President Romney

[Llamas]

Bush doubled our national debt by throwing all our money at a war which accomplished nothing. He also set our education system back a ton, throwing Europe way ahead of us in education and causing us to lose worldwide leader positions in research and such.

He also rewarded the rich with tax cuts, and praised their efforts to move jobs overseas, while wages for ordinary working Americans stagnated, and inflation and unemployment increased.

[jacknife737]

Anybody advocating austerity as a means of getting the US economy back on track, need look no further than its recent failures in Europe, primarily the UK. All it leads is to rising unemployment.

Obama's stimulus plan in the wake of 08 was far from perfect: it was too small, and was too watered down with tax cuts and pork programs instead of just focusing on raw infrastructure investment, but nevertheless, if it wasn't there, the economy would be even worse off than it is today.

[Jakebert]

Bush also removed steel tariffs, which effectively killed the already injured American steel industry (which was crippled by Reagan in the in the first place) which until the 1980s had been America's #1 most consistent industry, and had started to experience growth again in the 1990s due to some of Clinton's economic policies.

[Godxilla]

Well, Bush did cut taxes for middle class families, kill Sadam Husein, start the effort to kill OBL, and then lead us into a recession. But lest we forget, it was Barney Frank that led us into a housing collapse, with the screwed-up notion that everyone deserves a home. That's just not true. Especially for those who couldn't afford a home. If we're going to be fair here (which I doubt), we just have to mention that Bush did have some noble foreign policy goals. His economic principles could be questioned, but he just must have liked the Offspring. He must've known what Nitro meant, and "spent like there's no tomorroooooooow-whoa!"

[Jakebert]

Bush's middle class tax cut had nothing on his upper class tax cut, that arguably made the middle class tax cut smaller than it should have been.

As for Bin Laden, if anything, Bush's foreign policy is why it took us so long to finally locate him. Bush's policies towards finding Bin Laden were incredibly terrible. He spent his entire presidency focusing on finding in in Afghanistan, and for whatever reason, Iran. This is despite the fact that most national security experts had been claiming for years that Bin Laden was in Pakistan. Bush refused to go into Pakistan, and he also refused to listen to national security experts who warned him against trusting the ISI (Pakistan's intelligence agency) as it has numerous ties to a massive variety of terrorist organizations, including AQ, and famously worked against the Pakistani government on several occasions. Bush's support of Pakistan is equally mind-blowing when you consider the fact that Pakistan was allowed to develop nuclear weapons, despite being on the verge of becoming a failed state for over a decade now.

When he was elected to office, Obama completely changed course on foreign policy and shifted the hunt exclusively on Pakistan. This was major, major policy shift that completely changed the nature of the entire operation. Obama re-directed national security focus on finding Bin Laden, after Bush more or less abandoned it in the second term of his presidency. (At one point, the CIA team dedicated to finding Bin Laden was reduced to less than 10 people because Bush stopped allocating resources).

Getting Saddam Hussein was, I'll admit, a great victory. However, the fact that Bush had no plan to instill peace in Iraq after toppling his regime, or any withdrawal policy planned out at the beginning, is a huge oversight that has costs and is still costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. I'm glad Hussein is gone and out of power, but the vacuum Bush left in Iraq was incredibly poor planning, and something that tons of high ranking officials in the Pentagon warned him about.

The housing collapse can be partially blamed on Bush, partially on the Congress (both Democrat and Republican) but really a lot of it comes down to two things: a.) real estate companies selling products that they know customers can't afford and b.) customers buying things they know they can't afford. Congress could have put more laws in place to prevent that type of predatory business (although most conservatives would be against it as it regulates private business) but really you'd think real estate companies would be smart enough to realize it hurts their bottom line to sell to people who don't have the means to pay them back.

[Godxilla]

Remember: Pakistan nearly declared war on us for finding OBL. They were hiding him, of course, and so they got pissed when we found him. So Bush staying out of there might have been a "better safe than sorry and at war with a nuclear-armed nation" sort of thing.

[Tiny Vessels]

What you guys are forgetting the only reason we got Saddam Hussein was because Bush kept saying Iraq had nuclear weapons so the troops go there and find NO sign of nuclear weapons. So we stayed there way past due and (personally I felt we had no right to be there we should have never gone to war imho) eventually we got him. We should have just left right after that but no we had to stay which I think was bullshit.

[Jakebert]

Remember: Pakistan nearly declared war on us for finding OBL. They were hiding him, of course, and so they got pissed when we found him. So Bush staying out of there might have been a "better safe than sorry and at war with a nuclear-armed nation" sort of thing.

he re-routed his policy because you can't pay to be in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan at the same time, and his priorities lied in Afghanistan.

[Little_Miss_1565]

Godxilla, you seem to be operating under the assumption that Massachusetts politicians have a lot more power than they actually do.

[WeAreOne9]

While I have little interest in American politics (though I probably should have more), and I don't have anything against Romney, I'd have to agree that the poll question is worded in a very unfair way. It's a relatively simple question to answer (the logical answer seems to be "No"), but the results make it seem as if Romney is garnering more support than he should in this predominately liberal forum. If everyone were to answer honestly, it would appear (without enough analysis of the question of course) that Romney is well supported here and that the majority's opinion is that he will be a good president, when that's really not the case.

I'm conservative, so even though this poll seems to be in my favor, I still don't like deception.

Do you support Harper?