I am voting For Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
You can read summaries of what I believe here, here and here. In short it is something like: Strong on National Security, Pro-Entrepreneurial Capitalism, against big government central planners, for domestic lifestyle tolerance – especially in private, for free trade, against global governance and so on. The continuing US financial crisis (e.g. rising debt and USGOV spending, Bureaucratic regulations gone wild, increasing anti-entrepreneurial incentives, Inflation, increasing dole numbers, the BigBiz/BigGov cronyism nexus) is issue number one for me.
Romney was not my first choice in a hypothetical POTUS candidate (and Zeus knows I am no Paul Ryan fan), but when I consider the likely direction of a Romney administration vs. the likely direction of a second Obama administration I see a clear distinctive choice for all us of Americans.
In 2008, I did not support Obama/Biden and I believe my analysis was spot on. The Obama administration has been pretty bad and has moved the country in the wrong direction on almost every important issue. I have no reason to believe a second Obama administration would be an improvement.
The Romney/Ryan ticket is the best fit to my policy views and I will enthusiastically vote for him. I urge you to do so as well.
(source ABC News)
Filed under: Election 2012 | Tagged: "Paul Ryan", Mitt Romney, Obama administration |
PurpleSlog - The Future Will Be Kludged 
Going through your 2008 comments.
*Experience is now irrelevant–he has four more years experience in the very office he is running for than his opponent.
*His decision to leave Iraq was controversial, but so was his predecessor’s decision to invade it to begin with.
*How does escalation of drone strikes and Special Ops assassinations constitute “hugs for thugs and terrorists”.
*Foreign Policy magazine looked at the numbers–the budget sequestration everyone’s been dreading leaves the defense budget at a higher level than is normal for a post-war drawdown.
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/08/budget_crunched_the_facts_of_romney_s_proposed_2_trillion_defense_increase
*To my recollection, he’s negotiated free trade deals with at least two countries, used government loans (not grants) to help out the auto makers and ignored calls by folks on the left to use single payer to straighten out the health care mess.
*Which brings up a last point. If Obama is such a flaming Marxist, why are so many on the left disappointed in him?
>Experience is now irrelevant–he has four more years experience in the very office he is running for than his opponent.
He has been pretty bad as an executive.
>*His decision to leave Iraq was controversial, but so was his predecessor’s decision to invade it to begin with.
The Iraqi Surge (which Obama opposed) gave him breathing room to make that choice. How Iraq will turn out (e.g. Stability, w/o becoming findlandized by Iran) is unknown. The region is definitely better off without Hussein.
>*How does escalation of drone strikes and Special Ops assassinations constitute “hugs for thugs and terrorists”.
I am definitely okay with the drone strikes (and the escalation thereof). Pretty much all his other actions have been wrongheaded.
Facilitating a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt is going to cause problems for decades to come. Obama seemed okay with the overthrow of the cooperating gov of Libya. He wasn’t interested in helping the popular uprising against actual enemies (Iran, Syria). Speaking of Iran, a bad situation has been made by his administrations inaction. Wether Obama will do something if Iran gets nukes doesn’t matter. What’s matters is that Iran doesn’t really believe he will. Thus the chance of conflict has increased, not declined. Obama reduced relationships with the UK. He reduced relationship with Poland and other former east blocks states in order to make nice with Putin/Russia.
>*Foreign Policy magazine looked at the numbers–the budget sequestration everyone’s been dreading leaves the defense budget at a higher level than is normal for a post-war drawdown.
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/08/budget_crunched_the_facts_of_romney_s_proposed_2_trillion_defense_increase
You are not seriously suggesting Obama is a fiscal conservative? That is not a credible assertion.
>used government loans (not grants) to help out the auto makers
Hah! He circumvented the orderly US Bankruptcy process to enrich friends/crony’s. GM and Chrysler are still in lousy shape and the taxpayers are out billions.
>ignored calls by folks on the left to use single payer to straighten out the health care mess
Correct. He is going to use Federal regulatory authority to control the health care industry. After that fails…small steps small steps.
>*Which brings up a last point. If Obama is such a flaming Marxist, why are so many on the left disappointed in him?
Marxist come in different flavors and intensities and with different approaches. The Gradualist approach has been working. Those wanting a more revolutionary approach are going to be disappointed…
Won’t argue with the world being better off without Saddam. My problem with the Iraq invasion was (and still is) the timing and the execution. Reports were already coming out of shorthandedness in Afghanistan even before we invaded Iraq; doing so without a buildup or a selling of war bonds (raising a war tax, whatever the best finance mechanism would have been) undermined our ability to make the most of the occupations.
Egyptian Spring: we were caught between a rock and a hard place there. Support the protestors and risk a new government we didn’t agree with coming in vs Support Mubarak and guarantee the alienation of even a secular successor.
Defense spending: I didn’t calculate them. Didn’t calculate this, either:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/31/blue_planet
Note the results for the UK and Poland.
Gradualism: small steps towards what? Has he stepped past the norm for the 1st World nations at some point in the direction of Warsaw Pact-ville?
Timing, no. Execution yes.
The heavy armored Units would not have ever been used in Afghanistan anyways. The Marines could have been (should have been).
Nothing good for the US will come from the Muslim Brotherhood growing in Influence and power.
Re “Blue Planet” I don’t really care who peoples n other countries want as US president. Their interests and mine (as a US Citizen) are not necessarily aligned.
“Gradualism: small steps towards what?”
For the most part: Centralization of Power. Increasing gov micro-control over personal and economic decisions. Reductions/narrowing in freedoms. Toward a meld of State Capitalism / “Social Democracy” style socialism / Crony Capitalism and away from Free-Market Capitalism and Entrepreneurial. Toward dependency, away from self-reliance. Etc.
Iraq/Afghanistan: Heavy armored units are of limited use in urban warfare, though. Sooner or later, large numbers of people on foot are needed in any occupation. If we didn’t have enough for both countries, we shouldn’t have invaded both countries.
Blue Planet: Point was less about the world as a whole than about the UK and Poland. Why would they favor Obama if they were cruelly betrayed by him?
Re Iraq/Afghanistan….
I don’t think the plan was ever to occupy Afghanistan, fear of US causalities led to Al-Quada/Taliban escaping a decisive loss early in the war avoid. It was decided not to use Marines and/or Airborne forces as a blocking force. Marines were able to take fortified Islands in WW2 and the Airborne was used to fight/delay Armored units on D-Day, but the US purposely declined to deploy them against Al-Qada/Taliban light infantry. That is a big screw-up by the US Was this General Franks? President Bush? Both? Who knows. Oh well.
I definitely agree the occupation of Iraq did not go well right from the get go. The plan was pretty lame. Widespread looting was allowed. I think they expected more help from Arab allies (so-called). I think opposition by the Dems also reduced efforts at correction. I think Bush should have been assertive. It is a mystery why so few generals have been fired during this wartime period.
Disbanding the Iraqi Army and Bath Party was the right call though. Perhaps some of the Army units could have been re-constituted as a transitional border guard force with US Advisors and Leaders.
The problem was we tried to get re-shape the country top-down, instead of bottom up. Right from the beginning, we should have ruled at the top level, while setting up local Iraqi precincts for self governance and security co-located with US forces (security and civil affairs types). You grow the precincts and then turn over the municipalities, then the provincial legislatures, then the national legislatures, then the provincial governorships, then the national executive. It should have taken years. Separately, we could have stated creating a new professinal volunteer Iraqi Defense Force (Coast Guard, Border Guard, and a small combined Army/AirForce). think a small professional national Crime and Anti-Corruption investigate agency should also have been grown (an Iraqi FBI or “The Untouchables”) .
Starting with local self-governance, a broken windows policing policy, and collocating US forces with the localities from the get go would have been a better plan. Who knows though?
We were never going to deploy the high number of troops that certain US general demanded…not unless those troops were mostly from other countries like Turkey.