One of them is Anthony Scaramucci, the founder
and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, the glob- al investment firm. Scaramucci attended Harvard Law School with Obama and supported the junior senator from Illinois wholeheartedly in 2008. He now stands among those in the financial community who have experienced a change of heart. Before the 2010 midterms, Scaramucci gained no-
toriety by asking his fellow Harvard alum how much longer he intended to use Wall Street as a convenient piñata. Obama smoothly scoffed at the notion that somehow he had been unfriendly to business. Ob- viously unsatisfied with that response, Scaramucci subsequently switched his allegiance to Romney. “Barack Obama is about a smaller pie, and ‘I want
to make that pie more equal,’” Scaramucci tells News- max. “Donald Trump and Mitt Romney are about a larger pie, about growing the pie, and increasing fair- ness through the plentitude of wealth and the poten- tial that the U.S. economy has. So those two messages are going to be the war rhetoric. “I think that Donald Trump is a very effective ava-
tar of that message. And I think the campaign is also aware of how effective he is, which is why they’re us- ing him.” The growing recognition that Obama and Rom- ney offer two starkly different pathways to America’s
Donald Trump
really need: comprehensive tax reform that can substantially raise revenue in a fairer manner.” Billionaire real estate developer
Donald Trump stands in stark contrast to that philosophy. He and Romney maintain the best way to grow the economy is to unleash individuals’ productivity by keeping taxes low, competing for trade deals on a fair basis, and getting government out of their way. When John Stossel asked Trump about the Buffett rule, he
replied: “The rich people are going to leave [the country]. And other people are going to leave. You’re going to end up with lots of people [who] don’t produce. And then that’s the spiral. That’s the end.”
In a sense, the dueling surrogates, The Donald vs. Warren
Buffett, symbolize the stark philosophical differences of the candidates themselves. Obama and Buffett emphasize social
fairness, income redistribution, economic stimulus, and taxation to revive an economy laboring under a national debt of over $15 trillion. Romney and Trump, by comparison, advocate keeping taxes low while enhancing the global competitiveness of the United States vis-à- vis other nations. Bradley Blakeman, commentator and
former George W. Bush adviser, remarks: “Donald Trump knows that a free market
is noisy, and sometimes volatile — but a free market is what grew this country . . . It was the people who grew the country, who created a government that was supposed to serve the people. This is the difference between the way a successful businessman like Trump thinks, and a successful businessman like Buffett thinks.” Voters in November will determine which candidate — and which mogul — will ultimately prevail. — David A. Patten
AUGUST 2012 | NEWSMAX 53
future may explain why the Romney campaign con- tinues to position Trump beside their standard-bear- er. Trump, Romney, and Scaramucci hearken back to an era of prosperity, when successful entrepreneurs were emulated, rather than held up as objects of envy and ridicule. So the pundits expecting the Romney campaign
to hide Trump on the back shelf are likely to be frus- trated once again. “I do think he will be campaigning with Donald
again,” says Kessler, “and of course Romney appreci- ates the fundraising support that Donald brings, and the fact that Donald can plug in a large range of very wealthy Wall Street people and people in New York. That’s a big plus.” Or as Sean Hannity of Fox News puts it: “Donald
Trump understands that America is at a crossroads — a tipping point. And we either reverse course or we become Greece — bankrupt and dependent.” Hannity tells Newsmax: “It is his love of this coun-
try that compels him to speak out and become politi- cally active, and not only will he have an impact on this election, but he will have an impact on restoring America’s greatness.” In an election expected to be close, just a few thousand votes in key states and precincts may well determine the outcome. Given Trump’s symbolic
DIANE BONDAREFF
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