His campaign called his refusal principled: “Citizens of states should be able to make decisions . . . on their own.” Got it? People cannot make “their own” decisions if Romney expresses an opinion. His flinch from leadership looks ludicrous after his endorsement three months ago of a right-to-work bill that the New Hampshire legislature was considering. So, the rule in New England expires across the Appalachian Mountains?
A day after refusing to oppose repeal of Kasich’s measure, Romney waffled about his straddle, saying he opposed repeal “110 percent.” He did not, however, endorse the anti-mandate measure, remaining semi-faithful to the trans-Appalachian codicil pertaining to principles, thereby seeming to lack the courage of his absence of convictions.
Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.
Sigh…
I think that the Republicans best hope (in terms of getting a good candidate) is for a brokered convention, in which none of the current pack win. It would allow one of those unwilling to run a brutal campaign to reconsider the possibility of a shorter one. But that’s probably not very realistic.
So what we need is a conservative/libertarian who is intelligent, highly educated, thoughtful, finds leadership second nature, highly moral and most importantly, wise who’s also stupid enough to cover themselves with blood and jump into the media piranha tank with no clothes on.
Check.
I find the current state of GOP affairs utterly depressing. The alternative philosophy of government (sweeping generalization acknowledged) has shown itself to be a complete and total failure all across the planet. Now is the time to step in and fill the void with a clear message and clear alternative to the morally and financially untenable socialist democracy. Are these the best we can come up?
Having traditionally Democratic-party aligned organizations run the Republican Party primary debates hasn’t helped a great deal.
Although I recognize that Romney is far from ideal in many ways, I guess I have a pretty high threshold for what I’m willing to tolerate, because he’s still so much better than Obama. And if Romney is elected with a Tea Party House and Senate, then we could see him forced into more conservative stances on some issues.
As the Democrats embrace the OWS movement, I keep thinking that it could be a replay of the 1968 election if the Democrat-endorsed OWS movement acts up and makes trouble at and outside of their convention. In 1968, of course, that resulted in the election of Nixon, who was demonized by the left as a conservative, but was in actuality one of the more liberal presidents (as even Chomsky later acknowledged).
Kurt, being better than Obama encompasses a wide swath of the population, and even describes my cat. Aside from my other worries about Romney, he’s a guy that couldn’t even beat McCain and is currently tied with a pizza guy.
True enough, but I’m not a primary voter, and at this point the most important thing for me is that whoever the nominee is will be able to defeat Obama next fall. Now maybe Romney isn’t that person, but I’m not sure which of the candidates might be. Although undoing the damage wrought by the Obama agenda is high on my list of priorities, stopping him from being re-elected is an essential part of that.
I won’t vote for Romney. I will go 3rd party or not vote at all.
You hear a lot about “protecting our freedom” from American troops on the battlefield, but damn little about it here at home. If our politics were, in fact, a war for freedom, the Democrats are playing the part of the rapacious aggressor with every administration and the Republicans would be the Nevil Chamberlains accepting the gains and negotiating for “peace”.
If the liberty lobby’s lack of interest in “Democrat lite” candidates hurts the Republicans well FN boo hoo. Better the fast Democrat cyanide rather than slow radiation poisoning of the Republicans.
Governor Romney knows if he sides with the Tea Party in Ohio he will lose the state in next year so he tossing them under the bus.
Actually, given the mess the Tea Party has made of the race for the Republican presidential candidate, and of Congress, the best the Republicans might hope for is to keep control of the House of Representatives.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/26/congress-approval-rating-_n_938070.html
Congress Approval Rating: Poll Shows 87% Disapprove Of Congress
[[[WASHINGTON — Americans are plenty angry at Congress in the aftermath of the debt crisis and Republicans could pay the greatest price, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests.
The poll finds the tea party has lost support, Republican House Speaker John Boehner is increasingly unpopular and people are warming to the idea of not just cutting spending but also raising taxes – anathema to the GOP – just as both parties prepare for another struggle with deficit reduction.]]]
Tom, do you ever ask yourself: “Do I realy believe this shit?” before you hit submit or are you so reflexively anit tea-party you just can’t help yourself?
Menwhile, in Wisconsin, Perry is beating Obummer: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/wisconsin/election_2012_wisconsin_president
MPuckett,
Grasping at straws are we? And using a Rasmussen poll yet 🙂
The Republicans, thanks to the Tea Party, are all set to replay the 1964 election, you know, the one the Koch Brothers father tried to manipulate for the far right and which gave American LBJ with a Democratic Congress. The only good thing is that President Obama is not as good as playing the game as LBJ was. But then LBJ had 20 years of experience in Congress, versus President Obama only having a couple of years.
Yes, darn Rasmussen and his freakishly accurate polls! I could have used a junk CBS News/WaPo poll or something but I chose one from the most accurate pollster on the planet instead!
I think you are the on egrasping at straws Thomas if you can’t tell 1964 from 1980 in the making. The Republicans might now have a Reagan but the Democrats are even lacking a Carter at this point.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.
You misunderstand the importance of the poll I noted.
Presidential polls mean little this far from the election, but Congressional polls do. The reason is that if a member of Congress looks vulnerable its far more likely the opposing party will put up a strong candidate to take them on in the general election. Indeed, if they look really weak they might even see a strong challenge in their party’s primary.
The poll that shows so many have such a poor view of Congress indicates you are going to have some major Congressional races, with many incumbents likely to be in trouble, this election cycle.
By contrast, the reason you have such a poor Republican presidential field is because the most qualified Republicans recognize the Tea Party’s negative impact on this election and know it will result in a losing year, so they are staying out of the mess and making their plans to run in 2016, when the Tea Party is a distant memory in terms of political fads. Only Tea Party followers like you are blind to what is going on.
By contrast, the reason you have such a poor Republican presidential field is because the most qualified Republicans recognize the Tea Party’s negative impact on this election and know it will result in a losing year, so they are staying out of the mess and making their plans to run in 2016, when the Tea Party is a distant memory in terms of political fads. Only Tea Party followers like you are blind to what is going on.
From what planet are you posting this? Here’s the generic Congressional poll. Republicans lead consistently.
Someone is blind to what’s going on, but it’s not Tea Party supporters.
Rand,
That poll is just a generic one, not one looking at different districts. And 3% is most likely within range of the sample error.
The key will be how individual districts views their Representatives.
FYI
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/poll-republican-house-vulnerable-in-2012_n_1035371.html
Jordan Howard
Republican House Majority Vulnerable In 2012: Poll
First Posted: 10/27/11 02:58 PM ET Updated: 10/27/11 05:36 PM ET
[[[“The national numbers point to the possibility for Democrats to reclaim a majority in the House next year, and a series of polls conducted by PPP in 12 individual Congressional districts last week backs up what the national numbers are showing,” Director of PPP Tom Jensen said in an email.]]]
“Actually, given the mess the Tea Party has made of the race for the Republican presidential candidate. . . ”
Yeah, mess. God forbid we should have a Republican presidential candidate who might actually be willing to defend individual liberty. Matula wouldn’t like that. He likes his Republicans docile, not uppity.
The problem is that any alliance leftwards is always one-way: no enemies to the left, no friends to the right. One winds up moving further and further left. Allying leftwards is like negotiating with Palestinians. Memetic selection has created a black hole ideology. If you go near it, you get sucked in.
Bilwick, if it isn’t a mess from your point of view, then which candidate do you favor?
I will say this: it isn’t a mess at all from my point of view. 🙂
Bilwick,
The key word is elect. Elections are always decided by the independents and the moderates, not the extremists and party robo voters. It does no good to have the perfect Republican libertarian if he isn’t electable.
That’s what they told us about Reagan. It is 1980 redux, the normal rule-book does not apply.
The Republican Primary IS the election this time, the rest is a formality barring an economic miracle of unheralded proportions.
You need to review your history. President Reagan won because of President Carter’s bungling of the Iran Hostage Crisis and the associated 1979 Oil Crisis. Both provided a focus for the feeling most Americans had that America was sliding down hill and it was time for change and voted for someone who reminded voters of the greatness associated with America during World War II.
What do the current crop of Tea Party candidates remind folks of?
Once upon a time, the conventions were where the candidates were selected. But all the wheeling and dealing in smoke-filled rooms got a bad name, so the primary system was devised to let the party’s voters choose the candidate. We went through a period where the nominee was chosen before the convention, which became largely a ceremonial formality.
Now it appears that all the debates are designed to winnow the field and anoint a clear front-runner before all those pesky voters get to have their say. The way it looks now, the primaries themselves will become a largely ceremonial formality.
I’m not sure the smoke-filled rooms were so bad, in hindsight. The power brokers and party insiders knew the candidates, and were mostly able to weed out those who were unstable, or had serious skeletons in their closets.
I agree completely. The emphasis on primaries began as an effort to make the whole process more “democratic”. However, it has had the opposite effect, merely handing the system over to the bundlers and bagmen. In contrast, the smoke-filled rooms were a model of representative democracy, especially considering that the old style delegates were really party activists. Let’s face it, the party nominee needs to represent the PARTY, not some MSM view of an amorphous concept of what the party wants. I think our only escape route is either a) a paradigm shift where alternative media does an end run on the MSM; or b) the return of the favorite son! To get the latter to work, we need delegate slates led by Snyder, Walker, Haley, Jindal, Daniels, Christie, etc. Then nobody could wrap up a majority of delegates and then the horse trading could begin. Imagine the ratings for the convention!!!
Rickl,
Not to mention that two states that are not representative of the nation, Iowa and New Hampshire, have been elevate to a gatekeeper status by first the Main Stream media and the political parties themselves. Its no accident the quality of Presidents have declined in the last 50 years since New Hampshire assumed the mantle of “first” in the nation.
“The way it looks now, the primaries themselves will become a largely ceremonial formality.”
It looks that way now because the debates revealed that Bachman and Perry have weaknesses. If stronger candidates like Christie and Barbour and, oh, what the hell, Palin, had entered the race, you’d see an amazing fight that would last through the primaries. With the current actual scandidates, if Perry was smarter and/or more conservative, you’d see an amazing fight that would last through the primaries (and you still might, because Perry isn’t completely stupid, and he isn’t completely moderate). But with Christie, Barbour, and Palin in the race along Romney, you’d see a primary season somewhat like what happened with the Democrats in 2008 (Clinton vs Obama was not decided by the debates but just imagine the 2008 primary season if Edwards and/or Richardson had been as compelling as Clinton and Obama).
The debates could be better, but they have been good enough to reveal Romney’s superiority over every other candidate except for one: Newt. Newt has flaws of his own, but Ben Smith of Politico predicts a flavor-of-the-week Gingrich boomlet, and I agree. The system works, and it makes a Gingrich revival possible, which he deserves.
I am surprised by all the disconsolate-seeming comments here. Check out Gingrich?
Go to YouTube and see his “Change or Die” speech from last year in Detroit.
Then his speech at the Iowa Faith and Freedom conference October 25th or so including the question and answer segment.
You can see some video at his campaign site, newtDOTorg. But on YT, if you search for “newt gingrich” and refine your search by “longer than 20 minutes” or with specific titles or dates for events, you can find a lot of his speeches.
(On YT, you have to wade through lots of material (“featured” videos or recently posted videos), that is anti-Gingrich, but if you search specifically for his speeches, you can find them. Also there are videos on C-SPAN (road to the white house, then select candidate for specific videos of events and speeches).)
Gingrich has comprehensive suggestions for how we can get our country back on track for freedom, prosperity and self-government, appropriate for the 21st century. Look and see what you can contribute in your area of expertise.
The Left is entrenched in our institutions and it will take awareness and commitment from a LOT of Americans, including a TEA PARTY House and Senate ad well as governors and state legislatures, to transform the degenerating influence of totalitarian “egalitarian” governmental defaults that have been put in place over the last 80 years or so.
Gingrich is a trained historian and takes the long view.
He has studied health-care delivery systems and manufacturing. He has a vast knowledge of the world and foreign countries and foreign leaders. He has context for current events. He does not have to learn on the job.
He has actual plans for how to quickly change the regulations and taxes for a strong economy.
He has promised to sign an executive order, one of many, on the first day of his administration, around 3:45 p.m., around the time the Obama family is departing from Andrews Air Force base to return to Chicago, abolishing the White House “czars” as of that moment.
He sees that we must reform education and make it flexible and responsive to online learning and the way people learn today.
He wants to return the U. S. Supreme Court to co-equal status with the executive and the legislative branches so it does not act any longer like oligarchy, dictating policy and re-interpreting our Constitution at its whim.
He favors a foreign policy that takes American interests into account. He wants the people of every nation to understand that we believe every person in every land is endowed with unalienable rights by virtue of the nature of things.
He says we can and must secure our borders. He says maybe we should have a “red card” system for otherwise law-abiding people who are here illegally and local boards, like in WWI, to review who gets to stay, so we have fair outcomes for people who are here illegally (go to his talk in Florida to Cuban immigrants, autumn 2011, for more about this)…
and there’s much, much more — management tools such as Lean Six Sigma in use by government, to make necessary federal agencies effective again and to save money — space policy that would work… social security that would be solvent — medicare that would not pay criminals — returning power to the states — letting education be controlled by parents and schools at the local level — there is a lot.
See for yourself.
The Left has been undermining our society for at least 80 years. The institutions of our society are badly infiltrated. Education, at all levels, “journalism,” government bureaucracies. Children and even some adults do not know how self-government works and do not know American history or even what “American Exceptionalism” means.
(I believe it roughly means that our nation, unlike any other, and therefore exceptionally, is based upon the principle that rights and sovereignty belong to the individual and are endowed upon the individual by Nature and Nature’s God, and that the individual then grants permission to governments to govern. The government does not give us rights: we are born with unalienable rights, endowed by Nature, and we grant some powers to the government.)
Gingrich is asking us as citizens to become active again in self-government. If we take power away from Washington, the power has to go somewhere. It needs to be returned to the citizens at the local level.
So check it out for yourself.
Newt is compelling.
Gingrich’s quote about “Kenyan anti-colonialism” would sink him in a sensible world, but since this isn’t a sensible world, Gingrich’s flailing defense when asked about his jewelry debt sunk him (or will, should he enjoy the boomlet I mentioned above).
Why would “Kenyan anti-colonialism” sink Gingrich?
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/2010/09/09/obama-anticolonial-hegemonist/
Newt is clearly the smartest man in the room, but not enough of an actor to be head-of-state in a mobocracy.
Being a resident of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, and living through several MA Governors, I can tell you that most Republican Guvs are fairly lefty as compared to, say, South Carolina. But Romney was not the worst – The present Duval Patrick (D) is the worst.
I follow the Buckley Rule and as part of deciding how big to make the “C” after their name, I ask myself what sort of Supreme Court Nominees would a candidate appoint, and will he/she fight hard to get them through?
Hard to say with Romney. The biggest memory I have of him is that he seemed to tire of the job after a couple of years. Which is not what we need in the Big House.
Cain? Not chance in hell of beating Obama. He has no ground game; last I heard he had 6 total employees on his campaign staff and not one of them knows how to run a nationwide Presidential campaign. I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that Cain is not running for President. And as much as we might malign Washington insider-ism, it really is necessary if you want to play the game to win. Otherwise both parties in Congress will roll you lickety split.
Cain DOES supply one highly valuable service. He is demonstrating that you can be un-PC in your statements…say all those things true conservatives think but can’t say at tony DC cocktail parties, and rack up poll support. This is why Cain is in the lead in my opinion: not only because he espoused solid conservative ideas but he also says what’s on his mind…and many of the minds of conservatives.
Bachman plunged; Santorum never rose; Paul is whacked….., dunno what will happen to Perry…I was happy to see him get in but his performance sucks.
Which leaves us with Newt.
In my mind Newt is demonstrably more conservative than Romney. Sure Newt did/said some non-conservative things but so did Reagan from time to time.
Newt is smarter than Romney.
Newt is far less of a flip flopper than Romney.
Newt has more experience than Romney.
Newt is more dependably conservative than Romney.
Newt will not be afraid to duke it out with Obama…maybe Romney will, but I’m not sure. Newt can debate circles around Obama…not sure about Romney on this score.
I’ve listened to Newt at a local lecture he gave and the man is brilliant AND entertaining. What he says makes sense.
So what it boils down to is:
Can Newt overcome his personal baggage and beat Obama? Can he siphon off enough independents who will want his skills and will overlook his personal transgression?
or does Romney have a better chance of beating Obama?
Gingrich had his chance back in 1994. He blew it massively. I’d rather vote for Romney, if it came to that.
I hear you, Karl. Newt got too full of himself as Speaker and got really stupid. I’d like to think he’s learned something since then.