In California this Memorial Day in my neighborhood, the house signs for the GOP presidential candidate are pleasantly blue, and they read: "Romney: Believe in America."
Also on this day, we learn that the candidate has no intention of cutting the deficit upon taking office, and will be happy to add to the national debt with a stimulus plan, in total contradiction to what he has been saying on the campaign trail for months.
Jonathan Chait, quoting Romney himself, and referencing two reporters' work, eloquently describes Romney's conversion to the liberal faith in spending as "a big fat wet kiss to Keynesian economics:"
The real news in Mitt Romney’s interview with Mark Halperin, as Charles Pierce points out, is that Romney openly repudiated the central argument his party has been making against President Obama for the last three years: that he spent too much money and therefore deepened the economic crisis. Indeed Romney himself had been making this very case as recently as a week ago (“he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined. The consequence is that we are enduring the most tepid recovery in modern history.”) But in his Halperin interview, Romney frankly admits that reducing the budget deficit in the midst of an economic crisis would be a horrible idea:
Halperin: You have a plan, as you said, over a number of years, to reduce spending dramatically. Why not in the first year, if you’re elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you’d like to see after four years in office? Why not do it more quickly?
Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course.
Of course not. Regardless of the flip-flop and the assurances to the right. Sure Romney will cut spending. Just not now.
Also today, Romney said to to a reporter on his campaign plane that he will happily overlook the birtherism of Donald Trump because "I need to get 50.1 percent or more."
So, to recap, "to believe in America" is to go along with Donald Trump, birtherism, and debt.
Does this not sound as cravenly political as Richard Nixon?
That's who Romney's neighbors see him as, wrote Christopher Benfey earlire this year:
When I ask locals about their impressions of Mitt, I get a recurring response: Nixonian. “The overriding passion of his life seems to be to become president,” a conservative economics professor tells me. “I can’t think of a single issue over which Romney would risk reelection in order to stick to a principle.” A University of Massachusetts journalism professor puts it more positively: “He can be as cagey as Nixon, and he can be almost as smarmy, but he is also able to think strategically.”
But you must admit, he looks a lot better than Richard Nixon. Merrill Markoe tweets:
A photo of Romney and wife shows she may be human but he looks like he stopped at carwash to have his head detailed, then sprung for the hot wax.
Markoe (a former Letterman writer) has a point, even if she sounds a bit like left-wing Sue Lynch.
Sue (to Will): I don't trust a man with curly hair. I cant help but imagine thousands of tiny birds lying sulfurous eggs in it.
Sue, the winner on Glee, supports Romney, surely.
Kit Stolz 