Posted on 01/09/2012 6:24:44 PM PST by americanophile
The last two presidential election cycles have revealed a stinking hypocrisy in conservatives: They profess their love of capitalism and entrepreneurship, but when offered a real capitalist and entrepreneur, they go, “Eek, a mouse!” And they tear him down in proud social-democrat fashion. In the off season, they sound like Friedrich Hayek. When the game is on, they sound like Huey Long, Bella Abzug, or Bob Shrum.
Last time around, Mike Huckabee said Romney “looks like the guy who laid you off.” Conservatives reacted like this was the greatest mot since Voltaire or something. To me, Romney looked like someone who could create a business and hire the sadly unentrepreneurial like me.
Others said, “He looks like a car salesman,” or, worse, “a used-car salesman.” Ho ho ho! Commerce, gross, icky, yuck. Better Romney looked like an anthropology professor.
As I say in Impromptus today, I was watching a clip of Romney tangling with an “Occupy” protester last week. Romney was defending corporate profits. I was astounded. I don’t think I had ever seen a candidate do this. When the subject comes up, you’re supposed to denounce corporate profits or say, “Hey, nice weather we’re having, huh?”
Phil Gramm once explained to Bill Buckley why he never talked about free trade on the stump — he, a professor of economics and a free-marketeer: It wasn’t worth the trouble. “Free trade benefits almost everybody,” said Gramm. “But they don’t know who they are. Free trade hurts a few, and they all know who they are.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
LOL. Karl Marx supported "Free Trade" because he thought it helped the cause of Communism.
What did Perry say?
Obama will eat Romney. They know where the dirt is.
“I had to shake my head yesterday when one of the wealthiest men I suppose has ever run for the presidency of the United States, the son of a multimillionaire, Mitt Romney, he said, ‘I know what it’s like to worry about whether you’re going to get fired,’” Perry said at Mama Penn restaurant in Anderson, S.C. “I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips, whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out, because his company Bain Capital with all the jobs that they killed, I’m sure he was worried that he’d run out of pink slips.”
Articles regarding abuses of this type of action appeared in the Wall Street Journal back then (not some Marxist rag). Whether Bain engaged in abuses or not I don't know. If abuses occurred, it is a legitimate issue.
If mittens can't come up with an intelligent way to defend his business actions(supposedly the main reason to elect him), then there is no way he beats Obama when they come at him on this issue. Better to find out now that he can't do it, than to find out when he is the candidate.
Myself, I am more interested in his record as Governor in Massachusetts. That record leaves me underwhelmed.
Romney is a dirty politician and a liar. You think he was clean in business?!
I think you are dead on about him,,,
Oh I’ve been disgusted for a while now. The attacks on capitalism are legion here at FR and Newt;s already triangulating. But I depart from the author on Romney and the others electability. I think any of them can beat Obama except Ron Paul. And there are very good reasons to oppose Romney but doing it at the expense of free market capitalism sure the hell ain’t the right one.
Never said that, did I ????
Thank you.
I guess I dont see what is anti-capitalist in that.
I hope your evening is wonderful.
Whether Romney’s business dealings were legitimate or not, we have an interest in knowing exactly what they were and whether they represent the right temperament and experience necessary for a president. So far, it doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like he is someone who loves governing from the top-down, moving the pieces all around the board with little regard or thought for all the little people that get crushed in the process.
Again, it may have been necessary for the bottom line to cut those people off, but someone who is so comfortable doing that doesn’t seem cut out to govern the country. If Romney acted as President like he did in business, he would be a dictatorial socialist, creating and controlling big government machines to fulfill his own ends but not caring much about how the average citizen fared under the iron boot of his system. This also explains why he did govern as a socialist so comfortably in Massachusetts.
There is probably a reason we don’t have a tradition of big businessmen serving in government. Just look at one of our most recent examples, Jon Corzine, to see how well that worked out. These big businessmen seem to be control freaks who think they know better than the rest of us and are not sensitive to how their big decisions affect the little guy. Businesses are dictatorships built around a hierarchy. They aren’t democracies and their leaders aren’t used to being answerable to the will of all the little people living under them.
That being said, Romney is a disgusting anti-capitalist when he gets into political office. His reign in Massachusetts was not even close to being a sterling example of free-market capitalist political policy, it was nothing more than mainline progressive liberalism.
You said - “This is bunk. Free traitorism only benefits the small globalist elite that underwrites economics chairs at universities and bribes both parties.”
Spoken like the lowest class of socialist known to man. Why don’t you go to DailyKos or some place to plan your commie revolution?
Got that experience several times. Get bought, then everything gets chopped up into various 'units' and sold on the open market.
Worked for three different companies in three months and all in the same building at the same desk...all downhill after that until the last company closed it down a couple of years later.
I hate corporate raiders and their bean counters. No better than barbary pirates.
Romney, the anti-conservative. anti-Reagan, anti-Jesse Helms, anti-Contract with America.
Romney was so anti-conservative that he left the party after Reagan’s election, and by the late 1980s was moving on to supporting and even fund raising solely for democrats.
So many years I read and subscribed to National Review, I canceled them in 2008 (or late 2007).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.