The Real (Moderate) Mitt Romney Finally Stands Up
Mitt Romney, believing with good reason that he has the Republican
nomination sewn up (or at least that if anything gets in the way at
this point, it will be too bizarre to plan for), has turned from
attacks on his fellow Republican contenders to concentrate on
President Barack Obama.
This is the campaign's Etch A Sketch moment: time to shake the slate
clean of its hard-right positions and start again. In other words:
Flip now, flop later. With Romney's primary victories yesterday in
Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia, now it's later.
On Friday in Appleton, Wisconsin, Romney delivered what is probably
Version 1.0 of what will become his standard stump speech. It provides
some clues to Romney's true nature.
Romney predicts, as if he were a weatherman who is just reporting the
storm, that "this campaign will produce a deafening cacophony of
charges and countercharges." That's probably true, though he
theoretically has some say in the matter. His campaign can be as
high-minded as he would like. And the speech did contain bits of
statesmanlike yin-yangery. Consider: "President Obama did not cause
the recession, but he most certainly failed to lead the recovery." Or:
"Regulations are necessary, but they must be continuously updated,
streamlined and modernized."
Acknowledgment that Obama did not cause the recession and that
regulations are sometimes necessary are welcome. They also put Romney
at the far left of his party.
Romney criticizes Obama for saying he wants to "transform this
nation," whereas he, Romney, wants "to restore the values of economic
freedom, opportunity and small government that have made this nation
the leader it is."
Small government made this nation great? Uh, World War II? Social
Security? The Civil Rights Act? There are exceptions (the
Transportation Security Administration, for example), but many of
America's greatest moments involved an expansion of government, not a
shrinking of it.
Polls and politicians are always claiming that Americans are fed up
and want the country to change directions in some fundamental way. But
Romney, or his advisers, is smart enough to realize that this is just
a national tic. People really don't want fundamental change.
"Transform" is an ominous word. "Restore" is nice and soothing.
Obama, Romney says, "was elected not on the strength of a compelling
record but a compelling personality and story." Interestingly, Romney
says that the differences between the candidates can be explained by
"our life experiences." Is he actually going to make the case that
growing up in a stable, affluent suburban family, with a father who
was head of an auto company and later governor of Michigan, is a more
useful life experience than Obama's?
Yes, he is. Obama was a community organizer. "His desire to help
others could not be more admirable, but …" Well, you know, this
helping others stuff can be taken too far. Says Romney, who ran the
private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC: "Apple Computer and Microsoft
weren't started to save the world and neither were General Motors or
Alcoa. Nor were some of the companies I helped start like Staples or
The Sports Authority. … They became great commercial ventures, which
is another way of saying they made a lot of money."
Romney is right that free market capitalism has done more for the U.S.
(and the world) than any do-good organization. Nevertheless, it's a
brave politician who builds his campaign around the idea that
graduating from Harvard Law School and going off to serve the poor in
Chicago is less admirable than graduating from Harvard Law School and
going off to advise big corporations at a consulting firm.
Regarding the economy, Romney says that Obama's stimulus program was a
failure because it "protected the government, not the people,"
whatever that means. Bloomberg Government calculates that Romney's
proposed federal budget will actually run up a larger debt than
Obama's. That is because it includes a large tax cut for everybody,
with no compensating spending cuts.
Romney is, at this point, far too identified as a flip- flopper to do
much actual flip-flopping. He's stuck with the positions he had on all
the right-wing hot-button issues when the music stopped. But, as this
Wisconsin speech demonstrates, you can Etch A Sketch a new you without
getting into all that.
Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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