Most Hypocritical Column Ever?

December 29, 2012Danny Vinik Leave a comment

Harvard economist and former economic adviser to Mitt Romney Greg Mankiw has a column up on the New York Times website that will run in tomorrow’s paper. In general, it’s a well-thought out piece that basically says we are eventually going to need to cut entitlement spending and raise taxes on everyone in order to pay down our deficit.

But the last line of the piece made my jaw drop, given that Mankiw was one of Romney’s top advisers:

But fiscal negotiations might become a bit easier if everyone started by agreeing that the policies we choose must be constrained by the laws of arithmetic.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Now Mankiw wants policies to be “constrained by the laws of arithmetic?” He just spent months promoting economic policies that were mathematically impossible! And now he’s imploring everyone else to follow the laws of arithmetic. I haven’t read anything this hypocritical in quite a while.

BTW, I know the Tax Policy Center took a lot of heat on the right for the assumptions it made in determining that Romney’s tax plan was impossible, even though most of those assumptions were incredibly favorable to Romney. However, Mankiw and the Romney campaign could easily have cleared up the controversy by outlining the specifics of the plan. They refused to do so. Thus, the blame still lies with Mankiw and the campaign.

Will the GOP let the Tea Party Break Away?

November 7, 2012Danny Vinik Leave a comment

As promised, I stayed off WordPress and Twitter yesterday and enjoyed watching the election without frantically typing up blog posts. But, now that it’s been a bit, I’m back.

There are a huge number of story lines from yesterday’s results. One main one has been about the state of the Republican party. This has come up with a couple of my conservative friends. The party right now is a mix of center-right moderates and extreme Tea Party members. They are held together by a dislike for President Obama, but the ties are tenuous.

Now comes this from the Tea Party Patriots:

The Tea Party Patriots declared war on the Republican establishment after moderate establishment Republican Mitt Romney’s loss to President Barack Obama on Tuesday.Jenny Beth Martin, National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, criticized the Republican Party for hand-picking a Beltway elite candidate who did not campaign forcefully on America’s founding principles and said the “presidential loss is unequivocally on them.”

“For those of us who believe that America, as founded, is the greatest country in the history of the world – a ‘Shining city upon a hill’ – we wanted someone who would fight for us,” Martin said. “We wanted a fighter like Ronald Reagan who boldly championed America’s founding principles, who inspired millions of independents and ‘Reagan Democrats’ to join us, and who fought his leftist opponents on the idea that America, as founded, was a ‘Shining city upon a hill.

Instead, Martin lamented, “what we got was a weak moderate candidate, hand-picked by the Beltway elites and country-club establishment wing of the Republican Party.”

Many of the commenters on the article want to form their own “Tea Party” or “Constitutional Party” to break off from the Republican establishment.

I’m wondering how Republican leaders will treat this. I hesitantly think they may jump for joy. Here’s a perfect way to move towards the center, to become more open to Hispanics and more liberal on social issues. The Tea Party is extreme on all those issues. Just by having them jump ship, the Republican party becomes a lot more appealing to minorities and women.

Of course, that leaves a hole in the GOP base. But if the Tea Party runs a candidate in the next election (or in a Senate race, House race, etc.), he won’t have a chance. The Tea Party does not have bipartisan support and America cannot sustain a third party.

In such a situation though, whoever the Republican candidate is will have a chance and the Tea Party members may switch their votes from their own guy to the Republican at the last second to prevent a Democrat victory. In addition, if the Republicans can pick up a decent percentage of minorities and women, the party won’t be as stuck to its base.

It’s certainly a risky strategy, but it’s also a great opportunity. In the end, Republicans may just say, “Bring on the war.”

Final Predictions

November 5, 2012Danny Vinik 1 Comment

Under 30 hours until the first polls close so it’s time to lock in my predictions:

As you can see, I’m expecting a slight Obama victory. However, I’m also of the mind that Obama will likely win. The states I’m most iffy on are Virginia and Colorado, both of which Obama currently leads in slightly according to Real Clear Politics, and I’m giving to Romney. Both have been historically slightly Republican leaning and I’m going with my gut here that they’ll both end up going Republican again. However, if I’m wrong, Obama’s victory will only be stronger.

I don’t see any way Romney takes Ohio based on the current polling, or Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan for that matter. Iowa and Nevada are a bit closer and if Romney can snag both, we could end up in an electoral college tie. But that would require a large change from the current polling so the odds of that are very low.

On a separate note, I’ll be off the blog and probably Twitter tomorrow. Hopefully four years from now I’ll be a journalist somewhere frantically covering the election. That certainly sounds fun but for this election, I’m going to allow myself some breathing space to nervously enjoy watching it without quickly typing away on my phone and laptop.