Romney fought bad fight badly - response to Chicago Tribune op ed

Stuart Stevens, chief strategist of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, disgraced himself right out of the gate in "Romney fought the good fight" (Tribune op ed, Nov. 29) with his insulting opening line that, "Over the years... the Democratic Party"..exhibits "a shortage of loyalty and an abundance of self loathing".  After setting up his imagined despicable straw man, Stevens frets about Republicans emulating those terrible traits when interpreting Romney's "narrow" loss. That opening paragraph could be used in a rhetoric class to teach falsity, mean spiritedness and self delusion. The statement is not supported by a word of evidence or example. It's a sophistic way of saying "They are horrible; we are not, so don't be like them". Stevens use of the word "narrow" to describe Romney's loss is laughable. A margin of 126 electoral votes and over 3.5 million popular votes was a thumping rebuke of Romney and anything but "narrow".

Stevens then spends several paragraphs trying to demonstrate how close the election was because Romney's economic message resonated with the electorate. Poppycock! Virtually all post election polling indicated that Romney's economic message of continued tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and reduced regulation in spite of regulatory weakness implicated in the banking meltdown, was rejected by a clear majority of voters. Stevens completely omits one of Romney's biggest problems: Tea Party extremists winning GOP House and Senate primaries and then, along with Romney, alienating virtually every other voter group: women, gays, Latinos, African Americans, Asians, the young, the educated, the needy. To ignore that incredible self destructive stupidity and claim that the Republican Party "captured the majority of the middle class" is preposterous. That imagined middle class that Stevens puts in the Republican camp knows the President campaigned on keeping their middle class tax cut and only increasing taxes on the very privileged. They voted for the President. That imagined middle class Stevens puts in the Republican camp wants not less government but effective government; like the one that effectively dealt with the economy, the BP Horizon disaster and Hurricane Sandy. They voted for the President. That imagined middle class Stevens puts in the Republican camp does want more freedom; like freedom from GOP economic disaster and the endless funneling of middle class wealth into the upper 1%. They voted for the President.

With loser's introspection like that offered by Stuart Stevens, we progressives hope that he keeps his job as chief strategist for the 2016 GOP nominee. Let the games begin.

Congressman Roskam: What portrait hangs on your office wall?

In six years as IL 6th District Congressman, Peter Roskam has signed a pledge to just one person. Unfortunately, that person not only resides outside the 6th District, he resides outside the mainstream of responsible governance. I'm speaking, of course, about Grover Norquist, the GOP mastermind of maintaining ever lower tax rates for the wealthiest Americans with his Taxpayer Protection Pledge. This pledge, which should be called: "Rich Folks Taxpayer Protection at the Expense of Everyone Else Pledge" has been signed by Congressman Roskam and virtually every other GOP Congressman to demonstrate obeisance to their fabulously wealthy base as determined by Mr. Norquist.

I was reminded about Roskam's pledge to Norquist after reading his latest constituent email titled: "We can solve this", concerning current bipartisan efforts to control our nation's debt. Roskam began by recognizing the electorate's overwhelming re-election of President Obama by 116 electoral and 3.5 million popular votes. But he omitted recognizing possibly the biggest single lesson of the election: the great majority of the country, roughly two thirds, want the rich to give back a portion of the trillions in undeserved and unneeded tax cuts they got from Roskam's party back in 2001 and 2003. That brings us to Mr. Norquist. This political operative, active in GOP policy development since 1968, founded the Americans for Tax Reform in 1985, and created his Taxpayer Protection Pledge as a way unifying Republican Congressmen and Senators around protecting and promoting the largest transfer of our nation's wealth in history up to GOP's wealthy base while investment in the needy, the environment, our crumbling infrastructure, education and health care system are all shortchanged.

In Roskam's bizarre and heartless world view, popular public support for reducing a tiny portion of upper 2%'s tax cuts is totally ignored. Instead, Roskam says we can get more tax revenue by extending the tax cuts on the wealthy for one more year. Roskam wasn't playing Rip Van Winkle these past 11 years. As the rich got their trillions in foolhardy tax breaks, and our nation's debt soared, he was not only wide awake, he was feverishly championing that policy as GOP House Chief Deputy Whip. If you read closely, you will find that Roskam twists the urgent need for more revenue from the folks engorging on the largest tax breaks in history, into this silliness: "the country is highly dissatisfied with the current tax code".

Just this weekend, several high profile GOP leaders, including Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Congressman Peter King, publicly broke with Grover Norquist. Alas, Congressman Roskam will have a hard time breaking with the patron saint of the rich when he can neither utter his name nor mention the words: "tax rates on the rich". In some Democratic political offices you might find a portrait of FDR or John Kennedy adorning the wall. In some Republican offices it might be Abraham Lincoln or Dwight D. Eisenhower. If we could peek into Peter Roskam's House office we might not be surprised to find prominently displayed.....Grover Glenn Norquist.

Question for GOP: Does 70% float your boat?

Folks who analyze population and voting trends have determined that a 64 year trend of declining white vote as a percentage of all presidential voters will continue into the future. From 91% in 1948, the white vote has declined in every presidential election since, sinking to 72% this year. That trend helped President Obama take two southern states, come close in North Carolina, and make respectable showing in Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina in spite of doing virtually no campaigning there. The non-white vote is increasing faster that the white vote in every southern state except Louisiana. Georgia, in particular, could well be within Democratic reach in 2016. Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy", whereby most southern whites, along with their white sympathizers outside the south, were herded into the GOP with a subtle appeal to racial favoritism, is going "poof".  

The current trend shows the white vote declining two percent each election. That reduces the GOP core voting block to 70% for the next election. However, within that demographic, the GOP has alienated many of the young, the gay, the educated, women and those in need of a strong governmental safety net. Even if the GOP can hold onto their current 60% standing of the white vote, that gives them just 42% of the total electorate before the non-white vote is tabulated.

GOP agonists are publically stating their party must reach out to this vast "other" America they have written off for so long. What they don't state is the obvious: a helping hand does nothing if its empty.