How much better would be with Romney?

[Synthaholic]

If Romney had been elected in 2008, we would have been worlds better. He would have overseen a robust recovery. Can blame Huckabee's supporters for hating Romney so much that they would help the least conservative candidate win the nomination when they saw Huckabee couldn't do it.

I don't know how much better we might be if he had won in 2012. Obama had already done so much damage, Romney would have had to be careful not to make things worse. It would have been tricky no matter what. But Obamacare could have been quickly stopped by executive order if Romney was willing to follow Obama's example and disregard what the law actually said. And without all those disincentives to full employment, there would likely have been at least slightly faster improvement on the employment front.

A robust recovery based on what? Republican dreams?

Really, where does this come from? I thought the government did not create jobs. Are you now telling me that a Romney one would?

Look, I understand the sentiment that Obama is getting in the way but the reality here is that our economy is experiencing some fundamental flaws and Romney’s policies were not so different from Obama that we would have seen a stagnated mess suddenly explode into a great recovery. What exactly do you think would be driving the excellent recovery?

Romney would have let the stimulus measures deployed in 2009 take hold. He wouldn't have gone out of his way to stomp all over them with destructive measures like the ACA and destructive attitudes such as that which allowed Democrats to think it was a good idea to push the ACA through with lies and tricks no matter how great the angst of the nation was.

Republicans and Right-Wingers were uniformly against the stimulus, Romney included.

Are you now saying that they were wrong, and Obama was right, and it was needed?

 

[g5000]

Romney had said that the first thing he would do, was issue 50-state waviers to allow states to opt out of Obamacare if they wanted.

The Supreme Court has already done that.

And they all would want to, especially after "passing the bill to find out what was in it".

Nope. Only 20 states have opted out. And they are all red states.

 

[hazlnut]

I know it's only a year into it, but that's plenty of time to get some policies in place and maybe other policies wouldn't have been enacted.

Using real data and Romney's plans to make your point, can someone please tell me how much better off the US would be at this very moment had Romney won the election?

Look at U.S. History 1920-1930 -- Romney's tax and spending plan would have continued the 30 years of distributing money upwards through a rigged tax code.

Once one player at the table controls all or most of the chips -- the game is over.

1929.

Obama is not much better.

But this is what the Romney Presidency would have looked like.

 

[Amelia]

I know it's only a year into it, but that's plenty of time to get some policies in place and maybe other policies wouldn't have been enacted.

Using real data and Romney's plans to make your point, can someone please tell me how much better off the US would be at this very moment had Romney won the election?

If Romney had been elected in 2008, we would have been worlds better. He would have overseen a robust recovery. Can blame Huckabee's supporters for hating Romney so much that they would help the least conservative candidate win the nomination when they saw Huckabee couldn't do it.

I don't know how much better we might be if he had won in 2012. Obama had already done so much damage, Romney would have had to be careful not to make things worse. It would have been tricky no matter what. But Obamacare could have been quickly stopped by executive order if Romney was willing to follow Obama's example and disregard what the law actually said. And without all those disincentives to full employment, there would likely have been at least slightly faster improvement on the employment front.

How would he have done that?

What would Romney and the Republicans in Congress have done that would directly help the economy?


Oh, and Huckameenajad has no influence in the Republican Party. Zero.

They wouldn't have done what Obama did to directly harm the economy.

There would have been stimulus, and it would have been allowed to take hold. Obama killed the stimulus. Instead of making sure it was working as planned -- instead of helping those not-actually-shovel-ready jobs become more shovel ready -- he took his eye off the ball and pushed O-care. There would have been no O-care with Romney. If he had kept his promise about healthcare reform he would at least have deferred it until the economy had a chance to bounce back.

Huckabee may have zero influence in the Republican Party at this time; however, in 2008, his followers switched their votes over to McCain specifically to block Romney. Perhaps you weren't paying as much attention to the Republican primaries as I was in 2008, or perhaps you don't remember it as well because you're not as conscious about the lost opportunity.

 

[Mojo2]

If Romney had been elected in 2008, we would have been worlds better. He would have overseen a robust recovery. Can blame Huckabee's supporters for hating Romney so much that they would help the least conservative candidate win the nomination when they saw Huckabee couldn't do it.

I don't know how much better we might be if he had won in 2012. Obama had already done so much damage, Romney would have had to be careful not to make things worse. It would have been tricky no matter what. But Obamacare could have been quickly stopped by executive order if Romney was willing to follow Obama's example and disregard what the law actually said. And without all those disincentives to full employment, there would likely have been at least slightly faster improvement on the employment front.

The DOW hovers around 1600 and no one I know with a 20+ year old 401K plan is complaining.

Obama may be the greatest wealth creator ever!

Pretty damn good for a Socialist.

That sounds just as prematurely self congratulatory as when Obama was first elected and the American loons rejoiced in the streets that their Messiah had arrived to deliver them.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

'The proof of the pudding' is just shorthand for 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'. That longer version makes sense at least, whereas the shortened version really doesn't mean anything - nor does the often-quoted incorrect variation 'the proof is in the pudding'. The continued use of that meaningless version is no doubt bolstered by the fact that the correct version isn't at all easy to understand.

The meaning become clear when you know that 'proof' here is a verb meaning 'test'. The more common meaning of 'proof' in our day and age is the noun meaning 'the evidence that demonstrates a truth' - as in a mathematical or legal proof. The verb form meaning 'to test' is less often used these days, although it does survive in several commonly used phrases: 'the exception that proves the rule', 'proof-read', 'proving-ground', etc. When bakers 'prove' yeast they are letting it stand in warm water for a time, to determine that it is active. Clearly, the distinction between these two forms of the word was originally quite slight and the proof in a 'showing to be true' sense is merely the successful outcome of a test of whether a proposition is correct or not.

'The proof of the pudding is in the eating' is a very old proverb. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations dates it back to the early 14th century, albeit without offering any supporting evidence for that assertion. The phrase is widely attributed to Cervantes in The History of Don Quixote. This appears to be by virtue of an early 18th century translation by Peter Motteux, which has been criticised by later scholars as 'a loose paraphrase' and 'Franco-Cockney'. Crucially the Spanish word for pudding - 'budín', doesn't appear in the original Spanish text. It is doubtful that 'the proof of the pudding' was a figurative phrase that was known to Cervantes.

The earliest printed example of the proverb that I can find is in William Camden's Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine, 1605:

"All the proof of a pudding is in the eating."

The prrof of the pudding is in the eatingIt is worth remembering that, as the phrase is quite old, the pudding wouldn't have been a sticky toffee pudding from the sweet trolley, but a potentially fatal savoury dish. In Camden's listing of proverbs he also includes "If you eat a pudding at home, the dog may have the skin", which suggests that the pudding he had in mind was some form of sausage. THE OED describes the mediaeval pudding as 'the stomach or one of the entrails of a pig, sheep, or other animal, stuffed with a mixture of minced meat, suet, oatmeal, seasoning, etc., and boiled'. Those of you who have ventured north of the border on Burns Night will recognize this as a fair description of a haggis - "the great chieftain o' the pudding-race", as Burns called it in the poem Address to a Haggis, 1786. Mediaeval peasants, faced with a boiled up farmyard massacre, might have thought a taste test to have been a wise choice.

The proof of the pudding

 

[g5000]

Detroit would still be bankrupt. Osama bin Laden would still be dead. Nelson Mandela would still be dead.

The Fed would still be printing $85 billion a month for Wall Street's benefit.

Iran would still be cutting a deal with us.

Romney would have bombed Syria, with the full support of the GOP.

There would still have been a government shutdown as the Democratic Senate would refuse to pass the House budget which defunded ObamaCare. The federal web site would still roll out full of glitches, and the Left would claim Romney did it on purpose.

The unemployment rate would be the same. Gas prices would be the same. Food prices would be the same.

Rainbow-farting unicorns would still fail to appear.

 

[HenryBHough]

Based on the Alcoholic America theory:

Obama is far better for the country than Romney ever could be.

While both are leftist, Romney might be slightly less so.

Alcoholics need to reach rock bottom before recovery can begin. Either Romney or Obama could get us there. Obama is just quicker. Hence a Romney presidency could mean any potential recovery would be needlessly delayed.

Of course if John F'n Kerry had won at the time we'd be well on the way to recovery by now.

 

[Mojo2]

I know it's only a year into it, but that's plenty of time to get some policies in place and maybe other policies wouldn't have been enacted.

Using real data and Romney's plans to make your point, can someone please tell me how much better off the US would be at this very moment had Romney won the election?

Look at U.S. History 1920-1930 -- Romney's tax and spending plan would have continued the 30 years of distributing money upwards through a rigged tax code.

Once one player at the table controls all or most of the chips -- the game is over.

1929.

Obama is not much better.

But this is what the Romney Presidency would have looked like.

Why judge how he'd have done based on an FDR era photo montage of America during the Great Depression?

Why not show a montage of the thriving Staples stores across America, the highlights of the SLC Winter Olympics Mitt rescued from ruin or the people of Boston whose cry of being Boston Strong still echoes in my ears?

Or why not cite the story of Mitt Romney's heroic leadership in a life or death crisis?



[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS1DvuLE2is]Romney "The Search" - YouTube[/ame]

Hampshire campaign commercial for Mitt Romney also featured Robert Gay giving Romney credit for helping to find his daughter:

My 14-year-old daughter had disappeared in New York City for three days. No one could find her. My business partner stepped forward to take charge. He closed the company and brought almost all our employees to New York. He said, 'I don't care how long it takes, we're going to find her.' He set up a command center and searched through the night. The man who helped save my daughter was Mitt Romney. Mitt's done a lot of things that people say are nearly impossible. But for me, the most important thing he's ever done is to help save my daughter.​

Other sources have since suggested that Melissa Gay's disappearance was the intentional act of a runaway girl, that her life was never in danger, and that she was on the verge of returning home on her own when a telephoned tip led police to find her. But even they note "there’s no debate that Romney’s quick and resolute action helped locate the girl."

Last updated: 11 May 2012

snopes.com: Romney Business Partner Daughter Search

TRUE


Example: [Collected via e-mail, January 2012]

Sometimes, this facet of Romney's personality isn't so subtle. In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared. She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy.

Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay's daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York, and asked them to help find his friend's missing daughter. Romney's accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could — prostitutes, drug addicts — anyone.

That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney’s former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter's life, saying, "It was the most amazing thing, and I’ll never forget this to the day I die."

So, here's my epiphany: Mitt Romney simply can't help himself. He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it, sometimes consciously, and sometimes not-so-consciously. He doesn't do it for self-aggrandizement, or for personal gain. He does it because that's just how he's wired.

Ibid.

We'd have been LUCKY to have had his leadership and guidance.

We weren't worthy of him, apparently.

 

[Mojo2]

Detroit would still be bankrupt. Osama bin Laden would still be dead. Nelson Mandela would still be dead.

The Fed would still be printing $85 billion a month for Wall Street's benefit.

Iran would still be cutting a deal with us.

Romney would have bombed Syria, with the full support of the GOP.

There would still have been a government shutdown as the Democratic Senate would refuse to pass the House budget which defunded ObamaCare. The federal web site would still roll out full of glitches, and the Left would claim Romney did it on purpose.

The unemployment rate would be the same. Gas prices would be the same. Food prices would be the same.

Rainbow-farting unicorns would still fail to appear.

For a group of posters who can't see or agree that Obama is bad for America and every day in office he continually worsens our prospects of returning to be a nation that we all grew up loving, respecting and nurturing, your pronouncements are quaint.

Precious.

Like a kid explaining to another kid how the new teacher is going to be ugly and mean.

In this classic Little Rascals episode, "Teacher's Pet" just insert the name, Mitt Romney every time you hear the kids say, "Miss Crabtree."

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpHrcyIGNPs]Little Rascals -- "Teacher's Pet" (1930) -- Color -- 1/2 - YouTube[/ame]

I mean, who puts any credence in anything you'd say?

 

[Vox]

MUCH better.

we won't be enslaved by this crap obamacare - that part is fro sure.

 

[Oldstyle]

I know it's only a year into it, but that's plenty of time to get some policies in place and maybe other policies wouldn't have been enacted.

Using real data and Romney's plans to make your point, can someone please tell me how much better off the US would be at this very moment had Romney won the election?

We might be better off right now with Romney, because as soon as he took office, Republicans would pass all the job-creating bills that Obama and the Democrats have been trying to pass.

They would come up with a huge stimulus, pass infrastructure bills, get construction and housing going again.

They would just lie their asses off about it, and say they were always for it.

Ah, Dude? The GOP controlled House passed bills that would have created jobs and Harry Reid tabled them. Talking about lying your ass off?

 

[R.C. Christian]

Not better at all. The filthy Mormon dog is no different than Obama.

1. Gun grabber = check
2. Socialized medicine = check
3. Fag lover = check
4. Phony conservative = check
5. Phony Christian = check
6. Israeli grubbing corporate whore = Check to the 20th power
7. War mongering piece of shit = check

 

[billyerock1991]

all the corporations would have been sold to china ...nobody would have a job ... the population would be down from all the people dying from no health care ...

 

[Oldstyle]

Mitt Romney's "forte" was turning around troubled organizations...which pretty much sums up the US government at the moment. His proven track record of passing bi-partisan legislation would have been a refreshing change from the legislative grid lock that Barry has given us since he lost the 2010 mid-terms.

And who would Romney's VP have been? The very same Paul Ryan who sat down with Patty Murray and hammered out a budget deal? Think Joe "I've drooled on myself" Biden is ever going to give us something like that? Dream on, kiddies...

 

[Redfish]

We would have at least had a president who was respected and acted like an adult.

 

[Synthaholic]

If Romney had been elected in 2008, we would have been worlds better. He would have overseen a robust recovery. Can blame Huckabee's supporters for hating Romney so much that they would help the least conservative candidate win the nomination when they saw Huckabee couldn't do it.

I don't know how much better we might be if he had won in 2012. Obama had already done so much damage, Romney would have had to be careful not to make things worse. It would have been tricky no matter what. But Obamacare could have been quickly stopped by executive order if Romney was willing to follow Obama's example and disregard what the law actually said. And without all those disincentives to full employment, there would likely have been at least slightly faster improvement on the employment front.

How would he have done that?

What would Romney and the Republicans in Congress have done that would directly help the economy?


Oh, and Huckameenajad has no influence in the Republican Party. Zero.

They wouldn't have done what Obama did to directly harm the economy.

Obama has done nothing to harm the economy. He has had 30-something months of growth.

There would have been stimulus, and it would have been allowed to take hold.

Republicans were anti-stimulus. None of them voted for it, even though a third of it was tax cuts.

And they all posed with giant stimulus checks back home, after railing against it and voting against it. Republicans are the worst kind of hypocrite.

Republican hypocrites vote no on stimulus but take money and credit for 'good policy' - Modesto Political Issues | Examiner.com

Obama killed the stimulus. Instead of making sure it was working as planned -- instead of helping those not-actually-shovel-ready jobs become more shovel ready -- he took his eye off the ball and pushed O-care. There would have been no O-care with Romney. If he had kept his promise about healthcare reform he would at least have deferred it until the economy had a chance to bounce back.

The stimulus was cutting checks. That's all. There wasn't much of a bureaucracy involved. There weren't any problems dispensing the money.

Huckabee may have zero influence in the Republican Party at this time; however, in 2008, his followers switched their votes over to McCain specifically to block Romney. Perhaps you weren't paying as much attention to the Republican primaries as I was in 2008, or perhaps you don't remember it as well because you're not as conscious about the lost opportunity.

Well, I'm not claiming he never had influence. I just think he blew it, and diminished himself with some of his behaviour since the 2008 run.

 

[Synthaholic]

The DOW hovers around 1600 and no one I know with a 20+ year old 401K plan is complaining.

Obama may be the greatest wealth creator ever!

Pretty damn good for a Socialist.

That sounds just as prematurely self congratulatory as when Obama was first elected and the American loons rejoiced in the streets that their Messiah had arrived to deliver them.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

'The proof of the pudding' is just shorthand for 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'. That longer version makes sense at least, whereas the shortened version really doesn't mean anything - nor does the often-quoted incorrect variation 'the proof is in the pudding'. The continued use of that meaningless version is no doubt bolstered by the fact that the correct version isn't at all easy to understand.

The meaning become clear when you know that 'proof' here is a verb meaning 'test'. The more common meaning of 'proof' in our day and age is the noun meaning 'the evidence that demonstrates a truth' - as in a mathematical or legal proof. The verb form meaning 'to test' is less often used these days, although it does survive in several commonly used phrases: 'the exception that proves the rule', 'proof-read', 'proving-ground', etc. When bakers 'prove' yeast they are letting it stand in warm water for a time, to determine that it is active. Clearly, the distinction between these two forms of the word was originally quite slight and the proof in a 'showing to be true' sense is merely the successful outcome of a test of whether a proposition is correct or not.

'The proof of the pudding is in the eating' is a very old proverb. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations dates it back to the early 14th century, albeit without offering any supporting evidence for that assertion. The phrase is widely attributed to Cervantes in The History of Don Quixote. This appears to be by virtue of an early 18th century translation by Peter Motteux, which has been criticised by later scholars as 'a loose paraphrase' and 'Franco-Cockney'. Crucially the Spanish word for pudding - 'budín', doesn't appear in the original Spanish text. It is doubtful that 'the proof of the pudding' was a figurative phrase that was known to Cervantes.

The earliest printed example of the proverb that I can find is in William Camden's Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine, 1605:

"All the proof of a pudding is in the eating."

The prrof of the pudding is in the eatingIt is worth remembering that, as the phrase is quite old, the pudding wouldn't have been a sticky toffee pudding from the sweet trolley, but a potentially fatal savoury dish. In Camden's listing of proverbs he also includes "If you eat a pudding at home, the dog may have the skin", which suggests that the pudding he had in mind was some form of sausage. THE OED describes the mediaeval pudding as 'the stomach or one of the entrails of a pig, sheep, or other animal, stuffed with a mixture of minced meat, suet, oatmeal, seasoning, etc., and boiled'. Those of you who have ventured north of the border on Burns Night will recognize this as a fair description of a haggis - "the great chieftain o' the pudding-race", as Burns called it in the poem Address to a Haggis, 1786. Mediaeval peasants, faced with a boiled up farmyard massacre, might have thought a taste test to have been a wise choice.

The proof of the pudding

Yes, the proof is in the pudding: When Obama took office, the Dow was around 6,000. Now it's reached new highs, over 16,000.

What more proof do you need?

 

[Synthaholic]

MUCH better.

we won't be enslaved by this crap obamacare - that part is fro sure.

Do you have insurance? Do you get it through your work? Do you work?

 

[J.E.D]

I will assert here that both men were/are different sides of the same coin. So, we would not be any better off under Romney than Obama, with one exception--people would still have their healthcare insurance.

Except for the people with pre-existing conditions; the students under 26 who can stay on their parents' plan; the poor who would have fell through the cracks without Medicaid expansion

 

[Synthaholic]

I know it's only a year into it, but that's plenty of time to get some policies in place and maybe other policies wouldn't have been enacted.

Using real data and Romney's plans to make your point, can someone please tell me how much better off the US would be at this very moment had Romney won the election?

We might be better off right now with Romney, because as soon as he took office, Republicans would pass all the job-creating bills that Obama and the Democrats have been trying to pass.

They would come up with a huge stimulus, pass infrastructure bills, get construction and housing going again.

They would just lie their asses off about it, and say they were always for it.

Ah, Dude? The GOP controlled House passed bills that would have created jobs and Harry Reid tabled them. Talking about lying your ass off?

The reason they weren't brought to a Senate vote was because they had non-job provisions tucked inside, like more anti-abortion restrictions, etc.

Why won't they send a clean jobs bill?

Obama did: why didn't Boehner allow it to come up for a vote?