Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning that he believes Friday’s Labor Department report salvaged President Obama’s campaign.
“I think it was a significant help to the president. Imagine it came out at 8.2 following that debate. I mean, people would have entered this weekend saying well, that’s close to the end,” Gingrich said.
“This campaign is going to go down to the end, I think. It’s going to be one of the most interesting campaigns in American history. And I think you’re going to see it go back and forth some over the next week.”
But the former GOP presidential hopeful stressed that jobs numbers coming out of Washington really boil down to how they’re felt on Main Street.
“The average American goes outside and says, ok, 600,000 part-time jobs, 114,000 full-time jobs. Gasoline the highest in history. Do I feel better? Or in the real world, can my cousin still not find work? In the real world, is every small business in my neighborhood still stressed?” Gingrich said.
“And I think the reason Obama has never been able to pull away, even when Romney had two pretty bad weeks, is that in the end there’s this rubber band effect that they go, well, I’d almost like to give him another shot, but this is really frightening and really painful.”
The speaker also offered some good talking points for the Republican ticket.
“The reason people are losing respect for Washington is they are losing respect for Washington. It’s not some right-wing crazy thing,” he said. “I don’t know a single small businessman or woman who believes that the next four years under Obama will be good. I don’t know a single small businessman or woman who expects to hire a lot more people if Obama wins the election.”
What in the heck is wrong with Newt? Giving credence to a glaringly fraudulent jobs report which was cooked up by the communist harridan who currently presides over the Department of Union Labor. A meager 114k jobs created and the unemployment rate drops to the same level as when our first gay, marxist president oozed into the presidency? What a coincidence. The report is believed only by gullible fools like Newt. He is a real disappointment on this one.
Maybe Gingrich wants to see Romney fail against Obama just so he can say “I told you so” afterwards.
He’s being realistic. Obama is out there touting the unemployment percentage. Most people will not go further than that. So what Gingrich is doing, is reminding people that Obama is bad, and that this is the only thing keeping him afloat. He’s trying to reach the low-information voter. He’s trying to undercut the groundswell, a bit. He knows how it’s played.
Those grapes must taste sour. Either that or Newt thinks the people are so stupid they believe the numbers.
That’s because people are stupid enough to believe those numbers.
My take is that Newt is countering a narrative by seeming to pay attention to the MSM
Nonsense! Nothing crooked about that jobs report. The same jobs report has been producing about the same numbers for a long time. You are barking up the wrong tree. If you want to whine, whine about U6 not being the number that the media uses. U6 is at 11.7%, IIRC. That is down from the mid 15′s this summer. BLS puts out a whole raft of numbers;
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
Pick the ones you like best. No conspiracy here, just a difference of opinion about which of the many possible numbers are used. All of them can be challenged.
Haji can’t shoot.
You might want to listen to this description of how the unemployment is being fiddled (they get right down to the explanation in the first few minutes)
http://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/big-picture/2012/10/06/03/john-williams/the-real-facts-behind-todays-fictitious-drop-in-unemployment
No evidence there, just two dudes sharing a conspiracy theory. Nothing unusual or earthshaking about that. Normal behavior for sophmores. Some of us graduated, got a job, a wife, children, a life. Others suffered arrested development and spent the rest of their lives arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and other matters of equal import.
“I think it was a significant help to the president.”
then states reality
He isn’t giving it credence, just stating political reality
What in the heck is wrong with Newt? Giving credence to a glaringly fraudulent jobs report which was cooked up by the communist harridan who currently presides over the Department of Union Labor.
He’s giving an honest assessment. In this case that Obama’s lies will help keep him in the race.
Stop blaming Newt.
Help spread this story, it is a problem for Obama and his pals.
As Obama’s cover story comes down, the curtain goes up on the USAO’s cover-up of J.J., Jr.’s role in the Blago story
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/05/as-obamas-cover-story-comes-down-the-curtain-goes-up-on-the-usaos-cover-up-of-j-j-jr-s-role-in-the-blago-story/
*shrug* This is vintage Newt. He gives away the farm on a regular basis.
Gay?
Funny, funny, funny. The jobs report was a disaster; 114,000 jobs??? This is what we’re cheering? Nobody tells the truth. Few want to hear the truth. Please pass the Valium.
I don’t give a damn about the BLS’ sterling creds, their reputation for playing it straight, or their allegedly reassuring wonky colorlessness. Whenever unemployment is an issue in a presidential election year, the October jobs report is always so good it could only result from divine intervention if real.
They cook the books.
I don’t know how people in the BLS and the CBO live with themselves, not matter puff up with pride at their sterling “objectivity”.
They work according to rules established by political criminals.
It’s akin to Myer Lansky’s accountants claiming to be ethical.
Evidence please! Too many people involved in it to cook the books and not get caught. Do you really think all those bureaucrats in DC are rabid Obama fans? I’ll bet at least 40% hate him as much as you do. Obama Derangement Syndrome is as prevalent among the Federal Bureaucracy as it is among the general population. Instead, ask yourself why Mitt isn’t 10+ points ahead in the polls. 7 point whatever unemployment, $5.00 a gallon gas, Food prices going up so fast that the stores fill up in the morning before the afternoon price hikes. Of ALL the Republican candidates that started this process last year, why is Mitt the only one that would be losing now. Santorum would be ahead by 25 to 30 points. Cain, Perry. Michelle, everybody except Newt ahead by double digits.
So why did the GOP elites jam Romney down the throats of the party?
“Do you really think all those bureaucrats in DC are rabid Obama fans?”
No. I think they have a model for what to do in any presidential election year.
Filter #1: Is this a presidential election year?
No-Stop
Yes-Proceed
Filter #2: Is there an incumbent running?
No-Stop
Yes-Proceed
Filter #3: Is a high unemployment rate a campaign issue?
No-Stop
Yes-Make sure the rate in October is below what it was when the incumbent took office.
They did the same thing in 2004 for Bush.
“Do you really think all those bureaucrats in DC are rabid Obama fans?”
Which candidate will make sure the bureaucrats are his primary concern?
Regrettably, the federal civil service does remarkably well regradless of political party. Reagan talked a good game, and boy he sure showed those PATCO twerps who was boss, but on Jan 20, 1988, there were more in the civil service than when he took office in 1981.
Both. Remember Romney is a Clinton Democrat. He is as liberal as one can get without channeling Karl Marx. Mitt looks a centerist only when compared to Obama, who is some ways left of Trotskyville. That is why Romney hasn’t sewed this election up already.
The Senate looks to end 53 (R) 44(D) 3 (I) so it really doesn’t matter that much if Obama wins re-election. So why would a conservative vote for a liberal? Just because he has an (R) behind his name instead of a (D)? That is a mugs game and I’m one conservative that isn’t playing. Conservatives understand what is going down. For a conservative, Obama would be better then Romney.
Except, of course, to those who suffer ODS. Obama Derangement Syndrome is bigot based, with most of those that really hate Obama doing so because of an irrational hatred of high melanin individuals.
So anyone voting for Romney because he is the ‘not Obama’ is a chump and not very bright. A useful fool, to use a common term.
A compromise between water and sewage is still sewage.
Of ALL the Republican candidates that started this process last year, why is Mitt the only one that would be losing now. Santorum would be ahead by 25 to 30 points. Cain, Perry. Michelle, everybody except Newt ahead by double digits.
So why did the GOP elites jam Romney down the throats of the party?
The candidatet is chosen by the people who vote in the primaries. The claim that the candidate was picked by the Party elite is stupid and completely detached from reality. In fact, Romney overcame the opposition or indifference of the majority of the conservative elite and punditry. The reason Romney won is because he was the best organized and funded and enough of us saw in the GOP debates, and the man’s record, the excellence he demonstrated as he handed Obama his behind last Wednesday. None of the other candidates would have come close to eviscerating Obama in such a cheerful and winning manner.
Obama would be trouncing everyone of the GOP hopefuls whom you laud. None have Romney’s experience, character or skill set.
“Santorum would be ahead by 25 to 30 points.”
What are you smoking and can I have some?
You are assuming facts not in evidence when you think Romney is the only one who would be losing at this point. The election is going to be decided by alleged independents, not the Torquemada wing of the Republican Party. Santorum was a dead-bang loser and, I’ve always believed, not a serious adult.
We need to get the Dems’ sorry lot out of Washington before they work total, irrevocable ruin on the nation. Then we can deal with our own sorry lot.
Thank you. Such a self-assured easily testable hypothesis should certainly be accompanied by a link. But hey, I can go to the BLS and do it myself, can’t I? But why would I, given the confidence of the commenter? Surely he’s correct. Or not?
Absent book-cooking, you cannot drop 0.3% unemployment in the US with 114,000 jobs added. Period. “Can’t get there from here.”
Odysseus, I think you are lost. There is a LOT more then jobs added that goes into that report. You could get a 3% drop without adding a single job. Remember a person that stops looking for a job counts the same as a person that finds a job. The reporting sees no difference between them.
That jobs report IS NOT the percentage of people out of work…. It is the percentage of people looking for work (non farm). Somebody that drops dead counts the same as someone that found a job. So does an unemployed Lottery winner.
See? That’s why the BLS statistics are a load of crap even when there isn’t an election year. How they can possibly justify eliminating discouraged workers from the unemployment rolls is a mystery. It’s irrational. It’s a self-delusion. Some wag has come to the obvioius conclusion: the best way to eliminate unemployment is to convince all of the unemployed to stop looking for work.
Stoich, no, that baseline # of 114,000 jobs added is simply too low to drop the unemployment rate 0.3% in the US of A. Those other factors are indeed cooked–all in 1 month!!–so as to help Ogabe avoid a last minute humiliation.
A country w/~220 million working age adults simply does not change that dramatically in 1 month so as to allow such a small # as 114,000 have such a large effect on the unemp. rate. Use your head.
Later on, after it’s too late, we will learn just how these #s were faked. But we know now they are fake because they are not possible. “Can’t get there from here.”
Exactly. You’d have to add 1 million jobs in order to get that 0.3% drop. I thought I read somewhere that 355,000 left the job force the same month.
Hello!? Can we please start the comments over again? Apparently these people are so short that Newt’s commentary, simple as it is, sailed right over their heads. Kneejerkers back away from the podium, please.
Why is there no edit button?
Anyway, don’t forget the new job classifications due to the change in the welfare rules. Now if you are even thinking about getting a job (how do you gauge that?), you are actively seeking work. If you mow your own lawn or shovel your own driveway, you are now considered an independent contractor. Same if you are readying up your home for sale because you can’t afford to keep it anymore. So it’s just a new twist on what the definition of “is” is.
If Ms. Johnson has chosen to craft her post’s headline and thesis from the end rather than the beginning of Newt’s comments, I think her piece would have a rather different spin. Funny how she emphasized the observations that could provide the most hope for keeping Obama in the race.
I get that Newt has to sell himself in order to maintain steady media exposure, but, Ms. Johnson, do you have to reward him by accepting at face value, without a shred of critical analysis, his false assumption? You are only making yourself appear to be another MSM shill.
And if people did not things were good in 2010 and gave the Republicans a huge victory, why would it be any different now? People are just as upset, people hate Obamacare just as much, and unemployment is still high with the job market being just as bad. And let’s not even talk about issues like the “stimulus,” Fast and Furious, Libya, the huge national debt, and all the money that was poured down the solar industry rat hole by this administration. So if things are still this bad, why would anybody think that the next four years under Obama would be any better? It just doesn’t make any sense. I still think Romney is going to win, especially if people still feel this strongly about the economy and jobs.
“The reason people are losing respect for Washington is they are losing respect for Washington.”
—-
C’mon Newt, you can do better than that.
The jobs report is clear evidence that Obama has moved us in the right direction. But for his stimulus and tireless leadership, unemployment would be at the real Bush rate of 17.3%. What we need is another 4 years to bring down unemployment to an unavoidable 1.5% under the current leadership, which will be attained through massive investment in teachers and government workers. Armies of public teachers will teach our children, who will be much better able to create the wealth of the future. Fleets of government workers can assist through massive jobs programs, to help the children get the kind of good government work they need. Sieg Heil!
What Newt said on MTP about unleashing energy development – 4 million jobs – he even cited the royalty est of $750bil over ten years.
THAT is what Romney should be talking about when he promises to help create 12 million new jobs in four years.
Or is too difficult for Romney to fully embrace what started out as Gov. Rick Perry’s energy plan? Newt as intermediary!
If we have an electorate so brainwashed that they actually believe some phoney numbers cooked-up by the cabal of marxist revolutionaries in D.C., and this electorate will change their vote (or vote for in the first place) because that phoney number went down by .4% or whatever it was (and will likely go down again before the election) then we really deserve the destruction this lot will deliver beginning on November 7th. The people I bump into in day-to-day life are total zombies. No one has any clue what the hell is going on anymore. Facebook rules supreme. NFL is mind-control. Kardashian is King. This country has turned into a pathetic joke and I barely have the energy to care anymore.
/rant
obi’s campaign would have been over but for the jobs numbers?
not likely. he could scalp someone on the front lawn of the w.h. and still have the backing of the brain dead forty something percent. they want stuff, they know he will give it to them, and that is enough.
can you imagine a preacher who could convert forty something percent of the people to a certain religion? and even after four years of disaster after disaster, still claim him for the one they have waited for all these years? this is one for the history books, for sure.
This is the real statistic that needs to be looked at. In the USA about 30 Million Americans pay Federal Income Tax this Tax is NOT paid by 270 million Americans who are therefore being CARRIED by the 30 Million. The Country generates a $TRILLION year debt increase because a)It spends too much and b) There are too few people working and paying Tax.
The USURPER and his Islamo/Socialist Regime’s solution to all this is to a) CONTINUE or even INCREASE spending by growing Govt and creating MORE Benefit JUNKIES b) Vastly increasing the Taxes on business and individuals for the 30 Million in the lunatic assumption that this is FAIR.
The Repubs want smaller Govt , lower Taxes , more people working and thus paying taxes, and dramatic restrictions on Benefit creep. Obamaphones you are having a larf.
So the choice is stark America continue down the path to European bankruptcy or Third World cesspit with the corrupt , lying, racist , anti semitic Deem’o'crats under the Unqualified, Incompetent,Racist, Islamophile,Inefficient USURPER Barry HUSSEIN Soetero Kardashian America’s first Gay , Socalist, Racist President.
Or let someone else have a go.
On Monday the headlines will be about Obama taking money from foreigners. Wednesday the House starts their investigation of Stevensgate ( Benghazigate?). Then there is the $5.00 a gallon gas. Obama is looking at a bad week. A real bad week. An outlier in the jobs report won’t mean much.
The danger for the Won is that the media might think he is losing, which he is. If they want to hedge their bets and sell some ads, there are several juicy stories for them to go after. A crack in the media wall and the flood begins.
Safer to shower at Penn State then vote democratic.
The dog that did not bark, during the debate on the economy, is the energy – environmental conflict. Romney touched on being green and his line about the $90 Bn giveaways were half wasted (disputed later by the Dems). The unavoidable issue is carbon combustion vs climate change. American can no longer kick the can down the calendar, some rational, and extremely painful decisions must be made.
The energy cut backs envisioned by the greens will put all of us back to circa 1890 in per capita energy use. We will have electronics because their energy draw is small, but anything that heats or cools will be drastically cut, depending on how strict the regs become. (Think log cabins, no indoor toilets, no air conditioning, no central air heating). They will badly hurt our economy, every cost has an energy subtotal. And the bitter fact is that the US could vanish and global carbon combustion would still increase due to Asia. It is not within our power to stop increases in CO2 emissions. Short of world war.
Most thinkers hold, for this century, that America could become essentially energy independent, although a little foreign trade would be mutually beneficial. We would have to revive both the coal, and nuclear industry AND expand the nat gas – oil extraction. All have been blocked by Obama. He promised to make energy costs skyrocket (from coal combustion) and he did. His DoE boss wants gas to climb to $10/ gal. This is their goal; let them explain it during a debate.
A little candor from our candidates is in order, if they cared about a strong economy.
If Romney wins, he better have a strategy for conducting open warfare in the halls of EPA. Those Marxist-Communist rent-seeking appartchiks will not go quiety. It’s going to take SWAT teams armed with crowbars to beat their tiny little fists loose from their desks and partitions.
Gingrich once held the solution, but for some unknown reason, he dropped it. The solution is to defund the left, entrenched in government. The greens sue their buddies in government for every increasing power and control. The solution is to drop the grants and mission creep which is pandemic in the environmental movement. We need an EPA, but not in it’s present metastasized organization. Their secret papers, the scientific basis for their regs, must be exposed. The grants that only go to leftist scientists must be shut off, with equal funding going to those who hold differing scientific judgments. The economic studies justifying their regs must be divulged. We need sunlight on the green growth. And we need to restore trust in government.
Basically we need to restore professional technical authority in both government and the private sector. The top management of both organizations currently is overwhelmingly financial, legal, and political (in the pejorative sense). This has harmed our society.
We do not need civil war.
“The solution is to defund the left, entrenched in government.”
The problem with that is this: during their 60 or so years in the Congressional wilderness, the only way Republicans could get any funding crumbs was to ape the Dems concerns. It would have been one thing if they’d just acknowledged that it was a realpolitik mimicry to get anything for their constitutents. But being (mostly) men of some principles, they convinced themselves they really believed in all that touchy-feely “I’m for YOU!” BS Dems spouted. They co-sponsored. They took money from the same groups. They got their 30 sheckles to spend on their districts. How are they now going to pretend it was all a giant scam – the Dems, their aping Dems’ concerns, their looooooog trails of sympathetic blather, at least 40+ years of it now?
“We need an EPA.”
Couldn’t disagree more. IF (and for me it’s a big if) we ever needed those Druidic primatives running anything more complex than a tourist bus in national parks, the mission should have been lodged in Interior where similar preservationist functions reside. But that’s not the way Washington works. There’s 535 whores in Congress, all lusting after a Congressional committee or subcommittee to chair so they can squeeze campaign money out of the industries they oversee. It’s political reality. So we got this organization that from its inception has been a wholly owned subsidiary of cretins like Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren and the legion of crackpots spouting faux science to gain control of American prosperity in order to limit it ruthlessly.
It’s too late for compromise. The agency should be abolished, all the employees fired and returned to the ranks of Marxist/Communist footsoldiers from whence they came, the building razed, and the site sown with salt.
Don’t know how I became anonymous. The previous comment is mine.
With all the poll-skewing and media coordination going on, a sudden 0.3% drop in the unemployment rate is suspect… methinks some class of gov’t benefits recipents somehow suddenly got counted as “employees” due to some “rules change” or other chicanery.
Gingrich is, as usual, right.
Historically since 1994, Unemployment has gone down (or not changed)in the month of October. Every single year except 2001 and 2009. Certainly we should not give the 2012 tiny fraction any more attention than it deserves. I don’t think the books were cooked. I think voter fraud is a much bigger concern.
Obama has gotten away with becoming the President of the United States and it is supposed to be a surprise that the jobs rating dropped below 8%. Instead of worrying about the jobs rating where the h3ll is congress and the idea that this guy is guilty of treason, circumventing Congress on several occasions, Attacking a sovereign country on his own without consulting Congress and all the other criminal acts he has committed against this country?
Was Mr. Hawkins thinking about Obama when he wrote this?
DON’T YOU THINK THE DUMBOCRATS REALIZED THAT SO THEY MADE UP THE NUMBER???
I MEAN THE BEST NUMBER FOR JOBS IN 29 YEARS???? OH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH —LOOK AROUND AT THE HOMELESS LIVING EVERYWHERE – SURE THE JOBS NUMBER IS GREAT…………………………..HE FIRED 400,000 EVERY WEEK IN SEPTEMBER WHICH IS 1.6 MILLION FOR THE MONTH (AVG)
AND BARRY CREATED 114,000 JOBS – THE FREAK FIRED 1.6 MILLION AND HE CREATED 114,000 JOBS………………….AND THEY WANT US TO BELIEVE THAT LOWERED THE RATE AT A BIGGER CLIP THAN ANYTIME IN 29 YEARS…………..EVEN BETTER THAN REAGAN………….OFFLMFAO…………THIS LIAR BARRY IS GOING HOME SHORTLY………..WHY DO THE DUMBOCRATS LIKE THE IMPEACHED STAIN LIAR AND BARRY LYING SO MUCH? BECAUSE THE ONLY WAY YOU SELL PROGRESSIVE COMMUNISM – IS TO LIE…………………
Hmmm. IIRC Newt was convinced the GOP nomination was his for the briefest of moments, right after SC. The campaign wasn’t over at that point, Newt, and it wasn’t going to be over regardless of the jobs report, good or bad, cooked or not.
That said, I think the reality is the race has been over for some time, it just hasn’t broadly sunk in. This will be a ‘horse race’ right up to November, the president dutifully going through the motions as he exits.
I have written three replies and deleted them all. You may be right.
The decision, for the EPA, and several other government agencies, is whether to end or to mend them. As constituted, the EPA is a danger to our nation. It destroyed heavy industry in the US, ruined millions of livelihoods, and is becoming a dictator. It can not survive in present form, the question is what replaces it. The technical expertise, and authority, once was the function of the professional societies. The liberals rightly claim that they were subsumed by corporate interests. But they corrupted science. We now have Exxon science contradicting EPA science. This is absurd, one or both must be wrong. The result is skyrocketing costs; it is killing our economic life.
America, Quo Vadis?
A reply to No 15, Corlyss. Our thread has problems.
“The technical expertise, and authority, once was the function of the professional societies. The liberals rightly claim that they were subsumed by corporate interests.”
One fallacy in such liberal claims is that somehow corporate interests are separate and isolated from the interests of the society, the companies’ employees, and their customers. That’s par for the course in liberals’ fictional accounts of life. Us vs. Them. That’s how they make money and get power. It’s alll a lie. Why have they appropriated the language and tools of science? Because it’s suppose to be the very last neutral view of reality, untainted in the minds of the average voters with political posturing. But if science is truly neutral, if the liberals can’t manipulate it to tell lies, science is of no use to them. So they buy the scientists with open-handed grants from government (much of which they have controlled for most of the last 80 years) and foundations like Ford, Gates, etc., whose boards they control. They give them their marching orders, a la the UN direction to the climate panel set up 20 years ago (go find climate change so we can lobby for “environmental justice” and force the rich world to pay transfer payments to the Africans and Asians), and then they wait for the payoff, which they tout as “science.” If you question the paradigm, they denounce you as an ignorant troll, an anti-scientific artifact of an antiquated education or no education at all. In short, they thrive in a society of scientific illiterates, which, incidentally, is what we have now pretty much the world over.
If industry uses science to tell tales favorable to it, the liberals learned, likely from their Communist propagandist influences, how to do exactly the same thing. If I had to chose between them, I would pick industry. As Richard Epstein noted recently, to assume that industry is out to screw over their customers and their neighbors, that assumes they will deal with them only once. Business growth depends on a good reputation. It’s always been in industry’s best interest to be a relilable supplier, a good boss, and a good neighbor. That some haven’t gotten it is regrettable, but not cause for the savage hostility in which business and industry is viewed since the end of WW2. Industry = jobs. Industry = prosperity and wealth. Government has NEVER made its employees or taxpayers rich. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Ford, GM, and a host of others have made people rich, and if not rich, prosperous. With government, you get equality in poverty. With industry, you get prosperity and sometimes wealth.
In short, R., don’t believe that either is disinterested. Make them compete in the market place of ideas. Don’t plump for the government argument just because government once possessed a mantle of even-handed judicious impariality. It simply ain’t so and has not been for some time. Lately, the state has been commandeered by ideologues, both liberal and conservative, who believe the state is all-wise, all-powerful, all-knowing; the state is the source of all rights once believed to be God-given and inalienable and it can withdraw them at any time;and the state must prevail and expand to deliver more benefits to more citizens. The state never gives up power once we cede it. We are nearing the point of no return in relations between the state and the individual.
The organizational question remains: who holds the technical authority? It exists, some one must make the complex rules and enforce them. I concur that if it is held in the private sector, there is a possibility that the citizens may control it. (However in the age of big iron, IBM wrote the rules, favoring themselves, in computation. Bill Gates broke their monopoly with DOS.) The essence is the monopoly of power. Central government power, unconstrained by limiting law, leads to dictatorship, our mutual fear.
In this century, it has become common in complex technical subjects, that Multiple University Research Institutes, MURIs, were created. As the technology matures, the MURIs are spun off from a lead university, morphing into start up commercial ventures.
I have often thought that the EPA should be organized under some quasi MURI organizational structure within AIChE, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and including life technocrats. Cost – Benefit would be a central concern. There is a natural conflict between engineering, and science, between the cost effective, schedule and cost driven limited solution, vs. the perfect solution, which develops after the fight, or bankrupts the society. Most of the issues: e.g. mercury in coal combustion, or climate change should be debated in technical societies, not by ignorant, power hungry, ideologues.
Congress should shrink the government regulators and establish corporate – academic organization(s) which author the regs. We still need cops, the guys with guns which is the only valid role for a tiny EPA. But this reorganization would require courage by Congress, something that does not exist.
Romney is correct, commerce needs regulation, but what we have is a failure.