The Goat Pen

Owlman wrote:

Except for the Death penalty. Texas is a leader there.

Damn straight. Even Texans against the death penalty are proud that if you going to have it, at least Texas is number one. (There is no such thing as Alaska)

sardis wrote:Born to be wild...

Johnette's Daddy wrote:IN ALL SERIOUSNESS

Did Sarah Palin play a role at the GOP convention? I watched a grand total of 0 minutes of it.

hedge wrote:"And that's a little surprising considering his speech was "meh" at best"

It wasn't nearly as meh as Romney's. And the convention as a whole was infinitely better than that farrago of nonsense and tepid blather the repubs trotted out the week before. This one was over before the conventions, now it's just a matter of how bad it's going to be. Obama is likely to lose a couple of states that he won in 2008 (NC and Indiana), but he still wins by a very comfortable margin. They'll be calling it for Obama well before midnight...

Of course Romney's primary focus on the economy is dictated by conditions in the country, and the fact that an incumbent president struggling with unemployment over 8 percent really ought to be doomed. But it's also true that if there were potential customers for fist-shaking attacks about "God, guns, and gays," as the old Republican playbook had it, Romney would be moving much more aggressively to exploit that market. But he isn't, for one big reason: Liberals have won the culture war.

It isn't that Republicans have changed their views about any of those issues. But they don't see any advantage in pushing them.

If it's no good telling the voters that Democrats are alien because they don't hate gay people, better to say that Democrats are alien because they hate capitalism. After all, that's where the Republican ruling class' hearts were all along. Nobody really thinks that the likes of Brooks or William Kristol really care deeply about abortion and guns. No, it's economics, and in particular enhancing the wealth and privileges of the upper classes, that gets them up in the morning.

That's certainly true of Mitt Romney. Ask yourself this: What could you say for sure that Mitt Romney really believes? He's changed his position on so many things to appeal to the GOP base that not even Republicans themselves think that deep down in his heart he hates the Affordable Care Act or Roe v. Wade or cap and trade the way they do. (They've made peace with this fact. What matters to them isn't that he believes the party line, but that he'll have no choice but to stick to it. In other words: acts, not faith.) But we can all agree that if there's one thing Mitt Romney truly believes in, it's Republican economic policy. He may change his tune on abortion or gay rights, but he has never turned his back on tax cuts and deregulation, and he never will. He is a plutocrat to the bone.

But Mitt Romney seldom brings that issue up, and he'd rather not talk about abortion either. It's a little safer to be pro-God, so he'll go down to Pat Robertson's territory and defend the religiosity of our coinage. But as soon as he walks off that stage, you can be sure he'll quickly be returning to his arguments about the glory of capitalism and the unparalleled virtue of "job creators." Not only is it more likely to win him votes, it's where his heart has always been.