Mitt's Secret Assurances

Mitt's Secret Assurances

by digby

So a reporter standing outside on the sidewalk at a Mitt Romney fundraiser overheard the pitch. And guess what? Mitt's openly telling people that his campaign is dishonest:

In a speech to donors in the backyard of a private home here, the former Massachusetts governor and presumptive GOP presidential nominee outlined his plans to potentially eliminate or consolidate federal agencies, win back Latino voters and reform the nation's tax code.

And even Ann Romney, the subject of a national debate last week over the role of women in the workplace, was more direct than usual. She sounded like a political tactician when she described a Democratic consultant's criticism of her decision to be a stay-at-home mom as "an early birthday gift."

Romney went into a level of detail not usually seen by the public in the speech, which was overheard by reporters on a sidewalk below. One possibility floated by Romney included the elimination of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Cabinet-level agency once led by Romney's father, George.
"I'm going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I'm probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go," Romney said. "Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I'm not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we've got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states."

Asked about the fate of the Department of Education in a potential Romney administration, the former governor suggested it would also face a dramatic restructuring.

"The Department of Education: I will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller. I'm not going to get rid of it entirely," Romney said, explaining that part of his reasoning behind preserving the agency was to maintain a federal role in pushing back against teachers' unions. Romney added that he learned in his 1994 campaign for Senate that proposing to eliminate the agency was politically volatile.


Right. It's "politically volatile" to tell voters that you have an extremist agenda. They might not vote for you. So, lie and tell them what they want to hear.

Now, if today's GOP were a normal political party it might not make any difference. There would be moderating tendencies and Mitt could play mediator. But it isn't a normal political party:



I won't even mention the fact that rather than being hurt or insulted, Ann Romney was pleased that Hilary Rosen said she'd never worked a day in her life. Obviously, being a craven politician is a family trait.

Read the whole thing for the panoply of lies that Mitt plans to tell in order to win election. Latinos should especially beware of the pile of bullshit that's coming their way.

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