https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2012/10/07/the-debate-showed-that-romney-could-be-a-true-republican-leader/feed/HotAir is the leading conservative blog for breaking news and commentary covering the Biden administration, politics, media, culture, and current elections.en-usTue, 09 Jun 2026 03:53:41 -0400<![CDATA[But this wasn’t some sort of Sister Souljah moment, where Romney called out his fellow conservatives in order to curry favor with the center. Rather, what he did was clarify, elevate and translate. He clarified what kind of tax reformer he would be, by promising that revenue neutrality would take priority over sweeping cuts for the rich — a premise that plenty of Republicans are already happy to accept. He elevated an argument that’s increasingly popular among conservative wonks — that the Dodd-Frank financial reform perpetuates “too big to fail” — and used it to make a populist case against the president. And he translated the basic free-market vision to a nonideological audience, by talking more about decent jobs than heroic job creators, and more about the struggling middle class than about the supposedly persecuted John Galts&#8230;]]>Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:35:21 -0400<![CDATA[Allahpundit]]>https://hotair.com/headlines/2012/10/07/the-debate-showed-that-romney-could-be-a-true-republican-leader-n96411