Tag: mitt romney

Day Two of the Great VAGOP Meltdown.

And it is a meltdown.

For those coming in late, let me summarize*: both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have been excluded from the Virginia Republican primary by the Virginia GOP. This has placed the VA GOP in an awkward situation, given that: they have excluded the current national and Virginian front-runner from their own ballot; have currently no write-in option on the ballot; do have an open primary that anyone can vote in; and generally have created an environment peculiarly suited for conspiracy theories involving Mitt Romney (and ones that won’t contain the word ‘Mormon’ anywhere in their description, by the way). The current defenses to all of this are “rules are rules” and “any campaign that couldn’t follow them are by definition poor campaigns:” I will leave it to the individual reader to decide just how either argument will play in, say, Peoria; I am frankly of the opinion that the above defenses are well-suited towards reassuring Romney and/or Paul voters – and will do very little to persuade the other 60-65% or so of likely Republican primary voters.

But since I’m telling Mitt Romney what won’t help his situation, it kind of behooves me to tell him what might.

Continue reading Day Two of the Great VAGOP Meltdown.

Obama “won’t release his college transcripts” campaign criticizes Mitt Romney…

The chutzpah is strong in this one.

…for declining to release his tax returns:

A spokesman for President Obama‘s re-election campaign blasted Mr. Romney and questioned whether he had something to hide in his finances.

“Why does Governor Romney feel like he can play by a different set of rules?” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign. “What is it that he doesn’t want the American people to see?…”

I don’t know: possibly Romney’s got the financial equivalent of the alleged gentleman’s C+ GPA that Ben LaBolt’s boss has been resolutely hiding for the last decade or so? – No, come on: it’s like the worst-kept secret in Washington DC that the President doesn’t exactly live up to the intellectual hype that his sycophants like to toss around. Which is not to say that Obama is dumb. He probably has an IQ of about 125 or so; which is pretty good, all things considered. Middling decent. But it’s not like he can set fire to people with his mind. Continue reading Obama “won’t release his college transcripts” campaign criticizes Mitt Romney…

Team Romney’s pointless reach-out to the Leftist press.

More interested in solving the mainstream media issue than in talking to conservatives?

Background: Matt Lewis noted with no little bemusement that some folks working for Team Romney had a conference call where folks from organizations from the table below were invited and were given the opportunity to ask questions, while “Townhall.com, HotAir, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, National Review, Weekly Standard, American Spectator, or Washington Times” got left out in the cold.  Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air was willing enough to note that they didn’t give an invite… and I’ll chime in that – as far as I know – neither did RedState.  Which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, given that Team Romney apparently… well.  I will be nice.

But never mind that.  Conference calls are often themselves tools of a Lower power, anyway.  Instead, let’s look again at who got invited, and who got to ask Team Romney questions:

John Dickerson CBS / Slate Romney’s Achilles’ Heel
Mark Halperin Time
Lloyd Grove The Daily Beast South Carolina’s Orgy of Scandals
Evan McMorris-Santoro Talking Points Memo One Email Deleter Endorses Another In New Hampshire
David Corn Mother Jones Hey GOP 2012ers: You Lie!*
Phil Rucker Washington Bob McDonnell’s Thesis As GOP celebrates victories, ideological battles between moderates and conservatives remain

Continue reading Team Romney’s pointless reach-out to the Leftist press.

Mitt Romney flip-flops a grenade into illegal immigration debate.

How do I put this?  Actually, that’s easy: with malice aforethought.  Below are two key quotes of Mitt Romney with regard to his discussion with the Washington Examiner about illegal immigration:

I listened to Lindsey Graham the other day… I went down to Florida and met with Jeb Bush…

Yeah.  As The Examiner put it – succinctly – “Lindsey Graham. Jeb Bush. If you are an “attrition-through-enforcement” conservative on illegal immigration, then this answer is probably setting off alarms.” Continue reading Mitt Romney flip-flops a grenade into illegal immigration debate.

#rsrh The problem of/with Romney.

John Podhoretz sums it up perfectly:

Watching [Mitt Romney] try to figure out how to talk about the fact that his health-care plan forced everyone in Massachusetts to buy an insurance policy, just as Obama’s health-care plan will force everyone in America to do so, makes it clear what a relatively easy time he has had of it so far.

Such questions should have been the focus of the campaign in the summer, given Romney’s front-runner status, but there were a series of weird distractions. The debates compelled media types to spread the questions around to eight or nine people, thus allowing Romney to stay conveniently on the sidelines when he wanted to be. Meanwhile, other candidates feuded, rose and fell in the bid to be the not-Romney.

Romney did well in the debates because he couldn’t be pinned down, and knew how to escape the noose when it was dangling over him. Sitting across from Bret Baier in a Florida warehouse, he couldn’t dance around his own ideological contradictions. He was trapped, and he acted that way.

Continue reading #rsrh The problem of/with Romney.

#rsrh Manchester Union-Leader endorses Newt Gingrich.

Big get for Team Gingrich; problematical for Team Romney, given that the New Hampshire paper spent a good portion of the time between its 2007 endorsement of John McCain and the New Hampshire primary going after Mitt Romney… to Romney’s eventual cost.  Now, the numbers are a bit different between then and now; Romney’s in a noticeably better position.  Whether that survives a reprise of 2008 cycle is another question entirely.

But do note: the Union-Leader doesn’t have a notable track record in picking candidates.  Although I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you that: given their past sledgehammer-the-fly track record when it comes to pushback on bad news, Team Romney will end up using a fifty-foot laser cannon to inscribe that fact on the surface of the moon…

Well, it’s official: Herman Cain has a problem.

Mitt Romney decided to weigh in on it.

Mitt Romney today for the first time characterized sexual harassment allegations facing fellow GOP candidate Herman Cain as “particularly disturbing.”

“These are serious allegations, George,” said Romney in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired on ABC News and Yahoo.  ”And they’re going to have to be addressed seriously. I don’t have any counsel for Herman Cain or for his campaign, they have to take their own counsel on this.”

I guess this means that going after Herman Cain now polls well. Continue reading Well, it’s official: Herman Cain has a problem.

#rsrh Will the Koch brothers require Mitt Romney to give up E-Verify?

Yeah, I know, I know: merely asking this question feeds into the entire weird (and sometimes sewage-tinged) false narrative that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party.  Blame Mitt Romney for that: after all, if this Examiner article is correct (via Ben Domenech’s Transom) then Mitt Romney seems to believe that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party, and he’s acting accordingly.  You tell me how to ignore a conspiracy theory when a Presidential candidate refuses to.

Seriously.  I spent a good part of the morning trying to come up with a way to do that, and failing.

But let’s backtrack a little and go over the background.  As you’ve probably heard, Team Romney is going gangbusters over Governor Rick Perry’s supposed weaknesses on immigration, particularly his opposition to a national E-Verify system.  See Ramparts 360 and RightWing News for Perry’s actual views on the subject (and immigration in general): to summarize, Perry is as about as impressed at the federal government’s current ability to run a country-wide identification database as he’s impressed at its ability to run pretty much anything else; which is to say, Perry is not particularly impressed.  Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is actually pretty hardline on E-Verify.

For the moment, at least.  Whether this survives the weekend may be an open question.  Because, again, comes this news that Mitt Romney – everybody put down their coffee cups, by the way – is planning to court the Tea Party – and the Koch brothers. Continue reading #rsrh Will the Koch brothers require Mitt Romney to give up E-Verify?

#rsrh QotD, I Frankly Deserve Better Than Mitt Romney edition.

And so do you, and so does Ed Morrissey:

The one argument for Romney that actually works with conservatives is that he’d be a better President than our current incumbent by a country mile. That’s also true of most of the rest of the field, though. If the nomination went to Romney, I’d have no trouble pulling the lever for Mitt in November 2012, and I’d be ruddy pleased to do so. But while the primaries are still in front of us, perhaps we can be spared the rationalizations aimed at getting conservatives to back Romney rather than test the rest of the field for a more principled conservative who could win a general election and properly lead this country in the right direction.

I expect that, should Romney get the nomination, the Online Right will suddenly find Senate and House races of particular interest. Particularly the primaries – especially if the nomination gets resolved early…