A prediction about the second debate
Randy writes:
I predict Romney will get resoundingly defeated in the next debate. Obama is now saying he was “too nice.” He is going to pull out all the stops, including the race card, appealing to envy of the “rich,” gay marriage, anti-immigrant “nativism,” etc. It will be Johnny Cochran versus Marcia Clark. Romney will not be able to deal with the attacks in the way that any VFR reader could. Like Marcia Clark, he may have the “evidence” on his side, but it is too complicated for the average American’s ninth grade level of political intelligence. He will be tied up like a pretzel.
Americans now seem more receptive to the underlying sentiments of leftism partly because the weak neocons have no effective responses. The establishment Republicans will not confront the leftist assumptions head on—like defending the productive “rich” people and showing how they are the engine of economic prosperity.
LA replies:
That is a very interesting prediction. But I don’t agree with you on the last point. Romney has shown himself to be quite articulate and forthcoming in defending the idea of success and wealth. For a liberal-leaning Republican, he is surprisingly Ayn Rand-like in that regard.
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James P. writes:
You wrote,
“Romney has shown himself to be quite articulate and forthcoming in defending the idea of success and wealth.”
That was exactly what Romney failed to do in January 2008, when McCain launched a vicious, sneering attack on Romney as a cruel “vulture capitalist” who worked for profits, not patriotism at the expense of the little man.
In response, Romney just sat there grinning like an impotent fool.
Terry Morris writes:
I’m not sure how Romney could put this so that the average “undecided” voter would understand it without being offended at the same time, but should Obama dare to raise the issue again, as he did in the first debate, of his reasonable, “fair-share” plan to raise the tax rates of “people like us who have done very well for ourselves in this country” (“us” meaning himself and Romney), Romney should ram the point home that Obama’s “success” and his own success have very little in common with one another, as the former’s success has been on the taxpayers’ dime, while Romney’s success is the taxpayer’s dime upon which people “like” Obama depend for their “success.”
Additionally people “like” Obama aren’t particularly concerned about raises in their tax rates since they’re not paying any original taxes to begin with, but are merely acting as middle-men in the collection of these additional taxes. What people seem to miss in these arguments over raising or lowering tax rates for high wage earners is the enormous cost to the producer that raising the tax rate of higher income level people like Obama will entail. Of course the producer can, in turn, pass the additional cost on to the consumer to a certain extent, but at a point he is unable to do so and is forced to eat the additional costs himself. Ultimately this means his incentive to create wealth is destroyed by excessive taxation, and people lose jobs as a result.
Romney addressed the issue of destroying vs. enhancing job growth in the private sector during the last debate, saying his way is the way best to achieve the latter, without a response from Obama. But he failed to address the central issue of why following the President’s plan would result in the destruction of private sector employment, and thus the means by which we pay those who work in the public sector.
Obama is likely to come out swinging in the next debate concerning this issue of the wealthy paying their “fair share” of taxes, which implies that everyone other than “the wealthy” and high wage earners are paying their fair share and more. Which we know is not the case at all. Romney needs to utilize his experience as a businessman, and his superior intellect, to argue his position on its merits, or to show the reasons for which his plan will work while Obama’s will not. Simply saying “I don’t want to kill job growth” without explaining why his plan won’t kill job growth, but will enhance it, I do not think will quite get the job done this time.
LA replies:
I would like to see Romney address Obamacare in much more serious and urgent terms than he has done heretofore, for example, explaining how it must destroy the private health insurance industry and the entire private health care industry, and, indeed, is designed to do so. But of course he is protected by the law that exists in liberal society that if you state the plain truth of how extreme liberalism and liberals are, you will be seen as extreme. (It’s a variation on Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations under Liberal Society; I need a name for it.)
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 15, 2012 11:29 AM | Send