Yeah, Romney's Worse Than Obama, But America's Real Enemy Is Our Political Elite

I'm envisioning next year's presidential race being about how Romney really and truly is worse-- even much worse-- than an admittedly truly horrible Barack Obama. Romney may have been correct when he told the Wall Street Journal that Obama is worse than Carter but Obama is certainly not as bad-- at least he hasn't been so far-- as George W. Bush, who Romney has backed to the hilt. And, more to the point, Romney's record indicates he would be an even worse president than Obama-- on every level. I'm not going to talk about Lily Ledbetter; it's almost embarrassing. And I'm not going to talk about the basically conservative approach to healthcare reform that both Romney and Obama enacted. Instead... start by taking a look at the Rachel Maddow segment above that airs a series of ads that focus on Mitt Romney's record as a destroyer of American jobs.

There's nothing I would say to defend Obama's approach to the presidency. He just plain sucks. But Romney just makes him look... merely mediocre.

Republican Mitt Romney often says, as he did at three campaign stops here Thursday, that he wants to create jobs by lowering taxes. He says he wants to loosen federal regulations on businesses. And he says he has a unique skill set from 25 years in the private sector to develop innovative solutions that can revive the sputtering U.S. economy.

What Romney doesn’t say is which taxes he would lower and by how much. He doesn’t say which regulations he would loosen. And he doesn’t say what his solutions are other than general principles that for years have been Republican Party orthodoxy.

It’s not that the former Massachusetts governor doesn’t have ideas. It’s just that he hasn’t shared them yet.

At a lively town hall meeting here Thursday night, Romney methodically plowed through about 15 questions over the course of an hour, including one from a woman wondering whether he would continue to subsidize big oil companies if elected president.

“What I would like to see us do philosophically is to bring our [corporate] tax rates down to be competitive with the world but get rid of a lot of these special breaks that exist,” Romney answered. “We ought to look industry by industry and say, ‘Where are the lobbyists striking special deals for companies?’ Let’s get rid of that stuff and bring our rate down.”

The audience of about 300 gave him a friendly applause and Romney moved on to the next question, leaving behind a slew of unanswered questions. What would the corporate tax rate be? How does he define a “special break”? Which industry loopholes would he eliminate? And, of course, the original query: Would he continue oil subsidies?

By making the economy an almost exclusive focus of his campaign, Romney has raised the expectations for what he eventually will propose and has some policy gurus in his own party openly wondering whether the presidential front-runner has sound proposals to deal with the big problems he says he is uniquely positioned to solve.

And where will Romney be getting his macroeconomic guidance from? Well, the Team that tanked the economy under Bush, of course. Theirs is exactly the kind of voodoo economics, trickle down nonsense that Romney is comfortable with. He's already started recruiting an economic team-- the worst of the worst: N. Gregory Mankiw, who was chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers; Glenn Hubbard, who preceded Mankiw on the council and currently is dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; and former Missouri senator Jim Talent.

So... right back into the toilet. And there is just no subtly or shades of grey in Teabagworld: