Voting Resources
Thoughts on Romney
Who is Mitt Romney? I will admit I am not yet sold on the Romney quest for the White House, but there are aspects to be admired. When Bill O’Reilly pressed on Romney on why he didn’t talk about giving away his father's inheritance, one could see that Romney really didn’t talk about his charitable actions but preferred to keep them private. When it comes to charitable donations, Romney views this as part of his life and as his tax return showed, he annually donated 20% to his church and charity.
The biggest problem in the minds of many is Romney's disconnection from the masses, in particular Main Street. The biggest obstacle can easily be turned into an asset, if Romney did one thing, he embraced his wealth and success and is not embarrassed by it. Romney's success is due to hard work, and if there is one message he can communicate, hard work still matters. Romney may have been born into wealth, but his father wasn’t, and he learned the lesson of what one can accomplish through hard work from his father, and it is a story of how one generation built the wealth for another. Isn’t it the American dream to pass on your wealth and hard work to your family, to have each generation wealthier than the previous?
Romney is not going to become the guy who goes in a bar to hit a few brew but he doesn’t have to be. He needs to be himself; let's face it, when was the last time any liberals complained about Warren Buffet and for that matter, turned down money from George Soros? Conventional wisdom is that Democrats will make Romney's wealth an issue in this campaign, but this action may actually backfire. Barack Obama is no more a man of the people than Romney, and in many ways, he is far more separate from the common folks than Romney. As an academic leftist and a community organizer turned politician, there is very little evidence to suggest Obama understands the working man any more than Romney. Obama came into office with so little basic understanding of our economic system. One would be hard pressed to come up with any president so little educated in how business works than Obama, and there is very little evidence that he has learned much in office. Barack Obama told a group of donors in San Francisco about how voters in the 2008 Pennsylvania primary clung to guns and God in time of troubles, and it was not met as a compliment. This was about Democratic blue collar workers; imagine how he feels about the half of the country who are Republicans!
Romney does understand what Main Street business owners go through since he helped enough of those businesses move beyond small businesses to major players while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process. While the unemployment under Obama has been slipping downward, there are actually fewer people working today than there were when Obama took office. Job creation has been sluggish and this is the slowest recovery in post-World War II. The national debt is now exceeding the national output, something not seen since World War II, so what recovery that exists is threatened in the immediate future.
How can Obama truly understand Main Street when his energy plan is designed to increase energy cost for the average American, something that his Secretary of Energy all but admitted in a recent congressional hearing? Romney has to simply quote Obama and his own advisors to point the ignorance of their policy when it comes to energy. If there was a policy that shows how out of touch the Obama administration is, it is energy. Most Americans are not excited about $4 or $5 per gallon and they are not willing to pay a premium for Obama’s green cars.
Romney needs to remind voters: “Yes I am rich, but I didn’t inherit it or marry into it like some Democratic leaders, but earned it by helping put others to work and create new businesses. Contrast that to a President who mocks the value of whose votes he seeks. He views your belief in the Second Amendment as clinging to guns and your belief in God as clinging to God, and that simply shows that he is the one out of touch.”
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But is Romney a real conservative?
Mr. Donelson failed to mention that Mitt Romney struggles with conservative ideas. Romney is for an individual mandate for healthcare, look at Romeycare. Romney is for rewarding cronies with big money for the pet projects, look at the Olympics, The Big Dig, and of course Romneycare. Romney is for forcing religious institutions to provide abortive medicines against their principles.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
When Romney has been asked about current events and current legislation in congress. He usually answers the demrocrats' way until one of his advisors tells him the right answer and then Romney corrects himself later in the day. Conservatism comes do not come naturally to Romney.
We live in a dangerous world with turmoil everywhere. Yet, Romney has no foreign policy experience. He has no clear plan to protect us or our allies. He just "thinks its a good idea" to that we be clear to our enemies that we won't tolerate their idle threats.
When it comes to passing legislation, Romney complains more than Obama about the other party being in charge of legislation. Romney makes it clear that with democrats in control he was powerless to make real stands on important issues like judicial appoiments, pro-life, and real budgetary reforms. Oh, Romney vetoed many things. But his vetoes were so ineffective that his state legislature over-rode his veto 88% of the time. That isn't real leadership.
So Mr. Donelson, Barack Obama will not have to use Romney's wealth against him. Obama will point out that Romney is not a conservative, instead he is really a weak liberal who has no foreign policy experience, and was an ineffective governor. The real argument Obama will give the American public is, "do we want the devil we know, Obama, or the devil we don't know, Romney."
My hope is that the Texas GOP doesn't shove a moderate, liberal leaning candidate down our throat like other states have done to their conservatives. Nor do we want the shenanigans like Iowa, Maine and Michigan GOP leaders have demonstrated. We need someone who knows and articulates our conservative beliefs without Teleprompters and high paid advisors.
Rick Santorum has a significant lead in Texas, because real conservatives know he is the real thing. Santorum served on the Senate Armed Forces committee. Santorum was successful in getting Welfare Reform signed into law under a democratic president. Santorum was prescient about Iran and its real threat to us. So, Santorum passed a bill to help the Iranians who wanted to change their own government. Then Obama failed to use those resources during last year's Green Revolution.
Santorum was one of the Gang of Seven who exposed the House Post Office and check writing scandal. He wrote, fought and won the ban against partial birth abortion. Rick Santorum truly lives by his conservative principles.
As for me, and several hundred thousands of conservative Texas Republicans, we refuse your shoving Romney down our throats and WE PICK RICK SANTORUM.
Tim, Rick Is Not Ronald Reagan
Could you please explain exactly how Rick Santorum is more conservative and more qualified to be President than Mitt Romney? Rick is in no way the great conservative icon you portray him to be. He is a career politician with no executive experience who has accomplished nothing more than Obama in the real world. The last thing America needs is another President who has no executive experience or understanding of business and economics and free enterprise beyond his empty platitudes. In his last senatorial election he was defeated by 18% because he tried to impose his moralizing mantra. Newsflash: The GOP candidate needs the independent voters who are turned off by the holier than thou moralizing that is Rick's main attraction for certain primary voters.
By extreme contrast, Mitt Romney had a very successful career as a business executive and entrepreneur where he was immersed for 25 years in business and economics and organizational management. He went on to get more executive experience as a governor. He is a man of faith and strong character but he does not go about trying to impose his faith on others as Rick does. To call Mitt a liberal is like calling Ronald Reagan a liberal because he was once a democrat.
If you sit down and created a job description for President, you can make no credible argument that Rick is even close to being as qualified as Mitt to be President. To try and make that argument based on some unnamed conservative principals only exposes your lack of credibility. America is not electing a faith leader, we are electing a President to go in and completely revamp the federal government from a massive wealth and prosperity consuming disaster that is driving the USA to insolvency into a much smaller and effective facilitator of the American free enterprise economy. The last time I checked, Mitt has a long career history of converting ineffective organizations into economically effective organizations. Mitt probably has close to the ideal skill sets for what America needs right now, and Rick has none. That is the reality.
To defeat Obama, the GOP needs a candidate who can expose Obama's disastrous economic, spending and energy policies and offer compelling, real world alternatives. This person must have a career track record that offers credibility relative to Obama's complete, naive incompetence on the most important issues facing America. A man with real executive experience who can debate and defeat Obama on the economic and free enterprise issues. Romney has completely destroyed Rick in the debates on these issues and Rick has not been able to lay a glove on Romney.
The reality is that Rick Santorum is not Ronald Reagan. Nowhere close to Reagan in experience, temperament, communication ability, skill sets, leadership and political wisdom. Rick is a conservative fiction that you and others have created in your minds to oppose Romney because you believe he is the "establishment" candidate even though Rick himself previously endorsed Mitt as a true conservative in 2008. Do you seriously believe that Rick has better proven experience and skill sets than Mitt Romney to stand toe to toe with Obama in a national debate and defeat him? Give me break.
Mitt is not perfect, but no politician is, least of all Rick. The truth is that the GOP is very lucky that Mitt is willing to stand up and endure all the false abuse that misguided people like you are heaping on him in your desperate search for another Reagan no matter how unlike Reagan the other candidate may be. You and others like you might do well to stop the carping about Romney and get behind him because he is the only candidate who has a real chance to keep America from another disastrous 4 years of Obama. In truth, Mitt is a lot closer to Reagan in the most important ways than Rick will ever be, and rick has zero chance of defeating Obama.
Our kids future should be more important than your notions of a perfect conservatism that exits nowhere but in people's imaginations. America is blessed to have a man of Mitt's caliber standing up to challenge Obama at this critical moment.