Many of The Economist’s readers, especially those who run businesses in America, may well conclude that nothing could be worse than another four years of Mr Obama. We beg to differ. For all his businesslike intentions, Mr Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says. That is not a convincing pitch for a chief executive.
“Romney Versus the Automakers”:
Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth.
This satirical letter is provocative, but gets the point across:
Every time you say “I oppose a woman’s right to abortion, even in cases of rape,” what you’re also saying is “I believe that a man who rapes a woman has more of a right to control a woman’s body and life than that woman does.”
New York Times has a collection of Newspaper Endorsements From Across the Nation. I should have read this page instead. While most of the endorsements are similar, New Yorker‘s “The Choice” is still a standout piece.
Anyway, Less than one week to go. I hope you know who to vote for next Tuesday.
Warren would do more for Massachusetts:
[Warren’s] crowning achievement, the bureau guards the interests of average citizens contending with credit-card companies, student-loan holders, auto lenders, credit bureaus, and more. Anyone who’s felt powerless to escape a fee that seems unfairly imposed, or to cover an interest rate they didn’t bargain for, owes Warren a debt of gratitude.
My friends in MA, you have to vote for Ms. Warren.
Massachusetts didn’t know Romney after all:
Somewhere in the Republican presidential nominee is the sensible, data-driven moderate that the Bay State knew as governor. But it may also be that Massachusetts didn’t know Mitt Romney very well, after all. Stuck in a party far to his right, Romney made a fateful bargain to adopt sharply conservative positions, and then start clawing back. Now, voters have no way of knowing what kind of president he’d be.
Romney creates profits, not jobs:
The nominee has pegged [Romney’s] hopes to a pledge to create jobs, citing his record in private business. But there is a stark difference between creating wealth for oneself and others, and creating jobs. Companies often increase their profitability by squeezing out workers, or outsourcing jobs overseas.
In challenging the President’s first-term record, Mr. Romney has displayed a chronic eagerness to say anything he thinks will win him the support of the audience he is addressing at the moment. That raises the question of what he truly believes: He has changed positions so often on so many basic issues — health care, women’s rights, government regulation — that it seems his only fixed principle is his own advancement.
It is difficult to see Romney as a credible candidate. One of his own campaign advisers said that regardless of what Romney said January through July, there would be an Etch-a-Sketch moment after he won the Republican nomination. And that’s what happened.
Romney’s magical economic plan:
You would think that Romney, with his business smarts, would offer a coherent vision for the nation’s budget challenges. Instead, he’s conjured a magical economic plan with deep tax cuts and increased military spending. Romney would eliminate tax deductions to offset lost revenue, but he refuses to provide details. It’s simply not credible.