Romney Hits Stump for Giuliani
Who better to campaign for Rudolph Giulani than his main Republican adversary, Mitt Romney? That’s right, Romney really made the pitch for Rudy on Thursday, October 4th, at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics. Romney’s goal of the “Ask Mitt Anything” event seemed to be to contrast himself to Giuliani.
Romney, accompanied by a staff of just-out-of-college political junkies wearing Vineyard Vine ties and toting BlackBerrys, certainly did some contrasting. About one hundred students, faculty, and locals made their way to the NHIOP to hear Romney. An interesting notable amongst the crowd was Kathy Sullivan, former NH Democratic Chair. Sullivan, unlike Romney’s staff, did not clap very often, if at all. Romney opened his event with a light chat about the Red Sox. After some ‘Sox Talk,’ Romney moved to more familiar territory: strength. Romney said, “My campaign is about strength; a strong economy, strong families and a strong military."
One could not help but think of the Orwellian maxim: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Either way, Romney suggested that a strong economy was dependent upon solving immigration and ending US dependency on foreign oil. Furthermore, the line-item veto would obviate all economic problems. Romney’s fiscal policy could best be summed up by those three words it seems: line-item veto. This unconstitutional measure, added by the Clinton (that’s Bill Clinton) administration, was taken to the Supreme Court by Rudy Giuliani. Romney kept questioning why Giuliani would do that. Romney’s redundant speech always got back to his magic bullet theory that the acquisition of the line-item veto would keep the economy thriving. It seemed that the economy and the government only need the line-item veto to keep the good times rolling.
To keep families strong, Romney talked about encouraging marriage and closing “loopholes” that the unwed get over the married. And to keep the military strong, Romney seemed to suggest increased spending and troops would do the trick. Romney’s banter continued for only twenty minutes before he moved to his Q & A period.
Among some remarkable questions was a challenge for Romney to define a civil liberty, quote the state motto, and then reconcile a remark made at an earlier debate when he said our greatest civil liberty is our life. While Romney was more than able to come up with the “Live Free or Die” motto, he danced around a definition of a civil liberty and poorly explained life as one’s greatest liberty. “Life, liberty, and property,” Romney said. It is unclear whether he thought he was quoting the constitution or bringing about a revival of Lockean principles.
When questioned about the $720 million a day spent in Iraq, Romney got offended that someone would ask him a question about money in Iraq. “Don’t make it about the money,” Romney said; something easier for people to do when they have a nine-digit nest egg. He finished with a question on the shrinking power of the dollar where he made absolutely no mention of interest rates. The event calmly ended, Mitt shook some hands, and Romney’s hair still looked better than Edwards’s.