Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

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Rick Santorum destroys Mitt Romney on RomneyCare in CNN debate

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Is Rick Santorum right to criticize Romneycare as being essential a state-level version of Obamacare?

Reason magazine explains the similarities between Obamacare and Romneycare.

Excerpt:

ObamaCare, which includes a health insurance mandate, is a near carbon copy of RomneyCare: a hefty Medicaid expansion coupled to equally large middle-class insurance subsidies, new regulations that all but turn health insurance into a public utility, and an individual mandate to buy a private insurance plan. Indeed, the same Obama administration that Romney accused of being fundamentally anti-American has on multiple occasions explicitly cited the plan that Romney signed into law as the direct model for their plan.

Romney’s only real contrast between his plan and the president’s plan boiled down to a single, simple distinction: Obama’s overhaul was a federal overhaul; Romney’s was state-based. Romney would have us believe that the same system of mandates and regulations that constitutes an unconscionable imposition on individual liberty at the federal level is somehow a natural and great part of the American way of life at the state level.

Is Rick Santorum right about the number of “free riders” who choose to pay a fine and get free health care? Of course.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out this morning:

Uncompensated hospital care [in Massachusetts] rose 5% from 2008 to 2009, and 15% from 2009 to 2010, hitting $475 million (though the state only paid out $405 million). “Avoidable” use of emergency rooms—that is, for routine care like a sore throat—increased 9% between 2004 and 2008.

Romney also decried ObamaCare for failing to lower health costs. He’s right. But the overbudget RomneyCare doesn’t either: Indeed, its designers have explicitly admitted that the state’s plan was to increase coverage first and hope to figure out how to control spending sometime later.

National Review cites a Boston Herald article to explain what RomneyCare did to Massachusetts:

For Mitt Romney, who’s been campaigning on his ability to create jobs, this study from the conservative Beacon Hill Institute can’t be welcome. From the Boston Herald:

The Beacon Hill Institute study found that, on average, Romneycare:

  •  cost the Bay State 18,313 jobs;
  •  drove up total health insurance costs in Massachusetts by $4.311 billion;
  •  slowed the growth of disposable income per person by $376; and
  •  reduced investment in Massachusetts by $25.06 million.

Here’s another must-see clip from my friend Tim:

And another one I found for Jeremy:

Here’s the full transcript of the debate.

Mitt Romney

Rick Santorum

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What happened to the ethics charges against Newt Gingrich?

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Here are the facts from Legal Insurrection.

Excerpt:

So Romney is going on attack.  The centerpiece will be Newt Gingrich’s consent to a single ethics violation (out of 84 charged) in the 1990s.  The process was highly politicized by Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi.  Newt ultimately was vindicated by the IRS on the issue, but you wouldn’t know it from Romney’s speech yesterday in Florida:

“Speaker Gingrich has also been a leader,” the former  Massachusetts governor said. “He was a leader for four years as speaker of the  House. And at the end of four years, it was proven that he was a failed leader  and he had to resign in disgrace. I don’t know whether you knew that, he  actually resigned after four years, in disgrace.

Romney continued:

“He was investigated over an ethics panel and had to make a  payment associated with that and then his fellow Republicans, 88 percent of his  Republicans voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich. He has not had a record of  successful leadership.”

In 1999, Brent Bozell wrote a great column about how the media covered up Newt’s vindication, Newt Is Vindicated, But Nobody Knows It:

The judgment is in. After three and a half years of investigation, the IRS has cleared Newt Gingrich and his allied nonprofit groups of any violation of the tax laws in the controversy over his television history course “Renewing American Civilization.”

So after having run countless news reports highlighting the accusations that ultimately forced Gingrich to pay a $300,000 fine, did the media correct the record with a decent airing of the decision? Are you ready? ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted exactly zero seconds to Newt Gingrich’s vindication. Only CNN’s Brooks Jackson filed a decent TV report, on the early-evening show “Inside Politics.” …

Gingrich issued a statement that clearly expressed his feelings: “I consider this a full and complete vindication. I urge my colleagues to go back and read their statements and watch how they said them, with no facts, based on nothing more than a desire to politically destroy a colleague.”

But the damage hadn’t been done simply by devious politicians like Bonior, but by journalists. In the face of Newt’s innocence, some reporters couldn’t muster even a regret.

Bozell followed up that column last month, noting that the media continues to hide Newt’s vindication.

It has been 4,689 days since the IRS formally cleared Newt Gingrich of any  violation of tax law.  It’s been 4,689 days since ABC, CBS, and NBC have  had the opportunity to report it. What the heck.  Why not today?  Now  is the time for these networks to report the truth for once.  The networks  owe it to the American people to report the fact that in 1999 the IRS completely  vindicated Gingrich.

Between December 15, 1996 and January 31, 1997 the network morning and  evening newscasts filed a staggering 244 stories. Total number of network  stories on the news that Newt was completely innocent? Zero. That’s beyond  pathetic. Oh and what about CNN?  We found that the cable  network filed one — count ‘em, one — story. They’re probably exhausted by all  that effort, so we’ll let them off the hook.

Now you can add to the list the Romney campaign, which uses the worst of Nancy Pelosi’s machinations to its advantage, and like the mainstream media, hides the truth.

What does it say about Romney that he would smear Newt with charges that were obviously politically motivated – pressed by radical leftist Democrat Nancy Pelosi? Well, it says that Romney is desperate and lacks honesty and integrity.

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Why Mitt Romney lost to Newt Gingrich in South Carolina

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A couple of days ago, Mitt Romney was leading by 14 points in South Carolina – and he lost it by 12 points. What happened?

First, here’s a snippet from Gingrich’s victory speech:

“One of the key issues and I’m prepared to take this straight at the president and frankly straight at the elite media. One of the key issues is the growing anti-religious bigotry of our elites, and if you go to newt.org, my campaign site there’s a 54-page paper there on the balance of power, putting the judiciary back in its proper role in eliminating dictatorial bigots such as justice Berry in San Antonio who issued a ruling not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word “benediction” the word “invocation,” the word “God,” asked the audience to stand or a moment of silence he would put the superintendent in jail. Now we don’t have speech dictatorship in America by anti-religious bigots, period.

The second big theme, frankly, is one that every South Carolinian understands. It’s jobs, economic growth, balancing the budget, having stable money, and let’s be very clear, and again this makes some of the elite media nervous. President Obama has been historically the most effective food stamp president in American history. I worked with ronald reagan to create jobs and 16 million jobs were created by the American people in the 1980s. i worked with Bill Clinton, a democrat to create jobs and 11 million jobs were created by the American people during the four years that I was speaker.

I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history and I want to go into every neighborhood of every ethnic background in every part of the country and say to people very simply, if you want your children to have a life of dependency and food stamps, you have a candidate as Barack Obama. If you want your children to have a life of independency and paychecks, you have a candidate that’s Newt Gingrich, and I’ll bet you we have votes everywhere.”

That’s red meat for conservatives. We like policy papers and statistics. We like substance and bold contrasts.

Byron York explains how Newt won in the Washington Examiner. (H/T Smitty @ The Other McCain)

Excerpt:

Romney stages perfect events.  For example, on the eve of the primary, Romney’s rally in North Charleston was perfect from a production point of view: stage just right, big flags, big Romney signs, smooth introductions from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, all topped off by a showy entrance by Romney, who arrived in his big campaign bus that drove right into the room.

It was perfect in every sense but engaging with the voters.  Romney’s stump speech was a clipped — some would say dumbed down — list of generalities, concluding with this: “I love this land, I love its Constitution, I revere its founders, I will restore those principles, I will get America back to work, and I’ll make sure that we remain the shining city on the hill.”  Romney offered his supporters very little to chew on.  In this primary race, voters are hungry for substance, and Romney didn’t give them much.

Gingrich’s last event before the voting, a couple of hours later, was a rally on the hangar deck of the USS Yorktown, a World War II aircraft carrier that is now a floating museum across the bay from Charleston.  It was a most un-perfect affair.  To begin with, it just so happened that dozens of Cub Scouts were having an overnight on the Yorktown at the same time as Gingrich and the press showed up for the rally.  Their presence contributed to an air of happy chaos on board, and Gingrich was delighted to invite a few scouts on stage with him at the beginning of his speech.  When Gingrich got to the substance of his remarks, he was wandering, expansive, and detailed, where Romney had been brief and canned.  But Gingrich kept the crowd with him the whole way, and in the end had engaged his audience more than Romney could have hoped for.  Gingrich respected them enough to discuss issues with them seriously.

[…]Gingrich’s success here in South Carolina shows more than just a skepticism toward establishment Republicanism.  It also shows a hunger for real substance in the campaign, for a candidate who will talk to voters and give them more than phrases like “I believe in America.”  Mitt Romney’s team of seasoned campaign professionals may not think Newt Gingrich has any business playing a deciding role in the race.  But they better believe it, and they better take seriously what the Gingrich challenge represents — before it’s too late.

If you listen to Romney closely in debates, he never speaks like Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. With those two, you get specifics. Rick Santorum talks about his efforts to push for balanced budgets or his bill to ban partial birth abortions.  Newt Gingrich talks about the millions of jobs created when he was Speaker of the House and his 98.5% pro-life voting record.

What does Mitt Romney talk about? He never talks about his record – because it’s liberal. He passed socialized medicine with taxpayer subsidies for abortions. He raised taxes by $740 million dollars. He handed out licenses for gay marriages. When he speaks, he talks about how much he loves the United States, and how he would like to achieve results – results he never achieved when he was governor of Massachusetts. Mitt Romney has a Democrat record.

Note: Gingrich was losing to Romney 43-18 in Florida according to the January 17th CNN poll, but the latest ARG poll has Gingrich up 34.4 to 25.6, and the latest Rasmussen Reports poll has it at 41-32 for Newt. That’s how quickly things change because of a couple of good debates, with some real substance.

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