Romney "has a record of laying off firefighters"

[ProSense]

The limits of transactional politics

By Steve Benen

Mitt Romney stopped by a Manhattan fire station on Tuesday with Rudy Giuliani -- by pure coincidence, it coincided with the anniversary of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden -- and reflected on one of the conversations he had with a firefighter.

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Jon Chait picked up on the problem with Romney's rhetoric.

Well, maybe we should pay them more! Oh, wait -- Romney's position is that these fine public servants are luxuriating in excessive pay, a fact that, unlike swelling income inequality, constitutes a major source of unfairness in American life. ("We will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve," he said last week.)

This is actually a policy flashpoint between the two parties. Public employment has cratered in recent years, with public sector jobs continuing to decline even as private sector jobs rebound, exerting a continued drag on the sluggish recovery. Obama's position is that the federal government ought to provide aid to state governments to rehire some of the laid-off teachers, cops, and firefighters. Republicans oppose this. Romney seems to have forgotten that the firefighters he came face-to-face with are one category of Americans whose economic pain he's supposed to be in favor of.

Exactly. Obama even devoted a huge chunk of his American Jobs Act to hiring and saving jobs for first responders, like the firefighter Romney talked to on Tuesday. Republicans killed the proposal and Romney opposed the president's plan.

The disconnect is a real problem for the former governor (who, incidentally, has a record of laying off firefighters): he wants more public-sector layoffs, as well as pay cuts for public-sector workers, but he also wants to appear sympathetic to struggling first responders who won't benefit at all from his policy agenda.

In the bigger picture, this raises an often-overlooked problem for Romney's larger pitch: his entire platform is a failure of transactional politics.

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His is an agenda of austerity, a sharp reduction in public investments, and hostility towards government activism in general. In a transactional sense, Romney has to hope most voters aren't looking to make a traditional electoral trade, because he doesn't intend to give them anything.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/03/11522155-the-limits-of-transactional-politics

The one term that must not be mentioned
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002609835

[FSogol]

1. K & R n/t

[ProSense]

2. Another. n/t

[FSogol]

3. Excellent message: Romney has a record of laying off firefighters.

And when Mitt visits a business? Romney has a record of closing businesses.
And when Mitt visits a factory? Romney has a record of firing workers.
And when Mitt visits a bank? Romney of course, keeps his money in foreign banks.

Repeat often.

[Scurrilous]

4. K & R