Romney

[philunderwood]

Romney Buoyed by Good Luck --- and Hard Experience

By Michael Barone

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

Napoleon is supposed to have said that the quality he most valued in his generals was luck. In the current race for the Republican presidential nomination, Napoleon's favorite would clearly be Mitt Romney.

One lucky break after another has helped Romney maintain front-runner status or something close to it in polls of Republican primary voters and caucus-goers. And he needed luck to rebound from his unsuccessful run in 2008.

His strategy that cycle was slavishly modeled on George W. Bush's strategy in 2000. Romney started off early, raised and spent lots more money than any other Republican and sponsored his own "compassionate conservative" initiative, his Massachusetts health care plan.

He crisscrossed Iowa, campaigning as a conservative on abortion and cultural issues. Unfortunately, that was at odds with his past record, and he was overtaken by Mike Huckabee. Then he was beaten in relatively secular, tax-hating New Hampshire by John McCain. Romney came close but was out of the race after Super Tuesday.

An interesting counterfactual that may have occurred to him: If he had ignored Iowa and run on his business record as an economic conservative, he might have won New Hampshire and the nomination. And in the financial crisis in the fall, he might have sailed past a seemingly clueless Barack Obama.

But Romney clearly learns from mistakes. This time he has raised less money, mostly ignored Iowa, and is emphasizing his business and economic expertise that — lucky for him — seems relevant in a time of economic sluggishness.

Romney has been lucky as well in the shaping of the field. The decisions of Paul Ryan and Mitch Daniels not to run removed rivals who know a whole lot more about the federal budget and the looming entitlements crisis than Romney does. Each would have pressed him to take risky stands that he has deftly avoided.

Romney has been helped by the news media's fascination with supposed possible candidates who never seemed likely to run — Sarah Palin, whose looming shadow has been growing dimmer for months, and Donald Trump, who flared up like a Roman candle and came crashing to ground. No room for stories on Romneycare or flip-flops on some issues.

Romney has also been helped by surges of support for more conservative — they would say less establishment — candidates who did not live up to their early promise.

Michele Bachmann surged in polls in June based on good debate performances, and her victory in the Iowa straw poll Aug. 13 ended the candidacy of Tim Pawlenty, who with blue collar roots and two terms as governor in a Democratic state could have given Romney real competition.

Bachmann's candidacy was immediately eclipsed by Rick Perry's announcement that he was running. But in four debates since then, Perry has failed to live up to Republican voters' platonic ideal of a governor of Texas — and gave Romney a high-visibility opponent he could dominate in head-to-head repartee.

In the meantime, the threat of a Chris Christie candidacy, which threatened to eat into Romney's support, turned into a boon when Christie reiterated his non-candidacy one week and endorsed Romney the next. Good luck on good luck.

Now Herman Cain has zoomed past Romney in some polls. As a conservative without political experience he has credentials that would appear to trump Romney's in a party whose ranks of activists have been swelled by tea partiers determined to cut back government.

But his 9-9-9 plan is under attack from other candidates, and although Cain resembles Romney in some respects — business success, failed bids for the Senate — Romney has far more in the way of serious policy advisers and proposals. He speaks with more assurance and has been able to drill down in detail, while Cain tends to repeat talking points.

Romney's luck may run out at some point. He's topped 25 percent in only three of 80 national polls taken this year, suggesting vulnerability in a one-on-one contest. On some issues and on basic stance, he is out of line with the median Republican voter.

But luck tends to come from those who are well prepared. Romney has learned from his mistakes in 2008, and he is effectively executing a strategy that seems in line with his experience and recorded positions. Perhaps more important, he's shown a sense of command that none of his rivals has matched. Lucky — and something more.

["Q"]

I don't think romney is electable.

[philunderwood]

www.qando.net/?tag=capitalism

“Conservatives” attacking capitalism [update]

Published January 10, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain

Whether you like Mitt Romney or not, Jay Nordlinger at NRO is right about one thing that has disturbed me: we’ve been treated to a spectacle, through these often destructive debates, of so-called “conservatives” attacking capitalism in an effort to gain votes. And yes, I meant to put the word in scare quotes because such attacks, by supposedly real conservatives (just ask them, each will tell you he’s the only “real” conservative in the race), should be unthinkable.

Nordlinger offers a litany of examples from two elections cycles, starting with:


Last time around, Mike Huckabee said Romney “looks like the guy who laid you off.”Conservatives reacted like this was the greatest mot since Voltaire or something. To me, Romney looked like someone who could create a business and hire the sadly unentrepreneurial like me.

Others said, “He looks like a car salesman,” or, worse, “a used-car salesman.” Ho ho ho! Commerce, gross, icky, yuck. Better Romney looked like an anthropology professor.

Or a law professor and community organizer, which is what we got. Frankly, I’ll take a used car salesman any day over what we have now.

But Nordlinger’s point is true. In their quest to tear down the bona fides of the candidate most threatening to their run for the roses, “conservatives” have been reduced to taking pot shots at capitalism even while they claim to be its champion.


Over and over, Romney defends and explains capitalism. And he’s supposed to be the RINO and squish in the race? That’s what I read in the conservative blogosphere, every day. What do you have to do to be a “real conservative”? Speak bad English and belch?

In the Saturday debate, Santorum knocked Romney for being just a “manager,” just a “CEO,” not fit to be president and commander-in-chief. This was odd for a couple of reasons: First, Romney did have a term as governor of Massachusetts (meaning he has executive political experience, unlike Santorum). And second: Since when do conservative Republicans denigrate private-sector experience?

Indeed, the Santorum remark hit me as the remark of someone who has no idea what a “manager” or “CEO” does. But as Nordlinger points out, Romney’s also been an executive position, something Santorum hasn’t. Naturally he left that out.

The disturbing aspect of the Santorum remark is the apparent poor regard in which he holds business managers and CEOs in a capitalist system and believes you should too. This is just the “conservative” version of the Democrats class warfare shtick.

More Nordlinger:


Now Romney has said, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’” Simple, elementary competition. Capitalism 101. And conservatives go, “Eek, a mouse!”

I could go on: the $10,000 bet, the pink slips, conservatives wetting their pants, over and over. They have no appetite to defend capitalism, to persuade people, to encourage them not to fall for the old socialist and populist crap. I fled the Democratic party many years ago. And one of the reasons was, I couldn’t stand the class resentment, the envy, the hostility to wealth, the cries of “Richie Rich!” And I hear them from conservatives, at least when Romney is running.

So again, whether or not you’re a Romney fan (and I’m not), Nordlinger’s point is well taken. The problem for politicians is it is hard to explain the benefits of capitalism. But it is even harder to refrain from making assaults on another candidate when you think such an assault might be popular and gain votes. After all, the capital of elections is votes. In effect, however, these “conservatives” unknowingly (or uncaringly) back the class warfare message of the left and the OWS crowd. They are engaged in attacking and denigrating the very system they supposedly fervently support and see as the way out of the morass we find ourselves in.

And of course, at some point, depending on how this all turns out during the primary run, one of these “conservatives” may prevail and want to wrap himself in the mantle of “champion of capitalism” to solidify his base. I have to wonder about his reaction when his intemperate words of today are turned on him by his opponent in the race.

UPDATE: Speaking of full on attacks by “conservatives” on Romney, based in twisting his past into an anti-capitalist assault, Newt Gingrich has committed to just that. Even the left, in the person of Jonathan Chait, seems to understand that’s what is happening. As Chait says, the attacks by Gingrich are not substantially different than those from MoveOn.com.


The political effect of these ads is to turn Romney’s chief selling point into a liability – his private-sector experience becomes an indicator not that he will fix the economy but that he will help the already-rich. It’s a smash-you-over-the-head blunt message, with ominous music and storybook dialogue. At one point, the narrator says of Bain’s executives, “their greed was only matched by their willingness to do anything to make millions in profits.” (Aren’t “greed” and “willingness to do anything to make millions in profits” synonymous terms? Isn’t this like saying “his height was matched only by like lack of shortness”?)

The substantive merits of the attack are, obviously, a lot murkier. Romney’s job at Bain was a classic piece of creative destruction. The proper working of a free market system relies on ruthlessly identifying and closing down non-competitive business concerns. Gingrich’s assault relies on drawing a distinction between real capitalism and the “looting” undertaken by Bain Capital. “If somebody comes in takes all the money out of your company, and then leaves you bankrupt while they go off with millions,” he argues, “that’s not traditional capitalism.” The distinction is utterly ephemeral. It’s a way of saying you’d like all the nice aspects of capitalism without the nasty ones – creating new firms and products without liquidating old ones. For once I agree with inequality-denier and supply-side maven James Pethokoukis, who praises Romney’s work at Bain.

Trust me, when Chait agrees with James Pethokoukis, the reason for such agreement must pretty obvious – the attacks are a load of nonsense that even a leftist like Chait can’t ethically bring himself to accept. Instead, Chait is reduced to emotionalism to at least find a way to take a shot at Romney’s record.

But the point is you have “conservatives” leading the charge and doing the opposition research and framing the attack on one of their own. As an aside, I’ve been telling Newt fans that they’ll eventually see “bad Newt” show up, especially when he starts losing. Well, here he is, in full and living color.

~McQ

[philunderwood]

neoneocon.com/2012/01/10/republican-candidates-against-capitalism/

Neo-Neocon

Republican candidates against capitalism

I don’t know about you, but I’m angry.

I’m used to politics and its dirtiness and hypocrisy, the misrepresentations one candidate routinely makes about the other. They all pretty much do it, especially in their ads. This does not surprise me.

But I can’t recall an attack that’s made me as angry as the one launched by Gingrich, and to a lesser extent Perry and Huntsman, against Romney’s record at Bain Capital. Before I even read this editorial in National Review (with which I agree), I was aghast when I saw some of their statements on the news last night.

Readers of this blog know that my preferred candidate this year is Romney. And not just because he’s more electable (although polls show he’s that), but because I think he’s competent, smart, conservative enough—and, very importantly, has an understanding of the business world that not only prospective opponent Obama lacks, but that Romney’s current Republican rivals lack as well.

As I said, I’ve seen one candidate unfairly misrepresent something about the other before; it happens all the time, although I never like it. But this one is different. I can’t recall a time when the attack featured statements that violated basic principles that the attacker and his/her party were supposed to stand for—such as, for instance, knowledge of what capitalism is and what sometimes happens when companies are failing. Any candidate who wants to run against the bailouts cannot attack Romney for what he did at Bain, which was to try to save failing companies by (among other things) cutting costs, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, and to make money into the bargain. Any candidate who wants to appeal to people who would like a president who actually knows something about how business works cannot attack Romney for what he did at Bain (unless, of course, he was unethical in some way, which is not being alleged).

But that’s what they (especially Gingrich) are doing. Here’s NR on the subject:


Newt Gingrich’s risible super-PAC factotum has gone to the length of producing a feverish little film about Romney’s tenure as a “corporate raider” at Bain. Governor Perry, for his part, told a Republican audience: “If you are the victim of Bain Capital’s downsizing, it is the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain — he caused it.” To appropriate Governor Perry’s favorite adjective, that is the ultimate in populist pandering, or something close to it.

Huntsman’s private-sector experience consists of having served as an executive at the firm owned by his billionaire father. Gingrich and Perry have between them about eleven minutes’ worth of relevant private-sector experience — Perry being subsidized by the federal government to farm cotton, Gingrich subsidizing himself by farming his political connections — and therefore may not know (or care) what a private-equity firm such as Bain does. (Gingrich might consider asking his friends at leveraged-buyout firm Forstmann Little, where he was on the board.) Bain is involved in, among other things, leveraged buyouts, meaning that the firm and its investors borrow money from banks to acquire companies, usually firms that are in trouble but believed to be salvageable. These firms generally are bought on the theory that they represent fundamentally sound underlying business enterprises that are for one reason or another performing deficiently, usually because of incompetent management. Strong, thriving companies rarely are targets for leveraged-buyout acquisitions — if things are going well, there is no incentive to sell the company. If the firms are publicly traded, they often are taken private, their stocks delisted from the exchanges, and then reorganized. Once the company has been returned to profitability, it is taken public again or sold to a private buyer, in the hopes of turning a profit on the deal.

As you can imagine, companies that are buyout targets often are in very poor shape, and reviving them is no small thing. Many of them go into bankruptcy. Product lines are discontinued, retail locations are closed, assets are sold off, and, almost inevitably, jobs are lost. Some never recover. When the restructuring is successful, reinvigorated firms expand, add locations, develop new products, and create jobs. That is the creative destruction of capitalism…

[T]o abominate Mitt Romney for having been a success at the business of investing in struggling American companies, connecting entrepreneurs with capital and producers with markets, is foolish and destructive. Republicans ought to know better, and the fact that Gingrich et al. apparently do not is the most disturbing commentary on the state of the primary field so far.

This is very different from attacking the attackers for merely attacking; the big problem is the form the attack takes. These people are supposed to be the principled conservatives; you know, the ones who don’t toss out their beliefs when it’s expedient.

So what’s happening here? These guys know that if they don’t raise their poll numbers and lower Romney’s pretty soon it’s going to be curtains for them. As a result, they’ve become the equivalent of the drowning man who, in his desperate efforts to save himself, clutches at people around him and manages to drag them down too. And that includes their own supposedly conservative principles, and may include Republican chances for victory this year as well.

Nice going.

[ADDENDUM: I don't usually listen to Rush Limbaugh, but today he's tearing into Gingrich for this. And Limbaugh is hardly a Romney fan.]

[ADDENDUM II: Ron Paul shows some class.]

[ADDENDUM III: Jay Nordlinger nails it:


I fled the Democratic party many years ago. And one of the reasons was, I couldn’t stand the class resentment, the envy, the hostility to wealth, the cries of “Richie Rich!” And I hear them from conservatives, at least when Romney is running.

Go ahead, have your “bloodbath” in South Carolina. Make Romney the little guy in the top hat and tails, from the Monopoly game. Have your Santorum, your Perry, your Newt. They may carry something like four states in the fall, but at least they’ve never sullied their hands with — eek! — business.]

Neo-Neocon