Plutocrat Michael Bloomberg and the plutocrat-friendly Economist agree: Mitt Romney is just too big a risk to take.
My favorite line is from The Economist: “Mr. Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says.”
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Plutocrat Michael Bloomberg and the plutocrat-friendly Economist agree: Mitt Romney is just too big a risk to take.
My favorite line is from The Economist: “Mr. Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says.”
That is a great line. But “Romney of the mind” (allusion to Macbeth II.i) isn’t bad either!
I was seriously considering canceling my long-time Economist subscription if they endorsed R-Money, but I half expected them to be silent or to explicitly refuse to endorse either one.
…and I am seriously considering a subscription.
It is nice to see some “conservatives” who really are that, instead of extreme reactionaries.
Good point.
The Republican party has given conservatism a bad name.
I enjoy reading Daniel Larison at The American Conservative, for one. There’s a huge a growing void between conservatism and the stuff hawked by Limbaugh and Beck.
Larison is great, and a couple others at TAC aren’t that bad either, at least part of the time. Even when I disagree with them, I at least have the feeling that they’ve treated me in good faith by being honest and refraining from the more ridiculous allegations that come from movement conservatives. And that’s the main difference between the Economist/TAC conservatives and movement conservatives; the former are willing to critically examine conservative and liberal premises (they’re not equally critical of “both sides,” but critical nonetheless), while the latter are highly critical of anything liberals say or do, but believe that any critical analysis of conservative positions is not just inappropriate, but disloyal (just ask David Frum, Bruce Bartlett and Conor Friedersdorf, and probably Larison too). Reading the Economist’s endorsement was a little jarring, and there were several criticisms of Obama I took issue with, but on some points it’s possible that the Econ is more right than I am, since it’s as impossible for me to be perfectly objective as it is for the Econ’s editors.
Put more simply, the Jen Rubin branch of conservatives engage in naked propaganda, viewing liberals in the light least favorable and conservatives in the light most favorable, while the dissidents view liberals in a light less favorable than I might prefer, but at least have the decency and honesty to evaluate conservatives against some kind of objective standard.
The Economist is a British weekly. The ideology of the US Republicans is far to the right of the British Conservative party. If anything, even the Democrats are to the right of the British Conservatives. Besides, the Republican party has now become a radical party. Obama is the real conservative in these elections. A compassionate conservative perhaps (more or less what Bush promised in 2000), but a conservative nonetheless.
Actually, if you read the editorial the editors of The Economist place themselves considerably to the right of Obama on a number of issues. It rather surprised me, actually, and I don’t know how it compares to the normal range of British Conservatives, but there you are.
On economic issues the Conservatives in Britain can indeed be quite “conservative”. But on virtually all social issues they are extraordinarily “liberal” by US standards. For example, they are committed to universal health care run by government employed doctors and to greater investment in education for poor people. They also have no doubt about global warming, evolution, and other scientifically established facts. They are also, incidentally, in favour of strong consumer protection, and love the “Nudge” book.
The Economist is similarly liberal on social issues, and “conservative” on economic issues.