Mitt's Marxism

Mitt Romney, apparently forgetting for a moment that he's running as a psychotic rightwinger, slipped back into the Reasonable Moderate mode I recall from his winning 2002 gubernatorial campaign and told a Davenport audience "I like the idea of linking the level of support that we're able to provide to young people going to college to the contributions they're going to make to our society."

Needless to say, Cato's Neal McClusky fired back with the suggestion that Romney may be a "closet Marxist." We all know, after all, that before Stalin had consolidated power fully he greased the skids for the Gulag system by proposing a student loan forgiveness program.

Comments

Hey there, imagine if Republicans had not kept health care from the wild clutches of sick children. We have to have enough sick children about to terrify communists everywhere. Cough, cough.

Posted by Jennifer | October 18, 2007 4:01 PM

Sweetheart, get me rewrite on "psychotic rightwinger." One of those word is redudant.

Meanwhile, and off topic, I admit, I'm surprised there's no coverage here of Dodd putting a hold on the abomination that is FISA reform. It's not every day we see a Beltway Dem grow a spine and actually -- gasp -- stand up in favor of Constitutioanal government, but Dodd seems to have done so.a

Posted by lambert strether | October 18, 2007 4:06 PM

Cato's embarrassing. They have the gall to call Romney a Marxist when a chief plank of the Cato plan for school reform involves diverting public funds to pay kids to go to putatively private schools. What's that, if not Marxist-Leninist Socialism.

Or how about their plan to force people to pay taxes, then put that money into the private equity markets as part of putatively private savings accounts. What's that, if not Trotskyism?

Posted by Joe Strummer | October 18, 2007 4:06 PM

Mitt just takes a wide stance on certain issues.

Posted by MattF | October 18, 2007 4:12 PM

"...linking the level of support that we're able to provide to young people going to college to the contributions they're going to make to our society."

The connection to Marxism eludes me. But I'm more taken with the sheer fatuousness of the proposal. Exactly which careers and majors does Mr. Romney think provide a greater benefit to "society" and should therefore be funded at greater levels? (He didn't say in the speech.) How many students will be willing to pursue a particular career path solely for the short-term reward of a few grand in student aid? Would it perhaps not be better to find some mechanism for more generous compensation to those citizens making greater "contributions" (whatever that may mean)?

Posted by James Gary | October 18, 2007 4:43 PM

Possibly Stalin's only foray into the realm of forgiveness!

Posted by Warren Terra | October 18, 2007 5:06 PM

From reading the linked post it seems that their point is: Romney called Hillary Clinton a Marxist but by that standard he is too.

Posted by Jacob | October 18, 2007 5:26 PM

Joe Strummer: "Cato's embarrassing. They have the gall to call Romney a Marxist when a chief plank of the Cato plan for school reform involves diverting public funds to pay kids to go to putatively private schools. What's that, if not Marxist-Leninist Socialism.

Or how about their plan to force people to pay taxes, then put that money into the private equity markets as part of putatively private savings accounts. What's that, if not Trotskyism?"

Joe, I think you're missing something important. From a libertarian perspective, both these Cato ideas provide government program contributors/recipients with a little more choice over how their money is invested/spent. It's not perfect, but it's better than the status quo.

And to be clear, Cato's never advocated "forcing" anyone to put their Social Security contributions in the stock market. It's always been about letting contributors choose, because it's their money.

Posted by Matt Tievsky | October 18, 2007 7:31 PM

Blaming Stalin on Marx is like blaming the current state of the Republican party on Edmund Burke. Authoritarians don't really care about ideology, it's all about the power.

Posted by Mike | October 18, 2007 7:55 PM

Exactly which careers and majors does Mr. Romney think provide a greater benefit to "society" and should therefore be funded at greater levels? (He didn't say in the speech.) How many students will be willing to pursue a particular career path solely for the short-term reward of a few grand in student aid? Would it perhaps not be better to find some mechanism for more generous compensation to those citizens making greater "contributions" (whatever that may mean)?
Posted by James Gary

Exactly like we did in the crisis after Sputnik revealed great American weakness in Math&the Sciences. To great success.

We steer students away from degrees that are useless to national needs - like critical studies, african american studies, cultural anthropology, adding more lawyers... offer gov't help to fund urgent needs like more nurses, arabic studies, chinese studies, nanotech engineering, electronic engineering, quantum computer research, etc. Not just cutting edge, but university and HS studies that fill urgent high-skilled service sector jobs that can draw up lower IQ, indolent inner city youth to be productively employed...

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Posted by Chris Ford | October 18, 2007 8:58 PM

Joe, I think you're missing something important. From a libertarian perspective, both these Cato ideas provide government program contributors/recipients with a little more choice over how their money is invested/spent. It's not perfect, but it's better than the status quo.

And to be clear, Cato's never advocated "forcing" anyone to put their Social Security contributions in the stock market. It's always been about letting contributors choose, because it's their money.

Bullshit. From a libertarian perspective, government shouldn't be taxing people and using that money to pay for other people's schooling, nor taxing people and forcing them to save for retirement.

And to be clear, Cato advocates forcing government to tax people to save for their retirement. Now Cato would "allow" people to have the gov't put it in T-Bills or put it in private equity markets. That's not libertarianism. That's not even capitalism. That's socialism, at least to the extent that Cato policy analysts use the word to attack Mitt Romney.

Posted by Joe Strummer | October 18, 2007 9:43 PM

Has anyone got an answer to James Gary's questions:

a.) what does it have to do with Marxism?
b.) how do you measure contributions to society?

Posted by novakant | October 19, 2007 3:25 AM