FreedomTalks

We all knew what was coming, and we all gathered round next to the TV here at the end of Blogger’s Row to watch Romney bow out of the GOP race. I stood next to Julian Sanchez, who’s blogging the convention for The Economist, and in front of Flip Romney — the guy in the dolphin costume who made waves at the last CPAC.

Romney didn’t announce his exit till the end of the speech, and he used the bulk of it to deliver a series of strongly worded talking points, covering a lot of topics but not much substance. From a rhetorical perspective it was strong, and it certainly gave the conservative, Republican-friendly audience in attendance a lot of what they were looking for. NRO’s Mark Hemingway, for example, said that it was “terrific” and “inspirational.” But despite the quality delivery, I found it somewhat schizophrenic and disorganized, a hodgepodge of ideas that don’t all make sense together — or in the context of Romney’s history.

Near the beginning, he hit a note about the evils of government-created “dependency.” But isn’t that exactly what he gave people with RomneyCare? Isn’t that, in fact, the entire idea behind government-provided health insurance — that people can depend on the government to provide a safety net for them? Yet here he is, in one of if not the single biggest speech he’s likely to ever make, and he’s calling dependency poison. It’s the right idea, but given his history, it’s basically just rhetorical fluff aimed at the CPAC crowd.

Not long after that, he started talking up alternative energy research. He didn’t explicitly say that he wanted public financing of research and regulation of the energy industry, but that was certainly the implication. What I want to know is: How does that comport with the next passage, in which he railed against excessive spending and over-regulation of industry? He talked about how taking money out of the private sector depresses the economy, but doesn’t publicly funded energy research do just that?

Romney was right, of course, that the biggest budget issue facing the nation is the growth of entitlements. And while it’s good to hear him say that, I again have to ask: How does that square with RomneyCare? Spending on medical care, is, in fact, projected to make up the bulk of the rise in entitlement costs.

All in all, a well-delivered, firmly worded speech, but one that didn’t make a terribly coherent case for any policy program, and certainly not for limited government. I think the schizophrenia is telling about the overall flaws of the Romney campaign and why it failed to succeed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under 2008, Budget, Earmarks and Corruption, Energy, Health Care, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.