Krugman: Policy and the Personal
Policy and the Personal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
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In that case, however, why not run a campaign based on that substance, and leave Mr. Romneys personal history alone? The short answer is, get real.
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Perhaps in a better world we could count on the news media to sort through the conflicting claims. In this world, however, most voters get their news from short snippets on TV, which almost never contain substantive policy analysis. The print media do offer analysis pieces but these pieces, out of a desire to seem balanced, all too often simply repeat the he-said-she-said of political speeches. Trust me: you will see very few news analyses saying that Mr. Romney proposes huge tax cuts for the rich, with no plausible offset other than big benefit cuts for everyone else even though this is the simple truth. Instead, you will see pieces reporting that Democrats say that this is what Mr. Romney proposes, matched with dueling quotes from Republican sources.
So how can the Obama campaign cut through this political and media fog? By talking about Mr. Romneys personal history, and the way that history resonates with the realities of his pro-rich, anti-middle-class policy proposals.
Thus the entirely true charge that Mr. Romney wants to slash historically low tax rates on the rich even further dovetails perfectly with his own record of extraordinary tax avoidance so extraordinary that hes evidently afraid to let voters see his tax returns from before 2010. The equally true charge that hes pushing policies that would benefit the rich at the expense of ordinary working Americans meshes with Bains record of earning big profits even when workers suffered a record so stark that Mr. Romney is attempting to distance himself from part of it by insisting that he had nothing to do with Bains operations after 1999, even though the company continued to list him as C.E.O. and sole owner until 2002. And so on.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/opinion/krugman-policy-and-the-personal.html
What's Mitt going to run on, his record as Governor:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002955087