Romney: It was Bush and Hank Paulson, not Obama, who saved the economy with TARP
posted at 7:10 pm on March 21, 2012 by Allahpundit
Is it really “news” that he’s saying this? I’m going to argue yes, but purely for what it signals about the state of the race.
Hours after he secured the endorsement of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney credited his brother, President George W. Bush, with keeping the country from a great depression in 2008.
“I keep hearing the president say he’s responsible for keeping the country out of a Great Depression,” Romney said at a town hall in Arbutus, Maryland. “No, no, no, that was President George W. Bush and [then-Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson.”
He’s been making that point for ages. It’s even in his book. From Time’s piece on Romney’s “No Apology” back in March 2010:
The Harvard MBA and venture capitalist is sharper when it comes to the economy, a topic squarely in his wheelhouse. The best way for government to stimulate the economy, he argues, is to promote a favorable climate for innovation and then get out of its way. But he’s not an absolutist when it comes to government meddling in the markets. Though he denounces the bailout of Detroit carmakers, Romney is a backer of TARP, though he couches his position with a caveat that protects his right flank. “Secretary Paulson’s TARP prevented a systemic collapse of the national financial system,” he writes. “Secretary Geithner’s TARP became an opaque, heavy-handed, expensive slush fund. It should be shut down.”
The DNC accused him of flip-flopping on TARP late last year and PolitiFact, after researching, gave him a clean bill of health — a bit of consistency worth noting on Etch-a-Sketch Day in the blogosphere. If you don’t believe them, believe your own eyes. Embedded below you’ll find Romney defending TARP at a GOP candidate roundtable in October. He praises Bush and Paulson at around 1:15. His position on this has, as far as I can tell, always been that (a) TARP was imperfectly designed, (b) it should have been ended long ago after it became a slush fund, (c) he doesn’t support bailing out any individual bank simply because its managers made dumb decisions, but (d) in the extraordinary scenario where you’re looking at a systemic collapse of the entire financial system, with one bank dragging down another and then another in a catastrophic domino effect, then you have to act. I’ve always been sympathetic to that argument even though it makes conservatives bristle and amounts to rank heresy among libertarians, so perhaps my view of what he said today is skewed but I don’t see what the big deal here is. He was on record about TARP over and over again before the first votes were cast in Iowa and he’s got the nomination all but cinched three months later. Obviously it’s not disqualifying for most Republicans.
What is a big deal, though, is that he feels safe running through this again even though it’s Etch-a-Sketch Day. Clearly he thinks he’s in a strong enough position electorally that he doesn’t have to worry about hitting the occasional conservative nerve with his rhetoric, even at a moment when grassroots righties are perked up about him lurching towards the center in the general. (This is also a pat on the back for the Bush family on the day he finally landed Jeb’s endorsement, of course.) More significantly, this might be his way of starting to pivot from a “the economy’s a hopeless disaster under Obama” message to a more daring “yeah, okay, the economy’s starting to come back — thanks to Bush” message. If so, that seems exceedingly unwise; I’ve written many times about polls showing that voters continue to blame Bush, not The One, for the recession. Just last month, a Quinnipiac survey indicated that 51 percent still blame Bush for the current condition of the economy compared to just 35 percent who blame O. Dubya’s numbers have barely budged on that in more than two years. Sustained Republican messaging will move the needle a bit but if we’re banking on spinning away a recovery by rehabilitating George W. Bush(!) and TARP(!!), we’re in for a long election night, my friends.
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Sweet. How sweet it is.
Finally, Obama’s chikkinzzz are coming home to roost.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:22 PM
This.
When you have to plead incompetence to defend against charges of malfeasance, you know you might be in trouble.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:36 PM
ear relevant…
driguana on May 19, 2013 at 8:59 PM
Flush this lying tudd down the drain with the rest of the Obamacrap.
kemojr on May 19, 2013 at 9:34 PM
This was Dan Pfeiffer’s week in the barrel, like Susan Rice he was given the White House talking points and sent on a mission. He really needs to get copies of these tapes and watch them and see how foolish and unbelievable he looked and sounded. The White House is losing the little credibility it still had by sending these shills out every week trying to do damage control. Community organizers make poor leaders.
savage24 on May 19, 2013 at 9:42 PM
Pfeiffer’s statement that the law is irrelevant because the IRS conduct was “outrageous” and “inexcusable”, tells us all we need to know about this administration.
However, the follow-up should have been, “On what standard do you judge their conduct to be outrageous and inexcusable since the law is apparently not an appropriate standard?” (At least in Pfeiffer’s mind.)
What this comes down to is this: “if the Administrative deems something “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such. As we have seen in so many other areas, if the Administrative deems something to not be “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such.
In their mind, the law is – in fact – irrelevant. That’s what makes this situation so dangerous.
It’s not socialism. It’s worse.
EdmundBurke247 on May 19, 2013 at 10:36 PM
Irrelevant = “What Difference Does It Make?”
jaydee_007 on May 19, 2013 at 10:41 PM
A fitting capstone to Ed’s story about loss-prevention (aka employee theft) and management’s “permission structure” in this post.
(Not to mention the jaw-dropping statements of Eleanor Clift in this one.)
AesopFan on May 19, 2013 at 11:40 PM
I enjoy popcorn and hope it is a long week.
Drill and Fill on May 20, 2013 at 12:41 AM
Hey give Barky a break. He had to get his sorry ass out to Vegas.
tbear44 on May 20, 2013 at 4:49 AM
Of course they sent Pfeiffer out to do the Sunday shows. He was the most senior expendable staff member they had . . .
BigAlSouth on May 20, 2013 at 5:39 AM
Pfeiffer… The guy with the red shirt in the landing party…
Boudica on May 20, 2013 at 5:53 AM
Perfect!
lea on May 20, 2013 at 7:11 AM
Does anybody else remember the campaign in 2008 when Obama defended his lack of administrative experience by saying he was just so smart and tuned in that his instincts were better than experience. Someone needs to dredge up these sound bites and play then with the current line about the government being too large to control and that the White House only knows what it reads in the newspaper.
bartbeast on May 20, 2013 at 8:43 AM
If where the president was during the Benghazi crisis is “irrelevant”, then he wasn’t where one would expect the Commander-in-Chief to be. So, where was he? Was he watching a movie in the residence? Was he bowling? Or was he having a bi-curious outing with his good buddy Reggie Love? If Obama was AWOL, as I suspect he was, it is he who is irrelevant. This entire stinkin’ criminal Obama Regime must go and now!
SpiderMike on May 20, 2013 at 9:31 AM
If this continues all week, it will be ‘O’ himself doing the rounds on the Sunday talk shows – except for Fox, of course. (‘O’ can do everything better than everyone else as he has been known to say.)
He then gets the extra benefit that no one will challenge him like they have begun to do with his minions.
Carnac on May 20, 2013 at 11:00 AM
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