Remember you are the one who wanted proof of Romney's accomplishments in the Obama thread. Let's see, Romney balanced the budget, turned a deficit into a surplus, while raised no taxes. In ONE term. While Obama was "leading the passage of an Illinois state law mandating videotaping of homicide interrogations" 8 years in the state senate. Like I said, accomplishments, NO CONTEST. You need to come up with some better arguments, keep typing "LOL!!!" is not going to keep you from getting spanked.
Hey, I am realistic, I will vote for the guy gets stuff done over the guy talks a good game. Plus he didn't raise my taxes as the governor.
deepblue it's quite simple. Romney is the biggest political, “I'll-say-anything-to-win” opportunist there is in the republican field. But hey! He's the best the republicans can come up with this cycle so good luck with that.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/070807_skeleton_closet.htm Fox News Uncovers Ron Paul's Most Shocking Skeleton in the Closet Desperate debunkers resort to attacking Congressman on amount of money he requests for shrimp research, while Giuliani's rampant corruption is ignored Fox News are so desperate to dig up any dirt on Ron Paul, that one of their flagship shows last night resorted to attacking him over the amount of federal funding he requested for shrimp research. Watch the video. Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul — who is campaigning as a critic of congressional overspending — has revealed that he is requesting $400 million worth of earmarks this year," reported the Brit Hume show. The Wall Street Journal reports Paul's office says those requests include $8 million for the marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 million to pay for research into shrimp fishing. A spokesman says, "Reducing earmarks does not reduce government spending, and it does not prohibit spending upon those things that are earmarked. What people who push earmark reform are doing is they are particularly misleading the public — and I have to presume it's not by accident." The Texas Lone Star Times also ran with the shrimp hit piece, which originated with an article in the Wall Street Journal. If Ron Paul's biggest skeleton in the closet is the amount of money his district spends on shrimp research, then the establishment media are going to have a difficult time maintaining their assault on his credibility as they panic in fear at the Congressman's runaway popularity. The Congressman himself explained why earmarks have no relation to cutting the federal budget in a June 2007 article. Though much attention is focused on the notorious abuses of earmarking, and there are plenty of examples, in fact even if all earmarks were eliminated we would not necessarily save a single penny in the federal budget. Because earmarks are funded from spending levels that have been determined before a single earmark is agreed to, with or without earmarks the spending levels remain the same. Eliminating earmarks designated by Members of Congress would simply transfer the funding decision process to federal bureaucrats rather then elected representatives. In an already flawed system, earmarks can at least allow residents of Congressional districts to have a greater role in allocating federal funds – their tax dollars – than if the money is allocated behind locked doors by bureaucrats. So we can be critical of the abuses in the current system but we shouldn't lose sight of how some reforms may not actually make the system much better. Their desperation in scraping the barrel to uncover any dirt on Paul previously yielded the equally shocking scandal of one his aides having written fifteen years ago about crime figures and black people - another feeble jab that fizzled into nothing. Compare the egregious and rampant corruption of Rudy Giuliani with Ron Paul's alleged shrimp overspend and ask yourself why Fox News isn't running hit pieces on the Nosferatu of the Republican presidential race. http://www.google.com/search?q=giuliani+scandal&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8 As we reported yesterday, Fox News attempted to smear Paul by debunking the 9/11 truth movement and then associating it with the Texas Congressman.
OK, I'll play. Here's his Wiki bio: Now, no doubt he, being a successful businessman, had a great idea, developed it from the ground up, and contributed to the stature of our great country. Well, no. He got his start in a management consulting firm, became CEO of a management consulting firm, and co-founded a company with guys from the management consulting firm that ended up buying other companies. I'm sure his name and connections had nothing to do with his jobs and I'm sure he would have met the same success if he had been the son of a rancher or car dealer. I don't want to give the impression that he is Bush-like in his business acumen because he probably could find oil in Texas, but he clearly took advantage of his station in life. In turning around the Olympics, he apparently overstated the debts and didn't count the already guaranteed money from TV and other sources, thus making the turn-around look more dramatic. And let's be real here... he had a very powerful organization behind him and there was no way the LDS church was going to allow the Games to crater. Still, he did do a decent job at hitting up companies and gave a bunch of his cash to the Olympic Committee and donated his salary to charity. However, he handled the bribery scandal with a heavy hand, even lobbying for a couple of guys to plead guilty and go away for the good of the games... too bad they were eventually completely exonerated with strong support from the judge. Even after that, they were persona non grata as far as Romney was concerned, their not guilty verdict and hours of volunteering for the cause notwithstanding. He also cajoled the committee into giving huge parting salaries to his staff, many of which have, coincidentally I'm sure, been a large part of his current fundraising apparatus. This after promising he would not use the Games as a political tool. He was able to turn a Mass deficit into a surplus thanks to a bunch of fed funding and a sharp increase... not of taxes, but of fees. Of course, if a Dem had done this, Repubs would be crowing about how he raised taxes (fees) on innocent Americans by $500 million. (Some of this I got from Wiki and some from reading some of the articles here: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/ though I'm too lazy to go back and cite every fact to one of the articles.) Meanwhile, here's Obama's Wiki bio: (I guess it comes down to how you define accomplishments, but being the kind of guy I am, I value Obama's work in civil rights and community stuff like organizing job-training programs as more important then management consulting.) So, in contrast to Romney, Obama had no real advantages in life and several distinct disadvantages. Obama clawed his way into Columbia and Harvard, worked at a job that helped people make it through their daily trials, became the first black to be President of the Harvard Law Review, and ended up in the Senate. (Note: Romney also went to grad school (in business) at Harvard. He graduated c*m Laude. Obama graduated from law school Magna c*m Laude.) Finally, here's another accomplishment: Obama has a better chance at being on the ticket in 2008 then does Romney.
it's great that you will actually debate on topic unlike some others. The impression of management consulting firms are somehow not doing "real great" business, somehow do not contribute to the country is just ludicrous. Management consulting firms help other companies, individuals to improve, be more successful by providing ideas. It doesn't get anymore American than create new innovative ideas. They pay taxes, provide jobs, by helping other companies do better, their contribution to the country is a lot bigger than you realize. I am sure his connections helped, but as long as he still was able to do the job well, why does it matter. How many times have you seen bad CEOs running companies into the ground? My wife works in a management consulting firm, she had no connections for the job, that didn't stop her. Nothing is perfect, I'm a result oriented person, by all accounts he did a good job and turned around a bad situation. Those are the management/leadership qualities a good president should have. You do what you need to do to turn the economy around, which means no tax increases and cut spending. Imagine that, a politician actually tries to cut spending and balance the budget. That alone should make him more qualified than 90% of the candidates. No doubt civil rights and community services are important, but that doesn't make you president. I volunteer, I donate to the charities, pretty sure that does not make me a more qualified candidate than Romney. If you are coming up with "organizing job-training programs" as accomplishments to be considered for becoming the president of the United States, you have just made my point.
Then why do they all seem to follow the "management philosophy" that's hot? Read Dilbert regularly and you'll see my point. It seems to me that these firms mostly come in and affirm the current management... with maybe a few bones of changing processes or reorg to make it look good. It matters because he went into a business that is built on contacts and he was hired for his name as much or more then his talents. And yes, I have seen bad CEOs running companies into the ground, often with the support of a consulting firm that is paid to favor the approach of the CEO. I'm sure your wife's firm does offer a great service and is completely unbiased in their examination of companies and unflinching in their advice to make those companies better. And I bet she got the job solely on quals. I am tired of the President as CEO. I want the President to have a connection to as many people as possible, not just those from the same educational or financial ring. CEO's are used to saying, "do this" and they expect it to be done, whether the person doing it likes it or not. That works for Presidents sometimes, but the office demands a flexibility and agileness of mind that is necessitated by the job of dealing with Congress and the bureaucracy and the expectations of a country and the world. I just don't see your typical CEO being able to perform at a high level in that job. Well, that's the beauty of our system that only failed dramatically with the last guy... you don't have to accomplish any particular thing, but you do have to have the talent (Again, present president excepted). You could easily make the argument that Romney's more qualified then Lincoln, who's main quals were that he gave a bunch of speeches. Grover Cleveland went from County Sheriff to President in 3 years. LBJ started off as a teacher. Nixon was a small town lawyer before joining the Navy during WWII.
I like you deepblue and you got me thinking so I decided to do a little research about your boy's tax history. I found this interesting from the Cato Institute. It's a study from 2006 that rates each Governor and gives them a letter grade of their fiscal policy. Pretty interesting. -- Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2006 Mitt Romney, Overall Grade: C As Mitt Romney launches his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, his fiscal record as governor should be scrutinized. Romney likes to advance the image of himself as a governor who has fought a liberal Democratic legislature on various fronts. That’s mostly true on spending: he proposed modest increases to the budget and line-item vetoed millions of dollars each year only to have most of those vetoes overridden. But Romney will likely also be eager to push the message that he was a governor who stood by a no-new-taxes pledge. That’s mostly a myth. His first budget included no general tax increases but did include a $500 million increase in various fees. He later proposed $140 in business tax hikes through the closing of “loopholes” in the tax code. He announced in May 2004 that he wanted to cut the top income tax rate from 5.3 to 5 percent, but that was hardly an audacious stand. Voters had already passed a plan to do just that before Romney even took office. In his budget for 2006, he proposed $170 million more in business tax hikes, almost completely neutralizing the proposed income tax cut. If you consider the massive costs to taxpayers that his universal health care plan will inflict once he’s left office, Romney’s tenure is clearly not a triumph of small-government activism. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581.pdf I'd love to see some more studies if you have them handy.
I was going to post something about that study. Based purely on his rhetoric, I thought Huckabee was someone I could vote for. When I saw that he got an F, and only 3 points better than the second-worst politician in the world, Kathleen Blanco (ahead of Chavez, right behind Chirac), and looked into the details, I scratched him off my list. With Evan Bayh gone for months now and Huckabee off the list, Ron Paul has the last hope among major party candidates of getting my vote.
The answer is right there in the numbers in your post. I am speaking as a someone lives in Massachusetts . When Romney ran for Governor, our economy was not in good shape. The Internet/tech bubble had just bursted. We had a lot of high tech companies that were in bad shape, quite a few of my friends were laid off. The state was running a deficit. He needed to do what was necessary to turn the economy around. One thing to help the economy is to not raise taxes, so he raised some fees to balance the budget, cut some expenses. BTW, he took no salary as the governor. I don't get the talk about closing "Tax Loopholes" for corporations as if its a bad thing, being a liberal you should be loving putting the tax on corporations instead of Joe average tax payer. Yes, we the voters did vote to lower the income tax back to 5%, and you know what, I am still paying 5.3%. The reason is we have a overwhelming majority liberal democratic legislature, and they have repeatedly blocked this. So we need more voice for voters on this issue not less. (if only the Dems in our state would listen to the people) You as a democrat should be all for providing health care for everyone. Now when Romney started a plan that would give everyone in our state health insurance, that is somehow a bad thing? Nothing is perfect, consider Romney was the governor in a blue state, where he had to work with a majority democratic legislature. And yet he was still able to balance the budget, improve our economy. I can see with my own eyes, and Romney did a pretty good job for the people of Massachusetts.
Correct and that's the biggest problem with him. He has decided not to focus on his accomplishments in Massachusetts. For a guy who actually achieved universal coverage in his state, he refuses to demand similar action on the federal level. This also carries over into other policies that he pushed through that were compromises with the democratic legislature. many of those policies would perceived as "liberal" or "big government." But make no mistake about it, Romney wasn't some sort of small government guy. He spent money like the rest but I thought he did a decent job at it. Instead, he's become another mouthpiece for standard republican talking points, just like McCain has become after running a completely different campaign in 2000. I thought Romney had the potential to be the McCain of 2000 in this year's campaign, but instead he's just another guy in the crowd.
I am hoping its just the means to get elected. I can see him doing a lot of good things as the president. Hey if you can work with the dems in Massachusetts, you can do anything.
I put my hands together for Romney's stance on healthcare and what he's done for the state. I love his acceptance of civil unions in Mass. I wish we would look at a national model for that. If he would have run on his true beliefs, he probably would have made a pretty decent Democratic candidate. But the problem is that Romney's completely ran from those positions (ands his beliefs all to win a presidency) and now advocates policies that, frankly, he doesn't believe in. Transparency and accountability. People are screaming for that from a candidate, and for someone to be straight with them and not insult them.
Lacy has just signed on to head up Fred's campaign. [rquoter]Thompson knows how to get there William B. Lacy Sunday, July 29, 2007 The worst advice I gave during 20 years advising Republican presidential and congressional campaigns was telling Fred Thompson not to do the pick-up truck. Fred had the good sense to ignore my advice — I’d like to think the only bad advice I gave him in two campaigns. In spring of 1994, Fred badly trailed a popular Democratic congressman in the open Tennessee Senate seat vacated by Vice President Gore. Our fundraising lagged behind, and I had just fired our second campaign manager. We beefed up our communications effort and got to the key task of reassuring major donors and prospects. But there was another problem. Fred had a powerful message, and his performance was solid but unexceptional. Not what we expected, given his communications skills. Fred simply wasn’t comfortable on the campaign trail, and it showed. His demeanor was blunting the power of his message of congressional reform. He recognized the problem and proposed a solution: He would shuck the power suits and the sanitized campaign van and travel the state in a pick-up truck, without altering his message. Too clever, I said. Too much of a gimmick. Despairing of the situation, Fred sent a former adviser to governor (now senator) Lamar Alexander, Tom Ingram, to see me. Tom, one of the shrewdest pols I have ever known, argued there was nothing to lose and finally persuaded me to go along with the idea of the truck. Fred’s performance soared immediately. We unveiled the truck on primary day and shortly thereafter went on statewide television. The Democrats focused their attacks on the truck as a ploy and allowed us to stay on message. The campaign turned around overnight. Fred hit the road and left his campaign alone to do its work. I have had candidates who would drive me insane on insignificant details and miss the big picture. Fred was an ideal candidate; we spoke briefly daily, reviewed polling data and went off to do our jobs. Reviewing new survey data nearly two months before Election Day, I could see our message — Fred talking directly to voters via television spots — was having an enormous impact. Many voters still didn’t know Fred, but those who did chose him by a wide margin. I knew then, short of a catastrophe, we were going to get a big win. Fred’s debate performance was excellent; he was outstanding on the campaign trail, and hundreds showed up at Red Truck Tour stops across rural Tennessee. The least experienced statewide candidate I ever advised was also easily the best — in his first political campaign. Fred got more votes than any Republican in Tennessee ever had; his midterm total actually surpassed Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1984. The late wave which swept Republicans into congressional control obscured the significance of Fred’s win. Absent the wave, he would have won a landslide in a nondecisive year and vaulted to political superstardom. But soon to be majority leader Bob Dole asked Fred (sworn in immediately to fill Gore’s unexpired term) to provide the Republican response to a nationally televised speech by President Clinton. Fred drove to Washington, in the truck, of course, and burst onto the national political scene. Working with Fred in 1994 and his 1996 reelection campaign and working in Republican presidential campaigns from 1980-1996, I can make some pretty definitive statements about what Fred will bring to the presidential campaign: Fred ran in 1994 to make a difference, a cliché but also a truth. He gave up a lucrative and comfortable life in law and character roles in Hollywood to join the Washington rat race. It was a big sacrifice. He’s not running because he needs to be president; it’s a cause to him. That’s powerful motivation. He’s an intellectual conservative who will please the party faithful but whose folksy style and maverick impulses (like supporting the McCain-Feingold so-called campaign finance reform) soften his image, an invaluable general election quality. His experience during the Watergate hearings and the Tennessee pardons and parole scandal later in the ’70s established him as a committed reformer. He’ll run an unconventional campaign: Experts and journalists who jump to negative conclusions about his campaign’s tactics while ignoring his campaign’s substance do so at their peril. Just ask Tennessee U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, his ’94 opponent. While he has only won two elections, he came back from being written off in his first race. He will not blow people away every day but will wear well over time. He learned in the courtroom and in movies that his performance at critical junctures is far more important that a heavy schedule. Some say this shows Fred lacks energy. I used to hear the same thing about Ronald Reagan. Fred isn’t Superman. His style has some similarities to President Reagan, but he hasn’t been around as long and proven himself as much. He needs a solid team with national campaign experience to craft strategy, do the planning and execute the myriad tasks such a large undertaking entails. He does have a Senate voting record, which will be scrutinized, and like all first time presidential candidates, he faces a challenging vetting process. He has no national campaign experience and hasn’t been through that large-scale rough and tumble. But he has been tested: In the darkest hours of his political career, when the wheels were about to come off his first campaign, he figured out how to scoop them up, put them on a red truck and drive off into the sunset. It was classic Hollywood — a happy ending. I hear they are planning a sequel. William B. Lacy is director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. He had senior roles in the Reagan, Bush and Dole presidential campaigns from 1980 through 1996 and managed Sen. Fred Thompson’s 1994 campaign. © 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.[/rquoter]
This is truly hilarious. The guy swoons over Thompson because he rented a pickup truck and ran around Tennessee pretending to be a good ole boy. He's the perfect follow up to Bush's fake cowboy act.
