Previewing President Romney’s Regime
The Tea Party is right. What voters decide in November will change the face of America for years to come, as did the elections of Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000.
If Willard Mitt Romney takes the oath of office next January with Republican control over both houses of Congress, where do we go from there?
With no more Obama to “kick around,” in Nixon’s immortal words, how does a GOP that has spent years trying to dismantle government pivot to a position of actually running it? Where does Romney go after his Day One promise to wipe out Obamacare, and how do John Boehner and Mitch McConnell pivot to passing legislation instead of just gutting it?
As Obama and Romney now go head to head, the President’s campaign is working hard to make voters think about these questions, not only by the disputing the former venture capitalist’s claims about job creation but his record as governor of Massachusetts.
Beyond that, although it may only play a small part in voters’ decisions this November, there is foreign policy, the role of a president in shaping America’s role in the world.
Even pillars of the GOP establishment, most notably Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, are dragging their feet about endorsing Romney.
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If Brent Scowcroft is nervous, I’m nervous.
From Romney’s speech at the Citadel, October 2011.
http://digg.com/newsbar/Election2012/romney_criticizes_obama_at_military_college_the_weekly_standard
[In my first 100 days in office, I will take a series of measures to put these principles into action, and place America—and the world—on safer footing.
Among these actions will be to restore America’s national defense. I will reverse the hollowing of our Navy and announce an initiative to increase the shipbuilding rate from 9 per year to 15. I will begin reversing Obama-era cuts to national missile defense and prioritize the full deployment of a multilayered national ballistic missile defense system. I will order the formulation of a national cybersecurity strategy, to deter and defend against the growing threats of militarized cyber-attacks, cyber-terrorism, and cyber-espionage.
I will enhance our deterrent against the Iranian regime by ordering the regular presence of aircraft carrier task forces, one in the Eastern Mediterranean and one in the Persian Gulf region. I will begin discussions with Israel to increase the level of our military assistance and coordination. And I will again reiterate that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
I will begin organizing all of our diplomatic and assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with the authority and accountability necessary to train all our soft power resources on ensuring that the Arab Spring does not fade into a long winter.
(Middle East Czar - it has a nice ring - and if anything goes wrong it can all be dumped in this guy's lap. I like it!)
I will launch a campaign to advance economic opportunity in Latin America, and contrast the benefits of democracy, free trade, and free enterprise against the material and moral bankruptcy of the Venezuelan and Cuban model.
I will order a full review of our transition to the Afghan military to secure that nation’s sovereignty from the tyranny of the Taliban. I will speak with our generals in the field, and receive the best recommendation of our military commanders. The force level necessary to secure our gains and complete our mission successfully is a decision I will make free from politics.
And I will bolster and repair our alliances. Our friends should never fear that we will not stand by them in an hour of need. I will reaffirm as a vital national interest Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. I will count as dear our Special Relationship with the United Kingdom. And I will begin talks with Mexico, to strengthen our cooperation on our shared problems of drugs and security.]
It will be interesting to see how all this affects his first budget submission.
My guess is that most of the people who end up voting for Romney will do so because they like the way he dresses, or because of his ads, or because he is white, or more likely (as in the case of the commenter on Stein’s blog) out of tribal rationalization. They will know almost nothing about his intentions, his qualifications, nor will they care about giving power to a party that suffers from dementia.
If Romney wins and has both houses where do we go from there? There is no need to wonder, just look at Bush in 2000. There will be tax cuts, a further ballooning of the debt as a result without promised economic growth. Fewer jobs will be created because the policies will simply siphon more money from the middle class to the top tiers without any growth in median income so the recession will come back as people can’t afford to buy enough to sustain even the current tepid GDP growth. The financial sector will continue to play their shell games until the market crashes and the taxpayers have to pick up the tab. The Dept of Interior will go back to being staffed by the people from the Oil/Coal/Mining industry that the Dept of Interior was created to protect us against. And we will very likely try something drastic in Syria and/or Iran that will leave us with trying to once again nation build in a nation that hates us because neither one of them has a domestic coalition in place to step into a leadership role once we remove the existing regime. I’m writing this prediction down and dating it.