Mitt Romney: In His Own Words

When Romney's now-famous "47%" video was released, I stated that the attack ads would "practically write themselves." What I should have said was that the attack ads would actually write themselves:



As Jed at Daily Kos notes:

It's not often that a political campaign's best surrogate is the opposing candidate, but that's the case in 2012. Nobody has delivered a more devastating attack on Mitt Romney than Mitt Romney himself.

Greg Sargent reports that this ad will run in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

Great Quote

Via CNN:

According to The Washington Post poll, 64% of Ohio registered voters view the federal loans to GM and Chrysler as "mostly good" for the state's economy. Only 29% said the bailout was "mostly bad." Putting a finer point on the matter, one longtime Ohio GOP strategist called Obama's advantage on the auto bailout "a kick in the balls" for the Romney campaign.

The CNN article also discusses how the Romney Camp is irked by Republican Gov. John Kasich's "relentless boosterism for the uptick in Ohio job creation." RomneyCo does not like how the Ohio Governor's position "runs counter to the national Republican message that Obama's policies have kept the economy from bouncing back."

And by the way, how do you know that your presidential campaign isn't going well?  When your running mate starts referring to you as "Stench" (via Politico):

Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Coming from a resident of Iowa, a state where people are polite even to soybeans, this was a powerful condemnation of the Republican nominee.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Wow. Satirical perhaps, but brutal.

The Republicans' Problem? They Bought Into Their Own Bullshit

This paragraph from a National Review article, written of course by a right-winger, made me laugh (via Ed Kilgore):

[C]onservatives exhibiting less hysteria do remain puzzled by the polls. After all, the Obama presidency has been a trainwreck of Carter-esque magnitude. Almost every historical predictor shows that Romney should have a sizeable lead: Unemployment is high, consumer confidence is low, two-thirds of voters think the country is on the wrong track, more believe we’re worse off now than we were four years ago, household income has plummeted, gas prices are hovering near record highs, and most voters perceive America to be in decline.

I just think this is hysterically funny. A "trainwreck of Carter-esque magnitude"? Really? Did I miss the story about Osama bin Laden rising from the dead?  Was ObamaCare not actually passed into law, making Obama into the first president to pass health care reform in a century?  Did Obama actually fail to prevent the Great Bush/Cheney Depression? Did he not pass Wall Street Reform? Did the stock market not double since Obama's swearing-in? Did Obama not save the American auto industry -- and thus save a million American jobs in the process -- when Romney wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt?  Did Obama not end BushCo's Iraq Debacle? Did he not repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell"?  Did Gaddafi not get toppled? Has Al Qaeda not been crushed? Did Obama not reform the Federal Student Loan Program?  Did he not begin the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan?

These are just a few of Obama's first-term achievements, most if not all of which were accomplished without any help from the GOP.  Indeed, the GOP admits that its goal was to make Obama a one-term president, and Republicans have openly bragged about how they have refused to compromise with the President.

I believe that Mitt Romney -- and probably every other Republican -- simply bought into their own horseshit about Obama being a failure as a president and assumed that whomever won the GOP nomination would win the presidency. That's why Romney refuses to discuss specifics of what he'd do if he won. His campaign never formulated any specifics.  Why would Romney need to do that given that the Obama Presidency has been a trainwreck of Carter-esque magnitude? Why would he need to ever release his tax returns? 

Romney simply assumed this election would be a cakewalk.  That's why he had no problem taking positions during the primary that were right of even Rick Santorum.  In his mind, it didn't matter what he said or did during the primary season, because the winner of the GOP nomination would win the presidency and any troublesome thing that was said prior to the GOP Convention could simply be etch-a-sketched away.

Why such a gross miscalculation by the Republicans? Because they apparently thought that they could etch-a-sketch away George W. Bush, who was nowhere to be seen at their convention. Polls have consistently shown that the American people blame Bush more for the bad economy than they do Obama.  I think the GOP's' biggest problem is that the American people as a whole have a lot better memory than most Republicans thought.

A Tale of Two Candidates

Here are two photographs that I think speak to the character of the Republican and Democratic candidates for president.  This first photo was taken from a Romney ad wherein Obama is attacked for being anti-coal:

The Ohio coal miners behind Romney were actually required to attend this August campaign event on a work day and to do so without pay. As noted by the Columbus Dispatch: "Mitt Romney’s campaign is airing two ads in eastern Ohio that include footage of the coal miners who lost pay because he campaigned at their mine."

This next photo shows a note and gifts that Barack Obama gave to a newlywed couple earlier this month:

On September 1, Obama scheduled a last-minute rally at the Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa. Unfortunately for a couple named Jon and Sayli, they had long before planned to have their wedding at the same place and on the same day.  Here is what happened (via Gawker):

Unable to access the museum's parking lot, the couple and their entourage were forced to schlep across Hickman Road with the wedding dress and other necessities. The president's speech was expected to go long, meaning the bride and groom were unsure the ceremony would happen at all.

Happily, the rally ended with enough time to allow Jon and Sayli to say their I do's as planned.

And the best part? The president left behind a wedding gift for the couple — a silver tray and a mint julep cup — along with a handwritten note from Michelle and himself congratulating them and their special day and wishing them "a great life together."

Jon and Sayli aren't Democrats, but they know a bipartisan gesture when they see one. "Love him or hate him, it's a gift from the president," Jon told [WOI-TV]."

As I was reading both of these accounts, I think I acquired a little more insight into what Obama means when he says he wants to be President for all Americans. As for Romney, it simply reinforces my belief that he is, in fact, a dick.

You Can Now Officially Put A Fork Into The Romney Campaign

Look, I know it is still early, but unless Obama is caught on live TV in the next few weeks having sexual relations with an aardvark on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I'm pretty sure this one is over:

The overwhelming majority of voters who back President Barack Obama do so because they are "dependent on government" and "believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing," Mitt Romney told a closed-door gathering of about 30 major donors earlier this year, according to video of the event that has surfaced on the Internet. ***

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney says in one clip. "All right -- there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing."

Wow. The attack ads practically write themselves. For example, does Mitt consider permanently disabled Iraq War veterans -- or retirees living in Florida -- as part of this freeloading group of "victims" that he despises so much? As Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said yesterday: "It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation."

I think the only issue now is how big of an effect this complete collapse of Romney's Campaign will have downstream.  Any chance of Republicans gaining control of the Senate has probably evaporated, though, so expect to see the right-winged SuperPacs start investing very heavily in the campaigns of vulnerable GOP House candidates.

Republicans will be wondering aloud for decades how they let a prick like Mitt Romney win the 2012 GOP nomination.  The really hilarious part of all this is that folks like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Rick Santorum will no doubt be praising Romney later today for talking the way he did on the tape.

One thing is for certain: Republicans will no longer be able to complain after Obama's reelection that Mitt was simply "too moderate" to win. The tape clearly demonstrates that their nominee is in fact the severely conservative person he claims to be. 

The Al Gore Effect, Part II

Yesterday, I posted on the "Al Gore Effect," which I loosely defined as the newly-found willingness of the Corporate Media to finally call bullshit on the lies that the Romney Campaign are repeatedly spewing about Obama. The following video presents an excellent example of the Al Gore Effect once again giving some grief to yet another Romney surrogate (via Raw Story):



If you can't watch videos at your current location, basically what happened is that Rep. Peter King (R-NY), a Romney surrogate, once again repeated the GOP's "Obama Apology Tour" meme and CNN's Soledad O’Brien was having none of it. She asked Rep. King: “You called it an apology tour. You said, ‘the apologies.’ What apologies are you specifically talking about?” Rep. King, of course, could not come up with any examples of where Obama apologized for the United States (because Obama never did).

My favorite part of the interview was where Rep. King stated that Obama's Cairo Speech in 2009 was an example of Obama "basically apologizing for American policies," which was followed by O'Brien actually whipping out a copy of the Cairo Speech and then stating: “Never once in that speech, as you know, which I have the speech right here, he never once used the word apology -- he never once said, ‘I’m sorry.’”

In other words, O'Brien was ready -- with documents in hand -- to directly challenge the GOP bullshittery.  If the Corporate Media are actually now willing to aggressively challenge Romney and the Republican Party on the metric fuck-ton of lies they've been telling about Obama, then there might be some hope for this country after all.

Why Is Romney In Trouble Right Now?

I think Mitt Romney is currently suffering from an "Al Gore Effect," and he's going to have a tough time recovering from it between now and the General Election.

For a little historical context, here are the first few paragraphs of a piece Robert Parry wrote for the Washington Monthly during the 2000 Bush vs. Gore campaign (via Kevin Drum):

Al Gore may come across to many Americans as a smart guy with lots of experience and a clunky personal style. But the national news media have repeatedly portrayed the vice president in a much more sinister light: as a willful liar who may even live in a world of his own delusions.

This harsh assessment has been handed down across the media spectrum---from The Washington Post to The Washington Times, from The New York Times to the New York Post, from NBC's cable networks to the traveling press corps. Journalists and pundits freely denounce Gore as "a liar," "delusional," "Pinocchio," a "Zelig" character who inserts himself into improbable historical events.

Gore certainly has contributed to his own media problem with some imprecise phrasing and the kinds of exaggerations that all candidates make on the campaign trail. But journalists seem to have singled out Gore for extraordinary attention, with story after story reprising Gore's alleged pattern of deception.   But an examination of dozens of these articles, which purport to detail the chief cases of Gore's exaggerations and lies, finds journalists often engaging in their own exaggerations or even publishing outright falsehoods about Gore.

The reason I bring up Gore now is that I expect to see Republicans start attacking the "Liberal Media" for pointing out how much Romney and Ryan lie about shit. In fact, this has already started to some extent.  Last month I expressed surprise that members of the Media were actually going after Romney/Ryan and the GOP for willfully lying to the American people.  I was surprised because this type of inquiry into the truthfulness of Republican politicians was essentially non-existent during the Bush years.  In fact, I long ago expressed my belief that members of the Corporate Media share in the blame for Bush's Iraq Debacle because they were unwilling to question Bush and Cheney on all of their pre-war bullshittery.

So I never really expected our "Liberal" Media to go after the GOP ticket for lying, but it is happening. And this trend is continuing.  Ryan, undoubtedly due to pressure from the Media, was recently forced to backpedal from his Convention speech lie that Obama was responsible for the closure of a GM plant that actually closed during the Bush Regime. [I won't even mention Ryan's Marathon Lie].  And of course, the Media have been going after Romney mercilessly for lying about Obama's response to the recent embassy attacks, so much so that Mitt's people are complaining about it.

Why have members of the Corporate Media suddenly turned on the GOP and its current presidential ticket?  That's simple:  It is because of the Al Gore Effect.  Romney and Ryan have been caught in numerous lies over the last few months, and now I believe that members of the press are competing with each other to be the first to report on the latest Romney/Ryan lie, just like it was 12 years ago when the Media perceived that Al Gore was a habitual liar.

The problem for Romney is that once you've been branded as a liar, it is really hard to dispel such an impression, especially as far as the Media are concerned.  Al Gore was never able to do it, and most if not all of the stuff brought up against him was total horseshit. Romney will have a much harder time than Gore on this issue because Mitt is in fact a habitual liar.

Racist Republican Tim Huelskamp Attacks Planned Parenthood

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Republican congressman from Kansas (and apparently one of the GOP's biggest racists -- and that is saying a lot) -- had this to say at the Values Voter Summit this morning:

[W]e see this administration opposing any reductions in taxpayer funding to the one private corporation, the largest abortion business in the entire country -- Planned Parenthood. Would not allow any single reductions, more than $300 million tax dollars to this entity. And ladies and gentlemen, I am the adoptive father of four children, each of them either -- each of them either black, Hispanic, Native American, and I am incensed that this president pays money to an entity that was created for the sole purpose of killing children that look like mine -- a racist organization, and it continues specifically to target minorities for abortion destruction. Shame on this president and shame on that party.”

What an asshole.

Un-Fucking-Believable

Yesterday, I was wondering how far Romney's apparent support for radical anti-Muhammed filmmaking will go.  For example, does Mitt plan on campaigning with Terry Jones, the Quran-burning preacher from Florida who supported the movie? Does Romney plan on screening the movie before every one of his campaign events?

Well, someone in the Romney Camp also saw this as a potential problem.  The following was taken from a list of message points issued yesterday by the Romney Campaign to its surrogates (via CNN):

Questions & Answers:

Don’t you think it was appropriate for the embassy to condemn the controversial movie in question? Are you standing up for movies like this?

– Governor Romney rejects the reported message of the movie. There is no room for religious hatred or intolerance.

– But we will not apologize for our constitutional right to freedom of speech.

– Storming U.S. missions and committing acts of violence is never acceptable, no matter the reason. Any response that does not immediately and decisively make that clear conveys weakness.

– If pressed: Governor Romney repudiated this individual in 2010 when he attempted to mobilize a Quran-burning movement. He is firmly against any expression of religious hatred or intolerance.

Wait what?  Didn't Romney just say yesterday that there is indeed room for religious hatred or intolerance when he came out in defense of folks who engage in religious hatred or intolerance?  Now he is opposed to such expression? As Jed Lewison at Daily Kos notes, Romney "condemned the embassy statement for saying basically the same thing." 

The most hilarious part of all this is that the Romney Campaign has accused the Obama Administration of sending "mixed signals." The fact that Romney's people were compelled to issue such talking points essentially supports the President's statement that Romney likes to "shoot first and aim later."

By the way, this is pretty funny as well (via Political Wire):

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asserted yesterday that Mitt Romney was right to point out that the U.S. embassy attacks in Egypt and Libya were due to "perceived American weakness."

However, the Daily Dolt points out that there were twelve embassy attacks during George W. Bush's presidency -- the most of any president -- including eight under Rumsfeld's watch.

The Reasons Behind Romney's Colossal Foreign Policy Fuck-Up

One of Romney's favorite anti-Obama talking points is that our President is always apologizing for America.  His campaign decided to revisit this theme after hearing yesterday that the U.S. Embassy in Egypt -- facing protests over an anti-Muhammed movie made by an amateur U.S. filmmaker -- put out a press release stating that "respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy" and "[w]e firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others." 

Even though this statement was released before any embassy attack occurred, Camp Romney saw this as an opportunity to assail Obama after the embassy attacks occurred.  To quote Romney: "It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." [Remember -- when the embassy released that aforementioned statement, no attack had occurred yet].  RNC chairman Reince Priebus followed up Romney statement by tweeting: "Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic."

When it was later determined that loss of American lives occurred as a result of the Libyan embassy attack, Romney -- instead of admitting he jumped the gun -- doubled down on his mystifying statement during a press conference this morning wherein he categorized the embassy statement as "an apology for American principles."

Most folks in Romney's position probably would have backed off on the rhetoric, but not Mitt Fucking Romney.  He did, after all, set a trap for himself by -- as the President put it this morning -- engaging in "Ready! Fire! Aim!" tactics.  Romney probably decided to double down on his bullshit attack because to back down from it would make him appear weak.

In any event, Romney is being universally criticized for all of this, and rightfully so.  Even Republicans are fleeing this sinking ship. Peggy Noonan, a conservative author and speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, tweeted this morning: "I don't feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors in the past few hours." And Buzzfeed chimed in with this reporting:

"They were just trying to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy statement and now it’s just completely blown up," said a very senior Republican foreign policy hand, who called the statement an "utter disaster" and a "Lehman moment" — a parallel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 financial crisis, failed to come across as a steady leader."

It's pretty clear why this monumental screw-up on Romney's part occurred. Our current president has a very strong record with regard to foreign policy, and this really bothers Republicans.  Romney's campaign has tried to minimize Obama's successes by referring to foreign policy as a “distraction” and has described the Obama campaign's focus on foreign policy as "going from one shiny object to the next."  Romney's lack of focus on foreign policy has gotten him into some trouble, most recently when he failed to mention the deployment of our troops in Afghanistan during his convention speech and then defended this omission by stating that said troop deployment was not an important issue.

But this is not to say that Romney won't go after Obama on foreign policy if he perceives an opening to do so, even a flimsy one. Last May, Romney attacked the State Department's handling of the situation involving blind Chinese dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng as "a day of shame for the Obama administration."  Unfortunately for Governor Romney, it turned out that he spoke too soon because the Obama people successfully resolved that issue with the dissident.

And this is what happened over the last couple days:  Romney spoke too soon in an attempt to politicize an on-going foreign policy crisis, and now he is getting crucified for his tone-deaf response from all sides.  And that is as it should be.

Quote of the Week

“If you don’t start telling people what you believe — if you really do, in fact, believe in anything — and if you don’t start telling people, yes, these are the tax exemptions that we’re going to get taken care of … unless you have somebody that’s willing to do that, Romney’s going to lose.”

- Joe Scarborough, joining other conservative voices who are worried that Romney’s vagueness about tax reform and other policy issues will be fatal to his presidential run.

And here's some good analysis from Kos as to why the debates might not present the opportunity that the Romney Camp thinks it will:

[Romney] can't score points by playing it safe. If he tries to be nice and gracious and not touch Obama like he touched Gov. Rick Perry in one of those early-season debates, he might earn brownie points, but Obama will remain unscathed.

So he has to attack. But remember, people think he's a dick. So Romney has to attack in a manner that doesn't reinforce the narrative that he's a dick. And who really thinks Romney has the chops to pull that off? He can't interact with NASCAR fans or picnicking ladies or British prime ministers without coming off as a dick. He's now supposed to deftly attack—with a convincing smile—the guy who is standing between him and his birthright presidency?

Meanwhile, Obama can play it safe. He is winning. He can be gracious and accommodating, all the while rising above any nastiness with presidential bearing. He doesn't need to win these debates as much as not lose them, and that makes his job so much easier.

It seems pretty clear cut. If Romney plays it safe, he continues to lose. He has to throw that Hail Mary. But by going on the offensive, he'll remind people that they think he's a dick. Because he is. It's going to be brilliant.

The moral of this story? Don't be a dick.

Can You Imagine The Outrage . . .

. . . if a Democrat had said this?

"When you give a speech you don't go through a laundry list, you talk about the things you think are important."

- Mitt Romney, explaining why he did not mentioned our troops in Afghanistan during his Convention speech.

Let me give you a partial laundry list of the things that would have happened had Obama stated that he did not believe the service of our troops in Afghanistan was important:

• Drug addict Rush Limbaugh would go on a two-hour rant about how much the Democrats hate the troops and how tired he is of Obama constantly apologizing for America, and then - God willing - his head would explode.


• Donald Trump would do at least 40 interviews wherein he would claim that Obama's disdain for our fighting men and women only proves that our President was born in Kenya.


• FoxNews would be reporting on the story around-the-clock for at least six weeks.  Brit Hume -- on the first day of this scandal -- would have a dozen Obama-hating veterans come on his show to yell about how much the President and the Democrats love the terrorizers and how Obama "doesn't understand" America.


• Ann Coulter would proclaim that Obama should be hanged, drawn and quartered for treason and his body parts distributed to the four corners of the kingdom.

These are but a few examples of what would have happened had Obama made such a comment.  It was bad enough that Romney failed to mention the troops during his speech, but to follow that colossal fuck-up by openly stating that our troops are not "important" is astounding and only demonstrates that the omission from his convention speech was no mere oversight. 

Bottom line: Romney really does hate the troops -- or at the very least doesn't give two shits about them.

And while we're on the subject of the troops, I must say that I truly do not understand this:

A coalition of 15 military groups told a federal court on Friday that they plan to appeal a ruling that would stop the state of Ohio from cutting off early voting three days before the election. The suit, brought by the Obama campaign, sought to expand early voting hours to all Ohio voters during the three day period. A law passed by the state allows only active duty members of the military and Americans who live overseas to cast an absentee ballot in-person during that period.

OK, let me see if I've got this straight. Ohio Republicans -- in an attempt to suppress the vote -- passed a law which would cut off early voting for everyone but members of the military (who for the most part lean Republican) and folks living abroad. The Obama people sued to stop the law's implementation, win in court, and now military groups are complaining because . . . and that's where I get lost.

What are these military groups complaining about again? I readily admit that math is not my strong suit, but I fail to see how any of this actually affected the voting rights of anyone in uniform.  Don't military folks still have the same early voting rights in Ohio that they enjoyed prior to the GOP trying to suppress the voting rights of everyone else?

You right wingers out there -- chime in and tell me what I am missing here.

Quotes of the Week (with update)

“If Obama wins re-election, the Republican Party will react by moving right, not left.”

- Conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru.

I'd like to see that. How will the GOP move more to the right than they are now? Are they going to start wearing swastikas on their arms?

And here is my favorite part of Bill Clinton's speech tonight:

"Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats."

That's a solid critique of the current GOP. In fact, the Republicans hate Obama and the Democrats so much that they not only refuse to deal with Democrats, but they openly brag about their refusal to do so and then actually threaten to deal with the Democrats even less if Obama wins reelection (as if less cooperation is possible).

That's pretty fucked up.

UPDATE:  Here is the best quote from the final night of the Democratic Convention:

“Mr. Romney — here’s a little advice.  Before you debate Barack Obama on foreign policy, you better finish the debate with yourself!”

Senator John Kerry, after pointing out the many Romney foreign policy flip flops over the past several years.

My Advice To Paul Ryan?

It's simple -- stop acting like a Democrat:

Vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) backpedaled Monday from a claim in his Republican National Convention speech that President Barack Obama was responsible for the closure of a General Motors plant that in fact closed during the presidency of George W. Bush.

"What they are trying to suggest is that I said Barack Obama was responsible for the plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying, read the speech," he told NBC's "Today." "What I was saying is the president ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After the plant was shut down he said he would lead efforts to restore the plant. It’s still idle." * * *

Nice try, but he should have just kept his mouth shut. When I read he was trying to backpedal from his claim that Obama was responsible for the plant closure, the first thing to pop into my head was "Wow -- that's just what a Democrat would do in a similar position."

Stand up tp the media pressure, Ryan.  Own the lie.  Don't run away from it.  Make it a part of every one of your stump speeches.  Your ticket has decided that the only way to beat Obama is to lie about him.  Why change your strategy now?