When I saw that Ezra Klein had written a piece about how Mitt Romney would be a transformational president, I got kind of excited. I was thinking that Ezra had gamed out the likely avenue of New Deal destruction that would immediately commence with Romney’s inauguration. But I was disappointed. All Ezra did was point out the obvious. If Romney wins, that means the Republicans in Congress will have a good night, too. And that means that we won’t win back the House and will almost definitely lose the Senate. And because the job of destroying the New Deal is budgetary and fiscal in nature, it can all be done using budget reconciliation rules that are immune to the filibuster. So, elect Romney and he’ll have both houses of Congress and the simple majority he needs to destroy the last eighty years of progressive policy in this country. He can enact the Ryan Budget, or something much like it, and the Democrats will be powerless to stop him.
I guess that’s a smart thing to tell people from time to time, since it’s true. But a better idea is to tell people what the country is likely to look like as a result. Ezra should write that column because he’s good at that sort of thing. He could expand on this:
Right now, the GOP’s agenda is the Ryan budget, and that’s entirely fiscal: It’s a premium support plan for Medicare, and tax cuts, and deep cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other domestic programs.
There’s a lot to unpack in “other domestic programs.” A Romney presidency would completely transform this country. And not in a good way.