This man needs to stop saying stupid things.
He was the original flip-flop on SEVERAL major GOP issues, not the least of which (but not the most contraversial either) was abortion. He plays politics to win and has an ego a hundred times the size of his "I was soley responsible for the success of the 2002 winter olympics" book.
However, that's nothing compared to Mitt's messing up in the debates. He and Guiliani got into an argument about tax cuts and who cut them better, each claiming the other actually raised taxes (McCain blew both of them off and said both of them raised taxes). In the middle of this argument, Mitt has the nerve to bring up the issue of line-item vetos. If you're not familiar with a line-item veto, Newt "His first name says it all" Gingrich, and the "conservative coalition" gave this congressional power to William Jefferson Clinton.
The problem with this is that a line-item veto allows a president to pass *parts* of a budget bill, but cut and/or reduce the budget in whichever areas he chooses. This means Congress is giving their budgeting rights off to the executive branch, something that's stated to be an explicit "no-no" in the constitution. So when the opportunity came, and New York city was going to lose $250 million of funding, Rudy Giuliani took the opportunity to sue the excutive branch, and the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.
Any high school history class will explain to you why it's clearly unconstitutional, but Mitt used it on the offensive and condemned Giuliani for taking this important presidential power away from our commander-in-chief (even though it's actually a congressional power). Giuliani didn't do much to counter such a point, because he didn't have to.
To top the most recent debate off, when asked about whether he'd ask for congressional approval if he felt like Iran was a threat he responded with a one-liner that's made him a laughing stock in every national newspaper I've read (which is admittedly limited to the New York Times, Wall-Street Journal and a few online sources). It went as follows: "You sit down with your attorneys and tell you want you have to do, but obviously the president of the United States has to do what's in the best interest of the United States to protect us against a potential threat. The president did that as he was planning on moving into Iraq and received the authorization of Congress."
Giuliani's campaign took the opportunity to make a rather clever joke about the comment saying, "Let's hope he doesn't consult the same lawyers that told him a line-item veto was constitutional." This one's going to hurt him. And if he keeps on trying to dodge questions with... well, "dodgy" answers, he won't win the GOP primaries. But he's polling ahead (pardon the clever, clever pun) in the beginning states so I'm pissed.
So Giuliani was using every chance he gets to crack another lawyers joke. They also like to point out that the above-mentioned quote isn't the only one of it's kind... another instance in the debate goes as follows (provided to you by the Washington Post online):
"Chris Matthews... asked whether President Bush needed the Congressional approval he received for the Iraq invasion, Romney again offered a legalistic answer.
'You know, we're going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn't need to do,' Romney said."
Giuliani himself IS a lawyer (as Romney tries to point out, because he thinks it'll deter all the lawyer-jokes he's getting), and I'd rather have the White House run by a man who isn't going to have lawyers tell him what he can and can't do. Sure, you'll have your consultants. But we're talking COMMANDER IN CHIEF. Not just some political figure... this man controls the police power (aka. our ARMY), and is head of the EXECUTIVE (ie. "enforcing") branch of government.
Okay... this was written by me a couple weeks ago, so it's kinda dated, but gets to the general point: one of many reasons that I hate this man.
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Topic: Mitt Romney (Read 1646 times)