Willard Mitt Romney has conducted three political campaigns: 1994 for US Senator from Massachusetts, 2002 for Bay State Governor, and 2007-2008 for President.

He also served as Governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007 after a winning 2002 campaign.

Romney also has a record in the business world.

His track record in any one of these five endeavors (3 campaigns, governor, business) provides ample reason to reject the idea of Mitt Romney serving as John McCain’s Vice President. All five, taken in the aggregate, make the idea that this man could be one heartbeat away from the presidency frightening — regardless of your party, ideology, or political philosophy.

I made my first comment against Romney’s candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination in October of last year, in what I thought at the time would be a one-time throwaway item (fourth item at link):

Let me be the first to say it: It’s becoming painfully clear (link requires subscription) that Mitt RomneyCare in Massachusetts is blowing up, and will get nothing but worse between now and November 2008. If he’s the nominee, he’ll be playing the same game Michael Dukakis played unsuccessfully in 1988 — covering up the Bay State’s disastrous financial situation. Except this time, the other party controls the Governor’s Office. Deval Patrick will gleefully point to the mess he has inherited, and will then tout HillaryCare II as the “better, more comprehensive” solution.

For this reason alone, I believe that Mitt Romney should NOT be the GOP nominee. Period.

Both things have come to pass. RomneyCare has blown up (more on that in future posts), and Romney’s not the nominee.

Mitt Romney is not the GOP’s nominee because in the ensuing four months until Super Tuesday, courageous, underfunded activists in Massachusetts and elsewhere — many of whom, after having previously supported him, have now been active opponents for nearly five years — laid out a complete and comprehensive case against Romney’s candidacy that went far, far beyond CommonwealthCare. They communicated their case so effectively that Romney underperformed in virtually every GOP primary state where the voters had their say. This occurred despite tens of millions of dollars spent on Romney’s behalf, most of it from the candidate’s personal fortune.

Yet, over five months after Super Tuesday, according to various news sources (here, here, and here), Willard Mitt Romney is the front-runner to become John McCain’s Vice Presidential nominee. He seems to have the support of much of “conservative” talk radio’s elite (Hannity and Ingraham for sure; about Rush I’m not so sure). He and John McCain have become fast friends.

The dangers of Mitt Romney’s presence on the ticket, both to party and country, are almost impossible to underestimate.

The comprehensive case made against him by Mass Resistance in 2006 (”The Mitt Romney Deception“) made that obvious to anyone who reviewed it. The even more comprehensive case resulting from what Romney said and did during the 2007-2008 presidential primary campaign, along with the ever more obvious problems he left behind in Massachusetts, closed the deal, and closed the door on Romney’s immediate presidential ambitions.

That door must remain closed permanently.

Events that have occurred in the past 60 days or so, plus at least one other in the coming few days, all of which are directly tied to Romney’s flawed tenure as Massachusetts Governor, should erase any doubts that might remain.

If John McCain chooses Mitt Romney as his running mate, the Arizona senator’s chances of losing the election go up exponentially. If McCain somehow still prevails, an Objectively Unfit man will be in the second-highest office in the land.

This is totally unacceptable madness.

In the coming days, I will lay out the case against Mitt Romney as Vice President. The incurable problems with Romney are political, policy-related, personal, and professional.

The inescapable conclusion at the end of the series will be this: Not only should Mitt Romney not be nominated as John McCain’s Veep, he must get out of public life before he does further damage to our country and its institutions. Now.

I can tell you that a conservative legend has, in effect, renounced his earlier support of Romney and, in effect, without naming Romney, reiterated that renunciation just in the past few days. More on that is coming.

In the meantime, here are key blasts from the past for those who need to learn something now:
- Feb. 3 — Duncan Hunter Has Raised the National Security Alarm Over Mitt Romney. So Where Is the Scrutiny?
- Jan. 31 — WSJ Op-Ed: RomneyCare Is Life-Threatening CoerciveCare
- Jan. 24 — The Bob Taft vs. Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney ‘Face-off’
- Jan. 10 — Mitt Romney Calls Gregg Jackson ‘Delusional’; What Does That Make Romney?
- Jan. 7 — Unfit Mitt’s Economic Performance as MA Gov Makes Mike Dukakis Look Good
- Dec. 17, 2007 — Myth Romney: On Reagan, Hyde and Abortion, His History Rewrites Are Virtually Smears
- Dec. 6 — The NY Times’s Accidental Journalism Reveals the Full Scope of Mitt Romney’s Same-Sex Marriage Deception, and His Unfitness to Be President
- Nov. 26 — Romney, the Courts, and the Constitutions — Index to Posts and ‘Cliff’s Notes’ Explanations

It’s here at Pajamas Media.

Here’s my tease (appetizer, if you will) for the column:

In a proposal that is stunning in both its ignorance and arrogance, a South-Central Los Angeles politician wants to place a moratorium on the construction of new fast-food restaurants in her area.

What is unfortunately not nearly as surprising is how Washington Post reporter Karl Vick let some huge, uh, whoppers go by without challenge when he covered this development.

It will go up at BizzyBlog on Friday morning (link won’t work until then) under the title “Oh (Big) Brother: LA Pol Wants New Fast-Food Outlet Halt; WaPo Reporter Eats It Up.”

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UPDATE: Mary Katharine Ham was on this on Monday at the Examiner. Well, so was I, except there was editing and review time from above. :–>

I haven’t written much on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac yet, because I’ve covered it and basically predicted it previously, and because I knew someone would put out a better column more quickly than I could.

First, here are excerpts from that better column, by Arnold Kling at Pajamas Media (bold is mine):

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are known as government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) because they were created by the government and have enjoyed special regulatory privileges. However, they are both privately owned, with shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Fannie Mae was created during the Depression, as an institution that would purchase mortgage loans. At the time, many regional banks failed, and Fannie Mae was like a giant national bank specializing in home mortgages.

Freddie Mac was created in 1970, to address a different problem. California was chronically short of mortgage money, and other states’ lending institutions had excess capital but were precluded by law from lending across state lines. Freddie Mac was chartered to create a “secondary mortgage market,” which would allow a mortgage lender in one state to purchase securities backed by mortgages originated by other lenders in other states. To do so, Freddie Mac guaranteed repayment of the loans.

Neither Freddie Mac nor Fannie Mae originates mortgage loans. As a home buyer, you will never deal directly with a GSE to obtain a loan. Instead, the GSEs buy mortgage loans that are originated by other firms, including banks and mortgage bankers.

….. Congress and regulators gave the GSEs a regulatory advantage in purchasing investment-quality loans, meaning loans to highly-qualified borrowers making substantial down payments (20 percent of the value of the home to avoid having to pay for mortgage insurance, or 10 percent of the value of the home if additional private mortgage insurance was obtained). Through regulatory differences, primarily in the form of capital requirements, banks were put at a disadvantage relative to the GSEs when it came to holding investment-quality loans.

However, the GSEs have recently suffered large credit losses on loans that were not of investment quality. These low-down-payment loans were similar to the subprime mortgage loans that fueled the boom and bust cycle in housing. It is not clear why the GSEs chose to purchase these loans, since they are outside of the GSE charters. One story has it that they were afraid of losing market share. Another story I have heard is that the GSEs were under pressure from Congress to do more to provide funds for “affordable housing,” and the GSEs interpreted this as requiring more high-risk lending.

Stop the tape, so to speak.

Fan and Fred looked to expand its mission, as government agencies or government-backed entities usually do. Because going to riskier, low down-payment loans was “outside of their charter,” I think it’s fair to ask if it was also illegal. In terms of why they did this, I choose the “affordable housing” pressures.

When real businesses go to far afield into areas they aren’t familiar with and fail, the market punishes the owners. This means that owners usually know better than to let their managers go too far outside their expertise. But when government agencies or government-backed entities do this, all too often, as is the case with Fan and Fred, there’s no penalty. Instead, there’s a bailout.

Back to Kling, who refers to a former member of the vice-presidential search committee of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (link within excerpt is in original; bolds are mine) who has, like so many others, been thrown under the bus:

In hindsight, Freddie and Fannie were allowed to grow too large. They used political connections to fend off any attempt to rein them in, as can be seen in a 1997 story on James Johnson, then-chairman of Fannie.

The plan that Treasury Secretary Paulson announced on Sunday appears designed to shore up the GSEs and to return to the status quo prior to the recent loss of confidence by investors. In fact, however, I think it is unrealistic and undesirable to return to the status quo.

….. In my opinion, the playing field should be leveled as soon as possible so that banks can begin to buy assets from the GSE’s. Let the banks feed off the carcasses of Freddie and Fannie, just as Freddie and Fannie once fed off the carcasses of the S&Ls.

….. I see the GSE crisis as a failure of central planning. The GSEs were the victim of no one, unless you count the meddling by the Congressional meddlers whom the GSEs needed to please. Anyone could see that the GSE dominance of the mortgage market was unhealthy. But the political process was unable to get the job done. What the central planners tend to forget is that political failure is even more entrenched than market failure.

Many (although not all) of the GSEs’ enablers over the past decade have been Democrats.

….. The Treasury plan shows that the response to a failure of central planning is likely to be more central planning. Intellectually, those of us who prefer markets have a good case. Politically, we are in the process of getting steamrollered. The Treasury plan is being attached to a housing bill that was rife with corporate welfare and unsound subsidies. It ought to be vetoed, but instead it will be fast-tracked.

In other words, we’re, like, taken to the cleaners yet again.

If there’s anything to be learned from this going forward, it should be this: “No more bureacracies.” Not health care. Not energy crap and trade (not a typo). Not “industrial development.” Forget it. What government effort besides the military has ever worked as intended, or even if it has sort of worked, hasn’t cost exponentially more than intended?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Now, here are selected previous posts on the Fan and Fred, with occasional selected quotes.

(more…)

From Waterford, Wisconsin (video is at link):

July 3, 2008

An adorable little girl is alive, thanks to a Waterford police officer.

The toddler fell into a kiddie pool and was turning blue.

Her father started CPR, but an off-duty police officer took over and saved the girl’s life.

The girl’s parents are calling their daughter’s survival a miracle.

She wasn’t breathing for several minutes, but help from a neighbor, who is a police officer, saved her life.

Nineteen month old Ava Walters is a typical toddler. She sucks her thumb and plays with her older sister, but the fact that she’s able to do that is anything but typical.

Just two days ago, she fell into a kiddie pool and stopped breathing.

“For me it was the worse possible experience you could ever imagine. When my sister pulled her out of the water she was blue,” Sean Walters said.

Sean immediately started doing CPR, but was panicking. His sister ran next door to get help from off-duty Waterford police officer Jimmy Hecht, who took over.

“All of the sudden she made a few gasps and she started to cough, then she started to cry. It was a pretty wonderful thing,” Hecht said.

Paramedics rushed little Ava to the hospital, but her parents still didn’t know if she would survive.

“I just felt pure and utter horror. I can’t describe it any other way. I thought I lost her,” Heather Walters said.

….. Heather can’t thank Jimmy enough for saving Ava, but believes divine intervention played a role.

…..

Go here for the rest of the story.