This one is a political-nerd thing that requires some back story to it, but:
In the wake of the news that former Massachusetts Governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will likely run for Senate in Utah in 2018, his detractors have resurfaced the old “dog on the roof” smear that still makes no sense to me. The attack is from the 2007 presidential primary Romney lost to John McCain (who went on to lose the election to Barack Obama in the 2008 election) in where a story the Romney’s told about their family trips including their family dog going with them in a dog carrier on the roof of their car being alleged as some kind of horrible thing – evidently by people who have never traveled with dogs in an automobile before (summary: they *don’t* like to be in the cab of a car and much prefer to stick their heads out the window, or, if possible – be in the open bed of a truck during the traveling. A roof dog carrier is like that, except safer).
This one from a reporter at the conservative Washington Free Beacon incomprehensibly depicts the tortured dog meme being a stand-in for “common sense conservatism” riding on Senator Romney’s car down a road of unchecked Trumpism… huh?
https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/923977076373426177
Romney was a Trump critic who opposed his nomination…but this is alleging that he will speed down the road to no longer check the president at the expense of what is known as “common sense conservatism”?
If you can explain this metaphor to me, please do…
Don’t shoot the messenger, Trumpeters but: no, my Loves, Donald J Trump will neither be the Republican nominee for President in 2016, nor will he be elected to the office. He will be defeated by a cooler head and saner mind, but not that which by the name of Carson, Kasich, Cruz or Rubio (also the order of which those candidates will drop out).
No, children. The savior of this nation who will gallop to our aid on a glowing white horse will be one Willard “Mitt” Romney, the Republican nominee from the 2012 election who tragically lost to President Obama despite being right about absolutely everything.
I’ve been promoting and predicting a Romney 2016 Presidential nomination since 2012, halfway out of wishful thinking but half serious-prediction as a review of my commentary on each shoe dropping throughout the past few years shows will show, but I have a bit of an addendum as of February 2016: Romney will not run in the Primary as I was even until recently holding out hope that he might do (California, New Jersey and a few others allow for such a late filing) but rather will unite the party in strategic opposition to the looming Trump-disaster and remind the country that it can do better. His play won’t be conspiratorial or for his own gain (that’s MY plan, not his) but will set the dominos up for the possibility that he be considered for the position. Again: I see no evidence that he is pulling any strings to con his way into the position despite my wish that that was what is going on. More likely, he is pushing for his VP pick and current Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan to be the nominee at a brokered convention (Ryan/Romney 2016 would be great even though I don’t like Ryan as much and think he was a mistake to be chosen for the 2012 ticket). Regardless of those details though, my prediction is merely that Romney will save the day. My wet dream *hope* is that his day-savery results in these idiot elephants coming to their senses and brokering a Romney coalition in where Attorney General Chris Christie, Surgeon General Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing[orsomesh*t] John Kasich, and Antonin Scalia replacement Supreme Court nominee Ted Cruz, (while Rubio is dispatched to run for Florida Governor next go-around or something) all unite in a Romney/Latino 2016 ticket that eventually even Trump supports in a rousing speech at the convention where everyone is friends and truly Makes America Great Again.
*UPDATE* WEDNESDAY MARCH 2 2016: Mitt Romney has announced he will hold a press conference on “the state of the 2016 race” tomorrow… dude…
Prediction: No, it’s not an announcement of candidacy but no he is not endorsing another candidate. I know both because 1- the location of Utah is not the place to make an endorsement of one of the remaining candidates and 2- the absence of any leaked info whatsoever + what *is* being buzzed about it does not at all sound like an announcement that he is jumping in the race.
Instead I suspect he will calmly and rationally tell the party why Trump is not the candidate that can bring victory, add anecdotes on his own loss, and say nice things about the remaining 3 candidates in the race (Carson dropped out finally, today).
Update [March 3rd]: Still not having watched the speech yet, I was asked the effect a thing like this could possibly have, considering the source does not exactly enjoy Trump-level enthusiasm. In other words: how many supporters does Mitt Romney actually have at this point in order to make an impact? I would say there are at least 13… I think I should count double so maybe 14? but yes – the truth that for this to have an effect he needs “fans”, not just “supporters” and besides me and 4 other people in the fanboy department, the supporters are dwindling.
Meanwhile on the other side, another establishment figure being anti-Trump will only make the pro-Trump crowd more enthused for him. I hope Romney’s play is less “converting the faithful” and more “showing that the false-god bleeds and an uprising against him is possible” and for that I think there’s merit to it. I say “hope” instead of “think” because so far in this primary cycle, every Trump critic has foolishly thought they were going to win an emotional argument with logic (same mistake Romney made against Obama in 2012 and that Republicans do every time because they’re autistic nerds and out-of-the-pop-culture-loop populists).
I see it as having an effect on Trump getting nominated – just not in the obvious way in where everyone wakes up because the Mitt-siah revealed the truth from the mountain to them and now they flock to him instead (like they should). Rather I think this is less supposed to be an earth-shatter move as it is a long play as it may be a necessary event in the timeline that lends credibility to the Trump fracturing at delegate-count time so the argument that the nomination is being stolen from Trump doesn’t fly (because the record can easily show that key factions of the party had been increasingly against Trump + his lack of number-needed delegates means the remaining ones should pool against, not for him, and a stunt like this by Mitt aids in that future process).
That’s at best. At worst, then it’s just a less embarrassing version of when Rick Perry tried to do this same thing 5 months ago and Mitt can at least be in the “we tried…” camp.
Future first lady Ann Romney (yes this post was written in 2015 before the Romney 2016 announcement has been treated seriously by anyone or been made or hinted at) is a delightful person. Via IJ Review:
It’s not hilarious. but I like it. Partially cuz of my confirmation-bias in how much I like Ann Romney but also because of the personality that leaks through. She’s so obviously not in her element with this brand of Silly but its not stiff or phony the way it is when you see someone like Hillary Clinton try to do comedy. Ann is plenty stiff in it but that’s because she’s a grandma and not a performer – contrary to Hillary Clinton doing skit appearances that come off robotic because just letting any kind of personal looseness happen comes off as wildly uncomfortable for her. In other words: Ann comes off as a grandma doing an impression of a comedian while Hillary’s attempts at levity look like a robot doing an impression of a human being.
I also find it adorable that the Romney’s are so Ned-Flandersian that the original title of “baller grandma” was too raunchy for her and she opted for the 2nd choice of “Freakin Awesome Grandma” instead. Hot Air summarized it well:
Best goof on a famously wholesome mom’s image since Barbara “Leave It To Beaver” Billingsley spoke jive in “Airplane!”
Here’s what happened… President Obama is proposing a uniquely and aggressively horrible deal with Iran that would give it – the most anti-American regime currently in existence – hundreds of billions of dollars, for nothing in return. Nothing. Just says “here you go. you use this responsibly though, okay?”. And just like with the lifting of the blocks between the U.S. and Cuba – Obama’s getting the country he represents nothing in the deal. The argument in favor of this ridiculous Iran deal is that it somehow delays instead of hastens Iran getting a nuclear bomb by 15 years, a concept that is wholly unfounded according to the details of the actual agreement signed by the Government of the United States.
“If this deal is consummated, it will make the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz said during a round table Tuesday. “Billions of dollars under control of this administration will flow into the hands of jihadists who will use that money to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans.”
It’s true that the money Iran will get will likely be used to murder people and it’s true that Iran wouldn’t have this money if not for the Obama administrations agreement and it’s true that this was not a helpful thing for Cruz to say.
Mitt Romney, noted as such.
I am opposed to the Iran deal, but @SenTedCruz is way over the line on the Obama terrorism charge. Hurts the cause.
Which is the most sensible commentary a rational mind can have on the topic. Cruz’s comment isn’t wrong but the way it’s stated is so clunky that it hands Obama supporters a gift to turn a bad Obama policy into an opportunity to make Ted Cruz and Republicans the target of scorn. That is friggin horrible strategy but Cruz is notorious for being non-strategical. Which is cool if you want to drum up angst from your base but super horrible if your intention is to win elections. Romney helped his party by voicing his opposition to the deal while also noting that it most obviously hurts that oppositional cause for people like Cruz to be simplifying the dot-connections the way he did.
Cruz, 2016 presidential candidate, fired back at Romney in a Thursday radio interview with KFYO’s Chad Hasty.
“So Mitt Romney’s tweet today said, ‘Gosh, this rhetoric is not helpful,'” Cruz said. “John Adams famously said, ‘Facts are stubborn things.’ Describing the actual facts is not using rhetoric; it is called speaking the truth.”
The senator recalled what he described as a critical moment during the 2012 presidential race: A back-and-forth over that year’s attack on a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya.
“Part of the reason that Mitt Romney got clobbered by Barack Obama is because we all remember that third debate where Barack Obama turned to Mitt and said, ‘I said the Benghazi attack was terrorism and no one is more upset by Benghazi than I am.’ And Mitt, I guess listening to his own advice, said, ‘Well gosh, I don’t want to use any rhetoric. So OK, never mind. I’ll just kind of rearrange the pencil on the podium here,'” Cruz said.
He added that the 2016 presidential candidates need to speak up or they will fail like Romney.
I’ll get to why Cruz doesn’t know what he’s talking about here later in this post, but first a factual correction: Cruz’s claim never actually happened. As I’ve shown before, Romney expertly trapped President Obama on the Benghazi issue in the 2nd debate by going 3 rounds on the subject and giving Obama every inch of rope he needed to hang himself on the issue. Romney noted that Obama not only did not treat the terrorist attacks in Benghazi as such, but actually took great lengths to deceive the American people about the nature of the attacks, instead blaming a Youtube video for them. Obama, knowing that he was getting trapped in having to either lie by claiming he did something he did not do or obfuscate the question merely said “check the transcript” of his rose garden speech on the subject, in where he knew he could point to the word “terrorism” being present and then spin that as having taken responsibility for the attacks as being terrorism (successfully avoiding the messy explanation of the ensuing phony claims about a Youtube video instigation). In an unprecedented move, the debate moderator Candy Crowley stepped in and falsely claimed that Obama was correct in his claim about labeling the act terrorism and even though she walked it back later and the truth was verified by fact checkers, the damage had been done on live tv. To blame Romney for not attacking the issue he actually attacked in the most perfect of strategic ways is nonsense.
However – Republicans are just not smart enough to understand this and many agree with Cruz that Romney’s reason-for-loss was that he wasn’t tough enough on the President.
Here is how Rush Limbaugh summarized the positions of both men:
“Both Obama and Romney have called Cruz’s remarks inappropriate.” What has Cruz done? He’s “maintained that [Obama] would become a leading state-sponsor of terror if the agreement it struck with Iran makes it past Congress. He and others have argued that Iran would use a windfall from sanctions relief to finance terror abroad.” He has said on that basis alone this deal ought not get done! And then Romney piped up and said in a tweet (paraphrased): “Gosh, this rhetoric isn’t helpful. Gosh, this rhetoric isn’t helpful!”
Cruz fired back: “You’re telling me what’s not helpful? You got clobbered by Obama for a reason! You got clobbered because you backed off. You got clobbered because you didn’t have the guts to keep going.” So this is… I like this, folks. Whatever Trump’s responsible for it or not.
The truth is that both Cruz and Romney lost competitions to Obama but in very different ways…
In 2012 Mitt Romney ran for president against Barack Obama and lost.
In 2013 Ted Cruz led a strategy from the Senate against Barack Obama’s signature legislation “Obamacare” and lost.
Romney’s strategy was verifiably better at every level. Victory was in sight – the numbers just didn’t add up at the end since his side was fractured from a year of in-fighting and bad press while Obama’s side was boosted and mobilized during that time (and as I’ve pointed out before: the key to winning elections is to fracture the OTHER side and unite yours).
Cruz’s strategy in the senate was verifiably guaranteed to fail at every level as there was literally just no path to victory outside of President Obama just deciding to become a Republican overnight one day.
Cruz’s tactic of denying funding to Obamacare that caused a deadlock with the Democrats who refused to negotiate on the matter, resulting in a government shutdown that ultimately got Cruz absolutely nothing but scorn from the media and public at large.
So both men lost in their matches with President Obama, but one fought valiantly and one fought irresponsibly with literally no strategy to actually win.
Alternate headline: Defeated-by-Democrats-TedCruz lectures Defeated-by-Democrats-MittRomney on why the GOP gets defeated by Democrats.
Doesn’t sound like such bold talk when you put it that way now does it. Yet that’s exactly the case.
The only difference is that Romney actually had a chance of winning.
In 2012, Republicans had an opportunity to gain a Nixon landslide without the possibility of Nixon corruption or scandal by running a near-perfect man for the job of president and shunned it for petty stupid reasons. That man eventually became their nominee anyway but even his expert handling of the hand he was dealt was no match for an incumbent president who had 4 more years to organize as well as enjoy the comfort of positive press as his opposition party did his job of weakening theirs. The Obama Administrations mobilized base achieved a decisive victory to reelection.
Republicans could rectify this error and re-nominate their still-best-candidate again who has already been vetted and tried and come up clean and instead, powerful voices in the party are destroying their best chance at 2016 yet again.
Instead, the party of idiots will go through a year and a half of bloodying their bodies and creating more ill-will amongst the various factions that comprise it in another completely stupid Primary that will hurt far more than it helps. The reason it won’t help is that the differences between the ideology of the contenders that have an actual shot at the nomination is miniscule. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush administrations would differ little in policy. The question here is electability and marketing. But Republicans are too stupid and petty to see that.
The reason running the guy who lost the last go-around remains their best strategy is simply due to the fact that Mitt Romney remains their best figure in the 3 key categories that matter:
Electability: Might sound odd to say about the guy who lost last time around, but the fact remains that his balance of ideology, background, and approach to issues is the most electable option for the 2nd straight national election cycle.
Purity: The dude is so scandal-free that it is almost inhuman. Which ironically serves as a downside because then he is resented for how impossibly perfect he is and demonized by the other side for exactly that reason.
Representation: If Republicans could make a perfect candidate they would all vote to Frankenstein together a sterling family man with successful business experience who has served in a legislative position but didn’t engrain himself in Washington bureaucracy or corruption.The Republican Party stands for individual liberty outweighing government power, the reduction of government power over individuals lives from laws to regulations to taxes, core founding document principal preservation, American cultural conservation, and a strong national defense. Maybe the party will get a better figure to represent these values in the future, but as of now, there is no more perfect individual for the GOP than the family man who spent a life in the private sector both enriching himself and others as well as charitably improving the lives of his neighbors yet became interested in the direction of the country’s leadership enough to serve in an executive position and remain involved in the national dialog.
Ideological Sensibility: He follows the 3 legs of the Reagan-Conservatism stool while remaining sensible and adaptable. He doesn’t have any extreme positions or baggage to make him legitimately unpalatable, so when the inevitable attacks claiming as such happen, they are much easily dispatched than with less moderate candidates.
2012 should have been a Republican victory election year.
The Democratic incumbent, while personally popular, supported a list of widely unpopular positions including his signature name-bearing achievement that passed through bipartisan opposition with 1 deciding senatorial vote and was noted to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court but ruled as constitutional under the grounds that the Administration was lying about it the whole time (the Supreme Court ruled that the cornerstone rule in “Obamacare” that forced citizens to buy a product from a corporation was clearly illegal, but that calling the mandate’s punishment for disobeying it a “tax” was clearly within allowable bounds. Thus, the Obama administration, who had argued that the mandate is not a tax, won the case under the ruling that they were lying and it in fact is a tax).
Twas Systemic Idiocy that Lost the Race
Individual Republicans are just as astute and capable as anyone else, but the Republican party and conservative base as a collective is a band of absolute clueless self destructive idiots.
In no better way has this been on display more radically than the primary for both the 2008 and 2012 elections in where the party did everything possible to bludgeon themselves into a position of weakness and frailty before facing a far more prepared and expert opponent.
This is because Republicans generally are arrogant and clueless to social realities outside their analytical bubbles.
When facing an opponent with the power, organization, media attention, name recognition, financing, bully pulpit, and experience of having already won a presidential campaign – there ain’t no time for dickin around. In an election with no incumbent President or Vice President, such as 2008, the primary to choose a nominee for president can afford a more diverse group of contenders that include longshot candidates, since both political parties are going through the process. However, in an election to unseat an incumbent president or sitting vice president of the opposing party, there is no room for error, time wasting or to indulge longshot candidates or abstract party platforms.
Because of its sheer arrogance and stupidity, an active minority within the Republican party did all of the above and more and lost the election for themselves like the bag of tools they are.
Here are 5 reasons how this group of powerful morons worked hard to accomplish this feat of foolishness and snatch failure from the jaws of victory…
SQUANDERING PRECIOUS PRIMARY TIME ON CANDIDATES WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING
The rules of history, present electoral climate, and logical analysis reveal that the most likely path to the presidency is from a Governor and secondly, a popular Senator. The path to the presidency from the House of Representatives or from the Private Sector with no political experience is at such longshot odds to make it virtually non-existent.
Thus, logic dictates that the only candidates with a serious chance to win in 2012 and thus the only candidates worthy of serious consideration from voters were:
The entire primary should have been between these 4 men, alone.
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer would have been welcomed as well until their inevitable exit to seek the nomination of other loser parties after failing to gain any traction. Johnson went on to gain a typical less-than-1% of the vote as the Losertarian Party nominee and Roemer was the nominee of the Reform Party, which got something like 2 dozen votes or so.
Yet the news articles, media interview clips and headlines and most importantly – the debate stages – were also polluted with the likes of the following no-chancers:
-Ron Paul (U.S. Representative from Texas who never won a single primary state in any of his 3 presidential runs) -Michelle Bachmann (U.S. Representative, Minnesota) -Newt Gingrich (former polarizing U.S. House Speaker who hadn’t held political office since resigning from the House amidst controversy in the 1990s) -Rick Santorum (former Pennsylvania Senator who lost his 2006 reelection by 18 points and had remained out of political office since) -Herman Cain (Businessman founder of a regional pizza chain with no political experience)
These 5 candidates should not have run for president in that cycle as they were all vanity candidacies with little shot at the nomination and sure-fire losers in the general election. Although it is the right of any naturally born American citizen over the age of 30 to run for the office of President, it is the collective duty of the citizens that make up the grassroots activists, party leadership and voters themselves to not reward vanity candidacies and instead limit their support to the candidates whom most articulate their beliefs from within the realm of possibility to win, especially in an election against a powerful incumbent.
Instead, for an entire year, these individuals ate up the headlines with reality show style snipes at each other and mostly toward their eventual nominee they would all switch to tacitly supporting.
An entire. friggin. year…
A STUPIDLY LONG PRIMARY WITH AN ABSURD AMOUNT OF USELESS DEBATES
The time for a long primary season to give lesser funded candidates a chance to be heard and considered was 2008 while the Democrats did the same. The 2012 election however, was against a sitting president, which means every single day that the Republicans spent arguing amongst themselves was another day the Democrat had to argue to the American people, for himself and his brand, and against the Republican party. So that means there was a competition to be held in where a lead-up to that competition had one unified force attacking the other side and that other side attacking itself for that same period.
In order to win the 2012 election, the mathematically most-electable candidates needed to have been isolated early in the primary, condensed to a micro period of campaigning to make their case to the public and then boiled down to the one amongst them with the most amount of financing, support, organization, and adherence to party principals in where he should have been fast-tracked to the nomination with a maximum of 7 debates within a maximum period of 9 months (the length of time to gestate a baby should not be exceeded by the length of time to choose a politician you like best from a group of other politicians).
Instead, idiots that they are, the republican party and conservative base sought to achieve the exact opposite: to prevent a “coronation” of their inevitable nominee.
Thanks to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, the Republican primary lasted a grueling year of wasteful and expensive destructive in-fighting with a total of 20 divisive, destructive and ultimately Republican brand-damaging debates.
The first Republican primary debate occurred in May 2011 and the last didn’t happen until February 2012. The nominee wasn’t chosen until another 3 months afterward when on May 29th 2012, Mitt Romney finally crossed the threshold of 1,144 delegates – the number needed to win the GOP nomination. That means that the Republican party had no nominee to face Barack Obama until 5 months and 6 days before election day. But what is worse is that Romney’s campaigning to the public was constricted beyond even that minuscule amount of time because the official nomination for a presidential nominee (freeing up funds that nominee is allowed to spend on their campaign) doesn’t happen until the parties convention and that didn’t happen until August 28, 2012.
That means that Republicans spent 1 entire year wasting time and millions of dollars and resources attacking their own nominee for president, while that nominee had only 2 months and 6 days to spend their resources and targeted messaging attacking the incumbent Democratic president.
The usage of this time is clear: Republicans irresponsibly and stupidly misused the year+ of time in choosing their nominee while that nominee, Mitt Romney, used his 2 months and 6 days spectacularly well. Finally allowed to speak directly to the American people and his opponent, he unequivocally destroyed President Obama in the first debate to epic degrees. He performed similarly on-point in the second debate which was derailed not by Romney’s misstep but by the unprecedented overstep of the debate moderator Candy Crowley’s fraudulent bail-out of Obama amidst Romney calling him out on a major point of dishonesty. He continued strong on the campaign trail and in interviews, remaining cool and in command through and beyond the 3rd and final Presidential debate – which was considered a draw only because most of the points Romney was so presciently correct on didn’t reveal themselves until months later when it was too late.
The Republicans were already facing an uphill battle to unseat Barack Obama and giving Mitt Romney 2 months in which to do it was hard enough, but they needed to send him into that battle strengthened and with power behind him and instead pushed him out there politically broken and bruised to where the mostly uninterested voting majority defaulted to the popular meme about the media on this candidate peddled by the Democrats, their supportive media surrogates, and the Republican primary contestants for the previous year whom had all said Romney was an uncaring out of touch plutocrat who doesn’t care about the poor. Thus, by the time Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Candy hit, the anchor tied around the GOP nominee by his own party was barely too much to overcome.
But why?… Why would Republicans be so irresponsibly stupid as to try so hard to destroy their leading standard bearer?
The following reason is why…
OBSESSIVE “NOT CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH” WITCH HUNTING
Instead of following the William F Buckley rule of choosing “the most conservative candidate who can win”, idiot Republicans sought to choose “the most conservative candidate”, arrogantly expecting the whole winning thing to just fall into place somehow afterward. This is mathematically stupid because the majority of voters do not identify as “conservatives” they identify as “moderates”.
But what is worse is that Romney not only was the most electable candidate in 2012, but he was also the most conservative option.
In 2008 Romney was the “conservative alternative” to the establishment choice of the more moderate John McCain. McCain’s team smeared Romney as a “flip-flopper” and that was the big charge against him (because he dared to join conservatives on the issue of abortion, going from supporting abortion rights in the 90s to becoming pro-life as Massachusetts Governor) but his social, foreign, or economic conservatism was not in question in 2008. National Review lauded him as such, Laura Ingraham introduced him as “the conservatives conservative”, conservative businessman Herman Cain endorsed him, Rick Santorum introduced him at a rally as the only choice for a conservative candidate and Romneys conservative approach to Governing the 2nd most liberal state in the union (after Vermont) was praised as an example of how he was able to change minds and bring people towards the right.
Yet in 2012, these same sources dubiously decided that Romney was not conservative enough despite none of his positions from 2008 having changed at all. Suddenly Romney was being mocked instead of lauded for saying his tax cutting, government shrinking stewardship of Massachusetts was “severely conservative”, conservative magazines and talk radio were skeptical of him, and people like Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich who all endorsed “Romney the conservative” in 2008 were impossibly running against him because he wasn’t a real conservative.
The smears stuck with the ignorant Republican base who bought the smears, seemingly coming from a consensus in Right-wing media, dragging out the primary a half year longer than it needed to be. The self destructive part of this insanity was that the Republican “conservative alternatives” to Romney were anything but. In the 2012 election, the candidates deemed more conservative than Mitt Romney were:
-Rick Perry: A career politician governing the countries 2nd most Conservative state (after Oklahoma) with tax hikes, and a liberal record on illegal immigration.
-Rick Santorum: A former pro-abortion rights politician turned pro-life Statist who consistently supported and voted for big government and the welfare state in the senate including debt ceiling increases, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, long lists of wasteful spending including funding the infamous “bridge to no where”, and supporting Arlen Spector (who later became a Democrat and became the deciding vote for Obamacare) over Pat Toomey (the conservative PA Senator who now resides in Arlen Spectors former seat after running again and winning the election after Santorum’s loss).
These 3 choices were what was falsely portrayed to the conservative base as being more solidly right-wing than one Mitt Romney: A Washington outsider family man without a shred of impropriety in his entire personal and public life who was a successful businessman that ran the nations 2nd most Leftist state conservatively, never supporting a tax increase, and is largely responsible for getting Scott Brown elected as Republican Massachusetts senator nearly exclusively so he could be the deciding vote against Obamacare.
And for all the conservative misinformation about Romney, it amounted to nothing but damage among moderates – not conservatives, thus losing the election. Romney was able to show conservatives he was and would be one of them, but the negative attacks against him proved to be too much for him to overcome among moderates – a destruction achieved with the help of his own party.
Despite a myth being propagated the day after election day (before total counts were tallied) claiming that 3 million conservatives stayed home – Romney won those votes in historic proportions.
In fact, Mitt Romney won more Conservative votes than Conservative demigod Ronald Reagan.
Reagan won a landslide in 1980 with an electorate that, according to exit polls, was 28% conservative. Romney lost in 2012 with an electorate that was 35% conservative. Reagan won 78% of conservatives. Romney won 80% of conservatives.
Yet Reagan landslided to victory and Romney lost decisively. The difference between them is that Reagan won moderates. Romney lost moderates by 16 points.
The reason Romney lost moderates? Because his brand was damaged by his own party.
Romney lost moderates and the election because of the conservative in-fighting by desperate less-conservative challengers that included liberal smears against him that his Republican opponents tarnished him with for a full year before the Democrats did…
ATTACKING THEIR EVENTUAL NOMINEE… FROM THE LEFT
When a candidate in a primary is on track to win and you don’t want them to, it is natural to pull out all the stops in order to defeat them; however, when squabbling within one political party, it is an insane and deranged tactic to confirm all the talking points of the opposing political party during your in-fighting.
The attacks against Mitt Romney by his fellow Republicans were straight out of the Democrats playbook…
Governor Tim Pawlenty led the way in using the Left’s talking point on the Massachusetts healthcare plan Romney presided over being identical to Obamacare, making the term “Obamneycare” go viral before gutlessly backing off that accusation and then joining the Romney campaign without ever explaining any evolution in thinking on the charge.
Governor Rick Perry used the Lefts talking points on Immigration to smear his own party with exactly the emotional appeal fallacies the left leverages on the issue. Championing push for in-state tuition for illegals in Texas, Perry said “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.” To which Romney shut down by noting “I think if you’re opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a heart. It means that you have a heart and a brain.” A perfect shut down of this Leftist talking point – yet Conservative media analyzers lauded Perry from the Left over Romneys retort from the right.
Former Senator Rick Santorum attacked Romney from the Left on his wealth which Santorum claimed put him out of touch with blue collar families. Santorum attacked Romney for his financial success and his history in the business world, claiming that “America doesn’t need a CEO” (despite conservatives thinking that is exactly what the country needed). Santorum, who is nationally unpopular and has been out of elected office since losing his last election by 18 points, also brazenly attacked Romney as “unelectable” in debates, on Twitter, and through tv commercials attacking the Governor for being awesome in the private sector.
Once again, Romney had the perfect logical and conservative response, noting “If we become one of those societies that attacks success, one outcome is certain – there will be a lot less success.” But instead of lauding this advocacy of the foundation of their economic ideology, right-wing media praised the Leftist attack and buried or criticized Romney’s on-point rebuttal.
Newt Gingrich, the most liberal candidate in the primary, combined Perry and Santorums approaches and attacked Romney from the Left on both economics and immigration. Gingrich smeared Romney from the Left on his work as a businessman and specifically his time at Bain Capital, endorsing a Pro-Gingrich PAC produced documentary titled King of Bain which is a Michael Moore style production filled with emotional appeal fallacies and half truths. Gingrich claimed that Romney “looted” companies while at Bain, with no real deconstruction or argument whatsoever of the practices Bain Capital used while restructuring and turning profits from failing businesses.
Further attacking Romney for saying that he would not go rounding up families to deport them but would rather support legal policies that would cause some illegals to “self deport, Gingrich jumped on the Left-wing smear that this made Romney “anti-immigration”.
Yet again, Romney shut down his leftist attackers with conservative logic and accuracy in one of my favorite debate smackdowns in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFSf0H1gEE
It was obvious to any objective observer that Mitt Romney would and should be the 2012 nominee shortly after the primary season began. Not everyone had to like that, but the destructive tactics used against him weren’t necessary either ended up being total failures by failing in every area possible: They did not stop Romney from being the nominee, but did stop him from winning the election.
Way to go, idiots. It worked like a charm.
In other words: Mitt Romney won on the issues. The reason he lost the election were because Republicans Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum smeared him with Democratic talking points that stuck.
One shouldn’t expect this angle from their own side, but at least these attacks came from competitors of Romney’s for the nomination and thus conservative and center-right media figures could referee and point out their desperate and counterproductive tactics. Except, as alluded to earlier and covered in the next section: they emphatically didn’t.
A STUPIDLY DIVISIVE CONSERVATIVE MEDIA
Regardless of political persuasion, you can’t expect the average citizen to be doing independent research on political matters completely on their own. They turn to their like minded commentators for guidance and in the 2012 election primary, they were wildly misguided.
The top culprits smearing Romney in the 3 major markets of radio, print, and blogging were:
Mark Levin: talk radio show host who smeared Romney on the radio to his grassroots listeners. Phillip Klein: columnist at the Washington Examiner who used foolish and cliche talking points in repeated attacks on Romney. Erik Erikson: founder of RedState.com who perpetuated Romney smears online.
But really, no one else in conservative media helped all that much outside of the astute broadcasters on Salem Radio Network including Dennis Prager (who was fair, despite not initially supporting Romney), Michael Medved (who endorsed Romney early in the primary season) and Hugh Hewitt (a long time Romney supporter who none-the-less was fair to the entire field and refrained from smears and talking points).
With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?
Conclusion…
Mitt Romney was the best candidate Republicans had in decades and the party did everything possible to prevent him from winning the election. These conservative grass rooters succeeding in failing.
The Republican base lost the 2012 election. Not Mitt Romney.
Individual Republicans are just as astute and capable as anyone else, but the Republican party and conservative base as a collective is a band of absolute clueless self destructive idiots.
In no better way has this been on display more radically than the primary for both the 2008 and 2012 elections in where the party did everything possible to bludgeon themselves into a position of weakness and frailty before facing a far more prepared and expert opponent.
This is because Republicans generally are arrogant and clueless to social realities outside their analytical bubbles.
When facing an opponent with the power, organization, media attention, name recognition, financing, bully pulpit, and experience of having already won a presidential campaign – there ain’t no time for dickin around.
In an election with no incumbent President or Vice President, such as 2008, the primary to choose a nominee for president can afford a more diverse group of contenders that include longshot candidates, since both political parties are going through the process. However, in an election to unseat an incumbent president or sitting vice president of the opposing party, there is no room for error, time wasting or to indulge longshot candidates or abstract party platforms. Because of its sheer arrogance and stupidity, an active minority within the Republican party did all of the above and more and lost the election for themselves like the bag of tools they are.
Here are 5 reasons how they worked hard to accomplish this feat of foolishness…
SQUANDERING PRECIOUS TIME ON CANDIDATES WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING The rules of history, present electoral climate, and logical analysis reveal that the most likely path to the presidency is from a Governor and secondly, a popular Senator. The path to the presidency from the House of Representatives or from the Private Sector with no political experience is at such longshot odds to make it virtually non-existent.
Thus, logic dictates that the only candidates with a serious chance to win in 2012 and thus the only candidates worthy of serious consideration from voters were:
The entire primary should have been between these 4 men, alone. Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer would have been welcomed as well until their inevitable exit to seek the nomination of other loser parties after failing to gain any traction (Johnson went on to gain a typical less-than-1% of the vote as the Losertarian Party nominee and Roemer was the nominee of the Reform Party, which got something like 2 dozen votes or so).
Yet the news articles, media interview clips and headlines and most importantly – the debate stages – were also polluted with the likes of the following no-chancers:
-Ron Paul (U.S. Representative from Texas who never won a single primary state in any of his 3 presidential runs)
-Michelle Bachmann (U.S. Representative, Minnesota)
-Newt Gingrich (former polarizing U.S. House Speaker who hadn’t held political office since resigning from the House amidst controversy in the 1990s)
-Rick Santorum (former Pennsylvania Senator who lost his 2006 reelection by 18 points and had remained out of politics since)
-Herman Cain (founder of a pizza chain with no political experience)
These 5 candidates should not have run for president in that cycle as they were all vanity candidacies with little shot at the nomination and sure-fire losers in the general election. Although it is the right of any naturally born American citizen over the age of 30 to run for the office of President, it is the collective duty of the citizens that make up the grassroots activists, party leadership and voters themselves to not reward vanity candidacies and instead limit their support to the candidates whom most articulate their beliefs from within the realm of possibility to win, especially in an election against a powerful incumbent.
A STUPIDLY LONG PRIMARY WITH AN ABSURD AMOUNT OF DEBATES
The time for a long primary season to give lesser funded candidates a chance to be heard and considered was 2008 while the Democrats did the same. The 2012 election however, was against a sitting president, which means every single day that the Republicans spent arguing amongst themselves was another day the Democrat had to argue to the American people, for himself and his brand, and against the Republican party.
In order to win the 2012 election, the mathematically most-electable candidates needed to have been isolated early in the primary, condensed to a micro period of campaigning to make their case to the public and then boiled down to the one amongst them with the most amount of financing, support, organization, and adherence to party principals in where he should have been fast-tracked to the nomination with a maximum of 7 debates within a maximum period of 9 months (the length of time to gestate a baby should not be exceeded by the length of time to choose a politician you like best from a group of other politicians).
Instead, idiots that they are, the republican party and conservative base sought to achieve the exact opposite: to prevent a “coronation” of their inevitable nominee.
Thanks to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, the Republican primary lasted a grueling year of wasteful and expensive destructive in-fighting with a total of 20 divisive, destructive and ultimately Republican brand-damaging debates.
The first Republican primary debate occurred in May 2011 and the last didn’t happen until February 2012. The nominee wasn’t chosen until another 3 months afterward when on May 29th 2012, Mitt Romney finally crossed the threshold of 1,144 delegates – the number needed to win the GOP nomination. That means that the Republican party had no nominee to face Barack Obama until 5 months and 6 days before election day. But what is worse is that Romney’s campaigning to the public was constricted beyond even that minuscule amount of time because the official nomination for a presidential nominee (freeing up funds that nominee is allowed to spend on their campaign) doesn’t happen until the parties convention and that didn’t happen until August 28, 2012.
That means that Republicans spent 1 entire year wasting time and millions of dollars and resources attacking their own nominee for president, while that nominee had only 2 months and 6 days to spend their resources and targeted messaging attacking the incumbent Democratic president.
The usage of this time is clear: Republicans irresponsibly and stupidly misused the year+ of time in choosing their nominee while that nominee, Mitt Romney, used his 2 months and 6 days spectacularly well. Finally allowed to speak directly to the American people and his opponent, he unequivocally destroyed President Obama in the first debate to epic degrees. He performed similarly on-point in the second debate which was derailed not by Romney’s misstep but by the unprecedented overstep of the debate moderator Candy Crowley’s fraudulent bail-out of Obama amidst Romney calling him out on a major point of dishonesty. He continued strong on the campaign trail and in interviews, remaining cool and in command through and beyond the 3rd and final Presidential debate – which was considered a draw only because most of the points Romney was so presciently correct on didn’t reveal themselves until months later when it was too late.
The Republicans were already facing an uphill battle to unseat Barack Obama and giving Mitt Romney 2 months in which to do it was hard enough, but they needed to send him into that battle strengthened and with power behind him and instead pushed him out there politically broken and bruised to where the mostly uninterested voting majority defaulted to the popular meme about the media on this candidate peddled by the Democrats, their supportive media surrogates, and the Republican primary contestants for the previous year whom had all said Romney was an uncaring out of touch plutocrat who doesn’t care about the poor. Thus, by the time Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Candy hit, the anchor tied around the GOP nominee by his own party was barely too much to overcome.
But why?… Why would Republicans be so irresponsibly stupid as to try so hard to destroy their leading standard bearer? The following reason is why…
OBSESSIVE “NOT CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH” WITCH HUNTING
Instead of following the William F Buckley rule of choosing “the most conservative candidate who can win”, idiot Republicans sought to choose “the most conservative candidate”, arrogantly expecting the whole winning thing to just fall into place somehow afterward. This is mathematically stupid because the majority of voters do not identify as “conservatives” they identify as “moderates”.
But what is worse is that Romney not only was the most electable candidate in 2012, but he was also the most conservative option.
In 2008 Romney was the “conservative alternative” to the establishment choice of the more moderate John McCain. McCain’s team smeared Romney as a “flip-flopper” and that was the big charge against him (because he dared to join conservatives on the issue of abortion, going from supporting abortion rights in the 90s to becoming pro-life as Massachusetts Governor) but his social, foreign, or economic conservatism was not in question in 2008. National Review lauded him as such, Laura Ingraham introduced him as “the conservatives conservative”, businessman Herman Cain endorsed him, Rick Santorum introduced him at a rally as the only choice for a conservative candidate and Romneys conservative approach to Governing the 2nd most liberal state in the union (after Vermont) was praised as an example of how he was able to change minds and bring people towards the right.
Yet in 2012, these same sources magically decided that Romney was not conservative enough despite none of his positions from 2008 having changed at all. Suddenly Romney was being mocked instead of lauded for saying his tax cutting, government shrinking stewardship of Massachusetts was “severely conservative”, conservative magazines and talk radio were skeptical of him, and people like Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich who all endorsed “Romney the conservative” in 2008 were impossibly running against him because he wasn’t a real conservative.
The smears stuck with the ignorant Republican base who bought the smears, seemingly coming from a consensus in Right-wing media, dragging out the primary a half year longer than it needed to be. The self destructive part of this insanity was that the Republican “conservative alternatives” to Romney were anything but. In the 2012 election, the candidates deemed more conservative than Mitt Romney were:
-Newt Gingrich: A twice divorced liberal Republican.
-Rick Perry: A career politician governing the countries 2nd most Conservative state (after Oklahoma) with tax hikes, and a liberal record on illegal immigration.
-Rick Santorum: A former pro-abortion rights politician turned pro-life statist who consistently supported and voted for big government and the welfare state in the senate including debt ceiling increases, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, funding the “bridge to no where”, and supporting Arlen Spector (who later became a Democrat and became the deciding vote for Obamacare) over Pat Toomey (the conservative PA senator who now resides in Arlen Spectors former seat).
These 3 choices were what was falsely portrayed to the conservative base as being more solidly right-wing than one Mitt Romney: A Washington outsider family man without a shred of impropriety in his entire personal and public life who was a successful businessman that ran the nations 2nd most Leftist state conservatively, never supporting a tax increase, and is largely responsible for getting Scott Brown elected as Republican Massachusetts senator nearly exclusively so he could be the deciding vote against Obamacare.
And for all the conservative misinformation about Romney, it amounted to nothing but damage among moderates – not conservatives, thus losing the election. Romney was able to show conservatives he was and would be one of them, but the negative attacks against him proved to be too much for him to overcome among moderates.
Despite a myth being propagated the day after election day (before total counts were tallied) claiming that 3 million conservatives stayed home – Romney won those votes in historic proportions.
Romney won more conservatives than Conservative demigod Ronald Reagan.
Reagan won a landslide in 1980 with an electorate that was 28% conservative. Romney lost in 2012 with an electorate that was 35% conservative.
Reagan won 78% of conservatives.
Romney won 80% of conservatives.
The difference is that Reagan won moderates.
Romney lost moderates by 16 points.
The reason Romney lost moderates? Because his brand was damaged by his own party. Romney lost moderates and the election because of the conservative in-fighting by desperate less-conservative challengers that included liberal smears against him that his Republican opponents tarnished him with for a full year before the Democrats did…
ATTACKING THEIR EVENTUAL NOMINEE…FROM THE LEFT When a candidate in a primary is on track to win and you don’t want them to, it is natural to pull out all the stops in order to defeat them; however, when squabbling within one political party, it is an insane and deranged tactic to confirm all the talking points of the opposing political party during your in-fighting.
The attacks against Mitt Romney by his fellow Republicans were straight out of the Democrats playbook…
Governor Tim Pawlenty led the way in using the Left’s talking point on the Massachusetts healthcare plan Romney presided over being identical to Obamacare.
Governor Rick Perry used the Lefts talking points on Immigration to smear his own party with exactly the emotional appeal fallacies the left leverages on the issue. Championing push for in-state tuition for illegals in Texas, Perry said “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.” To which Romney shut down by noting “I think if you’re opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a heart. It means that you have a heart and a brain.”
Former Senator Rick Santorum attacked Romney from the Left on his wealth which Santorum claimed put him out of touch with blue collar families. Santorum attacked Romney for his financial success and his history in the business world, claiming that “America doesn’t need a CEO” (despite conservatives thinking that is exactly what the country needed). Santorum, who is nationally unpopular and has been out of elected office since losing his last election by 18 points, also brazenly attacked Romney as “unelectable” in debates, on Twitter, and through tv commercials attacking the Governor for being awesome in the private sector.
Once again, Romney had the perfect logical and conservative response, noting “If we become one of those societies that attacks success, one outcome is certain – there will be a lot less success.”
Newt Gingrich, the most liberal candidate in the primary, combined Perry and Santorums approaches and attacked Romney from the Left on both economics and immigration. Gingrich smeared Romney from the Left on his work as a businessman and specifically his time at Bain Capital, endorsing a Pro-Gingrich PAC produced documentary titled King of Bain which is a Michael Moore style production filled with emotional appeal fallacies and half truths. Attacking Romney for saying that he would not go rounding up families to deport them but would rather support legal policies that would cause some illegals to “self deport, Gingrich jumped on the Left-wing smear that this made Romney “anti-immigration”. Yet again, Romney shut down his leftist attackers with conservative logic and accuracy in one of my favorite debate smackdowns in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFSf0H1gEE
It was obvious to any objective observer that Mitt Romney would and should be the 2012 nominee shortly after the primary season began. Not everyone had to like that, but the destructive tactics used against him weren’t necessary either ended up being total failures by failing in every area possible: They did not stop Romney from being the nominee, but did stop him from winning the election. Way to go, idiots. It worked like a charm.
In other words: Mitt Romney won on the issues. The reason he lost the election were because Republicans Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum smeared him with Democratic talking points that stuck.
A STUPIDLY DIVISIVE CONSERVATIVE MEDIA Regardless of political persuasion, you can’t expect the average citizen to be doing independent research on political matters completely on their own. They turn to their like minded commentators for guidance and they were wildly misguided.
The top culprits smearing Romney in the 3 major markets of radio, print, and blogging were:
Mark Levin: talk radio show host who smeared Romney on the radio to his grassroots listeners.
Phillip Klein: columnist at the Washington Examiner who used foolish and cliche talking points in repeated attacks on Romney.
Erik Erikson: founder of RedState.com who perpetuated Romney smears online.
But really, no one else in conservative media helped all that much outside of the astute broadcasters on Salem Radio Network including Dennis Prager (who was fair, despite not initially supporting Romney), Michael Medved (who endorsed Romney early in the primary season) and Hugh Hewitt (a long time Romney supporter who none-the-less was fair to the entire field and refrained from smears and talking points).
With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?
Mitt Romney was the best candidate Republicans had in decades and the party did everything possible to prevent him from winning the election. These conservative grass rooters succeeding in failing.
I’ve been saying this in various forms for over 10 years but John Ziegler has said it so well in this column that i’m angry at not articulating my own version better before he beat me to it. Regardless, he nails it in the following in his list of the Six Dirty Secrets of Presidential Politics in 2012.
Issues/Ideology Mean Very Little
Thanks to “dirty little secret” number one, I find it almost hilarious that so many political commentators still desperately hang on to the delusion that voters (at least the ones who matter) make their decisions the same way that said commentators do. This reminds of me of the identical fallacy which occurs when a woman interprets the actions of a man based on the erroneous belief that his brain works like hers does.
These ignorant voters don’t delve deeply into the candidates’ record/positions to decide which one is closest to their views. They have no real ideology. Instead, they make their choices based mostly on feeling, and often that doesn’t even mean a sense about each of the candidates.
Instead, these people tend to vote based on which decision will make them feel better about themselves. Ironically, that usually means which side will make these “stupid” people feel as if they have made the “smart” selection.
A glance at recent history proves this point. In 2008, there was no doubt that the media had convinced the “middle third” that Obama was the “wise” choice. In 2004, despite the media’s best efforts, the middle third felt like Bush 43 would keep us safer in a post-9/11 world. In 2000, there was no real sense as to which candidate was the “wise” option, and it basically ended in a tie. In 1996, thanks to the economy being good, they deemed Bill Clinton worthy of a second term. In 1992, thanks to a misperception of the economy, they simply felt like three straight Republican terms was enough.
Now, if one candidate is perceived as being ideologically outside the mainstream (which, thanks to a media-created matrix, can really happen only to Republicans), then that perception will very likely impact the way that the “middle third” decides which candidate is the “wise” pick. But this usually won’t be because of the candidate’s actual views, but instead because of the narrative that his or her ideology creates (for instance, Rick Santorum would get crushed not because most people disagree with him about gay rights, but rather because his misunderstood views on the issue would create the impression that he was outside the mainstream and therefore not the “wise” alternative).
The bottom line as this relates to 2012 is that the notion that Mitt Romney would be at a disadvantage against President Obama because he is supposedly a “right-leaning moderate” going up against a “left-leaning moderate” is just silly. As long as there is no conservative third-party candidate, Obama himself will single-handily produce a near-100% conservative voter turnout for Romney, regardless of how his ideology is perceived.
This is also why Newt Gingrich is so unelectable, especially against Obama. All these voters would ever really know about him is that he is a fat, old, angry white male, with two ex-wives, who resigned as speaker of the House because he got Clinton impeached while he himself was having an affair. Game, set, match.
It’s another Republican primary debate tonight, this time in South Carolina…
Governor Mitt Romney has by far the highest performance in every answer he’s given, but all the others except Ron Paul (who has plateaued on how good or not he performs at these things) did exceptionally better than they have been in these things. Rick Perry would be the frontrunner right now if he was as smooth and competent 5 months ago as he was tonight.
Romney has never had a bad debate though. He has owned everyone who attempts to attack him in every one of these things and tonight had the closest call but he still won at the last second. What happened was that Rick Santorum complained about a commercial against him by a Pro-Romney PAC (Political Action Committee) and was whining to Romney about it being inaccurate. The reason it is “whining” and not a legitimate complaint is because Romney has nothing to do with the ad other than existing and being in this race for people to support. Candidates are not allowed to communicate with PAC’s. It would be illegal for Romney to tell any of the PAC’s supporting him “hey, don’t say this” or “hey, you know what you should say about Santorum?…”.
So the complaint from Santorum is stupid on its face but it gets better/worse: –actually, wait — before I tell you how it got better slash worse, I’ve got to point out that Newt Gingrich made this same whiny complaint to Romney in a previous debate and got the same 100% legitimate and accurate answer. Newt was mad over attack ads against him by Romney’s PAC, scolding Romney for not (illegally) telling the PAC to remove the ads. So what happens? Newt’s PAC releases a 28 minute documentary attacking Romney as an evil corporatist who – gasp – made MONEY (iknowright? hideous) while other people – doublegasp – failed to. The response was that it received 4 Pinochios from the same source Gingrich used to whine about the negative ads against him. Romney brought this up at the debate, calling the “documentary” the “biggest hoax since bigfoot” but failed to use the 4 Pinnochios fact. Okay, so back to Ricky Dicky Santoramos:
The ad misstated Santorums position on allowing felons the right to vote and he asked Romney if he believes felons should be allowed to vote. Romney does not even support PAC’s and neither do I (they only exist because of limits on money to candidates. if you remove those limits then candidates can run their OWN ads and be personally responsible for the content within them instead of PACs doing it), but he answered the question and said he does not believe violent felons should be allowed to vote. AH-HA! sez Le Santorum…because when Romney was governor in Massachusetts, the state had a law allowing felons to vote and Romney didn’t change it. So Santorum thinks he has a gotcha on Mitt and to me in the audience it appears that way as well… Except Mitt replies with his usual surgeon like precision and skill and casually diced that charge to peaces and threw it in the trash. The response: Romney had an 85% Democrat legislature that would not allow him to change that law so he picked his battles wisely and didnt press it in his short 4 year term as Governor – HOWEVER – long as you wanna bring up contradictory actions to ones beliefs – was it not you, Mr Santorum, who just minutes ago on this stage (this isn’t a quote, i’m role-playing Mitt while re-telling this story from a half hour ago) told us all that it was a noble thing you did in the senate by voting AGAINST a right-to-work law (that means that no one would be legally forced to join a Union to have a job) despite being pro right-to-work? The reason you said you voted against it despite supporting it was that your state voted against similar legislation so you wanted to accurately represent it as its Senator… okay. fine. so why are you being such a dumbass hypocrite and not applying that same standard to me, Mitt Motherfkkn Rom-nay, biatch? *applause*.
And the same goes for the rest of you conservative dopes that keep calling Romney such an untrustworthy flip-flopping unprincipled core-less manipulator because the dude, over time, came to YOUR position on abortion: the guy operated under the same philosophy Santorum did, but changed his mind IN YOUR FAVOR… Santorum believes in right-to-work laws but refused to vote for a national one because his state of Pennsylvania was against them. fine. Mitt Romney was personally pro-life his whole life, but thought he could reconcile that belief with keeping choice within the law and ran for senate in 94 (lost) and Governor in 2000whatever (won) on the promise to not change the current law on abortion. So the 2 men had the same principal. No excuses for you evangelical bigots who are looking for excuses to hate on Romney and call Rick Santorum your principalled savior of ideological purity. Romney did you one better though, because when legislation came to his desk as governor that would allow the destruction of embryos after conception, Romney was like “holy balls yu guyz. I can’t sign this thing… shits KRAZY, yo” (again, a paraphrase), rejected it, wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper explaining his official political position and how it reflects what was in his heart and mind but stays true to his promise to his state and thats the end of it. The floop is your problem with the guy?
1) You shouldn’t have one, cuz your argument essentially is “He kept a promise to the people who voted for him. He was persuaded to OUR position -AND – he didn’t further the advancement of abortion law in the most liberal state in the union”.
2) Who are you gonna vote for instead? Gingrich, who supported the same individual mandate on healthcare (for the nation, not just for 1 super liberal state) that Obama put into law and Romney never supported, ever? Rick Perry, who thinks you “have no heart” if you don’t give the children of illegal aliens special privileges such as college tuition? or Rick Santorum? – who is a hypocrite that defends his own history of voting in opposition to his stated political beliefs in order to accurately reflect and serve his constituency but attacks others for doing that exact same thing – but in a better way than he did.
Get with it, conservatives. The more you stupidly attack your best candidate, Mitt.0 Eagle-Claw Rombot the 2nd – the more smart people like me who are paying attention like him and realize how dumb you are.
