Sheila Baird, lifelong Republican who voted for John McCain, and who was FDIC chair under Bush (and continued for a while under Obama), doesn't plan to vote for The Rominee:
Final question -- you're a lifelong Republican. You write in the book that you voted for John McCain in 2008. Are you planning to vote for Mitt Romney this time around?
Bair: I am very disappointed in Mr. Romney. I am aghast at the recent statements that he made; they were on YouTube. I think he has a lot to explain. I am also, though, disappointed in Mr. Obama. I think his policies have been Wall Street-friendly through his economic team. I think he's got the worst of both worlds -- Wall Street doesn't like him because he's been publicly critical, yet his administration has performed policies that are pretty friendly to them. So at this point I have to say I'm probably going to write in Jon Huntsman.That she's not voting for Romney isn't the interesting part: she is, after all, one of those few remaining intelligent self-described Republicans. What's is interesting (reconfirming her intelligence) is the recognition that Obama has, in fact, been very friendly to Wall Street and yet they've lined up against him. Like so much else at the heart of teabagger rage against their president, it really makes no sense. He's anti-business? By what measure? He's made us less safe? On what evidence? (Not, surely, by virtue of terrorist body-count.) His energy policies are hurting Americans? In what way, exactly? Quadrupling drilling? Getting us closer to energy independence than we've been in decades? Whom does that hurt, and how? (And, unless you can point to why current gas prices, the same as they were under Bush, are his fault, line up the dots and connect them, don't bother to bring it up.)
The idea that Obama hates capitalism is as ridiculous as is the hate so many people have for the Affordable Care Act. The number of pages in it, or the number of Congressfolk who read it before voting, it seems to me, are less important than what's in it. When people find out, they mostly like it. Not to mention that when they're told it was originally designed by a conservative think tank, they're sort of dumbstruck.
If it hasn't happened by now, ain't never gonna: having a discussion of the two candidates that's based on reality. What Obama actually has or hasn't done (as opposed to crap like this); what Romney says he'd do (to the extent that he's been willing to reveal it); how his ideas have worked when they've been tried before. Claiming Barack Obama is antibusiness just because it's apparent that teabaggRs will eat it up and vote accordingly doesn't make it so. Evidently, Sheila Baird is among the few on the right who gets that.
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