If You Could Ask the Candidates One Question…
October 1, 2012

 
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The perfect Xmas gift for your future TeabagetteWednesday night will be the first Presidential Debate of 2012, and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the questions I’d like to hear someone ask. Romney has taken so many positions on every issue that the debates are the perfect place to put him on the spot and force him to finally set the record straight once and for all where he really stands on various issues.

Yesterday, New Jersey governor Chris Christie made the Sunday Show rounds to reassure everyone that Governor Romney isn’t going to give huge tax cuts to the rich because he will close so many loopholes that the total dollar amount collected will remain the same. Which begs the question: Then what’s the point? Why go through all that trouble if your tax receipts in the end are the same? Hardly sounds like an efficient use of government time, nor the tax payers’ money that you claim you wish to “save”. On Fox “news” Sunday, Paul Ryan flat out refused to admit that Romney’s plan for a “20% across the board tax cut” starts you off in a “$5-TRILLION dollar hole” that you then have to make up before you’d see one dime in Deficit reduction. Pressed several times by host Chris Wallace, Ryan eventually settled on insisting that a “20% across the board tax cut” would be “revenue neutral” because (say it with me now) tax cuts create jobs that make up for the lost revenue. And we all know how wonderful The Bush Tax Cuts were at creating jobs.

So here are just a few questions that I’d love to hear someone ask during the Debate this Wednesday night:

  1. “Governor Romney, you have repeatedly called President Obama “a failure” for not getting unemployment back under 8-percent. In 2010, Republicans ran on a platform promising to focus on “Jobs, jobs, jobs”. Doing so, they regained control of the House and picked up seats in the Senate for the first time since they controlled both houses of Congress in 2006. Question: Do Republicans bear any blame for unemployment being stuck above 8-percent?”
  2. “Governor Romney, you say cutting the taxes of “small business owners” will stimulate ‘job growth’. Say I’m a small business owner. Why would I hire even one more employee than I need just because I received a tax cut?
  3. “President Obama, ever since you sent the troop surge into Afghanistan in 2009, the number of insurgent attacks against Allied forces have only increased (in some months, dramatically). If the point of sending more troops into Afghanistan was to make that country “safer”, at what point do we acknowledge that maybe “more troops” is not the answer?”
  4. “Governor Romney, you said ‘providing health care to children’ while you were governor of Massachusetts is evidence of your ‘compassion’. What is it evidence of when that same person then wants to take their health care away? Wouldn’t it also be ‘evidence of compassion’ when President Obama passed health care for the entire nation?”
  5. “Governor Romney, your remarks about the ‘47% of the country that pays no income taxes’ was met with great criticism, with your surrogates saying ‘everyone should have “skin in the game”‘. Yet, you say you also want ‘a 20% across the board tax cut’ for every working American. Since most of those people paying ‘no income taxes’ are ‘the working poor’, wouldn’t having “skin in the game” mean those people would see their taxes go UP?”
  6. “Governor Romney, isn’t criticism of the 47% that pay no income taxes exactly the kind of ‘Class Warfare’ you accuse the president of engaging in?”

And that’s just a few off the top of my head. I’m sure I’ll think of a half dozen more by Wednesday. But now I’d like to hear some of YOUR questions for the Debate. Any nagging questions bouncing around your bean?

Side note: As President Obama’s re-election chances look to be a safer & safer bet, I wish he would start to focus more on getting a Democratic Congress elected that will actually work with him to ensure his second term is success. A second term for the president would only protect us from another Republican President presiding over another Republican Congress like we saw from 2001 to 2006, when we saw the National Debt nearly double in six short years, the United State declaring the first unprovoked attack against another sovereign nation in a war based on lies, the passage of The PATRIOT Act, the outing of an undercover CIA agent, and the price of oil & gas exploding leading to the worst economic collapse since The Great Depression, miring the nation in TWO wars with no exit strategy, and turning a Budget Surplus into a Trillion dollar deficit, but it wouldn’t ensure an economic turn-around. We need Democrats both in the White House AND in control of Congress if things are going to improve.

Postscript: With the death of the 2,000th American soldier in Afghanistan last week, America’s longest war is back in the news. So I thought now would be a good time to look back to my post on the subject from three years ago last Friday: “Reboot Afghanistan: Here’s How to Win.” My advice is just as true today as it was back then. I just wish someone of influence had read it back then, we might have been out of this mess by now.

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October 1, 2012 · Admin Mugsy · 3 Comments - Add
Posted in: Election, Politics

3 Responses

  1. Grant in Texas - October 1, 2012

    Romney/Ryan are seeming most anxious to blame the attack in Libya on the President, saying that Obama “should have known” up front that it was an Al Qaeda “terrorist attack” instead of a violent demonstration against a blasphemous video (even though video outrage has been a factor all over the Muslim world in recent weeks). The new Republican meme is that the White House has been bragging about diminishing the power of Al Qaeda and this attack in Benghazi shows that the terrorists have not been defeated.

    Sen. John “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb…Bomb, Bomb Iran” McCain seemed just recently to want a withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan but then goes on CNN yesterday to “blame Obama” for all of the problems in the Middle East including the “time table” to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan. Recently John McCain was beginning to talk about getting out of Afghanistan, saying, “I think all options ought to be considered, including whether we have to just withdraw early, rather than have a continued bloodletting that won’t succeed.”

    http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/250431-mccain-us-should-consider-leaving-afghanistan-more-quickly

    Then this weekend on CNN, McCain says that Obama fails to promote American ‘exceptionalism’. Maybe our active interventions in that part of the world over the past half century are a reason why we are not so loved, and which may have spurred on the growth of radical Islam.

    http://sotu.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/30/sen-mccain-political-overtones-with-libya-situation/

    Former Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO), now a top adviser to Mitt Romney, wants Libya to be introduced in Wednesday’s “domestic policy” debate saying that Obama has overseen a “total collapse” of our foreign policy…that his “leading from behind” has failed. I guess the USA should never have encouraged democracy and free elections in the Muslim world since OUR guys are not getting elected. The U.S. was in a better position supporting dictators all over whom we could better control. So lets just increase troop strength in Afghanistan, attack Syria, Iran, (and maybe Pakistan) too. What is it to politicians (many being chickenhawks including Romney) if more American military and collateral innocents are being killed or maimed? PLUS spending a few more TRILLION on wars increases our national debt which can then be blamed on the President.

  2. Mugsy - October 2, 2012

    Another question for Romney:

    Q: Governor, you say that you want to cut tax rates for everyone including corporations, but will close corporate tax loopholes so they pay “just as much in taxes as they are now.” What’s the point then? If corporations are still paying just as much after your tax reforms, how will that “spur economic growth”?

  3. Mugsy - October 2, 2012

    Radio host Nicole Sandler posed this question to her listeners Tuesday (are you a reader, Nicole?) and brought us a couple more good questions:

    Q: Governor, you said that “47% of Americans believe they are entitled to ‘food’ and ‘housing’. Do you not believe people are ‘entitled’ to the basic necessities of life?”

    Q: Governor, you currently hold the title of “Bishop” in the Mormon Church. Will you resign your title should you become president? If not, do you believe in the Separation of Church & State?

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