Mitt sure is a stand-up guy. He knows what he believes and he'll stand his ground. You can trust him. Except...
Mitt Romney refused to answer reporters' questions about how he would handle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after a Tuesday "storm relief" event in Ohio for Hurricane Sandy.
From the Romney pool report:
TV pool asked Romney at least five times whether he would eliminate FEMA as president/what he would do with FEMA. He ignored the qs but they are audible on cam. The music stopped at points and the qs would have been audible to him.
A follow-up report noted the specific questions Romney ignored, as he was collecting hurricane supplies following his event:
"Gov are you going to eliminate FEMA?" a print pooler shouted, receiving no response.
Wires reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored.
Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions:
"Gov are you going to see some storm damage?"
"Gov has [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie invited you to come survey storm damage?"
"Gov you've been asked 14 times, why are you refusing to answer the question?"
As a reminder, here's what Governor Romney
said about FEMA last year at a Republican presidential debate:
During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.
"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"
"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.
"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."
Here's what it comes down to: Republicans are robotically wedded to a rigid, ideological approach to government. The states handle things better than the feds. Always. The private sector handles things better than the government. Always. The bigger the government the smaller the citizen. Always.
Liberals analyze an indvidual situation and try to determine the appropriate response. Conservatives rely on dogma, because that's how they see the world, through the eyes of dogma. That's why they consider 'nuance' a dirty word, because their worldview is so simplistic, so black and white, so Manichean. It's why their prescriptions are always the same, no matter the situation.
The President got it exactly right in Charlotte when he characterized the Republican position on tax cuts:
“Have surplus, try a tax cut,” the president said. “Deficit too high, have another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations and call me in the morning.”
The problem is that the world isn't a simple place. The problems we face aren't simple. But when Mitt Romney was faced with some simple questions earlier today about what he had said about FEMA and disaster relief during this campaign, he couldn't even offer the simplest of replies. He just ignored them. This is one position he won't be able to etch-a-sketch away.
The problem for Mitt Romney is that, to be a successful President, you can't just ignore problems or rely on dogma. We found that out with George W. Bush. We can't afford to repeat those mistakes again.
PS-Please check out my new book Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, published last month by Potomac Books, where I discuss these issues in greater detail. You can read a review by DailyKos's own Greg Dworkin here.
4:27 PM PT: Here is the video of Romney's not answering the FEMA questions (h/t thtbaw):