The Trouble with Romney

At first, Romney looked like my guy. He is a proven executive with a strong record of success. He is immune from the family issues or lifestyle issues other candidates may face. He looked electable.

However, on digging deeper, a lot of issues arise. Much of the below is thanks to my brother who lives in Massachusetts and gave me some insight into Romney's performance as Governor there.

In a nutshell, the issue is the flip-flop. Furthermore, the experience in business does not appear to have translated into results. Mind you, it is probably a miracle that anyone can get anything done in Massachusetts at all, but here are the problems.

1) Taxes: went up for just about everyone in the state, especially when fees are included. Massachusetts was already a high tax state.

2) Economy: Employers continue to avoid Massachusetts or leave the state. Romney did nothing to attract employers back, or keep them here. Tax cuts and reduced government red-tape, which should be core Republican values, were not even attempted.

3) Health insurance: approved a statewide health plan that is an unfunded mandate, which many poorer people still can’t afford even though they are now legally required to have insurance. Self-employed people really have a lot of sticker shock here. Meanwhile, the state can’t really afford it, and will likely have to increase statewide taxes and fees to cover Romney’s health plan. This is almost as bad as Hillarycare.

4) Car insurance: in Massachusetts, there is a state-controlled set of pricing constraints on auto insurance premiums. Basically, every company that offers auto insurance has to charge everyone the same price. This is the worst kind of government meddling in the free market. Instead of changing this, Romney kept it the same. The new democrat governor immediately acted to change this, and soon there will be basic market competition in auto insurance.

5) The Big Dig: Romney continued to botch this one just like everyone else. His business experience didn't help here.

6) Social issues (Abortion, Gay Marriage, etc.) Now these are probably no-win issues for social conservatives in Massachusetts, but they need to be dealt with. Flip-flopping here means you haven't thought it through, and without a value-based position it is impossible to secure your base (that's true for either side of the issue, depending on who your base is).

7) Immigration: Companies he hired to work on his house employed illegal immigrants. This was a huge media scandal for a while.

8) Leadership style: Romney appears to employ a top-down, authoritarian style of leadership. He gives orders and people are supposed to follow. He did not engage consensus-building, bottom-up leadership. This meant that he was often in the position of working against state legislators rather than with them. . .of course the buck stops with the Executive. But leadership comes from convincing people to join you, not from telling them. Ironically, that's often true in business as well.

9) Education: Promised to fix problems with Massachusetts charter schools but didn't. Changed plan on higher education after elected. Even Republicans in the state legislature voted against Romney's revised plan.

10) In addition to all that, Romney's foreign policy experience is limited.

Whatever people say about Bush, he at least does what he says he will do. People may not like it, but Bush's positions have been clear before every election, and the actions have followed. In other words, there were no surprises and voters got what they voted for.

I'm not saying that it is always wrong to change policy. I often present in these pages that indisputable facts may require a change in direction (indeed if liberals did this, they'd become Republicans). However, a set of core values is critical to leadership. And I'm afraid to say that Romney's record in Massachusetts fails the test.