Posted on 05/03/2012 10:57:25 AM PDT by greyfoxx39
Mitt Romney is shifting to the center to attract important voting blocs that he may have alienated in the bruising Republican presidential primary.
Romney has recently sought to ingratiate himself with voters in industry-heavy Ohio, women, Hispanics and college students by softening his tone on a range of issues.
Campaign aides, wary of the flip-flopper label that plagued Romney during the 2008 campaign, dispute that he has reversed any of his positions since the fierce battles of Iowa, South Carolina and Ohio.
“Here’s the situation they find themselves in. Policy is politics, and they have much ground to make up among first- and second-time voters, Hispanics, working-class whites, working-class women. They have to move away from the policy positions they felt they had to take to secure the 2008 nomination and the even more extreme positions they took to win the 2012 nomination,” said John Weaver, a political consultant who worked on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns.
“I guess this is what an Etch A Sketch really looks like,” Weaver said, referring to a Romney staffer’s use of the children’s toy as a metaphor for the campaign’s pivot to the general election.
RESCUING THE U.S. AUTO INDUSTRY
Eric Fehrnstrom, the senior adviser to Romney who made the “Etch A Sketch” remark in March, asserted over the weekend that President Obama had followed Romney’s advice by rescuing General Motors and Chrysler at the start of his term.
The claim left the Obama campaign and other Democrats fuming and pointing to Romney’s 2008 op-ed for The New York Times entitled: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
Romney doubled down with another op-ed published on Feb. 14 in The Detroit News, in the heat of the GOP primary, bashing what he called “an $85 billion sweetheart deal disguised as a rescue plan” and “a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style.”
While that stance might have been popular among conservative primary voters, it is much less so among independents, especially in Ohio and other Midwestern battlegrounds.
A Pew Research Center poll released in late February found that 56 percent of the public now sees the bailout of automakers as mostly good for the economy. The Center for Automotive Research estimates the bailout saved 1.4 million jobs, many in the Midwest.
Fehrnstrom recast Romney as the mastermind behind the successful rescue.
“His position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed,” Fehrnstrom said. “He said, ‘If you want to save the auto industry, just don’t write them a check. That will seal their doom. What they need to do is go through a managed bankruptcy process.
“The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice,” he added.
A Romney campaign aide said Obama first tried to throw money at the automakers before requiring them to go through a structured bankruptcy.
The aide said Obama let companies go into managed bankruptcy, the path Romney recommended, only after trying to avoid it in a failed ploy that cost taxpayers billions.
Experts who followed the bailout, however, dispute these claims.
John Austin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution based in Michigan, said Romney’s proposal for the automakers to go through managed bankruptcy would not have been viable without billions of dollars in federal funding.
“Obama said we’re not going to keep throwing money at these car companies,” said Austin. “The decision that was taken was ‘We’re going to put money in and insist they go through rigorous restructuring and fast bankruptcy.’”
Kristin Dziczek, an expert with the Center for Automotive Research, said the Obama administration deemed GM’s and Chrysler’s restructuring plans insufficient in February 2009 and offered structured bankruptcy as the only option to accessing additional government loans.
Steve Rattner, the so-called auto czar who handled the bailout for the Obama administration, said no private investors were willing to supply the necessary funding because the credit markets were frozen. The administration invested $82 billion into the auto companies and is expected to lose $10 billion to $15 billion in the deal.
Romney’s February op-ed in The Detroit News drew stern rebukes from business leaders in the auto industry.
Mike Jackson, chief executive officer of AutoNation Inc., one of the nation’s largest auto dealers, called Romney’s op-ed “truly reckless, detached from reality and dishonest,” according to Bloomberg News. The criticism was especially stinging because Jackson had been a Romney supporter.
The bailout saved tens of thousands of jobs in Ohio, home to more than 350 auto-parts manufacturers and a crucial campaign battleground.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and strategist, said Romney is doing what he needs to win the general election.
“By definition in a general election, you’re appealing to a broader audience than in a primary process,” he said. “You have to address issues of less interest to primary audiences and of more concern to a general election audience and that’s what he’s doing.”
STUDENT LOANS
Romney has also sought to airbrush his image among young voters.
At a Feb. 29 campaign event, Romney took a hard line against the federal government subsidizing student loans.
“I wish I could tell you that there’s a place to find really cheap money or free money and we could pay for everyone’s education. That’s just not going to happen,” Romney told a female law student.
“The right course for America is for businesses and universities and colleges to compete for us to make sure we provide loans to the extent we possibly can at an interest rate that doesn’t have the taxpayers having to subsidize people who want to go to school,” he said.
Romney softened his position on student loans last month when he endorsed Obama’s proposal for the federal government to continue subsidizing loans for low- and middle-income students. If Congress does not intervene by July 1, student loan rates will jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8.
Keeping loan rates low, however, will cost taxpayers an estimated $6 billion a year.
A Romney campaign aide disputed that Romney has reversed himself. The staffer noted that Romney has agreed only to support a temporary extension to help students struggling in an economy that he said is suffering because of Obama’s policies.
Ayres, the GOP pollster, said young voters will be much more important in the general election than they were in the primary.
“There are far fewer young people in a Republican primary than in a general election,” he said. “It makes more sense to talk about student loans in a general election.”
Romney NEVER veered from Center-Left. NEVER!
The GOP is a centrist party.
Decade after decade , expecting it to become a right wing party is a lot easier than starting a new party.
If u will allow me to quote Savage.
Both parties are “Two Wings of the same bird of prey”
You’re on the wrong forum for Romney defense, my friend. I don’t know where the pro-Romney discussion forum is but this is most defintitely not it.
I’ve been on here three years and I’m still far too new to go rocking the boat here. You’ve been here a whopping two days and you’re asking to be banned with this post of yours.
Your first reaction to my post here will probably not be too great, but do appreciate that I’m offering the information to you as a fellow newbie on the forum.
Get off of it. Romney is going to be the candidate whether we like it or not. Whatever his positions, I can’t worry about them. I just want Obama out! I would vote for Elmer Fudd if he was running. Face reality for God’s sake!
This is the point where the Malignant Bastard and architect of failure will rush to his whiteboard on Fox News to explain to us peons how elections work. Having captured the conservative base in the primaries, Romney will now have to move left to attract the minorities, the hispanics, the women, the seniors, the students, the disadvantaged, the moderates, the independents, the squishy middle, the unemployed, the underemployed, the helpless middle class, those who cannot help themselves, the sick and dying, etc, because “everyone” knows you can’t win elections by being an unabashed constitution supporting patriotic traditional American conservative. Romney can now safely revert back to being the big government socialist/progressive he’s always been.
Oh man!(sad face) I was counting on this guy to help promote conservative initiatives.
Just darn. /S
the even more extreme positions they took to win the 2012 nomination,”
_____________________________________________
Yes Conservatism has always been a severe extreme for the progressive Moderate Liberal Willard Mitt Romney
Poor boy must have feel awful having to lie and appease them evil Conservatives..
Thank goodness he can get back to his political roots now...
Despite the history of the Brookings Institute.
Ooooookay!”
Don't pop their little “another excuse to hate Romney even more badder” bubble.
Some (dedacted) from the Brookings Institute claims this, offers absolutely no proof
______________________________________________
No Willie Mitty himself claims it...
The proof is in Wee Willies mouth...
Hes come home to his liberal roots...
Youre new here arent you MittBot ???
LOL. Bingo. My point exactly.
Indeed...the call is not for a third Party as some suppose...they've already united the parties of the Elite as one and the same....the call is for a second party to oppose them.
Excitable, aren't you?? I don't take orders well, especially from Romney supporters on an internet forum.
I suggest you stay indoors and pull down the shades
Bump
The only conservatives that Romney can throw under the bus is those who will hold their noses and vote for him. The rest of us are smart enough to read the writing on the wall and get away from this liar.
The only thing worse than a Romney supporter, IMHO, is the Paultards that are starting to come out of the woodwork on here again.
With Romney, Paul and Obama as our choices I think I’ll vote for Jack Daniels and write in Sarah Palin. At least I can vote for all the conservatives I can for House, Senate and local government. I just hope that’s enough to hold back the oil slick of slime that comes from these three candidates.
Well said.
...."The two major political parties are hell bent and riding hard to strengthen their grip on unconstitutional power..... The GOP-e can hardly wait to strip the pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, pro-liberty, pro-borders planks from its platform.... Romney is their ticket to get it done.
If staunch pro-life, pro-liberty, pro-gun, pro-borders, pro-small government conservatives can be turned, then obviously these principles are no longer a serious threat to the usurpers. DO NOT LET THEM TURN YOU!!
Do not let them do this... Do not give Romney and the GOP-e a mandate to chuck the life, family, small government and liberty planks from the platform!!....
You know Romney's record. And you know he's lying about any conservative conversion. He is no conservative, never has been, never will be, but has always been a liberal/progressive/statist bald-faced liar and petty tyrant. RomneyCare is tyranny! Government sanctioned/forced abortion, same sex marriage, gun control, crony capitalism, etc, all positions Romney has advocated for, are tyranny.
Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God......We are the resistance!! And perhaps the last line of resistance. ..
Jim Robinson
I detest Romney as much as anyone but come on, try freaking harder okay? Don’t let your hate reduce your intellectual standards.
I hate Romney with the power of 1,000 suns but I refuse to lower myself to the level of a drooling neanderthal in trying to tear him apart. He’ll do fine with that all by himself.
This is akin to posting a Mother Jones article that uses the DNC as a source for their story.
“I reckon the folks who have already decided ABO are fine with the fraud saying anything and catering to the squishy, middle and to those who depend upon big government, (bless their hearts) never dreaming that Romney just might mean what he’s saying to those groups. “
Folks like Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.
I trust their ethics judgement and morals.
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