{"id":654,"date":"2012-10-25T08:20:26","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T08:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=654"},"modified":"2012-10-25T16:01:13","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T16:01:13","slug":"why-mitt-romney-will-not-benefit-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2012\/10\/why-mitt-romney-will-not-benefit-liberty\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mitt Romney Will Not Benefit Liberty \u2013 Stolyarov\u2019s Response to Steele \u2013 Part 2 \u2013 Article by G. Stolyarov II"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
G. Stolyarov II<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
October 25, 2012<\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
Recommend this page<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Here, I continue my exchange with Dr. Charles Steele regarding the 2012 U.S. Presidential election and the question of whether either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney have any merit as candidates or whether one can be preferred to the other. In \u201cThe Imperative of Libertarian Rejection of the Two-Party Trap<\/a>\u201d, I addressed the question of whether it can be morally legitimate to vote for a lesser evil, and concluded that it is not \u2013 particularly where a fundamentally dishonest and deceptive ticket such as Romney\/Ryan is concerned. (Readers can also see the aforementioned article for a list of links to the previous installments of this exchange.) Here, I respond to Part 2 of Dr. Steele\u2019s previous response: \u201cRomney v. Obama: Tweedledum and Tweedledee?<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

I will first say that I have no intention of defending Barack Obama or claiming that his second term would not be \u201cas bad\u201d as Dr. Steele portrays. Barack Obama has, in many ways, been responsible for a massive growth of the American police and surveillance state, as well as an expansion of militaristic interventionism abroad. His economic policies have, likewise, been highly damaging to liberty and prosperity alike. Drone attacks on innocents, molestation at the airports, an escalating War on Drugs, persecution of whistleblowers, attempts to conflate Wikileaks with crime and terrorism, health-insurance mandates, bailouts and subsidies to political cronies, inflationary monetary policy, reckless deficit-spending fiscal policy, support for draconian \u201ccybersecurity\u201d legislation that would fundamentally curtail Internet freedom and subject billions of individual communications to monitoring by error-prone algorithms, continuing maintenance of CIA torture facilities (a.k.a. \u201cblack sites\u201d) abroad, and the \u201caudacity\u201d to insists that the President of the United States has the authority to assassinate any American citizen abroad, or indefinitely detain any American citizen in the United States, based on his mere say-so \u2013 all that (and more along similar lines!) has been the legacy of Obama\u2019s first term. I have absolutely no intention of defending Obama \u2013 except in cases where the accusations against him are simply factually untrue, or where his administration happens to have stumbled upon a decent and reasonable policy.<\/p>\n

One important question to ask is, \u201cWhy has Mitt Romney not emphasized virtually any <\/em>of the above tremendous harms of the Obama administration?\u201d At the Free and Equal Third-Party <\/a>\u00a0Debate<\/a>, all four of the participants (Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson, and Virgil Goode) had scathing criticisms of Obama\u2019s administration in some (or, in the case of Gary Johnson, most) of the areas mentioned above. Ron Paul\u2019s criticisms of Obama were similarly severe, and similarly on target. The perceptive observer, then, is left to wonder why Mitt Romney\u2019s campaign completely ignores <\/em>the actual harms caused by Obama during his first term and instead focuses on criticisms that are trivial at best or disingenuous and dishonest at worst. Is it, perhaps, that Romney would himself perpetrate the travesties discussed above, and perhaps intensify them? Is it, perhaps, that Romney\u2019s political base actually insists that he attack Obama for not being \u201ctough\u201d enough with regard to certain military engagements and infringements on civil liberties?\u00a0 (One must remember that Romney himself stated during the Republican debates that he would have signed the indefinite-detention provision of the NDAA. Furthermore, Romney expressed strong support for SOPA and the Protect IP Act before reversing his stance once it became apparent that continued endorsement of these bills would be politically ruinous.)<\/p>\n

Rather than defend Obama or contrast him favorably to Romney, I will respond to each of Dr. Steele\u2019s points by following a general theme: that Mitt Romney is cut from the same cloth as Obama policy-wise, and is even worse personality-wise. Obama, for all of his erroneous and dangerous views and actions, at least seems to have <\/em>an ideological system that he endeavors to realize, however imperfectly and however subject to political maneuvering and backtracking. Romney, on the other hand, seems beholden to no principles. David Javerbaum has aptly characterized Romney as engaging in \u201cquantum politics<\/a>\u201d \u2013 e.g., \u201cMitt Romney will feel every possible way<\/em> about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, then, can be seen as my response to Dr. Steele\u2019s point regarding the \u201cgeneral vision\u201d of the two candidates. Dr. Steele wrote that \u201cThis presidential election is not so much a choice between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama as it is between two competing visions of the role of government.\u201d I respond that the two parties do not represent competing visions, because the Republicans \u2013 by nominating Mitt Romney \u2013 have shown that they do not represent any vision whatsoever, or at the very least that their \u201cvision\u201d is a blank to be filled by the expediencies of the day. A left-progressive vision, however erroneous or even dangerous in some respects, is at least relatively predictable \u2013 though even many left-progressives (e.g., Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party) are themselves disgusted at the course the Obama administration have taken and strike me as a lot more honest and at least capable of doing good in certain areas (e.g., civil liberties), as compared to either the Democratic or the Republican establishments.<\/p>\n

I certainly do not see in Romney\/Ryan or the Republican establishment the barest shred <\/em>of \u201cthe view that government is limited by the rights of the individual, and that most of civilization is built by free people acting in the market.\u201d Romney\u2019s incessant ads in Nevada about how he opposes Barack Obama\u2019s \u201cthreats\u201d to Social Security and Medicare are a case in point; he is just another establishment campaigner who tells various segments of the electorate what they want to hear, and portrays his rival as a terrible menace. But more importantly, the Republican establishment has shown that it not only cares little for individual rights in theory \u2013 but it is ready to trample upon them in practice, through the fraudulent<\/a> and sometimes violent manner in which supporters of Gary Johnson and Ron Paul were effectively disenfranchised during the nominating process and \u2013 at the Republican National Convention \u2013 were met with a \u201crule change<\/a>\u201d (adopted over the loud objections<\/a> of the delegates) that will effectively bar grassroots delegate selection in perpetuity. The Republican Party, by preventing even their previously most ardent grassroots supporters from rising to positions of prominence in future elections, has closed itself off from any connection with individuals or the free market. It has become the party of oligarchic elites \u2013 the party of crony corporatism and entrenched political favoritism. To be sure, the Republican Party does need its \u201cuseful idiots\u201d to mobilize mass fervor against the Democrats and win elections. Hence, the Republican establishment fails to quell xenophobic, theocratic, and racist bigotries (e.g., the oft-repeated claims that Obama is an atheist Muslim who was not born in the United States). Even though the Republican elites are too intelligent to fall for such nonsense themselves, they are too callously manipulative and devoid of principles to discourage sentiments that may be politically useful to them.<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele writes that \u201cconservatives are far more skeptical of government than are progressives\u201d \u2013 but this refers to a conservative movement that was perhaps of this sort some thirty years ago during the Reagan era (in rhetoric at least), but not at all today. While Dr. Steele asserts that \u201cthe Republican Party is the party of skepticism about government\u201d, the Republican Party gave us unprecedented expansions of federal-government power during the George W. Bush era. Indeed, a principal observation regarding\u00a0 the Obama administration\u2019s deleterious effects for liberty is that Obama has built upon the foundation that George W. Bush created, with few material departures. Today\u2019s Republican Party is a mix of neoconservatism, theoconservatism, crony corporatism, and pop-conservatism<\/a>. Libertarianism is not a material component of the Republican agenda \u2013 other than occasional lip service to libertarians during election years \u2013 just to get their vote. Every election season, the Republican Party courts libertarians, and every time it has electoral success, it simply discards <\/em>any pretense at pursuing even a quasi-libertarian agenda. When was the last time that a Republican victory has brought about any policy shifts in a remotely libertarian direction?\u00a0 In the face of such repeated bait-and-switch tactics, how many times does it take to learn not to fall for them again? How many times do good libertarians need to be deceived by entrenched political elites who have no intention of diminishing the scope of their power?<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele contrasts the Democratic and Republican platforms, but even the shreds of pro-liberty sentiment in the Republican platform were hard-won from the establishment by the tireless activity of Ron Paul\u2019s supporters on various Republican committees. These friends of liberty were faced with procedural manipulations and threats from the establishment for attempting to introduce pro-liberty platform planks, and it is certainly salutary that they succeeded. But they were able to plant a few saplings of liberty into extremely hostile soil. The Republican establishment will never accept libertarians and will try, at every turn, to undo these hard-won gains. Attempting to accommodate the Republican establishment will turn libertarians into mere tools for specific establishment aims \u2013 as exemplified by the case of Rand Paul, who was largely ignored by Romney after achieving the useful (to Romney) goal of splitting the Ron Paul movement by endorsing Romney. Rand Paul was merely given a speech at the Republican National Convention \u2013 but that was largely it in terms of his \u201cgains\u201d from the endorsement. The liberty movement certainly did not gain even that much, as no policy victories were won by Rand Paul\u2019s action. Another potential approach, that of overruling<\/em> the establishment and \u201ctaking over\u201d the party, has become close to impossible after the National Convention, and so the only reasonable course of action left to libertarians is to abandon any connection to the Republican Party and act entirely outside of its confines.<\/p>\n

On the matter of free speech, Dr. Steele writes about the threat of Jim McGovern\u2019s proposed \u201cPeople\u2019s Rights Amendment\u201d, which would overturn the Supreme Court\u2019s Citizens United <\/em>decision. While this proposed amendment is certainly problematic, I do not see a direct connection between it and Barack Obama. Certainly, some high-profile Democrats support it, but that is no guarantee that it would pass or that Obama would endorse it if he received a second term. As an analogy, numerous Republicans have voiced support for overturning the Supreme Court\u2019s Roe v. Wade <\/em>decision on abortion (including through the means of \u201cright to life\u201d Constitutional amendments \u2013 and Republican candidates for President have often endorsed this course of action far more vocally than Obama has ever commented on the Citizens United <\/em>decision. Yet Republicans elected to office are virtually powerless to do anything about Roe v. Wade<\/em>, due to the vestiges of the separation of powers that remain. There are dire ways in which free speech is being eroded in the United States, but campaign finance is one of the least concerning areas in this respect. I am far more disturbed by the violent suppression of peaceful political protests (e.g., the pepper-spraying incident<\/a> at University of California Davis in November 2011, for which the University has now offered to generously compensate<\/a> the victims), as well as the overarching surveillance state which is emerging due to the domestic \u201cWar on Terror\u201d. Internet monitoring of the sort contemplated by CISPA<\/a> and the National Security Agency\u2019s planned data center in Utah would surely have a chilling effect on free expression online. Likewise, the intimidation and harassment that some of Romney\u2019s supporters have directed at supporters of Ron Paul and Gary Johnson certainly are not helping the cause of free speech. As someone who personally experienced such attacks, I would certainly not trust the attackers\u2019 candidate of choice with safeguarding my rights under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele is also concerned about the purported Democratic opposition to the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. Yet the right to bear arms is one area in which liberty has actually made progress <\/em>over the past decade \u2013 and this progress has largely been untouched by Obama during his first term in office. While the Democratic platform may call for some restrictions on gun ownership, even this language is mild compared to the rhetoric of the gun-control movement in the 20th<\/sup> century (particularly prior to the decline of crime rates in the 1990s).\u00a0 Due to Supreme Court decisions such as Heller <\/em>and concealed-carry laws in various states, widespread gun ownership has been subject to fewer legal restrictions in recent times, coinciding with the continued drop in rates of violent crime. This recognition that liberalization of gun laws did not lead to crime increases, combined with the extreme strength of interest groups such as the National Rifle Association, should keep at bay any attempts to limit Second Amendment rights at the federal level \u2013 no matter which party controls the Presidency. The greatest threat to gun-ownership rights remains at the local level, particularly at educational institutions that attempt to impose \u201cgun-free\u201d zones where not even teachers and administrators can bring weapons that could deter potential shooters and immediately disable any who are not deterred.<\/p>\n

Regarding PPACA\/Obamacare\/federal Romneycare, Dr. Steele responds to my argument that Romney would not veto it by stating that \u201cthe PPACA is much hated by the Republican base (for that matter the majority of Americans dislike it).\u00a0 A repeal would be extremely popular.\u00a0 It\u2019s simply incredible to think that a President Romney would defy his party and practically 100% of his supporters in order to save Barack Obama\u2019s hallmark program.\u00a0\u201c Dr. Steele \u201ccan\u2019t imagine anything else he could do that would make him more likely to lose the GOP nomination in 2016.\u201d This assumes, however, that the political base matters to Republicans like Romney to any greater extent than as vessels for whipping up sentiment and winning elections. It is much more likely that the Republican Party strategists will rely on the perceived political amnesia of the masses and will hope that the public in 2016 will have forgotten any promises to repeal PPACA. Romney has already anticipated this behavior and publicly backtracked<\/a> on his promise to repeal PPACA and stated that there are many portions that he would retain. Most likely, the worst part of PPACA \u2013 the individual mandate \u2013 which Obama initially opposed but was persuaded by politically powerful health insurers to include, will be among the parts that Romney \u2013 being the representative of corporate cronyism that he is \u2013 will retain. It is true that Romney might support some partial reforms to PPACA, but if the individual mandate remains, then these reforms would amount to a mere reorientation of PPACA in an even more corporatist direction, rather than a repeal or a movement toward a more free-market outcome. Under Romney, there might be fewer requirements and restrictions regarding the behavior of health insurers \u2013 but, in the status quo, those mandates and restrictions largely have the effect of partially (and, in the fashion of Mises\u2019s \u201cdynamic of interventionism\u201d, with severe unintended negative consequences) compensating for the pernicious effects of the individual mandate. A Romney-style amended PPACA might simply enable health insurers to exploit their new captive clientele with few limitations or checks.<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele writes that \u201cit\u2019s not clear that Romneycare and Obamacare really are the same thing, despite a similar basic framework. The Massachusetts bill signed by Romney was\u00a0different from that<\/a> which was implemented.\u00a0 Romney used his line item veto on a number of the more draconian parts of the bill.\u00a0 The Democratic legislature overrode these vetoes, and the bill was implemented by a Democratic governor who further altered it.\u00a0 Furthermore, at the time Romney signed the bill, the situation in Massachusetts insurance markets was far worse than perhaps anywhere else in the United States.\u00a0 In this context, Romneycare \u2013 at least <\/em>Romney\u2019s<\/em> version of it \u2013 was arguably an improvement over the status quo <\/em>in Massachusetts<\/em>.\u00a0 Thus when Romney argues that the reform might have been right for Massachusetts but not for America in general, he\u2019s not necessarily being disingenuous<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best way to determine how similar or different Romneycare is from Obamacare is to consult the economist who designed both, Jonathan Gruber, who recently stated<\/a> regarding the individual mandates of the two systems in particular, that \u201cThey are very similar [\u2026] They aren’t the same exact mandate, but they have the same basic structure.” Because the individual mandate is by far the most pernicious part of PPACA, this is enough of a similarity to make Obamacare and Romneycare fundamentally more alike than not. It is also appropriate to consider the statements made by Romney. As is typical with Romney, he vacillates on the matter of whether Obamacare does or does not resemble Romneycare, but he did praise Obama<\/a> for incorporating elements of Romneycare into PPACA. In April 2012, Romney even explicitly praised<\/a> the individual mandate! The distinctions that Romney makes are that (1) Romney\u2019s plan was state-based rather than federal (as if he had a choice as Governor of Massachusetts \u2013 and besides, bad ideas have to start somewhere, and Massachusetts was Gruber\u2019s training ground), (2) that Romney\u2019s plan did not raise taxes (which is false; Alex Seitz-Wald points out<\/a> that the penalties for failing to purchase insurance, which the Supreme Court has now ruled to be taxes, were higher under Romneycare), (3) that Romney\u2019s plan did not cut Medicare (again, a defense of the Medicare status quo on Romney\u2019s part), and (4) that Romney\u2019s plan did not include price controls (but Massachusetts does impose price controls now, as Ben Domenech points out<\/a> \u2013 and this may have been Romneycare\u2019s logical evolution).<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele also writes regarding the possibility that Obama would appoint \u201cdemocratic constitutionalist\u201d justices to the Supreme Court, which would result in the spread of \u201cthe notion that our Constititutional rights should not be considered \u201cabsolute\u201d sense, but rather\u00a0subject to international norms<\/a>.\u201d Dr. Steele believes that \u201cRomney is unlikely to draw from this crowd, and far more likely to draw from judges with at least some sympathy for the new federalism.\u201d While I certainly prefer the interpretation which Dr. Steele calls the \u201cnew federalism\u201d over \u201cdemocratic constitutionalism\u201d, I see this particular clash of interpretations as too many steps removed from the outcome of a Presidential election. To be sure, the President may appoint Supreme Court justices, but that is all. How the justices subsequently rule is out of the President\u2019s hands. Indeed, it was the George W. Bush appointee John Roberts who cast the deciding vote to uphold the constitutionality of PPACA\u2019s individual mandate. The 2005 Kelo v. City of New London <\/em>eminent-domain decision was joined by George H. W. Bush appointee David Souter and Ronald Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy. And, as I previously pointed out<\/a>, the Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders<\/a> <\/em>decision of April 2012 was entirely the doing of the \u201cconservative\u201d bloc (including Anthony Kennedy). If the \u201cnew federalism\u201d of these judges considers strip searches without criminal suspicion or material risk posed by the individual being searched to be constitutional, then perhaps it is not that strong of a safeguard of our liberties after all. But largely, my point is that any given Supreme Court justice is too much of an unknown quantity upon appointment for one to be able to make any decisions regarding the appointer on the basis of whom he might potentially, conceivably appoint \u2013 that is, if <\/em>a vacancy appears in the first place and if <\/em>the Senate would confirm that appointment.<\/p>\n

Regarding which candidate is more anti-entrepreneur, Dr. Steele writes that \u201cMr. Stolyarov suggests that Romney is anti-entrepreneur in practice, but it is small entrepreneurs who are most hurt by regulation. \u00a0Large established firms have teams of lawyers and accountants and frequently can benefit from gaming the rules; in practice, Obama is a greater threat to entrepreneurship<\/em>.\u201d But it is precisely the large established firms that will be explicitly <\/em>favored by a Romney administration \u2013 as evidenced by Romney\u2019s support for the various bailouts and \u201cstimulus\u201d plans of 2008-2009. (Incidentally, it was Romney who said<\/a> during the first Romney-Obama debate that \u201cYou couldn\u2019t have people opening up banks in their \u2014 in their garage and making loans<\/em>.\u201d This is clearly a statement of opposition to small entrepreneurship and an expression of desire to protect entrenched large financial firms from competition by innovative startups.) The only difference between Obama and Romney is that, while Obama supports subsidies to \u201calternative\u201d businesses (and financial firms), Romney supports subsidies to \u201ctraditional\u201d businesses (and financial firms) \u2013 combined with a heavy dose of mercantilist protectionism (evidenced by numerous Romney campaign flyers sent out in Nevada about how Obama is allegedly \u201cselling out\u201d the United States to China by endorsing foreign-made products). Romney is <\/em>the candidate of politically connected Wall Street firms and large banks (who also hedge their bets by donating large amounts of money to the Democratic Party). If he is elected, these entities will be free to continue to enrich themselves at taxpayers\u2019 expense, while socializing their losses. Bailouts and labyrinthine federal rules are key to the continuation of this exploitation of taxpayers by connected financial firms \u2013 and Romney is virtually certain to encourage the proliferation of such measures.<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele writes that \u201cRomney and Ryan have been willing to put forward the idea that entitlement programs as they exist are unsustainable and must be radically restructured.\u00a0 Obama assures us this won\u2019t happen<\/em>.\u201d Yet it is Romney\/Ryan <\/em>whose ads continually denounce Obama for \u201cthreatening\u201d Social Security and Medicare and promise that Romney\/Ryan will not take those benefits away but will rather \u201cstrengthen\u201d those programs. Gary Johnson, when observing the first Romney-Obama debate, repeatedly pointed out<\/a> that the two candidates were in competition regarding who could make more extravagant promises to preserve Medicare. I agree that the federal entitlement programs are unsustainable, but Romney, like Obama, is happy to argue for their perpetual existence as a way of gaining votes in the short term \u2013 at the expense of long-term prudence.<\/p>\n

On taxation, Dr. Steele writes that \u201cObama has stated a clear preference for increases in marginal rates on higher income earners, higher corporate taxes, and an increasing number of tax breaks, this last for purposes of social engineering (a.k.a. buying votes).\u00a0 Romney has endorsed a reduction in marginal rates and a broadening on the base by eliminating deductions and exemptions.\u00a0 The latter approach reduces the economic distortions of taxation and also returns it to the purpose of collecting revenue, rather than shaping citizens\u2019 behavior to match politicians\u2019 goals<\/em>.\u201d While I certainly do not support Obama\u2019s approach (or any tax increases at all), it is not at all clear that Romney\u2019s approach is preferable \u2013 especially since, as Dr. Steele acknowledges, we do not know quite what it entails, and Romney keeps contradicting himself regarding its contents. What we do know for certain, though, is that Romney\u2019s planned massive increases to military spending<\/a> are mathematically irreconcilable with any sensible fiscal policy or any description of Romney\u2019s tax plan. If fiscal responsibility is to be the deciding issue of this election, then Obama might even be preferable to Romney because while Obama\u2019s budget plan aims to increase military spending very slightly, Romney\u2019s plan would lead it to skyrocket. Ultimately, unsustainable foreign entanglements have led to the United States\u2019 budget surplus from the late 1990s turning into a massive deficit. Without significantly curtailing American military spending and engagements abroad, resolving the current fiscal mess is impossible. The Economist<\/a> points out that, more generally, Romney\u2019s statements are mathematically incoherent, and his tax plan, as publicly presented, would not be able to solve the United States\u2019 fiscal problems without significant tax increases on middle-income-earners.<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele concluded his essay with some thoughtful caveats, and I would also like to mention a few of my own, though they cannot be said to arise from any virtues on Romney\u2019s part. First, a Romney victory could galvanize Democrats to behave in a manner more reminiscent of the George W. Bush era, during which many of them actually opposed American foreign entanglements and expressed outrage at violations of civil liberties. As Glenn Greenwald points out<\/a>, Obama\u2019s election has led many of Obama\u2019s supporters to become blind to the administration\u2019s abuses of civil liberties at home and abroad. Perhaps, if the Democrats again become the party of the opposition, the old civil-liberties sentiments could be revived and strengthened (even if only to be used as a tool of political convenience against the Republicans). Second, Romney and Obama might both be mere figureheads of a larger political establishment: the \u201cbipartisan\u201d consensus \u2013 implemented by a federal bureaucracy whose operations do not shift due to a change in leadership, and existing to serve elites whose real power arises from connections and does not depend on particular formal titles. If this is the case, then Obama\u2019s or Romney\u2019s individual presence or influence in office might not amount to much at all. Therefore, the outcomes in terms of policy might be the same irrespective of which one of them wins. Third, interestingly enough, a similar irrelevance might be anticipated if Dr. Steele is correct in stating that \u201cIf elections and political processes do anything in this regard [expanding liberty], it will be simply to respond to and formalize advances made by civil society.\u201d In that case, a politician who seeks to retain office would have little choice but to succumb to the pressures of civil society sooner or later, and the party in power does not matter so much, except possibly with regard to the timing and tone of that acquiescence. (An example of this is the recent initially reluctant but subsequently strong expression of support for legalized same-sex marriage by Barack Obama, who originally campaigned against it, but whose hand was essentially forced by the public discourse of the issue.)<\/p>\n

Yet, with all this said, I can anticipate one major <\/em>harm of a Romney victory that might outweigh all possible incidental benefits. That harm is the normalization of lying in American politics. As I discussed above and in Part 1<\/a> of my response, Romney is a different breed of politician, in that he does not have a shred of consistency on virtually any issue \u2013 and is willing to lie even when lying is not necessary to gain him political advantage. A Romney victory would convey a clear signal to the electorate and to political pundits and strategists that facts do not matter <\/em>and honesty does not matter <\/em>in politics. Of course it is true that many politicians today make false promises and selectively portray the truth; Romney is far from the first. But the overt factual falsehoods <\/em>stated by Romney and Ryan are a different and more egregious sort of lies from the false promises, vague generalities, and dissembling characteristic of more \u201ctraditional\u201d American politicians. A Romney victory would complete the transformation of American elections into reality shows with much rhetoric and fanfare, but no substance; it would finalize the disconnect between the basis for the people\u2019s decisions in electing a candidate and the actual policies that candidate implements (based, presumably, on consideration of more reliable and accurate information than the nonsense disseminated on the campaign trail). A Romney victory would cement the unfortunate conviction of many on the political Right in the United States that they are entitled not just to their own opinions, but also to their own facts (which may, in Orwellian fashion, morph into their diametrical opposites based on the political agenda du jour<\/em>). I am reminded here of Mises\u2019s discussion<\/a> in Human Action<\/em> of the errors of polylogism. A Romney victory would create a peculiar sort of \u201cRepublican logic\u201d or \u201cconservative logic\u201d that employs \u201cRepublican facts\u201d or \u201cconservative facts\u201d that differ from the objective<\/em> facts which, well, happen to be true. Already, the derision aimed at fact-checking organizations by many on the Right today foreshadows this unfortunate possibility \u2013 which would render the entire conservative movement (and any libertarians who ally with it) a historical irrelevancy and laughingstock, but not before it inflicts tremendous human suffering in the manner of virtually every major polylogist movement in history.<\/p>\n

This brings me to the last point of discussion with Dr. Steele, the matter (discussed in the comments of my Part 1<\/a>) of whether the Romney campaign has misrepresented the Obama administration\u2019s approach to work requirements for welfare eligibility. I note that this is a matter on which a wide spectrum of sources are unanimous \u2013 including The Washington Post<\/a> (which leans Republican), ABC News<\/a>, and NPR<\/a>. PolitiFact<\/a> (which also leans rightward) has called the Romney campaign\u2019s statements on this matter \u201cpants on fire\u201d lies.<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele writes that \u201cRobert Rector, one of the authors of the original reform act, has given a detailed and careful argument<\/a> for why he considers the move by Obama\u2019s HHS move a gutting of the requirements.<\/em>\u201d It seems that Rector actually originated the claim that the HHS memorandum of July 12, 2012, would \u201cgut\u201d welfare reform. This is his blog post of the same day<\/a>, making that claim. It is clear that, akin to the dynamics of the game of \u201ctelephone\u201d, the Romney campaign took Rector\u2019s statements and exaggerated them further to claim that Obama\u2019s administration has already \u201cannounced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements\u201d \u2013 when in fact no such plan has been made, \u00a0no waivers of any nature have been requested or granted, and the HHS memorandum specifically cautioned against dropping work requirements. Rector (unlike the Romney campaign) at least provides some details for his interpretation, but it appears to be one remote hypothetical possibility among many, at best, and it is at odds with the explicit statements of the Obama administration that work requirements will not be dropped. Another of the authors of the TANF program, Ron Haskins, stated to NPR<\/a> that “There’s no plausible scenario under which it [the HHS memorandum] really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform.” The NPR article perceptively observes: \u201cSo why continue beating this drum? Partly because people believe it.\u201d This is a prominent illustration of the cynical and manipulative conduct of the Romney campaign. Facts do not matter to Romney and Ryan; the public appeal of any particular message \u2013 even if it is factually false \u2013 does.<\/p>\n

Dr. Steele also writes that \u201c<\/strong>GAO has declared that contrary to what the Obama administration has argued, HHS has overstepped its bounds<\/a> in this matter and by law must submit the proposed changes to Congress.<\/em>\u201d Yet the GAO letter does not comment on the practical effects of the HHS\u2019s waiver authority on work requirements. It simply states that the HHS\u2019s attempts to exercise such authority constitute a \u201crule\u201d under the Administrative Procedures Act, and that this \u201crule\u201d must be submitted to Congress for its approval. Perhaps it must. Yet this is not, per se, support for the contention that Obama has \u201cgutted\u201d welfare work requirements.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the American Conservative Union<\/a> article linked by Dr. Steele states that \u201cNo state has submitted a waiver request. Nor have any been approved. The GAO report has effectively blocked all Sebelius-led changes to TANF work requirements, but what would have it have done [sic]? The specific changes would vary from state to state, depending on whether a state requests a waiver and whether HHS approves the proposed new methods.<\/em>\u201c This is precisely the opposite of the Romney campaign\u2019s contention that the Obama administration \u201cgutted\u201d welfare work requirements. First, no actual waivers have even been granted, so any \u201cgutting\u201d is hypothetical only. Second, if any waivers are to be granted, the specific changes would vary by state and would largely depend on what a particular state requests. Again, it is entirely unwarranted to leap from the ability of a state to request a waiver of certain specific methods<\/em> to the presupposition that the waiver would entail an elimination of work requirements altogether (which elimination is contrary to federal law in any case).<\/p>\n

To conclude, I reiterate my question of why Romney is even emphasizing this non-issue so strongly \u2013 when there is a myriad of actual atrocious infringements of liberty by the Obama administration which could be used to legitimately denounce Obama\u2019s first term? The only reason that suggests itself is that Romney would commit more of the same infringements, and any differences with Obama are superficial only.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

G. Stolyarov II October 25, 2012 Recommend this page. ****************************** Here, I continue my exchange with Dr. Charles Steele regarding the 2012 U.S. Presidential election and the question of whether either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney have any merit as candidates or whether one can be preferred to the other. In \u201cThe Imperative of Libertarian Rejection of the Two-Party Trap\u201d, I addressed the question of whether it can be morally legitimate to vote for a lesser evil, and concluded that…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[76,1336,1258,324,28,1484,1456,1481,164,84,40,703,424,171,1483,30,59,33,74,146,1254,73,29,148,65,502,1346,1486,1244,25,843,1344,381,816],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-charles-n-steele","tag-charles-steele","tag-civil-liberties","tag-democrat","tag-dishonesty","tag-economic-freedom","tag-fiscal-policy","tag-free","tag-freedom","tag-g-stolyarov-ii","tag-gary-johnson","tag-honesty","tag-internet","tag-lesser-evil","tag-libertarian","tag-liberty","tag-military","tag-mitt-romney","tag-morality","tag-paul-ryan","tag-president","tag-republican","tag-responsibility","tag-ron-paul","tag-spending","tag-strategy","tag-tanf","tag-two-party-system","tag-united-states","tag-vote","tag-voting","tag-welfare","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}