What Romney's Five News Interviews Reveal

Sat Jul 14, 2012

Here is something for Republicans to start worrying about with respect to their candidate:

Mitt Romney, seeking to quell a growing media storm over his basic premise for seeking the presidency, took to the air yesterday and did not settle the storm. He answered no questions directly. He continued to repeat things that are currently being debunked. He refused any further disclosure to clear things up. He didn't either deflect the matter or settle it satisfactorily. Furthermore, HE LOOKED WEAK, by repeatedly begging his opponent to stop attacking him.

This is a disaster for Republicans.

The usual things that fix problems like this, the ole Clinton sit-down interview ... the Bush "so what?" swagger ... the Obama "teachable moment" speech ... Mitt Romney deployed none of that. What this reveals is a candidate who is simply unprepared to operate at a presidential level in the modern era. Mitt Romney, probably by virtue of a lifetime spent in high finance, does not have the keen sixth sense of politics that a serious presidential contender has by either nature (Clinton, Reagan) or by practice (Obama, Bush). Mitt Romney has arrived at the presidential ring by two circumstances:

1. No heavyweight Republican wished to run.

2. A campaign with a one trick pony: negative ads.

Even with those two gifted advantages he had trouble winning.

Republicans have a good case to make as to why they should be running away with this election, considering the economic circumstances President Obama has to accept responsibility for. The caveat to that is ... who? Who will beat him? You can't beat something with nothing. They've chosen Mitt Romney, who appears not up to the task of big boy presidential campaigning. He can only win if his opponent is a lightweight and he has an overwhelming advantage in resources. That is not the case with Barack Obama. Just as it was not the case with Ted Kennedy. The polls are consistently showing a large majority expect Obama to win. That means even people who plan to vote for Romney don't expect him to win. With declining economic news and a nation that feels it is way off track, Romney still can't seem to get ahead of Obama.

Republicans need to take a good look at their candidate's performance this week and realize something: Mitt Romney is simply not up to the task of unseating an incumbent president.

Originally posted to Triple-B in the Building on Sat Jul 14, 2012

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,2012 Elections,The Republican Party,GOP,Current Events

A Mitt Romney Government

   Here is another reason, out of thousands, to not cast a vote for Romney.

Mitt Romney is promising (threatening?) that if elected president, he will not fill his Cabinet with these punk-ass academics and politicians. No, no, no. If you want to run a government to the exclusive benefit of Wall Street and corporate executives, then that's who you put on the Cabinet. Why have a middle man between Wall Street and the president?

"It would be a very different lineup than the president has assembled. His team is almost entirely void of anyone with any experience in the business sector, in the private sector, that understands how the economy works," Romney told Medved. "I will assuredly have members of my team who have had experience in the real world, in the private sector… It will have a number of people who have been out working real jobs so they understand what it takes to keep real jobs in America and to have real jobs coming back."

The only thing that is real to Mitt Romney is the profit motive. The idea that government should maybe have some motives other than private profit for the wealthiest is foreign and illegitimate to him. And in many cases this "real world" experience that Romney so valorizes comes from Wall Street, a sector in which a new survey finds that 24 percent of executives "said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful" and 30 percent "said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law."

It makes sense, though. If Romney wants to demolish environmental and safety regulations, why not stock his administration people who have spent their careers avoiding and lobbying against those regulations? If he wants to break unions, why not have the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board run by executives who've spent their careers trying to break unions? If he wants to gut consumer protections and constraints on Wall Street's ability to wreck the economy again, why wouldn't he be guided by the people who did all that the last time around? The policies Romney is proposing and the people's he's proposing to implement them are entirely consistent. And both are aimed at destroying the economy as people who have to work for a living experience it.

       Posted to Daily Kos Labor on Tue Jul 10, 2012

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Bain Capitol,NLRB,2012 Elections,Wall Street,Current Events,Politics