Romney, the Pretzel Candidate

From George Will, in yesterday’s Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-pretzel-candidate/2011/10/28/gIQAPEQ8PM_print.html
Money quotes:
<span style="font-size:medium
“Every day, 10,000 baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare, from which they will receive, on average, $1 million of benefits ($550,000 from the former, $450,000 from the latter). Who expects difficult reforms from Romney, whose twists on ethanol make a policy pretzel?
” A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one. It is what Romney did when he said that using Troubled Assets Relief Program funds for the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts “was the wrong source for that funding.” Oh, so the source was the bailouts’ defect.

“… His campaign called his refusal principled: “Citizens of states should be able to make decisions . . . on their own.” Got it? People cannot make “their own” decisions if Romney expresses an opinion. His flinch from leadership looks ludicrous after his endorsement three months ago of a right-to-work bill that the New Hampshire legislature was considering. So, the rule in New England expires across the Appalachian Mountains?

“A day after refusing to oppose repeal of Kasich’s measure, Romney waffled about his straddle, saying he opposed repeal “110 percent.” He did not, however, endorse the anti-mandate measure, remaining semi-faithful to the trans-Appalachian codicil pertaining to principles, thereby seeming to lack the courage of his absence of convictions.
Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.

“Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this? ”

Of course, he didn’t need much to convince me…

Small Business/Venture Capital Discussion on NPR

I heard this interview on Morning Edition today: http://m.npr.org/programs/all/3/141033128
The guest was is reasonable And made so much sense that every elected official should pay heed.

Businesses don’t have responsibilities to “put people to work”, the Administration’s and Congress’ claims notwithstanding.

No Regrets on Solyndra??

From The National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279064/obama-solyndra-no-regrets-andrew-stiles

“President Obama weighs in on the Solyndra loan scandal in an exclusive interview with ABC News:
President Obama told ABC News Monday that he does not regret touting the solar company Solyndra as a model of his jobs program, or loaning $535 million in taxpayer money to the company before it declared bankruptcy.”

NO regrets? None? Not even a, “Gee, it’s a shame that we just flushed $535 Million down the drain”?

It might well be that that’s the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to some of our efforts at playing Venture Capitalist in the Alternative Energy realm:

In this story, which I found in Kausfiles,
“What’s terrifying is that after looking at some of the ones that came next, this one [Solyndra] started to look better,” another OMB e-mail exchange said of Solyndra. “Bad days are coming.”

I take that to mean that there will be another shoe or two to drop before we’ve heard the last of this.