Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney Roundup (011608)
I am pleased to report that the word about Mitt Romney’s myriad weaknesses is spreading, and continues to be enhanced by the contributions of others.
This is the third of a series of several daily links to others who have news about Objectively Unfit Mitt.
Here goes.
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IBDeditorials.com compares Romney and McCain on taxes, and guess who’s past record is better? –
McCain, of course, voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, while Romney didn’t support them as governor of Massachusetts. Noteworthy, however, is the fact that McCain favored the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s, while Romney indicated a lack of support for the Reagan program during his unsuccessful 1994 Senate run against Ted Kennedy.
So McCain should be leading on the tax issue. But hard-line tax-cutting strategists like Cesar Conda and Vin Weber have been working to position Romney as a supply-side tax-cutter. According to the New Hampshire results, this is paying off.
In other words, Conda and Weber are positioning Romney as something he’s not, and never has been, for a quarter of a century. I am sooooo not surprised.
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Stephen Bainbridge says Romney is the weakest Republican. By far.
In this post, he assails Romney for Mitt-Flopping on immigration in a major. And Bainbridge is right.
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Mitt Romney, circa 1994:
On why the gay community should support Romney over Kennedy, given Kennedy’s record of supporting both civil rights and the gay community:
“Well, I think you’re partially right in characterizing Ted Kennedy as supportive of the gay community, and I respect the work and efforts he’s made on behalf of the gay community and for civil rights more generally, and I would continue that fight.
“There’s something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation. When Ted Kennedy speaks on gay rights, he’s seen as an extremist. When Mitt Romney speaks on gay rights he’s seen as a centrist and a moderate.”
Doing radical things and passing himself off as moderate while doing it. This should have been seen as a precursor to the man who became Objectively Unfit Mitt in 2004.
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On Monday, Romney proposed spending an additional $16 billion on research that profit-motivated industries should be engaging in:
(he would) increase funding five-fold — from $4 billion dollars to $20 billion dollars — in national investment in energy research, fuel technology, materials science, and automotive technology;
He then proceeded to get into a back-and-forth with McCain about whether auto industry jobs in Michigan that have gone away will ever come back. They both missed the point. Those jobs aren’t being lost overseas. They’re being lost to Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and several other states that are doing a better job of attracting new automotive plants and suppliers.
Don’t forget the biggest source of job loss, that being automation due to the high price of labor. The reason why automakers distribute their plants to other states first and foremost is the UAW’s insistence of pricing workers out of the market in Michigan. So yeah, Romney go ahead a subsidize more research, all that will do is free up more money to move plants and automate the rest of the jobs.
The worst part is that venture capital toward start up companies like Tesla is basically competing against government subsidies to the old fart car makers. Why risk capital when the government will do it for you? Without the risk element, car companies have no insentive to target those dollars with efficacy. It’s positively shameful that the established automakers are stuck in the rut of cost cutting to save themselves from the inevitable price point when they should be engaging in innovation to differentiate themselves from their competition. The inherent of single mindedly focusing all one’s efforts into cost control results in a race to the bottom. Cost control is important, but it must be balanced with innovation in order to beat the competition. Keep an eye on Tesla Motors (electric car), at $3+ gas and $100/barrel oil, either they will be the next big automaker or they will be bought up and become a division of an existing automaker.
Comment by dscott — January 17, 2008 @ 12:10 pm