It's clear that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney
will survive the GOP version of "The Hunger Games" and become their 2012 presidential
nominee. The richest and most radical
presidential candidate in modern times, Romney offers a retrograde vision for
America and a surprising set of weaknesses.
Romney's a plutocrat leading a Party that dogmatically promotes
the interests of the 1 percent. He's
admitted that his net worth is approximately "$200-and-some-odd
million." (In 2010 and 2011 Romney
made a total of $42 million and paid less than 14 percent in
taxes.) Of course, wealth
alone does not determine political philosophy -- FDR and JFK were wealthy -- but
Romney's actions indicate he has swallowed the radical conservative ethos that defines
contemporary Republican politics.
Before serving one term as Governor, Romney was a vulture
capitalist. He made his money running a
subsidiary of Bain capital, whose "modus
operandi was to invest in companies, leverage them up with debt, and then sell
them off for scrap, allowing Bain's investors to walk away with huge profits
while the companies in which Bain invested wound up in bankruptcy, laying off
workers and reneging on benefits." (Romney's
work at Bain was attacked in a 30 minute video, "King of Bain," released by an anti-Romney Republican
Super-PAC.)
As the 2012 Republican primaries progressed, Governor Romney's
opponents tagged him as a "flip-flopper," a politician who panders to his
audience. His campaign has attempted to
counter this perception by having him take extreme conservative positions. On March 20th Romney embraced the
radical budget proposal of Congressman Paul Ryan. (Ryan then endorsed Romney.) Romney
lauded Ryan "for taking a bold step
toward putting our nation back on the track to fiscal sanity." (This is a
budget that cuts Medicare and Medicaid and further erodes the American middle
class.)
Romney has prevailed by running negative ads against his
opponents. (When it appeared that Newt
Gingrich would be Romney's main opponent, the Governor defeated him in Florida
by deluging Gingrich with attack ads -- Romney outspent Gingrich by $12 million.) This tactic has eroded his popularity with Republican voters. The latest Gallup Poll indicates that there
has been a sharp drop off in enthusiasm for Romney: from 56 percent in January
to 43 percent in March.
While Governor Romney will win the GOP nomination, he is far
from a Party favorite. He has seldom
garnered more than 40 percent of the votes in any primary and has only 40
percent of support in the latest Gallup tracking poll of Republican voters. There are three reasons for this conspicuous
lack of enthusiasm.
The first is his record of
flip-flopping on major issues. Romney began his political
career as pro-choice but switched positions in 2007 and adopted the
conservative stance . At the beginning of his career Romney
supported gay rights but in 2005 he stated his opposition to gay marriage and
civil unions. Romney once believed in
man-made global warming and taking remedial action but has backtracked and now
"i s not certain to the extent that man is causing
the change in the environment." It's difficult to find any
issue where Romney hasn't reversed his stance and, when challenged on these
reversals, his responses have been disingenuous.
Second, the
social conservative wing of the GOP doesn't trust Romney because of his
pandering and the fact he's a Mormon. In a June 2011 Gallup Poll, Twenty percent of Republicans and
Independents indicated they would not support a Mormon for President.
A December Pew Research poll examining
Republican voter attitudes about the candidates found " high
negatives for Romney among white evangelicals."
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