Mr. Romney, the presumed front-runner, provided almost no details of his economic plan, except to attack Mr. Obama for making the recession “worse and longer.” (He didn’t mention that the recession ended in June 2009.) He said the government’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler was a waste of money and accused the administration of catering to the auto unions. He did not mention that it saved at least 1.4 million jobs and a vital American industry, which has already paid back half the cost.
The field was silent on so many things: how to cover those without health insurance, how to improve education while slashing budgets, which popular programs to cut after the onslaught of tax reductions. It is much easier, apparently, to impress Republican voters with the facile argument that President Obama has failed.
But, at some point, those voters are going to want these candidates to start making some distinctions among themselves, and that will require far more truth-telling than was evident on Monday.
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