How Clinton Will Win the Nomination by Losing S.C.
Posted: 23 Jan 2008 12:41 AM CST
SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — With recession fears growing, Mitt Romney's latest television ad is part resume, part resolve. And all reassurance.
"I know how America works because I spent my life in the real economy," says the man who made millions as a venture capitalist. "My plan will make America strong."
No mention of John McCain, Rudy Giuliani or Mike Huckabee, Republican presidential rivals whose campaign credentials lean heavily on government service. The point is unmistakable, all the same.
The ad is the most visible element of Romney's strategy for the final week of the Florida primary. After a series of early campaign setbacks and one notable triumph, the former Massachusetts governor and aides have concluded that even in a state with relatively low unemployment, economic anxiety is his best hope for a victory that could finally set him on a path to the nomination.
"I won't need a briefing on how the economy works. I've been there. I know how the economy works," he told an audience on Wednesday to applause.
Not surprisingly, his Republican rivals are loath to let his claim go unchallenged.
"Of all the people running for president of the United States, I've had the most experience in turning around a government and turning around an economy," Giuliani said earlier this week. "I actually accomplished that in New York City," the former mayor added.
McCain's aides recently circulated a one-page compilation of reports, many from the media, that said Massachusetts state spending rose sharply and economic growth lagged during Romney's four years as governor. One recalled his refusal to take a position on President Bush's tax cuts in 2003.
In fact, Romney the politician can seem awkward trying to acknowledge the economic anxiety that is manifest in opinion polls.
"I do believe that among our citizens there's a growing concern about our economy as they see the dollar slide, the stock market slide," he said recently before listing more common concerns such as mortgage foreclosures and job losses.
And on Tuesday, as the markets braced for a sell-off that would send stock prices plummeting, he mixed in some professional investment advice. "If I were at home I'd be calling my broker and looking for opportunities to buy," he said.
Whatever his earlier position on tax cuts, Romney now preaches their virtue.
On Saturday, he issued an economic stimulus plan totaling $233 billion, half again as big as anything President Bush and congressional leaders had been discussing.
Its centerpiece is tax breaks for businesses investing in new equipment, an essential element, he says, for the creation of jobs.
It also included an individual income tax rebate of $400 to get money into the economy quickly, as well as a permanent reduction in the current 10 percent income tax bracket to 7.5 percent, designed for longer-term economic growth.
Under his plan, millions of lower-paid workers who pay payroll taxes but no income tax would not receive rebates. "I don't give it to people who don't pay taxes," he told one audience, which applauded in return. Aides also cited studies they said cast doubt on whether lower-income workers had used earlier rebates to stimulate the economy by purchasing consumer goods.
Romney's decision to emphasize his business background comes at a pivotal point in the battle for the nomination. Many conservatives have never warmed to him, wary of his previous support for abortion rights and gay rights. Huckabee's rise in Iowa and McCain's New Hampshire comeback made Romney odd-man out in the first two events of the year.
He rebounded smartly with a victory in the Michigan primary, where he campaigned on a promise to try and bring back the thousands of auto industry jobs that have been lost in recent years.
A Michigan native, he also stressed his personal ties to a struggling state with the highest unemployment in the country.
Without the same economic-based appeal, but without the personal connection, he stumbled the following week in high-unemployment South Carolina, where McCain won and Huckabee came in second.
Now Florida looms as the final single-state test before the campaign goes national with more than 20 primaries and caucuses on Feb. 5. With former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson out of the race, Huckabee out of money and Giuliani in desperate need of a victory, the winnowing process is under way.
Ironically, Florida presents Romney with a personal business decision to make.
He has poured $35 million or more of his own funds into the race. While he has outspent his rivals on television in Florida, he is not advertising in Miami, the state's most expensive media market. According to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, aides have urged him to so, and in recent days asked him to commit another $400,000 or so from his personal funds to finance the effort.
None of the behind the scenes maneuvering plays out in public, though.
Instead, Romney's aides produced a new campaign backdrop within hours after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and the stock market plunged on fears of recession.
"Economic Turnaround," it read.
By Matthew Mosk
Barack Obama's presidential campaign team is crying foul today over a new radio ad that rival Hillary Clinton has begun to air in South Carolina.
According to a transcript and audio of the ad being circulated by the Obama camp, the radio spot presents a clip of Obama saying, "The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years."
A voiceover then says, "Really? Aren't those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we're in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street. Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis. Are those the ideas Barack Obama's talking about?"
The line of attack is one that Clinton used during the contentious Democratic debate in South Carolina, and one she and her husband have both repeated on the stump -- though the radio ad drops the Clintons' earlier assertion that Obama said that the Republicans had "all the good ideas" during the 90s.
The Washington Post Fact Checker columnist, Michael Dobbs, examined the Clintons' earlier critique of the Obama remark, and concluded that the Clinton attacks distorted Obama's comment. Dobbs noted that Obama never said the Republican ideas were good ones, and during the interview in which he made the comment, he went on to criticize the Republican obsession with tax cuts.
Here, courtesy of FactCheck.Org, is the full text of what Obama told the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal:
Obama (Jan. 14, 2008): The Republican approach has played itself out. I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you've heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they're being debated among the presidential candidates, it's all tax cuts. Well, we know, we've done that; we've tried it. That's not really going to solve our energy problems, for example.There is something ironic about having Congress -- which is holding hearings on steroid use in baseball -- trying to solve our current economic challenges with the economic equivalent of fiscal steroids.
The maneuvering and posturing in Washington has assumed all of its normal pre-failure patterns.
The fact is, there could be no greater contrast between the approach I outlined in my new book, Real Change, and the traditional insider politics of Washington.
Central Banks Must Cut Rates Today
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 06:36 AM CST
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:41 AM CST
The Coming Test for McCain's Soul
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:35 AM CST
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:30 AM CST
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:20 AM CST
Blue Dogs Sniff at Fiscal Stimulus
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:20 AM CST
Feel-Good Remedy Can't Cure Economy
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:20 AM CST
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:15 AM CST
The Celebrity Industrial Complex
Posted: 22 Jan 2008 12:10 AM CST
As I have posted many times recently, I no longer am a registered Republican. Utah Republicans will blindly vote for Mitt Romney on Feb 5th, so what are we unaffiliated voters to do. Well I plan on voting for Obama, and I encourage as many other unaffiliated voters to do the same. I would love to see the National media explain how those white bread Mormon bigots could actually support an African American for President of the United States.
Now about McCain, If Rudy fails to win Florida his campaign is over, and it's the McCain express to the nomination. If McCain wins the nomination, he wins the election. America is not ready to elect Hillary or Obama. Mitt as vice president would be his way to the White House in 4-8 years, otherwise it's back to corporate America.
But what would happen in Utah if McCain were elected President? Governor Huntsman would be either Secretary of State or ambassador to China, and our Attorney General would be the next US Attorney General. This would allow Gary Herbert to become the Governor (he really is running the State already), and move another Utah County party leader into his seat, likely Bramble. The GOP party would likely replace Mark Shurtliff with Salt Lake County District Attorney Lora Miller.
John Valentine and Mike Leavitt will seek the US Senate nomination in 2010 when Bob Bennett elects not to run, after a internal state delegate poll tells him he would likely be defeated in convention. Hatch will also retire in 2012 for the same reason.
