Are Trump's Lies and Hypocrisy Good for America?

Anyone who bothered to pay attention and wasn't merely swept up by Donald Trump's appeals to their racism and overall bigotry should have known that much of Trump's campaign rhetoric and "promised" action if elected were lies.  Slowly, those others than the hard core racists, white supremacists and evangelical Christians who have long lived in their own alternate universe, Trump voters may be waking up to the reality that they were deliberately conned by America's would be fuhrer.  An column by Republican columnist Michael Gerson makes the argument that this awakening and Trump's willingness to walk away from continually made campaign promises is good for America albeit, I would argue, not sufficient to save the nation from a catastrophe.  Here are column highlights:

As Donald Trump’s campaign promises have been dunked in reality’s strong solvent, many have been transformed in one way or another — modified, moderated, qualified, abandoned or pushed off into the distant future. Not a wall across the whole southern border. Not every part of Obamacare repealed. Not all illegal immigrants deported, at least in the foreseeable future. Not literally tearing up the Iran agreement. Not an actual prison cell for Hillary Clinton.

All this has opened up Trump to the charge of being a hypocrite. For the nation’s sake, let’s hope so.

But we should take care in defining hypocrisy. . . . British political scientist David Runciman says that hypocrisy involves “claims to a consistency that one cannot sustain, claims to a loyalty that one does not possess, claims to an identity that one does not hold.”

[I]t is worth recalling that the founder of Christianity took hypocrisy quite seriously: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.” Purity of heart and motivation, in the Christian tradition, does matter. But the hunt for hypocrisy should begin in the mirror.

The issue at hand, however, is a certain kind of political hypocrisy — the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit. Most would concede that this type of hypocrisy is generally harmful for a democracy, in which self-government requires informed choices. Trump’s brand of personality-driven politics — emphasizing the virtues of a single leader — exaggerates the challenge. 

Some of Trump’s strongest supporters seem to assume his cynicism. The part about forcing Mexicans to pay for the wall, according to Newt Gingrich, was “a great campaign device.” Of the largest construction project since the Qin dynasty, Rush Limbaugh now says he never expected Trump to do it.

This is a rare ethical circumstance in which realism and good sense take the form of hypocrisy. On a variety of issues, the sincerity of Trump’s current intentions — or the cynicism of his past intentions — should not matter. If the candidate who gave a wink and nod toward white nationalism now repudiates the alt-right and promises to “bring this country together,” so much the better. If the candidate who promised a trade war with China reconsiders, it is all to the good.

It is admittedly an odd thing to cheer for cynicism. But in this strange, new political era, hypocrisy is our best hope.

Personally, I believe that Gerson is too quick to assume that Trump will walk away form some of his more extreme campaign promises.  His announced appointees to date are a study in extremism that ought to terrify thinking, moral Americans.  We can hope that Trump totally lied and conned his supporters, but I am much afraid some of the ugliest promises will be delivered on.  

Mitt Romney’s Campaign Insults and Deceive Voters

Living in Virginia which is being blanketed with campaign ads, I want to scream at times.  Especially when I hear Romney ads.  As I've noted before, I've been active in politics for a long, long time (I was on the GOP City Committee in Virginia Beach for 8 years quite a few years ago) and never in my recollection have I seen a campaign as blatantly dishonest and untruthful as that of Mitt Romney.  Worse yet are the Crossroads GPS ads orchestrated by nasty, sleazy Karl Rove.  They are simply devoid of truth.  There was a time when the Republican Party stood for integrity and some level of honesty.  Those days are clearly gone.  Today's Romney/Rove campaign tactics make the tawdriest whore look like a paragon of honesty and virtue.  Indeed, they make me ashamed to every have been a Republican.  It its main editorial yesterday, the Washington Post vented on Romney's lies and deceptions.  It is worth a full read.  Here are excerpts:

THROUGH ALL THE flip-flops, there has been one consistency in the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for the electorate.  How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers — the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich.

How, other than an assumption that voters are too dim to remember what Mr. Romney has said across the years and months, to account for his breathtaking ideological shifts? He was a friend of immigrants, then a scourge of immigrants, then again a friend. He was a Kissingerian foreign policy realist, then a McCain-like hawk, then a purveyor of peace. He pioneered Obamacare, he detested Obamacare, then he found elements in it to cherish. Assault weapons were bad, then good. Abortion was okay, then bad. Climate change was an urgent problem; then, not so much. Hurricane cleanup was a job for the states, until it was once again a job for the feds.

The same presumption of gullibility has infused his misleading commercials (see: Jeep jobs to China) and his refusal to lay out an agenda.

And then there has been his chronic, baldly dishonest defense of mathematically impossible budget proposals. He promised to cut income tax rates without exploding the deficit or tilting the tax code toward the rich — but he refused to say how he could bring that off. When challenged, he cited “studies” that he maintained proved him right. But the studies were a mix of rhetoric, unrealistic growth projections and more serious economics that actually proved him wrong.

This last is important — maybe the crux of the next four years. History has shown that it’s a lot easier to cut taxes than to reduce spending.

Now Mr. Romney promises to reduce income tax rates by one-fifth — for the rich, that means from 35 percent to 28 percent — and to raise defense spending while balancing the budget. To do so, he would reduce other spending — unspecified — and take away deductions — unspecified. One of the studies he cited, by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, said Mr. Romney could make the tax math work by depriving every household earning $100,000 or more of all of its charitable deductions, mortgage-interest deductions and deductions for state and local income taxes.  Does Mr. Romney favor ending those popular tax breaks? He won’t say.

Mr. Obama has a record; voters know his priorities. His budget plan is inadequate, but it wouldn’t make things worse.   Mr. Romney, by contrast, seems to be betting that voters have no memories, poor arithmetic skills and a general inability to look behind the curtain. We hope the results Tuesday prove him wrong.

The Tax Policy Center Rechecks Romney's Tax Plan: The Math Does Not Work

Among the many lies that Mitt Romney repeated on Tuesday night was his fantasy/lie that his tax plan will lower taxes and yet not cause the nations budget deficit - which has been going down under Obama - to utterly explode.  The Tax Policy Center has again rechecked Romney's supposed tax/deficit reduction plan and it simply CANNOT WORK.  As Bill Clinton said during the Democrat Convention, the math does NOT work.  The verdict as reported by Salon is in part as follows:

Mitt Romney proposed a tax plan, it didn’t add up, so he tweaked it. Now, a new study from the same people who dismantled his original plan finds the modified plan doesn’t add up either — nowhere near it.

[T]the jury (the Tax Policy Center, in this case) has returned with a verdict: No. Not even close. While it’s difficult to estimate because Romney has provided so few details, even the most generous version of Romney’s deduction cap would raise about only $1.3 trillion — about a quarter of the full cost — according to their new study, which was released yesterday afternoon. And that doesn’t include the additional roughly $2.5 trillion it would cost to extend all the Bush tax cuts, as Romney plans to. So he’s over $6 trillion short for the decade, and starting with a big deficit.

Yet Republicans - including some personal friends and neighbors refuse to open their eyes and face the fact that Romney is lying to them.  He's lying to everyone.   And should he win, it's not going to be pretty when Americans realize that Romney and his GOP pals have lied to them openly and played them for fools.  If Republicans who actually care about the nation are smart, they will be praying that Romney loses and saves the GOP from a possible nightmarish backlash.

Ryan Cuts to Medicare v. Obama Plan; Ryan Plan Three Times Worse Than Sequestration

As noted before, living in Virginia this campaign season exposes one to a huge barrage of presidential campaign ads.  And sadly, many of the ones being run by the Romney/Ryan ticket either totally distort the truth or are outright lies.  The image above (from Think Progress) and the one below put in stark terms the reality of the Obama proposals and/or cuts ahead if a budget deal isn't reached versus what the Ryan Budget calls for.  Thus, those who are concerned about sequestration need to seriously wake up to the damage that Romney?Ryan will do to the economy.

As for Medicare, Think Progress has these highlights comments:

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have spent the better part of their young campaign hitting President Obama and the Affordable Care Act for cutting an estimated $716 billion from Medicare.

But Romney and Ryan have offered a proposal that would voucharize the Medicare program and significantly reduce the government’s contribution. Romney has pledged to balance the budget by the end of his second term and would have to cut as much as $2 trillion from Medicare to achieve his goal, spending the money on tax breaks for the rich. Seniors, meanwhile, would be stuck with higher premiums.

Why the Senate Health Care Bill is An Abomination

Just as Barack Obama and many Congressional Democrats lied to the LGBT community during the 2008 campaign, so too they lied to average Americans who desperately wanted REAL health care reform to control costs and stop the de facto rationing of health care by insurance companies and price gouging by drug manufacturers. Now, Howard Dean - a physician himself - has an op-ed in the Washington Post that lays out just how big the betrayal of average Americans has been and why the "reform" bill in the U.S. Senate needs to be defeated and replaced by what was promised. Sadly, I increasingly believe that come November, 2010, the Democrats deserve a crushing defeat at the polls. Not because the GOP would be any better, but at least the Republicans are more honest about their contempt for most Americans. Here are some column highlights:

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If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
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Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.
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If lawmakers are interested in ensuring that government affordability credits are spent on health-care benefits rather than insurers' salaries, they need to require state-based exchanges, which act as prudent purchasers and select only the most efficient insurers.
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I have worked for health-care reform all my political life. In my home state of Vermont, we have accomplished universal health care for children younger than 18 and real insurance reform -- which not only bans discrimination against preexisting conditions but also prevents insurers from charging outrageous sums for policies as a way of keeping out high-risk people. I know health reform when I see it, and there isn't much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America.

Obama's Good Intentions Are Not Enough

As the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Thus, Barack Obama may have the best of intentions towards eventually pushing through the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but in the meanwhile careers and lives of LGBT members of the military continue to be ruined. Meanwhile, Obama fiddles like Nero as Rome figuratively burns. Again, living in this area with a huge military personnel presence and knowing many gays who are in the military, this issue resonates loudly with me and underscores the idiocy of a policy that does NOTHING except enshrine religious based discrimination within the U.S. military - something that is unconstitutional on its face. Aubrey Sarvis has a column in the Huffington Post which looks at the damage being done while Obama dithers with his good intentions:

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Sunday morning on ABC's This Week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told George Stephanopoulos that they'd been talking about "don't ask, don't tell" in the Pentagon. Admiral Mullen said, "The President has made his strategic intent very clear. . . . I've had discussions with the Joint Chiefs about this. I've done certainly a lot of internal, immediate staff discussions about what the issues would be and . . . ." Sounds like a plan? No, it doesn't, and without a strong push from the White House, it won't be.

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And Chairman Mullen did make it clear on This Week that he knew what the President wanted to accomplish with respect to repealing DADT. "The President has made his strategic intent very clear," he said. "That it's his intent at some point in time to ask Congress to change the law."

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"At some point in time . . . " Now what do you suppose that means? Time is a pretty nebulous notion, and there are an infinite number of points in it. I'd like to know what particular point in time Admiral Mullen and the other deciders at the Pentagon have in mind. This month? This year? Next year? This term? Next term? Somehow, Admiral Mullen didn't convey a sense of urgency to it.

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I'm all for a "measured, deliberate" path, as Admiral Mullen put it, but at some point the White House has to have a plan to get repeal through this Congress. We have to get beyond mere intent. "Intent" is not a plan and it isn't action and so far President Obama hasn't asked Congress to change the law. The President sent his Defense Department budget up to Congress a couple weeks ago and there was no repeal language in it. That budget will be working its way through Congress over the next several months. There's still time to fix it.

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What we don't need is yet another study or national commission to look at repeal. We all know those commissions involve delay and more delay and "kicking it down the road" more that a little bit. I say, put together a working group within 30 days. Have them focus on implementing open service and charge them to report back to the President within 90 days with a detailed plan and a timeline and how to get it done in this Congress.

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Good intentions and warm handwritten notes from the President will not carry the day. They certainly did not save the career of Lieutenant Sandy Tsao who was scheduled for discharge last week. The Arabic speaking Lieutenant Dan Choi is now at risk of being discharged. Sign his petition. Urge Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley to allow Lieutenant Colonel Victor Fehrenbach to keep flying. Sign the petition here. Hundreds more service members will be discharged over the next few months unless Congress and the President, and, yes, the Pentagon act.

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Good intentions are no substitute for the change our service members are counting on, especially those who might like to be relieved from a third or fourth or fifth tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. They really don't care much if the person who relieves them is gay. Would you?

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Do I prefer an Obama administration over a McCain/Palin administration? Most definitely. Do I still have respect for Obama rather than seeing him as a cynical liar who used LGBT Americans? No I do not, nor will I believe Obama in the future when he makes nice sounding pro-gay statements. The ONLY way he can regain my respect and trust is to DELIVER on his campaign promises.