In Search of: The Pro-Capitalist Candidate Mitt Romney
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As the Democrats peddle silliness with things like Romney’s Swiss bank accounts (while unemployed Americans wish they had any bank account at all), Mr. Romney needs to get into his stride by speaking like a capitalist who knows the system benefits all
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In an ongoing campaign to change the subject from the lackluster recovery that has resulted from the social engineering that President Obama has inflicted on this economy, Democrats are now attacking Mitt Romney for his “offshore financial arrangements,” after a Vanity Fair story revealing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s Swiss bank account and various holdings in the Caribbean. Since then, Romney said that he has closed the Swiss bank account and insists he paid all U.S. taxes due and owed.
“He is the first and only candidate for U.S. president with a Swiss bank account, with tax shelters,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) thundered on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “There is just no way to explain it.” (Credit goes to Bob Schieffer for not playing organ music after the good Senator stated such).
Putting aside the irony that Mssr. Durbin and his Liberal ilk push policies that make taxpayers want to shift money overseas, there is nothing wrong with having a Swiss bank account, although Mr. Durbin seems to imply that such is on a plain with Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme.
While Democrats want to talk about anything but the lousy economy, even they have to realize that ultimately such is an unavoidable subject.
Except perhaps if their opponent is Mitt Romney who is, to put it charitably, flat-footed when discussing and defending his business career at Bain Capital, at least what his company did and how much money he made. He is, though, more than happy to espouse his success as a manager at Bain, which is similar to the contortions he does when he doesn’t want to admit that RomneyCare was wrong but that the very similar ObamaCare is the wrong answer for this country.
And such ineptitude has spilled over to how he has communicated his vision for this country’s economy. Almost as if he is afraid to wade too far into the topic that is foremost on most voters’ minds, the economy and jobs, he has receded into the tall weeds of a 59-point plan. One must wonder if Mr. Romney, with such white paper, is running for U.S. President or Paul Krugman’s chair in the Princeton Economics Department. The last person running for the Oval Office to get caught in such minutiae and detail was (sic) President Dukakis. And even he would likely now tell you to keep campaign economic platforms to under 20 bullet points (alright, maybe 30).
All of this led up to this week’s flub when he had his top advisers say that the ObamaCare mandate penalty was not a tax but a penalty. Most voters, and non-voters too, will tell you that when they are paying money to the government, it doesn’t matter what it is called as the economic pain is still the same. But since government is so notorious at taxing so much, it will almost always feel like a tax, no matter what kind of free pass Mr. Romney wishes to give President Obama.
Above: In the movie “Full Metal Jacket,” the flaccid “Private Pyle” had to be held up by his comrades; does Mitt Romney need similar ideological support?
After such flub, Conservative precincts rightfully took Governor Romney to the woodshed. A Wall Street Journal editorial admonished his campaign by saying that “what [Americans] want to hear from the challenger [Romney] is some understanding of why the President’s policies aren’t working and how Mr. Romney’s policies will do better.”
Mr. Romney is now in a full retreat not just from RomneyCare he enacted in Massachusetts but also from his highly successful career as a capitalist at Bain. Such would be fine if he were just a private citizen who is having late-life crisis and decided to give everything away and join the Peace Corps. But Mr. Romney is running for President of the only super-power whose success is based upon free markets and capitalism. He’s also running in the Republican party that is natively more capitalist-friendly than its rival, the Democrats. So this is no time for Mr. Romney to get weak at the knees; he can wait until the day after the election (win or lose) to repent for any sins he thinks he made while working at Bain and contributing to the success story otherwise known as the U.S.
And while it’s nice to have allies in the media and elsewhere refine and clarify (if not correct) his message, the voters will go into the ballot-booth and be voting for either him or Mr. Obama based upon their stated positions, with little regard for what their surrogates or allies said or did.
Mr. Romney needs to sharpen his free-market, minimal government, pro-jobs message immediately and get it out there before the Obama camp muddies the campaign environment to the point of no return for Republicans.
-I.M. Windee
