I don’t have the motivation to cover every single detail of this boring GOP primary. The race is over, but on a night like tonight the press beats the Rick Santorum dead horse because there’s nothing else to do. The press has to have something to cover. I get it. Many on the conservative side have brainwashed themselves into believing that Joseph Ratzinger Rick Santorum is the perfect GOP candidate. The Examiner’s very own David Freddoso has gone all in on Santorum. His take on tonight’s pointless election results are comical:
If he can pull that off — and especially if he finishes ahead of Gingrich in Colorado, where results are just starting to trickle in — Santorum will have strengthened the case that he, and not former Speaker Newt Gingrich, is the proper alternative to Mitt Romney in this race. A great night for Santorum. A very bad night for Romney, but possibly an even worse night for Gingrich.
So the alternative to Mitt Romney is a guy who is not even on the ballot in Indiana or Virginia? This development is bad for Romney? Everyone would love to see campaign drama, but this race is as dull as it gets. Mitt Romney will be the nominee unless something spectacular happens. Tonight wasn’t spectacular. Remember when General Wesley Clark won the Democratic primary in Oklahoma in 2004? I didn’t think so… I suspect that no one will ever remember that Santorum won the GOP 2012 non-binding caucus in Colorado.
There’s no joy watching Mitt Romney’s march toward the GOP nomination. The man is uninspiring. I won’t hold that against him. In 2008, Barack Obama was inspiring, but no one knew what they were inspired to do. It was campaign about nothing. Not only is Mitt Romney uninspiring, he talks in the same platitudes as Obama. It’s a campaign about “believing in America.” What the hell does that even mean? As usual, Mark Steyn sums it all up better than I can.
Romney’s is a benevolent patrician’s view of society: The poor are incorrigible, but let’s add a couple more groats to their food stamps and housing vouchers, and they’ll stay quiet. Aside from the fact that that kind of thinking has led the western world to near terminal insolvency, for a candidate whose platitudinous balderdash of a stump speech purports to believe in the most Americanly American America that any American has ever Americanized over, it’s as dismal a vision of permanent trans-generational poverty as any Marxist community organizer with a cozy sinecure on the Acorn board would come up with.
After half-a-century of evidence, what sort of “conservative” offers the poor the Even Greater Society?
Mitt Romney will be raked through the coals for his comments about not caring for the poor, but the deeper issue is that “safety nets” have helped create this mess. It’s not just the safety net for the poor, but it’s the safety nets for everyone. The nation is running a textbook example of moral hazard. If there’s no incentive not to fail what’s the incentive to succeed? Over the last 30 years consumption is up 50% among the very poor in the United States. Oh, to be poor in the United States of America in 2012! I believe in America!
The goal of any conservative should be to do things to encourage economic growth. Ultimately that helps the poor more than a safety net. If Mitt Romney’s idea of leadership it be a caretaker for a nation staggering towards insolvency then what’s the point in defeating the President? Obama’s policies will simply help us get to a dystopian Mad Max version of the state much faster. Let’s give Obama the second term that Jimmy Carter was never able to have.
It appears that Romney is trying to plot the same course to the White House that Obama used in 2008. The Romney strategy is to say nothing for the next ten months and hope the other guy is so unpopular that he wins by default. If Romney is unable to convey any kind of real message now why does anyone think he’ll be a good President? What is Romney’s big idea? What does he intend to do when he’s elected? I’ve been following this closely for months and I can’t tell you a single specific thing that Romney intends to do to solve our fiscal crisis.
What do I know about Romney? He likes to fire people, he believes in America, and he’s not worried about the very poor. Awesome!
Such is the plight of the race obsessed that in the absence of any George Wallace rhetoric Democrats are inventing new racist rhetoric. Four years ago I wrote about how Dallas city Commissioner John Wiley Price claimed that the term “black hole” was racist. What? Racism is real, it exists, and the nation (and the world) has an embarrassing history in regards to race. It’s one thing to be sensitive and it’s another to be obsessed.
I’m all for exposing racial bigotry. It shouldn’t be tolerated in politics today. That’s why I don’t have time for Jesse Jackson. When Jackson goes around telling people they’re “not black enough” there’s a problem. In October, 2011, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for making “insensitive” comments about Muslims. Shouldn’t Mr. Williams be cognizant about the stupidity of “veiled racism?” Apparently not…
The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”
The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans.
But the code sometimes breaks down.
I didn’t know that blacks didn’t respect the Founding Fathers. Or that the “entitlement society” was racist. Most people on food stamps are white as are most people who make up the “entitlement society.” Also, the Republicans in this race have gone through painstaking detail about immigration. It would be very difficult to characterize Romney’s or Gingrich’s position as anti-immigration. Mr. Williams finishes his rant with this head scratcher:
The problem is not a lack of work ethic on the part of the poor, who are disproportionately minorities. The problem is there are few good jobs for blue-collar people with the best work ethic.
The problem is a lot more complicated than the lack of good jobs. There will never be “good jobs” for unskilled and uneducated people. I wish people like Juan Williams would get over all this racist crap and start talking about real problems. There’s an increasing number of unskilled and uneducated people. The common denominator with most of these people isn’t race, it’s family, or more accurately, the lack of it. Out of wedlock births are the underlying cancer of our society. For every feel-good story you see on CNN about a single mother who raised her kids there are 15 stories of tradegy.
Racism didn’t create this problem. Racism isn’t perpetuating the problem.
Last week I declared that Mitt Romney would win the GOP nomination. Nothing has changed my mind since last Saturday. Romney hasn’t sealed the deal yet, but Gingrich is crashing and the former governor should win Florida on Tuesday. At this stage it would take something incredible to keep us from an Obama versus Romney match-up.
Much will be written about head to head polls between Romney and Obama, but I’m here to tell you that they don’t matter. Ronald Reagan trailed Jimmy Carter by over 30 points six months before the election. President Obama trailed John McCain two months before the election. President Obama will be judged on his record and on the economy. Say what you want about Mitt Romney, but trying to brand him as an extremist will not work.
Mitt Romney is boring. He’s not quite as robotic and uncharismatic as John Kerry, Al Gore, or Bob Dole, but it’s not a stretch to compare him to those gentlemen. Romney is the steady hand. He’s the guy you call when everything else has failed. In other words, he’s the guy who will beat Obama if the economy doesn’t improve before November.
President Obama’s problem is that people have tuned out. Obama has no plan to make the economy better. He’s out of ideas. After all the adulation and all the grand speeches, what is Obama’s core conviction? Sure, the liberals still love him, but they loved Clinton. Democrats are a loyal bunch. It’s a collection of voter blocs. Give us your subsidies, affirmative action, unions, trial lawyers, hand-out recipients and those who’ve been brainwashed into believing that abortion is the ultimate civil liberty. The Democrats love to pat themselves on the back for their diversity, but no one is immune from the pandering hand outs. That is why the Democrats are fundamentally opposed to reducing the size of goverment.
If you reduce the size of goverment the Democrats would suddenly have issues with their voting base. Can any argue otherwise? How many people on food stamps vote for Democrats? Wouldn’t it bad for Democrats if any of the people dependent on the goverment could take care of themselves? So President Obama is out of ideas. If he allows pipelines, invests in real energy, or really reduces the size of the goverment he would be hurting his political party.
In the grand scheme of things far too many people are dependent on the goverment. It will be nearly impossible to roll back the tide. However, there aren’t enough dependents to keep Obama from losing. If gas prices go up over the summer Obama could lose in a landslide. The Republicans could have a super majority in the Senate. That would be the true test of our goverment. Would the Republicans have the guts to starve the beast? It will be very unpopular. Look how the union thugs in Wisconsin have behaved. Liberals and conservatives have very different ideas about the role of goverment. The reckoning is here.
I had hope that Obama would be a president that transformed the debate in the United States. Instead, he made things worse. He loves to talk about himself except when he’s blaming others. I don’t dislike the President. He seems like a nice guy. Most Americans like the 44th president, but that doesn’t mean they think he should continue.
Will Mitt Romney be any better? I doubt it, but could he be any worse?
Over the past four years it’s been widely speculated that Matt Drudge has a soft spot for Mitt Romney. No one knows the real story, but there’s little doubt that Mr. Drudge is in an all out offensive against Newt Gingrich this week at the Drudge Report. For Mitt Romney Florida might be the most important election of his life. If he wins he stops the Gingrich surge (at least for now), but a loss would be a terrible blow.
Perhaps that’s why Drudge is on the offensive.
Last June I wrote that time was running out for candidates to get in the race. In the case of Texas Governor Rick Perry he waited far too long to get in race. Perry bowed out of the race today after getting trounced in Iowa and New Hampshire. While political junkies wring their hands over the next two weeks the race is already over. Newt Gingrich may surge, but Mitt Romney has been running for president for six years. The Romney campaign is a well oiled machines with boots on the ground in every major state.
This system of selecting the president is not what the founding fathers intended. To be a serious candidate for president you have to have millions of dollars in infrastructure. The other issue is exposure. For candidates entering the race late the media scrutiny is intense (unless you’re a Democrat). In 2008, then Senator Obama seemingly came out of nowhere, but he had been receiving glowing press since 2004. There was no question he was going to run for president in 2008. Part of the reason why people like Romney and Gingrich seem to have escaped all their political baggage is because it’s old news. Romney has RomneyCare, but what else is there to write about it? Voters have short memories.
For those who were getting to know Rick Perry in the fall of 2011 there was a lot to digest. Perry’s ideas about immigration hurt his chances, but that was nothing compared to what happened next. For those unfamiliar with Perry the first impression of the governor of Texas was his weak debate performances. Then November 9th happened. There’s absolutely no way to recover from that kind of brain freeze especially if you’re trying to introduce yourself to the American public.
So here we are two days from the South Carolina primary and there’s no true conservative in the race. It’s basically Romney versus Gingrich. Santorum is still in the race, but he’s almost irrelevant. If Gingrich pulls out a win in South Carolina it’s unlikely he’ll win in Florida, Nevada and Maine. The race is over and Mitt Romney is the nominee.
Mitt Romney soundly stomped his rivals last night in New Hampshire. The closest competitor was Ron Paul and most of his voters aren’t even Republicans. In third was Jon Huntsman and then Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum rounded things out. It was a terrible night for Santorum, who didn’t get much bounce out of Iowa.
Remember when every AP picture of Obama in 2008 was fantastic. Mitt Romney will not be gettting the same coverage. Here's the AP's version of Robot Romney.
It was fun watching people spin the results last night. This race is over. It would take something huge to change this race. The field is scattered and no one is in Romney’s league when it comes to money and organization. The other candidates are struggling to get on the ballot in several states. Romney’s victory speech last night sounded like an acceptance speech.
To amuse myself I watched about 30 minutes of MSNBC. They had one Republican and five deranged liberals attacking the candidates. That’s what they consider “coverage.” Rachel Maddow was the voice of reason. It’s comical that Al Sharpton is on that network. The MSNBC panel was really disturbed that Romney compared Obama’s vision for America as European. Why you ask? They love Europe and don’t get it. Europe’s big goverment entitlements and unused mass transportation systems have bankrupted the state. Liberals haven’t been able to put two and two together.
The race moves to South Carolina and then on to Florida after that. Romney is the only candidate running ads in Florida right now because he really the only candidate left on the GOP side.
Last night’s New Hampshire debate was a strange affair. Mitt Romney has a commanding lead in New Hampshire, so one would assume he would be attacked by the other candidates. Instead, the only person who went after Romney was George Stephanopoulos. The mainstream media is just flat out irritating. Just when I think a debate can’t get any worse ABC lets a former Clinton campaign staffer moderate.
In the movie War Room, which chronicled the 1992 Clinton campaign, Stephanopoulos celebrates the victory and surmises that the United States will finally have universal health care. I think of that moment because the 2012 election is going to be about the economy and about ObamaCare. Yet, there wasn’t a single question about ObamaCare. The only question about the economy was about infrastructure.
Instead, Stephanopoulos asked questions about states banning contraceptives, gay marriage, and gay adoption. The candidates spent 30 minutes on issues that aren’t important and about which a President has little, if any, power to change. Stephanopoulos’ stupid question about contraceptives led to what I believe is Romney’s best moment in the campaign.
I thought Romney handled Stephanopoulos’ question about contraceptives very well. The whole premise of the question is comical. Stephanopoulos is supposed to be fair? He has no business moderating a debate, nor does what’s-her-face. The questions were ludicrous. One can gain insight from how delusional liberals are about the current state of affairs simply by watching these media yahoos rodeo clown their way through a debate.
The nation is on the brink of financial ruin and they’re worried about gays getting married and having kids? None of the GOP candidates pointed out that they share the same position on gay marriage as President Obama. I’m so excited that Stephanopoulos is back to host This Week. I didn’t even notice he had left.
If Mitt Romney is sworn in on January 20, 2013, he should shake Ron Paul’s hand first. Ron Paul has been the center of each of these debates. He attacks everyone and the liberal moderators love asking him questions. I can’t see how last night’s debate changed the race. Mitt Romney is simply running out the clock. Exit question: Could a Donald Trump moderated debate be any worse that what I watched last night?
The Rick Perry campaign died weeks ago, but he’s been one the most entertaining characters in the race. Tonight there is a debate in New Hampshire. It’s difficult to see anything happening in these debates to stop the Romney Express. Maybe Perry has a secret plan. Here’s a picture he posted on twitter today.
Say what you want about Perry, but he seems to be the most genuine guy in the race. When most politicians take photo-ops with guns it looks a bit ridiculous, but I wouldn’t want Perry aiming at me.
In the end Perry waited too long to get in the race. His debate problems were more or less the product of being unprepared. The lack of preparation is what happens to candidates who jump in the race late. One of the main reasons Romney is clear frontrunner today is because his dirty laundry has been out there for everyone to see for years.
We’ve seen the rise and fall over a lot of candidates over the last six months. Voters keep flocking to imaginary candidates. Then they’re dismayed that the person isn’t perfect. I could save everyone a lot of time. No one is perfect.
Is this the next President of the United States?
Liberals rejoice! Conservatives were vanquished in Iowa. Mitt Romney won in Iowa after hardly giving the state a second thought. Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich all had their moments in the sun before failing spectacularly. Perry and Gingrich are the only ones left and they’re candidacies are on life support.
We’re left with Santorum, Romney, Huntsman and Paul. I’m being generous to Huntsman and Paul. Paul’s candidacy isn’t going anywhere. The problem with Paul is he’s too worried about defense spending. He offers no solution on our fiscal problems. To put it in perspective we could eliminate our defense department and still be on the road to fiscal ruin. Paul seems more concerned with kookiness than with our fiscal problems.
Jon Huntsman has bet the ranch on New Hampshire. I have to admit that looks risky right now. Coming out of Iowa Rick Santorum is going to get all the press. It’s difficult seeing Huntsman being able to chop through Santorumania.
Speaking of Santorum…. the National Review has basically become an extension of the Santorum campaign. Rich Lowry’s tweets this morning were depressed at the very thought that Rick Perry was soldering on in South Carolina. How dare Perry get in the way of Santorumania! Even Rush Limbaugh is trying to defend Santorum today. Mark Steyn is really the voice of reason during these depressing times.
Rick Santorum is a wee bit too far down the compassionate-conservative end for my tastes, but he gave (as Newt would say) an extraordinarily remarkably profoundly good speech last night. Maggie got the right adjective: “grounded” — very real, very secure, very grown-up. Mitt did himself no favors by dashing on immediately afterwards and burbling cheesy stump-speech boilerplate. As readers will know, I broadly agree with Santorum that, ultimately, culture trumps economics — or, as he puts it, you can’t have limited government and a strong economy without strong families. But no doubt by the time the media are through with him that will be assumed to mean he has a secret plan to lock up the sodomites.
It’s a shame Mark Steyn was born in Canada and can’t run for president. Mr. Steyn gets it. Sadly, liberals don’t and many Republicans aren’t much better. Santorum is cut from the same mold as President Bush. If you like big goverment with splash of social conservatism he’s your guy. Santorum will drive the Christianphobes crazy, but he won’t reduce the size of the goverment. He’s not an alternative to Romney in any real sense, other than religion. A candidate who talks about the problems with contraceptives is never going to be elected in the twenty-first century.
Recent Comments