“LEADERS
ARE
SUPPOSED
TO FIX
PROBLEMS.”
HUFFINGTON 08.26.12
Romney wrote. “If we did, I’m convinced that we would do whatever
it takes to set things right.”
But up until the moment that
Romney appeared the morning
of Aug. 11 with Ryan on a stage in
Norfolk, Va., in front of the USS
Wisconsin—a World War II-era
battleship—he had not talked
much about debt or deficits or
Medicare in the 2012 campaign.
Instead he had focused singlemindedly on jobs, the economy,
and Obama’s record on both.
There was little expectation that
he would change course with the
selection of his running mate.
For good reason. Polls have
consistently shown jobs and the
economy, by an order of magnitude, to be the top concern for
voters. While the deficit has often
been in the top three, debt, the
deficit’s monstrously ugly stepchild, has been farther down the
list. Reforming Medicare is something that has not been popular
even with many in the Tea Party. A
survey of grassroots conservatives
THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
about Romney’s ability to run
against Obama on the basis of his
health care law, but for many conservatives, the qualification was
not necessary.
“Conservatives don’t trust Mr.
Romney in part because he gives
them little reason to do so,” wrote
the Wall Street Journal editorial board in mid-February, at the
height of Santorum’s rise. “What
Mr. Romney needs is to make a
better, positive case for his candidacy beyond his business resume.”
Romney had made promises
before that he intended to address
entitlement reform.
“I believe we can save Social
Security and Medicare with a few
commonsense reforms, and—unlike President Obama—I’m not
afraid to put them on the table,”
Romney said in February at CPAC.
In his 2010 book, No Apologies:
The Case For American Greatness,
Romney devoted an entire chapter
to entitlement reform. The chapter
was titled “The Worst Generation,”
and Romney wrote that the baby
boomer crowd could earn that title
if they did not solve the debt and
entitlement crisis.
“The problem is so deep-seated
that relatively few of us in the postwar ‘boomer’ generation even understand at a basic level how we are
compromising future generations,”