Minor Thoughts from me to you

Romney performed significantly better in Michigan, Florida, North Dakota, Indiana, Montana, and Missouri than Pete Hoekstra (6.7), Connie Mack IV (6.9), Rick Berg (9), Richard Mourdock (9.8), Denny Rehberg (10.5), and Todd Akin (14.7). I had not noticed earlier that Berg and Rehberg underperformed Romney by about as much as Mourdock did.

I'm not positive whether this means that Romney was a better candidate than people thought or that the Republican Senate candidates were worse than people thought. But it is interesting.

∞

I've been spending all day thinking about why my election prediction was wrong. And not just slightly wrong but completely wrong. The simple answer is: I didn't want to believe that the 2012 electorate looked exactly like the 2008 electorate. (There's a whole narrative in why I didn't want to believe that, but I don't feel like writing that tonight. I'll write it soon, but not now.)

Unfortunately for me, the 2012 electorate looks almost exactly like the 2008 electorate and that completely doomed Mr. Romney's chances.

A week ago, I bet Adam that Mitt Romney would win the Presidency and that he would do it by winning Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, and New Hampshire. Events have now revealed that I was definitely overestimating Mr. Romney's standing in those states.

Adam has won the bet and I'm now waiting to find out which book I must purchase, read, and review.

First, it is admittedly tempting for a libertarian voter to fill in the oval for Johnson, the former New Mexico Governor. Johnson is far and away the best candidate the LP has ever put forward, and would make an excellent president. But the bottom line is this: Gary Johnson is not going to be elected president on November 6. Either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama will have that honor and burden. So I don’t have to choose between Romney and Johnson. I’m choosing between Romney and Obama.

Here’s why I like Mitt:

1. Obamacare. One reason many libertarians are skeptical of Romney was his introduction of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts. Many people, including the Obama Administration, like to say that this was the genesis of the despised individual mandate. Governor Romney has offered various reasons why Romneycare is different (federalism, substantive differences), which are not convincing to many libertarians.

Fine. But here’s the thing. For most libertarians, this is one of the most important issues in decades. Libertarians worry that Obamacare, beyond being an atrociously designed law even on its own terms and assumptions, will fundamentally alter the relationship between Americans and our government, and cement into place once and for all a European-style social democracy.

Romney has pledged to repeal Obamacare. It is one of his most visible pledges, and therefore – even if one doesn’t trust Romney (I do, although I’m not sure he can get repeal done) – it will be one of the hardest for him to break or ignore. And he has vowed to use Obama’s own weapon – executive branch waivers – to effectively stop implementation of the Act immediately.

So let’s be skeptical. Let’s assume there is only a 10 or 20 percent chance Romney carries through on this promise (I think the odds are much higher, but I’m being cautious and skeptical here). What are the odds of repeal if Obama is re-elected? Zero. Zilch. Nada. None. Nothing. If repeal of Obamacare is truly important – and I think it is – I will not pass up the most (or only) realistic chance to get it done.

2.Taxes. Mitt Romney has expressed a desire for sensible tax reform that most libertarians support – lower rates with a broader base. We’d like to see overall taxes decline, but in the face of massive deficits, with a public unwilling to stand for major cuts in entitlements, that’s probably not a realistic option. But Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan have promised to try. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has expressed again and again his desire and determination to raise income tax rates, and, at times, even to do so solely for the purpose of redistributing income. And to add insult to injury, Obama’s Orwellian language about “asking” some “to pay a little bit more” grates every time one hears it.

Walter Mondale campaigned on raising taxes and lost. Bill Clinton campaigned on cutting taxes, won, and promptly raised the marginal income tax rates. Libertarians often like to say that there is no difference between the two major parties. But in my lifetime (and I was reading Reason and walking precincts for Ed Clark before many of those young Reason staffers were born) there have been two Presidents who have substantially reduced income tax rates: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both Republicans. Republicans have delivered on income tax rate reductions, and can do so again.

Romney is clearly the superior candidate.

∞

I think Bob Owens makes a lot of sense, in this post. (And Romney needs to do a better job of explaining his positions. I didn't have any idea that this was a plan, when I watched him debate President Obama.)

We’ve sunk — pardon the term — literally trillions of dollars into the development of nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered carrier strike groups and ballistic missile submarines, but the loss of a single one would be an overwhelming blow from which it would take years to recover.

We’ve created a Navy that is “too big to fail,” in terms of the importance and capital investment we’ve placed on just eleven ships — an incredibly short-sighted position. We’ve made similarly bad investments in the gee-whiz technology of the F-22 Raptor, where every accident or combat loss costs $150 million each, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost (if they are ever fielded) as much as a quarter-billion dollars each to replace for the Navy and Marine versions. We’re creating planes and ships that are too expensive to risk losing in combat. These technological marvels are backed by systems and support elements that are 50 years old, being used by the grandchildren of the men that built and used them.

It’s absurd.

What Mitt Romney has proposed is a shift in our way of thinking about the military that a community organizer simply can’t grasp.

Romney has proposed a Navy of lighter, more numerous, less expensive, and more deployable multiple-role ships that can be better geographically dispersed around the globe to more quickly respond to need, instead of having less than a dozen carrier strike groups chasing problems around the world.

Romney’s plan to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) technologies across the entire military may not be as sexy as spending billions to mount futuristic lasers and rail-guns on ships, but what it will do is put more ships and sailors on the water.

It’s a stunning turnaround offered by one of America’s best turnaround artists. Romney proposes to toss the bureaucratic dead-weight out of the military, out of the Pentagon, and replace them with real war-fighters and practical weapons.

It's a fairly fundamental issue. Do we want a Navy that has few ships that are each massively powerful and massively expensive? The downside is that it would be disastrous both economically and militarily to lose even one ship. Or do we want a Navy that has many, cheap ships that are each relatively weak? The upside is that we could afford to lose a few ships without crippling the Navy or the budget. Romney is in favor of the latter while Obama is in favor of the former.

∞

Three weeks ago, I was predicting that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton would fight to the death, trying to pin Benghazi on each other. For instance, What Happened In Benghazi

The State Department has released a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters via conference call on October 9 (Tuesday). I am not certain about this, but I believe the transcript was only made public today. You should read it in its entirety; it is the most detailed description I have seen of the events in Benghazi on September 11.

While this is by no means clear, it appears that the State Department may have released the transcript as part of the escalating conflict between Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. In their desperation to avoid responsibility for the Benghazi debacle, Obama and Biden have pointed fingers in two directions: at the intelligence community for reporting incorrectly that the incident was a protest over a YouTube video clip, and at the State Department for not providing adequate security for the Ambassador.

But then, Mrs. Clinton took responsibility for the event.

Clinton: I’m responsible for diplomats’ security – CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs

"I take responsibility" for the protection of U.S. diplomats, Clinton said during a visit to Peru. But she said an investigation now under way will ultimately determine what happened in the attack that left four Americans dead.

Clinton said President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.

"I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha," she added, noting that it is close to the election.

After thinking about it for a few hours, I saw one possible motivation for this: make the the President look bad by showing up his attempts to duck responsibility. It's possible that the President agreed.

Obama Camp: On Libya, President ‘Takes Absolute Responsibility’

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton said, “I take responsibility” in reference to the Benghazi attacks. But in an interview today, Obama campaign spokesperson Jen Psaki stressed President Obama accepted responsibility.

“President Obama takes responsibility for the safety and security of all diplomats serving overseas,” Psaki told Fox News Channel’s Studio B with Shepard Smith. “Secretary Clinton, of course, has a great amount of responsibility as Secretary of State and she was doing interviews yesterday as she often does on the first day of a foreign trip and said look we do own, the State Department does own decisions around funding for diplomats.”

But there's something else to notice: Mrs. Clinton took responsibility for the safety of the diplomats. She didn't say anything at all about the ensuing "it was the video!" cover-up attempt. She's more than happy to let the President explain that one himself. What's more damaging, when it comes to politics: the lapse or the cover-up? Mrs. Clinton may be betting that it's the cover-up.

McClatchy analyzed all of the government's statements following the Libya attack. They have some interesting findings. It looks like someone realized that an attack in Libya might cast doubt on President Obama's foreign policy and decided to try to deflect attention from that policy.

In the first 48 hours after the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya, senior Obama administration officials strongly alluded to a terrorist assault and repeatedly declined to link it to an anti-Muslim video that drew protests elsewhere in the region, transcripts of briefings show.

The administration’s initial accounts, however, changed dramatically in the following days, according to a review of briefing transcripts and administration statements, with a new narrative emerging Sept. 16 when U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice asserted in a series of TV appearances that the best information available indicated that the attack had spun off from a protest over the video.

... The story, however, began to change the next day, Sept. 14.

With images of besieged U.S. missions in the Middle East still leading the evening news, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney became the first official to back away from the earlier declaration that the Benghazi assault was a “complex attack” by extremists. Instead, Carney told reporters, authorities “have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” He added that there was no reason to think that the Benghazi attack wasn’t related to the video, given that the clip had sparked protests in many Muslim cities.

“The unrest that we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive,” Carney said.

When pressed by reporters who pointed out evidence that the violence in Benghazi was preplanned, Carney said that “news reports” had speculated about the motive. He noted again that “the unrest around the region has been in response to this video.”

Carney then launched into remarks that read like talking points in defense of the U.S. decision to intervene in last year’s uprising against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi: that post-Gadhafi Libya, he said, is “one of the more pro-American countries in the region,” that it’s led by a new government “that has just come out of a revolution,” and that the lack of security capabilities there “is not necessarily reflective of anything except for the remarkable transformation that’s been going on in the region.”

∞

Five days ago, I predicted that Mr. Romney would win the presidency. Adam, who's long though I'm daft on Mitt's chances, was quick to challenge me to a bet. I'm betting that Mr. Romney will be elected President, Adam's betting that President Obama will be re-elected. The stakes are simple: the loser has to purchase, read, and review an e-book of the winner's choice. The e-book can be on any topic but can't be a multi-volume work.

When I win, I'll post Adam's assignment here.

And this is why conservatives, in certain areas, don't like to put up yard signs or put bumper stickers on their cars.

Early Friday morning, thugs presumably supporting President Obama beat up the son of Wisconsin State Senator Neal Kedzie outside of his apartment in Whitewater. Kedzie caught the two men removing a Romney sign outside of his apartment around two o'clock in the morning. After telling them to put the signs back, one of the thugs attacked Kedzie and then put him in a choke hold and continued to beat his head.

Mark Belling spoke to the Senator’s son Sean on the radio earlier today. Sean Kedzie told Belling he was rushed to the hospital by ambulance with possible skull and eye socket fractures.

∞

The Wall Street Journal editorializes in favor of Mr. Romney's tax plan, arguing that it's both fiscally and politically feasible.

The Obama campaign and the press corps keep demanding that Mitt Romney specify which tax deductions he'd eliminate, but the Republican has already proposed more tax-reform specificity than any candidate in memory. To wit, he's proposed a dollar limit on deductions for each tax filer.

During the first Presidential debate, Mr. Romney put it this way: "What are the various ways we could bring down deductions, for instance? One way, for instance, would be to have a single number. Make up a number—$25,000, $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people. That's one way one could do it."

But details aside, the tax cap is a big idea, and potentially a very good one. The proposal makes economic sense to the extent that it helps to pay for lower marginal tax rates. Lower rates with fewer deductions improve the incentive for investing and taking risks based on the best return on capital rather than favoring one kind of investment (say, housing) over another. This would help economic growth.

The idea may be even better politically. The historic challenge for tax reformers is defeating the most powerful lobbies in Washington that exist to preserve their special tax privileges. Among the biggest is the housing lobby that exists to preserve the mortgage-interest deduction—the Realtors, home builders, mortgage brokers and the whole Fannie Mae gang.

But don't forget the life insurance lobby (which benefits from the tax exclusion on the equity buildup in policies), the tax-free municipal bond interest lobby, the charitable deduction lobby and more. Each one will fight to the death to preserve its carve-out, which means that reformers have to engage in political trench warfare to succeed.

This is one reason President Obama wants Mr. Romney to be more specific: The minute he proposed to limit the mortgage-interest deduction, the housing lobby would do the Obama campaign's bidding by running ads against Mr. Romney's plan. Mr. Romney is right not to fall for this sucker play.

∞

I've thought for a long time that Romney could win the election, in spite of the Conventional Wisdom that President Obama couldn't possibly lose to Mr. Romney. After the conventions were over, I thought that Mr. Romney had fumbled his chance to win over voters. But, after watching the debates and the way the polls are trending, I not only think that Mr. Romney can win, I think he will win.

Here's my prediction.

This analysis, as well as other reports from Ohio make me think the Mr. Romney is steadily moving in the right direction and will ultimately win Ohio. If the trend lines don't reverse, I think it's possible for Mr. Romney to win Wisconsin as well, increasing his electoral college lead.

If Romney wins, will lobbyists defile the White House that Obama has kept so clean and so pure? That’s what Politico suggests with this piece today headlined “Lobbyists ready for a comeback under Romney.”

President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it.

In crafting and signing those executive orders, I wonder if Obama relied on the help of White House deputy counsel Cassandra Butts (1), White House special assistant Martha Coven (2), or the chief of staff or the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Michael Strautmanis (3), all of whom were registered lobbyists. (I’m only numbering registered lobbyists.)

Timothy Carney gets up to 55 registered lobbyists, before concluding with this.

Given all this undue corporate influence already going on, imagine what would happen if lobbyists got jobs in the administration!!!

∞

This is hardly a conservative rag.

[W]hile the nation's economy is still sputtering nearly four years after Obama took office, the federal government is more than $5 trillion deeper in debt. It just racked up its fourth straight 13-figure shortfall.

We have little confidence that Obama would be more successful managing the economy and the budget in the next four years. For that reason, though we endorsed him in 2008, we are recommending Romney in this race.

Obama's defenders would argue that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, and would have made more progress if not for obstruction from Republicans in Congress. But Democrats held strong majorities in the House and Senate during his first two years.

Other presidents have succeeded even with the other party controlling Capitol Hill. Democrat Bill Clinton presided over an economic boom and balanced the budget working with Republicans. Leaders find a way.

... The next president is likely to be dealing with a Congress where at least one, if not both, chambers are controlled by Republicans. It verges on magical thinking to expect Obama to get different results in the next four years.

Two years ago, a bipartisan panel the president appointed recommended a 10-year, $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. Rather than embrace it and sell it to the American people, Obama took his own, less ambitious plan to Congress, where it was largely ignored by both parties.

Now the president and his supporters are attacking Romney because his long-term budget blueprint calls for money-saving reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, three of the biggest drivers of deficit spending. Obama would be more credible in critiquing the proposal if he had a serious alternative for bringing entitlement spending under control. He doesn't.

∞

David Henderson rounds up links to various economists and think tanks that have studied the Romney tax plan. They all agree that it's not impossible, that it could work, and that it is very similar to the Simpson-Bowles plan (which President Obama summarily ignored).

After laying out the details of the Romney plan, Reynolds does a comparison:

When it comes to tax policy, the main difference between Romney's and Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force advisers is that Romney proposes 1) a slightly lower corporate tax rate, and 2) a much lower bottom rate of 8 percent rather than 12 percent. (The fact that there would be six rates rather than three is insignificant.)

∞

Avik Roy, on a very promising development from the AMA.

At the Vice-Presidential debate last week, Joe Biden claimed that the American Medical Association sided with him, and against Paul Ryan, on the merits of the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare reform. “Who do you believe?” exclaimed Biden. “The AMA [and] me? A guy who has fought his whole life for this? Or somebody [like Paul Ryan]?” Well, it turns out that the AMA’s key policy committee has come out in favor of premium support for Medicare, in a fashion that tracks closely with what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are proposing.

... The AMA Council’s report states that it came around to this view not at the behest of Republican operatives or candidates, but after speaking with Bill Clinton’s former budget chief, Alice Rivlin, who along with Paul Ryan proposed a version of this plan. “Dr. Rivlin emphasized that defined contribution amounts should be sufficient to ensure that all beneficiaries could afford to purchase health insurance coverage, and that private health insurance plans should be subject to regulations that protect patients and ensure the availability of coverage for even the sickest patients.”

∞

Drone strikes. Obviously, President Obama doesn't want to say anything bad about the gobs of strikes he's authorized. Neither does Mitt Romney; if you're going to spend your whole campaign calling Obama a hyper-apologetic girly boy, you can't turn around and complain that he kills too many people! But American drone strikes--which seem to always target Muslim countries, and sometimes kill civilians--are famously unpopular in the Muslim world.

On this issue, Muslims have a very good reason to be angry. I'm not looking forward to the "foreign policy" debate next week. I think the candidates are very similar (and fairly dreadful) on foreign policy.

∞

How do you debate a guy who makes everything up on the fly?

I’d like to discuss the substance of the debate on health care and tax reform, where Joe Biden told one whopper after another in an attempt to help President Obama regain lost campaign momentum.

I was arguing with the TV when VP Biden was making up these facts. The more you know about policy, the more of a buffoon the VP is.

• Contra Biden, Senator Ron Wyden does still support the Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform plan.
• Contra Biden, the CBO determined that Medicare wouldn't save any money by negotiating drug prices .
• Contra Biden, Obamacare did cut $716 billion from Medicare and probably will cause 1 in 6 hospitals to go under and cause 15% of Medicare doctors to stop taking Medicare patients.
• Contra Biden, 7.4 million seniors are expected to lose access to Medicare Advantage once the Obamacare changes are fully phased in, in 2014.

∞

It's obvious that Obama for America has a high respect for election laws.

The Government Accountability Institute, a Washington watchdog group, says it’s likely a high percentage of Obama online’s donors aren’t Americans. For starters, a full 43 percent of the traffic on the site barackobama.com comes from foreign Internet provider addresses, versus just 11.9 percent at Romney’s equivalent site.

GAI’s 108-page report on online campaign fund-raising at local, state, and national levels shows that many campaigns have inadequate safeguards against foreign donors influencing this election — but Obama’s stands out as a veritable cesspool.

Obama’s campaign refuses to use industry-standard safeguards against online credit-card fraud. For example, some 90 percent of e-commerce companies (and Romney’s site) use Card Verification Value data, which checks those three or four numbers on the back of the credit card to make sure the card user matches the card holder. The Obama site uses it if you want to buy a T-shirt or hat — but not if you make a donation.

Indeed, the moment you sign up at my.barackobama.com, you get numerous solicitations to donate. When you give, you get a thank you e-mail — even if you happen to live in Shanghai.

∞

Smitty analyzes the State Department-White House blame game, in terms of the prisoner's dilemma.

Here, we have two public figures who both look negligent over a tragedy. And they hold grudges against each other going back. They can both get hammered together, or can try to minimize their damage by pinning blame on the other.

The most likely scenario, I think, is that Secretary Clinton and President Obama drag each other down, in a downward spiral of escalating recriminations.

∞

Stephen Hayes explains exactly why the Benghazi scandal is a scandal.

There are two possibilities. Either the intelligence community had a detailed picture of what happened in Benghazi that night and failed to share it with other administration officials and the White House. Or the intelligence community provided that detailed intelligence picture to others in the administration, and Obama, Biden, Clinton, Susan Rice, and others ignored and manipulated the intelligence to tell a politically convenient—but highly inaccurate—story.

If it’s the former, DNI James Clapper should be fired. If it’s the latter, what happened in Benghazi—and what happened afterwards—will go down as one of the worst scandals in recent memory.

It seems far more likely that it’s the latter. After all, is it conceivable that White House officials at the highest levels were not actively engaged in interagency meetings to determine what happened in Benghazi? Is it conceivable that intelligence officials, knowing there was no evidence at all of a link between the film and Benghazi, would fail to tell the president and his colleagues that their claims were unfounded? Is it conceivable that somehow the latest intelligence on the 9/11 attacks was left out of Obama’s intelligence briefings in the days after 9/11? It would have been a priority for every professional at the CIA, the State Department, and the National Security Council to discover exactly what happened in Benghazi as soon as possible. Is it conceivable that the information wasn’t passed to the most senior figures in the administration?

No, it’s really not. And therefore, the fact that these senior figures misled us—and still mislead us—is a scandal of the first order.

∞