I'm tired of tea-party folks and conservative Republicans calling Mitt Romney a RINO or a mushy moderate or a even liberal. He's not! He might appear more liberal to the casual observer because he went to Harvard (but remember he also went to BYU, the bastion of conservatism!) he governed in the Northeast, he lacks a cowboy swagger, and of course because of Romneycare... but he's actually pretty conservative.
A few things that people forget about Romneycare are that Mitt Romney vetoed much of it, and that the liberal Governor and liberal legislature who came after him has made it worse. That's why health care in Massachusetts is becoming higher in cost and lower in quality. I don't think it's Mitt Romney's fault. Another gigantic difference between RomneyCare and ObamaCare is that RomneyCare was started when the budget was balanced and there was in fact a surplus in the state coffers. ObamaCare, on the other hand, was done at a time when the debt and the deficit were out of control.
Look, if you read the chapter in No Apology: The Case for American Greatness on health care, you'll start to see Mitt Romney's side of things in regards to Romneycare. There's a lot of freeloaders in the emergency rooms, and that's driving up costs. And I agree that it would be inhumane to turn away the sick and injured from hospitals, just because they don't have the ability to pay. So, we're already treating medical care as a right in this country. Maybe it isn't such a bad idea to make everybody buy health insurance.
Mitt Romney's electable, OK? He's more electable than Newt Gingrich, according to the polls. And electability is one of the most important qualities the Republican party should look for when nominating someone. Just like Michael Medved writes, Presidents get elected with the support of the people in the middle. Like it or not, Obama has a really good chance of winning. He's the incumbent, and incumbents usually win. I was reading an article on Hot Air, one of my favorite political websites, and I found this comment and I thought I would copy and paste it here:
Again…Show me in Romney’s record here what is liberal, all of you who CLAIM to know so much about Romney!
Romney’s record:
Cut taxes in MA – Check
Closed loopholes and raised fees as Reagan did – Check
Voted pro-life bills as GOV – Check
Voted and eased 2nd Amendment bills in MA – Check
See here: “Massachusetts oldest, largest and premier pro-second amendment/gun rights group, Gun owners` Action League (GOAL) stated:“The bill was the greatest victory for gun owners since the passage of the gun control laws in 1998 (Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998). It was a reform bill totally supported by GOAL. Press and media stories around the country got it completely wrong when claimed the bill was an extension of the ‘assault weapon’ ban”
Against illegal immigration – Check
Signed bill against Illegal Immigration Recv tuition breaks – Check
Build the complete fence along the border – Check
For Defense of Marriage Act – Check
For Cut, Cap, and Balance – Check
Pro expansion of the military and keeping GITMO open – Check
Drilling in ANWR – Check
Investing in new technologies for oil – Check
Develop energy technology like nuclear or liquefied coal – Check
Conservative Reagan could vote for Romney…Reagan: “I’m not retreating an inch from where I was. But I also recognize this: There are some people who would have you so stand on principle that if you don’t get all that you’ve asked for from the legislature, why, you jump off the cliff with the flag flying. I have always figured that a half a loaf is better than none, and I know that in the democratic process you’re not going to always get everything you want. So, I think what they’ve misread is times in which I have compromised.”
Many of you need to check Reagan’s Governing and POTUS (POTUS means President of the United States) record to Romney’s!
You all spout off and have nothing to back it up with while he was in office he Governed with as a conservative. Did you know that Reagan vetoed his Tip O’Neill Congress 78 times in 8 years.
Romney vetoed his Massachusetts legislature over 800 times in 4 years. Virtually all were overridden–including the entirety of his 8 “Romneycare” vetoes because he governed as a Conservative!
Sincerely,
Telemoonfa
12 comments:
When Newt Gingrich proposed a “humane” approach to immigration in last week’s Republican debate, Mitt Romney pounced. Amnesty, he cried, claiming major disagreement with the former House speaker. Romney’s only problem is he can’t explain the disagreement.
That was evident when Romney was asked about immigration by Fox News anchor Bret Baier during an interview Tuesday. The interview showed how uncomfortable the former Massachusetts governor can be when pressed to say where he stands on issues where he’s changed his views. The immigration segment was particularly revealing.
Romney struggled repeatedly but never provided a clear answer to the question of how he would treat illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for many years.
In the past, Romney has taken positions that sound exceedingly close to those Gingrich has articulated during this campaign. Gingrich’s view is that, for someone who has been here many years — a quarter-century, he said — and who has put down roots in a community, there should be some system for moving to permanent legal status short of citizenship.
Gingrich argues that, as a practical matter, it would not make sense to break up families and disrupt the lives of people who have integrated themselves fully into American society.
Four years ago, on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Romney said this: “My view is that those 12 million who’ve come here illegally should be given the opportunity to sign up to stay here, but they should not be given any advantage in becoming a permanent resident or citizen by virtue of simply coming here illegally.”
Is that very different from what Gingrich said during the CNN/Heritage/AEI debate? Not really. In this Fox interview, Romney feigned ignorance of what, exactly, Gingrich has proposed. “I can’t tell you what Speaker Gingrich is saying,” he said.
That hasn’t stopped him from criticizing Gingrich. And on Fox, he mischaracterized his rival’s proposal by saying Gingrich seemed to be advocating a path to citizenship for longtime illegal immigrants. Gingrich has stopped short of that.
“My view is pretty straightforward,” Romney said, outlining a position similar to that of four years ago. “For those people who’ve come here illegally, they should have the opportunity to get in line with everybody else who wants to come into this country, but, they go to the back of the line and they should be given no special pathway to citizenship or permanent residency merely because they’ve come here illegally.”
Baier then asked the pertinent follow up: “The question is what you do with the 11 million plus people who are already here and how you handle them. And back in 2006-2007, you made a point in saying, we’re not going to round them all up and send them out.”
“That’s right, “Romney replied.
“So what do you do with them?” Baier asked.
Instead of answering the question, Romney ducked.“You know, there’s great interest on the part of some to talk about what we do with the 11 million,” he said. “My interest is saying, let’s make sure that we secure the border, and we don’t do anything that talks about bringing in a new wave or attracting a new wave of people into the country illegally.”
Does that put him in a different place than Gingrich? Seemingly not.
Sacramento, CA / Boston, MA • November 26, 2011 ― Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney now favors protection for LGBT workers, both before and after they are hired. “I favor gay rights,” Romney said during a one-hour video interview with the Nashua Telegraph newspaper editorial board on Tuesday, marking the first time that a major Republican presidential contender has taken such a position.
At a conservative evangelical forum three days earlier in Des Moines, Iowa, the trailing Republican presidential candidates — Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, Santorum — renewed their firm opposition to civil rights for LGBT people, but the leading candidates — Cain, Paul, Romney — are trending in the other direction.
“Romney’s new stance raises profound questions for members of the armed forces who are legally married to same-sex spouses,” says Marriage Equality USA Project Leader Ned Flaherty, “because if Romney applies his new fair employment policy to the military, then he would also have to support an end to the pay cuts of up to 40% which are imposed by the Defense of Marriage Act.” DOMA denies all military personnel with same-sex spouses up to 368 active/reserve/veteran benefits, including housing, medical/dental/optical care, commissary discounts, separation pay, relocation, spouse employment aid, survivor benefits, legal services, and burial rights.
Mormon Church officials have strongly opposed LGBT civil rights for decades. It remains to be seen whether Romney’s interpretation of his faith will allow him to advocate for paying all military personnel fairly.
Marriage Equality USA’s “Election 2012” table is a side-by-side comparison of presidential candidates’ plans for America’s 31 million LGBT citizens. Since going live on August 15, over 75 articles about the comparison table were published in magazines, Web sites, and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal. This week’s update marks the 11th time since the project began that a candidate has changed a stance. “The data we report is used by voters, journalists, and, of course, the candidates,” says Flaherty.
In a debate, Romney said to Perry this, about health care:
"I'm proud of the fact that we took on a major problem in my state. And the problem was that we had a lot of kids without insurance, a lot of adults without insurance, but it added up to about 8 percent of our population. And we said, you know what, we want to find a way to get those folks insured, but we don't want to change anything for the 92 percent of the people that already have insurance. … We have the lowest number of kids as a percentage uninsured of any state in America. You (Perry) have the highest. ... We have less than 1 percent of our kids that are uninsured. You have a million kids uninsured in Texas. A million kids. Under President Bush, the percentage uninsured went down. Under your leadership, it's gone up. I care about people."
I care about people? That sounds like what Perry said about immigration: that anyone who opposed his policy of in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants working toward citizenship didn’t “have a heart.” Equating subsidies with compassion is a common Democratic habit. Free-market conservatives find it galling. But Romney, like Perry, seems to have acquired it. And unlike Perry, he thinks the government must “replace” Obamacare with something that will “solve the problem of health care.”
Also Romney said this:
"The reason for giving a tax break to middle-income Americans is that middle-income Americans have been the people who have been most hurt by the Obama economy. … Median income in America has declined by 10 percent during the Obama years. People are having a hard time making ends meet. And so if I'm going to use precious dollars to reduce taxes, I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most, and that's the middle class. I'm not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine. The very poor have a safety net, they're taken care of. But the people in the middle, the hard-working Americans, are the people who need a break, and that is why I focused my tax cut right there."
If I'm going to use precious dollars to reduce taxes, I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most. That’s Romney’s most revealing statement there. A property-oriented conservative would say that dollars belong to the people who earned them and that tax cuts should let them keep more of their money. But Romney’s formulation — “use precious dollars to reduce taxes” — assumes that the dollars are his to “focus,” i.e. distribute, according to need. Again, it’s a defensible worldview. But it’s fundamentally liberal.
Don’t get me wrong. Romney’s positions on taxes, regulation, and military spending put him clearly in the right half of the political spectrum. But his comments here show a leakage of liberal sentiments well before the general election. A President Romney could be the best friend liberals have and accomplish more liberal legislation than Obama ever did simply because he's mostly conservative.
It’s been superexciting watching one outsized, vibrant and deeply strange Republican candidate after another rise to the front of the presidential pack, then crash and burn. But now we’ve got to refresh the storyline.
Really, even the TV networks are starting new mini-seasons. And they’ve got zombies.
This is particularly important for Mitt Romney, who seems to be responding to the flip-flop critique by becoming more and more repressed. If we don’t do something to free him up, they’re going to have to start wheeling him around in a laundry hamper.
“How can voters trust what they hear from you today is what you will believe if you win the White House?” asked Bret Baier of Fox News in a recent interview, mentioning changes of position on global warming, abortion, immigration and gay rights. He and Mitt appeared to be sitting in a warehouse full of canned goods, and Romney looked approximately as comfortable as the three wealth managers who had to appear on camera claiming the $254 million they won with a $1 Powerball ticket.
“Your list is just not accurate so, one, we’re going to have to be better informed,” Romney began.
His other responses included: “This is an unusual interview. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh.”
And, indeed, it was. Romney hasn’t done a Sunday talk show since “The Hurt Locker” beat “Avatar” for best picture. He is generally kept so far away from one-on-one interviews that he might as well be wrapped in cellophane. While stuffed in a laundry hamper. Which would eventually be installed in a campaign bus that could just drive around states that are in play, while never actually leaving the highway.
Never have we had a more uptight potential president. This is all because he’s a big, huge, bundle — well, actually, a lean, well-exercised, impeccably groomed bundle — of contradictory positions whose history he cannot possibly justify without standing up and screaming: Look, I’m running for office! I have to make things up!
It’s time to free Mitt from his demons. I propose that we give him one week in which to decide at which point in his life he was actually expressing his true opinion on any given topic, and we will just clear the slate and go from there.
For instance, it seems likely that despite Romney’s story about not understanding what an embryo was until after he was elected governor of Massachusetts, he has always been privately anti-choice. So let’s go with that and erase those rather emotional moments in his debates with Ted Kennedy when he recalled his mother’s pro-choice Senate candidacy and the close family relative who had died from an illegal abortion. (“It is since that time my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter, and you will not see me wavering on that.”)
Poof. It’s gone.
I think we should also accept Romney’s word that his current position on Detroit (let the carmakers go bankrupt) is the real Mitt. Honestly, the man spent his whole career laying people off.
But, in return, he ought to admit that he really does believe in global warming and that he’s always thought everybody should be required to have health insurance. Really, you can look that one up in his book.
Also, he has to stop bragging that the proof of his consistency is his refusal to totally disavow the Massachusetts health care law. “This whole stream of thought that you began with, which is: ‘Oh well, you’d say anything to get elected’ — if that were the case, would I still be defending Massachusetts health care?” Romney demanded in his warehouse interview.
Now how does a guy who was governor, who signed the health care law and waved it around like a pennant, go about renouncing the whole thing? I’ll bet he would have if he could have, but how would that work?
And maybe we could get over his driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car if he’d just admit it was because he was too cheap to hire a dog-sitter. Maybe.
The problem with Mitt is that he is a dime-a-dozen' northeast manager. For the bottom line, he will do anything. Cut, outsource, collapse all the while taking care of his donor-masters will be his mantra.
Who gets taken care of: Walmart, GM, Big-Pharma, Foreign-companies/donors, Chinese businesses, lobbyists
Who loses: Seniors, IT workers, American taxpayers, honest and dedicated public servants, the military
I don't see him mustering the gumption to accomplish anything except, perhaps, another Middle East war and more outsourcing.
I always say two things about Mitt Romney.
The first is that he's the perfect Harvard MBA candidate. That is, he looks at all of this as a marketing exercise, where he identifies his customers desires, and delivers the product as cost-effectively as possible. The problem, of course, is that politics is not the same as selling detergent, and that his customers want not only a President, but a leader, somebody with credible core convictions who will take them somewhere they didn't even know they wanted to go. He's giving them Jeffrey Immelt when what they want is Steve Jobs.
The second is that if he had to do it all over again, I strongly suspect he'd campaign as a conservative Democrat, as his personal views, his tendency towards data-driven technocracy, and pragmatic approach in general are more of a mind with the current Democratic Party, than that of the Republicans, who rely almost completely on either disproven ideas or insane "faith-based" economic policies which have already failed, not to mention a complete disdain for science or any other acquired knowledge.
The reality is that he's an intelligent guy who's only saving grace is that he doesn't believe most of the swill coming out of his mouth about apologies, etc., but is trying to sell a product. The problem is that this makes him not only not credible to large swaths of the population, but unsavory to many others.
He's painted himself into a corner to try and win, and will likely get the opposite result.
Romney is Gordon Gekko in Mormon Temple clothing.
He has thrown more people out of work than he has created jobs in the private sector. His "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" policy is remarkably shortsighted and surprising.
George Romney once led a Michigan car company. If Detroit did go bankrupt, there would be great swaths of unemployment and dislocation in the midwest. Most importantly, if the Detroit automakers were not around, there would be no American entities to manufacture tanks, jet engines and other armaments in times of war.
I guess Romney thinks a bunch of guys down at his Ward Building (Mormon Church) who are deft at roofing and sheet rock hanging could go down to Home Depot, pick up the materials, and cobble together a Humvee.
And this gets to the essence about Romney: his milkshake, good humor Mormonism belies the fact that he is all about money. Non-pecuniary aspects of life such as the wartime potential of Detroit automakers engineers and skilled machinists elude him. Likewise he has scant interest in public goods and using government to create a level and fair playing field for all Americans.
Romney has dealt with widgets, finance and marketing his entire life. Thus, Romney believes all things and all people are commodities and fungible. His credo is that the free market can solve most anything, including American manufacturing and the environment, in addition to his belief in Jesus sojourn in the western hemisphere.
Mitt Romney is a fake. A self-powered, remotely controlled tool. There's really nothing more to add.
Wow, there's a lot of anonymous comments here bashing Mitt Romney. I'll try responding to a few of them.
"Mitt Romney is a fake. A self-powered, remotely controlled tool. There's really nothing more to add.
December 2, 2011 4:43 PM"
Actually, there's a lot more to add. Why do you think Romney's a fake? Do you really think that someone could devote several years of his or her life and not really love America or not really want to be President or not really want to help America remain strong, prosperous, and free? I hear a lot about Romney being robotic or lacking in passion and conviction. How do you know what's in the guy's heart? You sound like a conspiracy theorist. I believe that Mitt Romney is a genuinely honest guy, patriotic, etc. I believe the same thing about Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry and some of the other candidates, too.
You think Romney's "a remote-controlled tool"? Who's controlling him? Let me guess, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs, the cigarette-smoking-man from the X-files?
"And this gets to the essence about Romney: his milkshake, good humor Mormonism belies the fact that he is all about money."
If Romney is "all about money", why is he running for President? Romney's worth over $200,000,000,000. Do you really think he's running for President in an effort to amass still more wealth? Romney's a brilliant, successful businessman. He surely could make more money pursuing other things. I think that Romney has good motivations for running for office, and he probably feels that he is inspired by God, much like George Washington and other Presidents felt.
Here I am replying to another comment:
"Romney has dealt with widgets, finance and marketing his entire life. Thus, Romney believes all things and all people are commodities and fungible."
I had to look up "fungible." It means: (especially of goods) being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind.
OK, this makes me think that you're an anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street type. You think that business-people view human beings as merely commodities? Capitalism, guided by moral values, is all about serving people.
Where do you work? If you currently work or if you ever worked for a corporation, did you start viewing humanity as a mass of commodities and customers? Or were you still a compassionate person? Your comment demonizes just about everyone who's worked for an advertising agency, just about anybody who's run a business. I hope that you'll reconsider your views towards business.
I'm a non-union private sector worker for a family-owned small-business manufacturer. I make movie screens. The people I work with are some of the honest, compassionate people I have ever met. The owners and managers are good to their customers; they try to provide quality service and the best product at the best price. And the owners and managers of the company that I work for are good to the employees.
Where do you shop? Virtually every store is a business where the owners and stockholders and managers have to engage in business. Don't you realize that the people you buy products from are doing business?
Mitt Romney loves people. He loves his wife, he loves his kids, and he loves America. He wants to get more Americans into private-sector jobs because he wants to help people. He wants to keep America safe because he knows that will make people happy.
Maybe this sound overly simplistic, but, what's the alternative? Romney wants to increase employment because he's just looking out for himself and his own fortunes? Look, if Romney were only interested in protecting himself and his property, he would build a compound and start hoarding stuff. Instead, Romney wants to be a public servant. He wants to serve us. I really believe that he loves everyone.
And to reply to another comment:
"He [Romney] has thrown more people out of work than he has created jobs in the private sector. His "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" policy is remarkably shortsighted and surprising."
Romney worked for Bain Capital. His job was to make businesses run better. Businesses were failing, and Romney's task was to turn them around. Of course some lay-offs were necessary. But then after a restructuring, the businesses oftentimes grew. You've got to prune the tree to make it grow. Of course some businesses that Romney tried to help didn't work and people had to look for jobs elsewhere. But overall, Mitt Romney was extremely successful at helping businesses run more efficiently and providing jobs for people at Domino's Pizza, Staples, and a bunch of other places.
"Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" was a headline applied to an article Romney wrote about the wisest course of action for the failing automobile companies based in Detroit. Romney was arguing that they should not receive a bailout, but instead they should go through the bankruptcy process and build themselves back up, the way most other companies do. You say Romney's advice to let the poorly-run car companies go bankrupt was short-sighted? I say it was sound advice from someone who knows the economy like the back of his hand.
And another comment:
"Non-pecuniary aspects of life such as the wartime potential of Detroit automakers engineers and skilled machinists elude him[Romney]."
It sounds like you're defending the Detroit bailout by saying that the car companies could build tanks and stuff for the military. I've never heard that rationale before. It sounds crazy. You know how many American defense contractors there are with top of the line engineers and scientists developing weapons of war? Do we really need Ford to start building tanks and planes and bombs?
Anyway, who do you want to be the President?
I need to say that all or most of these anonymous comments are text copied and pasted from the New York Times or other liberal publications. One of them is copied and pasted from an article by Gail Collins. I'm cool with excerpts from articles being copied and pasted in the comments section of my blog, but don't you think it would be nice, in the interest of full disclosure, to say, "The following was copied and pasted from..." instead of giving me the impression that someone spent a lot of time carefully crafting an eloquent response to my posts?
Mitt Romney 2012!
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