Mitt Romney Goes on Fox News and Gets Grilled, No Make That Gets to Walk with the Cakes

Surprised, Why Do You Think He Went on Fox News

For many years now Mitt Romney has avoided going on the TV News Talk Shows.  The reasons are numerous, one being that Mr. Romney does not feel the need to have to submit to questions about his views (he is rich, you know) and another being that he is running for President under the guise that he is already President, and Presidents don’t do that.  There is also the issue of whether or not he can tolerate someone questioning his positions.

But Mr. Romney now faces a challenge from Newt Gingrich.  And so the Mittster has dispatched his surrogates to attack Mr. Gingrich (Mitt being above that sort of thing) and he agreed to be interviewed on the Fox News Sunday program.  The tenor of that interview, with Republican enabler Chris Wallace was about what you would have expected.

Wallace allowed Romney free reign to discuss his economic policies, his personal life and – without inquiring about specifics – his differences with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

And in classic Mitt fashion, he equivocated on the question of the Iraq war

Romney, who has criticized President Barack Obama for pulling the remaining American combat troops out of Iraq, told Wallace he is unsure whether President George W. Bush made the right decision to launch the war in 2003.

But in an unusual comment, unusual in that it made no sense whatsoever Mr. Romney defended his policies of buying companies, loading them up with debt, taking out millions in fees and then selling the companies, or sometimes running them into the ground with loss of  jobs by comparing that greedy destruction of value with the assistance given GM and Chrysler to save them.

“The president has had one experience overseeing an enterprise, General Motors and Chrysler,” Romney said. “What did he do? He closed factories, he laid off people. He didn’t do it personally, his people did. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to save the enterprise and he wanted to make it profitable so it could survive.”

The difference, of course, is that Mr. Obama and the government intervened after private management had ruined GM and Chrysler while Mr. Romney and his cohorts at Bain Capital were the engine of ruin at some (but not all) of the companies they bought, plundered and ruined.  An unlike Mr. Romney, who did all this to make millions, Mr. Obama did all this to save jobs and help the economy.

And in a final display of arrogance Mr. Romney talked about how

“This is a president who goes after anyone who is successful, and by the way, he’s been pretty successful too. He’s done very, very well over the last several years.”

And of course Mr. Wallace did not note that Mr. Romney was born to wealth, has net worth of between a quarter and a half billion, made by creating nothing, building nothing and doing nothing but investing, while Mr. Obama was raised in a family with very little wealth, and made about 2 to 3% of what Mr. Romney made by actually working and writing.  After all if Mr. Wallace had brought that up, it wouldn’t be called Fox News.