Scott Brown: Romney’s much cooler now than he used to be
posted at 8:25 pm on January 29, 2010 by Allahpundit
Thus prompting the question: How uncool did he used to be?
He’s changed, he’s changed. You know, he’s actually — before he was an outsider coming in and he was, you know, kind of, you know, stiff. But he’s actually, like, funny, he’s like — when he was at my events he was cracking jokes, when we were on the bus — I was like, who is this guy? He’s really kind of, I think, settled into his role kind of being the elder statesman of the party and everything he went through as president. It’s kind of, and once again it’s my opinion but he’s really a different guy than I knew when he was here, and I certainly appreciate everything he did for me. And it wasn’t a lot, he was just there as the initial — you know, ‘here’s a check, go get em!’ And that says a lot, you know, when I signed my contract with the team, you know — I worried about, how am I gonna pay for this? And he was one of the first guys that helped me towards that obligation. And I remember those people who took a chance.
Not only did Mitt help bankroll him, but a lot of the Brown campaign staff overlaps with the Romney campaign staff. Meanwhile, a new PPP poll shows Palin’s favorables down to 47/45 — in Alaska. Via the Right Scoop, here are KP and Krauthammer from tonight’s “Special Report” both listing Mitt as the man to beat on the Republican side. Exit question: If ObamaCare goes down and Mitt pledges, as he can and must, that he’d never support a RomneyCare program for the entire United States, is it time for a second look at Romney?
Blowback
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Really? Does the name Gingrich come to mind?
You guys are funny. THE most competent and articulate politician, currently or formerly, is Newt Gingrich.
Can you honestly say that Palin would be able to hold her own in a debate with Newt on conservative ideas? Seriously?
You guys are too much. Really.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 10:59 AM
Yeah. These days it comes to mind sometimes in connection with the name “Scozzafava”.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 11:01 AM
Wow. That’s insightful. The liberal base could get Chuck Schumer the nomination too, but he wouldn’t win the national election.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 11:02 AM
Watch and learn something…
http://www.davidhorowitztv.com/restorationweekend/rw2009/280-newtgingrich
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 11:04 AM
Excellent. And when Gingrich endorses Palin and starts campaigning for her, we can look forward to his prodigious political talents put to best use.
rrpjr on January 31, 2010 at 11:08 AM
Clearly, you did not watch and absorb that 5-part series.
Newt Gingrich from that series (2009): “We have to design an argument so large that when we win it, we crush the left. I am totally opposed to base mobilization, narrow-focused campaigns.”
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 11:27 AM
Newt Gingrich, also from that series (2009):
“You can govern as a center-right majority, and you can bring together an amazing range of people, and we can break Pelosi…and we can break Reid…and we can replace Obama and he can be a one-term president exactly like Jimmy Carter. But it requires building a national majority.
Or we can feel really good and really narrow and decide, boy, are we virtuous. If that happens, Pelosi is Speaker for life and Obama will get re-elected. I think it’s that simple.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 11:40 AM
Timesonline calls Brown a “former model”. No mention of State Senate or any other experience.
elclynn on January 31, 2010 at 11:42 AM
Has anyone noticed the chatter last week about Paul Ryan, and there is not much talk on this thread about Ryan? Just curious.
If ALL Palin ever had on her resume was being a Mom; I would vote for her in a heart beat!!!!!! With all the family has been through, (including Bristol’s pregnancy), they are still together and a loving, forgiving family at that! What an example. On the other hand, we have the Obamas who have done exactly what with an aunt that lived in poverty, a brother in a hut, and a sister who is rarely if ever around. How has Obama treated his elderly grandmother in Kenya?
Sometimes the most obvious goes overlooked. Once upon a time the way a man treated his family and friends is how people formed their opinions of him. It was the their resume so to speak. I wonder if now would be a good time to employ a bit of old fashioned values towards who the GOP places at the top of the ticket? Just curious.
freeus on January 31, 2010 at 11:58 AM
How bout we build a party around policy goals, not in opposition to politicians? How about we really elect people who will do what they promise? We used to have that virtuous feeling. Now I just am supposed to feel shrewd because I helped some liars win the power to do whatever they want. Boy did we sure show those democrats!
Chris_Balsz on January 31, 2010 at 1:07 PM
That’s what I was thinking circa December 2007.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 1:37 PM
Talking about “crushing the left” combined with ignoring the base is a little contradictory.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 1:39 PM
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 11:40 AM
Thanks. You’ve made me think about how Palin represents a paradox, and why that may be the key to her appeal. I’m beginning to understand how on one hand she represents a political evolution out of the “Gingrich model”, (or rather the old dialectic of political conflict and calculation represented by all of the prospective candidates), and on the other, she doesn’t serve as a representation at all — she just is. This “just is” quality is key.
The convulsions we’re going through as a country (ironically triggered by Obama, who was elected in the hope of avoiding these convulsions) are in my opinion leading toward both a national revitalization of the idea of the individual (the shattering of the collective “narrative” so successfully promulgated by the mainstream liberal culture for so long) and a new narrative, or rather a non-narrative narrative, formed by the mass of individuals driven toward the “authentic.” In a way, John Edward’s catastrophic meltdown has also underlined this phenomenon of mutating narratives. Edwards has become the poster boy of political and personal artifice for our time, a man whose levels of despicable phoniness seem to have no end, and his disintegration seems prophetic somehow.
The immovable force of Obama’s increasingly obvious inauthenicity is running into the irresistible object of the people (and their reclamation of an American life, or freedom or self-will or something that goes beyond our parties or our political preferences). This is all happening unnoticed by the arbiters of our culture, the media. Of course, they would be the last to notice. But it is happening.
Palin’s sense of self, her non-belligerence and non-calculation (she would never say anything like “crush the Left” or attend seminars on how supposedly to do so), is coming into a merging orbit with the cultural zeitgeist that is both rejecting the old dynamic (now at fever pitch in Washington) and personally craving authenticity almost regardless of political inclination. One can envision the ongoing standard critique against Palin as a right-wing boob and chillbilly and religious nut in the popular liberal culture as nearing a point of imploding blowback, as even now liberals like Camille Paglia and Elaine Lafferty and Hill Buzz (the gay men’s group) come to appreciate her unaffected integrity and common-sense, but most of all her underlying and indomitable – yet certainly imperfect – authenticity. The fact she is a woman matters, especially in view of the national need for “healing” (only rising in next few years), but even more so exactly to the degree that she doesn’t try to exploit this fact (as liberal women often do). Again, a non-strategy that adds to her authenticity.
I believe she stands alone as the figure who can take on all this fractious energy and meliorate it into something healthy and useful for the nation. People like Gingrich, Romney, Huckabee, et al, can really only either avoid it or repel it or aggravate it or bury it under more piles of posturing or promises. They can’t do anything else — they are by both self-definition and the definition of others fixed within the political sphere of the familiar (not always their fault, but the way it is). Only Palin seems to be able to absorb it, process it and shock it into something else. Even the fact she is hated more intensely by some seems to add to the dimension of her persona, and makes her more compelling to those who once tacitly accepted the premise of her unfitness or stupidity. None of this would have been possible of course without her book and her reemergence on her own terms. But that, too, is just Palin.
Of course there are many other factors that go into a presidential race. My only point that Palin, by almost not trying to run a campaign or form a conscious strategy or posit theories on how to “crush the Left” with brilliant ideas, but by simply being who she is and playing a role in the national conversation with a voice startlingly clear and simple, offers the truly best “strategy” to help America, and thus disarm and defeat the Left.
rrpjr on January 31, 2010 at 1:44 PM
Romney is the man.
therightwinger on January 31, 2010 at 1:49 PM
It’s a focus on partisanship rather than ideology. Obama and Pelosi are career Democrats, so they’re the bad guys. And they’re not very popular. But they vote for things that are broadly popular.
What if everybody who votes Republican, keeps voting Republican, while the Republicans do Democrat things? Then surely some Democrat voters could throw over their unpopular leaders for Republican politicians.
Then the Democrat politicians are defeated!
It’s surefire. The problem comes in when selfish Republican voters identify with virture and purity and ideas instead of simply looking to defeat Democrat politicians with liberal handouts. These narrow-minded people have got to be bullied into voting Republican and then shutting the hell up.
Chris_Balsz on January 31, 2010 at 1:54 PM
The thing is, if Newt really meant CRUSHING the left, then the base would be right there. Instead, I suspect he throws out such terms as a bone to the base, while at the same time envisioning working with that left he professes to despise.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 1:57 PM
You can translate that roughly as “Boy, I’m still hurting from being called Satan for all those years…”
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 2:03 PM
This non-news thread is so much red meat that HA left it up the top for 2 days.
bayview on January 31, 2010 at 2:45 PM
Strawman. Gingrich did not say ignore the base. He said: “We have to design an argument so large that when we win it, we crush the left.”
His contention is that there is an element of the conservative base that’s only concerned about litmus tests, so that’s why he said that he’s “…opposed to base mobilization, narrow-focused campaigns.” Meaning, being short-sighted and myopic will not get you elected nationally and by the broad base of voters.
He went on to clarify is position by talking about alienating other groups of folks who are moderate, rational and some-what right-leaning people who need to be included because we “…can govern as a center-right majority, and you can bring together an amazing range of people, and we can break Pelosi…and we can break Reid…and we can replace Obama and he can be a one-term president exactly like Jimmy Carter. But it requires building a national majority.
Or we can feel really good and really narrow and decide, boy, are we virtuous. If that happens, Pelosi is Speaker for life and Obama will get re-elected. I think it’s that simple.”
The difference is simple. You want virtuousness and don’t care how that will eliminate a good chunk of the voting block that will help a conservative candidate get elected, and he sees the political reality and a realistic way to pull together the majority of Americans to a center-right area of the political spectrum, thus releasing us from the clutches of Reid, Pelosi, Obama, et al.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 2:54 PM
Why? His term as governor is a qualification. But as I have said repeatedly he has always opposed a Federally mandated program. The way some commenters carry on about this you’d think he intended to force health care on every citizen in the U.S. through a Federal bureaucracy – (like Obama, Reid and Pelosi have conspired to do). Those assertions are disingenuous at best.
Buy Danish on January 31, 2010 at 2:59 PM
:rolls eyes:
Palin being hated by Libs is to be expected. So what?
What she needs to be concerned with is being taken seriously by Independents. That’s the bottom line. If she cannot overcome the credibility gap she has with Independent voters, she will not win a national election. Most Independents that I have heard speak or write about her say basically the same thing…she’s a nice enough gal but they don’t feel comfortable enough voting for her because they do not believe that she’s the most competent or best person for the job.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 3:22 PM
That’s Mitt Romney urging a federal mandate. That’s Mitt Romney volunteering to help spread the Massachusetts formula around the United States.
Some of us don’t support Mitt Romney because we paid attention to what Mitt Romney said, instead of what his supporters insist we imagine he stands for.
Chris_Balsz on January 31, 2010 at 3:41 PM
And you don’t want virtue…we got that a long time ago.
“just good enough” isn’t. If you don’t get that, we don’t help preserve the United States through the coming debacle by empowering your party.
Chris_Balsz on January 31, 2010 at 3:44 PM
He also said, in the quote you provided, “I am totally opposed to base mobilization, narrow-focused campaigns”.
So, maybe you’re right. Don’t ignore the base, just take them for granted.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 3:47 PM
That’s what campaigns are for, if she should choose to run. You and lots of other Romney supporters seem to cherish this belief that the impressions of whatever candidate are set in stone on one occasion forever and ever. If that were true, their guy has absolutely no hope either, considering the fact that he couldn’t come out on top in the primaries with a weak field.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 3:53 PM
Another strawman.
I never said I did not want virtue. I agree with Newt that if you want to continue to be one and two issue party and push candidates into the national scene, thereby isolating a large block of voters who may have voted for you, because you believe you’re being virtuous for standing your ground, then fine. Be happy as the permanent minority national party. You can then sit there and complain or be happy in all of your virtuousness. Have at it…
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 3:54 PM
What “one or two issues”? Where do you draw the line, and isn’t the act of drawing that line “exclusionary”? How did Reagan “moderate” in 1980? 1984? How “moderate” was Newt in 1994? He helped engineer a takeover of the House by being fairly narrow.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 3:58 PM
I’m not yet a Romney supporter. I think, so far, he’s the most adult candidate there is for the position in any party, but I have not voted for or contributed to the man’s campaign.
You guys seem to want touchy-feely populism, and that’s fine. I believe it’s time for an experienced, competent and articulate adult to run the country. You believe it’s Palin. I’m not sure who it is at the moment– it may be Romney or Rick Perry or someone else entirely–but I don’t believe Palin is the most qualified or most competent person to handle that job at this point in time.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 4:01 PM
A new video has finally surfaced that shows the introduction Romney gave for Scott Brown for his victory speech. It’s a local news recording because Fox News had speakers talking over the introuctions.
Find it at this link, along with a video showing Brown giving Romney special thanks for his help during the campaign:
http://mittromneycentral.com/2010/01/30/video-mitt-romney-introduces-scott-brown-at-victory-party/
Nate G. on January 31, 2010 at 4:03 PM
Abortion is the primary one. And it’s the one that turns off most Independents. Most Independents do not care about an issue that is essentially a private matter — just like libertarians.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 4:04 PM
The base also needs some smelling salts of their own. Time to wake up, folks! Alienating the broader voting populace will not get you elected.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 4:07 PM
Ah, so you apparently agree that there is a credibility gap with Palin and Independents — right?
Gee, I wonder what their misgivings and hesitations in voting for her are?
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 4:10 PM
You’re the one who keeps using that word; trying to invest it with some negative connotation. Here’s some more apolitical words for you to sneer at: sincerity, commitment, perseverance, integrity. You don’t HAVE to be a two-faced Machiavellian weasel to get ahead. Try being honest about what you want.
We stand for policy across election cycles. Wrap your head around that if you can.
Certainly not by turning to liars to represent us.
So you want a pro-choice party? No, of course not…what you want is a pro-life party that doesn’t mind the status quo, so everbody can vote for it.
Chris_Balsz on January 31, 2010 at 4:21 PM
Romney has a credibility gap with conservatives. He’s not going to win only with independents and a few disaffected Democrats here and there.
B.s. Every winning GOP presidential candidate since 1980 has been pro-life. Name the last national election anyway in which abortion was front and center.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 4:26 PM
Actually, No_Balsz, I prefer the libertarian point of view. Get government OUT of our bedroom and private lives. Take away any federal funding of abortion and let the states decide.
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. Apparently you subscribe to this line of thinking.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 4:56 PM
So, they’re even then. Neither candidate is worthy. I can live with that more than you can live with the fact the Palin isn’t ready for prime-time.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 5:01 PM
No, they’re not. Palin has a base of support that Romney doesn’t have.
Both are worthy.
Isn’t ready for prime-time in what way? Because the NYT says so?
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 5:13 PM
And the base keeps pushing harder and harder on that issue. I’m telling you guys, you are gonna really alienate a large voting block. If we do not get serious about rectifying our economic situation, no other “issue” will matter.
Reagan won in 1980 on economics. Pure and simple. He won in 1984 because Mondale was the weakest opponent since McGovern. GHW Bush won by riding on the coattails of Reagan and having a weak opponent in Dukakis. Perot split the vote in 1992 with a lot of the Independents — yep, Independents who don’t care about private matters.
Those Perot voters are still around. They’re Independents and Tea Party participants. They’re tired of the same political positions being fought over and over again by the right and the left.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 5:16 PM
Isn’t ready for prime-time because she has a credibility problem with Independent voters. Is this concept hard for you to process?
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 5:19 PM
I am honest in what I want and what I believe in. I used the term virtuous because it epitomizes Gingrich’s point about short-sighted and myopic political activists — whether they be on the left or on the right.
How about the term sanctimonious? How about the term self-righteous? These terms can also apply to those who believe they have the answers to everything as well.
Niccolo Machiavelli was an intelligent man who gave pragmatic and realistic advice to nobles, princes and kings, and if you think that qualifies him as a Janus-faced weasel then so be it. We wasn’t a dreamer and an idealist.
Who’s we? Do you have a mouse in your pocket? Are you not speaking for yourself or are you on someone’s payroll? In addition, what policy or policies would that be?
Who are the liars?
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 5:36 PM
Have not seen it yet.
Those would at least match what’s in the dictionary. “Virtuous” doesn’t mean “self-righteous”.
And that is why you told me to go sniff the smelling salts–because you don’t know what to do.
I think the Newt dream that Republican candidates can adopt Democrat policy goals, and not lose right-wing voters, is pie-in-the-sky.
Too late for that trick, you already made clear you were addressing The Base.
Why do you try these semantic and rhetorical tricks? Because you don’t have much substance to argue about. You fully intend to create a majority party that simply will not decrease spending, curtail entitlements, reduce federal responsibilities–and yet you want the votes of people who desire those policies. 2005 all over again.
Gingrich, for one, because he keeps calling himself “conservative” when the mood strikes him, and then expanding federal responsibility to try and beat democrats. “Conservative’ is an ideology, not a party.
Chris_Balsz on January 31, 2010 at 5:55 PM
No, they aren’t.
But Mondale and Dukakis, weak as they were, were pro-choice.
And most of them have no problems at all with Palin’s pro-life stance. Or Romney’s for that matter. Or Perry’s. In short, your harping on the abortion issue is the real straw man here.
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 6:34 PM
There haven’t been primaries or a national campaign yet. How hard is THAT for you to process?
ddrintn on January 31, 2010 at 6:36 PM
[Video] Mitt Romney: The GOP Big Gun for 2012: http://mittromneycentral.com/2010/01/30/video-mitt-romney-the-gop-big-gun-for-2012/
dnlchisholm on January 31, 2010 at 7:09 PM
If only eanax worked as hard on Democrats…
Chris_Balsz on January 31, 2010 at 7:14 PM
+1
Mitt is a big government Republican. If you want ‘smarter socialism,’ more and better bailouts, and government healtcare, he’s your man. I want nothing to do with him.
If the GOP nominates another big government guy, be it Mittens or someone else, they’ll get no votes from my family. We’re done that crap.
james23 on January 31, 2010 at 9:48 PM
This guy earwax is arguing with himself. He’s here to plug for Romney and to dog Palin, then he writes this:
Those Perot voters are still around. They’re Independents and Tea Party participants. They’re tired of the same political positions being fought over and over again by the right and the left.
eanax on January 31, 2010 at 5:16 PM
james23 on January 31, 2010 at 10:23 PM
That’s interesting because Romney opposed the government bailout for the auto industry.
Here’s a transcript of Romney and Glenn Beck talking about the bank bailout.
Here’s what he said:
Mitt Romney argues that the bank bailouts were necessary and that Congress should have just focused on bailing out the banks.
However, Mitt Romney objected to the pork spending that went with the bailouts were unnecessary.
So, Mitt Romney isn’t for bigger government, or more bailouts or anything like that.
He isn’t for government run health care. He supports federalism in which states have the right to make thier own decisions about how to regulate and provide health care for its citizens.
So, your description of Romney as a big government, bailout loving, “smarter socialist” is just NOT TRUE.
Conservative Samizdat on January 31, 2010 at 11:38 PM
I know he is a “brother”, but look at his record.
He doesn’t raise “taxes”, he just raises fees…which is better for him because taxes you have to vote on, fees you just create.
That alone shows he is a little on the conniving side (as most politicians are), then you add the flip and flops, you add his “good ol boy” network where he protected them in the “big dig” (Bechtel), and you have another son of a famous politician, learning the ropes early and using that leverage to become “successful”.
A sharp guy, intelligent, nice man…unelectable because of his history…good cabinet prospect.
right2bright on February 1, 2010 at 10:03 AM
He supported some bailouts, so, I don’t know how it isn’t true that he likes bailouts. And I’ve posted his op-ed from July 2009 twice now. He does support federal health care. He doesn’t want single payer. He isn’t backing 50 state plans. He asked USA Today to run that for him, so I don’t know why you claim he thinks any differently.
Chris_Balsz on February 1, 2010 at 10:38 AM
Because CS is very smitten with Mitten…
Of course he supported bailouts, he does support universal health care, he raises “fees” which are the most insidious type of taxes.
You can find a speech from him on about any side of any major issue.
So CS is correct, and so are you…it just depends what speech you listen to and when he made it.
right2bright on February 1, 2010 at 10:42 AM
LMAO!
HotAir places the Romney thread on top for 4 straight days and counting, and yet Mr. RomneyCare can barely crack 400 comments. And most of them is discussing other candidates.
Enthusiasm, baby.
Norwegian on February 1, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Republicans seem to be building a center-LEFT outfit. Socially liberal; fiscally liberal–not neoKeneysian spend-cause-you-must, but not opposed to earmarks; accepting federal government responsibility for standard of living issues; preferring lower-maintenance tax credits to massive bureaucracies; open to targeted tax hikes; refusing to grow the military to meet the mission, but not peacenik; eager to play Balkan ethnopolitics; open to expanded federal Ludditism in the name of ecology.
Maybe that’s viable, Clinton did it with the DLC.
But then they expect right-wingers to vote for a Center-Left coalition cause it’s not socialist-Democrat. But we’ve got no good reason to create and maintain a second political party hostile to conservatism.
Chris_Balsz on February 1, 2010 at 11:00 AM
A preposterous claim.
Buy Danish on February 1, 2010 at 12:51 PM
Maybe you missed the list.
1. Socially liberal – gay marriage, pro-choice
2. fiscally liberal–not neoKeneysian spend-cause-you-must, but not opposed to earmarks
3. accepting federal government responsibility for standard of living issues–the Federal government should see you housed, fed, educated, insured, retired, healed whether you might afford those things or not
4. preferring lower-maintenance tax credits to massive bureaucracies — part of fiscal liberalism
5. open to targeted tax hikes — see the Kirk plan for health care
6. refusing to grow the military to meet the mission, but not peacenik– We’ll start the war with the army we have, and that better be enough
7. eager to play Balkan ethnopolitics– getting ethnic minorities on board, as ethnic minorities
8. open to expanded federal Ludditism in the name of ecology– global warming may not be real, but it’s real popular
I don’t think it preposterous that the GOP is increasinging tolerant of headliners support much of that list. Or preposterous that the items on that list are contrary to the Reagan and 1994 revolutions towards conservative govt.
Chris_Balsz on February 1, 2010 at 1:29 PM
I gave a little list of leftward turns by GOP headliners. Your Romney GMA appearance didn’t really address that. It’s interesting he’s still touting Massachusetts’ mandated insurance purchases as a great idea
Chris_Balsz on February 1, 2010 at 1:49 PM
Yes, he supported the bailout because it was necessary to prevent the total collapse of America.
What Romney didn’t support was the all the PORK spending that was inserted in the bailout.
In other words, Romney supported a very specific, focused bailout just to protect the economy. So, there’s nothing wrong with supporting the bailouts to keep the country from completely falling off the cliff.
The bailout Bush gave was just to keep the banks from collapsing which would have had a domino effect that would have rippled across the country and caused a total collapse.
Obama’s bailout however was delegated to Congress who loaded up the bill with massive pork spending.
So, Romney’s position is very simple. Bailout the banks, but no pork spending. Hence, Romney was against bailing out the auto industry because it was unnecessary and irrelevant to the goal of preventing a total economic collapse.
What’s wrong with that position and why is that bad?
Would you have preferred no bailout at all and risk a total and complete collapse of America?
Conservative Samizdat on February 1, 2010 at 2:13 PM
Oh please! You gave a list of grievances with no specific person mentioned, but since this is a Romney thread I responded accordingly. The point is that this is not what a left of center Republican sounds like. I should also mention that I agree with Mitt on Populism too.
As for him touting mandated health care, are you saying he’s pushing a Federal mandate? Because I can’t find anything to back that up. If Massachusetts wants to dump its mandate they are free to do so.
Buy Danish on February 1, 2010 at 2:25 PM
We’re talking about Romney because it’s early 2010 and it’s fun to talk about these things. But to seriously believe Romney will be the nominee is to misread everything going on around us – the essence of ordinary American-voter disgust and rising activism. Nice guy, manifestly qualified, but incapable of representing (or even understanding) the mood of our times.
rrpjr on February 1, 2010 at 2:26 PM
And it’s important to note that the “bailouts” were actually loans which are being repaid with interest. They were not gifts – like the gift to the U.A.W. union which stole from senior bond holders (which is how “social justice” works, but I digress).
Buy Danish on February 1, 2010 at 2:29 PM
Yeah well I hope the “mood” isn’t such that we end up with something more like the French Revolution than the American Revolution.
Buy Danish on February 1, 2010 at 2:38 PM
You never know…
ray on February 1, 2010 at 3:29 PM
Yes. If you’re a regular HA reader you’ve noticed a steady beat of “Our bank was OK but Treasury held a gun to our head” stories about TARP. One of the social functions of corporations is compartmentalized failure. We have a structure for dissolving them, if need be. It would have been better for AIG to fail and many other banks fail, leaving the few to consume their assets, and THEN worry about how to blow $3 trillion dollars on recovery.
Would it really have been worse than a Soviet nuclear strike? Because we didn’t mind risking that with our “evil empire” attitude.
Every time he talks up Massachusetts having 98% of the public insured, that’s what he’s talking about. If he wanted 50 states to solve it, I’d expect him to tell the President and Congress to stop doing any work on the issue, and let 50 states solve it.
Chris_Balsz on February 1, 2010 at 3:32 PM
The palin cultist are unbelievable.
Falz on February 1, 2010 at 3:53 PM
The cost of the bailouts are being seen right now…the average recession is just over 12 months, this one will be at least two years.
The interest is not being shown as debt…that is why this trillion dollar boondoggle is actually more like 1.5 trillion, and will be 3 tillion by time all the debt is paid.
Hardly a “fiscal” approach.
AIG was not the “total” collapse, I notice that Ford, who rejected the loans, seem to be doing just fine now.
You and other Mittens, have been tainted by your love of a candidate…bailouts, the ones created, have created a financial mess that only a bureaucrat would love and embrace.
right2bright on February 1, 2010 at 4:27 PM
WE loaned the money, so now WE pay interest back to us…that makes sense to you?
Do you think these bailed out companies just create the money…they have to raise prices, over and above their normal operating expenses (obviously since they went “broke”), so we will pay for the privilege of loaning them money.
A few choice bills, and suddenly they have favored tax status, or favored contracts…
Already you see the bailout queens beginning a new round of bail outs…
Mitt is way off base, but then many of his buddies were heavily invested in these companies, and he wouldn’t want his base to be wiped out…he was an opportunist, living on our dime.
right2bright on February 1, 2010 at 4:33 PM
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