Tag Archives: political parties

The Campaign and Mitt Romney

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With this post, I’ll begin a short series of posts consisting of my analyses of the Republican candidates for the nomination for President.  Keep in mind that you’re getting these analyses for free; it’s entirely possible that you’ll getting your money’s worth.  The structure of this series will consist of, first, a collection of posts concerning what I don’t like about the candidates, then I’ll have a series of what I do like about them.  I’ll conclude with my endorsement of a single candidate.  To be sure, my endorsement will have enormous value for the lucky pick; he’ll be able to take it to a famous coffee chain with a few bucks and get a truly adequate cup of coffee.

With Governor Christie confirming that he’s a man of his word and will honor his commitment to his fellow New Jerseyites by remaining their governor for the rest of his term, the Republican list of candidates is narrowing and sorting out.  The serious candidates are beginning to look like Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry.  Other members of the field, who once had a chance, include Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and some others, but they’ve all made too many gaffes, or exposed too much ignorance in key areas, or have too much baggage, or simply haven’t been able to gain enough traction to be taken seriously.  Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, I hope, will be back in 2012 or 2016; they deserve a more serious look than the current season is giving them.  There’s something to like about each of those top three, though, and something to dislike.

I’ll kick off this series with a discussion of ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

There are two key areas in Romney’s history that give me considerable disgruntlement.  His position on the environment is…uncertain.  He favors, apparently, cap and trade limits to carbon emissions, and so to economic growth—based on pseudoscience from anthropomorphic climate warming priests—until he turned against them.  He stood outside a coal-fired power plant and accused it of, if not outright murder, at least of killing people.   In an Obama-esque blame shift, Romney insists that his carbon emissions limits program was actually the work of prior administrations, but here’s what he did on his watch to block them: “These carbon emission limits will provide real and immediate progress in the battle to improve our environment,” then-Governor Romney said in a December 2005 press release, in which he also bragged that Massachusetts was then the first state to set CO2 limits.  He worked for a regional agreement among nearby states set up an area-wide carbon cap and trade régime, until he bailed on it in 2005 when he decided not to run for governor of Massachusetts anymore and instead look for the Presidency.

Health care.  Governor Romney insists that Romneycare is right for Massachusetts, but it’s not a national plan, and cannot be: each state is unique and has its own environment.  That last part is pretty good, but let’s look at the first part.  Was it right for Massachusetts?  Romney insists that he’s enrolled more citizens of Massachusetts in health insurance coverage than had been “possible” before Romneycare.  But at what cost?  He claims that every citizen of Massachusetts, while required by state government to buy health insurance, does so in a competitive market.  Set aside any argument about whether the State’s insurance markets truly are competitive—it’s irrelevant.  The problem is that we have a government requiring a free citizen of the United States to turn his property to government purposes, rather than for that citizen’s purposes.  We have a government dictating to a free citizen what he must buy, solely as a condition of his status as a citizen of Massachusetts.  This may be legal for a State to do to its citizens under the 10th Amendment, but it’s still wrong.

On the matter of Obamacare, most of the candidates have vowed to repeal it at the earliest opportunity and to work “from day one” to do so.  Romney, too, has vowed to defang Obamacare on his first day in office: via Executive Orders granting every state waivers against compliance with the state mandates organic to Obamacare.   But these  Orders will leave intact the individual mandate, taxpayer-funded exchange subsidies, a huge taxpayer-expensed Medicaid expansion, the robbery from Medicare, and Obamacare death panels.  In fact, while every other Republican candidate has vowed to push repeal from the start, Romney has not.  He’ll only implement those Executive orders (which any subsequent President can rescind), while he’ll “try real hard” to get repeal.  He won’t try at the expense of pushing a vote in the Senate, though.  Why is he avoiding a fight in the Senate?  Because a Democrat minority might remain strong enough to maintain a filibuster.  It seems that Romney will surrender control of the Senate to a Democratic Party minority, rather than fight for repeal.  Certainly it’s true that one should pick ones fights carefully, but there comes a time when you have to fight even when you know you’ll lose because the principle is that important.  If you don’t have any principles worth fighting for, what principles do you have?

Progressives and Democracy

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The ProgressivesDemocrats have long insisted that they Know Better than mere Americans, and so we should just sit down, shut up, and follow their guidance.  “Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance,” said Franklin Roosevelt in his 1932 nomination acceptance speech.  “I think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money,” said Candidate Obama.  Even your estate is better off in the hands of the government—and furthermore, as ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner insists, we shouldn’t even care: “You’ll be dead,” he insisted in a national television interview.

We have, now a governor, Bev Perdue (Dem, NC), saying with a straight face,

I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that….  You want people who don’t worry about the next election.

Of course her aides quickly spoke up and said this was just a joke, just hyperbole to make a point.  And perhaps she was only making a point, but what point?

Here’s the larger backdrop in which the Progressives (dang—I keep confusing them) Democrats are operating and against which Gov. Perdue’s statement was made.  The Democrats in the Wisconsin and Indiana State Houses both openly attacked our democratic foundation by going AWOL in mid-session, preventing their respective State governments from doing the job they’d been elected to do—from functioning at all—on the premise that if they couldn’t have their way, the good citizens of these States couldn’t have democracy.  A critical part of Obamacare is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)—the death panel—consisting of “experts” who will dictate cuts to Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, rationing health care in accordance with their own criteria, not the doctor’s or hospital’s decisions in conjunction with the patient in question.  These Democrats’ death panels are almost without oversight: the panel’s decisions must be positively overruled by Congress, our representatives, rather than be positively accepted.  The Obama Congress created an entity known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which is totally outside the oversight of Congress, getting its funding from Treasury essentially on demand.  This unaccountable entity has powers to dictate to banks, and to the mom and pop grocery store, the terms under which, for instance, they might offer credit to a customer.  The Democrats in the present United States Senate threatened us all with a Federal government shutdown and proximately with denial of funds to FEMA so thousands of Americans suffering ongoing emergencies from natural disasters like Hurricane Irene and flooding along the Mississippi River would go unaided solely because these Democrats weren’t going to be allowed to continue their profligate spending to which they’re so addicted.  The list goes on, but the backdrop for Gov. Perdue’s “suggestion” is plain.

Perdue’s rationale for this?  It’s in her statement:  “…tell them we won’t hold it against them….  You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”  Umm, Governor, that’s sort of the point of democracy, including—especially—the republican democracy that we have.  These folks work for us; we’re not hanging around just to give them something to do.  They do need to be worrying about the next election; they do need to be worrying about their jobs.  We sent them to Washington (and your constituents sent their representatives—and you—to the NC state house) with specific instructions.  If they don’t, or won’t, do what we told them to do, they need to get gone at the next election.  But a Progressive (dang!) governor doesn’t seem to get this.

Just whose side are these…Democrats…on?  Besides their own?

Update: Here’s Gov Perdue in all her glory, courtesy of The Daily Caller via PowerLine: Gov Perdue  You decide whether she was joking, or hyperbolizing….