A 15 minute speech

The American Thinker blog has a posting entitled “Mitt Romney Is a Big Government Conservative”. What does Steven M. Warshawsky give as evidence? After citing an example of Romney making government more efficient, Warshawsky says:

But instead of returning the saved money to the taxpayers, Romney stated that they were able to use the money for other, more important services. As Romney explained, "efficiency is desperately needed" -- not that the size of government needs to be reduced.

Warshawsky continues that somehow congressional gridlock will prevent Romney from managing effectively:

Perhaps he will be a better manager than President Bush but he will have to contend with a hostile and intransigent Congress and bureaucracy that will oppose any serious effort to bring "business management principles" to the operations of government.

Apparently Warshawsky feels that the Massachusetts legislature was friendlier to Romney and his “business management principles.” Warshawsky then proceeds to criticize Romney for the order of points he talked about and for not mentioning others.

Competition with China: “But the message I came away with is of a top-down, government-led effort in these areas.”

Fighting jihadists: “How this could be a lesser priority than economic competition from China, I don't understand, and Romney did not explain.”

Energy independence: “Frankly, either Romney has forgotten his basic economics or he is pandering on environmental issues.”

Immigration and Health Care: “Incredibly, Romney did not address the immigration problem, or the seemingly inexorably slide towards socialized medicine.”

All this might seem to be a serious indictment of Romney’s speech until you realize that earlier in the post Warshawsky says that “Romney spoke for about 15 minutes.” I guess that Warshawsky has high expectations for a 15 minute speech and how detailed the proposals can be. Warshawsky has some substantive critiques of Romney’s proposals which I will address in subsequent posts.