Rainman48314
11-09-2011, 09:48 PM
Tonight they debated and one self destructed. What follows is from the Detroit Free Press Political Columist
"Just give it to Mitt and let’s fast forward to next summer and get on with the main event, Romney vs. Obama in the 2012 presidential election.
I say this not because Mitt Romney was so impressive in Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate here in Michigan. He wasn’t.
He was pretty much the same Romney we’ve seen all along -- bobbing and weaving, trying one minute to sound conservative enough and anti-Obama enough to placate his party’s faithful base, then tacking toward the center by sounding more reasonable than the wingnuts and dunces sharing the debate stage with him. What Romney did do was avoid a major blunder, which Texas Gov. Rick Perry failed to do – again – by forgetting one of the three federal agencies he vows to kill the minute he becomes president.
Romney knows he needs to curry favor with the party base and he knows the most reliable was to do that is to keep bashing President Barack Obama by name, which he did in response to virtually every question. But he also managed to seem not so much a right-wing partisan as the others, when he talked about working with a lopsided Democratic majority when he was governor of Massachusetts.
Mitt fumbled the auto industry bailout question, as he always does, by stating that he favored managed bankruptcies – which he publicly did at the time, smartly, back in 2008 – but then contending that they should have been handled privately and not by government. Sadly, Romney the private equity financier who certainly knows better, keeps repeating that fantasy, knowing full well that there was no private-sector bankruptcy financing available in the dark days of late 2008 to save General Motors or Chrysler from liquidation. Uncle Sam was the lender of last resport – President George W. Bush knew that and so did Obama.
But Romney can’t bring himself – in a battle against red-blooded Republican rivals – to concede that the auto bailouts were necessary and successful, or that Team Obama might have done a single thing well.
Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and the one guy on stage with the chops and mental agility to call out Romney for pandering the public’s China-phobia, also laid an egg on the auto bailout question – suggesting the novel notion that instead of a $68-billion bailout, “there ought to be a way of taking the auto industry through some sort or reorganization.”
Well, duh. What does Hunstman think happened to GM and Chrysler in the summer of 2009 that transformed them from hulking carcasses to profitable growing companies?
As for the rest of the crew of candidates and questioners – leave it to “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer to make Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Michele Bachman seem less loopy than usual – it was a pretty uneventful night.
Professor Newt Gingrich, determined to show his historian’s chops, twice lectured us on how some out-of-control federal program was all the fault of LBJ, that president from back in the 1960s.
And Rick Santorum, always in danger of falling offstage on the far left, was hamstrung by the focus on the economy, so he couldn’t talk much about social issues and had to tell us in Michigan that manufacturing was important.All in all, not much happened that’s likely to derail the Romney train, even if lots of Republicans still aren’t enthused about riding it."
"Just give it to Mitt and let’s fast forward to next summer and get on with the main event, Romney vs. Obama in the 2012 presidential election.
I say this not because Mitt Romney was so impressive in Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate here in Michigan. He wasn’t.
He was pretty much the same Romney we’ve seen all along -- bobbing and weaving, trying one minute to sound conservative enough and anti-Obama enough to placate his party’s faithful base, then tacking toward the center by sounding more reasonable than the wingnuts and dunces sharing the debate stage with him. What Romney did do was avoid a major blunder, which Texas Gov. Rick Perry failed to do – again – by forgetting one of the three federal agencies he vows to kill the minute he becomes president.
Romney knows he needs to curry favor with the party base and he knows the most reliable was to do that is to keep bashing President Barack Obama by name, which he did in response to virtually every question. But he also managed to seem not so much a right-wing partisan as the others, when he talked about working with a lopsided Democratic majority when he was governor of Massachusetts.
Mitt fumbled the auto industry bailout question, as he always does, by stating that he favored managed bankruptcies – which he publicly did at the time, smartly, back in 2008 – but then contending that they should have been handled privately and not by government. Sadly, Romney the private equity financier who certainly knows better, keeps repeating that fantasy, knowing full well that there was no private-sector bankruptcy financing available in the dark days of late 2008 to save General Motors or Chrysler from liquidation. Uncle Sam was the lender of last resport – President George W. Bush knew that and so did Obama.
But Romney can’t bring himself – in a battle against red-blooded Republican rivals – to concede that the auto bailouts were necessary and successful, or that Team Obama might have done a single thing well.
Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and the one guy on stage with the chops and mental agility to call out Romney for pandering the public’s China-phobia, also laid an egg on the auto bailout question – suggesting the novel notion that instead of a $68-billion bailout, “there ought to be a way of taking the auto industry through some sort or reorganization.”
Well, duh. What does Hunstman think happened to GM and Chrysler in the summer of 2009 that transformed them from hulking carcasses to profitable growing companies?
As for the rest of the crew of candidates and questioners – leave it to “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer to make Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Michele Bachman seem less loopy than usual – it was a pretty uneventful night.
Professor Newt Gingrich, determined to show his historian’s chops, twice lectured us on how some out-of-control federal program was all the fault of LBJ, that president from back in the 1960s.
And Rick Santorum, always in danger of falling offstage on the far left, was hamstrung by the focus on the economy, so he couldn’t talk much about social issues and had to tell us in Michigan that manufacturing was important.All in all, not much happened that’s likely to derail the Romney train, even if lots of Republicans still aren’t enthused about riding it."