Mitt Romney
August 9, 2012 — John Hinderaker
How many people has Mitt Romney helped? Not in the abstract–by, say, making someone else buy them contraceptives–but personally? No one knows, probably not even Mitt, but I suspect the instances of his generosity that have come to light are only the tip of the iceberg. The New York Times, to its credit, adds another to the list. Back in the early 1980s, before Romney struck it rich with Bain
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August 9, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
E.J. Dionne delivers two pieces of hack sophistry for the price of one in his latest column. One of them is foolish; the other dishonest. The foolish attack is his claim that if you “hate” Obamacare, you “must” return any rebate check you receive from an insurance company as a result of that Act. This, Dionne claims, is “just common sense.” If you believe in free enterprise, then the government
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August 6, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Richard Landes, a medieval historian at Boston University, takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to demonstrate that Mitt Romney was right to focus on the cultural dimension of Israel’s economic growth and of Palestinian drift. Landes is the son of David Landes, the former Harvard professor on whom Romney relies, in part, for his views about the importance of culture in the economic realm. Richard Landes
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August 2, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Some critics of Mitt Romney complain that he has no plan to turn around our faltering economy. Others, like President Obama, claim that Romney’s economic policies have been tried and found wanting. Neither contention withstands scrutiny. Glenn Hubbard, the Romney campaign’s economic adviser, explained the basic contours of Romney’s economic plan in today’s Wall Street Journal. The program, which will not come as a surprise to those who have been
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August 2, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Bill Clinton agrees that culture is an important factor in the economic problems experienced by the West Bank. Seth Mandel at Commentary recalls that Clinton took this very view in a speech to the American Jewish World Service in 2007: Clinton expressed his frustration that the Palestinians in Gaza possess some of the most beautiful beaches he’s ever seen, beaches that could be tourism cash cows, if only they could
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August 1, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Whatever one believes about Israel and the Palestinians, the general proposition that culture strongly influences economic performance should not be controversial. Romney likes to cite The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by former Harvard professor David Landes, which makes that case. The work of economist Mancur Olson also supports Romney’s view. Reaching further back, Romney could have cited Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and R.
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July 31, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Mitt Romney has a post up at NRO’s Corner in which he explains why he believes that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it. Here, in part, is what Romney wrote: [W]hat exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it
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July 31, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Mitt Romney has moved on to Poland, but his critics continue to harp on his statement in Israel that cultural factors help explain why the Israeli economy so massively outstrips its Palestinian counterpart. For example, the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson calls Romney’s remark “puzzling” and “not widely shared in Israel.” Wilson presents no evidence in support of his latter assertion, and the headline of his story, “In Israel, Romney wows
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July 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
…has been the press coverage. It has been hypercritical, to put it mildly. It started in England, where Romney’s observation that certain logistical issues relating to the Olympic Games were “disconcerting”–a judgment that has since proved resoundingly correct–was treated as a major diplomatic faux pas. Already forgotten, apparently, is the press’s attempt to make something sinister out of a Romney aide’s reference to America’s “Anglo-Saxon heritage” and its “shared history”
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July 30, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel has gone well, and should help him recover a bit from the rocky beginning to his voyage abroad. In England, Romney offended the Brits. Even though the offending comments were justified, Romney shouldn’t have made them. Britain is a key ally. In Israel, as Politico reports, Romney offended Palestinian leaders. Again, his comments were on the mark, as I’ll discuss in a moment. But this
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July 30, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Newsweek Magazine wants us to think so. Its latest cover blares: “Romney: The Wimp Factor — Is He Just Too Insecure To Be President?” Along with the rest of the politically hyper-conscious, I’ve been observing Mitt Romney for years. I’ve also interviewed him one-on-one and read a comprehensive biography of the man by two Boston Globe writers. There is much to like about the Romney, but he also has some
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July 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Fox News has posted the video and text of Mitt Romney’s speech in Jerusalem this afternoon. I’m posting the Fox video below. Please consult Barry Rubin’s excellent gloss on the speech in conjunction with your viewing of the whole (17-minute) shebang. It is a valuable guide to what is going on here.
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July 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Daniel Pipes’s judgment about the Middle East is as good as anyone’s, so I was interested to see what he thought about Mitt Romney’s Jerusalem speech. In a word, he was impressed. Pipes writes on Romney’s Remarkable Speech in Jerusalem: Mitt Romney, the all-but-official Republican presidential candidate, delivered a stem-winder of a speech to the Jerusalem Foundation today, packing emotional support with frank policy statements. The contrast with Obama could
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July 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The Romney campaign has released excerpts of Governor Romney’s speech this afternoon in Jerusalem. They are, as you might expect, excellent. Here they are: Our two nations are separated by more than 5,000 miles. But for an American abroad, you can’t get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel. We’re part of the great fellowship of democracies. We speak the same
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July 26, 2012 — Scott Johnson
I would have said that it was impossible for Mitt Romney to say something deemed controversial by his British hosts on his foreign trip, but no. That seems not to be the case. I would also have said that there was no way he would destroy Brian Williams in a face-to-face interview in London, but no. That also seems not to be the case. Romney sat for an interview with
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July 24, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Like pretty much everyone else, I expect this year’s election to be decided more or less exclusively by voters’ judgments about the economy. This is one respect in which the present campaign differs from 1980. In 1980, America’s alarming weakness abroad and the steady expansion of the Soviet Union probably ranked equally in most voters’ minds with the high unemployment and inflation that marked the Carter years. This year, foreign
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July 23, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Many conservatives didn’t think Mitt Romney was a good spokesman for our movement, but the fact is that right now, he, more than anyone else, is lifting high the banner of free enterprise and American tradition. Democrats have tried to defend “you didn’t build it” by suggesting that Obama’s pronouncement was taken out of context. But on Larry Kudlow’s TV show, Romney made the same point we have made here:
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