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.