Challenge Match: Druid42 vs queenannie38: Mitt Romney will make a good POTUS.

We need a leader who gives direction.

The debate begins.

Thanks to ATS for hosting this debate, as it touches upon the aspects of the upcoming election. Hopefully, we'll get a well-rounded view of both the candidates. That's the product of having debates.

Our country has a Trillion dollar deficit on our budget. There's no quick fix for that, save an "eventual" reduction in spending. Otherwise, an economic collapse is eminent. This thread, in house, describes the scenario quite well.

Everyone on ATS knows that someday TS will HTF. It's inevitable. Many of us are expecting it.

When it happens, if it does, who would you like to be in charge? A morally based Republican, or a Democrat whose wife spends 3600 taxpayer dollars on a dress for an event? The wife of the Republican candidate wisely spent 33 dollars on a dress on sale from Kohl's.

Somewhere in this debate fiscal responsibility should come up, and when it does, I'll be rife with facts that prove President Obama has set a historical record for Government spending. That spending is a gross negligence of duty, as part of the oath of Presidency is to "protect" the country. Our financial recklessness is due.

I set my case that Romney, regardless of the political ads, is a man of tenure and determination. Outside of the fact that my own religious views don't correlate with his own, I see a man of character, unshaken, and the official Republican candidate. There have been no sex scandals, nothing mutable, a seemingly solid character, and nothing to detract from his outstanding moral standards.

Can Romney wave his magical Mormon wand, and solve all the problems of this once great nation? Definitely not. Will he, as a POTUS, be able to influence the establishment, once elected? These are the questions we are seeking answers to, and therefore will seek to delve deeper into the actual character of the Republican candidate.

I'll ask this of my readers as a rhetorical question: Does a man's religion, his own personal beliefs, detract from his ability to lead? Surely, it tenures his attitude, but as a leader, isn't having stochastic faith in SOMETHING a defining quality? He believes, in something, and therefore, can define goals.

With Romney as our POTUS, we will all become Mormons? No. Having a POTUS of such a controversial faith is no different than having JFK as a Catholic president. I wrestled with the idea of a Mormon POTUS ever since he gained the nomination, and I must admit my resolve and bias in this debate.

Socratic Question #1: Are there any scandals you can find regarding Romney, or is he an upstanding, solid, and ready POTUS?

Socratic Question #2: How important is the moral character of a potential POTUS to you? To flesh out the question, does a candidate's religion bear an opinion on your vote?

Over to you, queenannie38.

Thank you, Druid42… I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to debate with you on whether or not Mitt Romney is the man for the Oval Office in 2012.

I absolutely agree that we need a leader who gives direction, and my personal feeling on leadership has always been that there is no better form of leadership than leading by example. That is, living your principles without hiding details, showing inconsistencies, or making excuses if and when discrepancies become apparent. I think we all know that the President of the United States is not expected to be a super-hero nor is he or she expected to be without flaw or room for personal growth…the same applies to all of us and I think we, as a nation, can accept the humanity of our chosen leadership as long as that humanity is honestly dealt with when it reveals itself to be human and not guaranteed or even possibly infallible.




Socratic Question #1: Are there any scandals you can find regarding Romney, or is he an upstanding, solid, and ready POTUS?

There are are two shadows that I find hanging over Mr. Romney's Presidential hopes that do bear some relevance on his candidacy and potential future as POTUS.


The first, according to Mr. Romney, has been obscured by time, and supposedly his own failing memory, when asked about John Lauber.

Lauber was a schoolmate whom Romney, along with three friends, attacked as a group, sometime around 1965. The incident was allegedly instigated by Romney because Lauber's looks didn't fit in at the prep school all attended. Lauber was held down by all four and forcibly submitted to a rough hair-cutting by Romney. 48 years is a long time, admittedly, and memories do fade.

However, Romney's cohorts all have clear memories…matching memories…of the incident. In fact, one of the group, David Seed, claims to have met up with their victim, John Lauber, in an airport sometime in the mid 1990's. The two had an impromptu reunion of sorts. Mr. Seed took the opportunity to apologize to Mr. Lauber for what had happened. Lauber, who died in 2004, in turn told Seed that he also vividly remembered the episode and that it had been traumatic and had troubled him over the years.

Mean spirited things do happen when we are young…before we have gained temperance and empathy with others. That is understandable. But when Romney was confronted with the incident, he insisted he did not remember it and gave a sort of general and vague apology to 'anyone he might have hurt' back in his school days.



Next, there are the events of the 2002 Olympic Committee that quite literally put the world in jeopardy of losing the Olympic games altogether, the aftermath of which became Mitt Romney's opportunity to shine when he was offered the job of organizer…and a mess to clean up.

The details have been excavated by Wayne Barrett, a journalist who is known for decades of reporting accurate facts of the most sordid detail on people such as Rudy Giuliani and Edward I. Koch.

In-depth details can be had here and here.

In summary:
The 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City Utah were a boon to many business interests of Salt Lake City and the surrounding area and there were unethical and criminal acts including over $1 million in 'favors' designed to woo the International Olympic Committee to choose Utah for that year's games and many other things. There were investigations, a criminal trial, and testimony before a grand jury and various outcomes for those involved.

It has never been suggested that Mitt Romney was involved in these things before he arrived to rescue the 2002 games.

However those involved were, and remain, close business associates, and have donated around $1.5 million to his past AND present political campaign funds.

So far, Mr. Romney has evaded all questions presented about these campaign donations with dismissive statements.

Socratic Question #2: How important is the moral character of a potential POTUS to you? To flesh out the question, does a candidate's religion bear an opinion on your vote?

No, I do not care what religion a candidate subscribes to or how devoted he may or may not be.
Morals, to me, govern actions in the sight of others but principles guide what one does when no one is around.

That is what matters to me...as well as integrity and accountability...and a willingness to face the past, present, and future with honesty...and without excuses.

Meet the Candidate, and decide for yourself......

Facts from Wikipedia:

Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and politician who is the nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts (2003–07).

The son of Lenore and George W. Romney (Governor of Michigan, 1963–69), he was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

In 1969, he married Ann Davies, and the couple had five children together.

In 1971, he earned a Bachelor of Arts from Brigham Young University and, in 1975, a joint Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration from Harvard University.

in 1977 he secured a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as its chief executive officer, he helped bring the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. His net worth is estimated at $190–250 million, wealth that helped fund his political campaigns prior to 2012.

Romney is no stranger to financial crisis. However, if he is elected, he will be facing the worst financial crisis this country has ever seen.

A curious thought comes to mind when I was researching this debate. I read an article that stated the national debt would pass the 16 trillion mark during the DNC convention. The convention proceeded with no grave concern about the national debt. Honestly, I feel the current administration is out of touch with reality. The debt issues this country has are not being addressed.

The above external quote shows one example, early in his career, of Romney's success with business administration. The more I research this debate, the more I like about Romney's character. Originally, I was a Romney skeptic, with a strong bias against his Mormon religion, but I'm beginning to realize there's not much difference between him and JFK being a devote Catholic. I'm beginning to see that underneath, Mormon's are morally sound, and therefore do not require my unfounded judgment. I'll even further that by saying his religion is quickly becoming a non-factor within the realms of the bigger picture.

Let's take a closer look at Romney's Plan:



As a reader of this debate, and being open-minded, take a few moments to peruse Romney's website. Form your own opinion from the information presented.

Is Romney qualified to be POTUS? Yes.

Is his background rife with questions? No.

With the economy in shambles, it's time for voters to go conservative once again. We need to trim Government down, immediately, and tell TPTB you cannot spend our taxpayer dollars so frivolously. When the taxpayers hurt, the Government needs reduced. They need a reality check before it all collapses around them.

The current administration is ineffective in addressing the problems. Their solution was to spend, bailout, and spend more. That's not feasible when the system is paid for by taxpayers, and the taxpayers don't have jobs anymore. That creates debt.

The debt is over 16 trillion. The current administration has presented no solution to correct that. You can't throw more money at a problem, thinking that will work. That just creates more debt.

What we need is a POTUS with a strong background in business, and treat the numbers as a Balance Sheet, and even though nearly impossible, balance the budget. Mr. Romney has the background to achieve that. It's going to be rough, adjusting to all the concessions, but it does boil down to getting the budget back under control. That is the essence of the job of the next POTUS, notwithstanding all the other duties of The President of The United States, and I think Willard Mitt Romney will serve that position, and perform it to the best of his God Inspired abilities.

I yield to my opponent's response.

Mitt Romney's financial prowess has been his leading claim to qualification in his bid for the Presidency, promoted as a positive attribute of absolute necessity during this time of national economic crisis.

My opponent has raised the point of Mitt's handling of the crisis that loomed over Bain & Company in the 90's in support of this claim.

In regard to the issues that the POTUS must continue to deal with next term, the fix that Romney applied lacks applicable practicality to the national issue.

Story here.

The details of Mitt's own accounts of the noble and selfless rescue he heroically accomplished for his former company are starkly contrasted with Rolling Stone's raw and unapologetic style. While some may ridicule Rolling Stone as a valid source for anything other than music news, it is anything but uninformed and is aggressive in its reporting to the extent that it even filed a FoI act to obtain the documents which support their article on Romney, found here

It appears that not only is Mitt not the self-less knight as whom he hopes to present, he is also motivated primarily by self-gain as well as dishonest in presenting his campaign claims for electable values. Many of the practices and ethical decisions that he now spurns as not viable for inclusion in his own economic rescue of the US are the very measures he himself has applied in his own journey toward personal success.

The success of Bain Capital that Romney references as his own special experiential aptitude relevant to the Oval Office is not, on close inspection, the kind of experience that is needed to rescue us from our current predicament. While Bain Capital did initially begin as a venture capital firm, that changed early on to a focus on private equity and leveraged buy-outs. It is a win-win situation for the private equity firm in a LBO situation but not for the company itself, because whether the company succeeds or fails, the equity firm will profit from owing the equity put up as collateral in the beginning. It still has much to do with the management of the company even if assisted in their methods or approved in their decisions.

Regarding investment in the equity of the US, the sitting POTUS can claim personal interest in national success or failure through his own personal investment in US Treasury Bonds. We know Romney has considerable investment interests outside the US but so far, there is no evidence of any similar personal investment in this country.

Add to this consideration the personal income tax rate that Romney paid on his 2010 return, being half of what Obama has consistently paid and far less than the average Joe pays, as well as the fact that he is obligated to little or no FICA tax as a technically 'unemployed' person, even a brutal assessment of his business and financial motivations as being primarily for personal gain, does not support any claim as qualification for the job he's applying for with the American people, simply because his own financial situation is not fundamentally bound to or with that of the Nation and her people through personal or corporate investment.

Mitt Romney's motivation is rooted in personal profit and his interest in our economy is superficial and not vested. In addition, scrutiny of his proposals for remedy are either without substance, details, or are largely uninformed and point to his lack of congressional experience.

He has proposed 5 executive orders on his first day, one of them being to render Obamacare void, eventually to be replaced by 'his own plan' which has yet to be explained. Since Obama modeled his health care reform on the Massachusetts model, it seems less like a fix than an inefficient and needless action based not on true need but one-up-man-ship.

He has also spoken strongly against China's trade practices and has a plan to fix that, too. The problem is that his plan, if legal by WTO rules, will most likely backfire in our trade agreements with China. Is he unaware of Obama's www.forbes.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">own actions toward that end and the possible consequences?

Is he forgetting that it is not practical to cut off imports before we have increased our own manufacturing in order to provide ourselves with the products we would no longer import?

Unlikely, given his own business experience in a sector which is more about making money from having money than, as Rolling Stone said, the old fashioned idea of 'let's-make-stuff-and-sell-it' idea that Obama seems to be very aware of, even if stymied by congress in trying to bring the change necessary to return to that principle.

Sadly, I am out of space but not rebuttal. At any rate, I guess it's back in your court, Druid.

One Final Spin.

Romney is being spun in a negative light by the liberal media, and Obama is outspending him in political ads. The majority of Americans sit at home in the evening, as a family and watch TV, and only see the the negativity. The spin is that the "Romney Plan" creates 2000 extra in taxes for the middle class, while the millionaires get a tax break.

That's a horrible spin. If you don't research the facts, you'd be prone to believe that nonsense, as will most Americans.

The truth is, the extra taxes are not extra taxes at all, but rather eliminating certain tax deductions. It's called closing loopholes in the tax system. If you itemize deductions, a few deductions will be phased out. The majority of Americans take the standard deduction, and therefore will see no change in their taxes. There is no tax increase, just a change in the rules.

The supposed tax break for millionaires? Of 250,000 dollars? They get to deduct up to 250,000 dollars off their own tax return if they invest in the economy. If they invest in new business. No investments into America means no tax break. The clincher? It's Romney's PLAN. It's not legislation, it still has to pass Congress before it becomes law. It's a simple rough draft plan, and Romney, if elected, still has to get his ideas passed through the Legislative Branch of government.

Romney is a shrewd businessman, which is what this country needs with the leadership he will provide.

Detractors from the campaign will try to spin stories about Bain Capital, but let's face facts, it's a capitalistic society, and no rules were ever broken. A private equity firm invests in businesses, it's called venture capitalism, and as referred to above, the millionaires decide where to invest their money to make more money. Sometimes, investors choose companies that are struggling, and sometimes, they choose startups.

With the world economy on the verge of collapse, who has the most to lose? You, as the average citizen, or the millionaires and billionaires? They loose everything if it all falls down. That's why there are several billionaires backing Romney, and supporting his ideas for economic reform. They will invest their money into the start-ups, help out the failing companies, and put money back into the economy. It's game over for them if we don't find a solution, so they have a seriously vested interest in keeping the game going on. They have much more to lose as the 1%, and they see the fruitlessness of government bailouts. From a business aspect, as Romney has stated, the auto industry should have went bankrupt, and restructured, to a more streamlined model, but the government bailed them out and went further into debt. Business is about making a profit, not descending further and further into debt. The government has failed us under the Obama administration. On the balance sheets, the OUR government is bankrupt. Plain and simple fact. 16 trillion in debt? We don't have that kind of revenue. Tick tock, goes the clock, with no solution in sight.

Obama's solution? Add more taxes to the wealthy. That's the same as shooting yourself in the foot. If you add more taxes onto the wealthy, they will invest less. Sure, it will generate more immediate revenue for the government, but in the long term scenario you will have much less investment from the private sector into the business sector, which results in fewer jobs created. If you want to create more jobs in the economy, don't tax the rich more, let them invest it in feasible businesses. Private sector investments CREATE JOBS for businesses. That's what the economy really needs. More Americans with the opportunity to work.

Yes, it's true, the 99% pays the bills. Overall, we generate the revenue that keeps the government functioning. The 1% can't be sucked dry by the Obama administration. As much as I dislike being one of the 99%, I'd rather the businessmen dictate the future rather than the government. Choosing the current administration's path will lead to Socialism. I'd rather be a Ninety-Nine-Percenter than a Socialist, and I may be able to secure some venture capital to start my own business someday. I don't want the government to dictate my life, I want to be able to choose. I want the government to be accountable.

In closing, Romney has been spun with a myriad of distorted facts by the current administration. Their blades are dull once you consider the bigger picture, and the attempts to pull attention away from their own failings. It's a standard tactic in politics, but you, the reader and a member of ATS, know better.

The future of this once great country lies in your own decision come Election Day. Choose wisely.

Time to un-spin the spin and inject some more (well-researched) facts:

The idea that the Obama campaign is 'outspending' Romney's is not based on finances but based on the fact, widely reported and accurate, that there is a 7 to 5 ratio in the amount of ads being aired for each candidate, respectively.
NY Times

The fact of the matter, irrespective of finances, is that the Obama campaign planned ahead and bought on-air time well in advance and in bulk. The Romney camp is buying their slots on a week to week basis which means that Romney pays $1300, for an identical slot, for which Obama pays $700.
Huff Po

In addition, Obama's camp has not concentrated their focus on the prime time family audience at all, but on daytime and weekend viewers and not limited to the three main networks which most families watch in the evenings.


A textbook example of spin! I thank you, Druid, for the opportunity to demonstrate a working model of spin.


When it comes to Romney's history with Bain, spin isn't even necessary, if it were my style, that is. The facts speak for themselves when investigation reveals the truth behind them. Some are subtle but no less significant. The main one being that the heading 'private equity' company is a large umbrella, under which we find both 'venture investment' as well as 'leveraged buyout.' No manipulation of facts is required to ascertain that Bain Capital was of the latter sort rather than the former because it is a matter of public record (if you know where to look).

The differences between the two might be harder to find but here is a good article from
The New Yorker

The gist is as follows:

Financial engineering has always been central to leveraged buyouts. In a typical deal, a private-equity firm buys a company, using some of its own money and some borrowed money. It then tries to improve the performance of the acquired company, with an eye toward cashing out by selling it or taking it public. The key to this strategy is debt: the model encourages firms to borrow as much as possible, since, just as with a mortgage, the less money you put down, the bigger your potential return on investment. The rewards can be extraordinary: when Romney was at Bain, it supposedly earned eighty-eight per cent a year for its investors. But piles of debt also increase the risk that companies will go bust.

I will concede to my opponent that Romney is, indeed, a shrewd businessman.

However, that kind of selfish shrewdness can only dig the hole deeper. If America fails as a result of his so-called leadership, then I foresee him not as the captain of the ship, nobly going down with the ship, but more like one of the rats that leaves even before the women and children are issued life-vests. He's not invested in America and not limited in any of his choices just by virtue of his wealth and independence in regard to income. He no longer needs to make any new money as his money makes its own money these days. The best place to do that is currently right here but if that changes, I can see him having no problem becoming an expat and then citing family history as precedent.


As much as I would love to give a point by point rebuttal in my close, there is not enough room because there are too many facts to present...spin is always the shorter story while unadulterated facts are lengthy and often boring.



My last point, however, is directed at my opponent's declaration of preferring capitalism to socialism. If that be true, for anyone, then by all means, Romney IS your best voting choice on November 6.

However, the idea of the 'virtues of capitalism' contrasted with the 'evils of socialism' is probably one of the top three over-spun topics of interest in the last several decades. I would like to close this debate with an article that I encourage everyone to read...even if only to clarify their own understanding on the matter. It was written by Albert Einstein who is no politician but genius is not constrained by such delineation. I am not endorsing the magazine that published this profoundly timeless article simply because I have not read it nor had I heard of it before finding this article there. However, I will endorse Einstein any day of the week on any subject I have so far read from him.

Why Socialism?

Reading this article with an open mind begs the question, "Why not?"

Judgments are in...

Debate Verdict; In this debate I choose queenannie38 as the winner. queenannie38 provided a better argument for why Romney would not make a good POTUS based on the information provided. He is a business man, not a leader and following the statistics posted in the debate, along with attitude provided by Romney in his camp over his dislike of a large number of Americans proves just that. Also I agree in whole that Romney would be a "blame President" that would not take responsibility for American's actions at home or abroad.

While Druid42 did a stellar job of bringing information to the table, I felt that her views read a bit like a "Why I Love Romney" essay. Druid42 did not address issues brought up in queenannie38s' posts - seemingly choosing to sidestep them by simply adding more arbitrary "pro-Romney" information which did not directly address, IMO, the questions or statements tabled. In the end, both did an amazing job of debating and are surely both great credits to the ATS membership and as debate fighters... but I must give this one to queenannie38 for responding to the opponents issues and questions more attentively and effectively.

queenannie38 is the Winner right in her very first debate. Congratulations!!!!!