burden to the middle class, he promised not to raise their taxes and that the rich would continue to pay the same share as they do now and that his tax reform would be revenue neutral. So he ended up saying that he would cut taxes but not to the rich or middle class and the changes would have no effect on the deficit.
(All along he refused to show his tax returns going back at least 10 years for fear that they would be used against him. The two recent years he did reveal showed that he paid less than 14% of his annual income in taxes. He had been betting against America by investing his vast wealth in Swiss bank accounts and offshore tax shelters. He was the poster boy for tax inequity provided by tax loopholes large enough to fly a tax deductible Lear jet through.)
That left cutting the cost of government. With one half of the general fund budget going to defense (keeping Social Security and medicare costs and revenues should separate from the general fund budget, as they should be) and only $750 billion in other government costs to work with, cutting defense spending would be on top of the list. But, remember, he wanted to actually increase this spending. If he had cut out the rest of the government, he would save just enough to pay for his original tax plan, leaving us with a continued $1 trillion annual deficit.
The candidate promised to cut government programs but would not say which because he feared that if he did, the voters would reject him. The exception was Public Broadcasting and therefore, Sesame Street. That cut would save a few hundred million in a $2 trillion general fund budget.
He chose a running mate who has made a career out of attempting to rob from the poor to give to the rich. His plan for Social Security was to privatize it just as people like him and his running mate already do. Neither will be eligible for Social Security payments but neither needs them.
His running mate’s solution to future Medicare financing issues was to abandon Medicare and replace it with a voucher system which would help seniors and the disabled afford a part of their private health insurance payment. He would save Medicare by destroying it.
When the Republican team realized that talking about the economy was not sufficient, they decided to show their challenger’s foreign policy credentials by taking a trip abroad. He was to visit London before and during the Olympics, then push on to Poland and Israel. In London he offended the British by saying that he feared that their security provisions might be insufficient to ensure the safety of athletes and spectators. They almost booed him out of the country.
He went to Israel where he offended Arabs and their sympathizers by crediting Israel’s great success to its cultural superiority to the former residents, the Palestinians.
In Poland while visiting the tomb of their unknown soldier, his press secretary shouted four letter expletives at a reporter for asking the candidate a difficult question because, he said, “this G-- d---- f------ place is sacred for C----’s sake!!!”
The trip proved that the candidate had no foreign policy credentials. In a vote of people in Europe and Asia, the Republican ticket did not even reach double digits in their percentage of vote.
Then there were the gaffs, slips of the tongue that threatened to reveal the real him.
He told a crowd that corporations were people. He told Michigan residents that one of their best features was that their trees were all the right height. He bet an opponent $10,000 that he was wrong. He told a story in one town how funny it was that his father presided over the their annual parade and then closed its American Motors plant and laid off all the workers. He also told a crowd that he loved firing people which didn’t sit well with those who had lost their jobs. He told another gathering that he too was unemployed with the only difference being that he still made $21 million a year more than most in the audience could earn working for several lifetimes.
But these gaffs were dwarfed by his biggest one. He told a small group at a fundraiser that 47% of the American people pay no income tax and were hopeless. He could never change them and they would never stop seeing themselves as victims, unable to take of themselves and in constant need of government’s help. He later said that he was wrong. He never made clear what he felt he was wrong about. It seems that he felt that he was wrong for saying what he really believed, a rare occurrence for him.
While campaigning in Ohio and Michigan he attempted to rewrite recent history. After having strongly advocated against bailing out G.M. and Chrysler in early 2009 and advising that they go into bankruptcy even though credit markets were frozen solid and more than one million jobs would be lost at the height of our recession, he tried to say that he saved those companies. Then he tried to say that there was a secret deal to ship Jeep manufacturing abroad and eliminating jobs in Ohio. The story was a total lie but did upset the affected workers who were reassured by company executives that the outsourcing story was totally false.
Ironically, when this candidate was in private equity for 25 years, he was an advocate of outsourcing as a means of increasing corporate profit.
To counter charges by seniors that his running mate’s budget plan would eliminate Medicare, the presidential contender tried to claim that it was the President who was cutting Medicare by eliminating $700 million in unnecessary hospital and insurance company fees. It was revealed that this cut did not affect recipients and was also in his running mate’s rejected budget proposal, one that the presidential contender supported.
The Republican team then tried to convince voters that the President was undoing the job requirement for welfare recipients because he had allowed two states some leeway as long as the result was getting more recipients back to work. The requests had been made by two conservative Republican governors.
Should we still wonder why the Republican ticket was soundly defeated in November? Shouldn’t we be wondering how the Republican ticket even got 38% of the electoral votes. The answer to that is certain states in the Midwest and South will almost always vote for the Republican ticket, no matter how bad it is. At least they are consistent.
But can’t we say that the Republican team ran a good campaign and that both men on that ticket were decent, honorable men?
No.
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