Stop criticizing those who give you your paychecks, says super-rich equity sector candidate Romney to distressed MI workers

January 13, 2008 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, incompetence, mitt romney, policy, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: andrew cline, Bain Capital, equity-sector, industry, insanity, labor, mi, michigan, national review online, NRO, policy, rust belt, The Corner, workers

[…] Wolf [of the Late Edition] played a clip of a Huckabee commercial – “[Gov. Huckabee] remind[s people] of the guy they worked with, not the guy who laid them off [i.e. Romney],” reports Mark Kilmer of Redstate.com in a post titled The Sunday Morning Talk Shows

[In response:] Romney chastised Huckabee for criticizing the guy who gives people their paychecks […]

Romney to the workers of MI: STFU and trust those who who profit the most from your labor.

Romney argues further on Face the Nation that not only should CEOs be immune from criticism, they should also be subsidized at public expense for their insane decisions:

[…] [Romney] said that though it would be difficult to bring back the automotive industry, government could invest in “basic science and research”: fuel technology, automotive technology. With the money of the taxpayers. “We, frankly, are lagging behind,” proclaimed Mitt, and government is the solution […]

Further:

[…] Schieffer brought up a Huckabee remark, that Mitt’s business would buy businesses and people would lose their jobs. Mitt claimed that he rebuilt businesses, protecting “as many jobs as humanly possible” […]

Romney protected jobs? Really? This is not consonant with Romney’s earlier testimony. Elsewhere Romney argues for cutting jobs because US workers are lazy and overcompensated:

Romney: American workers are lazy and over-compensated

—and—

Romney really knows how to cut jobs, as he boasted in a live debate:

“Romney was doing great on the job creation answer until he said he knows how to get rid of people who need to be gotten rid of,” writes Andrew Cline of the NRO in a The Corner blog burst titled Romney on Jobs

That is not going to help him in New Hampshire, where another paper mill closed this year and the loss of manufacturing jobs remains a huge issue […]

We used to ask rhetorically who Romney’s natural constituency could possibly be. Now we know. It is the executive classes of the equity sector. See:

how Romney plans to enrich himself by liquidating the US manufacturing base

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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Romney utterly silent on world financial crisis—we, for one, are grateful for this oversight

October 23, 2007 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign management, election, election 2008, gaffs and pratfalls, GOP, incompetence, media, mitt romney, policy, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: economy, equity-sector, financial crisis, incompetence, policy, stupidity

“James Pethokoukis, who used to work at IBD and whose writing seems to lean pretty much to the economic right, has a consistent critique of the GOP primary so far,” writes eye of eyeon08.com in a post titled It’s the economy stupid. Redux.

His most recent post is entitled, “GOP Debate Strangely Ignores Financial Turmoil.” To be clear, he’s talking about things like the near-doubling of the unemployment rate of the South Florida economy in the last 9 months. Read him. He knows what he is talking about. He has also argued repeatedly that 2008 could be a 1992 redux. Don’t believe him?

eye provides sobering bullet points that include US loan default data, evidence that Americans are cashing in their 401(k)s etc., etc.

“Guys,” eye continues, “The economy is going to be a serious issue. Hillary Clinton is, essentially, taking Iraq off the table as a general election issue. She is going to run on health care and the economy. And the field is being set. And the economy is tanking in important swing states.”

“And we are silent.”

Well, OK., guilty, at least for the most part. But we have addressed this issue, at least obliquely. We have harped on the string of the world economy tanking—the world economy pioneering new ways to tank—all around us as way to reflect upon Romney’s non-leadership. We write about this here:

• world financial system in crisis; Romney, who made his fortune in the equity sector, has nothing to say
• Huckabee contra the inequities and inequalities of the financial services industry; is Huckabee sending signals to the Romneys?

It is grimly ironic that the one candidate with anything to say on this issue is—sigh—Willard Milton Romney.

This—and it pains us to admit this—is where Romney has a genuine contribution to make to the dialogue, the dialogue that has yet to take place.

We thank G-d with out-stretched arms that Romney’s incompetence, Romney’s lack of vision, Romney’s lack of depth, Romney’s lack of purpose, resolve, clarity, or direction, Romney’s lack of imagination, the ineptness and constant bungling of Romney’s lack-wit staff, the disorder, ineffectiveness, and the baffling primitiveness of Romney’s organization, Romney’s stubborn refusal to abandon his naive and unreconstructed faux conservatism, Romney’s difficult relationship with the truth, Romney’s ideological cross-dressing, Romney’s tactical excesses combined with a complete lack of strategic foresight, Romney’s distant and remote personality, Romney’s questionable character and sense-of-self, Romney’s thuggish and apolitical instincts, Romney’s associations with people like Terry Sullivan, Cofer Black, and General James “I will stab you in the thigh” Marks, and Romney’s frequent gaffs, pratfalls, missteps, miscues, and miscarriages of otherwise sound ideas, are such as to prevent the hapless, hopeless, and helpless candidate from ever-ever-ever capitalizing on this, his one true strength, his one true claim that he has to command our attention or even—oh G-d, we hate to write this—our respect.

 Sigh.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.