Mitt Romney couldn’t substantially distinguish his economic policies from former President George W. Bush’s during an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams on Wednesday, saying only that he would “take action to get America on track to have a balanced budget.” Bush increased the national debt by trillions of dollars.
There is a difference between Romney and Bush, alright. Romney has signed on to the Ryan plan, slashing taxes for the ultra-rich while gutting the social safety net including ending Medicare. That’s far more radical and extreme and devastating to the country than anything Bush did. The Ryan plan makes the Bush tax cuts look like no big deal.
chopper
this sort of thing is likely to be obama’s big push in the fall. what would you rather have, a second term for obama or a third term for george W bush?
KG
I don’t get how you grow up in a political family, run for multiple offices and yet be this incredibly bad at politics. You would think, somewhere along the line, someone would pull him aside and say “seriously, dude, go back to finance.”
Hill Dweller
If the media in this country doesn’t start doing its job, Romney, despite being the worst Presidential candidate I’ve ever seen, can win.
The wingnut brigade on TV/blogs/radio and at the RNC/Willard campaign/Rove headquarters aren’t even faking honesty at this point. They’re spitting out absurdly distorted video after absurdly distorted video, counting on the media continuing their he said/he said nonsense. It must be working with the mouth breathers because they keep doing it.
Hungry Joe
Seems like every election I say, “This is it, make or break, we lose this one and it’s all over.” Except I really mean it this time. Except I really meant it last time (when it went well), and the time before that and the time before that (when it didn’t and it didn’t).
But this is it, make or break, we lose this one and it’s all over. And I really mean it this time.
Hunter Gathers
He also shares Dubya’s uncanny foot-in-mouth disease. Where Bush was always making himself sound like some kind of clueless frat boy, Romney is always coming off as some kind of clueless Bill Lumbergh.
‘Corporations are people too, my friend’ is the new ‘Is our children learning?’
Kane
On domestic policy that is.
PeakVT
He’s told you people all the policy details you need to know.
Punchy
What ever happed to the Veep announcy that was poised to amalgamate his myriad supporters?
gene108
Bush, Jr. was relatively bi-partisan in his domestic policy.
He did things Democrats wanted done, but did them in a “free market” way, such as expand the Dept. of Education and introduce standardized testing and “accountability” and add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
He had a pretty solid immigration reform plan that his own party undercut him on.
Outside of privatizing Social Security, there’s not a lot Bush, Jr. wanted to do to upset the “apple cart” of domestic policies.
The same cannot be said of Romney and the current crop of Republicans.
jl
I hope he keeps it up. Even better than “we’ll get back to you on that”, or “we have no specific policy response”.
Maybe somebody could make up some “Romney: Bush II TWO!” bumper stickers.
PeakVT
@Punchy: He can’t get anyone to commit? The way things have been going, he might have to force the Veep nominee to accept by surprising them at the convention.
NancyDarling
Maybe this is a “woman thing” but I found this statement from Romney in the Brian Williams interview offensive to wives everywhere.
The emphasis is mine. Either he’s lying about watching the dressage event or he is a candidate for the biggest asshole-husband of the week.
peach flavored shampoo
Republicans of 2001 would be easily mistaken for conservative/moderate Democrats by today’s GOP standards.
Hal
Mittens is running so that he can reduce his tax rate and the tax rate of his super rich friends. After that, he’s done. Hell, Chris Christie is already planning on taking over in 2016 regardless of who is in the WH.
Face
Amended to fit the normal, non-rich family theme.
Gotta say, as a married male, that’s an enormously dickish thing to brag about.
lamh35
WTHF!!! Have uall aeen the new Romney ad targeted at AA. It includes his speech to NAACP completely editing out the boos and including Thd audience nodding along and even cheers and raucous applause!!! It’s insulting! The NAACP should be pissed
Wow, just wow!
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/07/26/590521/heavily-edited-romney-video-targets-black-voters-shows-naacp-audience-applauding/?mobile=wp
Just Some Fuckhead
Bush doubled the national debt from 5 Trillion to 10 Trillion.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I will say it again; I think Bush had one of the worst presidency’s in the nation history but a President Romney would make Bush’s administration seem like a golden age.
Greed Is God
@Kane:
Foreign policy too:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/sheldon-adelson-may-stop-by-romney-jerusalem-fundraiser/
catclub
@NancyDarling: Why not both?
cathyx
@Hal: I’ve always thought this too. He wants to be president so that he can get richer. If he can do it in one term, that’s all he’ll serve.
Roy G.
Is there any awareness that the Bush Tax Cuts were specifically designed to launch a budget crisis that the Repugs hoped would be enough to bring down Social Security and other social programs? After all, it was the only time in history where a nation at war gave its citizens a tax decrease, even while going deeply into future hock – not to mention it was the only time the Rs ever lauded a stimulus bill for anyone outside of their lobbyist circles.
cathyx
@Hal: I’ve always thought this too. He wants to be president so that he can get richer. If he can do it in one term, that’s all he’ll serve.
flukebucket
I cannot wait to see who this dick head chooses for a running mate. And which dick head accepts.
Romney is absolutely horrible as a political candidate.
I am sure that he has to be smart and good at something else he would not be worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
But is signing his name to job destroying paperwork really all he has ever done in his life?
liberal
@gene108:
Nope. Cf “the Bush tax cuts”.
SatanicPanic
@Face: Do we have to explain everything to Mitt? You make those jokes on P0ker Night with your buddies, not on national TV.
Then again, he probably has no buddies.
scav
Can one imagine the RommBott’s Missionary visits if what we’ve seen is an example of those highly touted Mormon Proselytizing skills honed in French Castles while His Heart was getting shot at in the Jungle? He’d poed those other scions of Angle-Saxonity the Australians before he upped sticks.
Litlebritdifrnt
Ooops someone went poking around in Mitt’s book to see what he previously had to say about England and the Guardian is reporting it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/26/mitt-romney-london-olympics-gaffe-live#start-of-comments
Zifnab
@gene108:
Um… what? There was the tax cut thing, just for starters. There was using the Civil Rights division of the DoJ to obstruct civil rights cases and using the EPA to undermine state-based environmental reforms. There was the USA scandal. There was the MMA scandal. There was the PATRIOT Act.
Were you just totally asleep during those 8 years?
4tehlulz
@lamh35: I admire his work.
/Winston Smith
rikyrah
of course he can’t tell you the difference.
Willard is a soulless sociopath
jibeaux
@lamh35: Fortunately, no one with awareness above that of a cactus will buy into that.
dmsilev
@lamh35: At least he’s consistent. His campaign is constantly airing videos taking Barack Obama out of context, and now they’re doing the same thing for their own candidate.
beltane
Now that Twitter is back up and running I see that Boris Johnson is mocking Mitt Romney before a crowd of 60,000 in Hyde Park.
pseudonymous in nc
Boris Johnson — Boris fucking Johnson, Mr Toad in human form! — just mocked Romney in front of a crowd of 60,000 people at Hyde Park.
“Worse than Sarah Palin” is the line offered on background from Whitehall.
Libby Spencer
@NancyDarling: I tweeted pretty much this same thing this morning. Not very supportive husband -like. I mean, ok, so he’s not into watching every single regional meet, but this is the Olympics for Pete’s sake.
Litlebritdifrnt
@beltane:
The #romneyshambles hashtag is trending, this has been the best day so far, I am laughing so hard at this.
Ruckus
@jl:
That’s
Romney = Bush Vote Obama
redshirt
@Litlebritdifrnt: I had to add something just for that tag.
Mitt’s gonna have to buy a couple hundred thousand twitter followers to clean up this mess.
beltane
@Litlebritdifrnt: Here’s another one:
“Romney in London. Come on. We needed this. It’s a little comic relief. Kind of like Mr. Bean, only he’s an American.”
I’ve never seen anything like this before. No one but the American mainstream media takes this idiot seriously.
jl
@Ruckus: I think “Romney: Bush II, number TWO!” sounds better than my first try.
jrg
I want a full-throated endorsement of the Ryan plan. The only reason the “tax cuts increase revenue” nonsense ever got a toehold is that it was de-coupled from it’s predictable outcome.
Give the gibbering, drooling “real Americans” what they say they want, and give it to them hard.
Ruckus
@NancyDarling:
…he is a candidate for the biggest asshole-husband of the week.
He’s one of the biggest political assholes, why not go for the hat trick?
Villago Delenda Est
@Punchy:
Postponed, I suppose, due to the need to take back everything he’s said to date in the UK.
Litlebritdifrnt
I’m dying over here, this is the best fun.
JPL
Sorry if this has been posted
link
PeakVT
@jl: Romney: Bush II, the Sequel.
Villago Delenda Est
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Cripes. That teensy weensy little island once controlled an empire that covered almost a quarter of the land surface of the Earth, and a fifth of its population at one point.
Not too bad for a country that Napoleon once called “a nation of shopkeepers.”
Citizen_X
@Litlebritdifrnt:
There he goes, pissing off the Celts ‘n Picts again.
beltane
Mitt Romney is a lifelong bully who has never once had the table turned on him. It looks like the British people have collectively decided to surround the bully and give him a taste of his own medicine. We owe a big round of applause to our English friends whether they be Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes or Pakistanis.
Valdivia
@JPL:
what a fucking asshole.
/yet today has been too fun to be too too mad at him. Keep putting your foot in your mouth RomBot you’re only good at reciting Teabagger talkingpoints.
Ruckus
@flukebucket:
I am sure that he has to be smart and good at something else he would not be worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
I’ll bet this is intended as snark because he really is stupid. He has an ego the size of, someone suggested Montana the other day but that’s not big enough, he continually puts both feet and his dick in his mouth, all at the same time, and he learns nothing from not only history but his immediate surroundings.
That people I know think he is a good guy just floors me. It says something bad about my taste in humans.
beltane
To make things even more sweet, here is a nice butthurt filled tweet from Josh Trevino:
Citizen_X
Wow. And what do we make, Mitt? Not much–not after you and your buddies sent all our manufacturing jobs overseas, for the $1-a-day cheap labor.
Takes some serious balls, that.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
Josh Trevino is a serious asshole, isn’t he?
It drives the wingtards absolutely bonkers that Obama is not only popular here in the US, but overseas as well.
Trentrunner
OMG Twitter’s #RomneyShambles is priceless:
Romney: “I hereby declare George Lazenby the best James Bond ever!”
JPL
@Valdivia: Dodd Frank goes to far also, too..
Does this mean Lincoln is put in the basement?
beltane
Today we are all Anglo-Saxons.
Valdivia
@JPL:
I am sure Lincoln is a dirty name to him.
pseudonymous in nc
Ticky Tacky Trevino seems to think that “being a dick abroad” is admirable when on a tour to countries hand-picked for their friendly governments. Perhaps he shits in the washbasins whenever he’s a houseguest.
Number 10 would have been very happy with some pablum from Mittens about how experience taught him that all Olympic hosts have teething troubles that get put aside once things get going. Smile for the cameras, on with business, absolutely no need to push back. Instead, Whitehall’s leaking put-downs like a colander.
trollhattan
The BBC’s Mark Mardell:
Bam! Enjoying your international adventures, Willard?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18987247
James
It’s funny that it says Bush increased the national debt by trillions of dollars, the implication being that that was a destructive action. Obama has increased the national debt by even more than Bush, but you people continue to support everything he does and justify his increase of the debt. You use Bush as an excuse for everything Obama does, some of which is the same yet worse than what Bush did. Bush increases the debt and it’s bad; Obama increases it even more, but it’s ok because he’s just trying to undo the damage Bush did. You people must know how full of crap you are when it comes to stuff like that.
trollhattan
@James:
Heh, indoozle. Troll says “you people” multiple times. Good times.
Villago Delenda Est
@James:
You realize, of course, that one of the first things Obama did was put the deserting coward’s excellent adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan back “on budget”, and so the numbers skyrocketed as a consequence?
No, you do not realize this, because you are a git.
bemused
Barclay’s and Libor are in the hot seat over rigging, British MPs tell Barclays to distance themselves from Romney fundraising but Barclay’s declined. It’s fun to ridicule Romney but Romney, banks and rate rigging in the same sentence makes my hair stand on end.
redshirt
@James: Worse than Bush, you say? Fascinating! Do tell more.
Mike E
Fairness Trolly sez it’s unfair )0:
Calouste
So Romney is going to govern like Bill Clinton then?
Hill Dweller
@James: The ’09 fiscal year started on Oct 1st ’08. In January of ’09, three months into the fiscal year and weeks before Obama was sworn in, CBO’s deficit projection for FY09 was 1.2 trillion dollars. And we know now that the BEA numbers used by the CBO to make said projection significantly underestimated the depth of the economic collapse.
There were going to be trillion dollar deficits for years regardless of who won the ’08 election, because we had a once in a lifetime economic collapse.
You wingnut can keep pretending Obama did all this, but it was Dubya that destroyed the economy. And it is the wingnuts’ austerity, especially at the state level, that continues to undermine the recovery.
Turgidson
@Villago Delenda Est:
Also too, the Great Bush Recession caused government revenues to crash as people lost their jobs and taxable income base, and also cause automatic stabilizers like unemployment benefits to skyrocket as many of those same people suddenly needed government assistance to weather the storm. Presto, change-o, deficit gets bigger too! This all before Obama even had a chance to impose his Kenyan sockulist utopia on us.
Which is exactly fucking why we need to listen to Keynes. Balanced budgets and surpluses in booms in order to be able to afford downturns. The Bush surplus destruction crusade fucked that shit up good.
Jay in Oregon
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Some of my favorites:
#RomneyShambles – He’s not even president yet and already apologizing abroad
Finding comfort in knowing that no matter what I do wrong today, Mitt Romney will still be having a worse day #romneyshambles
Maybe Romney should’ve just spent his trip visiting his hidden money, after all. #RomneyShambles
#RomneyShambles @MittRomney does not apologize. Doubles down by calling the Queen an old hag. World listens in stunned silence. (I need a source for that one!)
So Mitt Romney is off to Israel next. What could go wrong..? Oh. #MittHitsTheFan #RomneyShambles
#RomneyShambles – Mitt Romney should just come home and claim he visited all these countries and they loved him. It would be less sad.
Mitt Romney is proving John McCain right — he is a worse candidate than Sarah Palin! #RomneyShambles
And of course, the sad people of #tcot are trying to fling shit at the wall to distract people…
catclub
@Citizen_X: Not much, and yet the US still has the most Industrial output of any nation.
Chris Grrr™
Rmoney has plans to take action to get America on track to have a balanced budget.
Swell.
Will the swing voters ever get fed up with the lack of specifics?
Valdivia
@Litlebritdifrnt:
for the Israel trip it should be #romneyshandas (shanda is yiddish for something bad)
Soonergrunt
#RomneyShambles is the funniest hashtag on twitter I’ve seen in a long time.
Captain Subtext
@flukebucket: He’s really good at committing fraud, otherwise known as telling lies or being a con-man.
danimal
@James: Oh, hell, what bad can come from feeding the troll….
Uh, James, circumstances change. Preznit Bush came into office with a structural surplus that would have paid off the entire national debt in 10-15 years. He took that surplus, promised growth, cut taxes, started two wars (one of which was entirely voluntary, expanded the welfare state without paying for the increased expenditures and watched as his laissez-faire approach to government led to the collapse of the economy.
Obama came into office in the midst of a once-in-a-generation economic collapse, wrangled a smaller than needed stimulus that kept out of Great Depression II, began to rein in entitlement spending while increasing access to health care, faced an intransigent Congress dedicated to his defeat on all matters large and small and still managed to get the economy on its feet with some economic growth and hiring in the job markets.
We’re not full of crap; the priority of economic recovery is higher than solving the debt ‘crisis’. Nonetheless, I have full confidence that Obama will take solid steps towards fiscal stability in his second term. Thanks for playing.
Jay in Oregon
@Soonergrunt:
I was going to Tweet this to you but it occurred to me that you’d have no idea who it was from.
I’ve got this open in a window in the corner, enjoying the #Romneyshambles…
http://fi.somethingawful.com/safs/smilies/6/d/suspense.001.gif
El Cid
@James: Bush increased the debt for harmful purpose during a time in which there was little rationale for debt / deficit spending to strengthen a weakened level of consumer and business demand.
Had this not been done, then when such investment was necessary after the collapse of the casino gambling from the deregulated over-financialized economy, said borrowing could have been taken from a surplus or from zero, instead of beginning at a high level of already inflicted debt.
This is a tremendously stupid point.
It’s like arguing that it’s a contradiction to argue against taking out a $100,000 loan to buy a bunch of consumer items like TV’s and motorbikes and hang-gliding trips and the like but for borrowing $100,000 to fund a needed business expansion or pursue some type of advanced education.
It’s like arguing that it’s a contradiction to recommend people not suffering a likely terminal illness not to take chemotherapy, but then to recommend someone suffering cancer to take chemotherapy.
Oh ya? If yer damn chemotherapy’s so good, why’ain’t I takin’ it right now? Huh? Well, you didn’t have no problem saying chemo was so great when cancer boy over there did — so, what, it’s suddenly wrong when I want to take it?
Jay in Oregon
Dare we hope for a #Mittshuggener hashtag for his trip to Israel?
I can’t wait to see his reaction if anyone asks him about the Mormons doing baptisms by proxy on the Holocaust victims…
cckids
@Villago Delenda Est: Also, I believe, Medicare Part D; the prescription drug benefit. You remember, the one they lied to Congress re the cost of? Yeah, all of that. When you actually act as though numbers & dollars matter & treat the budget in a responsible way, the deficit goes up.
Only if you are a Repub can you get away with complete fantasy tales masquerading as budgets.