No Loss for Words

The primary in Florida is now in the books and Romney appears to be on his way; a big win for Mitt, but at what cost?  I guess Romney proved he can get down into the mud and sling it with Newt but he spent four or five times as much money as Gingrich to achieve it.  So was it the mud slinging by itself or was it the sheer volume of it? 

I suspect that with apparently unlimited funds Romney can steamroll the field doing negative campaigning.  I am not comforted by this win.  If the old adage “the one who pays the fiddler gets to call the tune” is true, then who now owns Mitt Romney?  I seriously doubt it’s regular folks like us.

At this point in the campaign I have to admit that I’m a Newt fan.  In spite of his baggage I think he is a leader where I have my doubts about Romney.  For folks of my persuasion I think Newt’s more likely to fight for the Constitution than Romney.  Strangely, I think of him as being more predictable than Romney.  Maybe not in the sense that he will go along with mainline Republicans, but that he will be his own man.  Some of us are not comfortable with mainline Republicans currently in positions of leadership in the Congress.  Their priorities are not consistent with my own.  As a matter of fact, their priorities are strangely similar to many of the mainstream Democrats.  Get re-elected and let the Goldman Sachs bureaucrats call all the shots.

One of my big problems with Romney is his lack of consistency on important issues.  Another maybe more important problem is his roots deep within the ranks of the Goldman Sachs/Wall Street insider crowd.  In my view, some of those guys were clearly criminals and many others were borderline but I doubt that Romney’s Justice Department would be any more likely to pursue them than Obama’s has.

If there is a basis for the Occupy Wall Street movement it’s the failure of the government to prosecute anyone for the Fannie/Freddie debacle or the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.  If there were no criminal acts perpetrated during that whole time by any of the companies that either failed or were bailed out I would be astounded.  And if those guys were allowed to conduct their businesses in such a way that so many of us were exposed to unimaginable risks, the government regulators should be prosecuted.  Or if the law of the land is written such that everything was legal then our Congress should be impeached and sent to prison.  Somebody besides everyday Americans has to be held responsible.

The government spends considerable funds pursuing blue collar criminals but sadly the white collar criminals responsible for collapsing the housing and mortgage industries are walking free with millions of dollars at the expense of the rest of us.  What message is the government sending with no prosecution for any of the culprits responsible for a multi-trillion dollar scandal?

If those mucky mucks at Fannie and Freddie were justifiably rewarded with hundreds of millions in bonuses then the folks who authorized those contracts should be in prison.

I don’t know that Mitt Romney is owned by the Wall Street crowd, but I fear he is beholding to them enough that justice will never be served if we are counting on President Romney to pursue them.  Mitt Romney’s record exposes a guy who is not a fighter.  Romney goes along to get along and that is not the kind of guy I want in the White House.

When the Red Phone rings in the middle of the night I think I would prefer that Newt or even Rick Santorum answered rather than Mitt Milquetoast Romney.

Chris Christie, John McCain and a slug of other Republicans assure us that Mitt’s the man for the job.  I guess only time will tell.  I hope that there is substance in their support rather than a fear of Newt Gingrich driving their efforts to get Romney elected. 

I know our country cannot take another four years of Obama so if Mitt’s “our” guy and we all work to get him elected then we will find out if he’s the good guy John and Chris say he is.  I pray for our country that they are right.