The 2016 nominee has to be new blood. Voters are not buying that the same people who have been in and out of government for decades are suddenly going to reform it.
Talk about running for the wrong reasons. The American people are suffering and certain power players are treating the reigns of our country as if it their personal play thing, as if this is some sort of soap opera.
Republican lawmakers aren’t jumping on the Mitt Romney 2016 bandwagon.
Even among his onetime allies, the news that the former Massachusetts governor is considering a third consecutive run for president is being met with criticism or cool indifference on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Romney’s congressional liaison for his 2012 run, said Tuesday he might support one of his Senate colleagues for president.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who backed Romney before the 2012 Iowa caucus, said he’s going to “wait and see.”
And another senator who spoke on background to offer a candid assessment of how Romney could affect the 2016 race offered a stark dismissal.
“What we know about Romney last time, he lost the election with working Americans,” said the conservative senator, who backed Romney in 2012. “[Among] those making $30,000 to $50,000, he lost it by 15 percent, and [those making] under $30,000 by 28 percent. You can’t win an election like that. And it can’t just be words. I’ll be looking for candidates who are authentic, who have credibility.”
Remember the problems with Mitt Romney in 2012:
1 – He smeared Newt Gingrich for starters in ads that were just plain dishonest. This cost Romney votes in North Florida among other areas. Millions of conservatives stayed home.
2 – He changed his views on illegal immigration and global warming depending on what group he was in front of.
3 – He trashed all the other 2012 candidates for not having perfectly conservative records when he had the least conservative record of them all.
4 – He let Obama paint him as a man who was responsible for the death of employees that had died after he left the company. These ads ran in OHIO for a month before Romney even responded. Losing Ohio alone will cost the election.
5 – His tax reform plan was the mildest proposal of all of the candidates.
This video is a bit of an oversimplification, but in our experience it is certainly directionally accurate.
Via Julie Borowski:
This is what the typical conversation with a Mitt Romney supporter sounds like. They are more anti-Obama than pro-Mitt. How did we get stuck with two terrible choices again? *Sigh*
I am sure readers have heard by now that Mitt Romney is blaming the 47% who is “on the take” and “isn’t paying taxes”.
Political Arena contributor Warren Roche put together this brilliant and entertaining montage, “Where is the love?”:
While it was impolitic for Mitt to include veterans and retirees in that number there is some truth to it, but in saying it they way he did left him open to be demagogued and attacked as hating retires, the disabled and veterans.
How many times will Republicans get whacked in the “battle of the narratives” before they learn? Or is the current crew in charge so used to fooling themselves that they have to be swept out for the party to have a chance in future elections?
At least some people get it:
I just think it’s nuts. First of all it is insulting. It is like WalMart after a bad week saying “The customers are being unruly”. – Newt Gingrich
“You have a political problem when the voters don’t like you, but you have a real problem when the voters feel like you don’t like them”. – George Will
Governor Bobby Jindal:
Yours truly had this to say a few days ago in Facebook Notes:
Much of the blue collar in this country used to be solidly in the Republican corner, but they feel like they have been lied to and taken for granted. Since the 2003 Bush tax cuts there have been ZERO domestic policy victories for this group of voters. That is why they are disillusioned and believe that no matter who they vote for government will just gets bigger, the economy will just get smaller while jobs dry up and flee the country. They feel squeezed and while they know that the Democrats are bad, they no longer have confidence in the Republican party. That is why these voters are staying home.
What isn’t helping is Republicans with an entitlement mentality who actually have the nerve to believe that just because the Democrat in power is a failed neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky radical that the man they cram down our throats is entitled to the blue collar conservative vote, and when they don’t get it they call them imbeciles.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz gets it as well and comments on why so many blue collar Republicans stayed home again:
For some reason the establishment GOP will not learn the lesson of George Bush 41, Bob Dole, the 2006 mid terms, John McCain, and now Mitt Romney. How many times will they push the same failed strategy and tell people that it is the only way to win? How many times will we be told that Dole, McCain and Romney must be chosen because they are the only “electable ones” only to watch them lose?
UPDATE– Zo: We ran a dull example of conservatism vs the shining star of leftism (video) – LINK
Editor’s Note – Romney lost the “cultural charisma” and the “popularity contest” voters – We put up a guy who is a dullard against the shining star of leftism. Think about this for as moment:
Nixon had more charisma than McGovern Carter had more charisma than Ford Reagan had more charisma than anybody Clinton had more charisma than Bush41 Clinton had more charisma than Dole No one has less charisma than Gore – Bush wins
Kerry and Bush have about equal charisma but Kerry was a stuffed shirt flip flopping (sound familiar) joke and everyone knew it.
McCain vs Obama – are you kidding me (but wow look at those Sarah Palin crowds)?
Romney vs Obama on likability Romney loses to the low knowledge voter.
One of the greatest Mass media theorists of all time Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the message” and that is what so many Republicans are missing.
Doubt me??? – Marco Rubio vs Joe Biden. Allen West vs Joe Biden. Mike Pence vs Joe Biden.
Bottom line on the cultural charisma factor: who would make a better president, Captain Kangaroo or rapper JZ? The answer is obvious, but who would low knowledge voters pull the lever for?
Bush got over 62 million votes in 2004 when people were not all that excited about him. Mitt Romney got just under 57 million.
Mitt Romney got fewer votes than John McCain and everyone acknowledged that many conservatives stayed at home because they did not trust McCain’s inconsistent leadership and his bad habit of trashing conservatives on the Sunday morning talk shows. Conservatives also stayed home in 2006.
Stop right there and let those numbers sink in. We are a nation where the people self identify as conservatives more than liberals almost two to one. Yet look at the exit polling of those who actually voted: 35% identified as conservative, 25% as liberal and 41% as moderate.
The math does not lie. More conservative men stayed home, evangelicals turned out but in lesser numbers than in previous elections. Even in bastions of conservatism such as Elkhart County Indiana, and counties in North Florida had more conservative voters stay home.
My establishment Republican friends are not going to like this, but the math is what the math is. In 2010 Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Marco Rubio and Allen West were the top of the political narrative. Women, who are to be swing voters, voted in heavier numbers for GOP/TEA Party candidates in nine of the top ten swing states than in any election since the 1984 Reagan landslide. This time women broke for the Democrats.
Just to give an example of what went wrong, look at the moral clarity of the messaging in 2010 vs 2012.
This was the prevailing political message in 2010:
Watch as Allen West sets the record straight on the war on terror where the other politicians are afraid to just tell it like it is:
By contrast Mitt Romney was pro-abortion before he was pro-life, against the Second Amendment before he was for it, was for Obama’s stimulus before he was against it, changed his stand on global warming alarmism depending on who was in front of him, was against the wildly successful Contract for America, and while campaigning went along with the Democrats in their disrespectful words against Ronald Reagan. Quite a difference.
So before we explain what went wrong it is very important to explain what the problem is not.
The problem is not that Republicans need to abandon conservatism and behave more like liberals as evidenced by the exit polling where almost every policy question favored Republicans:
Is the country moving in the right direction? – No
Should the government cut spending? – Yes
Should the government raise taxes? – No
Should Obamacare be repealed? – Yes
Should America use more of it’s own energy resources? – Yes
This demonstrates that on policy, those who voted, even engaged moderates, support conservative policy.
The problem is not that conservatism alienates independent voters, in fact every indication is that exactly the opposite is true. America’s Republican Governors are arch conservatives on policy, from taking on the government unions to school choice and fiscal responsibility. Independent voters vote for these governors and this election day such governors are in 30 states.
The elite media and some in the GOP establishment are blaming the TEA Party, but what they aren’t telling you is that establishment GOP “moderates” took a real beating this election including states such as Hawaii, North and South Dakota, Connecticut, and Virginia. Senator Scott Brown also lost his seat. The elite media may focus on Todd Akin in Missouri and Dick Mourdock in Indiana each losing their Senate races when they should have been an easy win. They self destructed because they engaged in some very undisciplined communication and turned enough voters off to cause some to split their ticket. Their loss had nothing to do with being conservative or traditional. Mike Pence won the Indiana Governor’s seat and he is as conservative as it gets.
Moderates also voted for Michelle Bachmann in Minnesota and for Jackie Walorski in Indiana’s Second District who again are both as conservative as they come and TEA Party favorites. Both won in swing districts.
About messaging: Jackie Walorski went after her Democrat opponent as the liberal fraud that he is, as he is nothing like he presented himself. She took off the gloves AND WON in spite of the fact that there was a 10% drop in turnout in Elkhart, the “conservative county” in her five county district. Walorski was willing to blast her opponent hard with the truth and was unafraid. If she had done so in 2010 she would have beaten Joe Donnelly back then. Michelle Bachmann did the same thing.
The problem is not solely because America is turning more brown. New Hampshire is as white as it gets and the same problems appeared there as in the rest of the country.
The problem is not that Republicans are willing to talk about about “social issues”. In fact quite the opposite. Why? It is Democrats who went nuts on social issues to paint Republicans as people who want to ban birth control. So we have no choice but to engage and fight back and our reluctance to do so in a smart, disciplined manner cost us lots of women’s votes. We surrendered on this issue because we didn’t fight back at the Democrats dishonesty hard enough.
To run on only economics is to expect that people really understand economics. Excuse me Mr. Voter could you please explain to me what the debt to GDP ratio is and why it is a threat to your standard of living?
The problem is not because of the power of incumbency…you know because beating the incumbent in the White House is so rare…unless of course we remember that Carter beat Ford, Reagan Beat Carter, and Clinton Beat Bush, and Obama, who was a sitting duck and ripe for defeat, only squeaked by.
UPDATE II – Ronald Reagan dealt with liberals in the Republican Party who said the exact same things –
The “GOP establishment” has to come to terms with some uncomfortable facts
The evidence shows that we had the wrong man at the top of the ticket whose campaign made some major mistakes.
Mitt Romney had high negatives in several swing states including Ohio and Florida after the primary. Why? This is what happens when you have, as Newt Gingrich said, “A Massachusetts moderate who passed Romneycare” who runs a dishonest scorched earth primary and has adjusted his views every election year. The GOP establishment crammed him down our throat with massive amounts of corporate and PAC money.
Remember this guy?
In Florida, where Romney played those brutal ads against Newt it seems many stayed home on November 6th. Romney also ran dishonest ads against Rick Santorum so more evangelicals stayed home. This explains why we did good in polling and poor on election day. The disillusioned participated in the polls, got pegged as likely voters and stayed home on election day. How can you trash conservatives again and again and then expect them to show up for you? And to ad insult to injury say that “we should not be too strident in our criticisms” of Obama’s failures.
Weekly polling for two years tells us 61% of the people want Obamacare repealed, but too many voters simply didn’t believe that Romney was serious. Newt Gingrich warned that this very thing would happen. This very writer knows plenty of people who are conservatively minded who have said, “there is no difference between the two parties” and they essentially believe they are all big government big spenders. More and more blue collar Republicans no longer feel like they have a political party to call home.
Speaker of the House John Boehner’s lack of effectiveness in cutting any spending at all also served to undermine 2010 Republican freshman who tried to cut at least some spending were unable to largely because of Speaker Beohner. Libertarians in Indiana got 6% of the vote in some races, which is another indicator of this reasoning.
Another indicator is that traditionally the GOP has received about 80% of it’s donations from individuals in amounts of less than $200.00. This was not the case with Mitt Romney, although in the last weeks small contributors did donate more heavily, but none the less this indicates a problem with the base.
Below is a video of a disillusioned white male voter who I am told is a former Army Officer who worked in psychological operations (psych-ops). Granted the man in the video is a bit on the paranoid tip, but his sentiment that it no longer matters who you vote for is not uncommon among the millions of conservatives who stayed home, especially when one considers how many times the GOP “establishment” has failed to deliver it’s “limited government” campaign rhetoric:
[There is a way to tap into this sentiment and turn it into energy for votes without alienating moderates, but someone will have to hire me to get that information. Gotta make a living – Editor]
The Republican primary was so long because the people were on a search for the “Not-Romney” candidate. In fact, you probably once favored voting one of the other candidates precisely because of the problems mentioned above. Odds are you who sit here reading this very page was against the idea of Mitt Romney being your nominee so how could it be a surprise that so many Americans never warmed to him?
One reason why people are so upset, and either not voting or protest voting for Libertarians is because they are sick and tired of politicians promising the world and delivering more suffering.
We have never witnessed polls like this, Americans are showing a clear contempt for both political parties and after seeing this it becomes clear why Tea Party is polling ahead of both Democrats and Republicans. Also note the massive disconnect between the political class the the governed.
Speaking as a political scientist, these numbers show that the government is losing its legitimacy (please be sure you know what that word means in poli-sci terms before you comment). This can only mean big changes are ahead.
There is also an indicator that independents may be more conservative than Republicans now, if this trend continues it changes everything.
The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.
However, 63% of the Political Class think the government has the consent of the governed, but only six percent (6%) of those with Mainstream views agree.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.
The bottom line is that much of the blue collar in this country used to be solidly in the Republican Corner, but they feel like they have been lied to and taken for granted. Since the 2003 Bush tax cuts there have been ZERO domestic policy victories for this group of voters. That is why they are disillusioned and believe that no matter who they vote for government will just gets bigger and the economy will just get smaller. They feel squeezed and while they know that the Democrats are bad, they no longer have confidence in the Republican party. That is why these voters are staying home.
Messaging and policy must be bold, simple and provide a stark contrast
The question that many of these politicos have not answered is this: how could we possibly be more moderate than we already are? We ran with Dole in 1996, and we lost; we ran with McCain in 2008, and we lost; we ran with Romney, and we lost. Romney took the issue of Obamacare off the table and barely attacked Obama directly for much of anything. There was no potent conservative philosophy that was offered to provide voters with a sharp distinction between the parties. The Republican convention was a pathetic Oprah show and the entire campaign was basically an advocacy of Obama’s policies, albeit with less enthusiasm. And let’s not blame the loss on Paul Ryan and Medicare reform; he outperformed Bush and McCain with seniors.
For all the talk of the need to moderate in order to win, Obama ran the most divisive, radical, and negative campaign, while Romney ran a relentlessly positive campaign with incessant promises to work with the other side. People are attracted to a show of strength, not a promise of bipartisanship, which smacks of insecurity in one’s own virtues and ideas.
For those of you who may not remember, this is how to set a bold contrast with vision – LINK. When one does not run on big ideas they run on small things and that is what both Obama and Romney did.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz gets it as well and comments on why so many blue collar Republicans stayed home again:
All of the money in the world won’t help if you keep using the same failed strategy
Obama was a sitting duck, ripe for defeat and after all of the money spent they still couldn’t win in this ripe of an environment.
The Republican strategist who created the model for the outside money groups that raised and spent more than $1 billion on the Nov. 6 elections saw almost no return for their money.
Rove, through his two political groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, backed unsuccessful Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney with $127 million on more than 82,000 television spots, according to Kantar Media’s CMAG, an ad tracker based in New York. Ten of the 12 Senate candidates and four of the nine House candidates they supported also lost their races.
The results have angered some Republicans who blame Rove for “sidelining conservatives” and diverting money from them.
“Right now there is stunned disbelief that Republicans fared so poorly after all the money they invested,” said Brent Bozell, president of For America, an Alexandria-based nonprofit that advocates for Christian values in politics. “If I had 1/100th of Karl Rove’s money, I would have been more productive than he was.”
The Rove group also spent $622,400 on ads attacking Nelson in Florida, $513,000 on McCaskill in Missouri, $486,000 on Kaine in Virginia, and $466,000 on Jon Tester in Montana. Those Democrats all won.
American’s for Prosperity (AFP), a group that used a more traditional bold, conservative, contrast communications strategy, and is willing to back some TEA Party candidates, made $754,000 in ad buys in Nebraska and Nevada and saw its preferred Republican candidates win those races.
The GOP must get media savvy and learn & understand that when the other side gives you an opportunity to land a hay-maker, take it
Seize the day. In the third debate Mitt didn’t capitalize on the disaster of Benghazi, and instead spent too much time trying to appear unoffensive in some type of attempt to appeal to female voters. We saw what that got us.
In 2004 women voted for President Bush because he made them feel safe and when you feel safe why make a change? Remember those “security moms”? Time after time Obama left himself open for a hay-maker punch where he was vulnerable and Romney wouldn’t seize the day. If Romney would have went after Obama on Benghazi the elite media would have been forced to talk about it, but instead the elite media has clammed up and has been trying to keep this huge scandal under the rug until after the election.
How can they pay all of these “communications strategists” and not a one of them understands that a president or a presidential candidate can set the media agenda. He can essentially make them talk about what he is talking about and get his message out even against an unwilling press.
In the debate, Obama hit Mitt Romney on equal pay for women, but Obama has paid women less in both his campaign staff and his White House staff. Romney should have delivered a knock out punch with that kind of opening, and followed it up with the fact that the Obama Administration is once again targeting women’s health care screenings for rationing while fully acknowledging that the result will be more dead women.
Even though the government response to Hurricane Sandy has been slower than Katrina and essentially a disaster, President Obama went and used Governor Christie as a campaign prop and it worked. While Obama was seizing the day, Mitt Romney was suspending his campaign and running a small food drive. Here is an idea, how about Mitt Romney returns to his home of Massachusetts to offer his services to Governor Patrick or to work as a government liaison with the Red Cross to help flood victims. That just may have helped Scott Brown win his Senate Race.
Speaking of the elite media…
The GOP must learn that the elite media is out to destroy you and is in the tank for the Democrats to a level that is truly astonishing. CBS News had in their possession classified emails that showed that the order to stand down and essentially let our people get slaughtered in Benghazi while Obama watched in the situation room came from the White House. CBS sat on those emails and only released the story on their web site when Glenn Beck threatened to out the network and those involved for covering it up.
The time for trying to make the media like you is over, dealing with dishonest reporters individually and embarrassing them into doing their job is the best you can hope for. The approval rating of the elite media is right up there with syphilis so embarrassing them Newt Gingrich style is a win.
Elite Media bias counts for up to five points in the election, which is more than enough to to swing most races towards a Republican win, we cannot afford to simply surrender those five points any longer.
Newt Gingrich vs CBS’ Scott Pelly:
Newt Gingrich Blasts the Elite Media for Bias and Anti-Christian Bigotry:
Newt takes NBC’s David Gregory to school:
Newt vs. NPR’s Juan Williams on the “race card”
Newt vs Piers Morgan on Class Warfare
You will notice that every time Newt took on the elite media who did the people believe? Did they Believe Scott Pelly and George Stuffingenvelopes or did they believe Newt Gingrich. The answer is obvious as demonstrated by the North Carolina Exit Poll where Newt dominated the numbers including independents, evangelicals, and women. As Ron Paul has demonstrated, the young graduate to those with a big vision and big ideas.
When one is not afraid of the elite media in the slightest and simply refuses to take any of their crap you can engage them and use them to get your message out, just as Newt Gingrich did in his lengthy interview on foreign policy on CNN.
If the nominee had dealt with the elite media as effectively as Newt Gingrich much of that five points from media bias would have been averted and that alone would have reversed this election.
The GOP must not let the elite media pick their nominee, or millions in the base will not show up. Remember in 2008 when the elite media sung the praises of John McCain until the day after he secured the nomination and then went after him scurrilously. The elite media did the same with Mitt Romney. They trashed everyone but Mitt, until he secured the nomination. Which brings us to the next lesson.
Define yourself early and WIN the battle of the narratives
Remember those ads that accused Mitt Romney of causing the death of the wife of a steel worker, when in fact it was an Obama fund raiser who was in charge of Bain Capital at the time because Romney had already left to run the Olympics?
Obama started running those ads in swing states such as Ohio and Florida before Romney even secured the nomination. The elite media knew it was a lie but the reporting of it was essentially to say how brilliant the lie was and what a brilliant campaign Obama was running. Mitt Romney did not engage the media or run ads to fight back. Romney’s negatives were already high because of the scorched earth primary he and his allies had run and the “dead wife”adds from Obama drove those negatives up even further.
Romney didn’t start campaigning in Ohio in earnest until just about the time of the debates. Too late, many people had already made up their minds.
This was why the first debate was such a shock to the country, as Romney showed that he was not the evil, bloodthirsty, knuckle-dragging bastard that the Obama Campaign portrayed him as, but by then it was too little too late.
There were so many narratives to hit Obama on. One example is an EPA that has become truly imperious and tyrannical. One EPA official even said that they like to crucify companies like the Romans did to people, just to set an example. Take the countless horror stories and jobless from his outrageous eco-extremism and take that suffering and pin it on Obama as he so well deserved. Obama’s policies are truly cold and heartless and his corruption in the green sector to enrich his friends is well documented. The fast and furious scandal, which resulted in the brutal murders of hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American federal agent should have been used to turn Hispanics away from Obama. A scandal is a gimme to the opposition but yet once again, Romney would not seize the day.
The biggest narrative of all that was not even challenged, is that the economic collapse was Bush’s fault. Well facts matter and someone needs to stand for the truth.
1 – The Bush Administration lobbied congress almost 20 times for mortgage reform since 2001
2 – Republicans tried to pass mortgage reform multiple times and when Barney Frank couldn’t stop it in the House Chris Dodd and the filibuster threat did in the Senate.
4 – When Obama was a lawyer for ACORN he participated in one of those bogus CRA lawsuits to force banks to give bad loans. The people he represented of course could not afford the payments and most lost their homes.
5 – Clinton Administration officials such as Janet Reno and Andrew Cuomo said on video that they wanted to use (read abuse) the CRA law to act as an affirmative action program for home loans, whether they qualified for the loan or not wasn’t important.
Voters have a limited attention span
Why would Mia Love and other fantastic candidates lose? The answer is coat tails. The top of the ticket sets the narrative and unless something unusual happens such as the Todd Akin or Dick Mourdock situation that gets huge press that catches the voter’s attention. If we are milquetoast at the top even the best of candidates pay the price down the ticket and we saw this happen in spades in this election. For most voters their time and attention only allow them to pay some attention to one or two races on the ticket. The rest are at the mercy of those at the top.
Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk
Remember that ridiculous job killing light bulb ban that Republicans blamed Democrats for? Well the bill was co-authored by “conservative republican” and self proclaimed guardian of small business Fred Upton. Upton was primaried and as a result he is now behaving himself. Upton sponsored the bill to reverse the ban, but it should never have been an issue to begin with. It is NOT the job of Congress to micromanage the lives of the people.
Vote Fraud
There were so many problems with ballot counts that favored Democrats that I could fill the page with the links. Other blogs are doing that so I suggest that lawmakers read up and citizens make them listen. We control most of the countries governorships and state legislatures so the time to put teeth in our election laws and procedures is now.
George Soros is using his empire to rig state vote counting the other way so for the integrity of the vote we need to push back hard.
Florida and Ohio were so close that if vote fraud could have been nailed down and military ballots counted we would have a President Elect Romney today.
[Editor’s Note – I was pretty tough on Karl Rove in this piece. For the record I like Karl and we have chatted a little, but Karl, for your own good you should listen to this piece.]
Their coverage of McCain/Palin was not even this negative.
Lets talk about Sarah Palin for just a moment. People now realize that Sarah Palin has been correct on issue after issue. She was right about ObamaCare, she was right about how radical the Obama Administration would be, she was also right when she predicted the rise of food prices very early on. Even the Wall Street Journal trashed Palin for the food prediction, but time after time she has been shown correct. The result is that more and more people doubt the elite media and truly understand just how vicious a partisan attack machine it has become.
During Mitt Romney’s overseas visit earlier this week, 86 percent of the coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC “emphasized Romney’s perceived gaffes,” according to a content analysis of 21 major news stories by the Media Research Center, which also compared Mr. Romney’s trip to a similar excursion made by President Obama in 2008.
The results: The broadcast networks committed 53 minutes of almost entirely negative coverage to Mr. Romney, and 92 minutes of “gushing” to Mr. Obama.
“The near unanimous negativity of their coverage is as outrageous as it is transparent,” observes the center’s founder Brent Bozell. “It’s impossible to look at the fawning coverage of Obama’s trip in 2008 compared to the sliming Romney has taken in 2012 and not see a clear agenda on the part of the liberal media.”
This is what bothers me about these two candidates. While Obama’s attacks are far less honest today, Mitt Romney is not innocent either and in the primary Romney’s attacks on the other GOP candidates were often sickeningly dishonest.
Interesting how the Democrat brings up the Swiftboat Vets Ads from when John Kerry ran for President as an example of a distraction. But he leaves out a fundamental truth – John Kerry made the three months he spent in Vietnam in the Navy a cornerstone of his campaign. At the convention Kerry had it military themed and he was saluting and the whole nine yards. The problem is that John Kerry misrepresented his service in his campaign and the people he served with and other veterans took issue with it. John Kerry, in a most unpatriotic way in the view of many war heroes, took the side of Jane Fonda when he came back and the North Vietnamese used John Kerry’s actions for great propaganda value.
With that said, the economy at the end of President Bush’s first term was doing rather well and national security and military policy was front and center which is another reason why the Swiftboat ads were no mere attempt at distraction. The economy today is a disaster and the Obama campaign wants to talk about anything but. And why the Obama Administration is declaring executive privilege to delay the release of documents relation to huge scandals such as “Fast & Furious” and is still hiding all sorts of documents form his past, all they want to talk about is how Mitt Romney had not released his tax returns from ten years ago? THAT is a distraction.
The simple truth is that most people are outraged at what Obama and the Democrats have done with our money and are not overly concerned with what Mitt Romney did with his own money ten years ago.
Also see – Obama invested heavily with outsourcers, after accusing Romney of doing the same… – LINK
President Obama accused Mitt Romney of being responsible for shutting down this American Steel plant, saddling it with debt, and screwing the employees out of their pensions, but Mitt Romney left Bain Capital two years before this happened to run the Olympics. So who was in charge of Bain Capital when this happened? You guess it, Obama’s top campaign money bundler John Levine. Does it get any better than this?
Our friends Chuck Slowe and Jim Hoft have a great report on this. Be sure add their websites to your daily reading:
The Obama campaign blamed Governor Mitt Romney for the demise of GST Steel company in a video they released in May. The plant closed in 2001. Mitt left Bain in 1999.
[Political Arena Editor’s Note – I ripped this video to my hard drive just in case it vanishes from Obama’sYoutube Channel]
For some reason the Obama camp forgot to mention this…
Obama’s top bundler Jonathan Lavine was in charge of Bain during the BST layoffs.
Blaming Governor Romney for any issues surrounding the failure of GST is wrong and it is a blatant lie. Mitt Romney had been long gone when the company started to fail and subsequently closed it doors. When are the President and his campaign hacks going to get the story correct? When are they going to get back to their economy and its dreadful condition? Mr. President, you can run but you cannot hide.
It turns out that Jonathan Lavine, current Obama bundler, was actually in charge, at Bain, during that period, when the layoffs occurred. Oops, that isn’t right, is it? Yes, that story is the one that needs to be reported on. Sorry Mr. President, your lies are just getting to be more than many of us are able to handle.
And, Jonathan Lavine is not your average Obama Bain donor. Lavine is one of Barack Obama’s top bundlers. ABC reported:
While Democrats assail presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital business practices, Republicans note that President Obama has not been bashful about accepting cash from Bain executives or other high-profile figures in the corporate buyout business…
…One of Obama’s top campaign financiers – Jonathan Lavine – is also managing director at Bain, bundling between $100,000 and $200,000 in contributions for the 2012 Obama Victory Fund, according to estimates released by the Obama campaign. The president has also relied on other leading figures in the private equity sector as hosts for high-dollar fundraisers and as members of his Jobs Council.
Maybe someday the liberal media will report on this.
Tony Rezco, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dorhn, and Obama was a campaign chairman for Rod Blagoyevich and this is just the surface. Eric Holder with the his illegal gun running to Mexican drug cartels….
…and Mitt Romney is the felon? Gimme a break.
Obama’s list of felonious associations can be found HERE.
#6. “When Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts was No. 1 in state debt. $18 billion in debt. More debt per person than any other state in the country.” — from an attack ad titled “Number One” that was posted June 12, 2012 on the Obama campaign’s official YouTube page
While this statement is factually accurate, it leaves out a big part of the picture.
Massachusetts owed a notoriously large state debt for a long time, certainly before Romney ever set foot in the governor’s office. Part of the reason the Bay State’s debt is so high, as PolitiFact points out, is because many projects that in other states would be funded by counties are funded by the state in Massachusetts.
Secondly, as anyone who’s ever lived in Massachusetts will tell you, “the Big Dig” — a highway and tunnel construction project that was started in the 1980s and has cost over $20 billion — has been a budgetary nightmare for decades. The Boston Globe estimates the project won’t be paid off until 2038 at the earliest. No matter who’s governor of Massachusetts, the Big Dig is still an incredibly expensive project, with the interest alone costing the state billions….
#3. “[Under Romney] Massachusetts plunged to 47th in job creation.” — David Axelrod, Obama campaign senior advisor, on CBS’s ‘Face The Nation,’ June 3, 2012
Romney’s been pummeled with this statistic, first during the Republican primaries and now by the Obama campaign (see here, here and here). Factually, it’s accurate to say that Massachusetts was 47th out of 50 states for job growth from December 2002 through December 2006 — PolitiFact verified the statement using Bureau of Labor Statistics. But there are different ways of looking at the numbers, and, as noted above, Romney inherited a state that was already in deep economic trouble.
While the rate of job growth in Massachusetts was lower than the rate for the country as a whole during that time, the number of jobs in the state did increase under Romney’s tenure.
#2. “Our businesses have created almost 4.3 million new jobs over the last 27 months.” — Obama during a presidential address in Golden Valley, Minn. (June 2, 2012)
Obama has made this claim many times recently (see here, here and here, and see Sarah Jessica Parker say it here), but again, he isn’t giving the whole picture. We called Josh Bivens, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, to see what the missing context was. Bivens told us that Obama neglected to mention the 500,000 jobs that were lost in the public sector over the same time period.
It is probably true. It is no secret that doing business in the United States is very expensive and more risky because of government meddling. There are lots of companies that in order to survive had to leave and that is not Mitt’s fault.
Remember how many Heinz plants the Kerry’s moved overseas?
The only way to fix this problem is with a new, simpler, flatter tax code, regulatory reform and the size of government cut a lot, much like the Deficit Commission said. Without doubt, if we had those reforms companies would keep more jobs at home, yet what party always stands in the way of these common sense reforms?
Of course when companies get driven out of the country or shut down by onerous government or just flat out abuse such as what the Obama Administration did to Gibson Guitar the elite media doesn’t have much to say about that do they?
Remember the stimulus money that went to an electric car company in Finland, and subsidized loans to Brazil to drill in deep water when he was preventing our people from drilling, or how General Electric, whose CEO Jeff Immelt sent jobs overseas shortly after he was appointed Jobs Czar by President Obama?
Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.
During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This is what Mitt Romney’s carpet-bombing states with misleading negative ads within the party does. It is likely that Mitt Romney cannot win in November and this poll is exactly why more and more in the GOP are hoping for a brokered convention.
These data are from a Gallup poll conducted March 8-11, 2012. The 35% of Republicans who at this point say they would vote “enthusiastically” for Mitt Romney for president if he were to win the GOP nomination is identical to the 35% of Republicans who said the same about Romney back in late January/early February 2008.
In that same 2008 poll, however, 47% of Republicans said they would vote enthusiastically for John McCain, who ended up as that year’s GOP nominee. In short, Romney’s enthusiasm deficit in 2008 has carried over to his current campaign, with the difference being that none of the other nominees this year are generating any more enthusiasm among Republicans than Romney is.
Republicans are also less enthusiastic about voting for their party’s current pool of candidates than Democrats were about voting for their potential nominees in both 2008 and in 2004. More than half of Democrats in 2008 said they would vote “enthusiastically” for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton if either were to win their party’s presidential nomination. Forty-five percent of Democrats in late January/early February 2004 said they would vote enthusiastically for John Kerry for president.
In Mississippi Newt Gingrich is holding on to a slight lead with 33% to 31% for Mitt Romney, 27% for Rick Santorum, and 7% for Ron Paul…
In Mississippi Gingrich’s net favorability is +33 (62/29) to +32 for Santorum (60/28) and +10 for Romney (51/41)…
In Mississippi 44% of voters describe themselves as ‘very conservative’ and Romney’s getting only 26% with them. But he’s still in the mix because Gingrich leads Santorum only 35-32 with them…
In Mississippi folks who’ve decided in the last few days go for Gingrich over Santorum 37-29 with Romney at only 15%.
The Mississippi presidential primary will be held tomorrow, Tuesday March 13.
We have heard it time and time again, “RomneyCare was a choice for Massachusetts as an experiment, but doing it nationally is a bad idea, likely won’t work, and is unconstitutional”. This is what Mitt Romney has been saying since the Iowa debates (LINK), but the video taped evidence shows that Romney was supporting a national insurance mandate up to at least 2009.
In the videos Mitt Romney says that his plan helps keeps costs down, but the record shows that the RomneyCare policy team was not really interested in keeping costs down, and as the record shows the cost of healthcare in Massachusetts has far exceeded the rest of the country (and YOU are helping to pay for it). Even if RomneyCare or such a plan could help keep costs down in theory; the simple truth is that getting control of healthcare (a sixth of our economy) is too much of a temptation for politicians to regulate favors, kickbacks, ideological experiments etc into the system. Government cannot be trusted with that much power as we have seen with socialized health care around the world and are already seeing in ObamaCare.
Mitt Romney not being honest about this is nothing new to our readers as we reported:
Romney: Requiring people to have health insurance is “conservative” – LINK …
….on January 9th, but these videos bring a new attention to this important story.
“Well that’s what we did in Massachusetts and that is we put together an exchange, the president is copying that idea. I’m glad to hear that. We let people buy their own private insurance. Most people can afford to buy that insurance once you have an exchange that allows them to do that in a cost effective basis. And then for those that are low income you help them buy their own private insurance. But you don’t set up a government insurance plan because it’s going to end up costing billions of dollars in subsidy. It’s the wrong way to go.”
Related:
New York Magazine: How Romney Advocated Obamacare and Lied About It – LINK
Newsmax: RomneyCare and ObamaCare Are Identical – LINK
MIT Economist: ObamaCare is RomneyCare with three more zeros – LINK
Romney Supporter Florida AG Pam Bondi Says Mitt Wants RomneyCare In Every State – LINK
You paid the high cost of RomneyCare in Massachusetts – LINK
This is a must see video. Levin makes one crucial point after another:
Romney just got virtually tied in his home state of Michigan, by Rick Santorum who has little money and next to no organization to speak of.
What kind of Republican Party agrees to 20 debates and has most of the run by CNN and NBC, both of whom try to keep the debates focused on non-issues and quibbling?
I have more questions:
How can we nominate Mitt Romney when he cannot energize the base, he does not energize independents, and turnout in areas he wins end up being below 2008 levels when many conservatives had decided to stay home?
How can the GOP sit there and let Romney trash many of its best leaders with lies and half truths for not being perfectly conservative, when Romney cannot come close to meeting the same standards for conservative purity he holds other candidates too? Mitt Romney trashes Rick Santorum for supporting “No Child Left Behind”, yet Romney supported it; Romney trashed Rick Perry saying that one cannot be too against illegal immigration, yet just a couple of years ago Romney was talking Amnesty on Meet the Press; Mitt Romney trashes Rick Santorum for losing his Senate seat by 18 points in the ’06 Democrat landslide, yet when Romney ran for Senate he lost by 16 points and that was a year Republicans did well?
How can Mitt Romney challenge Obama on ObamaCare when Romney’s own staff helped Obama craft it and implement it? How can Romney challenge Obama on the failed stimulus when he was luke-warm on it in the hardcover version of his book? How can Romney challenge Obama on his assault on the Catholic Church when Romney did something similar in Massachusetts? How can Mitt Romney challenge Obama on class warfare when Romney is already praising the progressive income tax and saying that the 1% should pay more? How can Romney challenge Obama on flip-flopping?
This list goes on and on.
I am also concerned because I am watching David Axelrod, who is a trained propagandist hired gun not unlike myself, very closely and I see that he has Mitt Romney psychologically pegged. Have no doubt that Axelrod understands the book on Mitt Romney.
Recently we saw Donald Trump blast Rick Santorum for losing his Senate seat by 18 points in the Democrat 2006 landslide.
Ummm hey Donald, when Mitt Romney ran for Senate he lost by 16 points. And the same year Rick Santorum lost, Romney was polling so bad he dropped out of the race.
Indeed. Romney is not selling us a product, he is just carpet bombing the other candidates with almost 100% of his ads being negative. Why should we vote for Mitt Romney? What policy heavy lifting has he gotten done for conservatives? This is a must see.
Can you imagine? When Rick Santorum was running in 1994 for the Senate. He won his house seat against a Democrat in a 3 to 1 Democrat district and he ran as a Conservative. He ran statewide in 1994 as a Conservative in a relatively blue state, a heavy union state. And in 1994 he was talking up Ronald Reagan. Go over a few states, or up a few states, and there you have Massachusetts, at almost exactly the same time, if not exactly the same time, Romney was running for the Senate against Kennedy, TRASHING Ronald Reagan. Distancing himself from Republicanism. Called himself an Independent PROGRESSIVE if I recall correctly. Now THIS Romney is attacking Santorum from the Right, as if he’s the Conservative and holds the high ground. Mitt Romney is not questioning Santorum’s Conservative credentials. He is attacking Rick Santorum from the Right. This is what is so damned annoying, because it is so disingenuous.
Because Romney has now taken in the last few years solidly Conservative positions, even though he can’t articulate them very well past one line in the Declaration of Independence (Come on America. Let’s go. Come on. I’m for America. Come on. Let’s go. Hey. Everybody. Line up. Lets just go) Anyway, the point is, Santorum was a true Conservative. You don’t have to agree with everything he voted for; everything he says. I get all that. Honestly I do. But that’s not the point. His principles were not negotiable. His principles were not mush. You could disagree with a vote here and say that vote does not line up with your Conservative agenda. I get that. I really do. But he was a very high, what was he in the 90’s with the American Conservative Union, if not 100% with pro-life groups and so forth. Romney was mush. He’s Jello. So now he’s going to attack Santorum as a Liberal while Romney is posing as a Conservative. This is why I’m so sick of this and disgusted with it…
I look at Rick Santorum at so many things that he did and tried to do from a Conservative perspective throughout his career and I can’t think of very many that Romney did. I’d even look at Newt Gingrich. You can attack him for a thousand things but one thing you cannot say is that he wasn’t a Conservative speaker. He was a Conservative speaker. Even though people may not have liked certain foibles and all the rest, the fact of the matter is, Gingrich gave us the House back and Gingrich lead a Conservative house and he did it in a way that was more Conservative than the way Boehner is leading this house. And he’s attacked from the Right by Romney too! So while Gingrch was trying to do the right things in the House, Romney was a Liberal; excuse me, a PROGRESSIVE; an Independent. So Romney attacks Gingrich from the Right when Romney at the time was on the Left and he attacks Santorum from the Right when Romney at the time was on the Left. Now he’s Mr. Conservative. How do you get away with this?
I’ll tell you how you get away with it. A massive amount of money to flood underfunded campaigns, a lot of media support, old media and, yes a lot new media which has been sucked right into this like the old media. And everybody just says well that’s just the way campaigns work, negative negative, you know, you’ve just gotta be a big boy…
This idea that Romney can attack bonafide Conservatives, at least they were, from the Right when he was on the Left is just so crazy. I hope you folks in Minnesota and Missouri and the other states coming up, I hope you remember this because you are now going to be flooded with ads telling you that Santorum was no damned good, he was a gutter snipe. Oh, he was a sell-out. He was a this or that. You remember those ads are paid for by a man and people who support a man who was all but trashing Ronald Reagan and when he ran against Ted Kennedy tried to move to the Left of Ted Kennedy; when Gingrich was running the House of Representatives and fighting Clinton and when Santorum was fighting the Democrat machine in Pennsylvania, a formidable machine, to win the Senate as a Republican. Just remember!
Oh, and by the way, the Romney people like to say that Santorum lost his reelection in 2006 by 17 points or 18 points. But in 1994 Romney lost to Kennedy by 16 points. Well guess what. Obama is every bit Kennedy and Kennedy was Kennedy. So, I’m asking you, is this the kind of nominee that you want?”
This had to be done. Ann Coulter came out with the worst column of her career called “Three Cheers for RomneyCare”. Before Ann lost all perspective desperately pushing for Mitt Romney she was rightfully critical of the economic disaster that is RomneyCare. As a fan of Ann’s intellectual work I must say that I am shocked by her recent behavior and am concerned for her.
The 2012 Republican primary race has passed well beyond the rabbit hole into some extra-dimensional bizarro world where up is down, black is white and the allies of the candidate who disavowed Reaganism would have us believe that the leader of the “second stage of the Reagan Revolution” is somehow insufficiently Reaganesque.
It’s no secret that the GOP establishment backs Mitt Romney. The same folks who gave us John McCain and Bob Dole have picked their winner. When Mr. Romney is down, their panic shows. They start floating desperate ideas like late-entry candidates or a brokered convention. They also pull out the long knives for Newt Gingrich. After the former speaker’s decisive victory in South Carolina, insiders launched an all-out assault upon him. Unmasked and panicked, the GOP establishment unleashed the tactics of the left upon the right.
GOP insiders first dredged up 2-decade-old debunked partisan ethics charges that damaged Mr. Gingrich’s reputation until the Internal Revenue Service finally exonerated him. Mr. Romney couldn’t resist seeking cheap points by joining the discredited Democrats who started the whole sordid mess. Mr. Romney featured, of all people, Nancy Pelosi with her innuendo of Mr. Gingrich’s supposed wrongdoing, ironically blasting out an email slur just as Mrs. Pelosi was backing away from it. Then came something even worse: the salacious insinuation that Mr. Gingrich somehow betrayed former President Ronald Reagan.
The anti-Gingrich onslaught reached an apogee on the Drudge Report as Romney allies fed one negative story after another, amassing an impressive 10 pieces on the influential website at one point. A screaming headline claimed that Mr. Gingrich had repeatedly insulted Reagan. The unseemly issue of Mr. Gingrich’s second marriage managed to resurface. To cap it off, Ann Coulter, the surprising new head cheerleader for the moderate movement, enjoyed seeing her latest anti-Gingrich missive prominently featured.
Unfounded charges that Mr. Gingrich, a man who was once criticized for being a “Reagan Robot,” insulted the Gipper barely pass the laugh test and definitely didn’t pass the Nancy Reagan test in 1995. Video of the former first lady honoring the speaker quickly surfaced: “Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” Today, it is the GOP insiders who are the ones trying to extinguish the Reagan dream.
Meanwhile, Mr. Romney’s allies who are pushing this false narrative that Mr. Gingrich is insufficiently Reaganesque couldn’t care less that it is their candidate who disavowed Reaganism. “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush,” boasted Mr. Romney. “I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” Of course he’s not. Why is that? Mitt’s answer: “I’m someone who is moderate and my views are progressive.”
If we judge both leading contenders in the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, by what they’ve done in life and by what they propose to do if elected, either one could be an excellent president. But when it comes to the election’s core issue—restoring a healthy economy—the key is a good tax plan and the ability to implement it.
Mr. Gingrich has a significantly better plan than does Mr. Romney, and he has twice before been instrumental in implementing a successful tax plan on a national level—once when he served in Congress as a Reagan supporter in the 1980s and again when he was President Clinton’s partner as speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. During both of these periods the economy prospered incredibly—in good part because of Mr. Gingrich.
Jobs and wealth are created by those who are taxed, not by those who do the taxing. Government, by its very nature, doesn’t create resources but redistributes resources. To minimize the damages taxes cause the economy, the best way for government to raise revenue is a broad-based, low-rate flat tax that provides people and businesses with the fewest incentives to avoid or otherwise not report taxable income, and the least number of places where they can escape taxation. On these counts it doesn’t get any better than Mr. Gingrich’s optional 15% flat tax for individuals and his 12.5% flat tax for business. Each of these taxes has been tried and tested and found to be enormously successful.
Hong Kong, where there has been a 15% flat income tax on individuals since 1947, is truly a shining city on the hill and one of the most prosperous cities in history. Ireland’s 12.5% flat business income tax propelled the Emerald Isle out of two and a half centuries of poverty. Mr. Romney’s tax proposals—including eliminating the death tax, reducing the corporate tax rate to 25%, and extending the current tax rates on personal income, interest, dividends and capital gains—would be an improvement over those of President Obama, but they don’t have the boldness or internal integrity of Mr. Gingrich’s personal and business flat taxes.
Imagine what would happen to international capital flows if the U.S. went from the second highest business tax country in the world to one of the lowest. Low taxes along with all of America’s other great attributes would precipitate a flood of new investment in this country as well as a quick repatriation of American funds held abroad. We would create more jobs than you could shake a stick at. And those jobs would be productive jobs, not make-work jobs like so many of Mr. Obama’s stimulus jobs.
Tax codes, in order to work well, require widespread voluntary compliance from taxpayers. And for taxpayers to voluntarily comply with a tax code they have to believe that it is both fair and efficient.
Fairness in taxation means that people and businesses in like circumstances have similar tax burdens. A flat tax, whether on business or individuals, achieves fairness in spades. A person who makes 10 times as much as another person should pay 10 times more in taxes. It is also patently obvious that it is unfair to tax some people’s income twice, three times or more after it has been earned, as is the case with the death tax.
The current administration’s notion of fairness—taxing high-income earners at high rates and not taxing other income earners at all—is totally unfair. It is also anathema to prosperity and ultimately leads to the situation we have in our nation today.
In 2012, those least capable of navigating complex government-created economic environments find themselves in their worst economic circumstances in generations. And the reason minority, lesser-educated and younger members of our society are struggling so greatly is not because we have too few redistributionist, class-warfare policies but because we have too many. Overtaxing people who work and overpaying people not to work has its consequences.
On a bipartisan basis, government has enacted the very policies that have created the current extremely uneven distribution of income. And then in turn they have used the very desperation they created as their rationale for even more antibusiness and antirich policies. As my friend Jack Kemp used to say, “You can’t love jobs and hate job creators.” Economic growth achieved through a flat tax in conjunction with a pro-growth safety net is the only way to raise incomes of those on the bottom rungs of our economic ladder.
When it comes to economic efficiency, nothing holds a candle to a low-rate, simple flat tax. As I explained in a op-ed on this page last spring (“The 30-Cent Tax Premium,” April 18), for every dollar of net income tax collected by the Internal Revenue Service, there is an additional 30¢ paid out of pocket by the taxpayers to maintain compliance with the tax code. Such inefficiency is outrageous. Mr. Gingrich’s flat taxes would go a lot further toward reducing these additional expenses than would Mr. Romney’s proposals.
Mr. Gingrich’s tax proposal is not revenue-neutral, nor should it be. If there’s one truism in fiscal policy, it’s this: Wasteful spending will always rise to the level of revenues. Whether you’re in Greece, Washington, D.C., or California, overspending is a prosperity killer of the first order. Mr. Gingrich’s flat tax proposals—along with his proposed balanced budget amendment—would put a quick stop to overspending and return America to fiscal soundness. No other candidate comes close to doing this.
This perfection double standard could apply to any candidate, but since Newt Gingrich is the subject of the current news cycle he will make a fine example.
Like many people, Newt’s ideology has changed over the years. Reagan’s influence changed the ideology of a great many. Did you know that Charles Krauthammer and George Will both opposed Reagan?
I see many people on FaceBook, blogs, and message boards blasting a candidate for saying something nice about a Democrat in 1972, while engaging in pretzel logic justifying their own candidate’s recent imperfections. By that standard every candidate is disqualified including President Reagan.
Ronald Reagan campaigned for FDR and Truman. So by the standard applied to Newt Gingrich this week Reagan was unfit to serve as a Republican.
Michelle Bachmann campaigned for Jimmy Carter.
Rick Perry was Texas Chair for Al Gore for President.
Zell Miller was a life long Democrat before he spoke at the Republican Convention against John Kerry as the Keynote Speaker.
Dennis Miller used to be a Democrat. David Horowitz, a conservative icon in every sense of the word, used to be a full fledged Communist radical.
I see many people posting videos of Glenn Beck criticizing Newt, but Beck cannot meet the standard that he applies to Newt Gingrich because Beck was a liberal alcoholic just a few years ago by his own admission.
I have particularly noticed this “perfect conservative consistency standard complete with a 20/20 hindsight rider” used against Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum by supporters of Mitt Romney… yes that is right Mitt Romney, who of course has a record that isn’t nearly as conservative as the other two.
On line and in other communications I have seen more and more Romney supporters get so caught up and emotionally charged with the anti-Newt media narrative that they are ready to vote for:
The guy behind RomneyCare over the man behind the Contract with America (Newt), America’s premier social conservative (Santorum), and the best job-creating governor in America (Perry – but he just dropped out), all of whom would also be more electable.
The “perfectionists” are selectively and conveniently applying a standard no candidate can meet. They are making the perfect the enemy of the good as evidenced by a recent Romney narrative “Newt supported Rockefeller in 1960’s” line. Really guys… the 1960’s?
The propaganda from those who oppose TEA Party conservatives and newly involved independents is designed to target the sensitivities of those TEA Party conservatives – by using that tactic those who are far less conservative have TEA Party activists attacking the candidates that would actually govern more conservative.
When Santorum started going up in the polls what did Romney and his attack dogs call him in ads – a Big Government non-conservative who was contrary to the Reagan Revolution. The Ronbots ran with it and spouted a similar narrative.
At first Rick Santorum was too conservative and now he is akin to Nancy Pelosi… many TEA Party activists are being lead about by the nose with these false narratives that are so brilliantly designed to target their sensitivities.
As a trained propagandist myself, I am like the magician who shows you how the other guys “made it disappear”.
One can be certain that Mitt Romney and President Obama have hired a team people all with similar training to what I have. Their propaganda is focus-grouped to be tested to generate exactly the narratives I am explaining to you here. The tactics and psychology of communication they use IS that sophisticated. You need to be as aware of this as possible. And make no mistake, even educated conservatives who believe they are informed are as easily influenced by negative ads and attitude change propaganda as anyone.
Mitt Romney is attacking candidates far more conservative than he is for not being perfectly conservative throughout history and voters are falling for it…. and emotionally investing in it with zeal.
But Chuck, Romney can get independents and is more likely to win….
Besides the fact that the political strategy just outlined was the political strategy of Gerald Ford, Bush 41 vs Clinton, Bob Dole and John McCain… and it is precisely that strategy that Reagan opposed; just who are these “Independents”??
In the 2010 elections, in 9 of the top 10 presidential swing states, women and Catholics voted for GOP/TEA Party candidates in the largest numbers since the 1984 Reagan 49 state landslide. Woman and Catholics are the two most notorious 50/50 swing voters.
So let me ask you. Were those swing voters responding to a moderate message of not being too conservative? Were they responding to “lets not be too strident in our opposition to Obama” (That is a Romney quote by the way)? Or were they responding to the TEA Party message of Allen West, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin?
Newt’s early previous statements, which I will freely admit are all over the place, do cause one to pause, but policy is where the rubber meets the road. not statements. Look at the policy heavy lifting Newt got done for conservatives.
While some are content to vote for the man who continues to defend RomneyCare and government mandates; I am more inclined to vote for an imperfect man who passed the Contract With America, balanced the federal budget, cut taxes, grew the economy, and passed Welfare Reform.
I heard Trent Lott on the radio trashing conservatives to protect Mitt Romney. I can’t say that I am very surprised but I sure am disappointed.
Sometimes I really believe that the so called “inside Republican establishment” would rather have a Democrat elected than a Reagan conservative; just as Charlie Crist tried to do, much of whose senior staff works for Mitt Romney.
The same establishment that opposed Ronald Reagan now pretends that he doesn’t exist with narratives like “People like Newt can’t win” – meaning conservatives can’t win elections… only people like Dole, Ford, McCain and Romney can. Then they have the gall to claim that they are more like Reagan.
If the GOP does not perform and present serious change in a big way against institutionalized leftism people will conclude that there is not enough difference between Democrats and Republicans and it will be Ross Perot’s and such all over again.
The GOP “establishment STILL has not learned the lessons from 2006, 2008 and 2010.
4.) READ this article in the Washington Post where former Congressman J.C. Watts, who was the head of the Freddie mac watch group in the House, said that Newt never tried to influence on Freddie Mac while Watts was in the House.
“Over the top rhetoric” coming from MITTENS? You’ve GOT to be KIDDING ME!
Editor:
Romney says “follow the law” that is a nice sound bite, but when Obama starts running ads saying that Romney is coming after the Latina grandma we will see Romney adopt Newt’s position real fast.
Editor:
You know, if Romney hadn’t gone hack ‘n slash ‘n lie in Iowa onward none of this would be going on like this. Newt tried to be positive but when you have millions in attack ads launched against you one has to fight back.
Now Romney says “follow the law” when it comes to illegals in the country. That is a nice sound bite, but when Obama starts running ads saying that Romney is coming after the Latina grandma we will see Romney adopt Newt’s position so fast it will make our heads spin.
While there is a degree of demagoguery going on by everyone, that one from Romney was just over the top.
Also Mitt Romney was on Meet The Press just a couple of years ago calling for amnesty and in the first debate told Rick Perry that one not be too against illegal immigration. It is maddening and why doesn’t CNN ask Mitt about that?
Chuck DeVore:
CNN Debate: Newt Gingrich: my goal is to shrink government to fit the revenue, not increase the revenue to fit the government.
Editor:
Newt: What does NASA do now that it has mismanaged itself into having no space vehicle? Does it sit down and think space? – Great!
Editor:
Santorum is going after everyone with some degree of effectiveness.
Santorum – We cannot give up this issue to Obama, this is about fundamental freedom! Santorum is right about Romney.
The issue is that RomneyCare was so inflationary that most of the private guys fled the state.
Go Rick Go!! That is absolutely right and the study [that talks about the expense of RomneyCare] is on my web site! – LINK
Editor:
Almost every question Wolf asks keeps Obama out of criticism……..and when Santorum went after Obama it was “Move on….”
Good answer from Mitt Romney on Israel/Palestine.
Final Thoughts:
Romney had a good night, but make no mistake, he is trying to be above the fray while his surrogates smear everyone and if Rick Santorum does well in Florida he will be next.
Newt was unwise to go after Mitt on the Freddie/Fannie stock. Millions of people had those stocks….. Who the heck is his communications team?
I didn’t ask for a neat and tidy campaign, I am asking for something a little less revolting… I can play rough. But destroying the Republican Party in the process is not a great plan going into the general as evidenced by the fact that Obama’s poll numbers are up three points in the last two weeks… this kind of smear crap damages the entire Republican brand and Mitt doesn’t care.
That is bad for the general, but that also says something about what his leadership style will be, it is ALL about HIM.
Newt was unwise to go after Mitt on the Freddie/Fannie stock. Millions of people had those stocks….. Who the heck is his communications team? I would never have made such a mistake.Newt should fire his comm director and hire me.
The first time Obama nails Mitt with “You will send ICE after Latina grandmothers” Mitt will adopt Newt’s position so fast it will make our head’s spin. And really all, that exchange on what to do about illegals is SO indicative of these two men. Newt is absolutely right. Mitt can say “Just follow the law” and you know… that sounds so nice. It is so easy to say. Well Speaker Gingrich understands full well the difference between the law and the law applied.
Of course so does Mitt Romney and that shows how incredibly disingenuous he is. I could not do what Mitt did and look in the eyes of my kids at night.
Just remember what this picture did to Bill Clinton and Janet Reno… I guarantee you David Axelrod will use something similar against Mitt Romney and he will lose the Hispanic vote just like that…
Former Governor Charlie Crist left the Republican Party and ran as an independent against Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race in a blatant attempt to get the Democrat in the race elected.
Romney’s “Charlie Crist” problem is this: Romney’s chief campaign strategist and several of his most senior campaign staff were Crist’s top political advisers — the same ones who crafted Crist’s moderate, ignore-the-tea-party strategy epitomized in Crist’s famous “hug” of President Barack Obama. That strategy led Crist, once the most popular Republican governor in the nation, to defeat.
Crist’s erstwhile political team was led by controversial GOP strategist Stuart Stevens. Stevens and partner Russ Schriefer are the principals in the high-profile Stevens & Schriefer Group consultant firm and are playing the lead role in crafting Romney’s primary and national campaign strategy.
According to the Stevens & Schriefer website, the firm had a long history with Crist, serving as chief strategists for his bids for education commissioner, attorney general, governor, and later for the U.S. Senate.
Other senior Crist political aides from his failed Senate campaign now hold key posts in Romney’s campaign. Amanda Henneberg, who had served as Crist’s press secretary, now is a spokeswoman with the Romney 2012 campaign. Likewise, Andrea Saul, who was Crist’s communications director, now is Romney’s press secretary.
Did you all notice that NBC asked one question after another that had almost nothing to do with Obama and the economy?
Also…..
So after complaining about how he and his business model was attacked by republicans with anti-capitalist rhetoric – Mitt Romney attacks Newt Gingrich’s business model where he personally made $35K on a consulting contract and is an “influence peddler”.
I consult some politicians and I have given a small check to the NRA so according to Mitt Romney that makes me “an influence peddler”. Romney has jumped the shark…..
By the way, Mitt Romney saying that Newt made 1.6 million over all those years from Freddie Mac is like saying that Mitt Made Billions off Bain firing people and cannibalizing businesses. Newt never took all of Bain’s income and attributed it to Mitt Romney, so why is Mitt Romney taking all of the money Newt’s company made and attributing it to him personally?
If you were trying to come up with the most atrocious candidate imaginable to go toe-to-toe with Barack Obama in 2012, you couldn’t do much better than Mitt Romney. He was an unpopular moderate governor who lost 2 out of the 3 major elections he’s run in and whose signature issue Romneycare is an enormous failure. Moreover, he’s so uninspiring that he makes Bob Dole look like Ronald Reagan and that’s before you consider his incessant flip-flopping that makes it impossible to really know where he stands on any issue.
Romney’s candidacy also runs counter to almost every political trend in the book right now. He’s the antithesis of everything the Tea Party stands for — a moderate establishment-endorsed, principle-free Rockefeller Republican. On the other hand, he’s like a bad guy straight out of central casting for the Occupy Wall Street crowd, a conscience-free 1 percenter who makes $10,000 bets and lectures the public about how corporations are people — while hordes of poor and middle class Americans that he fired trail in his wake telling tales of woe about how Romney made their lives into a living hell.
At one time, I thought both Gingrich and Perry were more electable than Romney. I have, however, reassessed and now believe Gingrich, Perry, Santorum, and even Huntsman, who just left the race, are ALL more electable than Mitt. It’s also worth noting that all of those candidates, including Huntsman, are more conservative than Romney. It’s mind-boggling to consider the fact that if Romney wins, the conservative base will have chosen the guy behind Romneycare over the man behind the Contract with America, America’s premier social conservative, and the best job-creating governor in America, all of whom would also be more electable.
Here we are in what may be, forgive me for the cliché, the most important election of our lifetimes and the GOP may end up choosing a candidate who’s one part Charlie Crist and one part John Kerry as our nominee.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Romney, hoping that the K Street crowd, who is scared to death of ethical reformers like Ted Cruz, would rally to him, leaked that he wants to run for the purpose of stopping Ted Cruz and he did Newt Gingrich.
Political Arena 