Election 2012

GOP Platform May Dilute Romney’s Focus on Economy

Merrill Goozner|The Fiscal Times
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Delegates to the Republican national convention will adopt a platform on Tuesday that represents a major triumph for the economic and social conservatives that make up the party’s activist base. The final document, which includes calls to radically transform every entitlement program, moves the party well to the right of where it stood four years ago.

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during a campaign event with Republican Governors at Basalt Public High School on August 2, 2012 in Basalt, Colorado.
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Standard-bearer Mitt Romney has already begun distancing himself from some of the more controversial elements of the document, such as the call to ban abortion under all circumstances, including pregnancies that result from rape or incest.

Yet he has largely embraced many of the platform’s controversial economic planks, such as turning Medicare into a premium support program, establishing private accounts for Social Security and making sweeping changes in the tax code that analysts say would provide most of its benefits to the nation’s richest families.

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