Former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney appears to be one of the front-runners of the 2012 presidential campaign. After losing to John McCain in the 2008 primaries, he immediately founded the Free and Strong America PAC, a political action committed whose goal was to help raise money for other Republican candidates and to promote Republican policies.
Romney kept much of his committee’s money to pay for salaries and fees for his existing political staff, which ultimately paved his way to run in the 2012 election.
Initially, Romney was registered as an independent up until his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign. However, as time progressed his policies began to lean more on the fiscal conservative side. He opposes elective abortion, same-sex marriages and medical marijuana. He strongly supports rebuilding America’s education system by increasing standards and quality; he also supports charter schools, school vouchers and home schooling. In favor of Bush’s tax cuts, he is not open to an increase in federal gas taxes. He focuses on creating more jobs for America and wants America to steer in the direction of becoming more independent of foreign oil sources, using alternative sources of energy.
A controversial issue that Romney is directly involved with is his past signing of the Massachusetts health care reform, which is fairly similar to the current health care reform that President Obama is trying to pass. Massachusetts’s health care reform provided near-universal health insurance access through subsidies and state-level mandates.
Romney is opposed to a national individual mandate and believes that decisions, such as a health care reform, should be left up to the states. In The New York Times interview, he said, “People ask me if this is conservative or liberal, and my answer is yes. It's liberal in the sense that we're getting our citizen’s health insurance. It's conservative in that we're not getting a government takeover.”
Romney prides himself upon his business and financial success. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he entered as a CEO at Bain & Company, ultimately leading it out of fiscal crisis and turning it into one of the more profitable firms in the nation. In 2002 he saved the Winter Olympics by revamping organizations leadership and policies, reducing budgets and boosting fund raising. An event that was running $379 million short before Romney stepped in ended up earning a profit of $100 million.
A nation that is slowly recovering a numbing recession, may find Romney candidate to help pull the country out strong.
Amanda Leonard
Communication Studies Major
Wilkes 2013
