Romney Doesn’t Want His Business Records Or Taxes Discussed

Author: Justin Acuff August 10, 2012 3:40 pm

In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Romney was reported as saying,

“Our campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature.”

“We only talk about issues. And we can talk about the differences between our positions and our opponent’s position.” Romney said of his own campaign: “Our ads haven’t gone after the president personally. … We haven’t dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven’t gone after the personal things.”

That interview was yesterday. Those seem odd things to request, considering some following excerpts from the transcript for July 23′s “The Kudlow Report,”

KUDLOW: You know, a lot of people are asking just on those very points you made that you and President Obama spoke so eloquently and beautifully about this tragedy right after it hit. People are saying, is it possible we could have a less negative back and forth for the duration of the campaign? Is such a thing possible or is that wishful thinking?

Gov. ROMNEY: Well, it really would be nice. I mean, I know that the president, when he called me and congratulated me on becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, said that America is–will benefit from a–an important and healthy debate. I haven’t seen the healthy, important debate coming from the president’s team. It’s been almost all attack ads on all sorts of peripheral issues. I think the American people want to hear a discussion of the economy, how we’ll get it going again, our philosophy related to foreign policy, how we’ll get Iran to finally be dissuaded from their nuclear folly. These are the issues that we should be talking about. But I’m afraid what’s primarily come from the president’s campaign has been a series of attacks on me for my private sector work, by the way, for which I’m very proud. Recently, the Olympics, which I’m also very proud of. And of course, my leadership in Massachusetts and I think I was able to–by virtue of having a great team, able to achieve some wonderful things there as well.

If he gets to claim positives from his private work, why can’t negatives be pointed out?

Gov. ROMNEY: Well, I think the president made an error coming into office and deciding that the economy would take care of itself and he focused his energy on a series of liberal plans that he and his friends have been working on for years; take over the health care industry, a massive regulation of financial services in this country, trying to impose unions where employees don’t want them, a new energy policy, slowing down the leasing of federal lands for the production of oil and gas. All of these things, not coincidentally, had the impact of slowing job creation and making them less likely for entrepreneurs to either open their doors or to expand hiring. And that’s come home to roost at a time we should’ve focused on getting the economy going and only passed measures which encouraged job creation. Most of the measures the president pursued were–are ones that hurt job creation and as a result we’re still suffering.

KUDLOW: You know, a lot of your supporters want you to be even more specific or just as specific regarding your own policies. In other words, Governor, what will you do to fix the problem, how will you convince voters that you’re the right man for the job? People agree that the situation is bad. How can you make it better, sir?

Gov. ROMNEY: Well, I’ll describe in some depth my economic plans as we continue through the campaign, but there are really five key points. One is to take extraordinary advantage of our energy resources. I have a very different view than the president on oil, coal, natural gas, renewables, nuclear. Energy, number one. Number two, trade. Opening up trade, particularly in Latin America. Number three, convincing the world that we are on track to have a balanced budget, that’s critical. Number four, human capital. And by that I mean training programs for adults as well as better schools for kids. And number five, restore economic freedom by keeping our tax rates down, get regulators to see themselves as the allies of enterprise, not the enemies. These things, if we do these things, you’ll see America’s economy come roaring back. I don’t know how bad it’s going to get in the coming months, but I know that if we put in place those five policy directives, America’s economy will see the kind of resurgence the American people expected some years ago.

It seems awfully personal to accuse our President of “coming into office and focusing his energy on a bunch of plans he and his liberal friends have been working on for years.” Also, it is later in the campaign–and no economic plan has been unveiled, other than his tax plan, which has been proved to be mathematically impossible as well as favoring the rich. Seeing as how he is rich, very rich, and refuses to let us know if he’s even paying taxes–I think that his personal life certainly needs addressing before he is considered worthy to lead our nation. It is time for the right wing to stop accusing Obama of lying (by not fulfilling promises they prevented him from fulfilling) and stop the lying themselves.