Friday, November 02, 2012

A Brief History of the Romney Campaign

I was one of those who followed the Republican presidential primaries, and watched for signs of life among the string of “anti-Romney” candidates that rose and fell: Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum. But Romney had the ability to outlast each and every one of them, as each and every one of them showed some flaw that could not be overcome.

The Wall Street Journal today has provided a brief summary history of the Romney campaign over the last two years.

My objection to Romney was embodied in the phrase “if he’ll believe in Mormonism, what else will he believe in?”

But Romney has since delivered a very sound set of economic policy proposals that I think will do for our sluggish economy what the Reagan policies did in the 1980’s. Having lived through those years, I can tell you that the 1980’s were a whole lot better than the 1970’s. Reagan inherited a recession, and the economy then slipped into a “double-dip” recession, before pulling mightily out of the doldrums with a full year’s worth of 7% economic expansion.

One may or may not see “economic growth” as a moral benefit. Chief Justice Roberts showed us this year that the “we-need-a-Republican-president-because-of-the-Supreme-Court” argument is still tenuous as it was in the George H.W. Bush era.

But from a life-on-the-ground perspective, the economic challenges of raising a family look to be helped a great deal by Romney’s policy proposals, and that’s the perspective I bring to this moment. I would rather see a Republican president with sound economic policies than a Democratic president with policies that drag on the economy.

As they say:

Perhaps Mr. Romney's most appealing trait is his optimism: We have problems, a whole lot of them, but they are solvable. Americans have always believed that. Yet the sentiment seems unusual given the current President who won with large Democratic majorities but has spent four years blaming his predecessors for every ill as if they are intractable.

Mr. Romney has treated voters like adults and offered them a true choice about the future. He is promising change, and for once that abused term doesn't mean [change] for the worse.

8 comments:

  1. ". . . among the string of “anti-Romney” candidates that rose and fell: Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum. "

    You forgot Michele Bauchman. (smile)

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    1. Hi Ken, I forgot Pawlenty, too, from Minnesota, who dropped out right at the beginning. But I wasn't really watching at the time when they were "serious" candidates.

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  2. yeah, I forgot about him too! He was too nice and almost "plastic" with his smiles and stories - sort of like Joel Osteen. (IMO)

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  3. You over estimate the value of Romney's policies. He will likely be better than Obama, but not in a way that will create a very strong recovery. Even if Romney wins in an electoral landslide, the debt has not gone away and there are no easy answers to reforming our spending and social services programs. We will need a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to get out of our current situation, and that will be both slow in effectiveness and unpopular with the electorate. Worse, Romney might do what every other politician has done and simply delay these reforms yet again.

    I would love to be wrong, of course.

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    1. Matthew, I have a Phil Gramm article contrasting the Reagan recovery with the Obama "recovery". Here's the link; I'll try to put up more about this later today.

      online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444812704577609863412900388.html

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    2. I've responded here:

      http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/11/romneys-pro-growth-policies-mirror.html

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  4. I appreciate the post. This has been a struggle for me—part of it for me is about moral values which come from the Ten Commandments which prohibits polytheism and makes degrading God a heinous moral sin. it appears that the ten commandments are part of a moral structure needed in a leader—to profess and to teach others that god was once a sinful man is wicked (“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens... I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and have supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea” (Mormon prophet Joseph Smith).

    At this point it’s hard for me to find a reason to vote for a man who daily Aims to break the 10 commandments—I’m open for a reason that the Decalogue ought not be the basic moral outline for a leader. but for now i dont buy into secular thought or the political financial wing that posits only the last six of the 10 Comm matter when society chooses a leader.

    romney leads people to break the 1st three of the Decalogue (“Our Father in heaven at one time passed through a life and death and is an exalted man... our Father had a father and so on” (LDS Prophet Joseph Fielding Smith) as he strives to be part of a group that leads millions to hell. at this moment i still think all leaders should, at a bare minimum, uphold a mere 10 Comm.– I don’t think that's asking too much. since romney aims to break the first three commandments ("As man is God once was.." (mormon leader L. Snow)and obama is very wicked - im leaning toward a 3rd party (perhaps Constitutional party). i understand many will disagree w/ me.

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