In a Scathing 17 Minute Speech former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney went on a rampage against Donald Trump.
“Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat,” said Romney.
Fox News host Sean Hannity blasted Romney for acting like Trump. So did Fox News opinion writer Julie Roginsky.
David Stockman provided hard evidence about how Romney made his fortune. And I can add to the list a couple of details they missed.
Hannity Unloads on Rubio’s Suicide Mission
Please consider Hannity Unloads on Rubio.
Hannity said Rubio’s onslaught is “turning into a suicide mission.”
“Donald Trump showed a side of himself last night — I’m speaking objectively here. I’m not taking sides in this,” Hannity said. “But Donald Trump showed a side of him that was very different last night. You could even use the word ‘presidential’ in the way he approached. He was magnanimous when it comes to Ted Cruz and his victories, how tough it is to run for president, you know, and what I’m watching here is the kitchen sink, scorched earth, MMA bare-knuckle brawl, thorough nuclear attacks.”
Politico reported Romney Speech Shows Why Trump is Winning.
Back at Fox News, opinion writer Julie Roginsky, asks “Who is the Real Phony and Fraud?”
Super-Fraud Proof
David Stockman provides the answer: Mitt Romney is the Real Super-Fraud: Here’s the Proof, Chapter and Verse.
Now that’s a screaming case of the pot calling the kettle black if there ever was one. Mitt Romney has lashed out at The Donald for being a “phony and fraud”, but consider this. During his 16-years at Bain Capital, fully one-fourth or $600 million of the firms cumulative $2.5 billion of profits were scalped from companies which went bankrupt soon after Mitt and his partners got out of town with the loot.
Loose Ends
Stockman provides example by example in brilliant detail as to who’s the “super-fraud”.
Let’s now return to Romney’s speech to clean up some loose ends.
In his speech, Romney stated “At the last debate, all he could remember about his healthcare plan was to remove insurance boundaries between states. Successfully bringing jobs home requires serious policy and reforms that make America the place businesses want to plant and grow.”
Curiously, no one pointed out the obvious fact that Obamacare and Romneycare are essentially the same thing.
Turning to recession, trade, and foreign policy Romney stated “His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He wants to bring jobs home from China and Japan. But his prescriptions to do these things are flimsy at best.”
Romney on Trade
The policies on China Romney blasted Trump for were his own!
- New York Times – October 22, 2012: Romney Pledges to Call China a Currency Manipulator.
- The Guardian – October 23, 2012: Mitt Romney renews promise to label China a currency manipulator
- YouTube Video – October 21, 2012: Mitt Romney says China is a currency manipulator; impose tariffs & start a trade war.
I am a huge free trade advocate. In this case both Romney and Trump are wrong.
Romney blasted Trump over Tariffs although his own policy suggestions were essentially the same. Romney is not only a hypocrite, but a hypocrite with a memory problem.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Harvard degrees and Harvard grades can be bought. Romney was a founder of Bain Capital, and the sole stock holder in the company. It is fair to suggest that he bought the company and his CEO position with his father’s money. Bain Capital hired nine hundred people like Donald Trump who earned degrees from Wharton.
Romney is a pathetic man who needs to be loved in way that makes him feel important. When the RNC went looking for a well dressed whore who could convincingly play the moralist Romney was their she-man. The RNC gently brushed his hair aside and whispered in his ear if you do this thing for us we will love you forever and you will always be our favorite whore. And if we ever need someone to fu*k the American people you will be the first one we call and the only one we will pay.
Okay, let’s try this: “Romney is a pathetic man who needs to be loved in [a] way that makes him feel important.” “Trump is a pathetic man who needs to be loved in [a] way that makes him feel important.” That one’s probably true too. How about another one? “Newt Gingerich is a…” “Rush Limbough is a…” “Barak Obama is a…” “Bill Clinton, GW Bush, George Herbert, “… All of these important people are pathetic — that is, sick in some way — people who need to be loved in a way that makes them feel important. The only one that I cannot say that for is Hillary Clinton, and that only because we would have to substitute the word “woman/her” for “man/him”.
Indeed, the same story has played out at lower levels: The governor of Virginia, for example, or our senators Robb and Warner; our State Council for Higher Education; our university presidents and athletic directors and coaches. Our city councils, and our mayor (is there anyone left to bash Chris Christie? He’s no better, though he’s no worse).
So now… We have successfully brought them all down to a level playing field. Maybe that can help one feel…
… important?
Let’s cut off that empty slanging. We’re in a massive mess, and human wickedness being what it is, it is unlikely that we will get OUT of the massive mess.
The focus of this blog is economics, which does indeed touch on politics. And politics brings out the worst in us. But I do have a question.
How will having Trump here affect the RNC, if at all? How will it affect the economy, if at all? How will having Clinton win affect each, if at all?
I, for one, am in a financially risky position [mortgage, no worse than anyone else, but no better either]. To be able to navigate the waters ahead might be advantageous.
Trump hadn’t revealed a fraction of his depravity when Romney embraced his endorsement.
Romney is a basically honest capitalist.
Trump is a destroyer of capital, a leech, an authoritarian, a bigot, a liar, and is, consequently, the only imaginable Republican candidate who could cause me to not only vote for HRC but also to contribute to her campaign.
Republicans for Hillary. Unbelievable, but “the abyss” that Romney warned about — that is not hyperbole.
Hillary, Cruz, Rubio are the war candidates.
Republicans for war.
Mish
You say that, but maybe have missed your explanation on what the limiting principle is on when to wage war, but would like to know.
Agree that this country has been too quick to go to war, but isolationism is not the answer either.
Trump gives every indication that he would be as, or likely more aggressive in the use of force than any of the three you mentioned.
It is not looking like any Libertarian candidate is on the horizon that would sweep up votes and prevent any of the current roster from getting elected.
These are the people we are essentially left with, unless you have another suggestion.
So-called Republicans that would vote for the most corrupt lying far left candidate ever (Hitlary) only prove the old theory that there is really no difference between the two parties. That is the reason Trump has been successful in his candidacy. Many voters have become aware of the so called “two party” scam. Washington needs a revolution.
Over the last 15 years the Republican Party destroyed any credibility that it once had. They left an opening for a guy like Trump a mile wide. Trump merely took advantage of it. Traitors like Bush, Romney, McCain, Boehner, McConnell, Paul Ryan, Rubio, Lindsey Graham, et. al. handed Trump the GOP nomination long before he entered the race. They made their own bed and now must lie in it. It was bound to happen. If not Trump, it would have been someone else.
Trump (and Sanders as well) are the inevitable result of obsessively contending orthodoxies neither of which offers actual solutions, but merely being pulled “three ways from the middle”. The economy is no longer functional and the prescriptions of orthodox economists and the disgusting ignorance and imagination of politicians will be of no avail. Here is a letter a Wallace K wrote to a politician in Canada that hits the nail right on the head:
Dear Tom,
Most assuredly, you do not have my support. The rational purpose of economics is not to create work but to create goods and services while rapidly eliminating labour as a cost factor of production through increasing efficiency. From this standpoint the only “good job” is a “dead job.” I mean to be just that blunt. Any nation that needs ninety-five per cent of its available work force to produce the needs, and wants, of its people must be functioning at stone-age efficiency. If a nation were to reach a position of requiring only ten per cent of its existing available work force, i.e., to reach a ninety per cent “unemployment” rate, it could, and should, then be enormously grateful for such a tremendous blessing—being so removed from the fear of scarcity.
Where do politicians derive the arrogant and errant notion or assumption that they are ordained to create work for their fellow humans so as to render society into a de-cultured human ant heap—a dispirited and disinherited charnel house? It derives from the Puritanical doctrine of Salvation through Works—the precise opposite of the Christian doctrine of Salvation through Grace. And whether or not one shares a belief in that particular religion It is the destructive policy that follows from the poisonous philosophy emanating from the Citadel of Finance—that agent of Mammon manifest by the international banking cartel clutching mankind by its strangling tentacles which encircle the earth in its death grip. And so we witness the fledgling “populist” NDP Government in the Province of Alberta seeking financial guidance from a former Governor of the Bank of Canada! It is, of course, well known that any significant Left revolution has almost always been facilitated by the assistance of International Finance.
Measures like “unemployment insurance” are just pathetic crumbs offered to the people, acting as a safety valve to dampen the likelihood of any popular uprising against the debt-imposed tyranny that has been foisted upon humanity by the enforcers of Puritanism through the instrumentation of fraudulent accounting and legerdemain.
My recent words to another correspondent: “So let’s fix it. Tell the politicians that the gig is up. We understand the fraud committed upon us by the age-old institutional system of legalized counterfeiting and its resultant grand larceny. The Banking System has appropriated the communal capital by means of its claim to ownership of the credit it creates to monetize the community’s wealth. We want it back in the form of falling prices, expanding incomes independent of any earned–and increasing leisure. Give it to us or we will do our utmost to ensure that you will not be occupying a seat in Parliament after the next elections.”
Sincerely
Wallace K
Wallace, this quote, ” Any nation that needs ninety-five per cent of its available work force to produce the needs, and wants, of its people must be functioning at stone-age efficiency”
I simply do not agree with.
Needs, yes, but wants are endless, and a truly free capitalistic society with limited interference (to protect the system from the greedy bastards that would control it) allows the creation of unlimited jobs to fill those wants as science and engineering create the means for a small percentage to supply all the needs.
Wants are not endless except in the minds of the unbalanced. Our productive capacity is such that every citizen could easily have at least a middle class lifestyle and those who desired more, much more could also be accommodated. Your argument is flawed.
Wants are indeed endless.
And the more you give away for free the less productive capacity there is.
Mish
In THEORY they are, in reality they AREN’T….except in the unbalanced.
As for productive capacity we already have way more than sufficient productive capacity to have the distributed income levels I posted about. And besides I’m not talking bout giving production away…only making it POSSIBLE to pay for what actually is produced. Distributism is a monetary profit making system and theory that is not capitalism or socialism, but rather the best possible and most ethical integration of the best aspects/intentions of both.
The politicians could not care less.
If we would forge an alliance of consumers and the small to medium sized business community for such policies….they would care…because it would mean their jobs if they didn’t.
We could simply summarize the whole thing as follows
envy, this is what is spewing forth
This is all out an attempt by Romney to steal the nomination. Romney for President filed papers at FEC in October and updated them on January 30th. Insiders in DC are confirming this. It also explains why Romney didn’t endorse anyone and is angling at a brokered convention. Romney is pulling the strings behind the scenes and thinks only Romney is worthy of being the Republican nominee. It looks like things may not come to a head until the convention if no one gets enough delegates. Exactly what Romney wants.
This comes a little closer to the truth, but I don’t think it’s quite on target. What would be more accurate to say is that the DNC and the GOP are basically the same party; and the leadership is unelected, and the leadership would prefer a known (Clinton) player to an unknown. Whether Trump is unknown to them, or just is being portrayed that way I have no idea.
But if Trump IS unknown, then we can look to what the power structure has done in the past successfully: When Ollie North ran for Virginia senator, and won the nomination over the handpicked candidate (Jim Miller), the party leadership convinced Miller to break his oath and run as an independent candidate in order to deliberately split the GOP vote and put a known Democrat (Robb, IIRC) in the senate seat instead.
In this case, Romney won’t have to break his oath: he’s made none.
I think, however, it is likely that the GOP will run Romney as an independent for that very purpose, to keep the Clinton/Bush dynasty in power.
Is the establishment afraid Hilary would lose to Trump ? I predict if Trump is nominee and hands Hilary a defeat, he will still be controlled by the Military Industrial Complez. The president is just the public face of the operation. The Pentagon, state department and other major portions of government have 95% of the same people no matter who gets elected. Those expecting anything other than bread and circuses are sure to be disappointed.
Romney, Hillary, Obama are all the same. I do not watch the debates but I do love the side show the next morning as all the media outlets deride Trump. The Republican party is imploding because they thought they could control the Trump and he blew them off. Rubio is just another whiners and Trump is correct he has never worked in the private sector period. Cruz keeps at the religious right and quite honestly people are tired of politicians pandering. People are tired of empty promises and political correctness. We all knew the race card, woman hater card would come into play. Heck I did not know who David Duke was and could care less. At least the guy is honest about not knowing it.
If nothing else Trump is brilliant in playing the media and candidates. He is getting all the free media time without paying a dime. If the media investigated Hillary and Bernie as much as they do Trump we might actually have some real news but alas as usual I am dreaming while the media starts off every night with a new story on Trump while Hillarie’s investigation gets a blurb in the middle of the news and they move on. Bernie’s 15% increase in taxes if he wins so we can hand out more freebies is a joke. I pay enough already so why work to support freebie land. I will just get freebies after all working is so yesterday.
The “establishment” Republican machine is in great fear of losing control of their promise everything, deliver nothing, public funds distribution status quo, oligarchy yes men candidate vetting process to such an extent that they are feverishly fighting against their own voter base!!! Just look at the parade of neoCONs claiming they’ll vote for Felonious if Trump is nominated. If Sanders was posing as much of a threat against the “establishment” Democrat machine, they’d be doing the same to him.
What they fear is an end to their vetting process which produces an endless series of oligarchy owned (via campaign donations and six figure “speaking fees”) candidates who promise change but deliver status quo. That loss of control would result in the end of or, at least, a reduction in the truth of THIS:
From the 2014 Princeton study:
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Excerpts:
A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
…the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of “affluent” citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.
Romney’s comments about Trump are accurate, regardless of his own sins.
But Romney acts holier than thou but he isn’t. Romney is unfit to judge anyone aa a candidate and clearly thinks no one other than Romney is good enough to be the candidate. Hence his updated filing at the FEC for President.
All this has become an ugly mess. Speculation, spin, and unlimited efforts by the media to influence the decision as to who will become America’s next leader is in full force. Sadly, the people who will most likely have the least say are voters like you and me. To say America has a flawed election process is an understatement.
Our primary system is geared to not putting the best qualified choice in a position to move on and the decision is placed in the hands of voters in a few early primaries that cast their ballots months before the rest of us.The article below looks at the flaws and puts forth ideas for a better system.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2015/09/political-debates-highlight-flawed.html
The problem is that the democratic and republican parties are more alike than different. This has been evident with Clinton bush and Obama. Policy papers of democratic operatives become realities with republican presidents and vice verse. Government is like cancer and continually grows so any hope of less government is a fantasy. I believe the true underlying issue which unites trump supporters is immigration and trade. Trump will be president because he is doing what no one has done since Reagan, attracting blue collar democrats. Thus he will take Ohio, Michigan and other democratic states. Look at the wide leads he has in these states. Pundits and media centers will eventually realize this but paradigm shifts always take time.
We have this problem because the President and the Federal government has WAY too much power. Reduce them to only representatives of the “Independent States”, which formed the Federal Government to represent them on the international stage.
Get the Federal government OUT of all domestic issues and return most all of it to the States. (By the way, when you are born, in America, you get your Birth Certificate from your State. You are really a citizen of your State but that issue is really, really interesting)
It’s bad political tactics for those not campaigning in the primaries to attack candidates of their own party. That is job of the candidate of the opposing party after the primaries. Here’s how Mitt could do more good than harm for the Republicans:
1.) By endorsing none or one of the Republican candidates.
2.) By attacking the Democrats.
3.) By collecting campaign money for the Republican party.
The last thing Mitt should be doing is attacking candidates from his own party since Democrats will argue the chaos in the Republican party is bad for America. At this point in time Republicans need to ask themselves, “What is more important – preventing Trump from running for president on the GOP ticket, or preventing Hillary from becoming president?”
Mish, your last sentence: ‘Romney is not only a hypocrite, but a hypocrite with a memory problem.’ pretty much describes most of the candidates and most of our current elected officials.
“I am a huge free trade advocate. In this case both Romney and Trump are wrong.”
Opinions Vary.
You’ve stated your opinion many times. Which I disagree with … and asked you’ve to clarify on points of Labor, Enviromental, and Intellectual Property differences. To no avail.
Trump’s position on China MUCH more to my liking.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/us-china-trade-reform
Wow, I never realized Trump wanted a war with China. The GOP should LOVE him.
Except for one thing: when we fought Japan, Yamamoto said, attacking the US is an ill-considered idea: unless we |arch into Washington and make them sign a treaty within one year, their productivity will overwhelm us, and we will lose. He was right.
But now, the shoe is on the other foot.
I made a mistake Bernie wants a 15 trillion tax hike. Good luck with that as it is more then the USA generates I nthe whole year in the private sector. I believe the whole of the USA is worth 19 trillion.
One side sees Trump as the cure while the other side sees him as the disease. I believe he is a symptom. The side that realizes that first and acts accordingly will win.
I believe that the RNC wants Hillary to win so they can justify not accomplishing any of their promises despite controlling the House and Senate. Ted Cruz is a parodic caricature of a president and would be perfect for running a terrible campaign. Much like Bush 1 vs. Clinton, Kerry vs. Bush 2 or Romney or McCain vs. Obama.
Sounds like a ‘market top’ event for Trump haters and RNC insiders to me. When you see this kind of hysteria, doesn’t it support a ‘bubble’ of sorts? Maybe now is the time to invest in the other direction.
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