News Roundup for 1/5/12

What the Romney tax plan looks like to the middle class

-Headline of the Day-
"Romney Plan Raises Taxes On Lower-Middle Class, Cuts Taxes On Wealthy."

Mittens is the 1%. If you ever doubted that, check out his new tax plan, which can best be described as a massive middle finger to anyone who isn't fabulously well-to-do. Basically, it works like this; the less you make, the larger your tax hike. Conversely, the more you make, the bigger your tax cut.

According to the report, "The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers — part of a series of analyses the group has done of the GOP candidates’ tax proposals — and found that the plan constitutes a major tax cut for wealthy Americans. But compared to today’s rates, Romney proposes effective tax increases for people making less than $40,000."

Meanwhile, the "average millionaire would thus pay $145,568 less in taxes in 2015 than they do today." Relying on the poorest to make up for the wealthiest just plain doesn't work -- mostly because math has a liberal bias -- and this makes Romney's plan a "a budget buster, meaning greater deficits or deep cuts to federal programs."

So, if you're not a bazillionaire and you're planning to vote for Romney, you're a chump. Plain and simple. (Talking Points Memo)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, did you know there was this big election thing going on? Of course you do! And did you know that other things are going on too? Of course you don't, thanks to...


Click for animation

For example, did you know there was political unrest in Iraq, with explosions across Baghda... Oh wait, BREAKING NEWS: Ron Paul seen eating ribs with mustard!

Ooh... That's really going to hurt him in Missouri. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Santorum Suggests Banishing Ninth Circuit Court Judges To Guam."

Oh Rick, you are going to be fun. (ThinkProgress)

Why Won't Santorum be President?

Shortest post ever: because he's a ridiculous boob.

OK, so maybe not the shortest post ever. That's an accusation that requires a bit of explanation. You see, back in 2006, Rick was in a tough reelection race against Bob Casey. Things weren't going very well -- Santorum would later lose that election in a landslide -- and he needed to pull a rabbit out of his hat. So Santorum teamed up with Rep. Pete Hoekstra to declare that WMD had been found in Iraq.


[Fox News:]

The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."


Well there ya go then; George W. Bush was right, those anti-war hippies were wrong, America had saved the world, and Rick Santorum was instrumental in all that. Good thing Rick had the foresight to offer 100%, unquestioning support of the invasion of Iraq, huh?

But there was a problem here -- the word "degraded." Sarin and mustard gas have a shelf life. And, as chemical agents, that shelf life is pretty predictable. In short, the agents couldn't have been fresh when we invaded. Santorum and Hoekstra had nothing.

Here's what stale chemical agents do, again from Fox News, this time from 2004:


A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday.

[...]

Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.


Those symptoms consisted of a headache. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the shells pre-dated the 1991 Gulf War.

Put Santorum's argument in the proper order here; instead of using this to justify the invasion after the fact, imagine this intelligence being used to justify the invasion itself. We suspect Iraq has a few hundred headache bombs, that means Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is an "existential threat" to our nation. We absolutely must invade.

Last time I checked, giving a couple of guys a headache and "mass destruction" were two entirely different things.

Not even the Bush administration -- desperate for some justification for a war turned horribly, horribly wrong -- could bring themselves to get behind Santorum and Hoekstra. And no one in the military would back them up either.


[Griper Blade:]

Santorum got his defeat on home turf -- Fox News. ThinkProgress reports, "Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are 'not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.'

Of course, Santorum wouldn't back down. He told Alan Colmes, who'd broke the news that his big revelation was a bunch of horse**it to Santorum, "I’d like to know who that defense dept, spokesperson is. The fact of the matter is, I’ll wait and see what the actual Defense Department formally says or more important what the administration formally says."


As far as I know, the White House never addressed Santorum's claims directly. And Rick dismissed the DoD response that Colmes informed him of. His big "The Iraq War was worth it!" story quickly fizzled, Santorum wound up looking like an even bigger fool than he did before, and went on to lose his reelection bid by over 700,000 votes -- or about 20%. As I said, a landslide.

This is what Santorum looks like when his back is against the wall. Not just a bad liar, but a hopelessly incompetent one. At some point, Rick is going to pull some ridiculous claim out of his pants and remind everyone just how much of a boob he really is.

I'm hoping that happens in the general election, but I doubt he'll make it that far.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/4/12

New GOP logo

-Headline of the Day-
"Gingrich Floats Idea of Anti-Romney Alliance."

The Republican presidential nominating process is already starting to feel like some crazy reality TV game show. Now Newt Gingrich proposes a strategy straight out of Survivor -- weaker candidates form an alliance to take out the stronger one.

In an interview with wingnut radio host Laura Ingraham, Newt was asked, "Can you see a scenario under which [Rick Santorum and yourself] would align together to try to defeat the establishment candidate, Mitt Romney?"

"Absolutely. Of course," Newt said. "I mean Rick and I have a 20-year friendship, we are both rebels, we both came into this business as reformers, we both dislike deeply the degree to which the establishment sells out the American people. We both think Washington has to be changed in very fundamental ways, and we have lots of things that fit together. And the thing that's interesting is if you take the votes, you add to that Perry and Bachmann, you begin to see the size of the conservative vote compared to Romney...if you take, you know, Santorum and Perry and Bachmann and Gingrich you get some sense of what a small minority Romney really represents."

This will probably work out great -- provided Mittens doesn't find the immunity idol hidden in New Hampshire. (Political Wire)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, the roundup is finally back and that means I can get lazy right off the bat with a leftover Mark Fiore cartoon! Yay!


Click for animation

I know, there was a lot more crazy than that, but these things can only run so long... (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Jon Huntsman Reacts To Sen. John McCain’s Romney Endorsement: 'Nobody Cares.'"

Probably the truest thing a Republican has said all week. (Mediaite)

Sweeping Up After Iowa

I'm tempted to say that the big winner in last night's Iowa caucuses was not-Romney. Newt Gingrich -- the old not-Romney -- got 16,251 votes. Rick Santorum -- the new not-Romney -- pulled in 30,007. Mitt Romney barely won, with 30,015 (we won't include Ron Paul as a not-Romney, because Paul voters were almost certainly voting for Paul, not against Romney). It's probably too simplistic to say that, had there been a single not-Romney, he would've won with by 16,000 or better, but I don't think Mittens would've won. I doubt anyone on Team Romney is feeling extremely triumphant today. The phrase of the day is probably "a win is a win." They're probably right. The Iowa caucuses aren't even representative of Iowa.

A few other observations from around the web:

Michael Li: Wow. Paid media $/vote so far: Santorum $1.65, Bachmann $8, Romney $113.07, Gingrich $139 Paul $227, Perry $817. [Numbers calculated last night with about 80% of the vote in]


Associated Press: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has won most of the delegates in the Iowa Republican caucuses, edging former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Romney won a projected 13 delegates and Santorum won 12. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was shut out.


Paul Begala: The Romney-inevitability stories will now be tempered by chin-stroking about the candidate's weakness. He is basically tied with a guy who supports banning contraception and another guy who attacks the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If Mitt Romney can't beat them, he ought to find another party to run in.


Wonkette headline: "Romney Beats Santorum By Just 0.000002667% of U.S. Population."


Dave Weigel: Four years ago, a depressed GOP went to the precinct caucuses, very well aware that Democrats had all the energy. The total GOP vote: 119,188. This year, Republicans should be psyched about the chance to uproot Barack Obama. There will be something above 122,000 total votes. An improvement, right? Well... in 2008, 86 percent of the people who chose the GOP caucuses were Republicans. This year, 75 percent of the electorate was Republican, with the rest of the vote coming from independents and Democrats. What the hell happened?


John Dickerson: As if to solidify Romney's position as the candidate the base isn't excited about, shortly before the final votes were counted Ben Smith reported that John McCain would endorse Romney. McCain, too, had trouble firing up GOP voters.


Josh Marshall: Going into tonight the idea was that Romney could come in first, second or maybe even third and still ‘win’. There was a decent logic to that. But as I hear the conventional wisdom taking shape, the result in practice (which could still quite likely be a numerical victory for Romney) seems considerably worse for Romney than one might have expected. It feels like a significant setback. In the big picture, still very hard to see how someone else gets the nomination. But a tie for first, which seemed like it would be still pretty good for Romney, doesn’t look so good in the event.


Steve Benen: Time will tell where Bachmann’s remaining supporters go, but it’s unlikely they’ll gravitate towards Mitt Romney. Indeed, the fact that the GOP field is shrinking at all is not what Romney wants to see. As we discussed earlier, because the former governor’s support in his party is so limited, Romney benefits greatly from as large a field as possible — the more the anti-Romney vote is divided among many candidates, the easier it is for him.


Right Wing Watch headline: "Religious Right Leaders to Meet and Plot Strategy on How to Stop Romney."

***
Not sure what to add after all that, other than to say I'm less inclined to think the Iowa caucuses were meaningless than I was before. If there had been a clear winner, I think I'd feel safer in making that assertion. But given that it was basically a tie, I think the least we can take out of it is that the search for a viable not-Romney is still on and the GOP primary is very much in flux.

-Wisco

Iowa Caucuses Aren't Even Representative of Iowans, Let Alone the Nation

`What IS a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

`Why,' said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.' (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?'
-Lewis Carrol, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale"


Yesterday, a mini-tempest in a micro-teapot came up over something NBC's Andrea Mitchell said in regard to the Iowa caucuses. "The rap on Iowa: It doesn’t represent the rest of the country, too white, too evangelical, too rural," she said. It is, apparently, a terrible thing to make a demographic observation that is true and wingnut bloggers responded to it with their usual "Help, I'm being oppressed!" histrionics.

But the fact of the matter is that the caucuses are barely even representative of Iowans, let alone the rest of the nation.


[Politico:]

The 2012 Republican presidential caucuses begin at 7:00 p.m. on Jan. 3. Iowa Republicans who wish to participate may locate their caucus site using the Iowa Secretary of State’s poll location tool. Republican caucuses for the state’s 1,774 precincts occur in public buildings, schools and homes, and some precincts share caucus space with other precincts. Every precinct in Adair County, for example, will caucus at Greenfield’s Nodaway Valley High School next Tuesday night.


So, if you can't blow an hour of your night precisely at 7:00, you're out of luck. If you want to vote absentee, you're out of luck. And then things get even dumber:


[Wikipedia:]

In the Republican caucuses, each voter officially casts his or her vote by secret ballot. Voters are presented blank sheets of paper with no candidate names on them. After listening to some campaigning for each candidate by caucus participants, they write their choices down and the Republican Party of Iowa tabulates the results at each precinct and transmits them to the media. In 2008, some precincts used a show of hands or preprinted ballots. The non-binding results are tabulated and reported to the state party, which releases the results to the media. Delegates from the precinct caucuses go on to the county conventions, which choose delegates to the district conventions, which in turn selects delegates to the Iowa State Convention. Thus, it is the Republican Iowa State Convention, not the precinct caucuses, which selects the ultimate delegates from Iowa to the Republican National Convention. All delegates are officially unbound from the results of the precinct caucus, although media organizations either estimate delegate numbers by estimating county convention results or simply divide them proportionally.


Is each precinct winner-take-all? You got me. I can't find a direct answer to that anywhere, but it seems to be the case. Not that it matters any -- the delegates aren't bound by the will of the voter. The caucuses are at their heart an arcane, non-binding advisory referendum. Think of the electoral college, only worse.

The idea that this could represent the opinion of the average Iowa Republican is more than a little suspect. Troops overseas or even stationed in a different state are out. Elderly and disabled voters who can't make to the caucus location are out. People who find the hour inconvenient are out. And the voters are few and ideologically skewed.


[Ezra Klein:]

...The momentum coming out of the caucus can cement Romney as the nominee or vault another contender to the nomination. But let's all take a deep breath and agree that that is completely insane.

In 2008, the Iowa Republican Caucus got record turnout: 120,000 people. That is to say, four percent of all the residents of Iowa. And those 120,000 people represent four hundredths of one percent of the total population of America.

And it's not a representative four hundredths of one percent of the American people. It's not a representative four percent of Iowans. It's not even a representative four percent of Iowa Republicans. The likely caucusgoers are further to the right than the average Iowa Republican.


Whoever comes out on top tonight will likely say that the "Iowan people have spoken." It won't be true.

-Wisco