This is such traditional Washington political thinking and it irritates me to no end. “In order to get elected I must support this bad policy. It is OK for me to support this bad policy because my election is the best thing for the country and therefore outweighs this one sellout.”

Unfortunately, there is never a sellout on just one issue. The same thinking leads the politician to sell out again and again and again until the end results of electing an R end up being only slightly better than the end results of electing a D.

So Ya want us to love ya, but you just don’t seem to know a single damn thing about free markets do you?

Hey, here is an Idea, Take your hairdo, your millions, and your economic illiteracy and go the hell away, forever!

It’s very meanspirited to use facts and direct quotes that paint him in a negative light. He is clearly the frontrunner®™ and we need to get behind him.

/endsarc

why anyone would support ethanol in order to go green is beyond me.
lessen the fuel mileage of the vehicle a LOT, make it very hard to start in -15 below and less and takes longer to get to operating temp.
damages small engines and any car more than a few years old requiring more materials to build replacements, its the anti-green.

Any Republican candidate who supports ethanol subsidies is running in the wrong primary. It is indefensible to support this and claim to be a fiscal conservative. Pawlenty surprised me when he came out against them but it immediately raised him to my possible list.

Romney once again proves he follows the 42 year establishment Republican legacy of Nixon, Ford, Bush, Dole, Bush, McCain whose only purpose is to grow the government … only at a slightly slower pace than Democrats.

With the current field and his dominating lead and proximity to New Hampshire, Romney could have won this nomination easily. The biggest mistake he made was not apologizing for RomneyCare, he very easily could have explained what he was doing in conservative terms (trying to end the free-rider problem by requiring health insurance) and said it was a failed experiment. Instead, he simply doubled down.

I despised Romney in 2008 for his insincere pandering to social conservatives, but I honestly had warmed up to the idea of him in 2012, mainly because I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to an impressive figure that had to govern in arguably the most liberal state in the US. I also thought he would be very potent in a general election and could win over independents, but I’m starting to go from casual indifference to outright hostility at the idea of a Romney nomination.

Same for New Hampshire? Their COMBINED populations are about that of the Metro Detroit area but our nation’s energy policy is dictated by whichever craven pol wants to pander to the ethanol rackets. The fact that Tim Pawlenty grabbed the true third rail of primary politics – telling Iowa that the welfare needs to end – puts him at the head of my list of acceptable candidates which currently consists of him and maybe Cain.

Someone needs to punch Romney in the hair.

With this and his doubling down on RomneyCare, he’s losing that opportunity. I try to be open minded about policy differences with people I generally agree with, but there comes a point when it is no longer being open minded, it’s more like having a hole in my head.

I’m looking for someone who will not only end ethanol subsidies (and yes, I know most of it isn’t technically a “subsidy” but has an identical affect on the market), but all agricultural subsidies, as we set out to do some years ago.

We need to carefully examine ALL subsidies with a miser’s eye. There is no earthly reason we should subsidize advertising for McDonald’s in Russia and other countries. That company knows more about advertising than almost any other company ever, why would they need taxpayer money to “help” them?

But neither should we tax McDonald’s overseas earnings, already taxed where propagated, when they try to bring them home to invest here. We are one of only a few countries which do this, and it encourages our multinational firms to leave their overseas earnings where they are, and reinvest in those countries. We are in fact subsidizing, in effect, more investment from US-based companies in foreign countries.

Now, I don’t expect every candidate to be up to speed on economics when they enter the race, but the guy whose main attribute is his skill as a dramatically effective turnaround artist should know all this stuff, and not be endorsing irrational government picking of winners and losers in the markets through subsidies or anything else.

We have serious economic problems in this country, right now and in the near future. The can is too heavy to kick down the road much longer, we must act and we need a President who will lead us to act prudently.

We don’t need a President choosing favorite industries as if he were viewing drapery samples – “Oh, yes, I like that . . . Definite maybe . . . . oh, no, that one is horrid!” – with his designer. We need a President who can say “NO” and mean it, and stick to it, and argue for it.

We’re looking at what, a $4 trillion budget now? There are a lot of piglets at that teat, and are they going to squeal when it is yanked away from them! We need a President who can ignore the noise.

While I am a big drill baby, drill guy, I also believe in working toward the future. Is Ethanol all it came be (no). Can it get there, yes.

Kammen estimates that ethanol could replace 20 to 30 percent of fuel usage in this country with little effort in just a few years.
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/01/26_ethanol.shtml

Pull up to most service stations in this country of 185 million people and you will find fuel pumps offering three choices: ethanol, gasoline or premium gasoline. The labels are slightly misleading: The gasoline varieties are blends that contain at least 20 percent ethanol. The pure ethanol is usually significantly cheaper — 53 cents per liter (about $2 per gallon), compared with about 99 cents per liter for gasoline ($3.74 per gallon) in Sao Paulo this past week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900842.html

Many said it was a bad idea to go to the moon, yet in the end, it produced the technology that we all take for granted today.

I have no problem developing a technology that shows such promise. I would not want to over due it, but I also don’t want use to lag behind the rest of the world.

Just like many who call themselves conservatives and who complain about reliance on foreign oil, and who will not look at all alternatives to the problems are like the proverbial ostrich who sticks their head in the dirt, and will not look around.

Just like the health Care debate, those who call themselves conservatives would readily accept Health Care Welfare than experiment on alternatives.

We used to be a can do nation, but it seems lately, we don’t have the wisdom to look at alternatives.

I am for all types of fuels, Oil based, Natural Gas, and his bio fuels. Lets stop sending our oil dollars to terrorist and lets make America energy independent.

He has Romney care around his neck like an albatross and now has pulled a Newt in Iowa.

Those are not the ideas of committed conservatives and leaders in search of an alternative to endless fed. spending and budget borrowing.

I look at regulation the same way some people look at Israel’s borders. Take 1967, just for fun. There were no robber barons or child labor epidemics, but there was arguably less government standing in the way of business.

If we ended pig corn subsidies today, farmers would not sit around and wait to go broke, they would go back to growing food.

…in essentially the same words as Mitt Romney, in fact. They both think government ‘should’ subsidize ethanol. Isn’t that a more important (long-term) distinction than how austere a particular candidate’s pretend budget is?

Do what the government wants and here’s some money for your trouble – who cares if we get unintended consequences – like sucking up the food supply and doubling the price of food since nearly everything has some derivative of corn in it.

GAH!

I’ve just simply had it with centralized planning and engineering of everything, using our kids’ money to do it with (and that means your kids too, even if you don’t have any yet), and screwing up everything else around it.

Mitt is the epitome of the words Ronald Reagan felt were most terrifying: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Al Gore’s Ethanol Epiphany

He concedes the industry he promoted serves no useful purpose

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572404575634753486416076.html

productive to good fuel economy as well as a waste of tax payer money then this subsidy will end. See www.fueleconomy.gov for proof. Now there is evidence that the corn crop will be late getting planted http://www.cnbc.com/id/43196125 so where will the corn go if there isn’t a bumper crop this year due to all the flooding?

Just my own anecdotal observations, I’ll get up to 29 miles to gallon in an older and more recent vehicles using premium gas, enough to make it worth buying premium over the regular, so I can’t imagine what crappy mileage would do with 15% ethanol would do for late model vehicles. What a headache to get that into the mix to placate the ethanol subsidized politicians and firms.

a lot of misinformation in regards to ethanol.

What Pawlenty did was different, but even he supported a phase out, whatever that means.

Romney’s position is the standard position. For all those who think this a big deal, Fred Thompson actually switched his position from opposing ethanol to supporting ethanol when he ran in 2008.

hate to say I told you so about this RINO. Not really, I enjoy calling a RINO A RINO!

So many RINO’s so little time!

is really a general GOP reaction to Romney being the present “leader” with the most name I.D.

In other words, I think most GOP types look at Romney and think “bleh” but the rest of the field has much lower recognition and they don’t know as much about them. In an early poll or early race when you don’t know much about any of them, or even a few — you are left with Romney and everyone else. There is no “clear favorite” oustide of Romney, so for the average voter (not a plugged-in RedState type) you are left thinking “this is it?!”

The early polling naturally will bias toward the previously known quantity — and the few (presently, the ONE) that fit that bill just don’t seem to fit the bill.

Personally I think the whole “hunt for new entrants” is a commercial media storyline, because what else do you talk about 24/7 if you don’t talk about all the people not running?

Jim is absolutely right. If you elect RINO’s that are willing to compromise their position away in a backroom deal whenever things get tough you might as well have put a Democrat in place instead. A politician that is willing to flip, flop, flip, flop is nothing but a fish out of water.

I’m unwilling to support any candidate who doesn’t support capitalism. Both Newt and Mitt have demonstrated that they don’t trust the free market to determine what the best use of corn is. Both have expressed opinions that they believe the Federal Government should determine what crops farmers should grow. Particularly disturbing is that both of these guys apparently think that the Federal Government has done such a great job with everything else that they should be responsible for saving the planet from the UN’s global warming.
We don’t need either of them.