Tag: mitt romney

“Big Bird didn’t even see it coming.”

Entertainingly, when it comes to this election… neither did Barack Obama.  What?  Sorry: the below is from Mitt Romney’s Al Smith Dinner speech. Good stuff, good stuff.  No, really: it’s funny.  I know that most political humor isn’t, but this is worth watching.

Moe Lane

PS: I assume that people will put up Obama’s comments; I just wonder how many people will give a tinker’s dam about them.

Mitt Romney demonstrates how to achieve an honorable separation from George W Bush…

…while at the same time eviscerating Barack Obama. Below are two video clips, and the relevant transcript.   I created a shorter and a longer version: some people like the thirty second clips, and some people want the full version for full effect.  Also, note that I’ve cut out the bit where Romney hammered Obama for lying about Romney’s contraception position, and the bit where Obama whined about not having yet more time to say nothing in particular: while important in general, neither bit is relevant to this specific discussion.

Enjoy!  I certainly did – and I like George W Bush, mind you.  But the way that Romney pinned Bush’s deficits to Obama’s insanely higher ones was choice.  Bet you Obama never contemplated that he was going to have to defend his predecessor there, afterwards…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Mitt Romney demonstrates how to achieve an honorable separation from George W Bush…

#rsrh Some thoughts on tonight’s debate.

In vague order:

  • President Obama is unlikely to do worse today than he did two weeks ago.  That means that at least one major network (and MSNBC) will declare him the winner tonight.  If Obama does do worse, then the election is over and we need to start thinking about how to increase our Senate majority*.
  • Whether he actually wins tonight will depend on whether Barack Obama was able to successfully transform himself into a personally likeable and attentive listener (with a healthy amount of ambition, but very little hubris) in two weeks. I was going to add ‘charismatic,’ but you can’t teach that**.
  • What we’re likely to get is instead someone in attack mode.  This is certainly what people on the Left are advocating; and I suspect that not many of them have contemplated that Barack Obama has had very few opportunities to participate in ‘fights’ where the other side can hit back (don’t remember where I saw this point made first, sorry). Couple that with Obama’s tendency to drone, and drone, and drone…
  • Mitt Romney, on the other hand?  Needs to be relaxed, needs to be peppy, needs to not get rattled, needs not to make stupid jokes, needs to not get cocky, and generally needs to see this whole thing as being a contested business pitch to a bunch of uncommitted but receptive stockholders, which is actually not too bad an analogy. That’s pretty much it.  Romney’s not the one who has to play catch-up, here: it’s Obama, and Romney can do well for himself by simply making it as difficult as possible for Obama to recover.  Bottom line is: Romney’s got a margin, and the goal here is to not lose the margin.
  • This isn’t going to be a cakewalk, though.  Obama will lash out.  He will get at least one hit in.  You have to be ready for that happening, going into this debate.  We cannot legitimately hope for a replay of the first one.  Sorry.

I think that covers it.  Summation: we’re in a good place, but we can still lose.  It that concerns you: volunteer.

Moe Lane

*Yes, I know that it’s a Senate minority for the GOP right now.  But you can safely assume at least R+4 if Obama collapses.  And possibly even if he doesn’t.

**Barack Obama is not charismatic.  Bill Clinton was charismatic. George W Bush was charismatic. Ronald Reagan was charismatic.  Barack Obama is inspirational.  The difference is subtle, important, and currently biting Barack Obama on the tuchis.

#rsrh GOP raises a remarkable 171 million to Democrats’ 181 million in September.

Via email comes this announcement of a nice little haul for the campaign:

Boston, MA – Today, Romney for President, Romney Victory, and the Republican National Committee announced fundraising totals of over $170.4 million in September. The campaign, RNC and state party participants have approximately $191 million cash on hand.

Not that you’d know if from ABC’s Emily Friedman, which inexplicably decided to simply report the 140 million that Mitt Romney raised on his own, then compare it to the total 181 million that Obama AND the Democrats raised in September.  Note that I am politely assuming (solely for the purposes of this discussion) that a significant portion of that money wasn’t illegally collected (this link might be of interest); even with that assumption, well. Ten million at this level gets Barry the win at the fundraising race, and not a darned thing otherwise.  It certainly won’t keep Romney from matching Obama buck for buck, for the rest of the campaign.  Which is something that the vaunted Obama for America campaign never contemplated happening, of course.

Also: D+9 race, my eye.

The NYT needs to read *itself* on the Syrian rebel situation.

Because first it’s writing things like this: “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats,” and then it visibly wonders why it is that such a thing could be happening.  Well, it’s probably happening at least in part because the Saudi and Qatar governments are being bullied by the Obama administration into not providing official support for the rebels, leaving private subjects in both countries to take up the slack: ” …there are signs of an uptick in the number of young men crossing illegally into Syria from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, and of private fund-raising efforts across the gulf to help the rebels acquire heavier weapons.”  Note: both quotes are from the New York Times. Continue reading The NYT needs to read *itself* on the Syrian rebel situation.

#rsrh Barack Obama’s tepid reaction to Joe Biden’s debate performance.

Yeah, I’m thinking Barack Obama didn’t really think that Joe Biden saved the re-election campaign last night:


Continue reading #rsrh Barack Obama’s tepid reaction to Joe Biden’s debate performance.

#rsrh “Four more weeks! Four more weeks!” – Overflow crowd in Ohio for Romney.

Your lips to God’s ears, Ohioan voters.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received a warm reception on a cold evening at the Shelby County Fairgrounds Wednesday as he addressed a crowd estimated at more than 8,500 people, more than eight times the number expected to turn out.

[snip]

As the elder Romney took the stage, the sea of people rose into a breaking wave of cell phones and cameras to capture the momentous event, chanting “four more weeks, four more weeks!”

But don’t worry: they cleaned up after themselves.  Because, you know, Republicans.

Via

Moe Lane

#rsrh Politico buries the lede on Democratic prospects.

Blink, and you’ll miss it:

Insiders see Obama’s flop as turbulence, unsettling but hardly fatal, and say their internal polling shows erosion but not anything approaching collapse.

Translation: Romney undeniably improved his position, permanently (or as permanently as anything else is in this business). And if the Democrats’ internal polling was assuming as much of an electorate like 2008’s as a lot of the external polling was (and is), well…

President Obama promises to be incompetently nasty at next debate.

I’m paraphrasing: the exact line from the ABC article was “President Obama says he was “just too polite” and that voters should expect “a little more activity” next week in round two.” How is this funny? Let me count the ways:

  • ‘Too polite’ is not actually semantically equivalent to ‘walked into an ambush fat, dumb, and happy.’  Which is what happened.  And while ‘a little more activity’ probably is meant to convey the meaning ‘I will try to avoid looking again like a gaffed fish being paraded through the town,’ the meaning of the former is still a little stripped-down.
  • Right now the only things that Barack Obama have going for him is that he’s the incumbent, and that enough people think that he himself is all right.  Get nasty, and suddenly the only thing that Obama has going for him is that he’s the incumbent.  Go ask GHW Bush, Carter, Ford, and Hoover if that’s enough*.
  • Just after that bit, Obama breezily “compared the presidential race to a seven-game basketball series in which he was ahead two-nothing and lost one game to Mitt Romney at the debate.” Bad metaphor: basketball game scores are not determined by the fans.  The President should try using the example of a boxing match: of course, if you use that metaphor then what we have here is a situation where it’s the third round, the President was ahead on points… and Mitt Romney just laid him out for a seven count.  Obama hasn’t lost, but he is not winning right now.
  • …You know something?  Obama should ignore that last bullet point.  Basketball game series?  Perfect.  Go with that, Mr. President.  Go with that.

Continue reading President Obama promises to be incompetently nasty at next debate.

#rsrh If you’re not on Twitter…

…then you are missing the most hysterical meltdown EVER about a simple Pew/CNN poll showing Romney ahead of Obama 49/45 among likely voters.  And I mean “hysterical” in every sense of the term.  The best ones are the folks who have suddenly discovered the joys of arguing partisan ID.  Personally, I consider R+3 (Pew’s finding for likely voters) a heck of a lot more believable than the D+8 or higher that we were supposedly seeing last month… but then, I’m a partisan hack, so that’s exactly what you’d EXPECT me to think.

Moe Lane

PS: Barack Obama really did screw up that debate, you know.

PPS: Don’t get cocky, kid.  Volunteer. Vote. Contribute.