David Frum: Romney did Obama a Huge Favor

Reactions to Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan continue and many continue to believe that Barack Obama is the winner.  Conservative columnist David Frum - who is a GOP outcast because he focuses on objective reality and not just ideology withing the GOP bubble - has a piece at CNN that looks at why in his mind Mitt Romney has done a huge favor for the Obama campaign.  Here are excerpts:

In Mitt Romney, the GOP has nominated its least ideological candidate since Richard Nixon. At every turn, the party has demanded, "More ideology! I gotta have more ideology!" With the selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has now acceded to that wish. The least ideological Republican candidate since 1968 has committed himself to the most ideological Republican program since 1964.  Democrats must be stunned.

This year, an incumbent even more embattled than George H.W. Bush has his own preferred election theme. He doesn't want to debate his own record, which is pretty dismal. He [Obama] wants to debate the record of the congressional Republicans elected in 2010, a bunch radically less popular even than the president himself.

You'd imagine that Romney's job was to refuse the Democratic invitation, to choose his own ground for the election, and to keep his distance from the congressional GOP. You'd imagine, but you'd be wrong.

Romney has instead chosen to bolt himself to the House Republicans.

 

He has effectively adopted Paul Ryan's agenda as his own: big immediate cuts in spending, a dramatic cut in the top rate of income tax to 28% and a bold reform of Medicare for those 55 and under.

Obama's message in 2012: "Forget the economy. It's Medicare, stupid!"  The Romney-Ryan response? "We agree. Medicare it is."

Most economists would draw a distinction between the government's fiscal problems over the medium term and the economy's problems in the near term. The economy's near-term problems can be traced to the housing crisis.

Americans assumed crushing levels of debt in the 2000s to buy expensive homes, homes they assumed would continue to rise in price forever. In 2007, household debt relative to income peaked at the highest level since 1928. (Uh oh.) When the housing market crashed, consumers were stranded with unsustainable debts, and until those debts are reduced, consumers will drastically cut back their spending.  .   .   .   .   The result: slow recovery of the private economy, weak consumer demand, paltry job growth -- considerably offset by continuing job shrinkage in the public sector.

Paul Ryan's various plans and road maps contain many interesting elements for the reduction of government in the decades ahead. They do not respond to the most immediate and urgent problem: prolonged mass unemployment caused by heavy household debt.

Why not? There's why the ideology makes itself felt. Conservatives ardently believe that big future deficits are the cause of today's unemployment. They feel it. They know it. And they don't want to hear different.

When naysayers worry that the Romney campaign has over-indulged the ideology, the answer quickly comes: "Well, Reagan was ideological in 1980 -- and he still won.  .   .   .   .    Here's the difference: Although Ronald Reagan was a highly ideological candidate, he did not run a highly ideological campaign. Quite the contrary! Precisely because party conservatives trusted Reagan's ideological commitment, they allowed him space to move to the center.

No such leeway for Mitt Romney. He has been constrained first to endorse Paul Ryan's budget plan (which he did in December 2011 after months of attempted evasion), to endorse a cut in the top rate of income tax to 28% (March 2012), and now finally to choose Ryan himself as his running mate. No leeway -- and now no exit.

Conservatives exult that the GOP will now offer the country "a choice, not a referendum." That phrase does not make a lot of sense. (What is more of a choice than a referendum?) But there's good reason why conservatives say it. They are looking for a rephrasing of the slogan uppermost in their minds: "a choice not an echo" -- the title of the best-selling manifesto that helped persuade Republicans to follow Barry Goldwater to disaster.