Mario Piperni on Defense Mittenisms

Romney’s Politics of Projection

August 15, 2012 By mario piperni

Wikipedia defines Psychological Projection as follows:

Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people.

Do not make the mistake of confusing the above definition of a personality disorder with the political dirty tricks used by Republican Party. In the GOP’s version, there is nothing subconscious about what they do. Their lies are intentional and it’s all part of a strategy crafted in the backrooms by the Karl Roves of the party to be disseminated to the masses by the grunts and hacks who populate the conservative media.

When a Rush Limbaugh charges that it is President Obama and Dems who prefer propaganda over truth, one could not find a better example of right-wing projection. Obama lies, says Limbaugh, while he and those on the right are “the virtuous ones in our society — we think truth wins. We have this investment in the truth. We think it’s holy. We think that it is profound, and we think it’s persuasive.”

Pass out the barf bags.

Is Limbaugh subconsciously projecting his own traits on to liberals? Not a chance in hell. He knows exactly what he’s saying. Limbaugh believes truth is holy and profound in the same way he believes marriage is holy and profound. How long before wife number 5 enters his life? Limbaugh’s only investment in truth is ensuring it never leaves his lips.

One could make the argument, of course, that pond scum like Limbaugh are simply “entertainers” out to make a buck and push a conservative agenda. Whatever. But what does one way say about a man aspiring to be president who uses the exact same tactics that a Limbaugh does – a man who lies with wild abandon and projects every weakness and flaw that he and the Republican platform possess on to Democrats?

Hello Mitt Romney. Here’s a sampling of what Romney said this morning (via Daily Kos) during a CBS interview.

• On the Obama campaign: “The president’s campaign is all about division and attack and hatred.”
• On whether his remarks seemed unhinged: “They were very measured. I can be much more dramatic, I think. I think unhinged would have to characterize what we’ve seen from the president’s campaign.”
• On what he means by the president’s campaign being about hatred: “Well, I think if you look at the ads that have been described, and the divisiveness based upon income, age, ethnicity, and so forth, it’s designed to bring a sense of enmity and jealousy and anger.”
• On his view of the president: “The president seems to be running just to hang on to power. I think he’ll do anything in his power to try and get reelected.”
• On what has really got him mad: “The president’s campaign has put out a campaign that’s talking about me and attacking me. I think it’s just demeaning to the nature of the process, particularly when we face the kinds of challenges we face.”

Projection at its best. The man whose party has claimed for five years that Barack Obama hates America is now crying that Dems are attacking him personally. Romney is a piece of work. Attacks and questions on what he heralded as his main qualifications for the job – his business experience at Bain – are now seen by him as personal attacks.

Personal is insinuating that a man is unpatriotic and is out to purposely hurt his fellow citizens. Asking to see the tax returns of a man vying for the top job in the country and questioning some of his business decisions are not. Four years ago it was hard to imagine a more unfit, incompetent pair of political clowns than McCain and Palin. That was until we got introduced to Romney and Ryan.

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Naked Capitalism on Romney/Paul “Reforms”

Bill Black: Romney Takes His Political Inspiration from Europe’s Worst Mistakes

Yves here. As much as Bill Black’s post makes a number of important observations about how the pro-austerity camp is misrepresenting its cause and the situation in Europe, it is also looking like Romney’s backers will win even if they lose. Recall that Obama himself is a budget hawk; we’ve discussed repeatedly how “reforming” Social Security and Medicare are long standing priorities of his. There was even a point in the budget negotiations of late 2011 where Obama was pushing for deeper cuts than Boehner. But the aggressiveness of Ryan’s talk will give Obama plenty of air cover, and as Dave Dayen has separately pointed out, take the focus off of some of Obama’s failures, such as the state of the economy and his refusal to provide anything beyond Potemkin reforms in the housing market.

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly posted with New Economic Perspectives

One of Governor Romney’s criticisms of President Obama is that he “takes his political inspiration from Europe….”

Romney never gives specifics on this criticism. The irony is that Romney (and Representative Ryan) “takes his political inspiration from Europe” and that the European policies they embrace have already proven disastrous in Europe. Here are five examples:

1. Austerity. European austerity has promptly forced the Eurozone back into recession. Romney, channeling Germany’s Prime Minister Merkel, claims that deficits are “immoral” and must be ended. Austerity is pro-cyclical policy that makes recessions far more severe. It has pushed several European nations into Great Depression levels of unemployment, which has reduced income and tax revenues and increased budget deficits. The EU’s Stability and Growth Pact (an oxymoron designed by regular morons) produces instability and negative growth by banning EU nations from using effective counter-cyclical fiscal policies that have proven successful for decades in reducing the severity and length of recessions.

2. Slashing working class wages. Ryan is an implacable opponent of unions and wants to end the minimum wage. Merkel is demanding the repeal of European laws protecting workers and is coercing the periphery to reduce working class wages. Unemployment rates are roughly 25% in Spain and Greece and the unemployment rate for the young is nearly 50%. The old sick joke is true again in Ireland – its leading export is the Irish. Real wages in Europe has fallen and unemployment has increased sharply.

3. Ryan wants to remove the Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate to seek full employment consistent with price stability and have it subject to a solitary mandate to maintain price stability. That mimics the disastrous single mandate of the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB lacks the legal authority to help the nations of Europe respond to the worst economic catastrophe since the devastation caused by World War II. It is an insane policy. The ECB’s crippled mandate meant that our Federal Reserve had to intervene in Europe to save several European Central Banks from collapse, which could have led to a global depression. Ryan wants to adopt a European policy that has proven grotesquely self-destructive.

4. Romney wants to end any vigorous financial regulation. He is inspired by the now infamous European “lite touch” regulation. The United Kingdom (UK) epitomized lite touch regulation. The failure of most of the UK’s largest banks, the Libor, HSBC, and Standard Chartered scandals and the allegedly rogue operation of JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office in the City of London constitute a record of failure and scandal without equal. Romney and Ryan oppose any serious regulation of banking and call for the immediate repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act in its entirety and the re-adoption of European-style “lite touch” regulation.

5. Romney’s lead economic advisor, N. Gregory Mankiw, continues to champion the regulatory “competition in laxity” that produced the “race to the bottom” that simultaneously destroyed effective financial regulation throughout the developed world. This perverse dynamic has created the criminogenic environments that drive our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. Mankiw is pushing the “need” for the U.S. to win that race to the bottom against the City of London. The only way to “win” a race to the bottom is to refuse to race, but Mankiw takes his policy inspiration from Europe and the City of London. Mankiw’s advice has caused Romney to ignore the recurrent disasters and the warnings of effective regulators, economists, and white-collar criminologists that his European-inspired anti-regulatory policies are criminogenic.

The truth is that Europe has some excellent and some terrible economic policies. Romney and Ryan have shown an unerring talent for embracing Europe’s worst financial policies and denigrating its best policies. What is amazing is that no matter how badly the European policies fail, Romney and Ryan ignore the failures and promise to drag us down the path to inevitable failure. Romney and Ryan complain about unemployment in the U.S. while pushing Europe’s austerity policies that would massively increase unemployment, debt, and deficits in the United States.

Mario Piperni on a Paul Ryan Ticket

Paul Ryan on the Ticket Makes It a Clear Choice for Voters

August 14, 2012 By John Liming

John Liming discusses the clear choice facing voters this November.

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There is all this talk going on “Out There” about Presumptive Republican Nominee Mitt Romney choosing Paul Ryan as his pick for candidate for the Vice Presidency in 2012.

Some of the “Buzz” that has struck me has been that which seems to be centering around the often-discussed “Ryan Budget Plan”— a proposal that has many Republicans enthused and energized and one that has many others apparently biting their fingernails in fearful anticipation.

Mr. Romney has reportedly endorsed the Ryan Plan which is said to contain some pretty draconian cuts to Federal Social Safety Net Programs — like Social Security and Medicare for example — and then has also reportedly gone to some lengths to attempt a distancing of himself from it.

One apparent advantage surrounding Mr. Romney’s choice of a running mate seems to be that it has caused the election to change from strictly what has been called “A referendum on President Obama and His administration” to something more on the order of “A clear choice.”

I have my own personal opinion, of course.

I believe the statement about the change in the nature of the overall election is correct.  I believe Mr. Ryan’s new status has created a “Clear Choice” and here is what I think that “Clear Choice” has become:

I think the “Clear Choice” facing the American Voters in this election now is a choice between an agenda that will almost certainly greatly benefit the top 1% of the nation’s wealthiest citizens and one that has the potential to cost everybody else dearly — or a choice that will benefit the Middle Class, Senior Citizens and Students and the balance of the 99% of America while still allowing the upper class to continue pursuing their fortunes more or less like they always have. (And I don’t think too many of them are hurting all that much.)

Let me try to make that a little clearer.

I believe a win by a Romney-Ryan Ticket in 2012 would mean an open door of vastly increased financial opportunity for that 1% at the very top of the food chain and I think it would open the door for Seniors, Students, The Middle Class, the lower wage earners, The Poor and everybody else to lose benefits on a heroic scale and that the already deep divide between the rich and poor in this nation would widen  even more considerably.

And make no mistake about it, folks — Many of those who stand to be disadvantaged by a development like this one would be Republicans who just do not happen to be wealthy Republicans.

I have noted over the decades that there seem to be a lot of what I call less affluent “Die Hard” Republicans and other less affluent Right Leaning Voters who have what I consider to be some kind of fantasy about National Republican Leadership “Having their backs” as they continue to support them in elections.

But I contend that it doesn’t matter much whether a person is a Republican, an Independent, A Tea Partier or a Democrat — if they are not part of that wealthy upper crust 1% elite, then any Right Wing politicians whom they support with such unrestricted fervor will most likely ultimately disappoint them too.

For example, if there is a Republican out there somewhere who has been using Medicare (something that should probably never happen if the Republican under discussion were true to ideology) — that Republican will be included in the number of all the other users of Medicare who will end up paying about $6 thousand more for their coverages under a plan like the “Ryan Plan” just the same as a Democrat will.

That is just one example of what I believe can happen even to a staunch non-rich Republican “True Believer” if they vote against their own interests in 2012.

Right now there seems to be a lot of talk about how a Romney win of the office of President (with Mr. Ryan as Vice President) would focus on the leadership and policies of Mr. Romney and not so much on the policies of Mr. Ryan.

My opinion of the matter is that one way or another, slowly but surely perhaps but inevitably for sure, much (if not all) of  the so-called “Ryan Budget Plan” would find its way into policy and that would just be too darned bad for the 99% of American Citizens who just don’t happen to have the advantage of being wealthy and who more often than not desperately need those “New Deal Era” Social Safety Programs that would be in danger of going under what I consider to be some pretty radical surgery.

John publishes The Liming Liberal Democrat.

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