Now Romney's Really in Trouble-He Tells the Truth

      He's said a lot of weird things during this campaign, he's lately tried to out-conservative Santorum and so the other night he said some very reactionary things about for example immigration.

      He says many things that just make you scratch your head like saying that 'I love my home state of Michigan where the trees are a good height. I like cars!"

      And of course he says lots of stupid things like that he doesn't care a wit about the rich or the poor-as both are taken care of-but only about the middle class.

     The other night, though he did something far worse from the standpoint of trying to win the Republican primary nomination for President. He told the truth. Call it a "Kinsley Gaffe" as Jonathon Alter did the other night.

        http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-02-24/on-bailouts-romney-is-intellectually-bust-commentary-by-jonathan-alter.html

       I've been rather shamelessly shilling for a Santorum candidacy and have been trying to think of the best way to make sure that happens. Like Rachel Maddow says, liberals like me are like, "Shhh! The Republicans are about to nominate Rick Santorum. Don't say anything!"

      However Romney may have found the best way to assure himself a loss by telling the truth. Who thought of that? As Alter says in his well named piece "No Bailouts for Romney's Intellecutal Bankruptcy"

     "By all accounts, Mitt Romney is a smart businessman with a sophisticated understanding of how economies work. So why is he so tied up in knots over basic questions of government spending in a recession and the limits of the free market?"

     "Because he’s running for president in a party that has lost its economic common sense, its political bearings and probably Michigan’s electoral votes."

      "Here’s the Republican candidate off-script (the best way to find out what’s in his head) at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Shelby Township, Michigan: “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, why, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy, so you have to at the same time create pro-growth tax policies.”

     There is truth in what Alter says-Romney is not nearly as stupid as he has to pretend to be to win the GOP nomination these days. One of the reasons while all of the current candidates can on some level be called fake conservatives is that the rigid Republican ideology of today is so absolutely wrongheaded.

        The Club for Growth immediately came after Romney for his heresy:

       "Sure enough, Andy Roth, vice president for government affairs at the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, called Romney’s comments “hogwash.” Roth said the statement “confirms yet again that Romney is not a limited government conservative. The idea that balancing the budget would not help the economy is crazy. If we balanced the budget tomorrow on spending cuts alone, it would be fantastic for the economy.”

       As Alter says, "Oh, really? If we balanced the budget by immediately cutting $1.3 trillion in spending, as some Tea Party adherents advocate, unemployment would surge. Spending cuts (mostly through entitlement reform) are critical in the medium and long term, but they’re harmful when the economy is weak. If you don’t believe Romney or me on this point, ask any economics professor who isn’t a crackpot."

      "After Romney’s gaffe, a campaign spokesman undertook damage control with a tortured statement that amounted to saying that Romney supports the House Republican “Cut and Grow” economic policy. This is the one that shuns all “investment” as a Democratic codeword for spending (thereby repudiating 150 years of Republican support for infrastructure investments) and says that the route to economic growth is through tax cuts."