Tag: Mitt Romney

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national politics & policies political challengers

Veto Washington

When former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson sought the Republican nomination for president, he was unequivocally told “NO” — not by voters, who had little chance to consider his candidacy, but by media outlets refusing to give him a place on their debate stages.

Mr. Johnson didn’t garner enough support in public opinion polls, debate organizers said. But his name didn’t even appear in many of those media-designed polls. Catch-2012.
Gary Johnson, 750 Vetoes as New Mexico Governor
But his campaign continues. He’s in Las Vegas this weekend, seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party. Most observers expect Johnson to become the minor party’s presidential nominee . . . and to wind up on as many as 49 state ballots this fall.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul — who is also still in the race, betting long odds on a brokered Republican convention — polls 17 percent in a hypothetical three-way race with Obama and Romney. Admittedly, Johnson doesn’t have Congressman Paul’s following, but given the commitment of Paul’s supporters to civil liberties, a non-interventionist foreign policy and ending the drug war, they are far more likely to opt for Johnson than Romney . . . or Obama.

Moreover, on the biggest issue facing the country, out-of-control federal spending, Johnson has the best resumé of any candidate. He pledges to submit a balanced budget and to veto any congressional spending that we can’t afford without more borrowing.

Believe him. Johnson issued 750 vetoes in his eight years as New Mexico’s governor — more than the other 49 governors combined.

So, in all likelihood, it’s a choice between Romney or Obama . . . or a guy who would veto Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers

Reason #6

I think I like Mitt Romney, the man. I have defended some of what he has said. But I doubt I will support him for the presidency — and if he gets elected, I’d likely spend as much time criticizing him as I did George W. Bush and as I do Barack H. Obama.

Shikha Dalmia, at reason.com, offers five reasons why conservatives should root for a Romney defeat. They are:

  1. Romney won’t man up and dismantle the worst element of RomneyC — oops, ObamaCare.
  2. Romney’s hard line against Pentagon cuts means he won’t be able to bargain with Democrats on making any other kind of cuts. Federal spending will increase under Romney.
  3. Romney, the “ultimate Wall Street insider,” will do nothing substantive against crony capitalism.
  4. A Romney win now would preclude a better candidate four years from now.
  5. “Four years of Romneyisms, all of which smack of elitism, will cement the image of the GOP as the out-of-touch party of the rich.”

All good reasons to blanch at supporting Mr. Romney. But I have another reason, a sixth: It’s highly likely that in the next four years we’re going to hit a major crisis that will make the current “recession” look like a weekend vacation. Romney will flub the response, as would nearly any mainstream politician — perhaps any politician. But because Romney pretends to be “for” free markets and such, “free market capitalism” would almost certainly take the blame for the debacle to come, even though its actual parentage will be the government.

I’d rather blame — and have others blame — Obama, who almost personifies government as we now know it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture political challengers

The BWIA Taboo

Last week, a Mommy Maelstrom unleashed when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, interviewed as an “expert” on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, charged that Ann Romney, who reared five boys as a stay-at-home mom and continues to be the better half of presidential candidate Mitt, had “never worked a day in her life.”

Super-swaddling mothers of all sorts were outraged. Their husbands, as I can attest, were offended as well.

Stay-at-home mothers work. Hard. Long hours. So, there!

After denouncing Ann Romney’s career status, Rosen added that, “She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and, and, and how do we worry — and, why do we worry about their future.”

So perhaps Rosen wasn’t attacking Mrs. Romney’s decision to stay home and rear her kids, but, instead, Romney’s commission of a more heinous crime: BWIA (Being Wealthy in America). She should be ignored not because she’s a homemaker, but because she’s rich.

That bias against “the rich” is nearly official national policy. Though a devoted and hardworking mother, Ann Romney should be seen and not heard.

What upset Ms. Rosen was not that she might be seen and heard by us, but by her husband, if elected. You see, when we vote for a president we in effect vote for an unofficial advisor. With Bill Clinton we got Hillary; with Mitt we’d get Ann.

By Washington’s standards, Rosen’s worst transgression was to remind voters that Ann Romney exists — for as soon as Ann gets into the picture, Mitt doesn’t look so bad.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political challengers

Enemies, Bedfellows

The Ron Paul 2012 campaign’s caucus-state delegate strategy, discussed here before, aims to work around the candidate’s biggest hurdle: Republican voters. Though Ron Paul has a strong appeal to the young and to independents — constituencies needed to win against a sitting president — older, mainstream Republicans voters aren’t especially responsive to the maverick’s charms. Concentrating on selecting actual delegates at the caucuses, rather than the media-hyped (and electorally meaningless) straw polls, is a clever strategy.

But what’s good for the goose is great for the gander. A video from Washington State shows a self-proclaimed “mainstream” GOP activist offering caucus participants a slate of 31 delegates allegedly divided up amongst Romney, Santorum and Gingrich supporters, explicitly promoted to make sure that Ron Paulers don’t “take over” the party as they did, to his horror, in the Seattle area.

The Ron Paul supporters touting the video call it “election fraud.” Well, “caucus fraud” might be more to the point, considering that the slate offered was rejected by Rick Santorum’s  supporters as a con job. Since then Santorum folks and Paul folks have united. As one Santorum activist put it, “[i]n order for us to win the nomination in Tampa in August, we must deny Romney delegates to that convention. If . . . Romney receives 1,144 delegates before the national convention, it is all over for our campaign. That is the reason why the Senator himself directed us to coalition with the Ron Paul delegates to deny Romney any state delegates.”

Whether as a grand dialogue of ideas or a horse race, this time around the politics is interesting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Into Each Life, a Little Romney Falls

Some things I just “don’t get.”

How can either pro-lifers or Obamacare opponents trust Mitt Romney? Sure, he says he’s pro-life and he pledges to repeal the Democrats’ health care reform package. But for years he said he was for abortion rights; he switched in what’s been called a “flip-flop-flip” while governor of Massachusetts. Further, he signed into law the state’s health care program that served as Obamacare’s blueprint.

Not exactly a resumé upon which to build trust.

It’s tough to change the status quo. Perhaps that very fact drives many to such improbable avatars as Mitt.

But it’s even tougher to change the weather, and that’s also in the news.

Pat Robertson says that if we’d pray more, we’d be hit with fewer tornadoes.

I understand that prayer can have healing powers; I recognize that the theory of Divine influence on natural phenomena has a long, august history. But I learned, long ago, that rain (along with other natural occurrences) falls upon both the just and the unjust.

I read that somewhere.

But then, proponents of anthropogenic global warming think driving cars, burning coal and raising cows causes harsher storm weather, too — and that if we’d all just ride bicycles to work, we’d have Robertson’s promised “fewer tornadoes” — so perhaps implausible-to-me meteorological causation has a fairly universal appeal.

When left and right converge on the weather, it’s time to return to subjects I know more about. (Stay tuned. I’ll be here.)

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption political challengers

As Goes Maine

On Monday I reported on the Ron Paul campaign’s “open secret” strategy: Gaining delegates in the caucus states, while letting the caucus-night straw poll numbers basically take care of themselves. The “popular” vote on caucus nights in states like Iowa and Minnesota and Maine may show Santorum or Romney as a winner, but the Ron Paul folks are picking up the actual, nomination-effective delegates.

Meanwhile, GOP insiders continue to work openly and sub rosa against the Paul candidacy, as is now pretty clear in Maine. Business Insider reports that

  • “Mitt Romney’s 194-vote victory over Ron Paul was prematurely announced, if not totally wrong”;
  • “Washington County canceled their caucus on Saturday on account of three inches of snow (hardly a blizzard by Maine standards), and other towns that scheduled their caucuses for this week have been left out of the vote count”;
  • “nearly all the towns in Waldo County — a Ron Paul stronghold — held their caucuses on Feb. 4, but the state GOP reported no results for those towns. In Waterville, a college town in Central Maine, results were reported but not included in the party vote count”;

. . . and on and on and on.

The open conspiracy of deliberately under-reporting Ron Paul votes may be more than matched, however, by the open secret of the Ron Paul delegate strategy, with the Paul campaign now believing “it has won the majority of Maine’s delegates.”

Real change is, apparently, a messy thing. And preventing it . . . even messier.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.