Mitt Romney was my first choice for president in last year's elections. Alas, it was not to be. Romney's message was basically ignored by the media, which attempted (successfully) to marginalize him by focusing on the odder tenets of Mormonism. Funny how the odder tenets of Obama's church didn't marginalize him. Oh, I forgot, Obama wasn't in church on any of the occasions that Rev. Jeremiah Wright went on his racist, anti-american tirades.
In any case, Romney recently appeared at CPAC, the conservative conference. With the Republican party is such disarray, I think his speech is worth reading. Here are a few excerpts:
"The President has already moved to stop our economy’s downward spiral. Parts of the stimulus will, in fact, do some good. But too much of the bill was short-sighted and wasteful. Every single Republican in Congress voted in favor of a better stimulus plan, one that focused on creating jobs immediately. But Congressional Democrats couldn’t restrain themselves from larding up their bill with tens of billions of dollars for their political friends. Republicans wanted to stimulate the economy, Democrats wanted to stimulate the government. Conservatives in the House and Senate stood their ground and voted no—and they were absolutely right."
"So far, the Administration has been unclear on what it will do to address the huge decline in the pool of risk and investment capital. These losses will be felt in businesses that don’t start-up and grow, and in jobs that don’t get created. To grow the pool of investment capital, the last thing you’d do is to raise taxes on investment, as the President has proposed. The surest, most obvious course is to rule out higher taxes on investment. I would propose going one step further. For all middle-class Americans, we ought to abolish the tax on interest, dividends and capital gains."
"For years, Washington politicians did nothing to prevent the abuses at Fannie and Freddie, and in some cases they encouraged those abuses for political gain. Let’s be clear on this point: conservatives favor clear, streamlined and up-to-date regulations and laws that let the economy work, but we will vigorously oppose those politicians who are poised to use their own failures as an excuse to undermine the free enterprise system."
“President Obama was awfully vague about some of his plans, but I think I heard him say that government is responsible for educating a child from birth—from birth—to its first job. Universal pre-school and universal college. And there were hints as well of universal healthcare and a universal service corps. It all sounds very appealing, until you realize that these plans mean universal government. That model has never worked anywhere in the world. America is great because our society is free and the power of government is limited by the Constitution.
For the last several years, we’ve heard liberals moaning about the 700 billion dollars that have been spent over six years to win freedom in Iraq. They have now spent more than that in 30 days. And with a government almost 12 trillion dollars in debt, any unnecessary spending puts at risk the creditworthiness of the United States. If the world loses confidence in our currency, that could cause a run on the dollar, or hyperinflation that would wipe out savings and devastate the Middle Class. President Obama says he hopes to cut the deficit in half after four years—does that mean a deficit in 2012 of 600 billion dollars? No president should accept such a staggering deficit, much less hold it up as a national goal. This is the time to pare back government spending. It is not the time to fulfill every liberal dream and spend America into catastrophe…
America voted for change. America did not vote for a boat-load of new government spending programs that would guarantee higher taxes and high deficits as far as the eye can see and that would threaten our currency, our economy, and our future. We must be the alternative course. We can’t be that if all we say is no.”
"Congressional Democrats are gearing up to take over the health care system. We need to advance a conservative plan – one based on free choice, personal responsibility, and private medicine; one that doesn’t add massive new federal spending. I like what I proposed in Massachusetts when I was governor. And even though the final bill and its implementation aren’t exactly the way I wanted, the plan is a good model. Today, almost every Massachusetts citizen who had been uninsured now has private, free-market coverage, and we didn’t have to raise taxes or borrow money to make it happen. We may find even better ideas in other states. But let’s make certain that conservative principles are front and center. A big-government takeover of health care is the next thing liberals are going to try, and it’s the last thing America needs."
"We and the President agree that America must act to become energy independent. But his cap-and-trade proposal is exactly the wrong way to go about it. It would tax American citizens and employers and send businesses and jobs to high polluting and high emitting nations like China. Any carbon plan has to be worldwide in scope: they don’t call it America-warming, they call it global-warming."
Mr. Romney, please hang around for four more years.
