Let me preface by saying that I am not supporting Mitt Romney for president. I know he’s a flip-flopping RINO. I know this. I’m not at all convinced that he has any steadfast ideals, morals, or principles that couldn’t be swayed by the slightest political breeze. And yet… somehow, like a moth to flame, he keeps pulling me in. I can usually slap myself out of it, but it just keeps happening.
It all started a few months ago, when Romney responded to the painful ignorance of a heckler at a small rally with this glorious, simple, righteous truth: “Corporations are people, my friend.” After so much fiscal malfeasance and economic failure from the current adminstration, that single statement was the soothing balm my Obama-tortured soul needed to hear. I hate to admit it, but Mitt Romney understands economics. Both philosophically and practically, he just gets it.
I was, therefore, a bit surprised when CNBC's Cramer threw such a laughably easy softball right up Mitt Romney's alley during the Wednesday evening GOP debate:
CRAMER: Governor Romney, do you believe public companies have any social responsibility to create jobs, or do you believe, as Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, the most important, most influential conservative economist of the 20th century held, that corporations should exist solely to create maximum profit for their shareholders?
ROMNEY: This is a wonderful philosophical debate. But you know what? We don't have to decide between the two, because they go together.
Our Democratic friends think when a corporation is profitable, that's a bad thing. I remember asking someone, "Where do you think profits go? When you hear that a company is profitable, where do you think it goes?" And they said, "Well, to pay the executives their big bonuses."
I said, "No, actually, none of it goes to pay the executives. Profit is what is left over after they have all been paid."
What happens with profit is that you can grow the business. You can expand it. You have working capital and you hire people.
The right thing for America is to have profitable enterprises that can hire people. I want to make American businesses successful and thrive.
What we have in Washington today is a president and an administration that doesn't like business, that somehow thinks they want jobs, but they don't like businesses. Look, I want to see our businesses thrive and grow and expand and be profitable. I want to see more --
Beautiful. Romney's answer reads like a Econ 101 textbook, and it feels so good. I have often bemoaned that it seems neither President Obama nor Congressional Democrats have ever taken an Econ 101 class, what with their relentlessly goading efforts to regulate, centrally plan, and interfere with the naturally virtuous mechanisms of the free market. Ergo, Romney's intrinsic comprehension of free enterprise warmed my heart more than I can say.
So, I suppose, if Mitt Romney were elected president, I wouldn't pack my bags and move to Chile. Heck, I might even vote for him at the last. His fundamental understanding of economics is just too appealing to resist in our current crisis. That's not to say that he wouldn't throw what he knows to be right under the bus if it helped his political career - I don't think I trust him that much. But, at this point in time, most Americans think our biggest issue is getting America back on the economic, fiscal, and business-friendly straight and narrow. And I think Mitt Romney possesses the know-how and common sense to do it.
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