Romney has a lot going for him, he is rich, intelligent, and a good public speaker, but has one fairly important flaw: everybody hates him. Romney is the political equivalent to a chameleon, he blends in wherever he wants to be elected, and with video technology this has left a trail of flip-flops and a sense of absolute phoniness to everything he says. When Romney was running in MA, he was a moderate Republican, but now that he wants to ride the conservative to the presidency, is a rabid right winger. For every important issue Romney has been on every conceivable side, thus no side ever trusts him because if it would help his cause he would stab them in the back in a second. In addition to the sheer phoniness, Romney is rich, and got his money through a big money corporation called Bain Capitol. Bain Capitol makes money by acquiring companies, cutting waste (read: firing workers and shafting the ones who remain), and reselling the company for a profit. Romney LITERALLY was the faceless executive who cut you from the payroll and slashed your benefits while making millions of dollars; this is a severe problem when you need a large portion of the population to like you.
Romney is the wall street candidate and thus has a huge amount of anonymous corporate money backing him up in both the nomination fight and the general election. Citizen's United now allows for corporations to buy our elections, but we have yet to see whether even corporate money can scrub the bad taste from people's mouth when the hear Romney speak.
Unless either Bachmann or Perry can really get into gear, Romney is the default choice for the Republican nomination. Nobody likes Romney, but he is very fiscally conservative, and recently has supported social conservative policy. I live in MA, where Romney was governor and I have to say, he wasn't a total disaster in his past policy choices (he was moderate). His health care bill, which now has become a major stumbling block in his campaign, works and he didn't do any real damage to the state. Job numbers stagnated under his governance but that could be attributed to other factors. Current Romney could be dangerous because nobody knows what he will do when he has the top spot, and he doesn't have to worry about climbing to higher office.
If Romney gets the nomination he will be fairly dangerous for Obama compared to the other front candidates. Romney is more moderate and unlike the other two candidates isn't dumb or insane (It kinda worries me that a contender for the presidency of the USA is valid because he simply isn't crazy or painfully stupid). It is entirely possible that Romney could run a legitimate campaign against Obama, thus he is the most dangerous of the three potential candidates.
If Romney gets elected, corporations will be celebrating in the street. He is not only bought by wall street, but IS wall street. The economic policy of the USA will become even more slanted towards benefiting the rich and cutting the benefits to the poor. I don't believe that Romney is principled enough to care about social policy on any side as long as he can get paid, so at most the social right wing will probably be screwed like all of Romney's past allies. Romney's election would be unfortunate and economically unbalancing but I don't believe that his election would be a total disaster.
The Sarcastic Liberal
Mittens does not stand a chance of winning the nomination. The Fundamentalists will never vote for someone whom they consider to be a member of a cult.
ReplyDelete