Romney Then and Now

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...dle-east-peace

10.08.2012 — 11:41 AM
Romney, Phoney

Romney on Israel/Palestine.

Foreign Policy Speech …

Finally, I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel. On this vital issue, the President has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new President will bring the chance to begin anew.


Private Fundraiser …

“I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way … the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish … [S]o what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem…and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
More here from the Mojo Tapes.
Josh

I smell a copy cat! The finest form of flattery...........

How'd you like that debate performance? I read that Obama is going to be "less polite" in debate #2. Great strategy he has there lol.

Candidly, it is his to lose, and of course, I hope he does. We've seen enough.

President Obama's debate performance? Not so much.
Vice President Biden's debate performance? Much better. :)

http://www.politico.com/news/stories...323.html?hp=l1

DANVILLE, Ky. — Whatever Joe Biden was drinking Thursday night, Barack Obama ought to order a case of it.

Biden took on Paul Ryan in the one and only vice presidential debate and did what Obama had failed to do last week in his debate with Mitt Romney: Biden not only won over the audience, but got under his opponent’s skin.

Biden smirked, sneered, and openly laughed at many of Ryan’s responses. It could have looked rude, but Biden made it look tough.

After all, Biden was the 69-year-old defender and Ryan was the 42-year-old challenger. But by the end of the evening, Joltin’ Joe had done real damage to his opponent.

(PHOTOS: Joe Biden’s smile)

In fact, as the 90 minutes flew by - - it was the rare debate where one actually wanted it to go longer - - Ryan began looking younger and younger. And not in a good way.

Both men have been in politics most of their adult lives, but Biden’s adult life has been longer. Biden was in the Senate so long, he knows a dozen ways of observing outward forms of politeness, while sticking a knife in your ribs and twisting it.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz293zZy6la

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_1968106.html
That Mitt Romney had a successful tenure as CEO of Bain Capital doesn’t mean he’ll be able to turn the economy around, according to an ex-Reagan budget director. Instead, he says, it’s just evidence that the financial system is rigged.

In an op-ed in The Daily Beast, David Stockman argues that the Romney campaign’s refrain is “dead wrong" -- the refrain being that the Republican candidate is prepared to help the sputtering U.S. economy because he transformed struggling companies and created jobs. Instead, Stockman says, it’s “crony capitalism” and central bank help that’s made gambling on failing companies a relatively safe bet.

“Mitt Romney was not a businessman,” he wrote. “He was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses.”


Keep on reading...

" I read that Obama is going to be "less polite" in debate #2. Great strategy he has there lol."

Well, i quess it didnt go quite like you thought. LOL.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...a-is-back.html
Obama Is Back!
by Michael Tomasky Oct 17, 2012 12:28 AM EDT

Well, Fox was calling it a draw, and its anchors started blaming Candy Crowley for how it all went down 32 seconds after it ended. Need to know anything else?

Obama won the debate. Won it big. Maybe not as big as Romney won the first one, but big enough to be clear. More interesting than that, though, is the way he won it. Name me one person—it surely wasn’t me—who would have said three hours ago that Obama’s best moment of the night, yes, Obama’s, would be Benghazi?

There were other moments. Obama won the immigration discussion. He won guns, to the extent anyone’s voting on that. He won taxes. Taxes—weird. I was shocked that Romney stood by his 20 percent and insisted that his math does add up.

That was fascinating and is worth dwelling on for a moment. I had thought coming in that Romney would keep moving to the middle. That would have meant bending even more on the tax plan, which is still coming under criticism, even increased criticism, for its fuzzy math. I thought he’d back off it. But he doubled-down. That means he and his team thought they’d covered that moderate base, that they couldn’t go any farther to the center without risking some alienation on the base. So he stuck to his guns, and Obama took that round strongly.

Obama really won the George W. Bush question. At first I thought he was losing that one. What’s he doing getting mired in a trade discussion? Tie Romney to Bush, tie Romney to Bush! But then he hit a bank shot that no one anticipated: Romney is to Bush’s right—on immigration, on women’s health issues, on Medicare. Great stuff. Romney had no answer.

Now, Benghazi. What was Romney doing? That was really surprising. Of all the attacks he had at his disposal, was hitting Obama for going to a fund-raiser really the strongest one? Not a chance. On the CNN dial meter, that went nowhere. It was a shocking waste of a key moment.

And that Obama riff about being the president was very alpha male, the kind of moment he needed, on exactly the issue he needed it: “That’s not what I do as president, and that’s not what I do as commander-in-chief.” And Romney not knowing that Obama called the attack an “act of terror” the day after? He just didn’t know. And Candy Crowley actually did now. Kudos to a moderator on a follow-up, for once. This takes a lot of air out of the Benghazi story.

And finally, the 47 percent moment. Why would Romney stick out his jaw like that? The last question. Romney going first. Knowing he’d have no chance to respond. Knowing also (as it had dawned on me about 15 minutes before) that Obama was about to go through two debates without mentioning the 47 percent. And Romney mentions that he cares about 100 percent. Here’s my jaw, Barack. Unreal.

For my money, Romney was the more different man tonight. Obama was plenty different from the first go-round. Even when not talking, he was good. The look on his face, the lean forward, looking like he was eager to get up out of his chair and take his turn at the mic, was right for TV. But as much as Obama was better than October 3, Romney was, uh, worser. He had a few good lines, but he left things on the floor. That battery company that Obama touted that just went bankrupt today. Where was that? And he was rude. A bully, and a whiny bully. Obama wasn’t light years better on that score, but Romney was awful. He clearly took his prep less seriously this time.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ate-night.html

Michelle Goldberg on the GOP’s Delusional Debate Night
by Michelle Goldberg Oct 17, 2012 12:21 AM EDT
The left freaked out after Denver. Tonight, the right pretended Romney won. Michelle Goldberg on the Republican disconnect—and the demonization of an undecided voter.

Here is a major difference between liberals and conservatives. After President Obama’s abysmal performance in the first debate, liberals were rending their garments and proclaiming everything lost. After Mitt Romney’s equally bad performance on Tuesday night, many conservatives were either declaring him the winner or blaming his loss on Candy Crowley. “Romney by two touchdowns,” tweeted Charles Krauthammer. “A stomping. Obama never was very good without a ‘prompter. Imagine what he’s like with Putin.” The left has a weakness for despair, the right, for delusion.


Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney and U.S. President Barack Obama debate on Oct. 16, 2012, during the second of three presidential debates at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. (Stan Honda / Getty Images)

I have no idea if Romney’s poor showing will change the momentum of the campaign the way Obama’s did. Nevertheless, the night scarcely could have gone better for the president. The hectoring, hyped-up alpha male attitude that served Romney so well in the first debate seemed, in the context of a town hall, bullying and slightly unhinged. His whining about not getting enough time was a reminder of his petulant, entitled side. Obama’s confidence, his evident connection with the audience, seems to have badly rattled his opponent, leading to errors that were entirely unforced.

Remember when SiriuslyWrong tried this same argument about the 47% not paying taxes? This article explains again just how much a Republican talking point this was despite the Republicans being involved in creating the tax environment to make this so.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89I08T20121019

By Kim Dixon
WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:04am EDT
(Reuters) - Mitt Romney has distanced himself from his remarks lamenting the nearly 47 percent of Americans who do not owe federal income taxes, but his fellow Republicans helped engineer the very tax breaks that have put many in that category. And little change is expected soon.

A key reason: The breaks in question - the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit - are based on core Republican philosophies of encouraging work to lift people out of poverty, Republican aides and many conservatives say.


The number of Americans not owing federal income taxes has been growing since the mid-1980s, and the increase largely stems from expansion of these two tax credits - championed by Republicans from conservative economist Milton Friedman to former President Ronald Reagan.

"It is absolutely true - there is some degree of disconnect between complaining about the 47 percent and yet supporting the policies that brought it about," said economist Alan Viard of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/op...omic-plan.html
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Romney’s Economic Model
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 24, 2012

Mitt Romney’s best argument on the campaign trail has been simple: Under President Obama, the American economy has remained excruciatingly weak, far underperforming the White House’s own projection.

But Obama’s best response could be this: If you want to see how Romney’s economic policies would work out, take a look at Europe. And weep.

In the last few years, Germany and Britain, in particular, have implemented precisely the policies that Romney favors, and they have been richly praised by Republicans here as a result. Yet these days those economies seem, to use a German technical term, kaput.

Is Europe a fair comparison? Well, Republicans seem to think so, because they came up with it. In the last few years, they’ve repeatedly cited Republican-style austerity in places like Germany and Britain as a model for America.

Let’s dial back the time machine and listen up:


Keep listening.

How did Siriuslywrong like the 2nd and 3rd debates? lmfao. Awfully quiet about those.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2019172.html
Obama had a resounding finish in Monday night's foreign policy debate, which 56 percent of viewers thought he won, while a third preferred Romney, according to the poll. That, along with Obama's strong performance in the second debate, helped him recover from the first debate, which viewers overwhelmingly said Romney won.

Unlike debate night snap polls, the Gallup surveys were taken up to two days after the debates -- enough time for viewers to have their opinions changed by post-debate analysis and media coverage. The results, however, are generally similar to the instant reaction polls, which also found the third debate to be Obama's strongest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/op...rosperity.html

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Pointing Toward Prosperity?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 25, 2012

Mitt Romney has been barnstorming the country, telling voters that he has a five-point plan to restore prosperity. And some voters, alas, seem to believe what he’s saying. So President Obama has now responded with his own plan, a little blue booklet containing 27 policy proposals. How do these two plans stack up?

Well, as I’ve said before, Mr. Romney’s “plan” is a sham. It’s a list of things he claims will happen, with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen. “We will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget,” he declares, but he refuses to specify which tax loopholes he would close to offset his $5 trillion in tax cuts.

Actually, if describing what you want to see happen without providing any specific policies to get us there constitutes a “plan,” I can easily come up with a one-point plan that trumps Mr. Romney any day. Here it is: Every American will have a good job with good wages. Also, a blissfully happy marriage. And a pony.

So Mr. Romney is faking it.




Read on.......

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/28/opinio...html?hpt=hp_c2

Obama's deficit plan closer to what CEOs favor

What's surprising is that the CEOs' commitment to a balanced bipartisan plan puts them much closer to Obama's deficit reduction plan than to Mitt Romney's.
That's because it also dovetails with the outlines of the Grand Bargain negotiated by Obama and House Speaker John Boehner in the summer of 2011, only to have negotiations fall apart.
The human cost of austerity in Greece How Sandy could impact the vote Fact check: Tackling the deficit Tackling U.S.'s runaway debt
Mitt Romney has repeatedly and specifically said that he will not consider any plan that raises any increased tax revenue to pay down the deficit and the debt. During the Republican primaries, he famously joined with his competitors in raising his hand to say that he would reject even a 10-to-1 deal splitting spending cuts with tax revenue increases. The Bowles-Simpson plan was based on an even less generous 3-to-1 split (though of course, still weighted decidedly in favor of spending cuts).
This is not an academic difference. It goes to the heart of what kind of deficit reduction can be realistically achieved as a matter of both politics and math. A plan that does not include any new revenues is not practical in terms of achieving the larger goal. "When you talk about a $16 trillion debt, I don't see how you can avoid addressing both sides" -- both spending cuts and revenue increases -- said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, sensibly. An imbalanced and ideologically pure solution without any revenue increases would be DOA with Democrats in the Senate.


Keep on reading.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...y.html?hpid=z5
Mr. Romney’s tax plan still doesn’t add up

By Editorial Board, Published: October 28

IN A LETTER published on this page last week, Pierce Scranton, economic policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, took issue with an editorial describing the “implausibility” of Mr. Romney’s tax plan. In the debates and other recent comments, Mr. Romney has taken to suggesting that one way to make his $5 trillion tax cut revenue-neutral would be to “pick a number” — say $25,000 — and let taxpayers take that much, and no more, in deductions. The Tax Policy Center, analyzing that proposal, found that it would close only $1.3 trillion of Mr. Romney’s newly dug revenue hole. And no matter how many times the Romney campaign insists that independent studies “have demonstrated the Romney plan works,” that simply isn’t true — not with the parameters (revenue neutrality and no tax increases for those making less than $200,000) that Mr. Romney has set, and not unless you assume economic growth far greater than that predicted by Mr. Romney’s own advisers.


Keep on reading.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2044213.html

Mitt Romney Refuses To Talk About FEMA After Hurricane Sandy Event
The Huffington Post | By Sabrina Siddiqui
Posted: 10/30/2012 1:17 pm EDT Updated: 10/30/2012 2:26 pm EDT

Mitt Romney refused to answer reporters' questions about how he would handle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after a Tuesday "storm relief" event in Ohio for Hurricane Sandy.

From the Romney pool report:
TV pool asked Romney at least five times whether he would eliminate FEMA as president/what he would do with FEMA. He ignored the qs but they are audible on cam. The music stopped at points and the qs would have been audible to him.
A follow-up report noted the specific questions Romney ignored, as he was collecting hurricane supplies following his event:

"Gov are you going to eliminate FEMA?" a print pooler shouted, receiving no response.
Wires reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored.

Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions:

"Gov are you going to see some storm damage?"

"Gov has [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie invited you to come survey storm damage?"

"Gov you've been asked 14 times, why are you refusing to answer the question?"

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/1...energy-in-Iowa

Romnesia: With 11 days to go, Mitt Romney changes position on subsidies for renewable energy in Iowa
byJed LewisonFollow

Remember how Mitt Romney hurt himself in Iowa by coming out against subsidies for wind power? Well, now that it's 11 days before the election and he desperately needs to win Iowa, he's apparently having a change of heart, because today he said he would support subsidies for renewables:


Mitt Romney says he's the change candidate ... and to prove it, he changes his positions.
We're going to support nuclear and renewables, but we'll phase out subsidies once an industry is on its feet.
Now this might not actually be a flip-flop, because Romney doesn't specifically say that he supports wind energy tax breaks. Instead, he goes with a vague pledge to support "renewables." But make no mistake: He wants Iowans to at least think he supports wind energy tax breaks.
The only question here is whether Romney is making a crass eleventh hour political flip-flop ... or if he simply wants people to think he's flip-flopped. Maybe we could get an answer if he actually took questions from the media, but that's not happening anytime soon. Actually, it probably doesn't even matter, because if there's one thing we should know by now about Mitt Romney, the only thing that you can truly believe about him is that he'll say whatever he thinks he needs to say in order to get what he wants to get.

Four More Pinocchios for Romney from the Fact Checkers:

Here’s what Romney said last Thursday in Ohio: “I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair.”
This was completely wrong. Bloomberg News had reported that Fiat, the majority owner of Chrysler, was planning to once again start building Jeeps in China, after production had been on hold since 2009.
The article made clear that Chrysler was was “adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China,” but some blogs, such as the Washington Examiner’s Washington Secrets, misinterpreted the article and reported: “Jeep, the rugged brand President Obama once said symbolized American freedom, is considering giving up on the United States and shifting production to China.”
After Romney made his comments, Chrysler issued a statement firmly denying that any North American production was being moved to China:
“Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.” – WaPo