Republican lawmakers
have declared war on the presidency. Not so odd, perhaps, given their recent
record. But the leader they're targeting this time is Mitt Romney.
The former Massachusetts
"We're not a
cheerleading squad," said Rep. Jeff Landry, a freshman from Louisiana
Their bottom line seems
to be that Romney can say anything he wants so long as he supports lower taxes
on the rich, the evisceration of food stamps and other programs that benefit
the poor, and the inflation of a military budget that already looks as though
it's on steroids.
Basically Republicans
don't want a president. They want a potted plant.
And judging from his
performance so far, Romney might be willing to accommodate them. He's already
reversed himself on pretty much every issue that would make a tea party fanatic
frown.
I keep wondering how in
the world Republicans expect to win the election on a platform that would
benefit — at most — 10 percent of the population at the expense of the other 90
percent.
I suppose they're going
to rely heavily on negative campaigning. Romney certainly did in destroying his
primary opponents.
And thanks to the
Supreme Court's lamentable Citizens
United ruling, they will have virtually unlimited resources to hurl
exaggerations, misrepresentations, and outright lies at President Barack Obama.
We're going to revisit
Obama the Muslim, Obama the foreigner, and Obama the hate-filled black radical,
as well as Obama the socialist and Obama the dictator.
I doubt that any of
those hysterical charges will stick with anyone who isn't a Rush Limbaugh fan,
but who knows?
When the Republicans
took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 election, they claimed a
national mandate to return to the 18th century.
That mandate has very
little validity. In that election, Republican candidates scored a total of
30,799,391 votes. Two years earlier in the presidential election, Obama
received 69,498,215 — more than twice as many. That's a mandate.
Unfortunately, he
hasn't been able to exercise it much over the past two years because of Republican
intransigence. Our system of government invites gridlock, and Republican
members of Congress have done everything in their power to accept that
invitation.
When Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
Beating Obama will be harder
for the GOP than it was to clench a robust majority of House seats and narrow
the Democratic Party's Senate majority two years ago. Despite the Republicans'
best efforts to paint him as an extreme liberal, Obama has governed as a
moderate. He's certainly too moderate for some of his supporters.
He's helped drag us
back from the brink of insolvency, save the auto industry, and cut our trade
deficit. He's even managed to oversee an increase in our oil production, making
us less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
All of this with the
Republicans leaving heel marks all the way.
Had the voters kept the
Democratic Party in control of Congress in 2010, or had more reasonable
Republicans been calling their party's shots, our economic recovery might be several
years further along by now.
The Republicans will
argue that none of that is true, of course, that the Obama administration has
been a failure in every regard. Maybe they can sell that. They've certainly got
enough money to give it a try. However, they have no competing narrative that
makes sense to anyone but people who are interested in nothing but low taxes
for the rich.
There's a saying in
politics that you can't beat somebody with nobody. This election will test that
premise.
OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor , Michigan