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Amazed that you’d say that. There is no “not-Romney” in the field who has even a remote chance of beating of Obama. Santorum? Of the 3,577 reasons why he couldn’t win, I’ll take “no abortion even in cases of rape and incest” as one of the top three. Gingrich? At least we didn’t *know* Cheney was corrupt before he got voted in. Newt doesn’t even have that luxury. He would bring out Democrats like Hilary brings out Republicans. Paul? For the electoral score of that presidential contest, see Goldwater v. Johnson. The fact is, people like it when ma and pa get their medicare checks, etc. Huntsman? Ironically, he’s the best candidate in the field but he’s unwilling to fake insanity the way Romney is. Romney will get the nomination, and (despite being a monumental creep) he has an outside but real shot of winning depending on how the year goes.
Not related to this post, but I’m curious where you stand on the so called “Big Lie” that has gotten so much treatment in the media of late. Ritholtz et al. say that the credit crisis was primarily caused by under-regulated private companies (e.g. predatory and fraudulent lending, ratings agencies rubber stamping, insurers delving into exotic derivatives, Wall Street putting lipstick on it all at every stage, etc.).
Others (not the least of whom being Michael Bloomberg) say that it was caused by the government, i.e. Congress made bankers give loans to people who couldn’t pay them back all in the name of home ownership.
[FYI, Jim Cramer chimes in on everything under the sun five billion times a week. To my knowledge he has not publicly said where he stand on this — one of the most central financial issues of our lives. I’ll give you one guess as to why. : ) ]
I have a post coming on this in the near term, until then you can see the complexity of the answer in my Blame Game series:
http://alephblog.com/?s=%22Blame+Game%22