It is possible. The polling numbers show the path. The avalanche of money that is cascading down on the electorate in support of the Romney/Ryan ticket and an uninformed and often foolish electorate show the way.
As horrible as it is to think of this, the wise are doing just that.
So let’s presume, Romney wins narrowly; the House stays GOP but with a smaller majority; and the Senate remains Democrat by the same narrow margin.
The Upside
1) Wall Street will demonstrate its approval with a surge.
2) There will be more hiring as corporations open up the profit vaults (with nearly $3 trillion in sequestered funds) to expand their labor bases and increase production.
Both will be in anticipation of tax breaks, the repeal of Obamacare, deregulation of the financial sector and the environment, the release of public resources to private profit, and massive government spending in defense and other earmark pork. Further nearly all of the jobs will be “cost effective” i.e. lacking in benefits, at minimal pay and unsecured.
The Downside
1) The buying of elections will become a permanent part of the political landscape.
2) Push the Ryan budget, which has been designed to be passed using budget reconciliation that will require only a simple majority in the Senate. Since its purpose is to finance huge tax cuts it will need to cut deeply into almost every federal program except for Defense, Social Security, Medicare and Debt Maintenance. What gets cut- everything from veterans’ programs to medical and scientific research, highways, education, nearly all programs for low-income families, national parks, border patrols, protection of food safety and the water supply, law enforcement, and the like.
3) Engineer deep tax cuts in personal, corporate, inheritance, capital gains taxes. What Romney is counting on is a boom in the GDP that will pay for them. Very few economists think this is likely given that the cuts will likely increase the tax burden on the middle class and the tendency of the upper class to limit its reinvestment in the economy.
4) Repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a plan that, while light on details, would be centered around health savings accounts and insurance deregulation (counting on the free market to bring things under control, very unlikely).
5) Voucherize Medicare. Seniors would at first get a voucher sufficient to cover the cost of a private insurance plan comparable to Medicare. But the value of that voucher would only increase by the rate of overall economic growth plus 0.5 percent. The problem is that healthcare costs grow a lot faster.
6) Turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, cap its funding – cutting $800 billion from the program over the next decade — and then send it to the states to administer. The first problem is that states – presumably red states – would be free to make it harder to qualify, and the second is that the program wouldn’t have the funding flexibility to enroll more people during economic downturns. He would likely do the same for S-CHIP, the kidcare system.
7) Raise the age of qualification and means tests Social Security.
Push for the privatization of the Social Security Fund, at least in part.
8) Nominate Supreme Court Justices who will enshrine Citizens United, demonize unions, and take on Roe V. Wade.
9) Return to a more aggressive foreign policy that will be shaped by neocons who got us into two wars in the last decade.
10) Further de-emphasize climate change and alternate energy.
Scared yet? Worried yet? I am.
Murph after reading your wonderful piece here, I am feeling a tad suicidal!:)
Hi EXFANOFARIANA, i am a little late on this conversation but romney lost 332 to 203 yea.
so this is RSGmusic from the hp site. i found a way in.
perhaps you will reply my dear friend
YAYAYAYAAYAYAAYYAAYAY Even FLORIDUH wanted to get rid of the Mittiotic! XX
Murph this is a related article worth reading as well.
10 Awful Things a President Mitt Romney Would Likely Do
http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/10-awful-things-president-mitt-romney-would-likely-do?page=0%2C0
I’m so glad you did this excellent piece Murph.
The economy will get better under Obama or Romney but the recovery will only be sustainable under Obama. Sure companies may invest more but the question is where? Under Romney and the GOP they’ll just invest more in China and the like or just churn it on unproductive Wall Street. His austerity measures will halt any recovery like it did in Europe and he won’t get the spending increases he wants in the military anyway. I don’t think he will pay for his tax cuts but if he does he’ll take another $2,000 out of the middle class who spend it and give it to millionaires and billionaires. Ending Obamacare will be another net negative on the economy because while their profits will go down expenditure by people who are uninsured now will go up sharply because they will finally go for the treatment they need. It’s also a myth that regulations slow economic growth because the opposite is correct since businesses need to hire more people for compliance. This puts a small dent in profits but it’s worth the offset in new hires. Last but not least is Romney will create some kind of bubble. Maybe in oil and gas production that will explode while cutting investments in future energy sources which would be sustainable.
Roe v. Wade will be overturned some way some how
Whether it’s an act of congress or a liberal judge retiring on the SCOTUS Roe v. Wade will be overturned and no longer law of the land. It will cause a schism in the union as devastating as slavery because some states will have legal abortions and some in some states they will deem women who get abortions criminals and doctors who provide them murderers. It’s similar to the way DOMA affects same sex marriage now but even more people will be affected negatively.
Most importantly you have to realize what a country governed by a lying sociopath would look like. Since Romney has no true core beliefs he will be driven like a remote control car by the right AND corporate America. Every decision will be slanted right and/or totally cynical. Ironically I don’t think he’ll end Obamacare fully because he knows that it will help his reelection but he will take away good parts of Obamacare like the subsidies, cost ratios and free birth control.
Add that no world leader will negotiate with a head of state they cannot trust and Romney is the poster child of that kind of pol. The only leader Romney will work with is Bibi and he will lead Romney by the nose to another unfunded and more importantly disastrous war.
BTW I have no problem with means testing for Social Security. It just makes sense not to give millionaires like McCain the same SS as someone who needs it. Of course it all depends on the level of means testing but I would be fine with it if it was staked very high. Though I would prefer increasing the income ceiling on payroll taxes but when you think about it they are both sides of the same coin because it means the rich don’t get back what they put in.
KQ Your further extrapolation of the outcomes of MadMitt is terrifying, excellently done, but terrifying.
I think I am going to copy and archive it. I need to mine it for material to use in the followups to the original post. You and ChoiceLady took my thoughts to a new level. May I do so with your permission?
I am especially taken by your ideas of a nation divided by access to women’s health options, by the right to love whom one chooses in marriage, etc. It will be a return to antebellum America where slavery divided us. A powerful image and devastating. Thanks for this.
I’m flattered. You can always use what I write on the Planet. If it’s used on another blog you don’t even need to reference my moniker since they probably won’t know me there anyway.
If Romney is elected, people will have to adjust to the consequences as best they can. And, they will placidly accept.
Millions will not even notice; and, if they do notice, they will not care. Apathy is a commonplace.
Apathy is the biggest threat to democracy indeed and the GOP plays that game so well.
Apathy, laziness, a desire for simple answers, fear, anger, all feeding a world view that denies the rights of others especially when they are led by “The Other” –
The GOP, the sons and daughters of Goebbels…
I think that if we are thrust into another war, or if the SS or Medicare change significantly, if DADT is renewed, if Roe V. Wade is overturned, we will likely come to a period of near revolution as was marked by the period of robust Progressive Reform (since syndicalist revolt seemed around the corner, and Populist movements were sprining up everywhere)at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century and which was continued as a result of the Great Depression. I experienced it directly during the Civil Rights and Anti War movements. I think that this may happen very quickly in an age of the internet, of cell phones and with Occupy a recent memory.
The anger will make the Tea Party seem mild by comparison.
Aaaarrgghhh!
Normally I’d agree that sequestration should protect a number of programs – they were saved out by an agreement NOT to include anything in the Pay-Go settlement – but if Romney wins, he will rescind that agreement, used an EO most likely, and everything including Social Security and Medicare will be up for grabs.
Vouchers for the under 55 will immediately gut the money for Medicare for those OVER 55. We would have months, not years, of support. Then the voucher would cover HALF the cost – most policies for us older folks are minimally $1000 per month IF we do not have a pre-existing condition, and the voucher covers HALF of that. Your kids can kiss their inheritance goodbye. The new growth industry will be county poor houses.
I think people also better be prepared for an end to federal minimum wage laws. The $3 trillion may come out, but it won’t be jobs as we’ve known them, they will be base pay with “exemptions” for fill in the blank types of work that will “require” a sub minimum wage. Kids will be ‘freed’ to work to help their families. Age of full unsupervised employment may soon be lowered to 12.
Same with environmental regs. Keystone, blowing up and all, will be ours right over the Ogallala aquifer. One good leak, and hello groundwater pollution. No CAFE standards for cars unless Detroit figures how useful that is, no regs on drilling anything, and no air quality much less carbon sequestration for fighting global climate change.
Even if the Senate is Dem, there are ways around ANY law using an illegal Ex. Order under the guise of ‘federal fiscal emergency”.
I am NOT exaggerating here. These are goals that have been articulated by the people who support Romney, by his cronies such as Newt. It’s just a matter of time. The method got grounded by Bush 2. VERY useful not caring about Constitutional limits on powers!
DADT will be repealed, DOMA will be enshrined, reproductive rights will disappear in fact if not by law, and you’ll be seeing a new chastity as even condoms disappear from the public marketplace.
But don’t worry! You will have prayer in school, all the kids your body will produce, and all the guns you can pack. We as a nation will have ratified these ideas by electing this extremist.
And his star will shine for months – probably not years – until the reckless investments once again cause a major disaster.Only this time it will be like ’29. No safety net. None at all.
Brave Old World.
You are spot on per usual CL.
I think Murph maybe giving the best case example but it will be a much gloomier future.
The only positive thing I could say is don’t underestimate people’s reactions to the right wing agenda. What the right wing may want they will not get in many cases. Sure they vote for the Ryan budget but when it counts are they willing to displease that many voters? I don’t know.
My case against Romney is more based on character than anything else. We will absolutely have the worst character as president I’ve seen in my lifetime and that’s saying allot. He’s a pathological liar and I don’t care what you call him in psychological terms but he has minimal human empathy. That is self evident from his Bain years alone. You can’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth so he’ll be a complete disaster as a head of state where your only currency is your word. Like Bush I think he’ll have to deal with foreign policy much more than he thinks and he’ll make all the wrong decisions because he has the wrong people advising him.
If I didn’t leave the country under Bush I’ll never leave but under Romney every day I’ll hate living under such an absurdly unqualified person to be president and will never accept Romney.
Even my best case scenario is none too good as the economic recovery I predict will be shallow and in the long run weaken the middle and lower classes.
As to his character….I fear that I have come to agree with your take on this. His brittleness, his sarcophagal laughter, his frozen face..all betray huge interior emotional stress. He has chosen a thoroughly dishonorable road to the presidency through a forest of deceit exploiting the shallowness of the voter at every turn.
He will be a disaster and will dishonor the Oval Office. I know it.
Choice…this is brilliant (terrifying but brilliant). I cannot gild the lily here. But I can ask permission to give you my highest compliment. I intend to copy your post, as is, into my archive as a compendium for my original post. I would like to use it, as is as a followup at HP. I can do this with or without your “name” attached, with or without a reference to the Planet. I can also attribute it generally to a comment from another blogger.
Really….you take my piece and you move to deeper and nastier conclusions. The pain this will cause.
Murph
This is truly a sad situation. I still think Obama has enough of an electoral vote to win, the problem is we do not know how True the Vote and others are going to effect voters on election day. UN observers are being placed in some polling places I just hope it is enough.
I saw Elijah Cummings on Ed last night and I was actually furious with him and the dems in congress for not working harder on this voter suppression and pusing harder on True the Vote for FOI documents. WTH they will probably still have jobs. It is also still hard to pinpoint which side might have the most apathetic voters too. There has also not been much info on the black vote this time around. I am just not sure overall how things will turn out but if R’s do win, who is going to start the Anti-Tea Party? And if such a group was formed how much would you bet that Law enforcement would dog their every move?
True the Vote has been warned by the Secretary of State and Attorney General in Mo. that they will not be allowed to interfere in the operation of polling place. In particular they have been warned that their members will be arrested and that the organization will be held responsible. Significant for the McCaskill/AKin race here.
I do not know how things will go overall and am deeply concerned that the electoral college wall may not hold as planned.
A truly Progressive Party might emerge in the face of a Obama loss.