Mitt Romney

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Those Wild and Crazy Republicans

So where are we with about 24 hours to go until the South Carolina Republican primary?  Yesterday we learned that 1)  Iowa Republicans can’t find some of the ballots and so they can’t certify the results (or maybe they can – the Chairman can’t decide), but it looks like Rick Santorum beat Mitt Romney.  2)  That Newt wanted to stay married to Marianne while having an on-going affair with Callista.  3) Rick Perry left the race and endorsed Gingrich.  4) Gingrich is leading the the South Carolina polls.  Makes my head spin!

If you are a conservative with what are generally referred to as family values who do you support?  Do you vote for Santorum and let Romney have the nomination or do you hold your nose and vote for Gingrich?  Speaking of noses, don’t let Newt pinch yours!

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pinches the nose of Bonnie Ellison, 78, of Easley, S.C. while shaking hands with supporters at Mutt's Barbeque in Easley, S.C. Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/The Independent-Mail, Nathan Gray) THE GREENVILLE NEWS OUT, SENECA NEWS OUTRepublican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pinches the nose of Bonnie Ellison, 78, of Easley, S.C. while shaking hands with supporters at Mutt’s Barbeque in Easley, S.C. Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/The Independent-Mail, Nathan Gray)

What is that all about?

Oh, and Mitt has not lived in Washington but has lived on the streets.  This from Politico

But the combination of the tax return issue, reports that his former firm parked assets in Cayman tax shelters and his own rhetorical missteps is beginning to paint him as a plutocrat rather than “someone who’s lived in the real streets of America,” as he described himself at Thursday’s debate.

If Newt wins South Carolina it means that the race will go on to Florida with the remaining four.  But it probably means that South Carolina will not have picked the nominee who will probably be Romney. 

Don’t know about you, but I think this is the best reality show on TV!

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Colbert, Stewart, and Super PACS

If you haven’t seen the Colbert/Stewart Better Tomorrow Tomorrow Super PAC aka The Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC ad yet, take a look.  Here is the link on the Colbert Report website:  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/405930/january-15-2012/colbert-super-pac-ad—attack-in-b-minor-for-strings?xrs=share_copy

Notice that it is called the Attack in B Minor for Strings and features the voice of John Lithgow.

You may recall that Stephen Colbert handed over his PAC to Jon Stewart in a live ceremony in the presence of a lawyer explaining the rules after Citizens United.  As the New York Times wrote

Mr. Colbert has used his PAC — called either “Americans for a Better Tomorrow Tomorrow” or “The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC” — to mock the loopholes in the nation’s campaign finance system. Last week he announced he was handing over control of the PAC to his fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart so he could run for “president of the United States of South Carolina” without legal complications. A super PAC is not supposed to coordinate with the campaign it is supporting.

In a statement announcing the ad’s debut on Sunday, Mr. Stewart said, “Mitt Romney claims to be pro-corporations. But would you let him date your daughter’s corporation?”

A few days ago, I wrote about Citizens United and three approaches to overturning the decision.  We can add this as a fourth.

Colbert 2008 Shirt from the last election.

 

Leslie Savin writes in The Nation about his appearance on This Week with George Stephanopolus.

You know how hard it is to give away your baby?” Colbert bemoaned  on This Weekwith George Stephanopolus on Sunday. “Now imagine if that baby had a lot of money.”

It is clear that Colbert knows how to talk like a candidate, specifically a certain front-runner. “Excuse me, George, I was talking,” he said at one point, and of the PAC ad in question, he claimed, “I have not seen this ad.” Colbert also took umbrage whenever Stephanopoulos referred to his “campaign” for president, explaining that he is not “campaigning” but forming an “exploratory committee.” “I’m a one-man Lewis and Clark.”

Explorer Stephen, of course, wholeheartedly believes that corporations are people, but when Stephanopoulos wouldn’t agree, Colbert went further than Mitt or even Newt would dare: “You won’t weigh in on whether some people are people? That’s seems kind of racist, George.”

As for the ad’s controversial contention, Colbert said, “I don’t know if Mitt Romney is a serial killer. That’s a question he’s going to have to answer.”

Do you think any of the Supremes thinks this is funny?  Will it help them think of a graceful way they can get us out of this mess they have gotten us into?  This is more than Pat Paulson running for President.  This is serious business.

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Democratic Results from New Hampshire

According to this new report in Politico.com, President Obama got 49,480 votes in the Democratic primary and 282 votes in the Republican primary.  Tim Mak notes, however, that

The nearly 300 votes are not enough to award Obama any delegates to the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.

Republicans also got votes in the Democratic primary.

The Republican Congressman [Ron Paul] from Texas led all write-ins in the Democratic primary with 2,273, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 1,808 and and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 1,228
I think this just goes to show how strange the voting can get in New Hampshire.  The votes for Huntsman and Paul, I can understand but Dems voting for Mitt not so much.
 
Glenn Thrush later updated this and explained the Romney vote
Ron Paul got 2,273 Democratic write-ins but, as one GOP operative pointed out, those might have been anti-war or anti-Wall Street protest votes. The Romney Democrats likely switched for other reasons: The economy, the deficit, frustration with big government, etc.

A Dem official pushed back – and said the crossover tally is low to average. In 1996, for instance, Pat Buchanan received 3,347 votes in the Democratic primary, and Lamar Alexander, Steve Forbes, and Bob Dole were all over 1,250.

“If anything,” the Democrat says, “Romney should be concerned he didn’t receive more write-ins on the Democratic ballot.”

There are caveats, of course. Republicans were actively recruiting Democrats for weeks up to the primary and pushing hard to whip up a Democrats-for-Mitt storyline.

Mitt “Mittens” Willard Romney

No one is claiming the campaign will be easy for the President.

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First results from New Hampshire

As expected, Mitt Romney has won the New Hampshire primary.  The question that remains at 9 pm is what his margin will be.  Right now he has about 37% of the vote with 34% of the vote counted.  Interestingly it is Ron Paul, who will not be the Republican nominee, who is second.  Jon Huntsman is third.

Two interesting facts I ran across today.

First, Glenn Kessler the Washington Post fact checker on Mitt Romney’s job creation record gave his claim of 100,000 jobs three out of four Pinocchio’s.

By all accounts, Romney was a highly successful venture capitalist. While running Bain Capital, he helped pick some real winners, earning his investors substantial returns. High finance is a difficult subject to convey in a sound bite, so Romney evidently has chosen to focus on job creation. 

This is a mistake, because it overstates the purposes of Bain’s investments and has now led Romney into a factually challenging cul-de-sac.

Romney never could have raised money from investors if the prospectus seeking $1-million investments from the super wealthy had said it would focus on creating jobs. Instead, it said: “The objective of the fund is to achieve an annual rate of return on invested capital in excess of the returns generated by conventional investments in the public equity market and the private equity market.”

 Indeed, the prospectus never mentions “jobs,” “job,” or “employees.”

…

When Romney made a run for the governorship, the Boston Globe reported in 2002 that he had not been involved in the details of many deals toward the end of his Bain experience: “These days, Romney can say he hasn’t inked a deal in many years. Even during the end of his tenure at Bain, from 1994 to 1999, he played the role of CEO and rainmaker rather than delving into the details of buyouts.”

 Interestingly, when Romney ran for the Senate in 1994, his campaign only claimed he had created 10,000 jobs. In one ad, a narrator said: “Mitt Romney has spent his life building more than 20 businesses and helping to create more than 10,000 jobs. So when it comes to creating jobs, he’s not just talk. He’s done it.”

Now, apparently, those 10,000 jobs have increased tenfold, apparently in part because of Bain investments in which Romney had at best a tangential role.

The Pinocchio Test

 Romney certainly has a good story to tell about knowing how to manage a business, spotting opportunities and understanding high finance. But if he is to continue to make claims about job creation, the Romney campaign needs to provide a real accounting of how many jobs were gained or lost through Bain Capital investments while the firm managed these companies — and while Romney was chief executive. Any jobs counted after either of those data points simply do not pass the laugh test.

Three Pinocchios

 

 

With Gingrich and Perry ready to pounce on Romney in South Carolina, I don’t think it is over.   I think the vetting of Willard is just beginning.

The seond item comes from Nate Silver who is live blogging for the New York Times at 8:57

Turnout in G.O.P. Primary Tracking Well Below 2008 Pace

Although the polls made pretty good predictions of the election outcome tonight, forecasting turnout is harder. So far it looks like rumors of a record Republican turnout in New Hampshire were greatly exaggerated.

With 85 of 301 precincts reporting, 52,191 voters have cast a ballot in the Republican primary so far. That projects to about 185,000 votes statewide, as compared with about 240,000 votes in the Republican primary in 2008.

The drop-off in turnout looks worse for Republicans since a higher fraction of voters – about half this year, compared to 37 percent in 2008 – are independents. That means that turnout among registered Republicans could alone be off by nearly 40 percent from 2008.

More on the campaign tomorrow.

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Did Obama win Iowa?

Mitt Romney won the Republican Caucus by 8 votes over Rick Santorum.  They both got just under 25% of the vote followed closely by Ron Paul.  You can read this as 75% of the vote went to other Republicans with the two closest rivals representing extreme positions.  Two interesting comments I heard on the MSNBC coverage last night.  First, former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts noted that he thinks Mitt’s 25% is about what his support is.  Not clear if he was talking about Iowa or generally amoung Republicans.  Second, Rev. Al Sharpton who hoped that Santorum and/or Paul stayed in the race for a while so that Mitt had to keep moving right to get the nomination.

(Daniel Acker for The New York Times)

Robert Creamer writes in the Huffington Post today that the Iowa was bad news for the Republican establishment which just wants to nominate Mitt and be done with it.

To maximize their odds of reclaiming their hold on the White House, the Republican establishment believes they need two things:

• To nominate Mitt Romney;
• To effectively end the Republican nominating process as soon as possible.

Last night’s results from Iowa lower the odds they will get either.

In fact, what we saw in Iowa last night was the Republican base gagging on the presidential candidate the Republican establishment is trying desperately to cram down their throats.

The problem is that Mitt is not good at displaying human qualities.  Brian McGrory wrote in his column in today’s Boston Globe

For not foreseeing his rise from the State House to, potentially, the White House, I shouldn’t, in truth, be so hard on myself. Romney has made a habit of getting in his own way.

First, there was the small matter of that gubernatorial campaign. His very best day was the one right before he declared. On the stump, he was, in a word, terrible – hollow and plastic in speeches and mannerisms. “How are you?’’ he would repeatedly ask, never waiting for a response.

There was one October campaign swing through Boston’s North End with Rudy Giuliani when a burly laborer in a crowded Mike’s Pastry called out “Let me buy you guys a cannoli.’’ Brilliant, I thought. The cameras would capture Romney with ricotta cheese on his strong chin, a man of the people. Then Romney called back, “No thanks, got to run,’’ as he headed for the door. He said it with that nervous smile, which was still frozen on his face when Giuliani said to the guy “Let me buy you the cannoli!’’ The place erupted in cheers.

Mitt and the establishment have other problems.  Like the fact that Rick Santorum was able to peak at the right time and become the anti-Mitt.  Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul will also continue in the race.

All of which leads me to ask whether Obama actually won Iowa.  He had some 25000 people show up to watch a live message, signed up over 7000 new volunteers and has 8 field offices open in Iowa.  He had almost as many people at meaningless caucuses as Romney, Santorum and Paul each got as vote totals.  Sure maybe people aren’t as excited as in 2008 and everyone – even supporters  can name at least one thing he did they don’t like, but I’m with Rev. Al:  Let this go on for a while and let Mitt move to the right.  Then we shall see what the general election will bring.  Even better the Republicans could nominate Santorum.  Howard Fineman said in the Huffington Post late last night: 

The final Iowa results aren’t in but we already know one big winner: President Barack Obama.

The dismal, nasty campaign here was not good for the Republican Party or the country. There was precious little debate on anything other than who literally was Holier than Thou; the dollars spent on attack ads were, vote for vote, enormous. One GOP top finisher is unpopular with the base; another is too far out of the mainstream to be nominated, let alone elected; the third lost his last Senate race, in Pennsylvania, by 17 points, and is far to the right of the country on social issues.

All of which is good news for a president with a 40 percent job approval rating and a desperate need for a weak opponent next November.

The winner in Iowa.

I’ll leave Richard Viguerie with the last word.  In an interview today with the New York Times, Viguerie said

The conservative direct mail pioneer and activist Richard Viguerie predicted that the pack would continue to seek out a more ideologically pure standard-bearer this year than it did in accepting Senator John McCain as the Republican nominee in 2008.

“Romney has just seemed to have gone out of his way to try to get this nomination without giving conservatives anything, and that’s troubling to a lot of conservatives,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to go away quietly into that long dark nominating fight — I‘d be surprised if the conservatives didn’t mount a serious effort to derail Romney.”

On to New Hampshire!

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The afternoon before Iowa

Yesterday we were out in South Hadley having our traditional family Japanese New Year brunch when talk turned to the 2012 election season and to Nate Silver’s piece in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times.  Some very interesting stuff there.

For example:  Iowa is 91% white (the entire country is 74% white).  You knew that, right?  Did you know there are so few Jewish people, they don’t register as a percentage?  But, except for race and the fact the Jews did not migrate to Iowa, the state is a fairly good mirror.  Oh, except for turnout.  Iowa wins 67 to 57.   Iowa and New Hampshire have each picked 10 of the eventual nominees.  Iowa does better with Democrats picking 6 while NH has picked 5 from each party.  They have each picked the President correctly 3 times with Iowa having the most recent pick, President Obama.  The track record is not particularly spectacular, but all the candidates  are flocking there and political junkies are watching polls eagerly.

John Nichols writes in the Nation that the Republican candidates and their PACs will have spent upwards of $200 per vote when you count only television advertising.  Kinda of nuts.

Seriously? All this for an glorified straw poll?

That’s the problem with the caucus system, which operates on an only slightly better model on the Democratic side.

Huge amounts of money are spent to influence a very small percentage of the electorate—less than 20 percent of Iowans who are likely to vote Republican in November will participate in Tuesday’s caucuses, and most of them will leave after the balloting finishes. An even smaller number of Iowans will begin the process of choosing representatives to county conventions, who in turn elect delegates to district and state conventions at which Iowa’s national delegates are actually selected.

As of lunch time today, Real Clear Politics shows  Romney edging out Paul 22.8% to 21.5%.  Romney is not even projected to get as many votes as he did in 2008- 25.2%.  Nate Silver has the race a little closer with Romney edging out Paul 21.8 to 21.  It is all in how you weight the various polls.  Throw in an estimated 41% undecided and Iowa is anyone’s game.  I think it is a measure of the field that Republican’s can’t decide who to support.  Poor Jon Huntsman.  We all agreed yesterday that is the only sensible one in the bunch so he has no chance.  Probably lucky for Obama.

Rosie Moser, an undecided voter thinking of endorsing Michelle Bachmann, listened to former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, in Independence, Iowa, on Monday.

(Daniel Acker for The New York Times)

Speaking of the President. he has been organizing in Iowa for more than a year and has more field offices that any of the Republicans.  It is will be interesting to see what the Democratic turn out is tomorrow night for a caucus that is already decided.  The link is to an interesting video on the Obama efforts from the New York Times

I think the polls are all done and we only need to wait for the caucus goers to speak.

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Massachusetts Mitt, Jobs Creator?

Just so there is no mistake here:  I didn’t like Mitt Romney when he was Governor of Massachusetts.  First,  he got the Republican nomination by elbowing out a perfectly good candidate, Acting Governor Jane Swift.  Second, he spent most of his time here not being Governor, but running for President.  Third, getting universal health care was a great achievement showing the country that it can be done, but Mitt wants to forget it ever happened.  Kinda like throwing out your only child with the bath water.  But now Mitt is running again as a jobs creator because only Republicans can create jobs.

Last night Rachel Maddow reminded us of a little fact about Mitt Romney’s job creation:  He didn’t create very many. 

What Romney leaves out of his stump speech, however, is just how bad his state’s job creation statistics were during his four years as governor. Different job creation studies rank Massachusetts in the bottom four states during Romney’s administration. A study by the independent think tank MassINC ranked the state 49th in job creation from 2001-2007, ahead of only Michigan. And according to the U.S. Department of Labor, Massachusetts ranked 47th, ahead of only Michigan, Ohio, and Louisiana. Michigan and Ohio, both located in the Rust Belt, faced heavy job losses due to the flight of manufacturing jobs from the Midwest. Louisiana, meanwhile, lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

During Romney’s period as governor, Massachusetts’ job growth was just 0.9 percent, well behind other high-wage, high-skill economies in New York (2.7), California (4.7), and North Carolina (7.6). The national average, meanwhile, was better than 5 percent.

So who does Mitt blame for this poor performance?  The Democrats in the legislature.

Romney blames the poor job numbers on Democrats in the Massachusetts state legislature. But since its economy faltered in 2008 and 2009, Massachusetts has rebounded in the job creation ranks, emerging from the recession with some of the nation’s strongest job numbers. Under current Gov. Deval Patrick (D) — and a legislature still controlled by Democrats — the state experienced 4.2 percent job growth in the first quarter of 2011, better than twice the national average and good enough to rank in the top 10 nationally. That followed a year of solid growth in 2010, when Massachusetts was among the nation’s leaders in job growth.

Mitt, you might have to find something else to run on.

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Massachusetts Politics and Health Care or Mitt, Scott and Rachel

This Luckovich cartoon is a good picture of Massachusetts politics after health care reform.  You could swap Romney for Scott Brown is it would almost be the same.

Joan Vennochi’s column in the Boston Globe last week provides a good summary of the dilemma faced by Romney and Brown.

WHEN YOU dance to the right with the one who brung you, you can end up with two left feet.

Two Massachusetts Republicans — US Senator Scott Brown and former Governor Mitt Romney — are in that awkward state.

Brown won election as an independent who happened to belong to the Republican Party. He’s quickly learning that in Washington, the “R’’ next to your name means your soul belongs to the GOP.

Brown paused for an instant before promising to vote against the Democrats’ historic health care package. That slight hesitation was enough to enrage conservatives who are already suspicious about his core beliefs.

No wonder he has to raise money by raising the specter of Rachel Maddow! (more on that later)

Brown’s campaign rallying cry — that he would be the 41st vote against health care reform — never made much sense. As a Massachusetts lawmaker, Brown voted for the health care reform package that was spearheaded by Romney and became the model for the federal law that President Obama just signed.

Brown never really explained how he could rail against a measure he once supported. Then, again, neither did Romney. He now sounds slightly unhinged as he attacks Obamacare, which is, after all, based on Romneycare. Right after the House vote, Romney condemned Obama as having “betrayed his oath to the nation.’’ Yesterday, his political action committee announced a new program, dubbed “Prescription for Repeal’’ to support conservative candidates who will repeal “the worst aspects of Obamacare.’’

The Republican problem is they wanted President Obama to fail so badly (and were conviced he would never pass any type of health care reform) they dug themselves into a corner. 

Brown and especially Romney should have known better. But they seized the path to the right as the best route to political victory. In the end, it could be the road to political defeat.

Brown will have to decide whether he belongs to the people of Massachusetts or to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and assorted Tea Party activists. He was attacked from the right when he joined the Democratic majority and backed a Senate jobs bill, and the attacks will continue.

To win reelection, he must be the independent he promised to be. Yet, conservatives will become incensed each time he strays from the party line, and even when he doesn’t. Some blame Brown for the passage of health care reform on the grounds that his election forced Democrats to go for it even without 60 Senate votes. That’s unfair, but that’s raw, partisan politics.

As for Romney, when he ran for president in 2008, he twisted and turned into a flip-flopper to a degree that severely undercut his credibility on the national stage. Still, based on past history, he was well-positioned to become his party’s nominee in 2012. The Republican nomination generally goes to a loser from the previous election cycle. Despite myriad weaknesses, that’s what happened with John McCain.

Now, to play in the Republican primary world, Romney has to do the mother of all flip-flops on health care reform. It’s hard to imagine how he does it, but if he succeeds, where does that leave him in a general election? Forget about two left feet. With his clumsy dance, he will have waltzed himself off the cliff.

If memory serves me, we just finished electing Scott Brown to 3 years in the Senate, but he is already trying to raise funds from his friends on the right by raising the specter of that scary Rachel Maddow running against him.  And Rachel is trying to use this to raise her profile and ratings.  It was good theater for a while.  And even though a number of commentors in the Boston Globe seem disposed to a Maddow run (according to a Tweet I glimpsed on Boston.com), I think is was just theater for her.  Brown, however is in a different position.  Even Newsweek is weighing in.  Liz White posted last week.

The fake 2012 Massachusetts senatorial race between newly elected Sen. Scott Brown and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is really heating up—er, sort of.

Earlier this week Brown sent a fundraising letter to supporters all over the country claiming the “political machine” in Massachusetts was vetting “liberal MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow” to oppose him in the state’s election in 2012. Maddow quickly fired back, announcing that she had no plan to run for office while denouncing Brown for making up the story just to raise money. On Friday, Maddow approved a full-page ad in The Boston Globe to make her plans known to Brown’s constituents.

…

It really says something that two years in advance and a few months after what GOP supporters called his “Massachusetts Miracle” election, Brown is already worried about competition, even if it is just to bring in more money. As the first Republican to be elected for Senate in Massachusetts in 40 years and a with no vote on the health-care-reform bill—not to mention his more moderate tendencies could turn off the far right—he could face a tough reelection campaign. The rumor of Maddow’s run might be false, but it’s clear Brown’s fear of the next election isn’t.

Hey Scott, why don’t you take Rachel up on her offer to come on her show?  I don’t think she will ask you any thing too hard – just why you were for health care reform before you were against it.  And what exactly is the difference between the Massachusetts bill and the National one?  Easy stuff like that.

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Bipartisan book buyer?

After his speech on health care in Iowa, President Obama stopped at a bookstore.  – an independent bookstore, Prairie Lights to browse and pick on some books for the kids.

I love this picture of the President holding books by Karl Rove and Mitt Romney taken by Doug Mills of the New York Times.

President Obama with books by Mitt Romney and Karl Rove.

The accompanying story in the Times by Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports some very amusing dialogue between Robert Gibbs and the President.  Here are some exerpts.  (This is based in part on reporting by the pool reporter.)

A few minutes later POTUS stepped up to the cash register with two books in his hands: “Journey to the River Sea” by Eva Ibbotson and “The Secret of Zoom” by Lynne Jonell for his daughters.

Obama pulled out five $20 bills to pay for the two books. Your pooler couldn’t hear the exact price but the two books didn’t cost that much.

Obama also bought a book for Gibbs, who was holding a large Star Wars pop-up book for his six-year-old son, Ethan.

“It’s a little expensive, sir,” Gibbs said to his boss as he handed it over.

POTUS showed the book to pool as the cashier rang it up for $37.44.

“I can handle it,” Obama said as Gibbs suggested he pay. “It’s for keeping his dad away for too many hours a day.”

“I need more books than that, sir,” Gibbs remarked.

Then after he left Prairie Lights

Nothing for Mrs. Obama?” Bloomberg’s Ed Chen asked.Obama paused to think for a second. “Thanks for getting me in trouble,” he replied.

We know that Obama used to visit a neighborhood bookstore in Chicago often.  I’m glad to see he still likes bookstores as they are among my favorite places.  And I never heard of another President who carried cash.  Obama buys shave ice in Hawaii, burgers in D.C. and now books in Iowa.  I also wonder how many copies of the books he bought will now be sold.  I know I will look into them for the grands.  Can we get the Obama girls to write some reviews?