Democrat/Republican voters don't win elections, the independent vote does. I still think, the Obama ticket will draw more independent votes. Hype works in America. Can't wait to see the 'Obama killed Osama' commercials.

I'm still trying to recover from 8 years of Republicans in the office, and I am not even from the US.

Initially he was not on the top of my GOP list (first Bloomberg then Huntsmen) but after happening to read more about him starting to like where he stands (Social Moderate/Fiscal Conservative) more and more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/us/po ... ts.html?hp

I prefer this guy's spin:

His competition is pretty lame too.

I mean, Newt is denying there was a Palestine people, pulling a bit of the land without a people to people without a land comic routine. Difficult to top that. And yes that unfortunately does find resonance in voters, which is a whole new discussion.

I am anxious to see who will be nominated by the CCP for next year china elections. The debates in china are normally really interesting, specially that part when common folks across the country submit their questions to each of the several candidates of the several parties. Civilization at its finest.

Shinbone wrote:Watched an extensive Q&A with him on PBS yesterday and got a good look at this Republican Governor of Massachusetts and candidate for US president.

+ he knows where he is talking about, he is not just an actor or lawyer
+ he is a businessman
+ he has lived in france for 3 years, speaks french, doesn't like the french arrogancy
+ he is a LDS Mormon
+ he has political experience from his father
- he has a business education, he is not an engineer
+ he is a conservative
+ he has plenty of speech writing and media pathology experience
- he has no China experience
- he has steadfast principles, doesn't want to compromise to get president (so he will not make it)

Mitt is a Mormon pastor; he knows how to talk to people. He is a politician promoting image, exactly what the USA does not need more of. Government is about governing not politic'ing. No more politicians, well, a little savvy is necessary.

Newt for President with Cain as vice president. The best of both worlds.

No to Mitt, no, no a thousand times no.
His telegenic appearance screams android.

^^^^Couldn't agree more....but the scary thing is that compared to most of the rest (GOP) his policy are actually more moderate. Truth is though none of the candidates (including Obama) so far will get me to go thru the hassle of voting through the mail while living overseas.

foreverinchina wrote:- he has steadfast principles, doesn't want to compromise to get president (so he will not make it)

I laughed when I read that.

I follow American politics very closely, and have been watching Romney for more than 4 years.

He has taken more positions than the kama sutra, and he's a dissembler of the highest order. Just like all the rest of them, but he's no different.

Jon Stewart ran a little segment last week about Romney's competition by listing Romney positions, then listing positions opposed to Romney's. But the joke was that all the opposing positions had also been taken by Romney in the 2008 presidential primaries. Stewart's humorous conclusion was that Romney is his own biggest enemy.

I take Stewart at his word - that the laugh is more important than the truth when you're producing a fake news show. But the positions listed weren't fake.

I'd rather have Romney than most of the others, but let's not kid ourselves that he's a man of principle IN POLITICS in any consistent way. As the electorate becomes more polarized, anti-science, anti-logic and ill-informed, being truly a man of principle would be the route to almost certain defeat.

^I would vote for Jon Stewart to be president.

Politicians will say anything, absolutely anything, which they think will get them voted into office.

The skills required to actually run a country are, on the whole, completely different from the skills required to gain office through a popular vote. Generally what happens when a politician becomes elected to high office is that they take their job seriously and try to do it well. This is partly so they can get elected again, and partly with a view to their eventual standing in history.

Therefore a voter should rarely, if ever, take the content of a politician's statements into consideration. Look instead at the person. Are they smart? Do they have a grasp of the situation? Do they maintain composure under pressure? Have they behaved moderately and appropriately in the execution of their past duties? Have they ever espoused extreme and unpleasant policy positions in the past, at a time when they were not actually campaigning? Have they ever exhibited a tendency toward megalomania?

OP, put Romney through that lens and you might come up with a different view. Or not.

tylerdurden wrote:Politicians will say anything, absolutely anything, which they think will get them voted into office.

The skills required to actually run a country are, on the whole, completely different from the skills required to gain office through a popular vote. Generally what happens when a politician becomes elected to high office is that they take their job seriously and try to do it well. This is partly so they can get elected again, and partly with a view to their eventual standing in history.

Therefore a voter should rarely, if ever, take the content of a politician's statements into consideration. Look instead at the person. Are they smart? Do they have a grasp of the situation? Do they maintain composure under pressure? Have they behaved moderately and appropriately in the execution of their past duties? Have they ever espoused extreme and unpleasant policy positions in the past, at a time when they were not actually campaigning? Have they ever exhibited a tendency toward megalomania?

OP, put Romney through that lens and you might come up with a different view. Or not.

Good post, Tyler.

One of the problems is that we (the voters) and the press insist on taking candidates' statements as "promises" when they may never have been intended that way.

Example: Somebody asks a politician if he'll promise to never run a deficit. If he says, "No, I won't make that promise because I can foresee situations in which I would reluctantly run a deficit", he's likely to be labelled as a "tax and spend" candidate. And while he might be a big spender, he may also be a careful fiscal conservative who refuses to say yes/no to questions that warrant a nuanced answer.

In many cases, the "promises" politicians make should not be considered promises at all. They should more accurately be called "goals". And when they fail to deliver on these "promises" that are actually "goals", they aren't considered to have fallen short of challenging objectives - they're considered to be "liars" who didn't do what they promised.

So knowing this, they lie. After all, if they told the truth, they'd be accused of lying anyway. If you're going to "do the time", why not "commit the crime"?

One of the under appreciated (even hated by conservatives) US president's I think was George Bush Senior (NOT Bush Junior) for him flip flopping on his "No New Taxes" pledge. Sometimes certain situations just require a President to compromise for the good of the country regardless of political consequences. Did not really like or dislike him beforehand but thought it took courage to do what he did.

btb wrote:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

President Barack Obama is considering naming Larry Summers, his former top economic advisor, as head of the World Bank, Bloomberg reports, citing "two people familiar with the matter."

This might be of interest, from the Economist.

Mitt Romney
America’s next CEO?
Mitt Romney looks like winning the Republican nomination. The party could do worse
Jan 14th 2012 | from the print edition

THE Republican primaries are meant to last six months, allowing all 50 states to have their say in the nomination of a candidate to take on Barack Obama in November. Amazingly, they may be all over only days after they started.

On January 10th, a week after his victory in conservative Iowa, Mitt Romney trounced his six opponents in liberal New Hampshire, winning nearly twice the share of his nearest rival (see article). The polls predict a victory for him in South Carolina on January 21st, and another in Florida on the 31st. Even if the race staggers on beyond that, he has raised as much money and built a bigger organisation than the rest of the Republican field combined. Barring an upset, Mr Romney is likely to win the nomination. The polls suggest that, should he do so, he has a real chance of ousting a president who has squandered much of his standing with the political centre.

But he has a lot of work to do. At the moment many Americans find him a bit of an enigma: a flip-flopper on some big issues, wooden in public, and a committed member of one of the world’s odder religions. None of that is entirely unfair, but it is exaggerated and incomplete (see article). At his best, Mr Romney should be able to offer America a competent centre-right alternative to Mr Obama (and drag the latter back towards the ignored middle). But he must do a better job than he so far has of capitalising on his advantages and mitigating his weaknesses.

Paint it grey

Start with the advantages. The most important fact about Mr Romney is that he is a non-ideological man who did something that America needs a lot more of. In 2002 he was elected to govern Massachusetts, normally a Democratic stronghold. He passed a version of health-care reform that is at once his proudest achievement and his biggest liability. Back then a system based on obliging everyone to buy private health insurance was a conservative idea, and Mr Romney did a good job of working with a hostile legislature to get it passed. (Today, his party viscerally opposes Mr Obama’s health reforms, which are closely modelled on Mr Romney’s; such are the twists of politics.) He also turned round Massachusetts’s finances, just as he had earlier righted the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Mr Romney needs to make these successes count for more than they have so far. Once the primaries are over, and America’s independents rather than the Republican Party faithful become the electorate to win over, he may be able to.

Second, Mr Romney has something that the president and his Republican rivals sorely lack: business experience. For 25 years he made himself and the management consultancies BCG and Bain a lot of money by making companies more efficient which, yes, sometimes means firing people, but also drives economic growth (see article). So far, Mr Romney has done a poor job of defending himself against attacks which are really aimed at the creative destruction which is the essence of capitalism itself. He says he created a net 100,000 jobs during his time at Bain. That figure is impossible to prove, but he could do more to argue that the benefits outweigh the costs. His task has not been helped by disgraceful attacks from fellow-Republicans on corporate restructuring.

Third, Mr Romney seems sure-footed. It is hard to think of a single misstep in this campaign. He may be wooden, but no scandal has ever attached to him. His family life is impeccably monogamous and progenitive. Those who have worked closely with him tend to admire him. On both the economic and the foreign-policy sides, he has already put together impressive and above all sensibly moderate teams.

The debit side of the ledger

A useful list, to be sure: but can it outweigh the negatives? Mr Romney’s pragmatism has an inconvenient flip side: no one is quite sure where he stands. The Republican base does not think he is reliable on such things as gay rights and abortion. That will not matter so much to independents (who will probably also accept that any Republican has to say a few mad things to win a nomination). But people have to trust a president on the main issues, and, despite publishing a long economic manifesto, Mr Romney remains vague over how a lot of it is to be accomplished.

Explore our interactive map and guide to the race for the Republican candidacy
.It is not at all clear how he would reform America’s ruinously expensive health-care and pensions systems. His views on what he wants to do about America’s 12m illegal immigrants are also unsettlingly gnomic. And where he has been clear, he has sometimes been wrong: his insistence that, on day one of his presidency, he will brand China as a currency manipulator represents dangerous pandering to populists. His pledge to cut federal spending to no more than 20% of GDP, a sop to his party’s fiscal extremists, would also be dangerous if applied as quickly as he implies.

Mr Romney will have other problems in wooing the electorate. He would be the richest candidate ever to win a big-party nomination and he reeks of privilege. His father was a governor as well, and he himself studied law at Harvard. On the other hand, Mr Obama is a millionaire several times over, can give a fair impression of having come from the planet Vulcan, and also studied law at Harvard. Mr Romney’s lack of charisma is a problem; but perhaps America wants fewer soaring speeches and more pragmatic restructuring plans.

Mr Romney’s last difficulty is one that should not be a problem at all. He is a Mormon and, despite Mormons’ protestations to the contrary, a third of Americans do not consider them to be Christians. There is not much Mr Romney can do about this. He could explain the Mormons’ extraordinary missionary work, but he can hardly risk saying that it is not really any more incredible that God communicated His plans to man in upstate New York in 1820 than He did in Palestine in 0AD. We recall, however, that America was for decades “not ready” for a Catholic president, or for a black one. Eventually, Americans thought better of those attitudes. Prejudice would be a silly reason for the Republicans to reject a man who offers their best chance of beating Mr Obama.

from the print edition | Leaders

Romney's latest tax return debacle could be a big hit for him. Apparently the guy only pays around 15% on his income. Also much of that income may have been from betting against the housing market and the middle class.

he is job creator.
we have high taxes,
we need to reduce taxes otherwise job creators will sit on their asses.
we haven't reduce taxes as we see for last 2 years we didn't reduce any and poof no jobs created .

ok la

^^^Not sure though that reduced taxes will actually produce jobs in the USA, especially export related jobs. I buy into the argument that the state (country) is not good at picking winners but if most of the world (especially china) is cherry picking the most promising/high tech industries do not see how the US can not follow and do the same. I think too much state/local incentives are given to domestic industries. Who cares if amazon/walmart builds a distribution center in XYZ state the net increase in jobs will stay the same since if they do not fulfill the need someone else will.

^ I don't think tax reductions will make a big difference except in one area - corporate taxes. If it were up to me, I'd eliminate corporate income tax completely, and I would tax dividends as ordinary income. I would make sure companies paid their fair share of infrastructure costs based on what they use and the wear and tear they place on this infrastructure.

I think the repatriation of many corporate offices would have a significant impact on job creation.

But I would eliminate "loopholes" in the tax personal tax code. That alone would increase tax revenues and also perceptions of tax fairness.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opini ... ue.html?hp

Interesting take on Romney's life and family history.

Kief wrote:Romney's latest tax return debacle could be a big hit for him. Apparently the guy only pays around 15% on his income. Also much of that income may have been from betting against the housing market and the middle class.

Bush2 and Obama made 15% the standard tax rate for everyone on capital gains income (stock profits), he is an investor, so of course his tax rate would be 15%. He is paying 15% on tens of millions of dollars in income so he is still paying a million dollars more in taxes than you and I.

He looks like the best of the Republicans.

^^^I agree. It seems though Newt gaining momentum but maybe just in the south. I think Newt is a hypocrite in preaching to others to live a "moral" (as defined by Social Conservatives) life while he himself did not (3 wife's / Open Marriage / infidelity) which is fine/none of my business but not when he is running on a "moral" platform. The saying "Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones" comes to mind.

I am personally fine with how Mitt Romney made his money for himself and his partners/shareholders (since within the laws). I would have more problem with the system (lobbyist/contributions...) then with the capitalist who worked within the system to become successful. If the system was changed I feel those same people would have found ways to make money also, just maybe not as much. If elected just hopefully he would value more the legacy he would have over the general population vs the legacy he would have in the Republican Party.

As in some countries I are starting to think better have a president serve only one term of 6 to 8 years vs 2 terms of 4 year.

Action! Chuck Norris endorses Newt Gingrich