President Mitt

[_Buffalo]

Even if he weren't Mormon, I don't think he'd have a chance. He's got a presidential look in photos, but in live action he's not likable or relateable.

[_Buffalo]

Come on guys, compared to Obama Mitt is hardly a flip-flopper. Okay, maybe he is to a degree and Obama is just a pathological liar. There can be a difference.

No one is impressed by dumb partisanship but dumb partisans, Fiannan.

[_Jason Bourne]

I like Romney

Yes he has modified his views on some things. But what politician hasn't? And is modifying views a bad thing really? I do not view him nearly as politically expedient as Sock Puppet does and no where near as much as say a Bill Clinton, who even though I did not like the man I think he ended up being a fairly good president.

I think Romney bring a lot of what we need right now especially regarding economic issues.


Course unless our dysfunctional power grubbing congress and senate can actually work together and both sides do some give and take then we are done for.

[_sock puppet]

I like Romney

Yes he has modified his views on some things. But what politician hasn't? And is modifying views a bad thing really? I do not view him nearly as politically expedient as Sock Puppet does and no where near as much as say a Bill Clinton, who even though I did not like the man I think he ended up being a fairly good president.

I think Romney bring a lot of what we need right now especially regarding economic issues.


Course unless our dysfunctional power grubbing congress and senate can actually work together and both sides do some give and take then we are done for.

Hi, Jason,

I respect your view. For me, his views have not merely changed. He's a flip-flopper, and the Democrats will eat him alive in a general election just as Bush was able to do so with John Kerry in 2004 with the ads that Kerry was for the Iraq war spending bill before he was against it. Remember the wind surfing ads? When you consider how many Republican baptists will not vote for Romney because he is Mormon, add the flip-flop baggage with which he can be attacked, even with 9.1% unemployment it will be a cakewalk re-election for Obama if the Republicans waste their nomination on Romney.

For me, the man simply drips with insincerity whenever he opens his mouth.

[_DarkHelmet]

Hi Dr. C,

To be open about my political leanings, I am a registered Independent and do not overtly support any party.

That said, I have mixed feelings about President Obama's last 2 years in office. Unlike some, I thought his pursuit of healthcare reform was drastically needed and the blow-up we saw was the result of poor leadership on the part of both Republicans as well as Democrats. Many, many people I have discussed the healthcare reform bill with seem to have little understanding of what it actually entails, which is too bad. Not because I think it is perfect, but because I think the best way to get out of the woods is to take a bearing from where you really are as well as know where you are trying to get to. At this point, the discussion about where we really are as a nation regarding healthcare is flawed. For example, the fact part of the healthcare bill had to stipulate that a reasonable percentage of health insurance costs went to actual health care, rather than profit or other corporate needs is telling yet missing from most critiques.

That said, the recent housing price numbers show that the new home-buyers tax credit only served to artificially inflate home prices for a brief period of time. The housing bubble that led to the unprecedented and unwarranted sense of wealth felt by the nation during much of the last decade will continue to weigh-down any attempt at a recovery, in my opinion, and programs that recreate the problems rather than purging them are flawed to say the least.

This is where my optimism is most challenged: if I knew a family that was living on borrowed funds and subsequently fell on hard times I would not view their calls for a return to the good times as rational. Instead, I would think they had failed to learn a valuable lesson from which they could move on. In the case of our nation, we have been like this family, and I do not think we can get back to the same comparable level of wealth and job creation that we enjoyed only a half-decade ago. Yet, I think that both parties are falsely tied to ideas that are not much different than the hypothetical family I describe above. Both parties have blind spots in regards to how the corporate/government collaboration has to work in order to make progress. And this makes it hard to create real progress. Again, we haven't been able to articulate well where we even are, let alone where we are going or how best to get there.

Romney has some interesting experience with both sides of this issue. But the election cycle is young and I am very interested to see how both sides present the issues, the solutions, and the ultimate destination. Personally, "I believe in America" and "Win the Future" are depressingly basic and don't lead me to expect too much. But we'll see.

I liked both of your posts. As much as conservatives hated Clinton, he was at at least smart enough to campaign on the economy. The economy should be the #1 priority right now. with unemployment at 9.1% these other issues are magnified because people are not happy right now. We need to generate jobs in this country, not write stimulus checks, and jobs comes from innovation within the private sector. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of innovation in this country right now. I see big corporations trying to maintain the status quo, but not much innovation to generate new markets and new opportunities for jobs. Speculation bubbles have driven this economy since the 90s. At least the dot com bubble did generate some real jobs after the dust cleared. The housing bubble did nothing.