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Mitt Romney on TechnologyFormer Republican Governor (MA) |
Many are pessimistic. I'm not.
In the next 10 years, we'll see more progress, more change than the world has seen in the last 10 centuries.
Our next president must unleash the promise and innovation of the American people.
I'm ready for that challenge. The future begins now.
I'm Mitt Romney and I not only approve this message, I'm asking for your vote
The ad features Romney talking straight to the camera, exuding confidence and optimism and saying "I'm ready" to "unleash the promise and innovation of the American people." We have no quarrel with that; any candidate is entitled to lay out goals.
A Romney spokesman said he didn't mean what he said as fact, calling the statement "a metaphor." We call it a ludicrous exaggeration. Lacking a crystal ball or time machine, we can't predict the future. But based on available evidence we judge Romney's claim to be so far beyond the usual bounds of campaign exaggeration as to be worthy of ridicule.
A: There's no question--if you really want to make some money in this country, really get some money so we can repair our infrastructure and build for the future, the biggest source of that is a growing American economy. If the economy is growing slowly, when tax revenues hardly move at all, and, boy, you better raise taxes to get more money for all the things you want to do. But if the economy is growing quickly, then we generate all sorts of new revenue. And the best way to keep the economy rolling is to keep our taxes down. Our bridges--let me tell you what we did in our state. We found that we had 500 bridges, roughly, that were deemed structurally deficient. And so we changed how we focused our money. Instead of spending it to build new projects--the bridge to nowhere, new trophies for congressmen--we instead said, "Fix it first." We have to reorient how we spend our money.
