Who Can Oppose the Democrats’ Pandering? Only Romney
While in Southern California, Clinton stressed pocketbook issues with voters in a working-class neighborhood of Inglewood.
“We need to freeze [mortgage] interest rates, or we are going to have more people at risk of losing their homes,” she said. “. . . What good would it be to have vacant homes in this neighborhood?”
“It is wrong for somebody to have to sell or refinance their home to send a child to college,” the New York senator and former first lady added as she visited a couple who did precisely that.
Freezing interest rates is yet another step towards creeping socialism — government control of the entire economy. Although the Fed controls the discount rate, that doesn’t necessarily affect long-term home mortgage interest rates. Federal control over those rates would be a radical step towards a central Soviet-style economy.
And since when is it the government’s job to send children to college? Parents have to pay for that any way they can manage — and if it requires a refinancing, so be it.
Who do we want to put up against a panderer like that?
Someone who has run a business and knows how insane it is to talk about freezing interest rates?
Or someone who talks about sending greedy Wall Street businessmen to jail for their role in offering subprime loans?
The choice is yours, Republicans. Most polls show McCain ahead — but one recent national poll has McCain and Romney neck and neck. The race need not be over Tuesday. Don’t resign yourself to second best.
Hillary (not Rodham) Clinton has a direct link to George Soros. Barack Obama has been endorsed by his organization – MoveOn.Org. John McCain has a direct link to Soros.
Mitt Romney does not.
Thank you for your time.
The Outlander (10d8f6) — 2/2/2008 @ 2:14 pmThe Outlander,
I assume you are referring to The Reform Institute but it would be helpful if you could provide links for your statements.
DRJ (517d26) — 2/2/2008 @ 3:50 pmAnd the fed sells and buys bonds to change the discount rate, it is not a government fiat.
Since the mortgage rate is the price of money to buy a house, Clinton’s suggestion amounts to price fixing. And we all know what happens when gov’t institutes a price ceiling…there will be a severe shortage of money to buy houses with. And how can that be good?
PW (d63e2b) — 2/2/2008 @ 3:53 pmMcCain has the right idea. This is the S&L crisis all over again. Whoever conspired to cheat the investors — from Wall Street “businessmen” to loan processors to appraisers to home owners — should go to prison. If not, you’re going to see money for home loans dry up. And the construction industry dying. And we’ll be back to FDR’s FannieMae, a government corporation, because no private investors will risk their money in it.
nk (12118a) — 2/2/2008 @ 5:36 pmnk — I agree generally with your position. But, I think pandering is the topic and the reason to question McCain’s statement about sending people from Wall Street to jail.
Absent proof, why would you assume the last one standing in a game of musical chairs — the loser — is the one who cheated or broke the law?
Unless of course you are a candidate who admits he doesn’t really know anything about finance or business and has a history of engaging in class warfare.
capitano (03e5ec) — 2/3/2008 @ 8:08 amI find this claim odd; Romney strikes me as being the remaining major candidate who is the *most* likely to tell people what they want to hear, and the least likely to speak with conviction about what he really believes.
Isn’t that the essence of pandering?
aphrael (db0b5a) — 2/3/2008 @ 9:11 amnk, the investors are the lenders, are they not? And it’s their money that’s going down the tubes. Any institutional investors that bought crap paper from the original lenders have made their risk/reward projections and bought in. Sometimes you lose.
As for the construction industry, the housing market has been en fuego for a decade now. The growth rate was unsustainable and that bubble was bound to burst. The industry cannot maintain it’s recent strength as the demand for new product simply doesn’t exist at the rate it did.
This looks like more of a market correction than anything else.
Pablo (99243e) — 2/3/2008 @ 9:27 amAphrael in post 6 is right. When I first read the title saying only Romney could oppose the Democrat’s pandering, I thought Patterico must mean it in a ‘set a thief to catch a thief’ way. But reading it, it looks like Patterico is the only person in America who has not noticed that Romney has been the poster child this election for candidates that tell the voters what they think the voters want to hear, even if it was the exact opposite of what they said the last time they ran for an office.
Counterfactual (61b56d) — 2/3/2008 @ 9:29 amWhy must you rail against help for the middle class? It’s not enough that more of us are dying due to lack of health care? If you don’t have your little card at the hospital, you can be turned away. If you die trying to get to a hospital that will take you, tough.
Enough of this soak-the-middle-class game. People have had it. We’re not serfs in some middle-aged kingdom anymore. In Europe and Canada, the middle class it treated decently, but their economy is fine. We can’t do that here because of misinformation (to put it politely).
I’ll tell you what’s insane: billion dollar tax breaks for the oil companies. Exxon’s profits were 40 Billion last year. Poor little ol’ Exxon (sniff). It beaks my heart… And yet they get billions of dollars in tax breaks.
Are they building any refineries yet? I seriously doubt it. Oil scarcity increases demand, so it isn’t in their interest to do so.
Psyberian (d18acc) — 2/3/2008 @ 11:02 amOf course, that should read “is treated decently.”
Psyberian (d18acc) — 2/3/2008 @ 11:07 am[I]t looks like Patterico is the only person in America who has not noticed that Romney has been the poster child this election for candidates that tell the voters what they think the voters want to hear, even if it was the exact opposite of what they said the last time they ran for an office.
Yeah, because I haven’t done any posts noting differences between his past and present positions.
Yup. None at all.
But even accepting that he has done some flip-flopping, he’s not advocating a rate freeze, as far as I know.
Patterico (4bda0b) — 2/3/2008 @ 11:14 amI decided to send Romney some money as I am registered independent. McCain is simply the the worst choice between two so-so choices.
Patricia (f56a97) — 2/3/2008 @ 11:14 amPatterico: hmm. so the argument isn’t that Romney is good because he doesn’t pander (an argument which is unreasonable, IMO), but rather that he’s likely to be more successful at defeating the *particular* pandering that Democrats are engaging in.
If i’m not misinterpreting you, this comes very close to saying that pandering is fine as long as it’s Republican pandering.
aphrael (db0b5a) — 2/3/2008 @ 11:48 amWell, call it what you like. If you think interest rates should be frozen, and you think Hillary will do it, then you might consider it pandering, or you might consider it an articulation of the policies you support.
That’s how I feel about Romney. It’s not like he has a history that tells me that he believes in these issues at his core. But I find him more likely to carry out the policies I support than any other candidate. Some of his policies are, no doubt, pandering to Republicans — but to the extent I agree with the issues on which he’s pandering, I’m OK with that.
Does that make sense?
Patterico (4bda0b) — 2/3/2008 @ 12:25 pmThat does make sense.
My take is that ‘pandering’ is basically trying to buy votes with policy prescriptions that you’re putting forward not because you believe in them, but because you know they will get you votes … and I find it objectionable when *either side* does it.
On the other hand, if what you’re saying is that you believe Romney is the best placed to stop those particular policies *which the Democrats are putting forward to buy votes*, it’s possible your objection is to the vote-buying (how I took it at first), and it’s possible your objection is to those policies (what I think you said in #14).
If it’s the latter … then that’s perfectly consistent and reasonable. It’s just confusing when I think it’s the former. 🙂
[That said … I really do think that Romney is pandering to conservatives, trying to get sell them promises in exchange for their votes, without actually believing what he’s saying. It’s one of the reasons that, despite really not liking Clinton, I’d vote for her over him … while i’d likely vote for McCain over Clinton. :)]
aphrael (db0b5a) — 2/3/2008 @ 12:32 pmAphrael,
That’s interesting because I view both Clintons as the world’s most accomplished panderers.
DRJ (517d26) — 2/3/2008 @ 12:42 pm