Romney and the Wiretaps

Much more consequential than Mitt Romney's troubled relationship with anecdotes, is this Wired story about Romney's approach to illegal surveillance issues:

I'm pointing this out because it makes me wonder how the debate over national security is going to shake out as the presidential election proceeds. It sounded as if the Romney team was adopting the Bush administration's approach of mis-characterizing the placement of minimal checks on the system as harmful to national security.

Well, I don't "wonder" how it's going to proceed on the Republican side. Whoever wins the nomination is going to mischaracterize the placement of minimal checks on the system as harmful to national security. The question is whether the other candidate will aggressively fight on these issues -- not just defensively pleading "no no mean republicans please stop saying I hate America" and hoping to shift the debate to jobs and the economy but actually going on the attack about the mess Bush has made of our constitution. I'm not especially optimistic, but I try to keep my hopes up.

Comments

Whoever wins the nomination is going to mischaracterize the placement of minimal checks on the system as harmful to national security.

It's hard to imagine either a McCain or Thompson campaign (or, in the most highly unlikely event, a Paul candidacy) doing anything of the sort.

Romney and Giuliani certainly would. Don't know about Huckabee. The only thing he ever lies about is himself.

Posted by Shinyk | December 22, 2007 5:28 PM

Shinyk,

Please tell me your response was satire. No one is that fucking stupid at this point of the game, are they?

Posted by LarryM | December 22, 2007 6:46 PM

"When a Republican tries to tell you that we need to start dropping bombs all over the Middle East or else there'll be mushroom clouds over Kansas City, you have absolutely no reason to believe them; when a Republican tries to tell you that we need to give them the power to imprison anybody without trial and torture them for years or else the terrorists will kill us in our beds, you have absolutely no reason to believe them; they have shamelessly lied about these things for political gain again and again and again, and they will go on doing so as long as they feel confident that the American voter is too frightened even to remember how they've been deceived and exploited in the past."

Some variation of this should have been the talking point of every Democrat on every talking-head show for the last four years.

Posted by Jeffrey Kramer | December 22, 2007 7:53 PM

I agree with the first poster. It seems strange that liberal bloggers are preparing for a fight that might not match the candidate they are up against. You'll have to beat a McCain or Thompson or even a Huckabee in a much different fashion than you'd beat a Romney or Giuliani.

Posted by Adam Herman | December 22, 2007 8:29 PM

Shinyk and Herman don't seem to understand: in the GOP, the winning candidate doesn't necessarily determine the style of attack in a general election. The party has a machine with its own style, and that style is dirty. For example, the fact that McCain was tortured and says he opposes our guys doing it wouldn't prevent forces acting on his behalf from smearing the Democratic candidate as weak, traitorous, unamerican, etc., for opposing, uh, harsh or enhanced interrogation and denial of habeas corpus. Dems might as well prepare for the inevitable, whomever they nominate.

Posted by Henderstock | December 22, 2007 11:01 PM

I agree with the first poster. It seems strange that liberal bloggers are preparing for a fight that might not match the candidate they are up against.

I'll bet you my car that whoever the Republican nominee is will bash whoever the Democratic nominee is over the head with this issue. It's in the blood of the daddy party.

Posted by justinb | December 22, 2007 11:04 PM

Part of the problem is that some of you people are under the illusion that that opportunistic piece of slime called McCain has a few honorable bones in his body. He doesn't. But even if I did (and, call me naive, but there is at least SOME evidence that Thompson actually might) Henderstock's point is well taken.

Oh, and I happen to think that, in their own way, the Democratic candidates a pretty horrible lot as well. Hell, Hillary in particular is capable of precisely the same type of tactics that I expect to be used by the Republican candidate.

Posted by LarryM | December 22, 2007 11:22 PM

If you believe that about McCain, or more importantly, if actual Democratic campaign advisors believe that, they'll lose. Misjudging your opponent is a sure way to lose an election. They aren't all Mitt Romney or George Bush.

As for third party attacks, sure we'll see them. But it's just not the same without Karl Rove or Lee Atwater at the helm. Third party attacks will never be as effective as attacks from the professionals unless the candidate is wide open because of his own record(which is why even the clumsy Swift Boaters were able to take down Kerry).

And yes, even McCain will hit the Democrats on national security, for the simple reason that he's stronger than the Democrats on that subject, on the merits. Live with it. Only Joe Biden or Bill Richardson can claim more foreign policy cred than McCain, and Democrats have decided that anyone who has served more than one term at well, anything, is disqualified.

Posted by Adam Herman | December 23, 2007 12:46 AM

Please tell me your response was satire. No one is that fucking stupid at this point of the game, are they?

Nope. Just look at the R primary. McCain and Thompson, like Obama on the left, have stuck to substance-based policy differences (even as Romney and Giuliani have, at times, tried to swift boat them). Both have been victims of Romney and Rudy scorched-earth campaigning and would be unlikely to hire the same campaign people, with whom they now have grudges, in the general.

Sure, they'll hit the Dems on National Security Issues (Presidential candidates do need to differentiate themselves from their opponents), but I haven't seen either of them show any inclination toward the Yglesias charge of mischaracterization (specifically regarding surveillance oversight), which is what I was speaking to.

Of course, this "honest" policy debate model goes out the window if Queen Hill gets her coronation and starts running ads that say McCain took some short kid's milk money back in second grade.

Posted by Shinyk | December 23, 2007 2:22 AM

Nobody wants to be fingered with blame for the next attack. While blanket unreviewed surveillance of every kind won't stop that attack that isn't the point. The point for politicians is to be able to cover their asses by saying we did everything we could.

The lack of a follow up attack has been a disaster for Bush and the GOP. Everyone knows that. Another attack will probably be a political windfall for them. They need one for a political reason beyond the spying and torture they love. Another attack could do wonders for deflecting the blame for the ongoing financial crisis.

Bin Laden saved Bush's ass in October of 04 with his tape. (All the members of the Bin Laden group at the CIA agreed that tape was a political windfall for Bush and those views became known soon after the election. The group was then dismantled, Admittedly they had been a failure). Will he save the GOP's ass in 08?

Posted by rapier | December 23, 2007 6:58 AM

I saw "Romney and the Wiretaps" back when they were on the club circuit playing for MLK Jr., before they made it big and sold out.

Posted by El Cid | December 23, 2007 7:30 AM

God, I weep for this country sometimes. McCain is running the campaign he needs to run to have a chance of winning, given the state of the Republican primary. But he has given ample evidence in the past of the type of "man" he is; he would waterboard his mother to become president.

Look, I have no horse in this race. I think they are all scum; like almost all U.S. politicians, they are more than happy to kill innocent brown people to preserve our hegemony in the middle east and elsewhere. But anyone who believes that McCain is some honorable patriot is too stupid to live.

Posted by LarryM | December 23, 2007 9:10 AM

But anyone who believes that McCain is some honorable patriot is too stupid to live.

Didn't say he was. Haven't been fond of McCain since he wasted his taxpayer-funded salary investigating the Senatorial irrelevancies that are steroids and baseball. McCain's a tinkerer who didn't understand that his job as Senator had any sort of constraint or limit to its scope. I'm sure he'd be the same way as president.

Even so, he doesn't have a record of mischaracterizations or policy-indifferent personal attacks, particularly on the issue Yglesias brought up.

I do think the Yglesias point stands regarding Romney (and probably Rudy). If Romney's the GOP nom, the scumminess of his general election campaign will make me want to wash my hands in Bill Clinton's bathwater.

Posted by Shinyk | December 23, 2007 10:21 AM

LarryM - God, I weep for this country sometimes.

Unlikely you ever weep for a country you hate.

LarryM - McCain is running the campaign he needs to run to have a chance of winning, given the state of the Republican primary. But he has given ample evidence in the past of the type of "man" he is; he would waterboard his mother to become president.

Probably not, but he would happily waterboard YOUR mother given how you turned out.

LarryM - Look, I have no horse in this race. I think they are all scum; like almost all U.S. politicians, they are more than happy to kill innocent brown people to preserve our hegemony in the middle east and elsewhere.

Only if you believe in the deranged construct of anti-Americans and anti-Westerners - of White Race Opressors "murdering" the innocent Morally Superior Brown Peoples. An insipid view belied by the US in it's history of war, with our killing far more "innocent white people" than brown, yellow, red - to defend our way of life, even including all the squalid 3rd world interventions we did to promote US-style economic imperialism.

An insipid view also belied by the fact that many of those "innocent brown people" who are our present radical Islamist enemy, are not "innocent" unless you also believe that all Jihad directed at destroying Westerners is an "innocent" activity.

LarryM - But anyone who believes that McCain is some honorable patriot is too stupid to live.

Probably 9 out of 10 Americans believe John McCain took up the call to serve his country, served honorably, paid a high price for his service and courage in the face of the enemy.

Contrast that with what percentage of Americans likely believe that Jane Fonda, LarryM, George Soros, and ACLU lawyers are honorable patriots.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 23, 2007 10:24 AM

Nope. Just look at the R primary. McCain and Thompson, like Obama on the left, have stuck to substance-based policy differences (even as Romney and Giuliani have, at times, tried to swift boat them).

Not launching distorted attacks on rivals of the same party in a primary is no evidence that they won't do so against rivals of the other party. (That's true of both parties, for your future reference). Thompson is probably just calculating that attacks like that will tend to backfire. Attacking in an N-candidate race is just more dangerous than doing so in a 2-candidate race.

The real point is that distorting wiretapping is not a Bush strategy, but a GOP strategy--when senators and representatives defend their votes against the RESTORE act, they tell lies about the bill way more detailed than those Bush tells. On the issue of wiretapping, the standard GOP position is lying and irrationality--for a GOP candidate to diverge from that requires a heterodoxy that we just haven't seen from a torture fan like Fred Thompson.

Posted by Consumatopia | December 23, 2007 11:06 AM

Here's a little hard evidence backing up the general sentiment that a McCain presidency wouldn't approach executive power at all like the Bush Administration:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/12/22/candidates_on_executive_power_a_full_spectrum/

In short, Charlie Savage polled all the presidential candidates on executive power and John McCain, Chris Dodd, and Ron Paul were the only candidates who said they would never use signing statements. In other words, only these three candidates would pledge to operate strictly within the confines of the authority granted to them by Congress. No other candidates - including Hillary, Obama, or Edwards - would make such a pledge. (Indeed, for all those "John Edwards is the liberal knight in shining armor" folks out there, kindly observe Edwards' disturbing refusal to address several of Savage's key questions.)

Don't get me wrong, McCain's foreign policy are purely neconservative, and as such, are plenty disturbing. Moreover, the Military Commissions Act was an abomination that McCain helped create. But let's not pretend McCain wouldn't represent a huge upgrade over the rest of the Republican field in terms of respect for the rule of law, executive power, and torture. One could argue that McCain hasn't done all he could to limit the Bush Administration in these areas...but neither have Hillary or Obama.

In terms of eavesdropping, I suspect that McCain would do his best to keep surveillance activities within the existing law. That's a lot more than you can say for Romney, who has embraced Bush's executive power theories with great enthusiasm.

Posted by owenz | December 23, 2007 11:08 AM

Chris,

Having a murderously deranged psychotic like yourself saying those things about me makes me feel good, not bad. And I kind of doubt you have much credibility on this board - even the kinder, gentler hegemony progressives on this site realize that you are a worthless piece of shit.

Die painfully in a fire, monster.

Posted by LarryM | December 23, 2007 6:54 PM