The Twin in the Background Takes Center Stage

He may need new material.

Mr. Castro, 38, is accustomed to being mistaken for his one-minute-older identical twin, Julián Castro, a rising political star who last summer became the first Latino to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In the two months since Mr. Castro, a lawyer and former state legislator, was sworn into Congress, he has been the twin receiving the larger share of attention.

He received high-profile assignments to the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees and was elected president of the House Democrats’ freshman class. Although his own Congressional race was noncompetitive, he made fast friends and earned praise from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for raising cash for future colleagues.

And he has been an unofficial ambassador on immigration for the Obama administration, appearing on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on ABC the morning after the White House’s comprehensive immigration plan leaked. There he lauded the president’s efforts and highlighted what he called “commonalities” between the administration’s proposal and one by a bipartisan group of senators.

“I’m trying to very quickly be as helpful as I can,” Mr. Castro said last week in an interview, “not only as a voice out there speaking about it in the news, but also internally, in the body.”

Business Insider named Mr. Castro one of its “12 most fascinating new members” of Congress. And a study by the University of Minnesota Smart Politics project ranked him the second-most-talked-about House freshman in terms of news media coverage, edging out Steve Stockman, the Friendswood Republican who brought the Obama-bashing rocker Ted Nugent as a guest to the president’s State of the Union address.

While there has been much public discussion about the ambitions of his brother to become governor, speculation is already mounting that Joaquin Castro could challenge Ted Cruz, the state’s Tea Party-backed junior United States senator, in 2018.

“Certainly my brother being in the spotlight the way he was at the Democratic National Convention helped a lot in terms of exposing us to the nation,” Mr. Castro said. “That said, I think that you’ve got to do well when you have the opportunity or those opportunities will go away.”

Mr. Castro has embraced the limelight and is leveraging the attention in many ways. He claimed one of the highly visible aisle seats hours ahead of the State of the Union address and uses distinctive wordplay to drive home one of his main messages, that education breeds prosperity for the underprivileged. In interviews and public appearances on a recent day in Washington, Mr. Castro used a term he coined — America’s “infrastructure of opportunity” — no fewer than six times.

He has also become a serious student of domestic and international policy. The academic aspect is familiar territory for Mr. Castro, who with his brother attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School after being raised on the working-class west side of San Antonio by his mother, a political activist.

He has surrounded himself with experienced staff members: his chief of staff is a former aide to Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, and his press secretary served Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader.

In a 12-hour period last week, Mr. Castro jumped from a meeting on Islamic terrorists in Eurasia to a briefing on challenges to the Voting Rights Act and the Defense of Marriage Act. He gave his first one-minute speech on the House floor, on the effects of sequestration, approaching the dais minutes after Speaker John Boehner accused the president of playing politics. Afterward, Mr. Castro dashed across town to a forum on high school graduation and college readiness.

Mr. Castro said it was too early to speculate on his political future.

“A lot of folks feel like my brother and me or other politicians chart out their careers from Day 1 until the end. I’ve never been like that,” he said. “I just believe that if I work hard and do well, who knows what the future holds?”

But he did not resist taking a thinly veiled jab at Mr. Cruz, who has made headlines in the Senate for a prosecutorial-style questioning of Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee, Chuck Hagel.

“I didn’t come here to be a wallflower, but I didn’t come here to get into a shouting match with everybody I meet either,” Mr. Castro said. “Doing your job requires different modes, and you can’t just be stuck in one mode where you’re always the shrill outsider screaming at everybody.”

The Castro brothers’ political allies credit them with boosting the national profile of Texas Democrats. State Representative Rafael Anchia, Democrat of Dallas, said they had “in a very short period of time almost single-handedly breathed life back into the Texas Democratic Party.”

Ed Espinoza, an Austin-based Democratic consultant, said that among the rising Latino stars on both sides of the aisle, the Castros pose a big electoral threat. “I don’t think the G.O.P. has the answer for them,” Mr. Espinoza said.

The state’s Republicans say they are unmoved. Jordan Berry, a political consultant who was on Mr. Cruz’s campaign, attributed the attention paid to the brothers to a “ ‘Parent Trap’ effect,” referring to the movie about identical twins, and said he was “confident in our bench over theirs” in the race to connect with the state’s rapidly expanding Latino population.

Rob Johnson, a Republican operative who ran a “super PAC” in support of Mr. Cruz’s primary opponent, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, said party leaders were unworried.

“We recognize that they’re talented politicians and political operatives, but this is also Texas, the reddest of the red states,” he said. “What we need to focus on is not what the other side is doing and saying, but what we as a party are doing and saying to grow our numbers among Latinos.”

For his part, Mr. Anchia, the Democratic state representative, said he was happy to see Mr. Castro getting his due on the national stage. He said Mr. Castro had spent more time in the last few years working to get his brother elected mayor than on cultivating his own aspirations.

“He sacrificed himself for his brother’s success,” Mr. Anchia said. “For someone who is equally bright, talented and ambitious, that was an admirable trait.”

Mr. Castro said he was glad to play a supporting role and that he did not believe that he had lost out.

“Somebody jokingly asked me a few years ago, ‘Who’s going to be the Jack Kennedy and who’s the Robert Kennedy?’ ” Mr. Castro recalled. “I said, ‘I’m glad to play the Robert Kennedy.’ ”

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Kielsky takes on Montgomery

In the race for Maricopa County attorney, a heavily favored Republican incumbent is being challenged by a Libertarian who has run twice before for the office.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who took office after winning a special election in 2010, is facing Libertarian opponent Michael Kielsky. The Democratic Party did not slate a candidate in the race.

One of the sharpest contrasts between Montgomery and Kielsky is views on enforcing laws. Montgomery presents himself as a law-and-order stalwart who, in his career as a prosecutor, has pursued tough sentences. Kielsky's main campaign promise is that he will not prosecute victimless crimes such as marijuana possession and prostitution, using the slogan, "No victim, no crime, no time, no fine!"

Montgomery, 45, has done no television campaigning and bought no print ads. He and Kielsky will participate in a lunch forum tentatively set for Monday at the Phoenix School of Law.

Kielsky, 48, says, "It will be my most successful run yet" because the voters of Maricopa County will express their dissatisfaction with Montgomery's first two years as county attorney.

The last general election for Maricopa County attorney, in 2008, was a horse race in which then-incumbent Andrew Thomas edged out Democrat Tim Nelson.

But less than two years later, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office was thrown into turmoil because of Thomas' skirmishes with judges and county officials. Thomas resigned to run for Arizona attorney general.

Former County Attorney Rick Romley battled against Montgomery to replace Thomas, but Montgomery, the party's preferred candidate in the Republican primary, won and then rolled over Kielsky in the November 2010 special election.

Montgomery's tenure has been relatively uneventful compared with Thomas'; he has presented himself as a conservative lawman in contrast to Thomas' anti-corruption crusader. Montgomery has gotten criticism from political pundits for not pressing criminal charges against politicians who allegedly took favors from the Fiesta Bowl or against Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne for possible campaign-finance violations. Horne defeated Thomas in the 2010 GOP primary for attorney general.

Montgomery said that there was insufficient evidence to warrant criminal charges and that seeking indictments "opens me up to criticism that there was a political reason to get an indictment."

Tempe-based polling expert Michael O'Neil said he thinks a Democratic opponent could have capitalized to some degree on the lack of prosecutions.

"You could say he's protecting his cronies and build a campaign on that," O'Neil said. But "nobody is willing to step up for a race that they would definitely lose."

Montgomery moved to improve relations with county managers and the county Board of Supervisors, and his press conferences often focus on community activities such as shred-a-thons to combat ID theft or anti-drug programs.

On broader political issues, Montgomery has hewed to Republican Party positions, such as supporting Senate Bill 1070, the embattled Arizona immigration law. In addition, he will defend the state's ban on abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals next month.

He has been outspoken against Proposition 121, which would create an open primary system instead of separate primaries for each political party. He also has opposed the successful citizens' initiative that allows for legal medical use of marijuana. Kielsky supports decriminalization of marijuana.

Kielsky, a former head of the Arizona Libertarian Party, ran for a seat on the board of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District in 1992. He then ran for justice of the peace in 2002, Congress in 2004 and county attorney in 2008 and 2010.

As in his past campaigns, Kielsky, who has been an attorney since 2006, does not take stands on major political issues, instead focusing on not wasting resources by prosecuting victimless crimes, saying this will save money, lower the prison population and provide greater freedom and justice. He said he would not devote resources to prosecuting minor drug-possession charges, prostitution or immigration offenses.

"The job of the county attorney is to help protect individual rights by prosecuting those who harm other people," he said. "Bill Montgomery, like his predecessor, is spending a lot of resources on prosecuting people who aren't hurting anyone."

"How about if we just focus on the core issues of that office?" he said.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Kielsky takes on Montgomery

In the race for Maricopa County attorney, a heavily favored Republican incumbent is being challenged by a Libertarian who has run twice before for the office.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who took office after winning a special election in 2010, is facing Libertarian opponent Michael Kielsky. The Democratic Party did not slate a candidate in the race.

One of the sharpest contrasts between Montgomery and Kielsky is views on enforcing laws. Montgomery presents himself as a law-and-order stalwart who, in his career as a prosecutor, has pursued tough sentences. Kielsky's main campaign promise is that he will not prosecute victimless crimes such as marijuana possession and prostitution, using the slogan, "No victim, no crime, no time, no fine!"

Montgomery, 45, has done no television campaigning and bought no print ads. He and Kielsky will participate in a lunch forum tentatively set for Monday at the Phoenix School of Law.

Kielsky, 48, says, "It will be my most successful run yet" because the voters of Maricopa County will express their dissatisfaction with Montgomery's first two years as county attorney.

The last general election for Maricopa County attorney, in 2008, was a horse race in which then-incumbent Andrew Thomas edged out Democrat Tim Nelson.

But less than two years later, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office was thrown into turmoil because of Thomas' skirmishes with judges and county officials. Thomas resigned to run for Arizona attorney general.

Former County Attorney Rick Romley battled against Montgomery to replace Thomas, but Montgomery, the party's preferred candidate in the Republican primary, won and then rolled over Kielsky in the November 2010 special election.

Montgomery's tenure has been relatively uneventful compared with Thomas'; he has presented himself as a conservative lawman in contrast to Thomas' anti-corruption crusader. Montgomery has gotten criticism from political pundits for not pressing criminal charges against politicians who allegedly took favors from the Fiesta Bowl or against Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne for possible campaign-finance violations. Horne defeated Thomas in the 2010 GOP primary for attorney general.

Montgomery said that there was insufficient evidence to warrant criminal charges and that seeking indictments "opens me up to criticism that there was a political reason to get an indictment."

Tempe-based polling expert Michael O'Neil said he thinks a Democratic opponent could have capitalized to some degree on the lack of prosecutions.

"You could say he's protecting his cronies and build a campaign on that," O'Neil said. But "nobody is willing to step up for a race that they would definitely lose."

Montgomery moved to improve relations with county managers and the county Board of Supervisors, and his press conferences often focus on community activities such as shred-a-thons to combat ID theft or anti-drug programs.

On broader political issues, Montgomery has hewed to Republican Party positions, such as supporting Senate Bill 1070, the embattled Arizona immigration law. In addition, he will defend the state's ban on abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals next month.

He has been outspoken against Proposition 121, which would create an open primary system instead of separate primaries for each political party. He also has opposed the successful citizens' initiative that allows for legal medical use of marijuana. Kielsky supports decriminalization of marijuana.

Kielsky, a former head of the Arizona Libertarian Party, ran for a seat on the board of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District in 1992. He then ran for justice of the peace in 2002, Congress in 2004 and county attorney in 2008 and 2010.

As in his past campaigns, Kielsky, who has been an attorney since 2006, does not take stands on major political issues, instead focusing on not wasting resources by prosecuting victimless crimes, saying this will save money, lower the prison population and provide greater freedom and justice. He said he would not devote resources to prosecuting minor drug-possession charges, prostitution or immigration offenses.

"The job of the county attorney is to help protect individual rights by prosecuting those who harm other people," he said. "Bill Montgomery, like his predecessor, is spending a lot of resources on prosecuting people who aren't hurting anyone."

"How about if we just focus on the core issues of that office?" he said.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Romney Takes Liberties With Claims About a Bipartisan Past

When Mitt Romney accused President Obama in their debate Wednesday night of refusing to work with Republicans, he held up his own record as the Massachusetts governor as an example of what political cooperation can achieve.

As a Republican governor whose legislature was 87 percent Democrats, he said, “I figured out from Day 1 I had to get along, and I had to work across the aisle to get anything done.” The result, he said, was that “we drove our schools to be No. 1 in the nation. We cut taxes 19 times.”

Mr. Romney and the legislature did at times get along, Massachusetts schools were often top-rated, and some taxes did drop during Mr. Romney’s four years as governor, from 2003 through 2006. But a comparison of his claims to the factual record suggests that all three take liberties with the truth.

While the governor and the legislature came together to produce balanced budgets and enact a signature health care reform bill, much of those four years were characterized by conflict and tensions. In the opening months of his tenure, Mr. Romney vetoed a Massachusetts House plan to create new committees and raise staff members’ pay, and the legislators rejected his flagship proposal, a nearly 600-page plan to overhaul the state bureaucracy.

Mr. Romney proved to have a taste for vetoes, killing legislative initiatives in his first two years at more than twice the rate of his more popular Republican predecessor, William F. Weld, The Boston Globe reported in 2004. The lawmakers responded in kind by overriding his vetoes at a rapid pace.

By 2004, the second year of his term, Mr. Romney was provoked enough to mount an unprecedented campaign to unseat Democratic legislators, spending $3 million in Republican party money and hiring a nationally known political strategist, Michael Murphy.

The effort failed spectacularly. Republicans lost seats, leaving them with their smallest legislative delegation since 1867. Democratic legislators were reported at the time to have been deeply angered by the campaign’s tactics.

“They had a deteriorating relationship during the first two years,” Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor and expert on state politics at Tufts University, said in an interview. The campaign “was designed to demonstrate that he could make life difficult for them if he chose to do so. It did not endear him to them.”

Mr. Romney quickly initiated a charm offensive, inviting Democratic leaders to dinners at his home for the first time since taking office two years earlier. But the legislators were soon “infuriated,” Mr. Berry said, when Mr. Romney, testing the presidential waters, began traveling outside the state and casting brickbats at Massachusetts’s traditionally liberal values before crowds of potential supporters.

On education, Mr. Romney was factually correct in stating that Massachusetts students were ranked first in the nation during his tenure. Massachusetts students in grades four and eight took top honors or tied for first in reading and mathematics on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal Department of Education test often called the nation’s report card.

However, educators largely agree that the state’s rise to first place was a result of a wholesale reform of state schools enacted 10 years earlier under Governor Weld. The reforms, carried out over eight years, doubled state spending on schools and brought standards and accountability to both administrators and students.

“Governor Romney does not get to take the credit for achieving that No. 1 ranking,” said Mike Gilbert, the field director for the nonprofit Massachusetts Association of School Committees, “but it did happen while he was in office.”

Under Mr. Romney, neither the governor nor the legislature enjoyed notable successes in education, although Mr. Romney is credited with battling successfully against efforts to dismantle some of the 1993 reforms.

Mr. Romney and the legislature cut deeply into state grants to local governments in 2003 amid a state budget crisis, forcing many school districts to raise property taxes. In 2006, Mr Romney vetoed a bill passed unanimously by the legislature that established standards for preschool education and set long-term plans to make it universal. He said the programs would cost too much at a time of budget austerity.

Mr. Romney’s claim that he was responsible for 19 separate tax cuts is also technically accurate. But here, too, the complete story paints a very different picture.

Perhaps the most substantial tax reduction occurred in 2005, when Mr. Romney’s administration wrote legislation refunding $250 million in capital gains taxes to 145,000 investors. But the legislation carried out a court ruling finding that the taxes had been illegally withheld in 2002; the court gave the state the option of refunding the taxes or rewriting the law to correct the illegality.

Mr Romney proposed the latter, and the legislature agreed.

Of the remaining 18 tax cuts, many were proposed by the legislature, not Mr. Romney, and others were routine extensions of existing tax reductions that were due to expire. One was a change in the Massachusetts tax code to make it conform to changes in the federal code. Two were one-day sales-tax holidays.

Mr. Romney’s critics note that his administration was also responsible for revenue-raising measures which, under that loose definition, might well be called tax increases. In his first year, Mr. Romney closed business tax loopholes and increased fees on an array of services, from marriage licenses to home purchases.

“Our numbers on revenue are that he raised about $750 million annually — $375 million from fees and $375 million from corporate taxes,” said Michael Widmer, president of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

In 2004, Mr. Romney signed legislation allowing local officials to collect an additional $100 million in commercial property taxes from businesses.

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Al Gore Takes a Pass on Charlotte

He came ever so close to capturing the presidency in 2000, and even spoke at the 2008 convention, but this time around, Al Gore was nowhere to be seen as Democrats gathered in Charlotte, N.C., this week.

Instead, the former vice president was doling out commentary for his network, Current TV, at a New York studio, and had particular praise for his former ticketmate, Bill Clinton, with whom he had not always enjoyed the warmest ties.

“I have heard President Bill Clinton give a lot of great speeches,” he said of his former boss’s speech on Wednesday, “and I honestly don’t know of a better one.”

On Thursday, with a Twitter stream to the side of the screen, he said he was “so happy” that Senator John Kerry, another former failed Democratic nominee, mentioned his most-prized issue, climate change.

The panel assembled on his network for Thursday’s speeches addressed him as “Mr. Vice President” and seemed to dance around the issue of his convention absence. During a break in the action, Cenk Uygur, a Current TV host, posed to each member of the panel a hypothetical: would you rather be a senator from a given state, or take a certain cabinet position? Mr. Gore was not asked.

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Column: Obama takes aim at Romney

Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckel is a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot.

By H. Darr Beiser,, USA TODAY

Head of the Democratic National Committee: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida tests the podium Tuesday in Charlotte, in preparation for the first day of the party's convention.

By H. Darr Beiser,, USA TODAY

Head of the Democratic National Committee: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida tests the podium Tuesday in Charlotte, in preparation for the first day of the party's convention.

Today:Obama takes the stage

Bob: Gallup reports that Mitt Romney had the smallest polling increase from any presidential convention since 1984. Romney's address to the GOP convention in Tampa, according to Gallup, was the least well-received speech since Bob Dole in 1996. Romney wanted this election to be a referendum on Barack Obama, but because Romney failed to close the sale on his own candidacy, he's given Obama an opening to make Romney an issue.

Cal: Nice try at those DNC talking points, Bob. Here in North Carolina, where I am spending the week with your political brethren, the new Elon University/Charlotte Observer Poll shows Romney leading President Obama 47% to 43% in the state. But enough about polls. Last week, we agreed on what Romney needed to say to the GOP convention and those watching on TV. Now, what do you think the president should say in his speech tonight?

Bob: In his acceptance speech, Romney did not harshly attack the president, which I thought was a good strategy. He let others, including Paul Ryan, do his dirty work for him. Speaker after speaker at the Democratic convention has attacked Romney for proposing warmed over policies from "the last century" and his running mate as radical and dangerous. Obama should do something similar, and to the extent he mentions Romney, it should be to compare the president's policies, popular or not, with Romney's lack of a single new idea.

Cal: The "last century" with its economic booms and defeat of communism in Russia and fascism in Germany is looking better all the time. I agree the president has a record. I anticipate the "failure" of the Democratic convention will be that Democrats will offer more of the same failed solutions. The president made some spectacular promises four years ago, few of which he has kept. It's going to be very difficult to defend that record, given the high expectations he generated, especially on unemployment, which he pledged the stimulus would hold to under 8%. Even Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley admitted to Bob Schieffer last Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation that America is no better off today than it was four years ago.

Bob: My cardinal rule in politics is to effectively manage expectations. The goal of any campaign should be to keep expectations in the right place so the candidate's strengths can exceed expectations and in the process minimize his weaknesses. If any president has ever suffered from high expectations, it's Barack Obama.

Cal: That was not the Republicans' fault. He almost single-handedly created those expectations with all of that lowering of the oceans business and other messianic talk.

Columns

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

Bob: I agree. Obama has himself to blame after raising expectations during his extraordinarily effective campaign in 2008. He made promises that were nearly impossible to fulfill, particularly about changing the tone in Washington. He did not expect to be facing a Republican Party that had moved radically to the right and had no interest in working with President Obama.

Cal: Whatever happened to the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill Clinton headed? These were moderate Democrats who were willing to compromise to move the ball forward. Look at the convention lineup of speakers. There isn't a pro-life, smaller-government, lower-taxes, less-spending, traditional-marriage speaker among the lot. The Democratic Party is now ruled exclusively by the hard left, and yet there are many Democrats who favor some, or all, of these moderate-to-conservative issues. Do you think the president in his speech tonight will have anything to say to these Democrats?

Bob: The DLC was a Clinton-driven organization that left the scene when he did. If you like radical speakers, Tampa was full of them last week. Back to the president's speech. I think Obama must address the expectations issue, and I know some people around him agree. As he told a CBS reporter, he failed "to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism."

Cal: It's a little late for that, don't you think?

Bob: No, I don't. For all his formidable skills as a campaigner and orator, Obama failed to tell the country why he was embarking on new directions in health care and why his stimulus package was necessary. He never sought to downplay the expectations of 2008 when he knew full well that they could not be met. Therefore, I think Obama needs to do a bit of mea culpa in his speech to let the voters know that he knows he hasn't met all their expectations, but that he is making every effort to do so.

Cal: A mea culpa doesn't fit his personality and will seem disingenuous. It would be like Madonna suddenly advocating modest dress. The public is cynical enough about politicians in both parties. The late comedian George Burns is supposed to have said, "Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Given the public's growing distrust of government, it is increasingly difficult to "fake sincerity." You've been a strategist. Should he attack Romney, or ignore him?

Bob: As I've mentioned, a little of both. When Obama talks about Romney, he should avoid talking about Bain Capital and Romney's refusal to release more of his tax returns. Those issues have been covered in his advertising and by others. Rather, Obama should point out that Romney is quick to raise all the problems facing America and has yet to offer solutions to solve them.

Cal: That's a fair point. As for Bain, Deroy Murdock wrote last week in the New York Post, "Bain's private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama's re-election." So lay off Bain, Mr. President, and tell us if we're in for more of the same policies if you are re-elected.

Bob: Speaking of policies, even TheWall Street Journal panned Romney's speech because he offered no new policies beyond cutting taxes, increasing defense and, in a break with his running mate, Romney said he will protect Social Security and Medicare. This adds up to massive deficits and perhaps taxes on the middle class. It's no wonder so many economists laugh at Romney's warmed over trickle-down policies.

Cal: With the national debt climbing past $16 trillion, I'm glad you are suddenly concerned with debt, which is caused by overspending, not under-taxing. More and more voters don't trust either party to do what it says, but I think they'll give Republicans one more chance to rescue us from this financial sinking ship. If they fail, as we have written in a previous column, voters will keep tossing out incumbents until they get leaders who will do the necessary things to repair the economy.

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Elizabeth Warren takes stage in coveted convention slot

CHARLOTTE – Four years ago, at his 14th Democratic National Convention, Sen. Edward Kennedy delivered his last speech. "We have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a better world," he told delegates.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Elizabeth Warren, candidate for Senate from Massachusetts, addresses the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night in Charlotte.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Elizabeth Warren, candidate for Senate from Massachusetts, addresses the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night in Charlotte.

Wednesday night, at her first convention, Elizabeth Warren sought to claim Kennedy's mantle — and his Senate seat — saying she's ready to answer the call.

In her distinctive rhetorical style, the Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts twice said the middle class was being "hammered." She said the system is "rigged" three times, and argued for a "level playing field" five times.

Warren is looking to dislodge Sen. Scott Brown from the Senate seat that Brown won after Kennedy's death in 2009. A prime-time speech leading into a former president would be a coveted slot for any first-time Senate candidate, and Warren herself noted that it was her first Democratic convention.

"I sure never dreamed that I'd be the warm-up act for President Bill Clinton— an amazing man who had the good sense to marry one of the coolest women on this planet," she said over chants of "Warren! Warren!"

As Warren led into Clinton, Wednesday night's prime-time speakers bridged two wings of the Democratic Party— Kennedy-like northeastern liberals and Clinton's southern, more moderate "New Democrats."

Warren represents the new liberal wing of the Democratic Party, a champion of gender equity and gay rights, but who is best known for taking on banks and Wall Street. As an expert in bankruptcy law, she fought credit card companies and was the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In her speech, Warren gave President Obama credit for the agency, saying he stood up to an "army of lobbyists" that tried to kill the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. And she noted that the new consumer bureau just had its first major enforcement action, a $210-million settlement with Capital One for what the government said were deceptive practices.

Taking a shot at GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, she said none of the small business owners she has met earned money from "risky Wall Street bets that brought down our economy." And "not one of them — not one — stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes."

Warren herself provided the rhetorical groundwork for Obama's now-famous "You didn't build that" remark more than a year ago. "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody," she said in a viral YouTube video in 2010.

Wednesday, she said Americans "don't resent that someone else makes more money."

"We're Americans," Warren said. "We celebrate success. We just don't want the game to be rigged."

The Massachusetts contest is one of 33 races that will decide control of the Senate, and one of the most hotly contested. Democrats now control 51 seats, though two independents also caucus with them.

Brown, Warren's opponent in the Massachusetts race, noted that Warren's speech failed to give him credit for voting in favor of Dodd-Frank — giving the bill a filibuster-proof margin needed to pass the Senate.

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Romney Adviser Takes U.S. Political Debate Overseas

A senior economic adviser to Mitt Romney criticized President Obama and his policy toward crisis-torn Europe, and Germany in particular, in an op-ed article in a leading German newspaper on Saturday, raising the question of the propriety of taking America’s political fights into international affairs.

The article — written by R. Glenn Hubbard, the dean of the Columbia Business School and a former adviser in the Bush administration, and published in the business journal Handelsblatt — drew a rebuke from the Obama campaign.

“In a foreign news outlet, Governor Romney’s top economic adviser both discouraged essential steps that need to be taken to promote economic recovery and attempted to undermine America’s foreign policy abroad,” said Ben LaBolt, press secretary for the president’s re-election campaign.

Every presidential election seems to test the frequently quoted cold war-era axiom of former Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican who cooperated with President Harry S. Truman, that “politics stops at the water’s edge” — though even then the rule was often observed in the breach. Separately, the Hubbard critique illustrates how the austerity-versus-stimulus debate concerning Europe is also a proxy for the ideological fight over fiscal policy that Democrats and Republicans are waging in this country.

“Unfortunately, the advice of the U.S. government regarding solutions to the crisis is misleading. For Europe and especially for Germany,” Mr. Hubbard wrote, according to a translation of his article from the Handelsblatt Web site.

He opposed what he described as the Obama administration’s efforts “to persuade Germany to stand up financially weak governments and banks in the euro zone so that the Greek crisis would not spread to other states.”

“These recommendations are not only unwise,” he added, “they also reveal ignorance of the causes of the crisis and of a growth trend in the future.”

Mr. Hubbard proposed a classic conservative pro-austerity, anti-Keynesian approach, arguing that cutting government spending will restore public confidence, encourage growth and avert future tax increases.

“Long-term confidence in solid government financing shores up growth and enables the same scope for short-term transitional assistance,” he said. “Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican opponent, understands this very well and advises a gradual fiscal consolidation for the U.S.: structural reform to stimulate growth.”

Mr. Obama and his Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, are in the camp with economists who argue that the German-led push for austerity in Europe — at a time when businesses and consumers are too weak to spend — has produced a spiral of job losses, belt-tightening and, lately, a backlash against several governments.

But, Mr. Hubbard wrote, “President Obama’s advice to the Germans and Europe has therefore the same flaws as his own economic policy — that it pays for itself over the long term if we focus on short-term business promotion.”

When Mr. Obama ran for president in 2008, he received some criticism for a foreign trip that included a speech in Berlin before 200,000 Germans. At the time, Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to plans to use the city’s historic Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop for what a Merkel spokesman called “electioneering abroad,” leading Mr. Obama to speak at another site. But Mr. Obama did not explicitly criticize Bush administration policies, despite their prominence in the American debate that year. He mainly extolled the partnership between the United States and Germany — and Europe, more broadly — in promoting freedom and prosperity around the globe.

A Democrat with experience in foreign policy and presidential campaigns, who asked not to be identified as weighing into the debate, suggested that the Vandenberg rule had lost resonance in a polarized age. “The ‘water’s edge’ is changing, and not just because of climate change,” he said. “It’s too bad, but there it is.”

The Romney campaign declined to comment.

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Ann Coulter takes on Howard Dean about Wal-Mart SCOTUS decision (Daily Caller)

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday by a 5-4 decision that a class action lawsuit filed in California had failed to prove gender discrimination was a widespread policy of Wal-Mart. The markets rallied after the suit was dismissed and it was heralded as a positive sign for business in the United States by some observers.

On Monday’s “The Kudlow Report” on CNBC, conservative pundit and “Demonic” author Ann Coulter took on former Democratic National Committee chairman and CNBC contributor Howard Dean on the merits of the decision. Coulter explained the circumstances where a class action lawsuit would have been appropriate, such as when a broad range of individuals in similar circumstances are affected in a way that each individual case would not make financial sense to try separately.

“[H]ere you have none of that,” Coulter said. “You have, as you bring up, absolutely individual circumstances with each employee — not only that, you have individual circumstances with each manager. All of these employees have different managers determining what they get paid, how long they work, what their work treatment is like. The reason they wanted a class action in California was because of the Ninth Circuit, which is very anti-employer. It’s an insane case for a class-action case. And not surprisingly, 9-0, the court reject this had case, although at the risk of having the market collapse again, it was 5-4 with the four liberals saying that they could have brought a class-action under a different theory.”

Dean was less impressed with the Court’s decision and declared it an “anti-worker court,” but noted that the decision didn’t absolve Wal-Mart of the discrimination charges.

“Look, first of all, it’s important to note that the court did not find there was no discrimination,” Dean said. “That I didn’t hear anybody trying to claim that they found there was no discrimination. There could be. We don’t know that. That’s an issue that has to be tried. I hope a public interest lawyer who doesn’t rely on the 30 percent or whatever it is commission will be able to still try the case and find out. Secondly, it is true. This is a tough decision for employees. This is a pro-business court which makes it an anti-worker court, I guess in this context. I personally don’t think that’s a good thing for the country. I think right now, the corporate balance sheets have recovered fully from the crash of September 2008. But the balance sheets of the American families haven’t recovered. I think we’re out of balance. You know, I’m not a lawyer. I can’t say whether the — if they had a unanimous decision saying this particular one wasn’t the right way to certify it, we have to respect the unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court.”

Dean told Kudlow he wasn’t biased against Wal-Mart, but wished the company had put more of an emphasis on jobs in the United States versus overseas.

“Larry, let’s be honest — first of all, I’m not in the ‘I hate Wal-Mart’ crowd,” Dean said. “I think they’ve changed a lot over the last five or six years and I think they’ve made a difference. And they’ve created millions of jobs. Unfortunately most of the millions of jobs they’ve created have been in China, not in the United States. So I think it’s time we gave American workers a break here. I don’t think this case was much of a break for most American workers.”

However, Coulter said it wasn’t a defeat for employees necessarily, but instead a defeat for trial lawyers.

“I would like to disagree with the idea that this is employer versus employee here,” Coulter said. “This was anti-trial lawyer. That’s the advantage of the class-action. They get all their attorneys’ fees for the entire country. They get much bigger damage as a slice of this. Employees would have been hurt by this because Wal-Mart would have had a lot less money, all going to trial lawyers to hire more employees. This is not employer versus employee.”

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