EDITORIAL OPINION

For many the answer to that question seems to be obvious. When another incumbent, George H.W. Bush, was fighting for a second term against upstart Bill Clinton, James Carville explained the simple reason Bush would lose his re-election bid: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Love him or hate him, Carville was right. The economy was stagnant and people were ready for a change.

As Barak Obama took center stage last night for his acceptance speech, he and his party find themselves victims of Democrat Carville’s lingering words, “It’s the economy stupid.” Eight years ago, Obama was a virtual unknown whose convention keynote address catapulted him into the limelight. Four years later, he accepted the Democrat Party’s nomination and became its standard bearer. And as that standard bearer he may wish all evidence of Carville’s words would magically disappear.

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush before him, this president had no executive experience on any level before taking the highest office in the land. Now, as executive of the United States of America, Barak Obama will soon face a referendum on how well he has assumed that mantle. Last night he told his rabid supporters: “I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention. The times have changed, and so have I … I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the president.”

Many Democrats’ optimistic view of President Obama’s reelection chances is based on the false notion that the president’s current political situation can be compared to President Reagan’s at the same point in their presidencies. As the National Review noted, the mantra of party spokesmen has become, “Not to worry. Reagan’s unemployment numbers were this bad or worse in his first two years in office and he was reelected.”

David Winston wrote recently in the National Review:

Reagan, like Obama, inherited a terrible economy suffering from stagnation and high unemployment. But that’s where the comparison ends, because Obama’s response … bears no resemblance to the supply-side approach of Ronald Reagan. In fact, the two policies are mirror opposites, and so are the results.

Comparing the two presidencies at identical moments in their first terms is a contrast in style and substance. In September 2011, President Obama has just announced yet another plan for job growth before a joint session of Congress. Last month, his economic plan managed to create zero jobs. At this same moment in 1983, Ronald Reagan’s policies were about to create 1.1 million jobs in the month of September alone, the biggest one-month job gain since the Bureau of Labor Statistics officially began keeping track back in February 1939.

But blaming the economy alone for where this presidential race stands at this moment in time is too simplistic. There is something wrong at the very heart of the American political system. “Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites,” said Obama. “And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising.” He is right about that but refuses to acknowledge his complicity in the matter. The “Hope and Change” candidate has become the “attack and duck” incumbent. “Hope and Change” has become “point and blame.”

Ronald Regan could have spent four years taking our current president’s tack. Both men inherited a mess. Both men promised something different. And that is where the comparisons end. In a time when there was no alternative to the Big Three networks’ constant cheerleading for the opposition, Ronald Reagan pushed on doing the job of the president.

Reagan’s approval ratings quickly slipped as he set about to do what he had promised to do. He made mistakes. Most notably, as he later admitted, not allowing for the legislative branch’s unwillingness to cut spending. The jobless rate was still high less than a month before the elections in 1984 and many blamed their Chief Executive. And it was at this point where the starkest contrast between Obama and Reagan can be drawn.

Reagan knew things were looking better. It was no smoke and mirrors when a Reagan re-election ad proclaimed, “Its morning again in America.” The month before the election, the United States experienced its single largest one-month gain in employment recorded since the Great Depression.  There were no negative ads, no attacks on the character of his opponent, no fingers pointed backward or excuse making – just a reassuring certainty that this country was headed in the right direction.

After the Republican Convention, President Obama said Mitt Romney and the convention were like black and white reruns. Looking back to Reagan, I realize something. I was a twenty-something both times I voted for the Gipper. I, too, wanted something new, something different. But as a newlywed, I also faced tough economic times; staggering inflation, long gas lines, and what Reagan described as a malaise that had settled over the land.

In such times I wanted other twenty-somethings for friends but not for president. I wanted my grandfather. I wanted someone who had been battle tested, made the hard decisions, was willing to bear responsibility for his actions, and who would lead. Romney is no Reagan; I’m the first to admit it. Even so, I think the teenagers have had their four years to play with this country.

It’s time to have some grown-ups at the helm again.

©2012 Off the Grid News

“My campaign opponents dared me to get an X-ray, and I will be the sort of president who never turns down a dare,” said Romney on Tuesday. “I want to get past all this robot slander and get on with the real campaign against Obama.”

Rumors began to grow about Romney being some sort of cyborg machine from his very first campaign speeches in which he repeated the same canned and trivial phrases over and over. During one speech before a packed house in Clinton, Iowa, Romney repeated the phrase “I want America to be more like America, again,” twelve times in a row without noticing it. The campaign explained it away as exhaustion and insisted it was not a mother-board malfunction.

In South Carolina, Romney campaign interns reported that, once in Wisconsin, their boss’s trademark Ken-of-Barbie smile remained stuck on his face for over six hours. Behind the scenes, Romney’s medical assistants finally succeeded in using Norwegian fish oil to dislodge the smile before he had to give a solemn war memorial speech.

Several staff members soon began to doubt whether Romney showed any evidence of having a genuine human personality, with any natural sense of irony or paradox, let alone an actual human soul. Former Romney campaign Deputy Political Director, Todd Dorsin, resigned from the election effort after claiming to find Romney sitting in a backroom with a recharging cord attached to his thigh. The campaign later described Dorsin’s account as a politically motivated smear, but Dorsin contended, “I know what a recharger looks like. I saw what I saw.” When asked about the incident at subsequent press conferences, Romney’s eyes glazed over and he repeated three times in monotone, “I will restore America.”

Last week, the robot rumors gained new strength after Republicans started realizing that Democrats were rejoicing over a national election that pitted Romney against Obama. Polls consistently show a strong Obama victory over Romney. Republican advisor Nathan Fernandez complained, “It’s a tragedy but Americans still hold deep prejudices against robots.”

Democratic National Committee vice chair, Mike Germond, admitted that “many regional Democratic parties have breathed a sigh of relief and held celebrations, including, unfortunately, robot-themed celebrations.” Some Republicans have seen a more sinister lining to the Democratic celebrations. Republican strategist Ralph Kinsey has even gone so far as to suggest that Romney is a Democratic plant. “How else could someone like that have come so far?” Kinsey said that “Democratic experimentation with cyborgs has been common knowledge since the vice presidency of Al Gore, known in the artificial intelligence community as Zanthrope 35-K.” At first, Romney refused to answer the Kinsey charges, dismissing him in February with the question, “How could I be a robot if I want America to be more like America, again? Answer that.”

Republican candidate Rick Santorum said he did not join with those accusing Romney of being a cyborg. Friday, Santorum, still standing by his insistence that Romney is human, suggested that Romney might silence the rumor “by agreeing to a slogan sound-off with an IBM humanoid machine, like Kasparov playing chess against IBM’s Deep Blue computer.” Kasparov finally dispelled cyborg rumors about himself by losing to Deep Blue and throwing a fierce temper tantrum. “Maybe Romney should throw a tantrum about something instead of smiling and glazing over all the time,” said Santorum. Newt Gingrich was more direct. He said distributed x-rays of himself to the press and challenged Romney to do the same.

Romney said the whole thing was ridiculous but made an appointment with Dr. Anita Gentry of the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital. Gentry agreed to produce the x-rays if an independent panel was allowed to release them to the press. Romney agreed to all the conditions. After a three-hour x-ray session, the images were available immediately. Romney joked that such “quick results would not be possible under Obamacare. I will restore America.” In a press conference, Gentry reviewed the images for the press. She said the panel of independent doctors concurred with her conclusion that “Mr. Willard Mitt Romney cannot be defined or characterized as a cyborg device.” Though not technically a cyborg, Gentry and the panel conceded that Romney does have a bionic middle toe but that has “little-to-no-effect on his reasoning or sloganeering.” Romney said he had forgotten about his bionic toe and admitted he had it implanted during the Reagan administration.

© 2012 Off the Grid News

Five caucus states have voted to date and according to the Associated Press delegate count, Paul isn’t projected to win any national delegates in Iowa, Colorado or Minnesota. He received five in Nevada and ten in Maine. Mitt Romney leads the overall delegate count with 123, followed by Santorum at 72, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 32. Paul is in fourth place, with 19 delegates.

The Texas congressman hasn’t come near to winning the popular vote in each state to this point. But, 1,144 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination for president. Paul’s campaign aides say their familiarity with caucus rules combined with the passion of Paul’s supporters offers a unique ability to take advantage of the complicated delegate process.

Paul’s campaign manager, John Tate, said “We are confident that when all is said and done and some of these caucus states finish their process that we will end up with either a good plurality or a majority of the delegates out of Maine, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, possibly Colorado.”

Political parties in many caucus states use a multistep process to award national delegates. AP used results from local caucuses in those states to project how many national delegates candidates would win if they manage to maintain the same level of support until the convention. But, local caucuses are just the first step and things can change a number of times.

120,000 caucus goers attended local caucuses on Jan. 3 in Iowa. In the straw poll Rick Santorum barely edged out Romney and Paul finished third, about 3,000 votes behind. However, while the national media focuses solely on the straw polls, they are just the beginning of the process. In Iowa the process means the caucus-elected delegates will attend county conventions in March. Those conventions will elect delegates to congressional district conventions in April and the state GOP convention in June.

If no candidate has a clear majority by the time of the national convention, there will be a number of wild cards to consider. In Florida, for example, state leadership declared the primary vote a winner-take-all affair, awarding all of its delegates to Mitt Romney. When Florida moved its primary to January it total delegates were cut from 99 to 49.

The national Republican Party also stated that no state holding primaries before Super Tuesday could winner-take-all.  As a result, Newt Gingrich is challenging the Florida vote and pressing for delegates to be awarded proportionately. If that happens, Romney’s lead shrinks.

So how does this pave the way for Ron Paul to have a greater impact on the national convention than ever before? Imagine a primetime speech at the GOP convention in which he challenges the party line on international affairs. The leadership may have no choice but to cringe and allow it.

“Paul is fascinating because good ol’ Ron will say just about anything he wants to say at any particular time,” said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. “And the last thing you want somebody doing is going off message in primetime at a convention.”

During an interview, Paul’s campaign manager said, “The ultimate goal is obviously still to win, to get enough delegates there to win the nomination. I think there’s lot of secondary goals, to make sure that our and Dr. Paul’s views are represented at the convention, represented in the platform.” He added, “We want to make sure that the Republican Party understands that we are a major part of the Republican Party.”

While Paul’s libertarian views make a nice fit with mainstream Republican ideas on limited government and low taxes, his views on foreign policy do not.  “Following the Constitution, don’t police the world, don’t participate in all this nation-building, cut spending, cut taxes, cut deficits — these are traditional Republican principles,” said David Fischer, vice chairman of Paul’s campaign in Iowa. “I consider the view of these Republicans who want to simply grow the size and scope of the government, that’s outside of Republican mainstream.”

Rich Galen, a GOP strategist thinks Paul is guaranteed a speaking spot at the convention, and has a good chance for concessions in the party platform, as long as they don’t diverge too far from mainstream Republican positions.

There is precedent for the losing candidate to make a bigger splash than the candidate who ends up with the most delegates. One need only look back at the Republican National Convention of 1976. Gerald Ford won the nomination but Ronald Reagan gained the nation’s attention. Ford lost to a virtual unknown in Jimmy Carter and Reagan returned in 1980 to lead his party to two terms in the White House.

Background

Willard Mitt Romney was born in 1947, the son of prominent Michigan auto executive George Romney. Like most young men in the LDS (Mormon) church, he served 2 ½ years as a missionary. Upon returning from his mission in France, he married his high school sweetheart, Ann Davies, and graduated as class valedictorian from Brigham Young University. From there Romney moved to Massachusetts and graduated from both Harvard Law and Harvard Business School with high honors.

Political Career

After a brief but successful career as a management consultant and then head of a private equity investment firm, Romney was ready to enter the world of politics. He won his first-ever bid for the Republican Senatorial candidate but had the dubious task of then running against longtime incumbent Ted Kennedy, one of the nation’s most famous liberals and an enormous force in state politics. The Kennedy campaign staff had no problem using a religious argument against Romney, which was ironic considering the vicious attack made on Jack Kennedy’s Catholicism when he ran for president in 1960. Though he ran a good campaign, the gap was far too wide to close and win the election.

Romney moved back to Utah in 1990 to assume leadership as the head of the organizing committee for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.  Though the Olympic effort had previously been plagued by scandal and financial problems, he was widely credited with the $100 million profit earned by the 2002 games, despite increased post-9/11 security costs.

By 2002 Mitt Romney had returned to Massachusetts to cash in on his business success by using his strong record of management expertise as a selling point in the 2002 gubernatorial election. He easily won the Republican primary and went on to defeat Democrat Shannon O’Brien by five points in the general election.

While governor, the state enacted a series of tax increases and rule changes, moving it from a $1.2 billion deficit to a $700 million surplus. During the same period, the Democratic state legislature moved state policy to the left, overturning innumerable vetoes. In the second year of his term, Governor Romney found his state at the center of major national controversy with the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in the state. Romney was on record as opposing both gay marriage and civil unions but was forced to take center stage on the contentious issue. Since then, the governor has identified himself as a strong opponent of gay marriage but an equally vocal proponent of other civil rights for lesbians and homosexuals.

In 2006, Governor Romney made national news by signing the Massachusetts health reform law, the first statewide law mandating health insurance for all citizens and subsidizing the premiums of low income residence. This move has become a major sticking point among conservatives and libertarians and is consistently pointed to as an inconsistency when Romney attacks Obamacare.

With a long record of public office and an established web presence, Romney’s stances are a matter of common public record. Here is a synopsis of his platform as gleaned from his official campaign web site.

The Role of Government and Economic Issues

• Smaller Government – Calls for hard cap on federal spending and curtailment of the intrusive expansion of federal authority in order to provide businesses with the certainty and stability needed to make investments.
• Economic Competitiveness – To improve America’s competitiveness in the world market we must lower taxes on businesses, slash bureaucratic red tape, and place a hard cap on the impact that federal regulations can have on the economy and limit the harmful influence of union bosses on productive businesses.
• Free Trade On Fair Terms – Pushes for open markets on fair terms for our products and services around the world. Access to foreign markets is crucial to growing our economy.  America must reassert its leadership in international negotiations, follow through on commitments we have already made, and push aggressively for advantageous new agreements.
• Energy Security and Independence – To meet the challenge of achieving a secure and affordable supply of fuels, we need to lower the amount of energy we use and increase the supply of domestic energy sources. Government must be a partner, not an obstacle, in this effort. This involves facilitating the exploration and development of conventional fossil fuels, removing regulatory hurdles that prevent the construction of nuclear power plants, and address market failures that prevent the adoption of new technologies.
• Training and Preparing America’s Workers – Steps we must take to restart economic growth include expanding trade relationships, developing new sources of energy, eliminating ineffective government handouts, and providing workers the resources to develop valuable skills and make the transition to new types of work.
• End Deficit Spending – The only way to curb a further economic decline is to stop borrowing unhealthy sums to pay for what we already cannot afford. Federal spending must be capped.
• Entitlement Spending – Entitlement programs must be reformed to be kept solvent.

Health Care Reform

• ObamaCare - Repeal and replace President Obama’s health care law.
• State Leadership – Give states the responsibility, flexibility, and resources to act in their own interest in health care statutes. We should empower states to expand health care access to low-income Americans by block-granting funds for Medicaid and the uninsured. Empower states to help the chronically ill, to improve their access to care, and to improve the functioning of insurance markets for others.
• Tax Reform – Empower individuals to purchase their own insurance and expand the tax deduction to also include those who buy their own health insurance.
• Regulatory Reform – Focus federal regulation of health care on making markets work through limited federal regulation to correct common failures in insurance markets, while eliminating counterproductive federal rules. This includes allowing the purchase insurance across state lines, free from costly state benefit requirements. Individuals and small businesses should be allowed to form purchasing pools to lower insurance costs and improve choice.
• Medical Malpractice Reform – Cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice litigation and provide innovation grants to states for additional medical liability reforms, such as alternative dispute resolution or health care courts.
• Market Forces – Strengthen health savings accounts (HSAs), which help consumers save for health expenses and choose cost-effective insurance. Permit HSA funds to be used to pay for health insurance premiums.

Foreign Policy

• National Defense – Restore defense capabilities to ensure security at home and peace abroad. Modernize air and naval forces, weapons systems, and equipment. Grow the number of troops and ensure that funds go to their needs and care. Establish robust missile defense and repair and update our nuclear arsenal. Oppose any cuts to our military budget.
• Dynamic Diplomacy – Enhance America’s “soft power” to bolster our standing and influence by capitalizing on the appeal of liberty, free enterprise, and our historical generosity toward nations in need. This will attract allies—old and new—to the cause of liberty and peace.
• Steadfast Alliances – Revitalize alliances to meet common challenges. America’s strength is amplified when it is combined with the strength of other nations. We must therefore be a resolute friend to our allies and honor our commitments to them. We should also fast-track NATO admission for our allies, bolster our support for Israel, establish a global military alliance of democracies dedicated to ensuring security and protecting freedom, and refrain from criticizing allies publicly and without consultation.

Conclusions

Romney has now made one major run for the Republican nomination and now is the definite front runner in the upcoming primaries. In spite of this, a number of questions still loom in the background of his presidential aspirations. Most of those questions center on belief (backed by some polls), suggesting that both evangelical Christians and the non-religious alike may find voting for a Mormon complicated.  There is also the widespread perception that Romney is really a moderate seeking to appeal to the conservative right to win the conservative-dominated GOP primary.

There is no doubt in these hard economic times that his track record as a businessman and budget-balancing governor are definitely in his favor. With his classical “presidential look,” winning smile, and spotless record as a family man, he makes a strong contrast with several of his competitors and remains the most traditional candidate running in a very traditional party.

However, there are some worrisome things about Mitt Romney. His platform is strong on rhetoric but sometimes perceived as weak on real substance. Many in the more conservative wing of the Republican Party see John McCain written all over his candidacy.  In a time when it seems people are looking for a reason to vote against President Obama, Romney may be just the ticket they are looking for. Or, too many may see him as more of the same and decide to go for a candidate who offers a clear contrast.