the best defense that Romney can possibly go on is 'capitalism is the economic foundation of America'.
Disagree. The best defense he can give is "Look, those companies were in trouble anyway and we made them profitable again. Those people were going to lose their jobs no matter what we did, and without us it would have been even worse."
Which now that I type it out sounds an awful lot like the Dems' defense of the stimulus package. (Which I happen to think is a perfectly valid one.)
That's not much of a fucking defense when we're in an election cycle with an electorate that is more vehemently against capitalism than any other election cycle in the last 80 or 90 years.
I doubt the vast majority of Americans would ever describe themselves as "against capitalism", vehemently or otherwise. I wouldn't refer to myself that way, and neither would the bulk of the OWS crowd.
That said, yeah, even on the Republican side we're seeing various varieties of adjective-capitalism criticized. Crony capitalism, vulture capitalism. And that's very, very interesting to me -- even the Republicans are conceding that capitalism is not ALWAYS good.
Romney is obviously going to win the primary, but I am looking at him as a John Kerry candidate. He's the 'most electable' and 'most safe' option. The republicans hate him and the democrats hate him and I think his best prayer of getting elected right now is to shut the fuck up and hope the Democrats keep screwing up. Every time he opens his big fat mouth he says one more thing that his opponents are going to use against him during the general election.
That and the flip-flopper label.
As I've said before, an election where neither party's base is enthusiastic favors the incumbent, while an election where the economy is in the shitter favors the challenger. It'll be interesting to see which force is the stronger.