The Mitt Romney Thread

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dULFZXk78ds

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A whole new Romney for 2012 presidential run

By Paul West, Los Angeles Times

March 5, 2011

Reporting from Washington — Defying his reputation as a 1950s square, the new, more casual Mitt Romney is popping up around the country as he readies a second run for president. He's going tieless on network TV, strolling NASCAR pits in Daytona and sporting skinny Gap jeans bought for him by his wife.

His latest campaign book, just out in paperback, opens with a regular-guy scene: wealthy Mitt in a Wal-Mart checkout line, buying gifts for his grandsons and comparing the surroundings to Target, another discount store he says he's familiar with.

The image tweaks are part of a broader makeover as Romney prepares to run from what should be an enviable spot: He's the early Republican favorite — though far from an inevitable nominee.

The former Massachusetts governor will start out with valuable presidential campaign experience from his 2008 try, and a deeper financial network than his Republican rivals. The national economic debate plays to his background as an investment executive and "gives him a big advantage," said Carl Forti, a former top advisor.

Yet for every edge, there are drawbacks. Taken together, they make Romney an unusually weak front-runner.

One of his biggest problems is "a suspicion that he is not as authentic as voters would like and he doesn't connect as well with voters as they would like," said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster not aligned with any candidate. "Politicians who are viewed as authentic have a much easier time connecting with the voters they are wooing. People like Ronald Reagan and [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie seem to have no trouble connecting, in part because they seem so comfortable in their skin."

The problem has been fed by the fact that, in each of his runs for public office, Romney has remade himself. Last time out, he shed his moderate social views on abortion and gay rights, then struggled to convince primary voters of his conservative bona fides. A perception grew that the handsome candidate, with his almost-too-perfect hair and teeth and seemingly scripted answers to every question, would say anything to get elected.

Meantime, religious conservatives, uneasy with his devout Mormon beliefs, failed to warm to his candidacy — and that remains a problem, particularly in Southern primaries.

In 2008, he had "no overarching theme to answer the question, 'Why should I vote for Mitt Romney?'" said an advisor, requesting anonymity to discuss his candidate's prospects candidly. Romney's campaign book, "No Apology: Believe in America," attempts to frame an answer around a theme of national greatness.

If 2012 were a typical nomination campaign, Romney's status as the establishment favorite would play to his advantage in the nomination contest. But today's GOP is consumed by anti-establishment fervor. Energy in the Republican primaries is likely to be pulsing from fired-up "tea party" backers, and Romney will face fierce competition for their support from more-conservative rivals.

His most serious new challenge involves an issue that wasn't a major factor last time: "Romneycare," the Massachusetts healthcare plan he signed into law in 2006. It features a provision just like the one that has conservatives outraged over President Obama's plan — a government mandate that requires virtually everyone to purchase medical insurance or pay a penalty.

"I still think he has to explain the Massachusetts healthcare law in terms that will satisfy the conservative base in the party, and I think that's a tall order," said former Rep. Vin Weber, policy chairman of Romney's 2008 campaign, who is supporting fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty this time.

Romney defends his Massachusetts creation by arguing that applying a mandate nationwide, as Congress has done, violates states' rights guaranteed under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

But few outside the Romney camp think a legalistic explanation will satisfy conservatives fed up with what they see as excessive government power.

In his most high-profile appearance so far this year, at a conservative convention in Washington, Romney never mentioned his healthcare plan. His remarks, bashing Obama, were in line with a cautious strategy designed to minimize unforced errors.

A formal candidacy announcement from Romney would be a technicality; for months, he has been quietly lining up support from insiders and big fundraisers, while successfully limiting media exposure. His visits to key primary states often take place in private and without advance notice. He declined an interview for this article through his press secretary, Eric Fehrnstrom, who said Romney wasn't scheduling newspaper or magazine interviews at this time.

Tonight, Romney will raise his profile with his first public appearance since last fall in New Hampshire, the first primary state.

His moves so far have been aimed at correcting a flaw from 2008: peaking before it mattered. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he built — and lost — early leads. "The one thing I learned from the last campaign I ran is that we got in too early," he told Hugh Hewitt, among the conservative radio hosts he has cultivated.

A stealth campaign has worked to his advantage up to now, helping him dodge the intense scrutiny that is a front-runner's curse. When he told CNN's Piers Morgan, at the height of the pro-democracy uprising in Cairo, that he would "avoid the term dictator" in describing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Romney received none of the attention Vice President Joe Biden got five days earlier for the same eyebrow-raising remark.

Romney, who turns 64 this month, has streamlined his campaign organization, by reducing the number of voices in the inner circle and shifting his longtime aide and 2008 campaign manager, Beth Myers, out of an operational role. He isn't planning to spend his personal fortune the same way he did last time, when he seeded his candidacy with more than $42 million of his own money. But with a net worth of at least $190 million, he can always dip into his own pocket.

As for doubts about authenticity, Romney is counting on the electorate being less concerned with past inconsistencies than in picking a candidate who can turn the economy around. Brushing aside a question from CNN's Morgan about his tendency to flip-flop, Romney said, "People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work."

[luckytxn 2,265]

Romney for the snooze.

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Mitt, the most transparent candidate

By: Michael Kinsley

March 8, 2011 04:45 AM EST

We’re all for transparency these days, and if anything is transparently clear about American politics, it is that Mitt Romney will do or say anything to become president. The best guess is that at heart he is an old-fashioned, business-oriented Republican. But there’s no knowing for sure. He may have no sincere beliefs at all.

There was a piece about Romney on Page 1 of The New York Times on Sunday, and what amazes me is the deadpan frankness with which the article and the Romney aides and allies quoted in it accept the premise that, of course, he is a phony, that this reputation as a phony could be a bit of a problem if he runs in 2012. And then they go on to discuss what Romney might do to solve this problem. He was criticized last time for being a stiff, so this time he is not wearing a tie. Ever. Problem solved, as Romney sees it.

“I like President Obama,” Romney says patronizingly, “but he doesn’t have a clue how jobs are created.” The last time he ran, Romney played down his experience as a businessman and played up his recently acquired views as a social conservative, because that’s what commentators and consultants were telling him to do back then.

One difficulty with Romney’s new emphasis on his expertise in job creation, and Obama’s lack of it, is that Romney doesn’t say what he would do to create jobs. He just repeats that “I spent my career in the private sector. I know how jobs are created.” The nearest he comes to getting specific is to say that in the business world, “the three rules of every successful turnaround” are “focus, focus, focus.” This is Peter Pan advice, about as useful as repeating, “I do believe in fairies.”

The Times reports that Romney’s flip-flops in 2008 on abortion and gay rights “prompted questions about whether his positions were driven by politics or conviction.” In fact, Romney’s reversals didn’t raise questions about his sincerity as much as answer them. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for someone who admired Romney’s record as a businessman, or who couldn’t stand Obama, to overlook Romney’s current right-wing stands on abortion and gay rights. But his sudden and implausibly explained reversals on these issues say something about his character that you can’t flip away so easily.

But health care is the killer. The center of the Obama health care reform — the part that has excited the ire of conservatives — is the individual mandate that says everyone must buy health insurance. Romney now says that given the chance, “I would repeal Obamacare.” Yet Romney advocated, signed and (for a while) bragged about a similar requirement in the Massachusetts reform passed while he was governor. The similarity is no coincidence. Private-sector health care can’t work without some sort of mandate that healthy people as well as sick ones must carry insurance. As a smart businessman, not just some dumb politician, Romney surely grasps this point. Nevertheless, he says that the situation requiring an individual mandate was “unique to Massachusetts” rather than — more accurately — a universal requirement imposed by mathematics.

To me, these issues and the way Romney has handled them are characterological and stamp him as ethically unqualified to be entrusted with the presidency. To his former advisers and supporters quoted in the Times, they are merely strategic challenges to be overcome. Alex Castellanos says Romney should have gotten health care over with long before the 2012 campaign started. Doug Gross, a “prominent Iowa Republican,” suggests that Romney has to “present himself as genuine and not as someone chasing voters far to the right.” “More than a dozen” previous supporters worried about whether he “could withstand scrutiny without being tempted to reinvent himself again.” Pshaw. Maybe he can, through self-discipline, refrain from flip-flopping. But that would happen only if he calculated that the cost of the flip-flop exceeded the cost of an unpopular position. (He is, as he keeps reminding us, a businessman.)

Romney and I attended the same private high school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., though he was several years ahead of me. I remember only one encounter: We shared a car to a gubernatorial debate during his father’s reelection campaign for governor. The younger Romney argued vigorously the whole way that people were talking more about why the Michigan economy was good than why the Michigan economy was bad and that this proved that the elder Romney had been a success as governor. In a speech over the past weekend, as reported in the Times, Romney said “the president and his people spend more time talking about me and Massachusetts health care than ‘Entertainment Tonight’ spends talking about Charlie Sheen.” After a half-century of work, the joke is a tiny bit funnier, but the point is just as lame.

Michael Kinsley is a columnist for POLITICO. The founder of Slate, Kinsley has also served as editor of The New Republic, editor-in-chief of Harper’s, editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times and a columnist for The Atlantic.

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Obama Misery Index hits a record high

By Mitt Romney

The unemployment rate has just fallen one-tenth of a percent, from 9 percent to 8.9 percent. Of course, it is indeed progress, and it is being celebrated in the White House as such. But the celebrations bring to mind what a wit once said: An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job. Today, as we move into the third year of the Obama administration, we do not have anything resembling even such an "acceptable" level of unemployment. Far from it. As of this month, 14 million Americans can't find work.

When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, he hung the Misery Index around Jimmy Carter's neck. It consisted of the sum total of unemployment and inflation. Today, we have a different set of ailments. Instead of unemployment coupled with inflation, we have a toxic blend of unemployment, debt, home foreclosures, and bankruptcies. Their sum total is what we can call the Obama Misery Index. It is at a record high; indeed, it makes even the malaise of the Carter years look like a boom. Unemployment has fallen, but it's fallen to a level that is still, by any historical marker, a national disaster. To suggest it as an achievement is to engage in what Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously called "defining deviancy down."

Where should we go from here? Having spent my career in the private sector, I know a thing or two about how jobs are created and how they are lost. The most important lesson I learned is that there are three rules of every successful turnaround: focus, focus, and focus. Turnarounds work when the leader focuses on what's most important. President Obama did just the opposite: he delegated the jobs crisis to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and he went to work on his own priorities, like cap and trade and government-run health care.

I hope we don't have to wait two years for a new president to fix things, but I fear we might. What the occupant of the Oval Office needs to do, and do now, is focus on getting Americans back to work.

Take taxes. Our employers pay the highest rates in the world, tied with Japan, and higher than such societies top-heavy with government as Italy and France. Our small companies are hit particularly hard. If employers are going to start investing and hiring, we must reduce the burden. We can offset the lost revenue by ruthlessly eliminating corporate loopholes and the special deals that reward political influence and punish productivity. We also need to stop taxing companies that make money overseas if they want to bring it home. Encouraging companies to keep money abroad makes zero sense. As much as one trillion dollars kept abroad may be at stake; a sum that size invested here would create hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of good, permanent, private-sector jobs.

Our out-of-control fiscal policies are also impinging directly on the labor market. The failed stimulus program cost around $800 billion. Obamacare is going to cost another trillion. The denizens of the White House appear not to know it, but employers and entrepreneurs worry a good deal about the federal deficit and the federal debt. They look at the future and see that the government's spending binge will mean higher taxes, higher interest rates, and a much weaker dollar.

All these things are the direct enemy of long-term investment. The climate of uncertainty they create has an indirect but no less damaging effect on confidence. Historically, federal spending has ranged between 18 and 20 percent of GDP. Today it has soared to near 25 percent. If we want our politicians to end their free-spending ways, we need to establish an iron-clad ceiling on federal spending, setting it at a fixed percent of the GDP.

These proposals may sound wonkish, but let's keep in mind what is at stake. Behind the unemployment statistics is a lot of heartbreak. Unemployment means children who can't go to college; marriages that break up under the financial strain; young people who can't find jobs and start their lives; and men and women in their fifties, in the prime of their lives, who fear they will never work again. Then there are the job fairs where thousands of people are showing up to compete for a few openings that probably are not as good as the jobs they held two years ago.

Unless President Obama changes course, these job fairs, with their day-long lines of unemployed seeking nothing more than a chance to earn a living, are going to be seen as his Hoovervilles. "I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him," President Hoover once ruefully complained. Obamanomics, which at extraordinary cost has accomplished extraordinarily little, is earning our president his own dubious place in our history books.

http://www.bostonher...747&format=text

Edited March 8, 2011 by Lord Infamous

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Maybe this can be the Mormon Presidential Wannabe Thread and not just the Romney Thread.

Jon Huntsman - Liberal?

LaVarr Webb, a political consultant who worked for former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt ® for seven years as a policy deputy, described Huntsman, a former two-term governor, as among the most popular governors ever. Webb said that Huntsman especially appealed to mainstream Democratic, Republican and independent voters and that conservatives liked him personally. But as Huntsman’s Salt Lake City administration unfolded, “he took more moderate positions than the far right would have liked” on gay rights and climate change, Webb said.

...

Early in Huntsman’s gubernatorial tenure, he successfully shepherded a private school vouchers bill through the state Legislature. But conservatives were later disappointed because they believed he did not fight to defend the legislation in a voter referendum that repealed it. There was another uproar when Huntsman pared down the state’s workweek from five days to four to save energy — and when he entered Utah into the Western Climate Initiative with five other states concerned about global warming.

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Huntsman, who turns 51 later this month, has yet to announce a presidential bid and is precluded by law from doing anything in this regard before his scheduled April 30 resignation as ambassador becomes official. But a White House run had been in the planning before Huntsman went to China, and a team of well-known Republican political operatives is in place and ready to go to work for him if he pulls the trigger.

The former governor is the scion of the wealthy businessman that he’s named after and emanates from a much-respected and beloved Utah Mormon family.

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The Utah Republican could access his family’s vast fortune to seed any presidential campaign, and he was thought of as potentially formidable before he accepted the ambassadorship in early 2009.

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Huntsman’s supporters refute charges that he is insufficiently conservative, describing him as a statesman who could provide conservative leadership while still reaching across the aisle to forge consensus.

“As governor, he signed into law market-based health care reform and across-the-board tax cuts, which allowed Utah to weather the economic storm and remain the best state in the U.S. for businesses to create jobs,” said Republican lobbyist Allen Shofe, who would handle Member relations for Huntsman if he runs. “This record makes Gov. Huntsman the type of proven, authentic conservative who would have the ability to appeal to a broad swath of a presidential primary electorate.”

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Republican activist Larry Jensen ... said Huntsman’s support for same-sex civil unions in 2009 caused many conservatives to turn on the governor and decide he had become more liberal than when first elected.

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Huntsman’s pragmatic streak could be attractive to some GOP primary voters, possibly in New Hampshire, where independents can vote in the primary. But his centrism could be problematic in Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina and other early primary and caucus states.

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State Rep. Carl Wimmer and state Sen. Howard Stephenson, two Utah Republicans who have dealt with Huntsman over the years, each described the ambassador as honest, respectful, likeable, politically astute — and moderate. Neither expects Huntsman to fare well in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, should he run.

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Mitt, the most transparent candidate

By: Michael Kinsley

March 8, 2011 04:45 AM EST

Michael Kinsley? Founder of http://www.slate.com/ ?

Ya, that's not a bias opinion

How entire Slate's staff and columists voted...

Total:

Barack Obama: 55

John McCain: 1

Bob Barr: 1

Not McCain: 1

Noncitizen, can't vote: 4

http://www.slate.com/id/2203151 (total on page 4)

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More commentary on the other Mormon who (maybe) wants to be President.

This is now the Mormon Presidential Wannabe Thread.

How Jon Huntsman Could Debut With a Bang

March 7, 2011 9:41 A.M.

By Jim Geraghty

In the Morning Jolt, you’ll see some conservative bloggers expressing great skepticism about the potential presidential bid of Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and soon to depart as ambassador to China. Scoff if you want, but there’s at least one way for a Huntsman bid to quickly generate a lot of buzz.

Picture it: It’s early summer 2011. Huntsman has launched his campaign to a generally “meh” reception, and now, in his first major policy address, he goes to Washington, D.C. He gives a lunch speech at the Brookings Institution or some other centrist, non-conservative foreign policy think tank — his natural base of support, really.

With the campaign correspondents in the back and all of Washington’s foreign-policy cognoscenti sitting in front of him, Huntsman begins by hitting predictable notes: He joined the Obama administration with the best of intentions and the highest of hopes, a desire to prove that politics stops at the water’s edge and that when dealing with a challenging, threatening world, America’s political leaders act in unity. He admits he knew he had some disagreements with Obama, but he felt that he could steer foreign policies in the right direction by having a seat at the table.

And then, in detail, Huntsman paints a picture of an administration that is flailing, frozen with indecision, short-sighted, often at war with itself, disorganized, and ultimately lacking any sense of what it wanted to do after Obama had finished his apology tour.

He says things like, “The charm offensive wasn’t just this president’s first foreign-policy tool; it was his only one. And when it failed to achieve significant concessions from either our allies or our foes, the president and the team around him had no plan B.”

He points out that Obama and Hillary’s constant invocation of a “reset” button reflects an immature yearning to go back to some earlier, simpler time, out of a misplaced nostalgic belief that foreign-policy challenges were easier to solve in past years, and a tacit admission that they cannot make progress in current circumstances. “We have to deal with the world as it is; yelling ‘do-over’ doesn’t even work in the schoolyard.”

Huntsman sets a record for talking out of school, sharing a series of anecdotes that make Joe Biden look cloddish, Hillary Clinton frustrated, dismissed, and quick to lash out, David Axelrod meddling in areas he doesn’t understand, and the man at the top so far out of his league he terrifies Huntsman.

Huntsman shares frustrating tales of trying to be the voice of reason while the president tried to tailor his foreign policies to the whims of congressional Democrats. He laments that Obama’s Middle East vision begins and ends with Israeli settlements, that he effectively sold out Iranian democracy protesters in pursuit of a Quixotic dream of a summit with Tehran, and that in two short years he has snubbed India and insulted almost every major ally. He laments that the administration was caught flat-footed time and again: cartel violence in Mexico spilling over the border, North Korean shelling, WikiLeaks, the uprising in Egypt and beyond.

He ends his litany, “And I told him the president of the United States isn’t supposed to bow.”

Huntsman closes his speech, now generating furious reaction from the administration, “It was only when I saw how poorly this administration was serving America that I felt the need to leave, and to take steps to help steer us back on the right course . . .”

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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262809/why-mitt-will-never-be-president-exhibit-michael-walsh

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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262809/why-mitt-will-never-be-president-exhibit-michael-walsh

The reader comments on that page are excellent.

[웃 910]

There is a better than likely chance whoever the GOP nominee is will be our next president.

So the question is will Romney get the nominee?

I don't know and I don't really care. All I know is if you went to March 2007 (1.5 years before 2008 election) and asked 1 million Americans if they knew who Barack Obama was most would say no. If you showed them his middle name and a picture 99% of them would burst out laughing and say 'you're kidding, right?'

Edited March 23, 2011 by Lord Infamous

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Romney plans to skip Iowa

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Tea Party supporters pick Mitt Romney as top choice for President in 2012, Palin ratings slip: polls

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Tea Party supporters pick Mitt Romney as top choice for President in 2012, Palin ratings slip: polls

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Romney: On jobs, where is Obama?

USA Today 3/31/2011

Sometimes truth arrives from the most unexpected sources. Christina Romer, President Obama's former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, said last week that she was dismayed at Washington's lack of focus on jobs.

"I frankly don't understand why policymakers aren't more worried about the suffering of real families," Romer said. "We need to realize that there is still a lot of devastation out there." She called the 8.9% unemployment rate "an absolute crisis."

How bad is it? Last week, in the blue-collar community ofTaunton, Mass., the annual jobs fair was canceled because not enough companies came forward to offer jobs.

Defining Deviancy Down was the title of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's seminal account of how American society came to condone previously stigmatized conditions and behavior. Moynihan focused on the growing acceptance of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the expansion of single-parent families and the violence in inner cities. To his examples, we can now add joblessness.

Last year, unemployment averaged a shocking 9.6%. The previous year, at 9.3%, was only marginally better. So far in 2011, it has fallen to 8.9%. A consensus has emerged among some economists and politicians that we must accept historically high levels of unemployment over the next several years. Best case forecasts see a range between 7.5% and 8%.

Faces of despair

Even 7.5% unemployment means 11.5 million Americans without jobs. The human cost of that dry statistic can be detailed in a canvas of broken hopes and shattered lives. Workers at job fairs today are confronting an employment market in which there are almost five times as many job seekers as there are openings. Anyone who has visited such a fair or gone to a career center has seen the face of despair up close.

President Obama didn't cause the recession, but he made it worse and caused it to last longer. From the outset, he inaugurated the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs policies we have seen since Jimmy Carter. Further, the White House has still not crafted any discernible plan to put Americans back to work.

Creating good, lasting jobs will require the following:

•A tax policy that rewards savings, investment, entrepreneurial risk-taking and exports.

•Free, open and fair access to foreign markets, with a focus on constructive trade reform with China.

•Elimination of the federal bureaucratic and regulatory stranglehold on business.

•A market-driven energy policy that encourages investment in America and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

•A commitment to fiscal responsibility through budget restraints and entitlement reform.

Not more stimulus

Another stimulus is not the answer: like putting a cup of gasoline on a fire, it produces heat only for a very short time. A stimulus doesn't lead entrepreneurs and businesses to make the long-term investments in people and capital that will help the unemployed get the good jobs they deserve.

Our high unemployment is a tragedy for millions, and it is a tragedy for America. If our society fails to offer a significant segment of its population the opportunity to participate in economic life, the broader social and moral fabric will fray.

One of our greatest strengths as a nation is our dynamism. When we mobilize to solve a problem, we solve it. It might be a cliché to say that leadership is required, but it also happens to be true.

We don't have that leadership now. Instead, we have passive acquiescence. Yet, if there was an ever an issue on which all Americans should agree, it is that when it comes to unemployment, the time to define deviancy upward is overdue.