The waffling Pinocchio (a compilation of greatest hits to come shortly) launches into pious monologue about not being a career politician. Newt Gingrich once again exposes the baloney about Romney not actively seeking a career in politics. Basically, Mittens has not been in elected office for the last 18 years because he kept losing. Video below:
One can debate whether the country is better off as a result of the slash and burn venture capitalism he helped pioneer or whether it has much relevance to being an effective President (it sure did not do much in creating jobs in Massachusetts), but Mitt Romney has accomplished a lot in his business career. But his phoniness is so transparent it makes this blogger want to barf. It also explains the tepid enthusiasm for him in an awful Republican field.
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First there was the Mitt Romney whopper about a fictional Obama apology tour. Then a flailing Rick Perry desperate to remain relevant in the Republican race raised him with an outright lie that Obama called American workers lazy. Now Mittens has decided to double down with a blatant lie, taking a clip of Obama quoting McCain and pretending it was an original Obama statement.
This is the latest salvo in a campaign where a president who lowered taxes, oversaw a return of corporate profits to pre-recession levels, prevented a collapse of the Detroit auto-makers, passed a healthcare plan originally drafted by Republicans, ordered the raid that took out Osama deep in the heart of Pakistan and midwifed the fall of Muammar Gaddafi is somehow a befuddled America hating marxist/socialist naif. Mitt Romney should know better, but then we already know that there is nothing he will not do to gain the Presidency.
Problem is, others can take Romney quotes out of context to lie as well (video below):
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Mitt Romney deviated from his tired canard about Obama apologizing for America to provide the sort of platitudes that comprise his foreign policy platform. After all, you have to dig deep to call the President who ordered a raid into the heart of Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden and who helped bring down Gaddafi weak. So the solution is the blanket statement below on the Iranian push for a nuclear bomb.
So Mitt, since you are evidently willing to go to war to achieve this end please tell us how you manage this:
- Almost every military expert agrees that an aerial bombardment of the type Israel is itching to launch would at best delay the Iranian push for the device. So are you going to send in ground troops?
- Where would such an invasion be launched from?
- How would we pay for this?
- What would be the impact on an overstretched military that is seeing light at the end of the tunnel of two long wars in the countries on the West and the East of Iran?
- What will be the impact in Iraq if Iran unleashes its Sadrite proxies or on Israel if Hezbollah gets involved?
- How will you handle the economic shock of an almost certain spike in oil prices (to go with the mess in Europe)?
- If this is a snatch and grab, how will we prevent Iran from restarting the program?
- How will you handle the fallout with Russia and China – or do you just not give a damn?
- Are you willing to consider a full fledged invasion? If so, how will you handle an occupation?
The ugly reality is that there are few good options to prevent Iran from getting the Bomb. Iran has wanted the Bomb since the days of the Shah. The pursuit of the Bomb is incredibly popular even among the anti-cleric democratic movement. The Obama administration has been incredibly successful in getting Russian and Chinese support for a practical containment policy. But if Mittens has a silver bullet for Iran other than his usual foreign policy bluster, I am all ears.
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A couple of Jon Huntsman commercials highlight why Mitt Romney cannot break away from a pack consisting of lunatics and ignoramuses. The core problem the base has is that even for a politician Romney has an extremely malleable set of core values that adapt to the office he seeks and the time he seeks it. Videos below:
Other examples of Romney’s extraordinary agility are very easy to find on YouTube:
This is the latest one
This is not a new charge. The last election cycle provided some entertaining Whack-a-Mitt sessions as the rest of the field piled on the candidate they despised.
Romney does come with strong business credentials (though his business experience often seems to have resulted in acquiring companies, sucking out their assets and bankrupting them). While he was a pragmatic governor, his job creation record was at best mediocre. On foreign policy he resorts to the same fluff and platitudes that the rest of the Republican field not named Jon Huntsman or Ron Paul resort too. But ultimately he is a pragmatic candidate who has some appeal to the center. He was a competent and pragmatic governor. He probably will be an adequate President (more than can be said for any of his opponents other than Huntsman). But where in the political spectrum a President Romney will govern from remains a mystery. The Weather Vane is probably still monitoring the winds. To take a DNC quiz on where Romney has stood on issues to date – click here (includes videos).
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The weather-vane of the Republican party has a problem. His record. Even if some of his policies were pragmatic and defensible, he faces a party that rejects former conservative ideas when they are embraced by the Democrats, particularly Barack Obama. Mitt Romney has shown an impressive ability to change positions like a chameleon changes colors (and then to attack opponents for holding positions he held a short while back). Needless to say his opponents in 2008 pounced on this trait during the debates, particularly in the two videos below:
Now a democratic operative in South Carolina has added to Romney’s misery by preparing the attack ad below composed almost entirely of Romney statements.
Note to the rest of the Democrats – there is a treasure trove out there on YouTube that is begging for attention. Much of it does not even need to be “quoted out of context.”
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A couple of articles today discuss the healthcare albatross crippling Mitt Romney’s presidential dreams (See here and here). This blog discussed this issue months ago (See here and here). Republicans still wax eloquently on repealing “Obamacare” and replacing it with their plan that barely expands access to health care. They also still talk about barring insurance companies from discriminating for pre-existing conditions but do not specify how they will address the freeloader problem. No wonder that the man from the party of no ideas who wants to be speaker admits that he has no solutions to offer.
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Matt Yglesias has a good article comparing Romneycare to Obamacare and Mitt Romney’s transparently dishonest attempts to run away from his legacy. See link. He also discusses the fundamental flaw in the Republican position which accepts the need to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions without understanding that such a provision cannot stand alone. This point is not new. Others like Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait have raised this point in responding to people like Peggy Noonan. See here and here.
The point is simple. If insurance companies cannot deny people with pre-existing conditions you create an incentive for healthy people not to get insurance until they fall sick. Hence you need a mandate to take care of the free-riders. But once you create a mandate you need subsidies for people who cannot afford health care. The end product is something along the line of Romneycare, Obamacare or a robust public option (which is probably more popular than either).
Given that Republicans support an ban on insurance companies discriminating against pre-existing conditions they need to come up with a meaningful alternative to Obamacare, not that nonsense of a plan they previously issued which expanded coverage by only 3 million. Otherwise it is time for them to focus on responsible fixes to the plan, notably on the issue of cost control. Somehow, I don’t see that happening.
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The passage of health care reform may have had the unintended side effect of winnowing the 2012 presidential field. While the 2012 Republican convention is over two years away, an eternity in politics, Mitt Romney may have just seen his hopes of securing the Republican nomination go up in smoke.
Romney’s ambitions and his willingness to adapt his positions to the prevailing winds are no secret. Even by the low standards of politicians he displayed a chameleon like ability to change his colors for the prevailing audience and the brazen chutzpah to attack people for holding positions he held a short while before. This made him very unpopular among his fellow Republican candidates notably John McCain and Mike Huckabee who barely concealed their disdain for him. The 2007-8 Republican presidential debates often degenerated into “whack-a-Mitt” sessions where all the candidates ganged up in the self funded Romney with cheerful glee. See link. His Mormon faith also acted as a handicap as the Republican evangelical base looked at him with suspicion.
When John McCain all but wrapped up the Republican nomination the ever malleable Romney promptly dropped out to stump for McCain in hopes of securing the Vice Presidential nod. Unfortunately all that sucking up came to naught when McCain went for the wonderfully clueless Sarah Palin.
In the aftermath of the elections Romney has tried to reposition himself as the only remaining adult among the Republican candidates. His extensive business background lends him a public perception of gravitas on economic issues. He has stayed away from an embrace of the occasionally unhinged tea party protests. His attempts to burnish his credentials on foreign policy were less successful since his Palinesque use of jargon and tough words largely drew snickers. See here and here.
But for a long time the sword of Damocles hanging over Romney was his signature accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts – health care reform. In the Republican primaries Romney defended his plan but faced a dilemma when the contours of Obamacare started to look very similar to Romneycare. While even the latest Wall Street Journal editorial replete with Republican talking points (some discredited) refers to the two plans as “fraternal policy twins” Romney has been busy tying himself in knots in explaining how the plans are different and whining about the alleged abuse of power by the Democrats in not deferring to a minority that lost the last two national elections.
This is a big problem for Romney. With the Republican base whipped up into a frenzy the next nominee will have to attack Obamacare. A federalism argument could work, but can also be countered by the fact that the balanced budget obligations on most states make it extremely impractical for any of them to pass health care reform. In any case federalism will not explain away Romney’s willingness to sign on to government interference at the state level, something that has the base in a lather.
Even with Romney penchant for short term memory loss on his previous policy positions, it is hard to see how Romney will be the candidate to perform that task. Democrats will gleefully paraphrase the attack used on the last nominee from Massachusetts that Romney was “for health care before he was against it” to cement Romney’s reputation as an unprincipled flip-flopper. A base already predisposed to distrust Romney will have a hard time trusting him as the man to take down Obamacare, which practically will be very hard to pull off in any case.
So the man who should have been the Republican nominee and had the best understanding of economic policy will enter primary season severely hobbled. Again things can change. A continuing bleak economic outlook could cause Republicans to hold their nose and vote for Romney, like they did for McCain in the last election cycle. Repealing health care reform could be a fringe issue by 2012 and Romney could position himself as the man best equipped to fix it. But at present it is hard to see Romney securing the support of a distrustful base. IMO the man the Obama campaign should worry about comes from next door Indiana – Mitch Daniels, though a lot can change in the next two years.
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