Romney Proposes $3000 Yrly Child Care Allowance. Greene Ejected from Committees.

 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Today Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) proposed giving at least $3000 annually per child to American families. This suggestion is coming from a man who, when he ran as the Republican candidate for president in 2012, famously echoed what was then Republican orthodoxy. He was caught on tape saying that “there are 47 percent of the people who… are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

Romney’s proposal indicates the political tide has turned away from the Republicans. Since the 1980s, they have insisted that the government must be starved, dismissing as “socialism” Democrats’ conviction that the government has a role to play in stabilizing the economy and society.

And yet, that idea, which is in line with traditional conservatism, was part of the founding ideology of the Republican Party in the 1850s. It was also the governing ideology of Romney’s father, George Romney, who served as governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, where he oversaw the state’s first income tax, and as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard Nixon, where he tried to increase housing for the poor and desegregate the suburbs. It was also at the heart of Romney’s own record in Massachusetts, where as governor from 2003 to 2007, he ushered in the near-universal health care system on which the Affordable Care Act was based.

But in the 1990s, Republican leadership purged from the party any lawmakers who embraced traditional Republicanism, demanding absolutely loyalty to the idea of cutting taxes and government to free up individual enterprise. By 2012, Romney had to run from his record, including his major health care victory in Massachusetts. Now, just a decade later, he has returned to the ideas behind it.

Why?

First, and most important, President Joe Biden has hit the ground running, establishing a momentum that looks much like that of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt had behind him stronger majorities than Biden’s, but both took office facing economic crises—and, in Biden’s case, a pandemic as well, along with the climate crisis--and set out immediately to address them.

Like FDR, Biden has established the direction of his administration through executive actions: he is just behind FDR’s cracking pace. Biden arrived in the Oval Office with a sheaf of carefully crafted executive actions that put in place policies that voters wanted: spurring job creation, feeding children, rejoining the World Health Organization, pursuing tax cheats, ending the transgender ban in the military, and reestablishing ties to the nation’s traditional allies. Once Biden had a Democratic Senate as well as a House—those two Georgia Senate seats were huge—he was free to ask for a big relief package for those suffering in the pandemic, and now even Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who had expressed concern about the package, seems to be on board.

FDR’s momentum increased in part because the Republicans were discredited after the collapse of the economy and as Republican leaders turned up as corrupt. Biden’s momentum, too, is likely gathering steam as the Republicans are increasingly tainted by their association with the January 6 insurrection and the attack on the Capitol, along with the behavior of those who continue to support the former president.

The former president’s own behavior is not helping to polish his image. In their response to the House impeachment brief, Trump’s lawyers made the mistake of focusing not on whether the Senate can try a former president but on what Trump did and did not do. That, of course, makes Trump a witness, and today Jamie Raskin (D-MD),[below] the lead impeachment manager, asked him to testify.

Trumps’ lawyers promptly refused but, evidently anticipating his refusal, Raskin had noted in the invitation that “[i]f you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021.” In other words: “Despite his lawyers’ rhetoric, any official accused of inciting armed violence against the government of the United States should welcome the chance to testify openly and honestly—that is, if the official had a defense."

The lack of defense seems to be mounting. This morning, Jason Stanley of Just Security called attention to the film shown at the January 6 rally just after Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke. Stanley explained how it was an explicitly fascist film, designed to show the former president as a strong fascist leader promising to protect Americans against those who are undermining the country: the Jews. Stanley also pointed out that, according to the New York Times, the rally was “a White House production” and that Trump was deeply involved with the details.

Trump’s supporters are not cutting a good figure, either. Today, by a vote of 230-199, the House of Representatives voted to strip new Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her assignments to the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee. It did so after reviewing social media posts in which she embraced political violence and conspiracy theories. This leaves Greene with little to do but to continue to try to gin up media attention and to raise money.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had declined to take action against Greene—although in 2019 he stripped assignments from Steve King (R-IA) for racist comments-- and only eleven Republicans joined the majority. The Republican Party is increasingly associated with the Trump wing, and that association will undoubtedly grow as Democrats press it in advertisements, as they have already begun to do.

McConnell has called for the party’s extremists to be purged out of concern that voters are turning away from the party. 

Trump Republicans are betting the former president’s endorsement will win them office in the future. But with social media platforms cracking down on his disinformation, his ability to reach voters is not at all what it used to be, making it easier for members of the other faction to jump ship.

A Smartmatic representative demonstrating the company’s vote-processing system in 2018.Credit...Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated Press

In addition, those echoing Trump’s lies are getting hit in their wallets. Today, the voting systems company Smartmatic sued the Fox News Channel and its personalities Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, along with Giuliani and Trump’s legal advisor Sidney Powell, for at least $2.7 billion in damages for lying about Smartmatic machines in their attempt to overturn the election results.

Republicans rejecting the Trump takeover of the party are increasingly outspoken. Not only has Romney called for a measure that echoes Biden’s emphasis on supporting children and families, but also Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) today released a video attacking the leaders of his state’s Republican Party after hearing that they planned to censure him for speaking out against the former president.

“If that president were a Democrat, we both know how you’d respond. But, because he had ‘Republican’ behind his name, you’re defending him,” Sasse said. “Something has definitely changed over the last four years … but it’s not me.”

Biden Forges Ahead on Issues Popular with American Voters.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

The contours of politics today look much like they did yesterday. President Biden is forging ahead through executive actions—today pausing oil and gas leases while switching the government to electric vehicles— while the two factions in the Republican Party claw for supremacy.

Dead center of both of these political fights is the future of this country. The dangers of Trumpism are becoming clearer each day. Today, for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin that warned of violence from domestic extremists angry over “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” and emboldened by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The bulletin expires at the end of April.

Law enforcement has moved National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., in part to guard against violence on March 4, a day that QAnon supporters who still believe Trump is part of an elaborate trick to reclaim the nation from the Democrats think will be the day on which the former president is finally sworn in for his second term. (March 4 was the nation’s original inauguration date; it changed under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937.)

In testimony yesterday, the acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington told the House Appropriations Committee that at least 65 officers filed reports of injury after the January 6 attack. The chair of the Capitol Police officers’ union, Gus Papathanasiou, put the number closer to 140. "I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake," he said. One officer died of injuries sustained on January 6. Two officers have since taken their own lives.

Meanwhile, a video emerged today of the new Republican representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, harassing David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. Greene followed Hogg down the street in Washington, D.C., in March 2019, with an accomplice filming as she badgered him, called him a crisis actor paid by George Soros, told him she was armed, demanded he talk to her, and called him a coward. He walked on, without engaging her.

The video emerged the day after reporters discovered old Facebook activity on Greene’s page in which she responded positively to a commenter talking of hanging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and another talking of killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

While Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress, leading Republicans in the House responded to the Facebook news simply by saying they condemned violent rhetoric on both sides. Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.

Republican lawmakers seem to be siding with Trump’s supporters, turning against the ten House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment. In the House, Trump supporters are trying to throw Liz Cheney (R-WY) out of her spot in the party’s leadership, and the former president’s new political action committee is ginning up anger against her as it urges primary challengers to jump into the race in 2022.

Increasingly, Republican lawmakers are pushing to let Trump off the hook on impeachment. In the Senate yesterday, Rand Paul (R-KY) insisted that a former president could not be tried on an impeachment charge, and 45 Republicans agreed with him. This is not necessarily a signal of how the eventual Senate vote will go, but Paul said it was. Republican lawmakers seem to be coming down on Trump’s side as polls show that while most Americans are horrified by the attack on the Capitol and blame Trump for it, most Republicans- 78%-- don’t blame him. 

Some Republicans are, though, alarmed at the idea that a president might get away with inciting an insurrection. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) dismissed the idea that the country could have unity without addressing the causes of the current anger. 

Also notable is the firm stance of Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who has bucked his party to speak out against the former president’s attacks on the election and incitement of the rioters.

When a reporter today asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki if the administration had any comment on Greene, Psaki made it clear the administration was not going to give any oxygen to her or those like her. “We don’t, and I am not going to speak further about her, I think, in this briefing room,” Psaki said.

While Biden is starving the Republicans of oxygen, he is also moving quickly on a range of issues that are popular among ordinary voters of both parties. Today’s executive order on addressing climate change calls for the government to buy zero-emission vehicles made in the U.S., and to rebuild federal infrastructure, creating construction, manufacturing, engineering, and skilled-trades jobs. Job creation and infrastructure development were both promises the previous president made in 2016 that boosted his support but which never really came to pass. If Biden can actually deliver on them, he could reclaim those Trump voters for the Democrats, as well as addressing climate change and our failing infrastructure.

Biden’s people are also making sure we see a White House that is addressing issues that created concern in the past administration. They are upholding old norms—holding daily press briefings, for example—honoring science, restoring government websites, and treating members of the media with respect.

They seem to be trying to remind us how our democracy is supposed to work.

HOW TWITTER CHANGED POLITICS AND POLITICAL JOURNALISM

Twitter Inc stock information is seen on a display at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, New York, USA 07 November 2013. Shares in the company Twitter (TWTR) [were offered]on the NYSE at a price of 26 US Dollars, at the start of Twitter’s highly anticipated initial public offering. At the end of the day it traded at $44.90


CHRIS CILLIZZA WASHINGTON POST

Twitter is now a publicly traded stock. But long before any Tom, Dick or Harry (or Ron) could buy stock in Twitter, the micro-blogging service was in the process of fundamentally reshaping the way in which politics is practiced and covered. The changes, which are still in process, are profound — in the way that politicians interact (or don’t) with reporters, the life cycle of news cycles and how the general public gets (or doesn’t) its information.



CNN’s Peter Hamby [above] has done what we take to be the definitive work in this space in a paper entitled “Did Twitter kill the Boys on the Bus?” that he wrote during a semester as a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Hamby’s paper runs 95 pages. You should read the whole thing, but in the event you don’t, here are the key quotes from it as well as a few of our own thoughts.

* “It’s become the new conventional wisdom setter, and that conventional wisdom gets amplified as well, because you have editors sitting in bureaus watching this stuff. When everything is in 140 characters, it gives a skewed version of reality, and that impacts how editors think about what reporters should be covering, and it impacts what reporters think is  important.”
That quote, from Associated Press political editor Liz Sidoti, is a telling one.  As WaPo’s Dan Balz noted in his terrific campaign book “Collision 2012,” the conventional wisdom surrounding any political event — particularly presidential debates — was set by Twitter even as the event was happening. By the time the debate ended, political Twitter had rendered its judgment on who won, who lost and why. There’s no question that political Twitter reinforces a sort of groupthink — since everyone in the D.C. bubble is following everyone else 0n Twitter; it’s an electronic echo chamber.  And that echo chamber often forgets that just 8 percent of the public gets its news from Twitter and only 16 percent of the public uses Twitter at all.



* “No offense to CNN.com, there is a lot of traffic there, but I can go to Robert Costa and I can take his link off The Corner on the National Review and I can generate as much news out of The Corner. Now with Twitter, you can make your own news and put it up on your Twitter feed.”
This is a quote from an anonymous staffer for Mitt Romney’s campaign — and gets at the new realities of how, why and to whom political operatives dole out their information. Twenty years ago, a campaign would need to go through one of the broadcast networks or places like the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal to get major coverage for a story. The onset of the Internet changed that, allowing political operatives to use smaller news outlets and, eventually, partisan news outlets to push stories into the public arena. Matt Rhoades, who managed Romney’s 2012 campaign, grasped that changed reality far earlier than most. (“A link is a link,” he told Hamby. “I’ve said this a million times. I used to say it going back to, like, 2004.”) The emergence of Twitter altered the calculus of how to disseminate information even further. Now, a good tidbit leaked to someone with a strong social media following in the political world could immediately become a “thing” — no matter whether the tweeter was affiliated with a particular news outlet or no news outlet at all.

* “Reporters, [Rhoades] saw, seemed to care about self-promotion, clicks and buzz as much as the journalism they were supposed to be practicing.”
In an era where everyone is a “brand,” the danger is that the brand becomes more important than the journalism. There’s no question that Twitter has fed the already-rampant navel-gazing tendencies of political reporters. We can’t even count the number of conversations — many of which we start — that center around this basic sentence: “Did you see what fill-in-the-blank-person tweeted? I am going to retweet it.” (It reads even worse than it sounds!) Like with all good things, there is such a thing as too much Twitter.

* “It started to feel like with Twitter you had to chase every little thing. Sometimes, all the editor sitting in front of the computer screen knows is that this tweet just came past their eyes and they want you to match that. And all your time is spent racing toward nothing.”
That quote comes from Ashley Parker of the New York Times. (Fun fact: Ashley’s Twitter handle reads “I remain skeptical about Twitter.”) And it speaks to the fact that Twitter has made the difference between mountains and molehills in the context of a political campaign virtually indistinguishable. EVERYTHING is seen as a big deal — worthy of analysis. (Yes, the Fix is as guilty as analyzing things to death as the next blogger.)  That mountains=molehills mentality means that readers/users/viewers often have trouble distinguishing the major from the mundane. Here’s the problem from a reporter’s perspective: There’s almost always no way of really knowing what molehills might become mountains in an hour, a day or a week. Because of that reality, you have to monitor everything in the event that what looks like a small deal becomes a big deal. That’s nothing new in journalism, but what Twitter has done is exponentially increase the number of small things you need to watch.

The Final Insult: Mitt Romney’s Clueless Gift Gaffe

by John Avlon Nov 14, 2012 11:20 PM EST  The Daily Beast   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/14/the-final-insult-mitt-romney-s-clueless-gift-gaffe.html

 

Here’s what he said, according to The New York Times:

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest, was a big gift…Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008 … You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge … Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

Romney’s comments about his opponent’s “old playbook,” as he called it, again revived a dystopian scenario conservatives have been warning about since the New Deal, where Democrats “buy” a permanent majority and undermine democracy at the cost of the productive class. Using this old myth to explain his defeat illustrates again Romney’s disconnect from modern America. He views growing groups—young voters and particularly young women, and Hispanics—as outside special interests, and not as an essential part of the fabric of America.

And it shows the mind of a man who believes that everything is for sale—including, or especially, votes. This is consistent with what I always felt was the most accurate criticism of Romney: that he approached politics as a salesman, offering every group a different pitch. From that perspective, it’s easy to see how he could complain about government as a competing salesman, cobbling together constituencies with “gifts”—which sound perilously close to “bribes” in this context.

A final point: President Obama backing the DREAM Act or contraception coverage is not a nakedly political gesture, it is a matter of policy difference. Addressing the needs and desires of people is not a bribe or a government gift to be exchanged for a vote. It is part of the purpose of representative government as conservative forefather Edmund Burke himself once envisioned: “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.”

Romney’s distance from this perspective about government shows how far the conservative conversation has drifted from original principles. His impulse to rationalize defeat as victory for liberal special-interest bribery shows again that it is probably best for the country that he was not elected president this November.

THE SECOND DEBATE

President Obama and Mitt Romney engaged Tuesday in one of the most intensive clashes in a televised presidential debate, with tensions between them spilling out in interruptions, personal rebukes and accusations of lying as they parried over the last four years under Mr. Obama and what the next four would look like under a President Romney.

 

Competing for a shrinking sliver of undecided voters, many of them women, their engagements at times bordered on physical as they circled each other or bounded out of their seats while the other was speaking, at times more intent to argue than to address the questions over jobs, taxes, energy, immigration and a range of other issues.

President Obama charged that Mitt Romney’s policies are economically threatening to women.With some polls offering sporadic evidence that Mr. Romney is gaining support among women in the final weeks of the campaign, the president seized every opportunity during their face-off at Hofstra University on Long Island to assert that Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate, would eliminate financing for women’s health services, block access to contraceptives, oppose equal pay and undermine the economic recovery for families in which women are the breadwinners.  Mr. Romney said he would do better by struggling families — especially women.

 

President Obama, who concluded that he was “too polite” in his first debate with Mitt Romney, made sure no one would say that after their second. He interrupted, he scolded, he filibustered, he shook his head. He tried to talk right over Mr. Romney, who tried to talk over him back. The president who waited patiently for his turn last time around forced his way into Mr. Romney’s time this time. At one point, he squared off with Mr. Romney face to face, almost chest to chest, in the middle of the stage, as if they were roosters in a ring.

 

 

 

“What Governor Romney said just isn’t true.”

 

“Not true, Governor Romney, not true.”

 

“What you’re saying is just not true.”

 

The strategy for Tuesday night was clear: undercut Mr. Romney’s character and credibility by portraying him as lying about his true positions on issues like taxes and abortion. Time and again, Mr. Obama questioned whether the man on stage with him was the same “severely conservative” candidate who tacked right in the Republican primaries.

 

He painted Mr. Romney as a tool of big oil who is soft on China, hard on immigrants, politically crass on Libya and two-faced on guns and energy. He deployed many of the attack lines that went unused in Denver, going after Mr. Romney’s business record, his personal income taxes and, in the debate’s final minutes, his comments about the 47 percent of Americans he once deemed too dependent on government.

 

 

 

“Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan,” Mr. Obama charged. “He has a one-point plan,” which is to help the rich, he said.

 

For all the relief among President Obama’s aides over his energetic performance during the presidential debate on Tuesday night, there was less exuberance. After his listless showing in the first debate, Mr. Obama’s aides believe the second debate essentially reset the race to where they long expected it to be: the president holding a narrow lead in enough battleground states that they hope he will eke out victory over Mitt Romney.

MONEY FOR OBAMA & GOOD NEWS FOR ROMNEY

President Obama and his party shattered the election cycle’s fund-raising record with a $181 million t0tal for September, the announcement offered a jolt of good news for Mr. Obama’s supporters in the wake of a lackluster debate performance on Wednesday that left many of them worried.

Meanwhile, The Mitt Romney on display this week was looser and more relaxed, offering a counter to his reputation as a data-driven technocrat.

Facing off against President Obama in Denver, Mr. Romney had been the candidate his aides had longed to see all year: funny (joking about the “romantic” evening he and Mr. Obama were spending on the president’s 20th wedding anniversary), commanding (challenging Mr. Obama on taxes and government spending) and even warm (placing his right hand over his heart at the end of the debate, in an homage to his supporters in the crowd).

 

On Friday night, at a rally here, his campaign seemed determined not to let that more emotive, three-dimensional Mitt Romney slip away. Before the crowd of several thousand, Mr. Romney shared stories of friends who had died.

 

Perhaps his most moving anecdote — about David Oparowski, a 14-year-old boy with leukemia to whom Mr. Romney had ministered — first made an appearance at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, when David’s parents talked about how Mr. Romney had tended to their son, a member of his church ward in Belmont, Mass. But Mr. Romney had never before mentioned the experience on the stump. Mr. Romney recounted how, as he sat in David’s hospital room, the teenager called him “Brother Romney” and asked him about “what’s next.”

 

“I talked to him about what I believe is next,” said Mr. Romney, recalling that a few days later he got a call from David asking if he would help write his will.

 

“So I went to David’s bedside and got a piece of legal paper, made it look very official,” he continued. “And then David proceeded to tell me what he wanted to give his friends. Talked about his fishing rod, and who would get that. He talked about his skateboard, who’d get that. And his rifle, that went to his brother.”

 

He concluded: “I loved that young man.”

 

 

 

By NATE SILVER:

Mitt Romney continues to show improved numbers in polls published since the presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday and has now made clear gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. The forecast gives him roughly a 20 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, up from about 15 percent before the debate. Mr. Romney’s gains in the polls have been sharp enough that he should continue to advance in the FiveThirtyEight forecast if he can maintain his numbers over the next couple of days.

Mr. Romney gained two points in the Gallup tracking poll, which now shows him down by three. He also gained roughly 1.5 percentage points in the RAND Corporation’s online tracking poll, reversing a gain that Mr. Obama had made on Friday. And a companion pair of polls published by Clarus Research Group just before and after the debate showed a five-point swing toward Mr. Romney. He trailed Mr. Obama by four points in a poll that Clarus Research Group conducted on Tuesday night, before the debate, but led him by one point in a poll they conducted on Thursday.



 

      

 

ROMNEY: THERE HE GOES AGAIN

FROM the New Yorker

September 21, 2012

A Letter from Ann Romney

Posted by Andy Borowitz

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—The Borowitz Report has obtained the following confidential letter from Ann Romney to members of the Republican Party:

Dear Fellow-Republican,
I’m not a happy camper.

Over the past few days, some so-called Republicans have taken it upon themselves to lob some pretty harsh words in the direction of my husband. Now, it’s one thing when Mitt gets criticized by the forty-seven per cent of Americans who are parasites sucking at capitalism’s teat. But when former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan calls his campaign “a rolling calamity,” it’s time for Ann Romney to kick some ass.

Which brings me to you. This is not a fundraising appeal. Lord knows this campaign has all the money it needs, especially since Mitt went to Vegas and promised Sheldon Adelson he’d bomb Tehran on Day One. As Mitt’s wife, I’m asking you to pledge something far more valuable:

Your silence.

By signing the pledge form below, you become an official member of Ann Romney’s Circle of Silence, an élite tier of the Romney for President Campaign. As a member of the C.O.S., you will receive priority ticketing to the Inauguration, as well as a collectible “Loose Lips Sink Mitt” ball gag.

All you have to do is shut the freak up until Election Day.

That’s right, for the next forty-six days, I’m asking you to bite your tongue every time Mitt says or does something idiotic. If you think that sounds difficult, welcome to my world.

And Peggy Noonan, if you’re reading this: you want a piece of Ann Romney? Then get in the ring, girlfriend, and I’ll mess you up good.

Vote for Mitt,

Ann

Photograph by Lauren Lancaster.


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/09/a-letter-from-ann-romney.html#ixzz27GjHi5CJ

WILL THE REAL MITT ROMNEY PLEASE STAND UP

from London Review of Books (via Book Forum)

Eliot Weinberger is British, and it shows in, what can only be called the arrogant overconfidence with which he concludes his otherwise brilliant sum-up of Mitt Romney, and the Rebooblican party in 2012. Esco brackets his opinions re Weinberger's assumptions when Weinberger states them at the end of the piece. Which brings us to the DISCLAIMER: The photos, and written material in this piece, unless specifically stated otherwise, i.e.[placed in brackets,] are not my own. The bracketed writings are annotations or comments by esco20 inserted to express the opinion of esco20 . No infringement is intended and any media used is not for commercial purposes.





Poor Mitt. He became the Republican candidate for president by default, as the least worst choice from a pack of bizarre characters seemingly drawn from reality TV shows or Thomas Pynchon novels, but he’s not finding much love, even at his own coronation. Only 27 per cent of Americans think that he’s a ‘likeable’ guy. (Obama gets 61 per cent.) On television he projects a strange combination of self-satisfaction and an uneasiness about dealing with others who might doubt his unerring rectitude. The only well-known anecdotes about his bland life of acquiring wealth are both cruel: leading a pack of bullies at his prep school, personally cutting off the long hair of a weeping and pleading gay student, and putting the family dog in a box on the roof of his car for a twelve-hour drive to Canada. (His five sons knew something was wrong when they saw diarrhoea streaming down the back window.) Even Ann Romney, given the task of ‘humanising’ Mitt on the opening night of the Republican convention, couldn’t come up with a single warm or amusing story from their 43 years of marriage. One commentator has compared him to Prince Charles at a welcoming ceremony in New Guinea: he maintains a fixed half-smile, but has no idea what the natives are getting excited about.

Americans value sincerity, above all, in their presidential candidates, regardless of opinions on specific issues. Obama, Bush Jr, Bill Clinton, Reagan all appeared to mean what they say. Failed candidates (Hillary Clinton, McCain, Kerry, Gore, Bush Sr) were all too obviously reversing or avoiding long-held beliefs to pander to the various voting constituencies. But Romney is more than merely insincere. He seems to be a hologram programmed by whatever audience he is addressing at that moment. With an expression as impenetrable as Andy Warhol’s, he is reminiscent of the Warhol who once told an interviewer: ‘Just tell me what to say.’ He is the simulacrum of a candidate: many have noticed his uncanny resemblance to the extraterrestrials in 1950s movies who take on human form.

Republican dogma forces him to rail against the Obama health plan, but sometimes he can’t help but brag about the success of the identical health plan he instituted as governor of Massachusetts. He has subscribed to every possible variation in the medieval theological debate over abortion, and contradicts himself, sometimes on the same day, on economic details. He was at his most Romneyesque when, denouncing gay marriage he said: ‘I agree with 3000 years [sic] of recorded history … Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman.’ He was not only erasing his former support of gay rights, but his own recorded history: his great-great-grandfather had twelve wives and his great-grandfather five, and his father was born in a colony of renegade Mormon polygamists in Mexico.

Romney is so inordinately proud of his enormous wealth, which he mentions at every opportunity, that he apparently assumed it would command unquestioned respect from the masses. He’s been actively running for president for six years, but – even to the amazement of Fox News – it never occurred to him that it might not be terribly appealing to American voters that a potential president hoards his millions in the tax shelters of Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Or that an election year in the midst of an economic recession might not be the moment to spend $12 million renovating his beach house in California, complete with an elevator for his cars. Or that perhaps his wife should have been encouraged to take up another hobby besides $400,000 dressage horses.

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In the end, the Romney-Ryan ticket is running on a single platform: ‘We’re the white guys.’ White people, in the next few decades, will become a minority in the USA. (2011 was the first year in which the majority of babies born were non-white.) Obama is the most visible sign of this inevitable future and there is no doubt that it is race that has led Republicans to oppose everything Obama supports (even if they supported it the week before). Sixty-four per cent of Republicans still believe that Obama was born in Kenya – Romney likes to joke that no one ever asks him for his birth certificate. Thirty-four per cent of conservatives think Obama is a Muslim. The continual Republican refrain is that ‘Obama doesn’t understand America’ or even ‘Obama hates America.’

....In Tampa, the Republicans managed to put some minority speakers on the stage – most notably Condoleezza Rice – but the crowd in the hall itself was a sea of milk. Nationally, the Republicans are 90 per cent white.

Demographics are shrinking the Republican Party,... Republicans don’t seem to know that the world has changed. The new generations simply don’t object to the social issues – mainly abortion and gay marriage – with which the Party used to rally the troops. Most people, living through last July, the hottest month in recorded history, believe that global warming exists....Above all, in one of the strangest reversals in American politics,...The Republicans have been largely taken over by people who, not very many years ago, were considered the lunatic fringe.

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...nearly everyone agrees the cause is hopeless, [Everyone, perhaps, who doesn't live in America. The polls only give Obama a slight edge, one that can easily disappear in a volatile, economically depressed country. Anything can go wrong. The mainstream media is on the mark by constantly warning its viewers and readers how close the race is, and how easily the lead can change hands.] despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that Romney will spend for television advertising, paid for by a handful of billionaires. The convention in Tampa was notable for the spectacle of the young Alpha-males, vying for dominance in the 2016 elections. But, in the end, it will only be remembered for the sight of a dishevelled Clint Eastwood in an ill-fitting suit, mumbling to an empty chair.

Obama leads in NBC/WSJ poll: A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Obama leading Romney 48 percent to 44 percent.

The poll shows voters continue to process negative information about Romney, with 44 percent saying what they’ve heard in recent weeks has made them feel more negative toward Romney, as opposed to 32 percent who said it has made them feel more positive. Overall, Romney’s favorable/unfavorable split is 38/44.

On the congressional ballot, voters say they would prefer Democrats to control Congress by a 47 percent to 42 percent margin. That’s up from a one-point Democratic advantage last month. The GOP brand remains significantly worse than the Democratic brand.



But, it's not all bad for Romney...



Swing state polls are swinging — ever so slightly — toward Mitt Romney.

Romney, who has generally performed better in national polls than in swing state polls, has seen that disparity begin to disappear. And in fact, recent polls in several swing states show Romney asserting a lead or closing the gap in a way he hadn’t before.

Today’s trio of swing state polls from Quinnipiac University, CBS News and the New York Times are the latest to show a little movement toward Romney.


Remember: these are the states that will decide the presidency. National polls are fun/important and worth keeping an eye on, but as November approaches, the battle in this handful of states is what really matters.

Romney still trails in more swing state polls than he leads in, and a USA Today/Gallup poll released this week showed his performance in swing states (trailing President Obama 47 percent to 44 percent) continues to lag behind his performance elsewhere (ahead 47 percent to 45 percent)

But as Nate Silver pointed out Wednesday, it’s not nearly as lopsided as it used to be. Silver notes that, in June and July, Obama led in in about four times as many swing state polls as Romney did.

That had Democrats claiming that their attacks on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital was working. After all, they argued, the swing states are the places where those ads are running.

If that was the case, then it appears the GOP’s ramped-up advertising — or maybe the bad economic news or Paul Ryan’s selection as Romney’s running mate — has brought things back near even. And while the Obama campaign has spent heavily early on, Republicans are expected to significantly outspend Democrats down the stretch.

n the end, it’s not surprising to see the swing states begin to reflect the national race a little more. We live in a highly polarized country, where half of people are very much on one side and half are on the other. Swing states are supposed to reflect the national mood.

There’s no big sea change in these polls — most changes are within the margin of error — and every poll is a snapshot in time.

But the preponderance of evidence — to borrow a legal term — suggests a race that is getting more competitive in the states that will decide the next president.