Outsourcer Yourself!

Romney’s way of handling criticism is worthy of note. The man challenging Barack Obama for the presidency doesn’t attempt to change the subject or put up some other distraction when he’s under attack. Instead, the Republican has a much more insidious strategy: Accuse his opponent of the same thing he’s accused of or, better yet, redefine the accusation as one of his own strengths.

To do this, he prefers to resort to double standards. Example: His plans to expand his beach villa in San Diego to include an elevator for his cars – not exactly a sign of pragmatism. When the project drew criticism, it seemed clever of him to respond by selling the expansion as an example of his great success, all part of the American dream. They like winners in the United States. During the 2004 campaign, however, he portrayed opponent John Kerry as snobbish, detached from and out of touch with average Americans because of his family’s large villas. Now that’s brazen.

The Republicans are using this pattern over and over in countless variations in the battle for the White House. Romney will never rid himself of his image as an out-of-touch millionaire, born with a golden spoon in his mouth and completely indifferent to average American citizens. But that, of course, is no reason to refrain from leveling those same criticisms against Barack Obama. Romney says Obama spent far too much time within the elite walls of Harvard and is therefore “out of touch.” That’s a truly stupid thing for Romney to say considering that Romney himself earned two degrees at Harvard and thus spent more time within those elite walls than Obama did.

My Taxes, Your Taxes

Romney’s game of double standards is best observed with two subjects: The Supreme Court’s decision on Obama’s Affordable Care Act and especially the topic of jobs and economic conditions.

In the eyes of the Supreme Court, the individual mandate, or more properly, the penalty for non-participation in the healthcare plan, is seen as a tax. As such, it is deemed constitutional. That decision was right up Romney’s alley because he delights in portraying Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal. But then Romney owes everyone an explanation why, when he instituted the same individual mandate in the healthcare plan he made law as governor of Massachusetts, it wasn’t a tax at all. At least that’s how Romney sees the issue today. But research in the archives shows that he even briefly referred to it as a tax back then as well.

Then there’s the matter of outsourcing American jobs overseas. Obama’s campaign team has had some success in depicting Romney as a pioneer in outsourcing jobs during his tenure as head of Bain Capital Investments when he destroyed numerous American jobs and invested in firms that shipped those jobs overseas to low-wage nations such as China.

“Outsourcer-in-Chief”

Basically, Romney couldn’t very well deny the charge so he did the next best thing and resorted to splitting hairs. Outsourcing was the wrong term, he insisted. It should properly be called “offshoring” and work done overseas could then be seen as supporting U.S. exports.

But in the end, he fell back on accusing Obama of doing the same: Obama’s stimulus plan contributed as much to shipping jobs overseas as anything else, he said. Many firms with overseas operations profited from taxpayer money, he said. The Republicans have even gone so far as to label Obama “Outsourcer-in Chief,” i.e., the same title the Obama campaign had originally used to discredit Romney in its ad campaign. The Republican assertion stretches things a bit, since Obama’s stimulus plan contains regulations that stimulus money must benefit the U.S. labor market.

But this is Romney’s response to ads attacking his record as a financial investor. Obama is vulnerable to attack on this subject since his critics have long maintained that Obama had to step up efforts to get China to re-valuate its currency in order to reduce the chances of jobs migrating overseas. And the fact that the Obama campaign located its call center outside the United States hasn’t helped much.