Mitt Romney for President -- Part Something plus One

He did pretty effectively run to the right. Now that we're in the general, it's pretty normal to head back center. He's been frenetic with his intentions though. I really don't have much of an idea what he would do with the actual presidency.

Speaking with some people here that know Mitch Daniels pretty well, there was a feeling that it would be a difficult year to win in the general, and they knew the primary was going to be the cluster******** that it was. I've heard that he (and probably some other potential candidates) decided it would be better to just sit this one out.

 

watching this video after watching the leaked fundraiser video is pretty jarring

 

Even David Brooks sounds like he's given up hope...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/brooks-thurston-howell-romney.html

 

I can't recall ever being so personally insulted by a presidential candidate. I just got called a freeloader just because I'm a liberal. I've never made a dime over $35K a year in my life and I work long hours in the heat, the snow, with aching joints at the end of the day.

I'm proud of every dollar of my money that has gone to starving kids in public schools, seniors left to die alone, unemployed veterans ... etc ... I could go on all night. I'm proud to be able to contribute my measly hard earned money to ease their troubled lives. I've been blessed with good health, a good brain and favorable circumstances that give me a roof over my head and food on my table. Just because I'm comfortable with some of my money being taken by the government, that makes me a freeloader? Heck I'm willing to give even more of my money if they can use it for things that benefit us all like clean energy, public transportation and universal healthcare instead of wars in the Middle East.

FU Mitt! Come walk a day in my shoes and then talk.

 

Mitt Dawg

 

I think the party's in disarray. They've strung along the "Tea Party" wing (which I'm using as shorthand to describe a certain faction of the Republican base, regardless of whether they identify with any organization which calls itself that) for a long time, using social issues and fear to attach people to an ideology of free market fundamentalism which doesn't really benefit them. But the Tea Party ideology has grown into a bit of a monster, demanding more and more fundamentalist views in regards to not only reproductive rights and immigration and all that, but also taxes and government spending. It's kind of nuts.

It almost looks like the GOP is on life-support. Its gigantic influx of money and its organizational apparatus as a major national party are keeping it alive, although it's technically brain-dead.

On the other hand, I also think the GOP establishment are sitting this election out. Ideologically and intellectually they may be bankrupt. But all it takes is one strong candidate. This is not their year. The field was thin to begin with. Obama is charismatic and an excellent campaigner. The economy is just not quite shitty enough and people don't really hate Obamacare enough. But there's no reason to think they couldn't get their act together for the next cycle, with the right candidate.

 

It's possible I'm underestimating the impact, but it's a little too early to tell in my opinion. There was a time when "Mitt Romney didn't paid any taxes for 10 years" dominated the headlines, and that eventually petered out as well. By the end of this week the media may have already found something else shiny and new to focus on. Now I think the comments are despicable yet wholly predictable from the guy who likes to fire people and isn't concerned about the poor, but I fail to see how this is Mitt's "Monkey Business" moment. The totality of this and all his other callous, tone-deaf comments may sink his candidacy, but this alone? This is the guy who nominated Mr. Let's-Privatize-Medicare as his running mate, and I'm supposed to believe a remark about people who weren't going to vote for him anyway is going to be the death knell for his presidential run?

 

Because he's specifically talking about a large group of Americans, many of which are senior citizens who will be casting votes in Florida. Sure, we all knew he was like this deep down, but him actually owning up to be a loathsome human being is not going to win him any votes.

 

I just don't see it... his choosing as his running mate the guy who wants to voucherize Medicare wasn't a deal-breaker, but this is a bridge too far? My guess is that people who weren't already turned off by Romney are very capable of assuming he wasn't talking about them when he made these remarks.

Sometimes I think we forget this place is a liberal circle jerk (and that includes me). Mitt Romney had us at "I was a severely conservative governor." Whether the few people in America who were still undecided (seriously, who is still undecided at this point?) will be swayed by these remarks remains to be seen as far as I'm concerned.

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/real-romney-is-a-sneering-plutocrat.html

Romney repeated the wildly misleading but increasingly popular conservative talking point that 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes. The federal income tax is, by design, one of the most progressive elements of the American tax system, but well over 80 percent of non-retired adults pay federal taxes. But most people hear “income taxes” and think “taxes,” which is why the trick of using one phrase to make audiences think of the other is a standard GOP trick when discussing taxes. For that very reason, it won’t strike many voters as an insult: Most people who don’t pay income taxes do pay other taxes, and fail to distinguish between them, and thus don’t consider themselves among the 47 percent scorned by Romney.



I do not think of this revelation as surprising or as the final nail in the coffin.. It is just the weekly revelation of an out of touch guy running an inept campaign. At the end the cumulative effect of his weekly foot in the mouth is only going to be lower voter turn out (and maybe on both sides), although the long term consequences for the GOP are yet to be seen.

Most surprising is how many people will vote with their heads up their a$$es and willingfully ignore the multiple signs of incompetence shown by this piece of human crap along with his associates, just because the other guy is a Kenyan-born commie that has not cleaned up the mess fast enough...

But after seeing W reelected nothing should surprise me anymore in politics...

 

It's a bit ironic where most of the "47%" are:

 

More than a bit.

 

While easily misunderstood, I do think that this issue - should it come up - is something Obama should be able to handle well in the debates.

 

You haven't, because no Presidential candidate has ever insulted the electorate to that extent.

 

Remember, to be a teabagger/repug you need to have no sense of irony at all, among other things...

Bottom line, is as what I said above, do you think the 47ers in the red states think that Rmoney was referring to them? Nope, he was talking about the free-riding-libural-scum that Obama has in foodstamps so they vote for him....

 

Exactly... this is the latest in a long line of statements by Mitt that make him increasingly unpalatable to those with both a brain and a heart, but it's not some kind of tipping point. I think he lost this race a long time ago, and this 47 percent stuff is just another nail in the coffin.

 

That's the first time I ever actually heard that. Really not offensive at all, I ahd assumed it was pretty bad. Not anywhere near what Rmoney said.

 

Interesting chart showing how being a "moocher" is basically a function of getting old.

 

Someone should totally do a David Brooks Win thread!

 

Is that a Menace II Society clip?

You're my new hero.

 

Right, but it petered out after that controversy performed its duty, namely, pushing up Obama's poll numbers.

Not really. Irony is based on juxtaposition, on subverting expectations. But what you see there is a chart of white southerners resentful of their poor, black neighbors. Non-southerners are always making this bogus "red staters are moochers" point, but it's exactly wrong.

Here's the thing...Romney stammers. Alot. It's how he kills time when he's fumbling for the next line.

The dog that didn't bark in that video is the stammering. He was very "fluent" in Objectivism in that clip. At this point, I think it's more likely that THAT is the "real" Mitt Romney (to the extent one exists) rather than the guy who ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994. It's hard to tell, but if I had to bet, I'd bet on Mitt being a real wingnut rather than a true moderate.

 

Obama never really ever says anything bad; it's one of the reasons that the GOP loathes him.

 

This. He hasn't expressed a natural thought in this entire campaign. Everything has been through filters of advisors. This seemed like the real deal.

 

Mitt is Neidermeyer. What I've learned from this election is that about half the people in the country will side with Delta House when watching a film, but join Omega Theta Pi in real life.