In the 'Better Late then Never' category: first Mitt Romney Flip-Flop of the 2012 election cycle!
November 19, 2008
Already, Mitt?
race42008.com
We’re not even out of 2008 yet and we already have our first Mitt Romney flip-flop of 2012. Here are the relevant quotes:
Romney, January 2008:
“I hear people say, ‘It’s gone, those jobs are gone, transportation’s gone, it’s not coming back’…I’m going to fight for every single job. I’m going to rebuild the industry. I’m going to take burdens off the back of the auto industry.”
Romney, January 2008:
“Look at Washington. What have they done to help the domestic auto industry?”
Romney, January 2008:
“Where does it stop? Is there a point at which someone says ‘enough’? Or are we going to allow the entire domestic automotive manufacturing industry to disappear? … As president, I will not rest as Detroit gets to see layoff after layoff after layoff.”
Fast-forward ten months, and in a piece entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” Governor Romney writes:
“Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.”
More…
Romney, January 2008:
Romney proposed increased government spending for research on advanced fuels and vehicles, aid to automakers to deal with the costs of health care and pensions for retirees, and tax cuts for most taxpayers to help them buy new cars.
Romney, November 2008:
I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.
So now the twenty billion isn’t for the auto industry in particular anymore. And furthermore, he’d rather see a managed bankruptcy than fight for every job and “take burdens off the back of the auto industry.”
Sorry, Michigan, but thanks for those primary votes!
At the risk of overstating my case — the quotes in themselves are rather damning — we should recall that John McCain stated, truthfully, in January, that the lost jobs were not coming back and that Michigan would need to innovate to find a way to create new jobs — that’s simply how the market works. Romney disagreed, saying that McCain was being a cranky pessimist and that he would “fight for every single job” while offering a $20 billion aid package specifically to the auto industry. He’s still dropping the $20 billion number, but he’s doing it in a very tricky manner: what he’s proposing now and what he proposed before are not the same package. Pretty slick, and psychologically savvy.
The new context, really, makes this new $20 billion arrangement make even less sense: since we’re talking about solutions at this moment for the auto industry specifically, why would Romney shift his proposal from the exact focus to the general issue of energy? The answer is obvious: he’s backing away from his original interventionist plan to try and curry favor with free-marketeers.
(PS: I actually rather like the article, ironically. I just wish that I could trust the man who wrote it.)
by Alex Knepper @ 8:48 am. Filed under Mitt Romney
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