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Yes, Virginia, Mitt Romney Is A Fraud

Your own governor, Democrat John Lynch [of New Hampshire] scored better (receiving a B) on the annual fiscal report card issued by the libertarian Cato Institute than Romney (who got a C). The 2006 Cato report described Romney’s message that he was a governor who stood by a no-new-taxes pledge as “mostly a myth.” “Rather than […]

Your own governor, Democrat John Lynch [of New Hampshire] scored better (receiving a B) on the annual fiscal report card issued by the libertarian Cato Institute than Romney (who got a C). The 2006 Cato report described Romney’s message that he was a governor who stood by a no-new-taxes pledge as “mostly a myth.”
“Rather than forcing the Legislature to close the budget gap through spending cuts alone, Romney raised some $500 million in fees.

 

“Romney raised corporate taxes by an estimated $210 million and only backed down under pressure from pushing for even higher taxes on business.

 

“Romney watered down a voter-approved immediate rollback of the income tax, by proposing to spread the final phase of the cut over two years.

 

“Romney flip-flopped on rebating capital gains taxes to taxpayers that had been collected unconstitutionally. ‘I’d far rather see tax cuts in the future than tax cuts applied in the past,’ he said as the state’s highest court wrestled with the issue. ~Virginia Buckingham

Now he is supposedly Grover Norquist’s golden boy–no wonder he made a point of bragging to the NRI Summit that he had signed the “no new taxes pledge.”  It was a very new experience for him, and he wanted to tell everyone about it.  He was so eager to convince everyone that he wasn’t the sort of tax-raising Northeasterner they assume he would have to be. 

Perhaps he can concoct an equally implausible conversion story about this “evolution” of his views.  It would go like this: he had a meeting in the winter of 2004 with an accountant, who was going over his deductions, when he suddenly “discovered” that raising taxes actually costs people more money.  “My chief of staff and I just sort of looked at each other, and we realised that taxes take away money from people and give it to the state–that would be the welfare state, by the way, which they also have in Europe!” 

As many have noted, and as Ms. Buckingham notes again, Romney was against making the Bush tax cuts permanent until he once again recently “discovered” that taxes are a drag on economic growth.  (In other words, he was against the one relatively good Bush policy of the last six years until he found out that he needed to be for it to win over voters.)  Actually, he discovered that he had to come up with something to say to people in New Hampshire about taxes, and obviously he can’t run on his record, so he’ll just invent a new position.  His current position is that he is against taxes and for freedom.  Just wait a year or two, and he’ll have a different position.  What’s remarkable about all this is that he is such an obvious fraud, and his record should automatically make conservatives flee from him as if from the plague, yet he is receiving a bizarre, enthusiastic reception from a lot of top activists.  They can’t all be that gullible post-Bush, can they?  Apparently they can be.

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