Romney's Terrible Record

The great Thomas Sowell asked today in his piece in the IBD, "Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone?".  Let's look again at what he did in Massachusetts:

• Of course, Romneycare, which is the basis of Obamacare.  How is it that nobody but Mitt Romney passed universal healthcare in their states?  No Republican, No Democrat, just Mitt Romney.  Than in itself provides evidence that he would govern from the left.  It's not like anyone pointed a gun to his head and told him to enact Romneycare.  He did it on his own.  His attempts to convince us that Romneycare wasn't that bad because states should be the laboratories of reform is just utter nonesense.  His plan denies healthy young people the ability to choose to not throw money away by paying for health insurance that they probably won't use (apparently you can choose to kill your baby but not choose whether or not to sign up with Oxford).  I don't really find it appealing to have states experiment with abrogating our civil liberties.  A local despot isn't much better a far off one. The worst thing about this is that despite pandering to the left wing in Massachusetts, he still only had a 34% approval rating when he left.
• He broke his pledge not to raise taxes in order to balance the budget.  In 2004, he increased government fees by $259 million.  If you gross this up to a national level and then use the 10 year budgeting metrics that we normally use when talking about tax cuts and hikes, this is the equivalent of a $120 billion in tax hikes (I multiplied $259 million by 46.5, the ratio of the size of the US vs. the Size of Massachusetts and then multiplied by 10 to get the 10 year projection).  And Romney didn't stop there, he increased fees again every year of his administration.  He even proposed an excise tax on SUV's.
  
• He has opposed real tax reform by the GOP.  He ran ads calling the flat tax "a tax cut for fat cats" and even refused to support the Bush tax cuts.
• In 2004, he proposed a "climate protection plan" that would reduce greenhouse emissions by 25% by 2012.  Can you tell someone bought into the global warming hype?  I also don't see how you can realistically cut emissions by that much without asking a quarter of your people to leave your state and other draconian solutions.
  
• He proposed indexing the minimum wage for inflation.  Again, why should the government get in the middle of two consenting adults negotiating pay?  Also, why would you want to make it more expensive for companies to hire workers?
  
• He signed a permanent assault weapons ban (though has now become a lifetime member of the NRA).  
• Out of 36 judicial appointments, Romney only nominated 9 Republicans.  One of his judicial appointees even turned out to be the judge that blocked the removal of those Occupy Boston whackos.  One of the strongest arguments to vote for a Republican, any Republican, is that the judges they will appoint will be conseravative.  But with Romney, the record doesn't show that.  How do we know he won't pick another David Souter to the court, as George H.W. Bush did?
  

So let's see, implemented a socialist healthcare system, raised taxes, opposed tax cuts, proposed a draconian decrease in greenhouse emissions, was for increasing the minimum wage, signed a permanent assault weapons ban and appointed liberal judges.  His record in Massachusetts is simply dreadful and really makes it hard to see how he would be that much different than Obama.