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Tag Archives: Mitt Romney
Bipartisan Rich Guys
The Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi’s column today asks that Republicans cut senate candidate Gabriel Gomez some slack for his dances with Democrats. After all she argues, Bill Weld showed Republicans how to win in Massachusetts and he modeled bipartisanship. That got me to thinking about possibly our greatest resource for bipartisanship.
Bipartisan ambitious rich guys.
Special Election Primary Potpourri
There has been a flurry of announcements and non-announcements in the special election as everyone but Gaspar Griswold Bacon enjoys a moment in the limelight before remembering that pressing business or family time prevail over service. We’ve had Gerry Leone and Bill Weld, continued misdiagnosis of the Scott Brown 2010 victory, and Brown giving birth to a new GOP chair then abandoning her at the nearest safe haven. And Tagg Romney, we hardly knew ye.
Political Science Explains the News
Recent news stories remind me how much political science can add to understanding (or prevent misunderstanding) of what goes on in politics. So here goes:
Sorry Tagg Romney, your dad Mitt Romney wasn’t going to be president even if his advertisements showed how cuddly he is. Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe, cheap shot at elected officials the other day – but political science can show you a way to give them proper credit while still suspecting their motives. And the NRA channels a long gone political scientist’s wisdom.
“Ol’ Blood ‘n’ Teeth” Warren Heads to the Senate
As Senator-elect Elizabeth (“Ol’ Blood ‘n’ Teeth”) Warren prepares to accept her seat on the Banking Committee it is well to remember that she is not joining some version of the FDR 100 Days Democratic Party. I recalled this recently while reading a short New Yorker piece which recounted a Priorities USA Action ad called Stage.
The ad featured an Indiana paper plant worker who told of how one day he and some co-workers were told to build a stage. When it was built he and the workers from all three shifts were shuffled in front of the stage, where it was announced that Bain Capital had bought the paper mill and they were all fired. According to the ad, Mitt Romney made more than a million dollars on that deal.
But that isn’t the interesting part. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker characterizes the reaction: They “fielded bitter complaints from Democrats who were cozy with the private-equity industry.” Bill Burton of Priorities USA Action said: “When we first went up, there was a lot of pressure on us from people like Steve Rattner, Cory Booker, Harold Ford, and even President Clinton. The leaders of our own party were telling us to quit.”
Romney’s “Victory” By The Numbers
I’ve been wondering since election day how the famously data-driven Mitt Romney could have misinterpreted polling trends so badly that he actually thought he had the race in the bag. Noam Scheiber answers that question in The New Republic in The Internal Polls That Made Mitt Romney Think He’d Win. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said ”that the biggest flaw in their polling was the failure to predict the demographic composition of the electorate.” Scheiber has gone through the internal polls and has an interesting take. Take a look.
When Bipartisan Means Bistupid
One major line of attack Senator Scott Brown makes against Elizabeth Warren is that she is a bomb tosser and he is bipartisan. But perhaps being bipartisan isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Simon Johnson at IdeasBoston
Simon Johnson, Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund had some sobering words about our economy on Wednesday at IdeasBoston at UMassBoston. Prof. Johnson talked about the European mess, the danger of debt, our Chinese rivals, and even a little politics.