What I Want From Romney

You don't get to read too much about the presumptive Republican candidate for president from the mainstream media: who is is and what he stands for.  That's because they aren't much interested in Mitt Romney and his agenda.  Those chaps have another agenda.

That's why you have to get past the mainstream media and actually look at the candidate's speeches to figure out who he is and what he means for America.  Now that Romney is the presumptive Republican candidate we can get a glimpse of how he proposes to run for president rather than run for the Republican nomination.  Our first look at his general election campaign came on Tuesday night, April 24, 2012, at Romney's victory speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, after he won primaries in five eastern states.

What I want to see is for Romney to step up to who he is.  Democrats have made a big deal about his years leading Bain Capital, as if it is shameful to be a capitalist creating new companies and trying to resurrect failing companies.  Republicans cannot continue to shy away from support of capitalism. And I want Romney to take on the "fairness" issue.  So long as Democrats can go on about fairness and not get push-back so long will the unaffordable welfare state get bigger and bigger until it collapses.  Then the real "unfairness" will start.

In Romney's Manchester speech he made a start on both these themes.  Said he, about his business experience:

Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.

I’d say that you might have heard that I was successful in business. And that rumor is true. But you might not have heard that I became successful by helping start a business that grew from 10 people to hundreds of people. You might not have heard that our business helped start other businesses, like Staples and Sports Authority and a new steel mill and a learning center called Bright Horizons. And I’d tell you that not every business made it and there were good days and bad days, but every day was a lesson. And after 25 years, I know how to lead us out of this stagnant Obama economy and into a job-creating recovery!

OK.  I'd call that a start.  Here's what I'd like him to say next. I'd like him to say that his business centered around two things.  First, he helped create new start-up companies, based on new ideas, with new money.  Then he helped try to turn around and rescue companies in trouble, by reorganizing and recapitalizing.

When you do that, you are putting yourself on the line, because there are going to be failures to balance the successes.  But if you don't do something, risk something, then you can't get to success.  Here in America, we need someone like that, someone with experience in turning around failing companies.  Because the United States is not in a good place.  In fact it is in a turn-around situation; we have to change now or we risk losing it.  We need not a community-organizer-in-chief but a reorganizer-in-chief.

Then there is Romney on "fairness."

This America is fundamentally fair. We will stop the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice; we will stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends’ businesses; we will stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing; we will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve; and we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next.

Now we are talking.  The basic fact of the big-government welfare state is that it is unfair.  It is a system of looting.  You get in power and then you hand out the loot to your supporters.  So the more we limit the looting, the better for all Americans.  Right now, the biggest chunk of government loot is going out to baby-boomer seniors like me.  But why?  Seniors are the richest kind.  We shouldn't be looting the younger generation for our Social Security and Medicare.  Romney doesn't mention that, of course, because he dare not.  But he does hit the Obamis where they are most vulnerable.  On lousy urban schools, run by Democrats.  On crony capitalism, giving out money to campaign contributors.  On the gigantic disaster of government employees looting the state treasuries with their unfunded pensions and retiree health care.

Jonah Goldberg is out with a new book this week on The Tyranny of Clichés.  He argues that liberals use clichés to shut down political speech.  There are two problems with this liberal habit.  First of all it stops the other guys from talking to the American people.  That's a pity.  But then it puts liberals into an idea-free cocoon.  They never get to defend their ideas in an open forum.  They are always sneaking around looking for the chance to lead with a rabbit punch.  That's a shame.  Because one day conservatives will break through to the American people with some new idea and liberals won't know how to counter it, because they have never had to honestly defend their ideas.  Maybe that is happening right now.

Mitt Romney has started out the general election campaign with some good themes.  Things can only get better from here.  Is that possible.  One of the campaign consultants working against Romney in 2008 said this.  He said that the Romney campaign in 2008 learned so fast it was scary.

What's so remarkable about that?  That is how capitalism and business works.  That is how you get to be successful in business. You learn and adapt every day or you go out of business.  Or, as Mitt Romney said in his speech: "there were good days and bad days, but every day was a lesson."