Mitt Romney doesn't want to talk about his record as governor

by  Jed Lewison   

There was something missing from Mitt Romney's nomination-clinching speech on Tuesday night: any reference whatsoever to his track record as governor of Massachusetts. In fact, he didn't even mention that he had been governor.

Not even once.

During the most important speech Romney's given so far, he didn't say a single word about the one time in his life that he's ever been elected to anything. That's rather extraordinary admission by omission that he doesn't see his record as something that he can run on.

It's not hard to see why Romney feels that way. Massachusetts ranked 47th in the nation in job creation under his leadership and he left the state with a massive debt. If he'd run for a second term, he would have been defeated, with good reason.

Romney's biggest legitimate accomplishment was Romneycare, which President Obama took national. But now Romney is against Obamacare, so he can't talk about Romneycare.

Romney's failure to mention his gubernatorial experience really was a telling moment in his campaign, a vivid illustration of the fact that he believes his campaign depends entirely on convincing voters that President Obama has been a failure. As Greg Sargent has been arguing, Romney's approach to that task has been to blame Obama for the failures of the Bush years—to make the public forget that President Obama inherited an economy in freefall.

As depressing as it would be if Romney were able to pull off such an argument, I don't see it happening. His argument is transparently false, and neither the Obama campaign nor grassroots progressives are going to let him get away with making it. As tiring and annoying as it can be to constantly battle back Romney's lies, it's not particularly difficult—because the truth is not on his side.

I suspect that deep down, Mitt Romney knows just how tenuous his position really is. If he were really confident in his own claim to the presidency, he wouldn't be trying to blame Obama for Bush. He'd be out there selling his own achievements. The fact that he's not tells us everything.

Originally posted to The Jed Report on Thu Apr 26, 2012

Also republished by Massachusetts Kosmopolitans and Daily Kos.

 

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Governor,Politics,Current Events

CISPA UPDATE: House Makes Changes To The Bill

House making changes to CISPA, but it's still too dangerous

WED APR 25, 2012 By Joan McCarter

EFF

Growing opposition to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has forced sponsor Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) to make some amendments that he says will secure 218 votes. The vote on the legislation has also been postponed a day, and is expected to be held Friday—unless we stop it, like we stopped SOPA, because the proposed changes aren't enough to answer privacy concerns.

"A lot of them aren't substantive," Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU, told CNET. "They just put the veneer of privacy protections on the bill, and will garner more support for the bill even without making substantial changes."

There are amendments from Democrats that would make the bill less onerous, but still aren't adequate. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), has an amendment that would prohibit monitoring of protestors, but not other Americans. Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) has one that would make Homeland Security destroy personally identifiable data after a year has elapsed, but doesn't at all restrict the collection of that data in the first place. These amendments aren't bad, but they aren't good enough.

None of the amendments strike out the most dangerous part of the bill, where it says "notwithstanding any other provision of law," government agencies can collect our private data. That "notwithstanding" means this law trumps every other privacy law, federal and state, on wiretaps, educational records, medical privacy and more. That's unacceptable. And, of course, the bill still doesn't allow for the kind of regulation that could actually matter to national security: protecting key infrastructure like electrical grids and water systems from cyber threats.

Please, tell your representative to vote no on CISPA.

Technorati Tags: CISPA,House Intelligence Committee,The Internet,Privacy Rights,SOPA,CyberSecurity,Current Events