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.
No one in the GOP is even defending themselves much less making a fight of it (please correct us if I we are wrong).
Robert Davi
Famed actor Robert Davi said recently that he believes that elements in the establishment GOP and the Democratic Leadership are in a conspiracy to bring the country down. It is nonsense like this that make him correct.
It is nonsense like this that will finally push those who care about good policy to form a new party to replace the Republican Party because its brand is damaged and it’s establishment doesn’t seem to even really believe what it preaches.
I bet many in the GOP wishes they had Newt Gingrich right about now to make the case.
A new poll from CNN/ORC shows that President Obama remains Teflon despite the fact that he designed the upcoming fiscal cliff to speculation. Even though Obama insisted on massive defense cuts and huge tax increases as the two alternative parts of the fiscal cliff, the American public will apparently blame Republicans if the fiscal cliff isn’t stopped. A full 45% of respondents said they would blame Congressional Republicans – even though the Democrats control the Senate – while just 34% would blame President Obama.
The public, by and large, sees Republicans as obstructionist. That’s due to a combination of messaging failure on the part of the GOP — nothing new, in that they seem incapable of explaining the simple fact that low tax rates, particularly on job creators, spur economic growth and thereby raise tax revenues — and a media concerned only with saving its flailing president. The Republicans’ mixed messaging on the fiscal cliff has been astounding to watch. They signed off on the sequester, which put a fiscal gun to their heads, forcing them to choose between raising taxes partially or watching tax rates skyrocket and defense get slashed. Then they turned around and complained about the gun being put to their heads. Now, they’re standing for the principle that we need more tax revenue, but it can’t be raised by raising rates. No wonder the public is confused.
Poll numbers like this could be the reason that Republicans are looking to cave on tax increases, or ending tax deductions. 25% of the country says that the nation would undergo a crisis if we hit the fiscal cliff; 44% expect major problems. 25% say that it would cause minor problems. A full 77% of the public believes the fiscal cliff would hurt them personally.
Republicans have done such a poor job of informing the public about why taxes shouldn’t be increased that even Republicans, by a margin of 52%-44%, say they want both spending cuts and tax increases. An unbelievable 56% of Americans say they want high taxes on higher income earners, despite the fact that higher income earners pay a vastly disproportionate share of all tax revenue.
[Editor’s Note – For anyone concerned about politics, or freedom in general, or the culture, should read this post carefully and watch every video link. We are gratified to see that that some in the regular GOP are seeing what we have seen for a long time which we summed up in our “Why Republican’s Lost” post. Fortunately I have been told by a mutual friend of this editor and the former Speaker that he was told to read our post. If he did it certainly shows in his speech at Restoration Weekend sponsored by Dave Horowitz.]
Read carefully what former Democratic political strategist Pat Caddell has to say which has been well reported by Breitbart News:
Speaking at The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s “Restoration Weekend” in Florida on November 16, Pat Caddell indicted what he called the Republican “consultant-lobbyist-establishment” complex for losing a presidential campaign in 2012 President Barack Obama had no business winning.
“No presidential campaign should be run by consultants,” Caddell said. “They should be run by people who are committed to the candidate and not into making big money.”
Caddell, the former Jimmy Carter adviser who consulted on the “Hope and the Change” movie that profiled disaffected Obama 2008 voters who were not going to vote for him in 2012, warned Republicans that the consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex may threaten to take the party into oblivion if not marginalized.
The Romney campaign, Caddell said, was driven be establishment consultants and was a failure of mechanics and message.
“But most of all, it was a failure of imagination,” Caddell said. ““It was the single worst campaign in modern history of a challenger who had a chance to win … and that’s the truth and nothing can take away from that.”
Caddell said “Republicans never attempted to put a frame around the national election” because “the people who run the messaging in the Republican party and their consultants refused to do it.”
As a result, Rommey lost decisively to voters who voted for the candidate who “cares about me,” which was more than 20% of the electorate. Many of these voters are Reagan Democrats and independents.
“You have to have some connection to the people,” Caddell said, noting Romney lost the “empathy vote” by 65 percentage points to Obama.
Caddell said the Republican establishment thought, “We don’t have to do anything, [Obama] will be defeated because of the economy.”
He said Republicans believed the “numbers” told them they would win the election, and that is why many in the establishment and consultant class thought they could win by default by “holding the ball” and running out the clock. As a result, Caddell said the party neither controls the presidency nor the Senate after having played so unimaginatively and cautiously in 2012.
Caddell blasted the Romney campaign’s strategy of not running positive biographical ads about Romney until the convention. He said he was puzzled the Romney campaign did not play up Romney’s success in managing the Winter Olympics, which the Obama campaign even admitted was a winning issue.
More shockingly, Caddell said the Romney campaign made no effort to run positive spots about Bain Capital, even after Ted Kennedy’s campaign had already eviscerated Romney over Bain during the Senate campaign two decades ago. Letting the Obama campaign define Romney again was, he said, campaign malpractice.
Caddell asked: “Don’t you think you would want to say something positive about Bain?”
Caddell also wondered why Romney, who spent nearly $50 million of his own money in losing the 2008 GOP presidential primary, did not loan his campaign a similar amount of money in the spring so his campaign could more positively define him to voters.
He then brutally told donors in the audience that the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex took millions of dollars from them to only enrich themselves without having any meaningful impact on the election.
“You donors and others were played for marks by groups like [Karl Rove’s American] Crossroads,” Caddell said, noting that establishment super PACs cared more about “preserving arrangements in the media.”
Too often, Caddell said the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex ignores anything that could be effective if it does not allow them to profit.
For instance, even though a Frank Luntz focus group found that the “Hope and the Change” movie was the most effective way for Republicans to appeal to independent voters, Caddell accused the Republican “consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex” of not utilizing the film because “that communication didn’t fit” in their conventional plans to make the consultant class wealthy.
Caddell said Republicans have to go away from a bureaucratic, top-down approach to messaging and outreach and be more imaginative in the future if they do not want to go the way of the Whigs. He said Republicans have been so poor on combating narratives and framing their own messages that minorities — like Asians — voted overwhelmingly for Obama despite sharing conservative values because they think Republicans “do not care about minorities.”
He said the Republican party needed to be more imaginative — like promoting education reform against teachers unions as the new battle for civil rights and running against corruption in Washington, which a Breitbart News/Judicial Watch Election Night poll found 85% of voters were concerned about.
“Why are Republicans not the anti-establishment party?,” Caddell asked.
Caddell emphasized a “narrative is a story” that comes over a period of time and “not just a single message.”
He cited Ronald Reagan as someone who knew how to speak to Democrats and “ordinary and common” Americans and bring them over to his side because Reagan had been one of them and came from regular Americans and shared their experiences.
“That is a quality that has been missing a long time in a search for alternative candidate,” Caddell said, in reference to Reagan’s ability to resonate with blue collar Americans.
In contrast, Caddell compared Romney to the “man on the wedding cake” and Thomas Dewey in 1948, who lost to Harry Truman in an election nobody thought Truman could win. Obama, Caddell said, turned “hope and change” into “divide and conquer” and activated his liberal base just like Truman energized the New Deal coalition in 1948.
Caddell said Republicans played into Obama’s strategy because they continued to believe they could win by default and did not aggressively confront Obama and his machine. For instance, even after the first debate in which Romney thumped Obama, Caddell said Republicans tried to run out the clock. They advised Romney not to challenge Obama on Libya, which Caddell said was as much of a transparency and honesty issue as a foreign policy issue.
As a result, the media was able to protect Obama and go on the offensive against Romney for most of the campaign.
Caddell again called the media the “enemy of the people” for wanting to protect Obama instead of trying to uncover the truth about Benghazi, and told Republicans if they do not confront the mainstream media like the Romney campaign failed to do, “they will continue to kill you.”
Caddell said those in the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex “do not want to hear any views from outsiders” because it threatens their racket. Caddell said this mentality will just result in more Republican losses unless this Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex is eviscerated.
“As long as the establishment wants to preserve the establishment and their special deals, you will lose,” Caddell said.
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.]
Bush got over 62 million votes in 2004. Romney got just under 57 million.
Stop right there and let that number sink in. We are a nation where conservatives self identify more than liberals two to one.
Romney led the ticket in votes in every state he won meaning that he appealed to those moderates who are willing to lean conservative just fine, but evangelicals stayed home and so did traditional conservatives in North Florida.
Some people are saying “It is because this time more Hispanics went for Democrats instead of Republicans. This is true, but it is still dwarfed by the fact that five million conservatives stayed home.
This is what happens when you have a perceived “Massachusetts moderate who passed Romneycare” who runs a scorched earth primary as Romney did. The GOP establishment crammed him down our throat. In Florida, where Romney played those horribly dishonest ads against Newt it seems many stayed home. Romney also ran dishonest ads against Rick Santorum. Many evangelicals stayed home. This explains why we did good in polling and poor on election day. They participated in the polls, got pegged as likely voters and stayed home.
Weekly polling for two years tells us 61% of the people want Obamacare repealed, but too many voters simply didn’t believe that Romney and the Republicans were serious. Newt Gingrich warned that this very thing would happen. I know 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 socialist big spenders. Look at how ineffective John Boehner has been in the House. 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 eight weeks small contributors did donate more heavily, but none the less this indicates a problem with the base.
Another indication that the American voter believes that voting this time was futile is that 118 million people had voted in this White House race, far below 2004, and 2008 numbers.
The Republican Party needs to regain credibility with it’s base, who is so disgusted that three out of four of the last elections (2006, 2008 and 2012) the traditional conservative wing of the Republican Party has stayed home. In 2010 we had a clear message, this time we had “Obamacare vs Romneycare”. Lessons: Messaging and contrast matter; “electability theory” should now be put to bed as Dole, McCain and Romney were the “only electable ones”.
UPDATE – Our friends at Red State also had a similar take:
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.
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.
I have mixed views about the idea of pulling out of Afghanistan’ but I believe that the facts are in Newt’s favor. I do not like the idea of leaving the Afghans, especially the women, to the hands of a never ending stream of Taliban coming from Pakistan. I like the idea that many tens of thousands of jihadists go to Afghanistan to get themselves killed fighting our military. However there is almost no chance that the larger strategic goals in the area will ever be achieved. The culture is too backwards and tribal.
I think that our best bet is to evacuate all of the women and children who want out as well as those who threw their hat in the ring with us and leave. We should leave with a firm warning that if Afghans ever attack us again we will respond with Bremen like force.
March 11, 2012—Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told Face The Nation this morning it was time for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan. “I think that we have to reassess the entire region,” Gingrich said, adding further, “I don’t think that we have the willpower or capacity to fundamentally change the region.”
Gingrich’s recommendation is perhaps the best thing I’ve ever heard him say throughout his entire campaign. The financial cost of the war in Afghanistan is an immense burden to the American taxpayer – estimated to be $113 billion this year alone – even as the debt continues to skyrocket and our military sees deeper and more dangerous cuts to cover the costs of the ongoing Global War On Terrorism.
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.
Orlando, FL – In another sign of Newt Gingrich’s surging momentum, 200 additional Tea Party Organizers have joined the coalition Tea Partiers With Newt. This Coalition now represents 300 Tea Party organizers from 36 states who have joined together to help elect a bold Reagan conservative in Speaker Newt Gingrich and defeat Massachusetts Moderate Mitt Romney and then President Barack Obama.
Earlier today Newt2012 announced the endorsement of 47 Florida Tea Party organizers who also joined Tea Partiers With Newt.
Tea Party support for Newt in Florida is extremely high according to Tom Gaitens, Former Florida State Director of FreedomWorks. “Newt Gingrich is a Reagan Conservative and Mitt Romney is not. Their records clearly support this. If Americans truly want to have real change they will elect the man who balanced four federal budgets, who has reformed entitlements and not the man who is a Massachusetts Moderate who governed as a liberal and continues to flip flop on every Conservative issue.”
“The GOP establishment and liberal and conservative mainstream media assault on the Speaker clearly shows that the people who have torn our great nation down are afraid of change and bold vision. Another moderate GOP nominee in Mitt Romney will result in the reelection of President Obama.” said Patricia Sullivan, Founder of Patriot Army and Co-Founder of North Lake Tea Party from Eustis, FL.
“The Tea Party is not going to sit by and let the establishment determine who our nominee is. Our time for remaining quiet and balancing our ideals with staying out of elections is absolutely over. We will either elect Newt Gingrich or we will have the second incarnation of John McCain – and we all know how that turned out,” said Karin Hoffman, who leads DC Works For Us in Broward County, FL and has organized meetings between key Tea Party organizers and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and also former Chairman Michael Steele.
Full list of endorsements:
United States House of Representatives
Representative Joe Barton of Texas, Chairman Emeritus of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
Representative Michael Burgess of Texas
Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia
Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia
Representative Tom Price of Georgia
Representative Austin Scott of Georgia
Representative Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia
Representative Andy Harris of Maryland
Representative Trent Franks of Arizona
Representative David Rivera of Florida
Governors and State Constitutional officers
Governor, former Presidential candidate Rick Perry of Texas
Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia
Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens
Georgia Public Service Commissioner Stan Wise
Georgia Public Service Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald
Former officeholders
Former Senator, former Presidential candidate and actor Fred Thompson of Tennessee
Former Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire
Former Senator and Governor Zell Miller of Georgia
Former Representative Fred Grandy of Iowa
Former Representative Greg Ganske of Iowa
Former Representative J. C. Watts of Oklahoma
Former Representative John Napier of South Carolina
Former Representative, former Attorney General Bill McCollum of Florida
Former Representative Gary Lee of Florida
Former Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia
Former Lieutenant Governor André Bauer of South Carolina
Former diplomats, board members and other officials
Former United States Treasurer Rosario Marin
Former Ambassador to Tanzania, former Commerce Secretary of South Carolina Bob Royall
Former member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board Arthur Laffer
Former Director of White House speechwriting for President Ronald Reagan Bently Elliott
Former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, partner at the Nexsen Pruet law firm, Billy Wilkins
Former member of the board of visitors at the Medical University of South Carolina Debra Wilkins
Current and former state and local officials and party officeholders in Florida
Former Miami Mayor Joe Carollo
Former Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty
Vice Mayor of Bradenton and Bradenton City Councillor Patrick Roff
State Senator Jim Norman
State Senator Thad Altman
Former State Senator John Grant, Sr.
State Representative Michael Bileca
State Representative Gayle Harrell
State Representative Deborah Mayfield
State Representative Carlos Trujillo
Former State Representative Kurt Kelley
Former State Representative Monica Rodriguez
Former State Representative Luis Rojas
Brevard County Chair William Tolley
Hillsborough County Chair Sam Rashid
Honorary Brevard County Chair Coy Clark
Duval County Co-Chair Bert Ralston
Pinellas County Co-Chair Dr. Miguel Fana
Jacksonville City Councillor Ray Holt
Brooksville City Councillor Kevin Hohn
Former Chairman of Calhoun County Commission Dan Wyrick
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Xavier Suarez
Palm Beach County Commissioner Steve Abrams
Former Leon County Commissioner Ed Depuy
Gingrich Florida Chair College Republicans Nathan Meloon
Gingrich Florida Chair of Young Republicans Christian Waugh
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.
We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.
We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.
I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.
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.
Note both Mark Levin and Jeffery Lord worked in the Ronald Reagan Administration. This video is a MUST see.
Mini-UPDATE –
Chuck DeVore:
Very disappointed in Elliott Abrams’ unjust smear of Newt Gingrich, claiming that he was somehow opposed to Reagan in a 1986 floor speech. In 1986 I was a Reagan White House appointee in the Pentagon where I worked as a Congressional liaison in the area of defense and foreign policy. I knew Gingrich then as an ally of Reagan, not an opponent or a squishy Republican.
Newt Gingrich was at one with Ronald Reagan on values. I never heard Elliot Abrahms say the things he said about Newt – ever.
I find what Mitt and his surrogates are doing disturbing……
Mrs. Reagan and Michael Reagan insist that Newt was with Reagan the whole time. Rush Limbaugh says that he Remembers Newt Gingrich doing special orders in the House Well proclaiming Reaganism.
In fact, I’m sorry to say, what appears to be going on here is that Elliott Abrams, a considerably admirable public servant and a very smart guy, has been swept up in the GOP Establishment’s Romney frothings over the rise of Newt Gingrich in the Republican primaries. He is even being accused of trolling for a job in a Romney administration. No way!!!! Really????
What else can possibly explain a piece like the one Abrams penned on a day when Gingrich was being of a mysterious sudden targeted in one hit piece after another for his ties to Reagan? The pieces invariably following the Romney line that Newt had some version of nothing to do with Reagan.
A piece like the one Abrams wrote depends for its success in garnering headlines — which it did — by assuming no one will bother to get into the weeds and do the homework. Usually a safe assumption when dealing with the mainstream media, particularly a mainstream media that, as one with Establishment Republicans, hates Newt Gingrich.
Not so fast.
Due to the diligence of one Chris Scheve of a group called Aqua Terra Strategies in Washington, Mr. Abrams has been caught red-handed in lending himself to this attempted Romney hit job.
“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…
“I sure am….he is not the only one vilified, though, look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him, via the establishment’s attacks. They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history, and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years. It’s not just Ron Paul. I believe it is also Newt Gingrich that the establishment, that the liberal media, certainly that the progressives and Democrats don’t like.”
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?
Florence, South Carolina (CNN) – South Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Ken Ard announced Tuesday that his vote in the state’s Saturday primary will be for GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.
Ard is the highest office-holder in the Palmetto State to back the longtime Georgia congressman and former House speaker.
“When I vote Saturday morning it will be for Newt Gingrich.”
Newsmax and Ronald Reagan’s eldest son, Michael, say the 2012 presidential election is crucial to America’s future and Newt Gingrich is the candidate who will best continue the Reagan legacy.
Introducing an exclusive Newsmax interview with Gingrich, Reagan says the former House speaker “will help continue my father’s legacy.”
Gingrich is “a man who fought in Congress for my father’s programs, a man who believes that President Obama’s vision for America is a dangerous one and must be stopped and reversed.”
Recounting Gingrich’s amazing career, Reagan says that, after he was first elected to Congress in 1978, he “began to confront the usual politics and became a leading ally of my father, Ronald Reagan. He helped Congress push through massive tax cuts. He worked to secure a military buildup that helped defeat the Soviet Union. Under his leadership, Congress also limited the welfare state. As a leader in the Reagan revolution, Gingrich began to confront both Republicans and Democrats in Congress for their cozy insider deals.”
Michael Reagan also reminds viewers that House Speaker Newt Gingrich was the key conservative figure behind the Contract with America, which helped the GOP gain control of Congress in 1994 and led to the first balanced budget in decades.
And since leaving Congress, Reagan adds, Gingrich “has remained at the forefront of an American political scene” and “helped keep my father’s legacy alive.”
Translation – the parts of the GOP base that want/need/demand policy results don’t trust Mitt Romney to deliver. As Romney supporters Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham said; the more that Romney is pressured and the closer he gets to the general election the more to the left he will go.
To this point, though, the Tea Party movement has wanted nothing to do with Romney. Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, endorsed Newt Gingrich. The Tea Party Fund created a website – NotMittRomney.com – to inform voter’s of his liberal positions on key issues. And, Karen Martin, South Carolina Tea Party organizer said on National Public Radio recently that “no Tea Partier that I talk to in the state or nationally would want to promote Romney.”
In the Iowa caucuses, Romney finished tied for fourth among strong supporters of the Tea Party movement, 14 points back of Rick Santorum. In New Hampshire, although he won a plurality of the vote among Republicans who strongly back the movement, he received noticeably less support than he did from Republicans who were less supportive of the movement.
Low Income Men Can’t Relate to Him
Low income, white men have long been an important part of the Republican base. Romney, though, has alienated many of them with comments during the campaign that were perceived as being insensitive. At a debate last month in Iowa, he tried to make a $10,000 wager with Rick Perry over how his health care plan was characterized in his book. This past week, he commented that he liked to “fire people” that provide services to him.
These gaffes are showing their impact at the polls. In the past two contests, Romney has done poorly among low income, white men. In the Iowa caucuses, he received less than 15 percent of their support. In the supposedly friendly confines of New Hampshire he did not fare much better. He received only 27 percent of the vote from low income, white men in New Hampshire, trailing Ron Paul by 11 points.
Independents Don’t Support Him
Self-identified independents are a key swing group in presidential elections. Winning their support doesn’t ensure electoral success, but losing it by a wide margin almost guarantees defeat. In 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain among independents 52 percent to 44 percent on his way to winning the presidency.
Despite all his success in the nomination campaign, Romney has been unable to attract much support from independents. In Iowa, Paul crushed Romney among self-identified independents, besting him 43 percent to 19 percent. Things improved in New Hampshire, but on a night, in which Romney won most demographic groups, he managed to lose independents again. Paul beat Romney 32 percent to 29 percent.
Romney’s weakness among independents appears to stem from views about how to solve the federal budget deficit, likely to be a major issue in the fall campaign. Among independent voters in the New Hampshire GOP primary who thought the deficit was the most important issue, they supported Paul over Romney by a whopping 48 percent to 23 percent margin.
Romney assured Massachusetts voters when he was running for the Senate in 1994 that he did not want to go back to Reaganomics. He said during that campaign, “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”
Romney was also one of the few Republicans in 1994 to refuse to sign on to Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. He said during that campaign, “In my view, it is not a good idea to go into a contract, like what was organized by the Republican Party in Washington, laying out a whole series of things that the party says ‘these are the things we are going to do.’ I think that’s a mistake.” That mistake led to an historic Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. But Romney was one of the few Republicans to lose that year.
True to form, even today Romney is effectively promising not to take America back to pro-growth Reaganomics. Cowed by President Obama’s class warfare rhetoric, Romney promises to eliminate taxes on capital gains, interest, and dividends, but only for middle income Americans. He says he would do that because they, not the wealthy, were the ones most hurt by the recession.
But effective tax policy does not distribute tax cuts based on who “needs” a tax cut the most. That is Obama neo-socialist class rhetoric. Effective tax policy enacts tax cuts that will do the most to promote economic growth and prosperity.
That is what Reagan did in cutting tax rates across the board for everybody, including the wealthy who have the most resources to invest. That is what the middle class and working people actually need most, cutting tax rates that will promote their jobs, higher wages, and personal prosperity.
Sarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today.
But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said.
Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.
Todd Palin said he believes that being in the political trenches and experiencing the highs and lows help prepare a candidate for the future and the job of president.
He did not criticize any of the other candidates and said his “hat is off to everyone” in the Republican race.
But Todd Palin did point to last summer, when a large portion of Gingrich’s staff resigned and the candidate was left, largely by himself, to run the campaign.
Gingrich’s ability to overcome the obstacle and still move up in the polls showed his ability to campaign and survive, according to Todd Palin, who said Gingrich is not one of the typical “beltway types” and that his campaign has “burst out of the political arena and touched many Americans.”
UPDATE – New Hampshire Speaker Bill O’Brien endorses Newt:
Former New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith Endorses Newt Gingrich
The New Hampshire Union Leadereditorializes in today’s paper that Newt Gingrich is the only candidate with a track record of changing Washington. Romney will merely manage the status quo:
Of the candidates who have legitimate claims on the conservative name, this newspaper has endorsed Newt Gingrich. We were alone for awhile, but others have since taken Gingrich’s side. (They include economists Thomas Sowell and Art Laffer, the father of supply side economics, by the way.) The case for Gingrich is not that he is the best debater. Simply put, he is the only candidate in this primary who could both beat President Obama and bring real, conservative change to Washington.
…
Gingrich can win in November. What would happen if he did? He would immediately work to build broad support for cutting federal spending, reforming entitlements, undoing Obamacare, balancing the budget, slashing the regulatory burden, instituting strongly pro-growth tax cuts, and reinvigorating the American military.
A President Romney would competently manage Washington’s status quo. A President Gingrich would strive in his first term to upend the status quo and replace it with a government that works for and with the people, not against them.
That’s conservative. And it’s needed — this year, not in four years. Voters who want to change Washington the right way have only one choice this year: Newt Gingrich.
President Reagan’s National Security Advisor Endorses Newt Gingrich:
[This is worth watching all the way through – Editor]
At a veterans townhall meeting in Wolfeboro, NH, Bud McFarlane, National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, explains why Newt has the right experience and knowledge to be the Commander in Chief.
“He also brings to the presidency a knowledge of how to move the U.S. Congress, how to have the courage to go against conventional wisdom, how to balance a budget, and at home and abroad show the kind of leadership that President Reagan did only 25 years ago.
Nobody else in this race has those qualities of knowledge and experience. I’m here because I believe in Newt Gingrich. He can do this. He’s the only one who can do this.” — Bud McFarlane
The Rev. Donald E. Wildmon is urging Christian voters in Iowa to vote for Newt Gingrich in their caucuses on Tuesday in what he describes as the “most critical” election in American history.
Wildmon also warns that voting for other “good” conservative candidates will ensure Mitt Romney’s victory.
Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, is one of the nation’s most respected Christian leaders and has been at the forefront for decades in fighting for traditional values against a rising tide of secularism.
In an exclusive interview Thursday with Newsmax, Wildmon said other candidates in the Republican race, including Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann, are all “good people.”
But he said a vote for any of them will divide the conservative vote and help former Massachusetts Gov. Romney.
Wildmon told Newsmax that Newt Gingrich is the only candidate who can wrest the White House back from President Barack Obama.
“I think he is the one person that could win the White House and make some of the changes that are desperately needed,” Wildmon insisted. “I think that he would be able to defeat Obama, and also he would be able to defeat Romney.”
Newt talks about Reagan’s example and explains how Reagan’s example set the path for a genuine American recovery. Be sure to read every last word.
Newt Gingrich:
Officially, the recession ended two and a half years ago. President Obama tells us the economy has been moving in the right direction since June 2009.
Few will take solace in that statistic. Americans are suffering. For nearly three years, nearly one in 10 have been out of work. Almost double that number are either underemployed—working part time when they would rather be full time—or have simply given up looking.
Historically in America, the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery. By historical standards, we should be completing the second year of a booming recovery. Recall that, just like President Obama, President Reagan inherited a terrible economy when he took office. But Reagan enacted historic income tax rate cuts, regulatory reforms and spending controls. The recession officially ended in November 1982, and in the following two and a half years the unemployment rate dropped 3.6 percentage points, more than eight million Americans went to work at new jobs, and the longest period of economic growth in American history commenced.
Mr. Obama’s policies have been just the opposite: trillion dollar stimulus-spending waste, a government takeover of the health-care system, an activist EPA attacking businesses, and demonization of job creators. The president barnstorms the country advocating tax increases for investors, entrepreneurs and small businesses, teeing up the country for another crash in 2013 when the Bush-era income tax rates expire. Meanwhile, America’s businesses continue to suffer from the highest business tax rate in the industrialized world, with no relief in sight.
This nightmare will not end until Reagan-era economic policies are restored: tax reform, a sound dollar and smarter regulations. If they are, within a year the American economy will take off on another historic boom.
First, we must reduce the federal business tax rate to 12.5%, eliminate the capital gains tax as a double tax on capital income, and eliminate the estate tax. We must allow immediate expensing (writing off the costs in one year) for investment in capital equipment so American workers can continue to be the most productive in the world, using the latest and most advanced technology.
On the personal income side, I propose an optional 15% flat tax, allowing those American taxpayers who prefer it to file their returns on a postcard. This will save close to half a trillion dollars annually in tax-compliance costs.
These tax reforms are not designed to be revenue-neutral, but to maximize job creation, wages and economic growth. We will balance the budget with the revenues from such growth and spending cuts. That would include breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into manageable, entirely private companies, with no government guarantees.
Second, the dollar needs to be stabilized by establishing a price rule for the Federal Reserve to follow in its conduct of monetary policy. This will help stabilize international exchange rates, resolve the ongoing cycles of global financial crises and investment bubbles, short-circuit the run-up in gas and food prices, and unlock the frozen credit system.
Third, the burden of regulatory costs on American businesses and consumers has to be lightened. Reflecting my unwavering opposition to cap and trade and any other form of tax on energy or carbon, we must replace the Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency. We must move from antigrowth confrontation with business to collaboration with job creators, states and local communities to achieve better results. We must repeal Dodd-Frank and its “too big to fail” big-bank bailouts, and repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, restoring Wall Street as the world’s pre-eminent equities market.
We can slash further trillions in taxes, spending and regulatory costs by repealing and replacing ObamaCare with Patient Power, involving no individual insurance mandate and no job-killing employer mandate. We must also modernize the Food and Drug Administration, recognizing the need to get lifesaving medicines and technologies to patients faster and to remove cost barriers to their rapid development.
My economic plan includes sweeping entitlement reforms that would altogether cut federal spending in half over the long run, entirely solving the nation’s entitlement and fiscal crisis. Reforms include starting and then expanding personal savings, investment and insurance accounts until they ultimately finance all the benefits now financed by the payroll tax—and eventually displacing that tax entirely. The successful federal welfare reform of 1996 should be expanded to every federal means-tested welfare program, close to 200 or more, block-granting them to the states and ultimately saving trillions.
We also need an American Energy Plan, freeing the energy industry to maximize production of all forms of American energy, ensuring the reliable supply of low-cost gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal and other energy sources essential to fueling a booming economy.
These policies will ignite another record-smashing, and world-leading, 25-year economic boom, restoring the American Dream and rebuilding the America we love.
“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 