Romney's Going To Need Some Mighty Tall Platform Shoes To Get Through This Tampa Mess

I love this ad. I first saw it as part of a TV news story. It was made by an outfit called Patriot Majority USA and I think I had dinner a few months ago with the executive director of it before it had a name. They have a cool website, StopTheGreedAgenda, which goes a long way towards explaining how the Republican attack against economic justice is wrecking America. They say their aim is to "expose the efforts of the Koch Brothers and other special interests who have threatened to spend more than $1 billion to advance what Patriot Majority calls a 'Greed Agenda.' The Koch Brothers and other mega-billionaires have advocated for more tax breaks for mega-billionaires, while cutting needed protections and programs for middle class Americans." They're all about using their vast wealth to supplant our democracy with a plutocracy.

Patriot Majority lays out the Greed Agenda being shoved down our throats by the "too wealthy" very specifically:

•       Give More Tax Breaks to the Super Rich
•       Privatize Social Security and Medicare
•       Suppress Voting Rights for Working and Middle Class Families
•       Cut Funding for Public Schools In Favor of For-Profit Education
•       Roll Back Consumer Protections and Important Regulations On Wall Street and Big Banks
•       Lower Wages for Middle Class Families
•       Eliminate Workers’ Rights
•      Block Pay Equity and Health Care Equity For Women.
•       Continue Special Giveaways to Super-Rich Oil Companies
•    Privatize Firefighting and Important Public Services
•    Cut Funding for Veterans’ Services
•    Protect Special Interest Polluters From Common Sense Regulations, Even If It Increases the Risk of Cancer and Other Fatal Illnesses

You might even say that the above dozen points is the real Republican agenda, rather than the silliness being drafted in Tampa. That document is so bizarre and extreme and so out of the mainstream outside the Old Confederacy that even right-wing ideologue and culture warrior Reince Priebus went out of his way to tell the media that the crackpot platform drawn up by off-the-chart religionist extremists like David Barton and Tony Perkins doesn't represent Mitt Romney. Oddly, though, some of the most hateful and weird parts of the platform exactly represent not just lunatic fringe Republicans like Todd Akin, Steve King, Michele Bachmann and Virginia Foxx, but also Romney's running-mate, Paul Ryan.

"I think as far as the details of some of these things, like an exception for rape or life of the mother, these are not uncommon differences that candidates have and don't share some of the detail on some of those exceptions," Priebus said on MSNBC. "This is the platform of the Republican Party; it's not the platform of Mitt Romney."

The party adopted identical language in its 2004 and 2008 platforms, which doesn't talk about exceptions or granular details, but also doesn't specifically stipulate an exception to bans on abortion in cases of rape, incest, or the health of the mother.

The RNC platform has invited renewed scrutiny because of an uproar this week over comments made by Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP candidate for Senate in Missouri, in defense of his opposition to abortion in instances of rape. He said that "legitimate rape" rarely results in pregnancy, a statement for which he's since apologized and said was factually incorrect.

(The Romney campaign said in its statement Sunday disagreeing with Akin that the former Massachusetts governor would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.)

Republicans are especially sensitive, though, to the revived debate over abortion in part due to the fact that President Barack Obama holds a healthy lead over Romney among women voters.

"Although these particular comments have led Gov. Romney and other Republicans to distance themselves," Obama said of Akin's comments during a press conference on Monday, "I think the underlying notion that we should be making decisions on behalf of women for their health care decisions-- or qualifying forcible rape versus non-forcible rape-- I think those are broader issues, and that is a significant difference in approach between me and the other party."

The Obama campaign also launched a TV ad making issue of presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's voting record in Congress, which called for stripping funding for Planned Parenthood, and other efforts to curb abortion rights.

As Sally Kohn said in her perceptive post at Salon yesterday, "Akin is not an aberration. He is merely the latest canary in a coalmine of crazy." Her point: Akin is just like all the rest of them; he just stupidly said it out loud and on camera where normal people-- particularly women-- could hear it. And they heard it so loud and so clear, that Republicans who supported Akin's insane approach (like letting an imprisoned rapist sue his victim to stop her from going through with an abortion) demanded he give up his hard-fought nomination. Among the most glaring of the right-wing misogynists were, co-sponsor of that bill, Paul Ryan, as well as a pack of garden variety women haters from Miss McConnell, Rick Berg and Denny Rehberg to the bastions of Missouri's GOP Establishment, like Roy Blunt, Jim Talent, John Ashcroft, Kit Bond and John Danforth and, of course, struggling to stay relevant in this snake pit, Willard Mitt Romney. Mitt's Sistah Souljah moment: "As I said yesterday, Todd Akin's comments were offensive and wrong and he should very seriously consider what course would be in the best interest of our country.  Today, his fellow Missourians urged him to step aside, and I think he should accept their counsel and exit the Senate race." 

As Kohn reminds us in her Salon post, "Republicans are rushing to paint a Republican candidate for the United States Senate as a fringe outsider from the party mainstream. If only we could be so lucky. While Akin and others were making increasingly extremist statements about rape and proposing crackdowns on women’s reproductive freedoms, Republican leaders wading into whack-a-doodle territory with other far-right, extreme positions."

And that's where the GOP's bigoted Bronze Age patriarchal lunacy meets the agenda of the would-be oligarchs:

Paul Ryan has advocated handing over Social Security to Wall Street. Before Social Security, one in three elder Americans lived in poverty. Now, instead of preserving our sacred pact to help seniors age with dignity, Paul Ryan wants to give the money we all pay in Social Security taxes over to Wall Street. Had Ryan’s plan been enacted before the financial crash of 2007-2008, Social Security would be thoroughly bankrupt and today’s seniors thrust back into poverty. Ryan’s plan is so extreme even President George W. Bush distanced himself from it. But while the rightward lean of the GOP was shocking enough four years ago, the party has rapidly shifted even further to the right-- to the point where extremist Paul Ryan is now its star.

By the same token, a plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system and cut non-defense discretionary government spending by a severe 91 percent-- all for the purpose of giving even more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires above and beyond the historically enormous Bush tax cuts for the rich-- might have once seemed like a secret fantasy document locked in a dark cabinet of the Heritage Foundation. But this is the substance of Paul Ryan’s budget plan, voted for by all but 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives. Of the once-extremist anti-government, anti-tax advocate, President George H. W. Bush recently asked, “Who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?” Today, Paul Ryan’s radical, scorched earth budget against the vast majority of government spending is better than Norquist could have dreamed.

I suppose kudos is owed to the Tea Party and its far right forbearers for achieving this shift while simultaneously distracting the public by labeling President Obama’s milquetoast moderate policies as evidence of wanton socialism. The right wing sure knows how to infiltrate and infect the political mainstream while pointing fingers elsewhere. But for crying out loud, what the hell is happening to our country? We now have a party with elected leaders who think child labor laws are unconstitutional (Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah), who would repeal the Civil Rights Act (Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky), who think climate change is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” (Republican Senator James Inhofe). The rightward tilt of the Republican Party has been so swift and so extreme that, today, not only do both Bushes and Ronald Reagan look to liberal, but frankly so do John McCain and Mitt Romney (which is why Mitt Romney pandered to the extreme conservative base by picking Paul Ryan as his running mate).

...The increasingly extremist Republican Party wants to make economic inequality worse and consolidate money and power in the hands of the elite (most of whom are wealthy, white men) while rolling back liberties for women, gay people and people of color. The increasingly extremist Republican Party believes that public programs which care for the poor and elderly, prevent corporations from polluting our air and water, and ensure equal opportunity in education are “shackling” big business-- regardless of how much they help ordinary Americans. The increasingly extremist Republican Party doesn’t believe in the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change, but upwards of two-thirds of Republicans do believe that President Obama was not born in the United States. Not only is the modern Republican Party fairly unconcerned with poor people and women and gay folks, but the modern Republican Party is unconcerned with basic facts. It is a purely ideological agenda, rationalized by whatever means necessary, including false “medicine” about women’s bodies and the atrocities of rape.

The Obama campaign put out a statement after the new platform was finished yesterday: “Today, Republican leaders passed the Akin amendment as part of their party platform, banning abortion for all women even in the case of rape. Several Romney supporters and advisers were present and stood silently while this vote took place. This should come as no surprise, as Mitt Romney supported this exact language in the 2004 and 2008 Republican platforms and Paul Ryan fought to ban abortion even in cases of rape. Women across this country should take note of the Republican Party’s position, and not trust any of the false promises made by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on the campaign trail.” How many women voters would have been aware-- as they now will be, thanks to Akin-- that the Republican platform calls for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest? As they do every year, they're insisting that the fertilized egg "has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” No one would have noticed... if not for Akin. And few would have known that Paul Ryan co-sponsored a bill demanding just that. Ryan unmasked! Yesterday Robert Reich unmasked him in the economic justice department. GOP/Wall Street propaganda is very careful to refer to him as "an entitlement reformer," rather than as the destroyer of society's social fabric that he is.

Ryan “reforms” Medicaid by destroying it-- cutting the federal contribution by some $800 billion and then continuing the cuts after the first ten years until federal spending is a small fraction of what it is today, and handing it over to the states, which can’t possibly keep the program going.  

Ryan “reforms” food stamps by slashing them-- reducing the federal contribution by around $125 billion and then, beyond the first decade, essentially ending the program altogether.

He “reforms” Medicare by substituting vouchers that can’t possibly keep up with the rising costs of health care.

Originally he wanted to “reform” Social Security by turning it into private savings accounts whose value would rise or fall at the whim of the Wall Street casino. (Now he doesn’t suggest any reform of Social Security. )

You want real entitlement reform? President Obama has begun it. Rational people would make sure he gets a second term to:

Use the government’s huge bargaining clout in Medicare and Medicaid to push down drug costs and the costs of medical providers, and to shift from a fee-for-services system to a payments-for-healthy-outcomes system.

Then allow anyone of any age to join Medicare so all Americans can get affordable health care.
Fold food stamps and other programs for the poor into a single enlarged Earned Income Tax Credit-- a monthly cash grant that’s inversely related to income.

Save Social Security by eliminating the ceiling on income subject to it. (Now, income over $110,100 isn’t touched.)

These are real reforms. Ryan isn’t an entitlement reformer. He’s an entitlement destroyer. And in an era of rampant economic insecurity, Ryan’s destruction would cause American families even greater hardship.