Mitt-flop

Mitt Romney is a flip-flop plain and simple.

There is actually a website called mittromneyflipflops.com. It’s quite entertaining too. It’s incredible how one person could possibly flip-flop on virtually every issue presented before him throughout the course of a political career.

It is even more incredible still to me how that person could be considered one of the front-runners for the GOP nomination for such a long time. I have read that the reason he is still standing close to the top of the polls is his consistency, but the matter of the fact is that he isn’t consistent at all. Unless, of course, you are one of those people that counts being consistently inconsistent as some backwards form of consistency.

I am not.

I would rather elected someone to office with the direct antithesis of my beliefs than to elect someone to office that doesn’t know what he or she believes at all.

The man running for the presidential candidacy for the REPUBLICAN PARTY, the very party who’s Congressmen and Senators have been trying to repeal Obama’s health care bill, is the one that implemented the system that Obama’s is based off of while he was the governor of Massachusetts. I do not understand how people do not see this, or choose to ignore it when they vote in the opinion polls.

The man doesn’t know what he wants, and it’s as simple as that.

Yet he has remained a very serious contender for the GOP nomination, while other candidates with consistent ideals and messages like John Huntsman have hardly gotten looks.

I don’t feel like Romney has any star power either, which is also mind-boggling when you look at his politics. I mean, he's got to have something going for him right?

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich (who is currently ahead of Romney in the polls) has plenty of star power, but definitely hasn’t always toed the party line, and has been anything but consistent throughout his political career. He does claim to have gone through a political rebirth, which has led to his recent successes, but we’ll see how long he goes with this new image. Nonetheless, I can see how Gingrich's personality would lead people to follow him, where as with Romney it is just another aspect not adding up for me.

Romney has flip-flopped on the issue of abortion, saying both, that he respects a woman’s right to choose and also that he was never pro-choice as Massachusetts Governor.

Jon Swaine of the telegraph.co.uk wrote a recent article about the issue of Romney’s flip-flopping and attacks being issued on the subject. Swaine writes that Romney “is under pressure for appearing to have become more Right-wing on abortion, immigration, climate change, health care and gay rights only in recent years.”

That list encompasses virtually every major issue that voters look at outside of the economy.

His support is dropping ever so slightly, but he still remains as unmoving as his hair has remained throughout his political career (his hair never moves). Amidst claims of changing his views and not being conservative enough, Romney has found a way to fasten down his name at the top of the GOP primary polls, and if the trends stay on the same course, I don’t see him losing any major ground soon.

It just baffles me that such an unsure figure could be considered a front-runner by so many voters in the incredibly harsh and polar political climate of the day. Why do you guys think Romney has remained so consistent?

Non-Politician Politics

The question at hand: Can someone who is not a career politician run for and win the presidential election?

I think that people are tired of politicians, and I think that the American people would choose to elect a prominent businessman or a powerful public figure to the presidency without them having much political experience.

I am however skeptical that someone without very much political experience can run a successful campaign regardless of how experienced their campaign manager is, or how successful they have been in other aspects of life.

Herman Cain is the perfect example.

Our country is currently in economic shambles (say what you want, but it’s in shambles), so who better to take on the task of fixing everything than a self-made businessman? Cain has been on numerous executive boards of companies and has been successful at vitually every company he has taken up residence with, so the natural progression (sarcasm) would be to take on the debt of an entire country and see what he could do with that.

In an ideal world this would be perfect. The man with the supreme gift of knowing how economics work and knowing how to balance a budget would finally be able to take the reigns of the most powerful economy in the world, and bring us back to economic stability. It sounds perfect. I bought into it for a little bit.

And so did everybody else. Cain was racing up the charts in the GOP primary race, and was even in the lead for a couple of weeks. He was the Republican Wonderboy who could do no wrong.

That is until the reality of the situation started to come about. Allegation after allegation began to come to light of sexual harassment from former coworkers and employees of Cain.

What would the seasoned politician do in the situation (unless your name is Wiener)? Be honest about it, say it was from a long time ago, and ask your constituents and the voters for forgiveness.

What did Cain do? He lied about it of course.

TOTAL rookie move…

Not long after he lied about the allegations his campaign began slipping through his fingers. He began losing support at just as rapid of a rate as he had gained it. I believe that if he would’ve handled the situation honestly he would have lost far less support. He might not have had any chance to win after the sexual harassment came to light, but the transparency in his response would’ve at least given this voter a second thought into his candidacy.

Donald Trump could be used as another example in this scenario, but I am convinced his supposed presidential bid was just a way to stir things up. But if he was serious about being a candidate, then the things that he said show further that a businessman, used to saying what he wants when he wants, probably won’t be able to keep his mouth shut long enough to be considered a legitimate candidate.

- Trump F bomb...

I think that a non-politician could be good for the economy, provided they have a long-standing track record of economic successes, and that if the right one comes along they have a great shot at getting elected. But let’s wait and see how Italy’s coalition of businessmen and professors do running the land of Ferraris and Calcio before we pass any further judgment.