Romney Expands Staff to Include More Establishment Elites
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Under the assumption that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will become the Republican Party’s nominee for President in Tampa in June, the Romney campaign staff is growing from 87 to more than 400 to prepare for the national election in November.  

A close look at Romney’s expanded staff reveals the same influence of elites that was reflected by the members of his “Foreign Policy and National Security Advisory Team” announced last October. Included in that list were:

 Members of Romney’s “Economic Policy Team” include:

  • Glenn Hubbard: served as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors during President George Bush’s first term; currently Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; considered to be a “supply-side” economist who helped design the 2003 “Bush Tax Cuts”; is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; holds degrees from the University of Central Florida and Harvard University.
     
  • Jim Talent: former Republican Senator from Missouri; was an advisor to Romney’s presidential campaign in 2008; holds the position of distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation; voted for the Renewable Fuel Standard, an act that provides “incentives” and government loan guarantees to “innovative [read: green] technologies” and mandates for increased ethanol in gasoline and other interventionist measures; supported the Bush Medicare prescription drug benefit — Medicare Part D — as well as increases in the minimum wage; holds degrees from Washington University (St. Louis) and the University of Chicago Law School.
     
  • Vin Weber: former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota; retired from Congress in 1992 following a scandal which revealed that the House’s bank repeatedly paid overdrafts for 125 checks on his account; became an advisor to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in 1994; appeared regularly on National Public Radio (NPR) concerning health care issues until it was disclosed that he was a paid lobbyist for several large health insurance companies; a member of Eliot Cohen’s Project for the New American Century (see above); is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations where he also serves on the board.

To put it nicely, the Romney campaign is in bed with the establishment elites (and vice versa), including many of his advisors holding membership in the Council on Foreign Relations and being cheerleaders for militarist interventions abroad and economic interventions here at home.

If the remainder of the 400 members of his campaign have the same background and worldview, there is no reason whatsoever to think that anything substantial will change if the former Governor of Massachusetts somehow gets elected President of the United States in November. A vote for Romney will, in effect, be a vote for Obama (and vice versa).   

Photo: Then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, and his Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey —  a member of the Council of Foreign Relations — arrive for a news conference at the Statehouse in Boston, July 27, 2006: AP Images