(by katana) No, but he has so far turned out to be a far better general election candidate than I expected. But I did not start out thinking the man had bad character. Just that he was the choice of the Quisling go along to get along party establishment and that this election was and would have been an opportunity to elect a genuine Conservative and Constitutionalist. The primaries are like family squabbles. Hot and fierce within the family but when outsiders put their nose in everybody lines up (or should) to give them a good a** kicking. I cannot think of a single Republican I would not prefer over what's in the White House and running the Federal executive agencies now. Guess that makes me a YDR: Yellow Dog Republican.
The above I think are the sensible responses. I much preferred Palin, but the Left's attack machine may have made it difficult to win with Sarah.
Possibly this is the way it was meant to be. Maybe with the way things are working out, (as Senator Jesse Helms once said after Reagan's election), maybe God will have mercy on the U.S. one more time.
I believe we will hear the theme from round 1, plus Benghazi, from Romney. Zero is going down, despite the “perfectionist FReepers” posting their “purity” theme. Clowns they are.
Will I be disappointed by some of the things he will do? Time will tell!
If you studied my history, you would see many posts against Mormonism. But, Romney can be my President, and I believe he can lead us back to prosperity! I am a Christian, but I am also a Patriot! I will continue to pray for him to see his spiritual life in danger!
BUT, I will vote for him like I did for McCain. It will be based on his pick for VP!!! He is certainly a RINO, but that will likely get us back into the FRONT DOOR of the White House...
************
From his first debate... responding to Zero:
ROMNEY: Well, sure. I’d like to clear up the record and go through it piece by piece.
First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. They’ll do fine whether you’re president or I am.
The people who are having the hard time right now are middle- income Americans. Under the president’s policies, middle-income Americans have been buried. They’re just being crushed. Middle- income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. This is a — this is a tax in and of itself. I’ll call it the economy tax. It’s been crushing.
At the same time, gasoline prices have doubled under the president. Electric rates are up. Food prices are up. Health care costs have gone up by $2,500 a family. Middle-income families are being crushed.
And so the question is how to get them going again. And I’ve described it. It’s energy and trade, the right kind of training programs, balancing our budget and helping small business. Those are the — the cornerstones of my plan.
But the president mentioned a couple of other ideas I’ll just note. First, education. I agree: Education is key, particularly the future of our economy. But our training programs right now, we’ve got 47 of them, housed in the federal government, reporting to eight different agencies. Overhead is overwhelming. We’ve got to get those dollars back to the states and go to the workers so they can create their own pathways to get in the training they need for jobs that will really help them.
The second area, taxation, we agree, we ought to bring the tax rates down. And I do, both for corporations and for individuals. But in order for us not to lose revenue, have the government run out of money, I also lower deductions and credits and exemptions, so that we keep taking in the same money when you also account for growth.
The third area, energy. Energy is critical, and the president pointed out correctly that production of oil and gas in the U.S. is up. But not due to his policies. In spite of his policies.
Mr. President, all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land. On government land, your administration has cut the number of permits and licenses in half. If I’m president, I’ll double them, and also get the — the oil from offshore and Alaska. And I’ll bring that pipeline in from Canada.
And, by the way, I like coal. I’m going to make sure we can continue to burn clean coal. People in the coal industry feel like it’s getting crushed by your policies. I want to get America and North America energy independent so we can create those jobs.
And finally, with regards to that tax cut, look, I’m not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce the — the revenues going to the government. My — my number-one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.
But I do want to reduce the burden being paid by middle-income Americans. And I — and to do that, that also means I cannot reduce the burden paid by high-income Americans. So any — any language to the contrary is simply not accurate.