As Andy Warhol once said, “That’s not fake. It’s real plastic.” Warhol’s immortal words came to mind as I learned about Willard Mitt Romney’s latest flip flop. The 2011 paperback version of his book No Apology is at war with last year’s hardback edition. The fairly accommodating Romney who said nice things about President Obama has been hauled off and replaced with an angrier, more combative Romney — perfect for the GOP presidential primary season, which will heat up as Romney addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this morning at 10:30.
As the Boston Phoenix’s David S. Bernstein wrote yesterday, “Times change, and so does Mitt.”
Bernstein cited two key passages in Romney’s text. The earlier version of No Apology included a dispassionate analysis of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. Seemingly more in sorrow than in anger, Hardback Romney predicted that the $814 billion measure “will accelerate the timing of the start of the recovery, but not as much as it could have.”
Paperback Romney is far less charitable. He calls the stimulus “a failure,” and denounces Obama’s “economic missteps.” He adds: “This is the first time government has declared war on free enterprise.”
In an inverse relationship with the cover of his book, Romney also morphs from soft to tough on health care. According to Bernstein, Hardback Romney offered cautious comparisons between the president’s health-care reform plan and RomneyCare, the former Massachusetts governor’s own big-government legislation that the Wall Street Journal called “the dress rehearsal for ObamaCare.”
Once again, Paperback Romney is far more fiery and partisan, now that the February 6, 2012, Iowa Caucuses are less than a year away. “ObamaCare will not work and should be repealed,” Paperback Romney roars. “ObamaCare is an unconstitutional federal incursion into the rights of states.”
In addition to the fresh and disturbing evidence that Romney remains a constant work in progress, one wonders how dumb he thinks Americans are. In an age when a casually shared shirtless photograph can trigger a media brushfire and an instant resignation from Congress, did Romney really think he could get away with this auto-revisionism without observers noticing it, and the commentariat sharing the news with GOP primary voters from coast to coast?
This little episode proves that Romney is less tethered than a soccer ball at the World Cup. He bounces around, not thanks to his own compass, but in reaction to forces that encircle him — first and foremost what he thinks the next election’s voters want to hear.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) is 10,000 percent more deserving of respect than is Romney. Waxman is wrong on everything except, maybe, today’s temperature. Given his cap-and-tax bill, on second thought, maybe he is wrong on that, too. But at least Waxman sticks to his guns — I mean slingshots — and fights — er, labors— to make America conform to his political philosophy, as destructive as it is.
In contrast — from abortion to spending to taxes to guns — Romney keeps shifting, just like the political pressures that toss him this way and that.
Compared to Willard Mitt Romney, I have seen mannequins in less empty suits.
— Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
not good. i like Mitt -- but didn't read his book. We want a candidate who knew from the beginning that the porkulus would not, could not work. And who said so.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYet, Mr. Romney (someone for whom I wouldn't vote for President) is to be preferred to Rudy Giuliani.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow! Guess you don't like Mitt Romney. Your reaction in characterizing his evolution from mildly critical of Obama to strongly critical as being a "flip-flop" seems a bit over the top. Is there something else going on?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe doesn't have to think all Americans are dumb. He just has to think that his tame RINO media and journal fangirls and boys will help him smooth over yet another flip. And you can't really blame him for thinking that, can you, based on part experience?
Of course, Mitt hasn't fully absorbed that since 2008, Hugh, Rich, and even KLo have found a younger, sexier hunk down Florida way.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThese math problems are getting harder and harder : I only have a public school education . But anyway , A vote /$ buck for Mitt is a vote for four more years of O . Throw the mutt in the dustbin of history and move on.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe're all works in progress, every last one of us. When I click on The Corner, I expect better than this.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou don't like him! You really don't like him!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI mean it, if Romney is the nominee for GOP president I am voting for Obama. I find the novelty of a two-term black president to be more enticing than that of another weathervane Republican wishing to test the theory of "compassionate conservatism" again.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen it comes to politics, Myth Romneycare is the man of the moment.
By that I mean his positions are likely to change from moment to moment based on whatever is needed to appeal to his current target audience.
Can't we convince him to give up his presidential aspirations and go into TV news? He could fill Olberman's position - he has the hair for it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Times change and so does Mitt."
Kind of says it all, doesn't it?
I do wish people would quit attacking Romney for his religion, though. At least Romney has one, and most people I know would not let it affect their vote. Those who would should be ashamed of themselves, for we will be voting for President, not Pope or Archbishop of Canterbury, and I have seldom met a Latter Day Saint who was not a good family man or woman - and a conservative.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseKeynes supposedly said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" in reply to criticism of his consistency on monetary policy.
Mitt has developed a nice corollary. When public opinions change, he changes the facts of his career.
Everyone on the right wants to like Mitt because he is nice person and *could be* a great pitchman for conservative economics. The trouble is he is two-dimensional automaton.
The wrong advisor entering the wrong code and Mitt could give a speech exalting the virtues of Marxism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNow now Deroy, stop picking on K-Lo
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseProps to KLO and NRO for posting this.
Clearly, Mitt believes us stupid, that he can manipulate our thoughts on him by flipping one day and flopping the next.
It is sheer desperation. Perhaps he knows its over, and will just save his money this go-round.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOofy Prosser, someone changing their mind is one thing. Changing the text of a published book without even calling it a revised edition is entirely another. It's dishonest and underhanded.
I don't trust Romney at all. That doesn't mean I won't vote for him (this is reality, after all), but if I was a Republican I wouldn't vote for him in the primary.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...weathervane Republican wishing to test the theory of "compassionate conservatism" again."
Great point. How many of Bush II's "compassionate conservative" proposals would of been voted down in the GOP Congress if Bush II had a D beside his name instead of R.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePaperback Romney! Love the term. OK, with apologies to the Beatles...
Dear Sir or Madam, can I have your vote?
I know many of your want me off this boat.
You may have heard all my prior claims
But I need the job, so I want to be a Paperback Romney.
Paperback Romney!
{groan}
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMitt is not among my first 5 choices for the Republican nomination. However the notion that he should not have used the clarity of hindsight to fortify his positions this far along is really pretty feeble.
I don't care for MItt. He is at best a centrist Republican if not an out right RINO. However the notion that anyone who loves this nation and wants to turn us from its current path to destruction would vote for Obama should MItt be the nominee is absurd.
We will take the Senate in 2012, and the Senate Republicans will be pulled further to the right. We will hold the house. While a strong conservative in the WH would be idea, with Congress firmly moving rightward, any Republican president will allow us to make huge in roads in the damage done to our nation.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe all remember the NR cover article endorsing Romney for the GOP nomination in 2008, don't we? At that time, he was the man most likely to beat Hillary, wasn't he?
But then, the Florida primary came along, and McCain got his momentum largely thanks to the military voters in the panhandle. They sure knew how to pick a loser, but hey, he's a military guy.
Look, why not just do this with artistic flair: Let the GOP run Palin for President, along with some small-town mayor in South Dakoka for VP. They can run on a platform of "snowshoes and moose-meat pie for everyone!" Las Vegas will go wild booking whether they'll get over/under 6 electoral college votes.
Or, find someone named Kennedy or Cuomo who'll be willing to temporarily switch to the GOP "for the good of the nation," and run that person as veep under Romney. Their platform could be, "We're better than you." Something like that is easy to understand, and might actually win, unfortunately.
But fear not, we can all revert to religion. Why, San Francisco's Grace Cathedral (Episcopal, just like the big boys) advertises: "If you are passing by and feel hesitant to join the ranks of a particular denomination or to buy into the creed of millions, please know most people who enter Grace Cathedral every week are practicing no regular religious discipline." I do not know if that refers to tourists, or the congregation, or the clergy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis author is such an joke.
Its amazing what passes for a flip flop nowadays. If Romney changes his shirt, he's somehow a flip flopper on his favorite color.
Romney's book was written well over a year ago, before Obamacare was even passed, and stimulus was in its infancy.
His new forward was written with a year + of new information on the subjects. Of course he will have more to say on the two issues.
He has always been against the Stimulus bill. He takes a stronger stance against it now because facts have shown how ineffective it was.
How is that a flip flop?
Romney was against Obamacare from day 1, with another year of information and understanding of the legislation, he is in a better position to talk about it, and have a more developed opinion on it.
How is that a flip flop?
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
This post is exactly what's wrong with politics today...stupidity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow - Miss K Lopez must be busy not-attending CPAC - who allowed this post past the censors??
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