What Republicans Think. Do they?

Today was a good breakfast watching Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, on Squawk Box and reading David Brooks' editorial in the Times, “What Republicans Think.” I bring this up because Lou has got to be the sort of constructive businessman that the GOP would bow and salute to. Yet he appeared non-plussed by the partisan politics practiced in Washington. “Look I am just a computer salesman from the past, so who cares what I think about Washington” he said more or less. Which got me to thinking when reading Brooks. Is there any thinking going on over there at the GOP?

What I detest about Romney in particular and Republicans in general is that they insult my intelligence. If Romney is anything like Gerstner then he will take a meat cleaver to the budget. He will cut and re-organize government and generally try to eliminate some of the strange life forms that develop in the petrie dishes of bureaucrats talking to each other in their own little world. But Romney explains nothing and with a vagueness directed by poll watching doesn't inspire confidence that he knows what he is about. Obama will probably be reelected by Romney's timidity.

Romney's present course is to be elected without a mandate.  Reagan, on the other hand,  talked radical and was not fearful of scaring some people away.  Never the less, he get's elected with a clear mandate to veer away from big government and toward individual initiative.  I don't see Mitt leveling with the people so that when elected he can convince them to do the heavy lifting required of all of us if we are to turn this global economic malaise around.