I am specifically going to ask Yglesias, Drum, Cowen, Ozimek and Barro (Josh) to chime in on this. Anyone else feel free as well, but I would like to hear from these guys.
I don’t care if Mitt Romney pays negative taxes, cheated on his mistress with her daughter, fired his Grandmother while at Bain, and lied to kids to get the GOP nomination, etc.
What are the significant differences that you think we could actually see come to pass from a Romney Presidency versus an Obama Presidency?
I am generally a better-the-devil-you-know kind of guy, but I am pretty open here. So, let me here it.
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Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 2:04 pm
DJAnyReason
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2012/features/what_if_he_loses034501.php
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
jpersonna
Heh. Wishing Mitt weren’t a wild card, eh?
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
buddyglass
Romney would advocate for a less progressive tax structure and lower taxes in general.
Romney would be less likely to defy or criticize Israel.
Romney’s Justice Dept. would not have declined to defend DOMA.
Romney, in conjunction with his Sec. of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, would not have agitated for the repeal of DADT.
Romney would nominated someone(s) other than Kagan and Sotomayor.
Romney would not have given us ObamaCare (or RomneyCare). Not that he’s necessarily against it, but it isn’t important enough to spend the political capital.
When it comes to spending cuts, Romney would be less willing to cut defense and more willing to cut entitlement programs that benefit the poor.
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
lark
Under Romney the NLRB and the Consumer Protection Bureau would be eviscerated. Dodd-Frank would lose all effectiveness. The nominees to the Federal courts would continue the rightward tilt of the last few decades. The insane Republican element in Congress would see itself as rewarded by the voters and its intransigence (to democracy, not Romney) would increase.
Politically, given the utter indifference of the Republican elites to the rise of inequality and the overall welfare of the American people, the recent Occupy activism could become radicalized and much more disruptive. I think Obama has a moderating influence which we will not appreciate until its gone.
Overall, Romney would feed the flames of American polarization more than Obama. That is because a substantial (and growing) part of that polarization is not based in identity politics or religion or ‘values’, but rather is based on hopelessness, lack of opportunity and jobs, alienation from elites, losing faith in the system to be fair, and so on. This part of the polarization would surge under Romney.
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 4:01 pm
buddyglass
“Overall, Romney would feed the flames of American polarization”
Both Romney (or any other Republican) and Obama have this effect. They just agitate different groups of people.
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Corey Mutter
One factor to consider is that, even if their policy preferences were identical, there would be some difference arising from (2013) President Obama being a lame duck and President Romney not.
This leads me to assume that President Romney would be more averse to vetoing craziness from the Republican Congress (which we’ll have either way), since he’d need Republican support to win again in 2016. I’m not enough of a political scientist to know how big an effect this would be.
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
rjs
Krugman & Yglesias would do a whole lot better under romney:
Romney’s Tax Plan Helps the 1%, Hurts the Bottom 40%
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/Hzoh/~3/dPVE-P846M8/romneys-tax-plan-helps-1-hurts-bottom.html
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
adam.smith
Yglesias is not 1%, not even close. Slate is paying him ~80k, I don’t think he’s making a lot of money from his books, and while I’m sure he makes some money with speaking engagements, I doubt it’s the ~250k needed to put him in the top 1%.
Don’t get me wrong – Yglesias is still top 10% and doing well, it’s not like I’m feeling bad for him, but important to keep things in perspective.
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 12:41 am
Curt Doolittle
I love this line front the comment above:
“Politically, given the utter indifference of the Republican elites to the rise of inequality and the overall welfare of the American people,”
Should be “the frustration demonstrated by the Republicans at their inability to preserve the traditional family structure, change the tax structure, and replace the education system so that the lower classes can maintain the same level of marketable skills as the upper classes have done”
Republican’s aren’t’ indifferent. They just know the CAUSE and want to fix it.
But Social Democrats don’t want that to happen. They want to blame someone else for the failure of their ideas.
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Lifter
Karl,
I think Yglesias tried to answer your question here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/01/11/mitt_romney_is_pretty_conservative.html
The basic fact about a Romney administration is that it would be a Republican administration. The staff would be Republican Party loyalists and activists. The high-level jobs will overwhelmingly go to people with experience in the George W. Bush administration or to people who’ve worked on Capitol Hill in Republican Party circles. The judges nominated will be formally and informally vetted by the conservative legal community. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice will seek to focus on instances of discrimination against white Christians. The Romney administration will be friendly to the interests of the fossil fuel industry, will seek to reduce taxes on the wealthy, and will seek to reduce transfers to the poor. Exactly what happens with regard to most of these things will come down to congress. Newt Gingrich has proposed a much steeper tax cut than Romney, but President Gingrich and President Romney alike will end up signing into law the tax cut that Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe want to vote for, just as George W Bush did. Dozens of totally unforseen issues will arise in the 2013-2016 period and the precise identity of the person in the White House will matter in unpredictable ways to determining how those situations resolve themselves. But in terms of “the big issues” the real question you have to ask is whether or not there’s any meaningful disagreement inside the party on the direction of policy and you can see from watching the 111th and 112th Congresses in action that Republicans are all basically rowing in the same direction on taxes, spending, and environmental & labor regulation.
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
JM
I think an important consideration with Romney (or any candidate) is what he would do when something unexpected happens. I recall during the Bush-Gore campaign that there was a good deal of talk over which candidate would be “tougher” with a rising China, but absolutely no talk about terrorism, Afghanistan or Iraq. And yet…
It’s in this sense that the disposition, history and, most importantly, the advisory staff of a candidate need to be evaluated. Who are Romney’s most trusted advisers? What is their intellectual background/philosophical commitments? How did Romney react to crises in the past?
In terms of Romney’s official policies, I assume he would be a standard Republican, somewhat constrained by Congress, but able to nominate more right-leaning judges and frustrate the implementation of the health care law. What worries me more is how he would react to a new military or terrorist threat. His defining attribute seems to be “do whatever seems popular at the moment,” and I could see that leading to some very rash decisions in a moment of crisis.
For example, a drastic curtailment of civil liberties in the event of a terrorist attack, or an ill-conceived invasion or bombing of Iran. Or it could be something he would refuse to do, such as stepping in forcefully to prevent Europe from going into economic free fall, or intervening in a humanitarian crisis. I think that it’s these kinds of low probability/high cost decisions where Presidents are least constrained and most potentially destructive. I’m not sure how you would predict how any person would behave in these inherently unpredictable situations, though.
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Lord
The deficit will be forgotten. Republicans will do their best to run it up until creditors flee the dollar.
Thursday ~ January 19th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Barry
Aside from ‘flee the dollar’, this is good. The GOP will do just what they’ve done since the early 1980′s. And the right-wing economists will offer a few token protests, but generally bank the fires of their outrage until a Democratic administration. However, they will all say that this proves we need to slash all spending not going to the rich.