The emails have mostly been viewed in the context of the lawsuit, but they also provide an extraordinary view of high-stakes negotiation between the leaders of two powerful firms, Apple and News Corp. They start far apart, but over the course of five days, Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs successfully pulls the son of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch over to his side.
Via the Atlantic (who illustrates the thread with talking head icons that are pretty helpful to follow a mental visual of what’s going on) ~ Here’s how it went down:
Newscorp starts…
Eddy,
Thanks for coming in again this morning. We’ve talked over the proposal and I want to make sure that you have a summary of the deal that HarperCollins would be willing to do in your timeframe.
1. Pricing: We need flexibility to price on a title by title basis outside the prescribed tiers in the contract. We will use our best efforts to meet the tiers we discussed.
2. MFN [“most favored nation” status]: In the event that HarperCollins and Apple disagree on a consumer price for a title, HarperCollins needs the ability to make that title available through other agents who support the higher price.
3. Commissions: We need a lower commission on new releases for the economics to work for us and our authors. We believe a 30% commission will lead to more authors asking for ebooks to be delayed a result that will not work for Apple or HarperCollins.
4. The new release window: We need to have flexibility on the agency window. We believe this window should be 6 months rather than 12 months in the event that one or more large retailers do not move to an agency model.
Leslie will be sending Kevin a contract that reflects these points in the event you wish to move forward on these terms.
Thanks
Brian
Next, the publishers opening bid in the negotiation happening with just 5 days until the iPad debuted.
Steve,
Thanks for your call earlier today, and for the time last week.
I spoke to Brian Murray and Jon Miller [then the head of digital media at News Corp.]–and Brian is sending a note to Eddy today. I thin I have a handle on this now. In short–we we would like to be able to get something done with Apple–but there are legitimate concerns.
The economics are simple enough. [Amazon] Kindle pays us a wholesale price of $13 and sells it for 9.99. An author gets $4.20 on the sale of a hardcover and $3.30 on the sale of the e-book on the Kindle.
[A portion of this email was redacted by the court.]
Basically–the entire hypothetical benefit of a book without raw materials and distribution cost accrues to Apple, not to the publisher or to the creator of the work.
The other big issue is one of holdbacks. If we can’t agree on the fair price for a book, your team’s proposal restricts us from making that book available elsewhere, even at a higher price. This is just a bridge too far for us.
Also, we are worried about setting prices to high–lots of ebooks are $9.99. A new release window with a lower commission (say 10[%]) for the first six months would enable us to proce much more kenly for Apple customers. We’d like to da that.
More on this below in Brian’s note to Eddy. We outline a deal we can do.
Feel free to call or write anytime over the weekend to discuss if you like.
I am in the UK (so eight hours ahead of CA). My home number is [redacted]. I check the email regularly.
Steve, make no mistake that across the board (TV, Studios, Books, and Newspapers) we would much rather be working with apple than not. But we, and our partners who produce, write, edit, and otherwise make all this with us, have views on fair pricing, and care a lot about our future flexibility. I hope we can figure out a way, if not now and in time for this launch of yours, then maybe in the future.
Best,
JRM
Jobs replies…
James,
A few thoughts to consider (I’d appreciate it if we can keep this between you and me):
1. The current business model of companies like Amazon distributing ebooks below cost or without making a reasonable profit isn’t sustainable for long. As ebooks become a larger business, distributors will need to make at least a small profit, and you will want this too so that they invest in the future of the business with infrastructure, marketing, etc.
2. All the major publishers tell us that Amazon’s $9.99 price for new releases is eroding the value perception of their products in customer’s minds, and they do not want this practice to continue for new releases.
3. Apple is proposing to give the cost benefits of a book without raw materials, distribution, remaindering, cost of capital, bad debt, etc., to the customer, not Apple. This is why a new release would be priced at $12.99, say, instead of $16.99 or even higher. Apple doesn’t want to make more than the slim profit margin it makes distributing music, movies, etc.
4. $9 per new release should represent a gross margin neutral business model for the publishers. We are not asking them to make any less money. As for the artists, giving them the same amount of royalty as they make today, leaving the publisher with the same profits, is as easy as sending them all a letter telling them that you are paying them a higher percentage for ebooks. They won’t be sad.
5. Analysts estimate that Amazon has sold more than one million Kindles in 18+ months (Amazon has never said). We will sell more of our new devices than all of the Kindles ever sold during the first few weeks they are on sale. If you stick with just Amazon, Sony, etc., you will likely be sitting on the sidelines of the mainstream ebook revolution.
6. Customers will demand an end-to-end solution, meaning an online bookstore that carries the books, handles the transactions with their credit cards, and delivers the books seamlessly to their device. So far, there are only two companies who have demonstrated online stores with significant transaction volume–Apple and Amazon. Apple’s iTunes Store and App Store have over 120 million customers with credit cards on file and have downloaded over 12 billion products. This is the type of online assets that will be required to scale the ebook business into something that matters to the publishers.
So, yes, getting around $9 per new release is less than the $12.50 or so that Amazon is currently paying. But the current situation is not sustainable and not a strong foundation upon which to build an ebook business.
[A portion of this email was redacted by the court.]
Apple is the only other company currently capable of making a serious impact, and we have 4 of the 6 big publishers signed up already. Once we open things up for the second tier of publishers, we will have plenty of books to offer. We’d love to have HC among them.
Thanks for listening.
Steve
“Murdoch starts to bend”
Steve,
I think the crux of this is our flexibility to offer product elsewhere at price-points you don’t like.
If we could offer to you that a certain percentage of releases (>50%) would be available within your pricing structure (< or = 14.99), does that give you enough comfort?
I think we are worried more about the absolute holdback of product elsewhere, and our ceding of pricing to Apple, than we are about the actual haggle over what the price will be.
I haven’t shared this with HC directly–so this is only hypothetical. But if you were willing to accept that a supplier can exploit other avenues (at prices not disadvantageous to you), with a guarantee of substantial volume through Apple–maybe I could work with HC to get to some common ground.
Please let me know.
A different question: we have four areas of discussion (related to our product) between our teams right now: Books, US Video, Int’l Video, and newspapers. All at different stages of maturity, these discussions are all centered, for us, around the desire to make our product widely available, and to make yours and our products more attractive for our customers. It seems though that we in each one we largely encounter a “take it or leave it” set of terms, and predictably we’ve so far failed to really strike the kind of partnerships that could move things forward.
Is it worth considering in the round, over the next few months or weeks, whether or not some of these loose ends can be tidied up? It’s clear that Apple is already becoming an attractive platform for so many of our customers–all over the world. As a creative company at our core, NWS [News Corp.] should be more engaged with Apple, and I think Apple could be more engaged with NWS, globally, than either of us are today.
Best,
JRM
Jobs goes in for the kill:
James,
Our proposal does set the upper limit for ebook retail pricing based on the hardcover price of each book. The reason we are doing this is that, with our experience selling a lot of content online, we simply don’t think the ebook market can be successful with pricing higher than $12.99 or $14.99. Heck, Amazon is selling these books at $9.99, and who knows, maybe they are right and we will fail even at $12.99. But we’re willing to try at the prices we’ve proposed. We are not willing to try at higher prices because we are pretty sure we’ll all fail.
As I see it, HC has the following choices:
1. Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.
2. Keep going with Amazon at $9.99. You will make a bit more money in the short term, but in the medium term Amazon will tell you they will be paying you 70% of $9.99. They have shareholders too.
3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started there will be no stopping it. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any other alternatives. Do you?
I wouldn’t have posted this if that were the end of the story because goofy people giving accounts to the news isn’t really enough to perk my interest in putting something down in the Richardland Hall of Records. The Shmoyoho auto-tuned music video of the account, however, turns a geeked out interview subject encounter into inspirational wonderment.
“No matter what you done you deserve respect. You loveable.”
Try to not well up with emotion when he melodically chants that “you are worthwhile”….
The music video dropped in February 2013 and as of May, Kai the hatchet wielding hero is the prime suspect in a murder.
Prosecutors say 25-year-old Caleb McGillvary could face a life sentence if he’s convicted. A county grand jury handed up the indictment Wednesday.
McGillvary is accused of killing 74-year-old lawyer Joseph Galfy, whose body was found May 13 in his Clark home. McGillvary was arrested in Philadelphia days later.
Authorities say McGillvary and Galfy met in New York City and McGillvary stayed at Galfy’s home.
McGillvary had suggested on his Facebook page before that he had been sexually assaulted by Galfy at the man’s home saying, “What would you do if you woke up with a groggy head, in a stranger’s house, realizing that someone had drugged and raped you? What would you do?”
Recently, President Barack Obama was doing the only thing he seems to be capable of not screwing up (see: getting people to give money) and still managed to step in it with his base of totalitarian hippie supporters somehow.
At a fundraiser outside of San Fransisco, the President included in his remarks that attorney general of California, Kamala Harris was “the best looking attorney general in the country”. The hippies got angry and used it as an opportunity to peddle their speech-policing about what is and isn’t okay.
What isn’t okay about noting that someone is attractive? Nothing, obviously. Which is the only thing that makes this a noteworthy story. The articles and social media praise for those scolding the president don’t even make an attempt at logical arguments. They just forbid and demand and seek to bully and shame those who don’t adhere to their thought and comment codes and it’s gross.
The definition of “political correctness” is forbidding truths inconvenient to the political Left, which is rooted in Marxist ideology seeking “sameness” but usually masking it under the more palatable but flexible term of “equality”. This strive for sameness requires a lot of social engineering that no un-brainwashed person would find at all appealing, so pressure tactics need to be employed under the guise of pleading on behalf of a victim class.
In this case, the social engineering the hippies desire is the 1960s version of “feminism” (the attack of femininity in the pursuit of women being seen, thought of, and treated no different than men in any way) which is the opposite of feminism (embracing the feminine and observing it as different but equal in respect and legal rights to masculinity and other typically male traits). Hippie feminism demands the suppression of the fact that men find women attractive, so thus it demands that references to this fact be banned. Media using attractive women are demonized as “objectifying” women and comments on women’s attractive appearances are labeled as doing the same thing. This is because that under an ideology of sameness-worship, the observation of differences debunks the end goal. So their solution is just to ban it. Call these things offensive.
It doesn’t matter that there is no logical basis behind keeping quiet over obvious observable truths and it doesn’t matter that there is nothing insulting, degrading, inappropriate, or out of context about polite notation of such obvious observable truths. The argument is merely “we said so. the end”.
Harris was already noted by President Obama as being “brilliant” and that “she is dedicated and she is tough” before he added that she was also “the most attractive attorney general in the country” so there is no argument to be made about any kind of denial of her non-physical attributes. Instead, the presidents comments are just being called inappropriate and offensive by the usual suspects of hippies stepping in front of someone who was neither victimized nor offended and broadcasting about victimizaiton and offense.
Mika Brezinski on MSNBC said “It just divides women and it just divides people up to separate them by looks and probably was a little ham-fisted. I just think the whole thing, the whole dynamic about women and their looks puts women under a lot of stress that they don’t need.” I like Mika and don’t want to beat up on her, so i’ll leave it to you to decide if she really believes that hippie talking point and/or if it is congruent with pictorials like this:
Katie J. M. Baker asks in a Jezebel post that uses an unflattering photo of Kamala Harris, “was it wrong of Obama to call Harris “the best looking attorney general” while listing her many other attributes?” and then immediately answers herself with “Yes”, because, she says “Women put up with enough unsolicited attention as it is; the president of our country doesn’t need to legitimize the practice by piling on.”
Robin Abcarian in the LA Times had to admit the statement is “accurate” and “stating the obvious” but still asks if it was “sexist” (inadvertently admitting that truth is sometimes “sexist” which un-defines the word sexism). She concludes that making obvious statements about a womans attractiveness is predatory and problematic by saying “More wolfish than sexist, I’d say. And this may be a little problem he needs to work on.” In an attempt to justify this potential “problem” that needs “working on”, Abcarian says:
As Arlette Saenz of ABC News pointed out, Obama got into some hot water a while back when he addressed a reporter as “sweetie.” That was obnoxious, and demeaning, and Obama rightfully apologized. In 2008, he told Hillary Clinton she was “likeable enough” during one of the primary debates, which turned off God knows how many women, who heard the smug judgment of an arrogant upstart.
2 more bogus examples as the reporter didn’t express any offense at the “sweetie” remark, which isn’t inherently obnoxious or demeaning and the “likeable enough” comment was a joke in response to a question about whether Hillary “is likeable” (so in other words, he was using the language of the question in the debate to make light of the question in her defense – not decreeing to Hillary that he, as an elitist, had dubbed her to be adequate).
Amanda Marcotte at Slate wrote an article titled “Sorry, President Obama, but Complimenting a Colleague’s Looks Isn’t Harmless” but forgot to include in the article, any “harm” inherent in such an action. Instead she just points out that dumb hippies on twitter rebuked the President, and lauds that many were male and dismissed columnists debunking the lunacy as “unsurprising defensive whining”. At least she is unsurprised that when cry-bullying over fake victimization stories in service to illogical dogmas are used as offenses, the defense is expected. Her laughable evidence that complimenting women “isn’t harmless” is a statement by a social scientist who quoted a 1996 paper in where researchers discovered that – gasp – passive-aggressive behaviors exist. Marcotte should get with the 21st century and realize that this isn’t news. Yes, it’s true that people can say nice things in manipulative ways for negative outcomes – thanks for that professional citation to uncover that obvious point literally everyone is already aware of. Sorry, Amanda, but the potential to be negative by paying people compliments doesn’t make the act of making a compliment in itself “harmful”.
Joan Walsh at a Salon.com titled “Kamala Harris deserves better” un-makes her point in nearly every line of the first few paragraph by admitting the details that contradict he phony claim of sexist oppression (Obama and Harris are close allies; the compliment was intended as such and not as an attack; that it was preceded by calling her “brilliant”) and then says “but my stomach turned over anyway”.
And that’s the perfect summary of this situation: “Yes, there was nothing wrong whatsoever about this comment that had good motives, was well received by the person it was directed to and was objectively accurate…but I hated it anyway” – Hippie Feminism in a nutshell.
~~
To review: President Obama says something nice about a friend and supporter at a fundraiser and no one there complains and the friend and supporter expresses no problem at having been publicly complimented by the President of the United states on her brilliance, toughness, dedication, and good looks. Leftist crusaders, however, step in to say that’s not okay in a variety of outlets, but to recap the 5 covered here:
An MSNBC host says that complimenting women on being attractive adds “stress that they don’t need” and “divides” them, even though she adds to the division with 90% more hair and makeup vamping and 100% more leg showing than her male co-anchors.
An LA Times columnist says that it is “wolfish” and “a problem” to compliment a women on her looks, even though she admits herself several times that the woman in question has complimentary looks (ie: a compliment).
A Slate.com columnist claimed that a 1996 paper someone wrote said that nice things could potentially be used in bad ways and dubiously concluded that that is proof that complimenting a womans appearance is “harmful”.
A Jezebel columnist said that the president was “piling on” the plight that women already unjustly suffer when they look attractive by saying so.
And a Salon.com columnist claimed that she became physically sick when she heard that the President had complimented a woman.
So, just like I told you, Apple is turning its iPod Nano into a new wearable device coming soon. Given Apples history with these things, I predict it will be cool but fall way way short of its potential.
It’s unlikely any of this will actually be in version 1, but my 100% technologically and business-wise possible wish list is as follows. From my mouth to Jobs ears… Here’s what Apple could do to make this product tha bomb dot com:
1- Make it WATERPROOF.
Not water “Resistant” to where it can get splashed – iPhones are already that. They don’t advertise as such, but I’ve taken mine on enough boats and in enough oceans, lakes, pools, hot tubs and bath tubs to know that it can handle some spritz and even moisture (minimal, obvs) in the headphone jack and Lightning-butthole. The only iPhone I killed with water was Brenda1 – my first generation iPher in 2008 when my group stayed out on an offshore Hawaiian island too long and the tide came in and was rough so the swim back was equally rough, causing our waterproof bags to — whatever. The point is that a smart watch that doesn’t need to be removed in water is how to make watches a thing again. I used to love my old waterproof Fossil a girlfriend bought me back in the day to keep track of how many hours I was out in the waves and whatnot. Phones should be waterproof but I get why the care and expense isn’t taken to make them so. Theres no excuse for watches. Especially a smart watch. We already have an electronic thingy that we have to remove from our person before we go wake boarding. We don’t need another. A waterproof iWatch is how Apple can truly keep us connected with something actually useful: Get Facebook, Twitter and other notifications with you while in the pool. Don’t cut your surf session short waiting for a call – just check your wrist for important texts and incoming calls to tell you when you need to hustle back ashore. This is the #1 need for this device. All it would mean is wireless charging for the device – which is not a big deal but for some reason Apple doesn’t use that technology anywhere. The iWatch might be the first wireless charging device Apple finally releases though since there really is no sensible way to add power to a wearable device conveniently and in keeping with the minimalist Apple esthetic. And I’m not even talking about the electricity wifi that I invented and was laughed at for claiming was possible in 2001 – I just mean a charging dock with no plug-in. My tooth brush uses it. Why can’t apple? Their wireless mice should at least use it (with double-A recharbales inside that can be replaced with regulars if you choose) but doesn’t. Make the watch waterproof and that alone will get me to buy it.
2- Make it talk to other Apple products.
This is your chance to make being in the Apple cult really pay off, Apple. Wtf is wrong with you for letting Samsung punk you on that cool “bump phones to share a picture” feature? How was that not an Apple thing, you dummies? Especially when this iTV monster finally comes out after 4 years of developing – you’re gonna have to blend your shiz better. I want my iWatch to pause and play my iTV so I essentially have a remote with me at all times and I want it to know when I’m in the vicinity of my other Apple children so it can do things like log me into my computer without making me type in my password every time.
3- Make it loud AND make it silent.
Up until now, watches just beep and chirp at you. Apple has a chance to re-invent this product that’s been stuck in the 1980s for 20 years and give people a Walkman on their wrist and instead of calling it the iWatch – call it the iBand and make use of the play on words since you’ll have a music band within a wrist band. Put a speaker in this thing. Let me listen to a podcast or music playlist with the sound coming from my arm instead of a device in my pocket. That combined with its waterproof feature would make the watch fantastically unique.
For alerts, alarms and other messages: Morse code them to me with vibrations. You put your phone on vibrate and it still makes a loud “JZZZ JZZZ” sound. Put your iBand on silent and it subtly notifies you that you have something you might want to give attention to and finding out what it is not a cumbersome hassle of digging for your phone or retrieving it across the room just to see what has popped up on the screen – it’s as simple as glancing at your time telling device (which is perfectly socially acceptable in almost any instance outside of Presidential debate and other moments where you might be considered inapropes for waiting for whatever is going on to be over).
4- Make it a wallet.
Apple is inching towards this with it’s built in Passbook app that stores boarding passes, coupons, movie tickets, gift cards and more. Put it on the wrist. Eventually, I’d like to pay for my milkshake with money on my credit card by booping my wrist on a device in front of a register and getting an electronic receipt logging my purchase right away – but until then, I’ll just settle for paying for that milkshake with a gift card stored in my iBand the same way I can do now with Passbook on my iPhone. Put it on the wrist and give people one less thing they have to hold in their hand and dig in their pockets for. It’s the way of the future.
5- OBVIOUSLY open it up to the App Store
It’s really dumb that the Apple TV has existed for so many years and STILL doesn’t (and may never) allow 3rd parties to make apps for it outside of special deals made with Apple itself. Slowly, new features have been introduced to the device like Hulu Plus and a bunch of sports bullshit (baseball and basketball video streaming or something? Idk. I’ve never explored the icons) but it needs so much more. I assume this is Apple just holding back until their actual TV comes out in a million years to give it a bigger bang, make sure it works exactly how they want it to and that there aren’t conflicts of interest with their other products but it’s still lame. The iBand needs apps right away. I love the idea of having a hand-watch (which I’ve lost the ability to read) and a digital watch in the same device that is a tap away from switching back and forth in full-screen and I love the idea of being able to swipe left and right to see the local time vs time @ my destination I might be traveling to vs time in Kandahar – but that shiz is just the beginning. Make your watch a Mickey Mouse watch – put some screen savers on it that could be conversation starters – turn the screen stark-white to make it a makeshift flashlight – let me run the far superior (and free) Run Tracker exercise app on it instead of Nike’s super lame built-in iOs app that requires an external $30 device on your shoe – OPEN this thing up and it. can. Be. Awesommmmme.
These features are necessary, awesome and most of all: useful by being not redundant (ie: they achieve better ways to do things than currently exist even in other Apple products like the iPhone or any version of the iPod).
I rarely ask these closer questions (cuz it’s almost always just a cheap gimmick by authors to get viewers interactive) but I really wanna know: What do you want in the upcoming Apple-wrist-product?
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.
Lazy sensationalist writers are overusing and improperly applying a word that should mean something.
The phrase “meltdown” should be reserved for mental breakdowns where a person loses control of their behavior in a fit of confusion, rage or sadness. That’s what a meltdown is. It comes from the informal phrase used to refer to a nuclear power core being damaged from severe overheating, referred to as a “nuclear meltdown”. A human meltdown should be similarly explosive and a result of their core systems being overtaxed. Then it would be accurate.
Britney, courtesy Splash News
A “meltdown” is not being annoyed with an assistant and saying snippy things. It is not a misunderstanding that is handled with less patience than one might expect. It’s a flip out. A tantrum as a result of stress and anxiety. Not just a person being awkward or angry.
You would think poor Jessica Simpson was made of wax, looking at the constant headlines about her alleged “meltdowns”.
Knock it off. These aren’t meltdowns. They’re bad days. Lots of people have legit meltdowns you can point to if you’re not so lazy. Find and highlight those. Leave formerly-hot-currently-fat actresses and other celebrities whose success you’re jealous of, alone.
Pew polls also confirm that as of now at least, it’s down to the wire.
As the general election campaign gets underway, Obama’s slim 49% to 45% edge over Mitt Romney is based on his continued support among women, college graduates, blacks, Latinos and lower-income voters. Obama leads Romney by 13 points among women, which is identical to his victory margin over McCain among women four years ago, according to National Election Pool exit polls. Men, who split their vote between Obama (49%) and McCain (48%), are leaning slightly toward Romney today, by a 50% to 44% margin…
Obama has lost support among several groups: Obama carried the independent vote by a margin of 52% to 44% in 2008. Today, 42% of independents favor him, while 48% back Romney. Obama also is faring worse among lower-income voters and those with less education than he did in 2008.
The problem here that it seems no one but me is either aware of or willing to talk about is the racial minority vote and the emotional appeals the Obama campaign uses to drive that voter turnout. Sorry, but a majority of Barack Obama’s appeal as a politician is race-based and that shiz translates to votes. Romney can counter if, and only if he puts the brakes on that appeal by choosing a non-white-male running mate. My pick is son-of-Cuban immigrants, Florida Senator Marco Rubio but there are plenty of acceptable options. This is an issue of marketing and optics. The point is not that the Repbulicans should play the same bogus identity-politics game that the Democrats are but rather merely to slow the dishonest attacks on their own brand. In other words: the strategy in my plan is not to try and get Republican votes by making people say of someone on the voting ticket “they are just like me regarding ethnic or racial makeup and I would like to have what I ignorantly feel is ‘one of my own’ in positions of power” in the way that skyrocketed black votes for Obama in 2008 to 96% which became 13% of the voting electorate (and my pick of Rubio should be evidence of that, since Cuban Americans are already solid Republican voting blocks and have little to no ethnic identity crossover appeal to Blacks or other Latino segments) – but rather its merely to debunk that very notion. Obama is going to try to win not by ideas and arguments and honest appraisals of Republican policies and how they may or may not benefit society – he’s going to try to win with smearing his opponents as elitists that don’t understand or care about the struggle of the underclass, which is to many minority voters, a dog whistle for “the other side is racist and you can’t trust them”. Romney can’t merely rely on his life history of helping those in need to end the effectiveness of those attacks. He needs a running mate that can show the key demographic of voters (of all races and ethnicities) that don’t follow the specifics of politics and aren’t terribly informed on policy, that he and his party are not the stuffy white-guys coming in to take down the first half-black President of the nation and, unfortunately, the only way to earn the listenership of that demographic is to match the optics of the opponent in some way and then make the argument from there. The argument will be made regardless, obviously, but if that argument comes from 2 white guys against a half-black guy and old white guy, the team with the half-black guy will get enough votes from non-politic followers across the board and especially in racial minority demographics and it will be enough to tip the election.
Romney is halfway there…
Obama trails Romney by a wide margin among white voters (54% Romney, 39% Obama), though that is little changed from 2008. But Obama has lost ground among certain groups of white voters. In 2008, whites with household incomes under $50,000 favored McCain over Obama by a slim 51% to 47% margin. Today, lower-income whites favor Romney over Obama by a 16-point margin (54% to 38%).
To sow up a victory in November, it all hinges on this decision.
Britney, courtesy Splash News
