President Obama Re-Elected - Page 118

On May 31 2012 05:47 TheToast wrote:


But if we do manage to get the economy back on track and the stock market goes back up, then treasury bill yeilds will go back up and we'll have the same damn problem as before. Can't keep sweeping messes under the rug, eventually you will have to clean them up. That's what Greece found out the hard way.

On May 31 2012 05:52 aksfjh wrote:

And when that happens, you cut spending and allow the private sector investments pay for the jobs lost in the public sector. Although, if Japan is any indicator, we could very well never see yields rise very far and inflation continue to stay down.

On May 31 2012 06:02 TheToast wrote:


Well when a country reaches the point of Greece, the only option is a massive bailout or a default. You can't tax your way out of that kind of mess without cutting entire branches of government. The problem with Americans is they want European style social services, but don't want to pay for them. And "tax the rich" is not a solution to the problem. If you took every last cent from every billionaire in the world, you wouldn't even be able to pay off 1/3 or the US national debt. At some point, the middle class has to pay some money into the system. You can't have everything and not pay for it, that's why we have this $15,000,000,000,000 mess to begin with. Either the middle class has to pay for at least some of it, or cut the spending; those are the only two options. Not to mention every president since Carter has slyly tried to sweep it under the rug.

Also Japan is not a very good comparison to anything, Japan's political system is filled with rampant clientalism and political corruption which is more responsible for the nation's sluggish economic growth than anything else.

On May 31 2012 06:02 TheToast wrote:


Well when a country reaches the point of Greece, the only option is a massive bailout or a default. You can't tax your way out of that kind of mess without cutting entire branches of government. The problem with Americans is they want European style social services, but don't want to pay for them. And "tax the rich" is not a solution to the problem. If you took every last cent from every billionaire in the world, you wouldn't even be able to pay off 1/3 or the US national debt. At some point, the middle class has to pay some money into the system. You can't have everything and not pay for it, that's why we have this $15,000,000,000,000 mess to begin with. Either the middle class has to pay for at least some of it, or cut the spending; those are the only two options. Not to mention every president since Carter has slyly tried to sweep it under the rug.

Also Japan is not a very good comparison to anything, Japan's political system is filled with rampant clientalism and political corruption which is more responsible for the nation's sluggish economic growth than anything else.

On May 31 2012 06:13 Roe wrote:

What are the references for that?

On May 31 2012 06:10 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So who is running for President Romney or Trump?

Grow some balls Mitt.

On May 31 2012 06:57 Defacer wrote:


God, that's my biggest pet peeve about Romney.

Obama may be 'professorial' or evasive, but that Romney simply has no integrity or shame.

I can't believe more people haven't made a stink about him throwing his foreign policy advisor -- a lifetime Bush-acolyte and neocon that happened to be gay -- under the bus because some Christian radio host made a stink.

On May 31 2012 14:32 Gummy wrote:
Romney is a very cynical man who is operating on the safe and entirely correct assumption that the general voting population is idiotic and he can arbitrarily place his position so as to maximize the number of votes he gets. It's all a game to him, though tbh, I'm not sure his attitude will be reflected in election results.

The Obama campaign's attempt to make an issue of Mitt Romney's governorship quickly descended into spectacle Thursday.

As the president's chief strategist, David Axelrod, made his case in front of the state house in Boston, he was nearly drowned out by pro-Romney hecklers chanting slogans. From the sidelines, a clean-cut young man in a blue tie blew soap bubbles. "You can't handle the truth!" Axelrod was reduced to yelling, as he leaned across the podium and strained to hear a reporter's question.

Axelrod and the gaggle of sympathetic local officials behind him argued that Romney sold Massachusetts voters the same bill of goods he's peddling now -- that his private-sector expertise would make him an ideal chief executive of the state. But his record in office, Axelrod claimed, was "alarmingly weak."

Was Romney actually a terrible governor of Massachusetts, or was this all politics? Naturally, the reality is not as simple as either side would like to claim.

Romney can't be accused of leaving the state in a shambles, local experts say, and his tenure was by no means a disaster. He left the state with one towering accomplishment -- universal health care, an achievement neither Romney nor Obama likes to mention now. But Romney fell short of his campaign pledge to change the state's political culture, stymied by a combination of entrenched interests and his own failure to cultivate relationships. And his naked positioning for national office in the latter part of his one term left a bad taste in many mouths.

"I think there's really a Romney One and a Romney Two," said Marty Linsky, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School and former Republican state legislator. "Romney One really worked very hard to try to do what he thought was in the best interests of the commonwealth; Romney Two worked very hard to position himself to run for president of the United States."

By the end, Linsky said, "People felt they didn't know who he was. The only way to make sense of his trajectory was that he was only about himself."

THE ECONOMY

Romney took office in 2003 with the nationwide economy still in the slump that followed the tech bust and September 11. Unemployment was rising, in Massachusetts and nationally, and job growth was stagnant.

During Romney's term, these trends reversed. Unemployment declined and jobs began to rebound. But they did so in Massachusetts at a slower rate than most other states, with the result that, over the course of his governorship, the Bay State was 47th in the nation in terms of job creation. As Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, told Politifact, "Jobs grew, but they grew at an anemic rate compared to the rest of the country." Andrew Sum, director of Market Studies at Northeastern University, put it this way to the Boston Globe: "That time period was a very weak time period for the state. I'm not blaming everything on [Romney], but he didn't turn anything around."

Romney has claimed that he tried to bring small government to Beacon Hill, but here again, the record is mixed. "When I took office, I was facing a $3 billion budget deficit and an economy in a tailspin," he said at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (this was the same speech where he claimed to have been a "severely conservative governor"). "Even with a legislature that was 85 percent Democrat, I cut taxes 19 times and balanced the budget all four years. I cast over 800 vetoes and cut entire programs. I erased a $3 billion budget shortfall and left office with a $2 billion rainy-day fund."

But as Axelrod pointed out, the size of government -- both state spending and the number of government jobs -- actually grew on Romney's watch, and he avoided raising taxes largely by raising fees, on such things as vehicle registration and marriage licenses, instead. And while Romney did balance the budget for his final year in office, he left his successor with a $1 billion structural deficit.

Given that Obama is campaigning on a platform of raising taxes and increasing government spending -- er, "investment" -- you'd think Democrats would balk at criticizing some of these moves, which seem to show Romney as more of a fiscal moderate than his rhetoric indicates. But Axelrod argued that raising fees was an overly regressive way to bring in state revenue, and that in falling short of his promises Romney showed he couldn't be trusted.

"I think he did do a competent job" managing the state's finances, said Maurice Cunningham, chairman of the political science department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. "It was spotty, and to say he didn't raise taxes when he raised fees was a semantic game. But he did come into a situation where the budget was in a bad state, the economy was in a bad state, and he maintained a balanced budget along with a fairly fiscally conservative [Democratic] speaker of the House."

HEALTH-CARE REFORM

At Thursday's Boston presser, Axelrod was preceded onstage by four Massachusetts Democratic officials, including the current lieutenant governor. The phrase "health care" did not pass their lips.

That shouldn't be surprising -- after all, the Obama team just spent the Republican primary repeatedly reminding voters that Romney's Massachusetts health-care reform was a key inspiration for Obamacare. For the same reason, Romney rarely mentions his crowning achievement in Massachusetts, either, even though, as Ryan Lizza detailed in The New Yorker last year, it was intended to serve as the capstone to his legacy and potentially his ticket to the presidency.

"The health-care bill is an example of Romney at his best," said Linsky. "He negotiated a very complex situation, and he worked out a brilliant deal, at the end, with the Democratic leadership." In a well-choreographed legislative dance, the Democrats sent Romney a bill containing most of his reforms, he used his line-item veto to excise parts he disagreed with, and the Democrats overrode some of the vetoes, including the individual mandate.

The result has been broadly popular and is largely considered a success. In a lengthy examination of Romneycare last year, the Globe called it "a revolution that basically worked," securing coverage for the vast majority of the state's residents "without devastating state finances."

Romney got through the GOP primary by all but disowning his health-care bill, trying in vain to distinguish it from Obama's achievement and straining to argue that its approach was not applicable on the federal level. He hasn't addressed it since wrapping up the Republican nomination, but it's a debate that's likely to come roaring back when the Supreme Court issues its Obamacare verdict at the end of this month.

LEADERSHIP

Romney campaigned on a promise to clean up Massachusetts' notoriously cronyistic state government, painting his opponent, the sitting state treasurer, as a product of a backroom-dealing Beacon Hill culture. But his efforts once he was elected were somewhat halfhearted and largely fruitless.

One example was the state's judiciary, a notorious hotbed of patronage. Romney's attempts to reform it didn't succeed, and instead, he ended up succumbing to the status quo, the Washington Post reports. His attempt to consolidate transportation agencies was shot down by the legislature, as was his push to remove from the state university system William Bulger, brother of mobster "Whitey" Bulger. (Bulger did eventually resign, in part due to Romney's pressure.)

"A lot of governors come in offering to change the political culture," said Cunningham. "But he wasn't here long enough, he didn't put enough effort into it, and he had a very formidable opponent."

Perhaps because of his outsider mien, Romney enjoyed notably chilly relationships with legislators and local officials, who found him distant and somewhat disengaged. John Barrett, who was mayor of the city of North Adams during Romney's governorship, described him Thursday as "a governor who just ignored us, who didn't want our effort," saying he never met with mayors or sought their input. "He believed that a PowerPoint presentation would solve all our problems," Barrett said.

Romney probably could have achieved more if he'd been less aloof, Cunningham said, pointing to the example of one of Romney's Republican predecessors, former Gov. Bill Weld. "Weld really bashed the legislature in the gubernatorial campaign, but when he got in, he found thing he could work with them on," Cunningham said. "Romney never tried to cultivate those relationships."

By his third year in office, it was apparent Romney's priorities lay elsewhere. He turned against abortion rights and took stands against stem-cell research and gay marriage, and began turning up in states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. In those appearances, he frequently made jokes at the expense of his own state as he tried to win favor with conservatives. By the end of his governorship, his approval rating had declined to a dismal 39 percent.

"Once he decided to run for president, his consitutency changed. The people of Massachusetts, most of whom weren't particularly interested in his presidential campaign, weren't his constituency anymore," Linsky said. "Everything he did was oriented toward positioning himself for his next challenge."

On June 01 2012 15:06 DeepElemBlues wrote:
Judging from the most recent posts Mitt Romney is hitting the sweet spot. Keep at em, Mitt. They get mad when you don't play their game and let them set the pace and agenda because that isn't how it's supposed to happen! You're supposed to dance to their tune. Keep on punching back instead of showing your belly like tired old McCain.

On June 02 2012 00:56 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:




I gotta wonder what Trump's angle is on all this. Romney has secured the primary... what is Trump really getting for the level of continued support that he's fueling for Romney?

I don't think Romney would choose Trump as his runningmate, and so I don't see how Trump continuing to be in the political limelight does anything to further his business (not that he needs a publicity boost in that respect). Maybe planning for four years from now?

On June 02 2012 00:56 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:




I gotta wonder what Trump's angle is on all this. Romney has secured the primary... what is Trump really getting for the level of continued support that he's fueling for Romney?

I don't think Romney would choose Trump as his runningmate, and so I don't see how Trump continuing to be in the political limelight does anything to further his business (not that he needs a publicity boost in that respect). Maybe planning for four years from now?

On June 02 2012 03:18 xDaunt wrote:
This thread cracks me up sometimes. Everyone's discussing Trump, and no one is discussing either the bad economic news rolling out today or the fact that prominent democrats (including Bill Clinton) are throwing Obama under the bus and defending Romney's Bain Capital record.

C'mon now -- priorities people.

On June 02 2012 03:33 Velocirapture wrote:


People are discussing Trump because he is more relevant. The Clinton thing is nothing more than boys club banter. Everybody who has ever had the ego necessary to achieve presidency in the modern era thinks they are the hottest shit on the block. Criticism is a natural extension of thinking you are right about everything.

The economic news is just more of the same so... not really news. This is bad for Obama but will not be headline worthy for a few months.

Quite frankly, Romney could have put a stop to this by completely abandoning any association with the birther movement. Romney is one good "birthers are crazy, trump is crazy and I dont want any of them to have anything to do with me or my campaign" quote away from putting this behind him. Its the wait for such a declaration that is news.