The Tragedy of Mitt Romney, Act III

I feel certain that within a decade Mitt Romney will be the subject of a tragic opera. Here we have a man who has been successful at every job he has undertaken, famously competent and driven, who decides to become President. Meanwhile, though, his party has gone insane, so to compete for its nomination he has to turn himself into an ignorant, arithmetic-challenged reciter of right-wing talking points. Fareed Zakaria notes that Romney is meeting increasing criticism from Republican critics, then writes:

Fox News anchor Brit Hume got specific in his critique, saying this month that “Romney’s got the presidential bearing down. . . . What he [hasn’t done is] dwell at length on the economic policies that he would put in place.” Why won’t Romney, an intelligent man, fluent in economics, explain his economic policy? Because any sensible answer would cause a firestorm in his party.

It is obvious that, with a deficit at 8 percent of gross domestic product, any solution to our budgetary problems has to involve both spending cuts and tax increases. . . . But every Republican presidential candidate — including Romney — pledged during the primaries that he or she would not accept $10 of spending cuts if that meant a dollar of tax increases.

So Romney could present a serious economic plan with numbers that make sense — and then face a revolt within his own party. His solution: to be utterly vague about how he would deal with the deficit. When pressed for details recently, he explained that “the devil’s in the details. The angel is in the vision.” He’s right. Were he to get specific, he would be committing ideological blasphemy. So instead he talks about freedom and capitalism.

There simply are no realistic solutions to our budgetary and economic problems that the average Republican primary voter would find acceptable. So Romney is stuck, and us with him.