Conservative UK Economist newspaper cannot endorse romeny

[pampango]

When Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things.

All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr Romney could win an Olympic medal in it (see article).

But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper. The convention offers Mr Romney his best chance to say what he really believes.

There are some areas where Mr Romney has shuffled to the right unnecessarily. In America’s culture wars he has followed the Republican trend of adopting ever more socially conservative positions. He says he will appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court and back the existing federal Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA). This goes down well with southern evangelicals, less so with independent voters: witness the furore over one (rapidly disowned) Republican’s ludicrous remarks about abortion and “legitimate rape” (see article). But the powers of the federal government are limited in this area; DOMA has not stopped a few states introducing gay marriage and many more recognising gay civil partnerships.

The damage done to a Romney presidency by his courting of the isolationist right in the primaries could prove more substantial. He has threatened to label China as a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency. Even if it is unclear what would follow from that, risking a trade war with one of America’s largest trading partners when the recovery is so sickly seems especially mindless. Some of his anti-immigration policies won’t help, either. And his attempts to lure American Jews with near-racist talk about Arabs and belligerence against Iran could ill serve the interests of his country (and, for that matter, Israel’s).

http://www.economist.com/node/21560864?frsc=dg|a

Reading between the lines, you can tell that the Economist would like to endorse any republican candidate but just can't bring itself to endorse romney.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. " I’m actually gonna — I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by

what I said, whatever it was. I’ll go back and take a look at what was said there."

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. The Economist also endorsed Obama in 2008

and Kerry in 2004; their previous history of endorsements: Bush in 2000, Dole in '96, Clinton in '92.

The line from their endorsement of Clinton in 1992 seems about as applicable today:

The Republicans, tired to distraction, out of ideas, have become prey to a far right whose economic nostrums run to demonising taxes, and many of whose social ideas would rub salt in the country's wounds.

http://www.economist.com/node/12499760

The Economist is probably both small-c conservative and big C Conservative (in the sense of "Tory&quot ; but their conservatism is of a moderate variety that finds the American conservative fixation on social issues and demagoguery distasteful.