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"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
WEBCommentary Contributor
Author:  Michael J. Gaynor
Bio: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  January 23, 2008
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Topic category:  Other/General

The Case for Mitt Romney: Economy, Judges

Query: After losing the Republican presidential nomination to President Bush in 2000, McCain admitted that he had craved the Republican nomination so badly that he had broken his promise to talk straight and lied about his views on South Carolina flying the Confederate battle flag. If McCain did become President in 2009, would he admit that he really had still wanted McCain-Kennedy to become law and revert to promoting its passage?

When it comes to the economy and judges, Mitt's the One!

Bad economic news highlights the need for a President with the credentials of Mitt Romney, not political maverick John McCain, Mitt's chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination.

With the economy front and center now, Mitt is especially preferable and the lion's share of voters in Florida's upcoming (Republicans only) primary should reach the same conclusion that a large plurality of the Republican primary voters in especially economically challenged Michigan recently did: For President, Make It Mitt. He's The Best Fit.

National Review: "Romney is an intelligent, articulate, and accomplished former businessman and governor. At a time when voters yearn for competence and have soured on Washington..., Romney offers proven executive skill. He has demonstrated it in everything he has done in his professional life, and his tightly organized, disciplined campaign is no exception. He himself has shown impressive focus and energy."

As the late President Reagan said, "Facts are pesky things."

McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the naval academy and admittedly is not very knowledgeable about economics.

A war hero, he was, back in the 1960's.

A personal moral exemplar (like Mitt), he was not.

Wikipedia:

"As a child, John was known for a quick temper...."

"McCain was a rebellious midshipman and his career at the Naval Academy was ambivalent and lackluster. He had his share of run-ins with the faculty and leadership; each year he was given over 100 demerits (for unshined shoes, formation faults, talking out of place, and the like), earning him membership in the 'Century Club'."

"Upon his graduation McCain was commissioned...and....earned a reputation as a party man, .... dated an exotic dancer named 'Marie the Flame of Florida', and, as he would later say, 'generally misused my good health and youth.'"

"During a practice run in Corpus Christi, his aircraft crashed...; another time he emerged intact from a collision with power lines over Spain."

"During [their] time in Jacksonville, the McCains' marriage began to falter. McCain had extramarital affairs, and he would later say, 'My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine.' His wife Carol would later echo those sentiments, saying 'I attribute [the breakup of our marriage] more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else.'"

"McCain and [Cindy] Hensley were married on May 17, 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona, with Senators William Cohen and Gary Hart as best man and groomsman. McCain's children were very upset with him and did not attend the wedding, but after several years they reconciled with him and [his second and current wife] Cindy.

Mitt Romney (1) attended Brigham Young University and graduated as valedictorian, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in 1971 and graduated from a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration program coordinated by Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School cum laude from his law school and as a Baker scholar (signifying the he was in the top 5% of his class) in his business school in 1975.

Mitt's business success was phenomenal.

Wikipedia:

"After graduation, Romney remained in Massachusetts and went to work for the Boston Consulting Group, where he had interned during the summer of 1974. From 1978 to 1984, Romney was a vice president of Bain & Company, Inc., another management consulting firm based in Boston. In 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to co-found a spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital. During the 14 years he headed the company, Bain Capital's average annual internal rate of return on realized investments was 113 percent, making money primarily through leveraged buyouts. He invested in or bought many well-known companies such as Staples, Brookstone, Domino's, Sealy Corporation and Sports Authority.

"In 1990, Romney was asked to return to Bain & Company, which was facing financial collapse. As CEO, Romney managed an effort to restructure the firm's employee stock-ownership plan, real-estate deals and bank loans, while increasing fiscal transparency. Within a year, he had led Bain & Company through a highly successful turnaround and returned the firm to profitability without layoffs or partner defections."

No wonder Mitt shares the late President Reagan's optimism instead of McCain's pessimism and the voters in Michigan's Republican primary preferred Mitt by a wide margin.

His personal fortune made, Mitt left Bain Capital in 1998 to head the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee and used his terrific turnaround skills to save the day.

Wikipedia:

"In 1999, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. Plans were being made to scale back the games in order to compensate for the fiscal crisis. The Games were also damaged by allegations of bribery involving top officials....

"On February 11, 1999, Romney was hired as the new president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Romney revamped the organization's leadership and policies, reduced budgets and boosted fundraising. He also worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by coordinating a $300 million security budget. Despite the initial fiscal shortfall, the Games ended up clearing a profit of $100 million, not counting the $224.5 million in security costs contributed by outside sources.

"Romney contributed $1 million to the Olympics, and donated the $825,000 salary he earned as President and CEO to charity. He wrote a book about his experience titled Turnaround Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games."

Then there is the matter of judges and the need to undo the great damage done by judicial activists who disregarded the law, including the Constitution, and did what they wanted to do instead of what a judge is supposed to do.

McCain, the Democrats' favorite Republican, was the Republican leader of the Gang of Fourteen, and cannot be counted on to appoint justices like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and thereby anger his liberal friends in the United States senate, like Ted Kennedy (with whom McCain teamed to craft the thankfully defeated Kennedy-McCain immigration bill) and Russ Feingold (with whom McCain teamed to craft the fundamentally flawed McCain-Feingold campaign reform bill).

Fred Hutchinson, Renew America, June 14, 2005, evaluating the agreement made by the Gang of Fourteen:

"A group of Senate moderates blinked. Seven moderate Republican Senators and seven moderate Democratic Senators, the 'gang of fourteen,' made a compromise deal."

"[W]as the deal of the gang of fourteen virtuous or vicious? From the perspective of the order and harmony of the Senate, the deal was virtuous. From the standpoint of policy outcomes, it was not so virtuous. With the nuclear option off the table, the Democrats might start once more with filibustering conservative nominees to the Supreme Court. If this happens, the court will be more likely to shelter abominable things such as abortion, the right to die, homosexuality, and banning God from the public square."

In his sensational "Faith in America" speech, Mitt emphasized the importance of judges who share basic American values: "We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'"

The principals of the Judicial Confirmation Network are supporting Mitt, not McCain: a clear signal that mitt would be best on judges.

Recent email to me:

"In the beginning I was a little skeptical toward Mitt. I did enjoy reading your thought provoking narrative regarding the GOP race, 'Mitt’s the One, and Why'. Great insight, I hope the majority of people in this great nation read and think about your column.

"I do believe that the issue at hand is who can best lead this great nation in a positive moral and aggressive manner and Mitt has it hands down. Why I even felt prompted to send Mitt a donation toward his campaign, though I’m not sure he needs it or that he is running short of cash, I thought I should put my money where my heart is."

Excellent!

Dick Morris: "It’s too early to coronate McCain or Hillary but they have clearly moved to the level of front runners as a result of their victories on Saturday."

Mr. Morris is half right: Hillary's a frontrunner, but McCain is not.

Mr. Morris claims that McCain and Giuliani are the Republicans with "the best chance to defeat Hillary."

Mr. Morris: "She can’t pull the old experience gambit on this long term Senator."

The key word in that sentence is "old." Team Clinton would point out that McCain is too old for the grueling job of President of the United States.

Mr. Morris: McCain's "record on everything from global warming to corporate reform to campaign finance to torture to tobacco regulation to immigration reform makes it very hard for Hillary to defeat him."

Stated otherwise, McCain is the liberal Democrats' favorite Republican.

That's reason NOT to nominate him if the Republican Party is to remain true to its principles and values!

National Review is right:

"Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest."

"John McCain is not as conservative as Romney. He sponsored and still champions a campaign-finance law that impinged on fundamental rights of political speech; he voted against the Bush tax cuts; he supported this year's amnesty bill, although he now says he understands the need to control the border before doing anything else."

Mr. Morris: "because of his appeal to Hispanics left over from his battle for the McCain-Kennedy immigration plan, [McCain] is ideally suited to take minority voters, burned by Hillary’s scorched earth policy against Barack Obama, away from the Democrats."

The Republicans need a nominee who appeals to law-abiding Hispanics and won't surrender to illegal immigrants!

And not a member of the Gang of Fourteen, the so-called "moderate" Senators who stopped the Senate from conforming its filibuster rule to the Constitution's provision that presidential nominees should be confirmed by a simple majority, not a super-majority.

Query: After losing the Republican presidential nomination to President Bush in 2000, McCain admitted that he had craved the Republican nomination so badly that he had broken his promise to talk straight and lied about his views on South Carolina flying the Confederate battle flag. If McCain did become President in 2009, would he admit that he really had still wanted McCain-Kennedy to become law and revert to promoting its passage?

Like St. Paul's conversion of the road to Damascus, Mitt's conversion on the abortion issue is real. As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt came down on the side of life.

Has McCain really converted on illegal immigration, or did the same enormous ambition that got the best of him in 2000, when he was 63, get the best of him again, at 71?

Think carefully, especially Florida Republicans.

Michael J. Gaynor

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Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


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