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- Thread starter Arkady
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Lapcat
Governor
Oh goody.....[rubbing hands together].
This is gonna be fun!
Welcome, welcome, welcome!!!!!
What took ya so long?
This is gonna be fun!
Welcome, welcome, welcome!!!!!
What took ya so long?
MaryAnne
Governor
Yes,you came through loud and clear! Welcome.
MaryAnne
Governor
I missed that one, Play on Arkady!
Zam-Zam
Senator
KnotaFrayed
Mayor
Yessssssss!!!!!
Welcome Arkady!!
Welcome Arkady!!
MaryAnne
Governor
Days
Commentator
I feel like I jumped his bones on his intro post, but, hey, so did Lap... so at least I'm not the sole idiot. I tried to find that post a couple of months back and couldn't, it was a real gem... might have been an entire thread... my mind rolls things together. Arkady knows money too, which this forum needs more of.
MaryAnne
Governor
Arkady knows all kinds of things.That is why he was missed. Now,if we could just find Boss Geer and Midwest, both Cons but sensible ones.
Arkady
President
Here you go:
If Romney wins the nomination, he’ll pivot away from posing as an arch-conservative — he has no principals whatsoever, other than his devotion to his own personal ambition, so he’ll just as happily go back to posing as a moderate, once that’s again the more convenient stance. To beat Obama, he’ll soft-sell the conservative culture warrior angle, and instead convince America that he’s the man who knows how to get the economy moving again. He’ll try to portray himself as highly competent (hoping that people forget how his 2008 campaign was so incompetent that one of the biggest campaign warchests in world history only got him an embarrassing third-place finish). Most Americans aren’t terribly familiar with Romney’s time in Massachusetts, and the media doesn’t like doing any homework, so maybe Romney will get away with campaigning as a guy who can get stuff done. But we in Massachusetts know better.
This stuff will be familiar to anyone who hung out on Kausfiles Special, since I’ve posted versions of this theme many times. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with Romney’s track record, it’ll be a revelation. The fact is, he was a singularly lousy governor, under whose leadership the state badly underperformed, before his approval rating dropped so far that he was effectively shown the door.
In Massachusetts, the Romney adminsitration is remembered as a time when we had a political vacuum in the governor’s seat. As soon as Romney was elected, he started trying to position himself to run for president. Rather than fighting to get things done in the Commonwealth (or, say, managing the disastrous Big Dig), he was off doing fund-raising events and press-the-flesh appearances down south, attempting to build bridges with the evangelical reactionaries who hold the keys to the national GOP. When he should have been pushing for job-creation programs at home, he was instead making speeches in the Bible Belt where his own state was the reliable punchline to his carpet-bagging gags. The results back home weren’t pretty.
I remember a funny SNL sketch from back in the 1992 campaign. It had Clinton trying to sell himself with lines like “When I took over as governor of Arkansas, we ranked last in the nation in adult literacy. Well, I’m happy to report that we’ve moved ahead of Mississippi and Louisiana.” It was a good gag line, but an unfair criticism. Clinton took over a remarkably backwards state and helped them improve relative to their peers, even if they did remain near the wrong end of the list. The fair criticism of Romney is the opposite. He took over a state that was far ahead of the national curve in most social and economic indicators, but under his leadership the state slipped. If Romney were to give a speech similar to that SNL speech, it might go a bit like this: “When I took over as governor of Massachusetts, we ranked first in the nation in median household income. Well, I'm sorry to report that we’ve slipped behind Maryland, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey.”
Sure, we stayed near the right end of the list, since there’s only so much damage a single person can do in four years (especially in a state with a relatively weak governorship), but we fell compared to our peers. You can select any number of economic and social statistics to make this point, but median household income’s a good place to start. Using two-year moving averages, median household income nationally grew during the Romney era, while in Massachusetts that same figure fell in that period. The nation was getting ever-so-slightly richer, while Massachusetts got slightly poorer. As a result, Massachusetts slid down the national rankings list. Fortunately, Massachusetts was strong enough before he took office that it still was near the top when he left – but it was a marked change for the worse.
Unemployment tells a similar tale. Massachusetts had a significantly lower unemployment rate than the nation as a whole before Romney became governor. By the time he left office, its unemployment rate was significantly higher than the nation as a whole. Since he left office, and a liberal Democrat took over the governorship, the Massachusetts unemployment rate has again fallen significantly below the national average.
You could look at housing, too. Before Romney, home values in this state were doing much better than they were nationally. On his watch, they didn’t trend as well as the nation as a whole. Gross state product indicates similar relative underperformance. And so on. Do the comparisons and you’ll find that in multiple measure of state well-being, before Romney the state was doing well, during his time it did poorly, then after he left it did well again, relative to the nation as a whole.
There’s a reason the people of Massachusetts dislike Romney. He was a bad governor. He didn’t even dare to run for re-election, because he knew he’d suffer the kind of wide-margin crushing defeat that would ruin his presidential bid. So, he slinked out of town, leaving his Lt. Gov. to stand as his de facto proxy in the next election. The people of Massachusetts, deprived of the chance to show Romney what they’d already told pollsters when his approval ratings slipped to 34%, took their disgust out on his proxy, and she got demolished by a margin of over 2-1 (despite a much larger campaign warchest than her opponent).
If Romney wins the nomination, we’ll hear plenty about how smart and practical and hard-working he was as governor, and that message will be delivered with the polish that only a blow-dried CEO with a multi-million-dollar warchest can provide. But don’t fall for it. Romney was such a horrible governor that he didn’t even dare try for a second term. He failed miserably in his last political job and now he wants a big promotion. Tell him no.
If Romney wins the nomination, he’ll pivot away from posing as an arch-conservative — he has no principals whatsoever, other than his devotion to his own personal ambition, so he’ll just as happily go back to posing as a moderate, once that’s again the more convenient stance. To beat Obama, he’ll soft-sell the conservative culture warrior angle, and instead convince America that he’s the man who knows how to get the economy moving again. He’ll try to portray himself as highly competent (hoping that people forget how his 2008 campaign was so incompetent that one of the biggest campaign warchests in world history only got him an embarrassing third-place finish). Most Americans aren’t terribly familiar with Romney’s time in Massachusetts, and the media doesn’t like doing any homework, so maybe Romney will get away with campaigning as a guy who can get stuff done. But we in Massachusetts know better.
This stuff will be familiar to anyone who hung out on Kausfiles Special, since I’ve posted versions of this theme many times. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with Romney’s track record, it’ll be a revelation. The fact is, he was a singularly lousy governor, under whose leadership the state badly underperformed, before his approval rating dropped so far that he was effectively shown the door.
In Massachusetts, the Romney adminsitration is remembered as a time when we had a political vacuum in the governor’s seat. As soon as Romney was elected, he started trying to position himself to run for president. Rather than fighting to get things done in the Commonwealth (or, say, managing the disastrous Big Dig), he was off doing fund-raising events and press-the-flesh appearances down south, attempting to build bridges with the evangelical reactionaries who hold the keys to the national GOP. When he should have been pushing for job-creation programs at home, he was instead making speeches in the Bible Belt where his own state was the reliable punchline to his carpet-bagging gags. The results back home weren’t pretty.
I remember a funny SNL sketch from back in the 1992 campaign. It had Clinton trying to sell himself with lines like “When I took over as governor of Arkansas, we ranked last in the nation in adult literacy. Well, I’m happy to report that we’ve moved ahead of Mississippi and Louisiana.” It was a good gag line, but an unfair criticism. Clinton took over a remarkably backwards state and helped them improve relative to their peers, even if they did remain near the wrong end of the list. The fair criticism of Romney is the opposite. He took over a state that was far ahead of the national curve in most social and economic indicators, but under his leadership the state slipped. If Romney were to give a speech similar to that SNL speech, it might go a bit like this: “When I took over as governor of Massachusetts, we ranked first in the nation in median household income. Well, I'm sorry to report that we’ve slipped behind Maryland, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey.”
Sure, we stayed near the right end of the list, since there’s only so much damage a single person can do in four years (especially in a state with a relatively weak governorship), but we fell compared to our peers. You can select any number of economic and social statistics to make this point, but median household income’s a good place to start. Using two-year moving averages, median household income nationally grew during the Romney era, while in Massachusetts that same figure fell in that period. The nation was getting ever-so-slightly richer, while Massachusetts got slightly poorer. As a result, Massachusetts slid down the national rankings list. Fortunately, Massachusetts was strong enough before he took office that it still was near the top when he left – but it was a marked change for the worse.
Unemployment tells a similar tale. Massachusetts had a significantly lower unemployment rate than the nation as a whole before Romney became governor. By the time he left office, its unemployment rate was significantly higher than the nation as a whole. Since he left office, and a liberal Democrat took over the governorship, the Massachusetts unemployment rate has again fallen significantly below the national average.
You could look at housing, too. Before Romney, home values in this state were doing much better than they were nationally. On his watch, they didn’t trend as well as the nation as a whole. Gross state product indicates similar relative underperformance. And so on. Do the comparisons and you’ll find that in multiple measure of state well-being, before Romney the state was doing well, during his time it did poorly, then after he left it did well again, relative to the nation as a whole.
There’s a reason the people of Massachusetts dislike Romney. He was a bad governor. He didn’t even dare to run for re-election, because he knew he’d suffer the kind of wide-margin crushing defeat that would ruin his presidential bid. So, he slinked out of town, leaving his Lt. Gov. to stand as his de facto proxy in the next election. The people of Massachusetts, deprived of the chance to show Romney what they’d already told pollsters when his approval ratings slipped to 34%, took their disgust out on his proxy, and she got demolished by a margin of over 2-1 (despite a much larger campaign warchest than her opponent).
If Romney wins the nomination, we’ll hear plenty about how smart and practical and hard-working he was as governor, and that message will be delivered with the polish that only a blow-dried CEO with a multi-million-dollar warchest can provide. But don’t fall for it. Romney was such a horrible governor that he didn’t even dare try for a second term. He failed miserably in his last political job and now he wants a big promotion. Tell him no.
MaryAnne
Governor
Nothing stuck, Arkady is just impatient and did not stay around long enough to figure out how the board worked. Remember how hard it was for us? But he is here now so watch out
)
