It's easy enough to point out the inaccuracy in Dana Milbank's "Romney can’t have it both ways on defense spending, tax cuts." It's easy because Republicans have had a manifestly successful time of having it both ways for 32 years.
Ronald Reagan, once of the fiscally ascetic Goldwater school, came to national power on the Laffable promise that we could have it all: tax cuts and more defense spending as well as government's usual and essential services. When David Stockman, Reagan's budget guy, tutored the new president that this was a fiscal fantasy that would lead to a fiscal catastrophe, the president cheerfully countered that the OMB should simply give sanguinity a chance.
And thus began our ascendant fall. Annual deficits and the national debt zoomed, just like Stockman (and tens of millions of others) knew they would; then came George H.W. Bush's fiscal gallantry of common sense, which earned him his ideological party's disdain and cost him his job; then came the majority Gingrichites who had battled Bill Clinton's fiscally modest corrections as the very model of executive tyranny and economic madness; then came George W. Bush mimicking virtually word for word the elementary impossibilities of Reaganomics.
Now Romney wants "it both ways on defense spending, tax cuts." And Milbank flatly says he can't have it? The empirical evidence says he can, as does the political. Turns out, it's rather easy to hoodwink most of the people most of the time; that is to say, people who actually trouble themselves with active participation in their country's direction--it's called "voting"--a concept the right seems to grasp, even if, for them, elementary economics is an intellectual bridge too far.
All of which is to observe that Romney's pseudoconservative, fiscally insipid message is eminently marketable. Its problem is the messenger, who hasn't the theatrical magnetism of Ronald Reagan, or the balls of a Newt, or the good-old-boy charm of aristocrat W.
Furthermore, Romney's opponent is no Carter, no Mondale, no Gore and no Kerry. Barack Obama won't be intimidated and he doesn't panic; he refuses to tactically flop around like a mackerel in the moonlight; he sets a strategic course and he sticks to it, reflecting an inner confidence and determined calm that noticeably frustrate the bejesus out of bullies like Romney.
Presto, two-term President Obama.
Eliminating the immense headache of a Romney presidency, however, cannot reverse the immense fiscal injuries done to this nation by the very unfunny Laffable crowd, who, with mountains of Kochsucking cash in their virtual pockets, are likely to dominate the next Congress, too.
Only in the world you describe could Obama be considered audacious or heroic.
He has takena series of "bold initiatives" for which polling shows hands-down support (sometimes as high as 80%). The media and I are amazed by his courage. DC democrats are scared witless by his wreckless courage.
Yesterday, the senate Democrats could only muster 51 votes for bill that has the support of 80% of the electoate.
Courage ain't what it used to be.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | July 26, 2012 at 11:08 AM