Romney's 12 Step Plan

 In the second debate President Barack Obama said this:

Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules.

It's a skillful jab.  Whoever fashioned it for Obama deserves a pat on the back.  This isn't just campaign rhetoric.  It's true.  Thomas Edsall of the New York Times recently posted a fascinating essay that looks at the implications of a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research published by Northwestern economist Robert J. Gordon.  Gordon's paper argues that we may be at the end of a centuries-long arc of economic growth.  After several cycles of innovation and industrial growth, supporting growing levels of economic well-being for many of us on the planet, we may be at a crossroads, where innovation will be harder to come by, and sustained growth harder to achieve.  I'm not sure I'm convinced.  Innovation tied to biotechnology or clean energy might be able to kick start new cycles of growth.  But it is possible that our existing models for organizing economic life might be exhausted; we might need to think about redistributive models, sharing wealth to lift up those mired in poverty.  This is exactly the fear that Romney and his party share.  As Edsall puts it:

Affluent Republicans – the donor and policy base of the conservative movement — are on red alert. They want to protect and enhance their position in a future of diminished resources. What really provokes the ferocity with which the right currently fights for regressive tax and spending policies is a deeply pessimistic vision premised on a future of hard times. This vision has prompted the Republican Party to adopt a preemptive strategy that anticipates the end of growth and the onset of sustained austerity – a strategy to make sure that the size of their slice of the pie doesn’t get smaller as the pie shrinks.

This is an important observation and, I think, penetrating analysis.   I recently came across an ad for Romney which I found incredibly strange.  It uses the language of addiction to make an appeal to the American people.  It says:

I'll Deliver RECOVERY - Not DEPENDENCY

But as I thought about it, I realized there is nothing surprising here really.  Newt Gingrich and Romney, in fact the entire Republican field throughout the primaries, have been peddling this rhetoric about Obama fostering a culture of dependency.  And now it seems clear.  They think we are sick.  Addicts, depending on our fix of government-supplied money. Obama is our pusher, hanging out on the street corner, passing out food stamps and welfare and free health care.  Redistributing wealth.  

Obama was wrong.  Romney doesn't have a one-point plan.  He has a 12 step plan. He wants to put us all in rehab.