And then I read this quote in the Times from Michael D. Tanner, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute (my emphasis):
"If you go program by program, the differences between [President] Obama and [Mitt] Romney are more ones of degree. [Romney is] a manager. He wants to manage the status quo, not blow it up."
That sounds about right to me.
So if the economy rebounds, and the president's numbers go up, would a "manager" like Mitt Romney really be the guy Republicans want to lead them into battle next fall? Really?
Wouldn't a True Believer, like Rick Santorum, make more sense?
Didn't we all believe, in 2000, that the difference between Bush and Gore was not that big of a deal? In 2000, I was still drinking the Republican Kool-aid, and I still couldn't vote for Bush - because I thought he was a corrupt nincompoop - and I turned out to be right. But there was no marching in the streets over the 5-4 awarding of the Presidency to Bush because we didn't think there was much of a difference. An in their rhetoric - Gore's DLC "Third way" vs Bush's "compassionate conservatism" there wasn't. But anyone who blieves that Gore would have governed Like Bush is fooling themselves. And while Massachusetts Governor Romney and Obama's centrist, pragmatic rhetoric may sound the same, their governing will be vastly different. We need a Democrat in the White house for nothing else but to 1) make Supreme Court appointments that do not favor corporations over people and 2) avoid invading other countries. You need to quit drawing these false equivalences. Obama and Romney on paper are fairly similar. In reality they will be vastly different. It happened just 12 years ago.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I expect to be asking the question a lot between now and November: What difference would a Romney presidency make?
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