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?
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.
There’s no real winner tonight. It’s certainly not a good night for the Republic. A three man race between Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney? The fake, the crazy, and the flip flopper. Does anyone really think those three guys will ever be a good president?
The real loser tonight is Iowa. It’s time to end this farce once and for all. The state of Iowa is a subsidy hog. It’s the reason Tom Harkin has been their senator for decades. Iowa clings to its “first” status to ensure pork forever. In 2016, the GOP shouldn’t recognize Iowa delegates unless they move the caucus back.
These so-called moderators shed no light whatsoever on the Republican candidates or their policy positions. Their intent was to divert attention away from the abject failure that is the Obama administration and focus on the Republican candidates' warts, especially Newt Gingrich's. It's time for these pretentious, shallow mainstream media people to go away.
I was one of a few people who caught the Republican debate on ABC Saturday night. It was awful, mainly because moderators Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos continued to prove how irrelevant, out of touch and shallow the so-called mainstream media really is.
The style of questioning was more appropriate for American Idol, The X Factor and Jersey Shore than it was a serious debate among people vying for the highest office in the land. Rather than substantive policy questions, the entire debate was geared toward the usual Gossip Girl nonsense… “So and so said you’re an idiot. Do you agree with that?”
So, for 15 or 20 minutes we were treated to the spectacle of the candidates nitpicking each other instead of addressing the issues that really matter to voters. It got so bad that Gardasil came up again. It was exhausting to watch the pointless back and forth.
When health care came up, we had to suffer through the usual rehash of Romneycare and Newt’s flirtation with the individual mandate. I really don’t care what either candidate did or believed in the past about health care. What I really want to know is what their ideas about health care are going forward.
The low point of the evening came when the so-called moderators asked how important marital fidelity was in a presidential hopeful. This was an obvious dig at Newt and a blatant attempt to get the other candidates to take turns ripping on Newt. (Ironic, wasn’t it, that Stephanopoulos worked for a serial adulterer; I don’t recall the mainstream media or Stephanopoulos being overly concerned about marital fidelity and the presidency then.)
Perry was asked first, and blathered on about how faithful he is, etc. His response should have been: “Why don’t you ask Newt since you’re so obviously talking to him? I’ll pass on this until you ask a real policy question.” The candidates should have nipped the ridiculous questions in the bud and asked the moderators to ask real ones. Instead, they took the bait.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, but I trust this modern-day P.T. Barnum to ask better questions than clowns like Stephanopoulos, Sawyer, Williams, Cramer and Cooper.
I was too tired last night to write a recap of last night’s FOX News/Google debate in Orlando, Fla., but it was a big debate. Rick Perry was terrible last night. He didn’t just fade; he didn’t show up. Perry stumbled through almost every question. Instead of getting better, he seems unprepared to answer the simplest of questions.
Perry’s big splash in the race has crippled Michele Bachmann’s candidacy. Mitt Romney is the one really benefiting from Perry’s entrance in the race. Suddenly Romney appears presidential and safe. As Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Bachmann beat up on Perry, Romney just watches with glee. The GOP establishment is falling over themselves trying to say it’s over for Perry, but that’s just hyperbole. However, Perry really need to step up his game in these debates.
Perry’s two biggest problems are the vaccination business and immigration. Bachmann has got all she can out of the HPV vaccination. The best part? Bachmann is sinking fast. Perry has a real problem with immigration. Illegal immigration is a complex topic. There’s no concensus on how to solve it; however, Perry might get buried on it because Santorum Bachmann, and Huntsman are unrelenting in their attack on Perry. I’ve written about Perry’s luck in politics in Texas, but he’s gonna need a healthy dose of it to survive these attacks. On the flip side, Perry’s stance on immigration is likely to be a plus in the general election, if he ever makes it that far.
This race is Mitt Romney’s to lose at this point. The establishment is on his side. He’s the best politician in the field. You have to be a great politician to change your positions as often as he has in the past ten years. One last thing that Mitt Romney has going… he’s left-handed. Since President Ford, the United States has elected two right-handed presidents (Carter, Bush 2). President Reagan was ambidextrous, so maybe we should be looking for that trait in a candidate.
Finally, Newt Gingrich has been the best in all three debates in September. Gingrich’s problem is that he’s too unpredictable to support. It’s a shame, because he’d crush Obama in a debate.
Gossip Girl or serious journalist? After watching the Republican debate on MSNBC last night I'm leaning toward Gossip Girl.
As usual, Henshaw made some good points about last night’s Republican debate, though I’m not sure I agree with his winners and losers. Alas, it is quite difficult to come up with an objective list of winners and losers since a debate isn’t quite as easy to score as, say, a boxing match. And even boxing matches that declare a winner without a KO are sometimes controversial.
Even so, here’s my list of winners, losers and those who fought to a draw… Winners: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. Losers: Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. Draw: Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.
Part of my problem scoring and declaring a winner is that these debates don’t allow for much explanation by any one candidate, thus they tend to stick to rhetoric and key words. Even when it’s narrowed down to two candidates during the Presidential race, debates don’t offer much substance.
Still, the candidates could make a move away from the pack by better articulating core principles. In the case of a conservative candidate, one of these core principles, and what is perhaps the most important one, is the role of the Federal government.
Ron Paul and Herman Cain came closest to hitting the mark on this, though no one’s really listening to them. The others danced around it and the moderators probably don’t know the difference between Federalism and oligarchy, though they certainly know how to gossip (“A friend of your campaign manager said that Rick Perry is a wussie. Why is he a wussie?”)
There was a golden opportunity at this debate to point out that the governors in the debate did the best they could with the circumstances specific to their states and the needs of their constituents. And that’s the point. Who best to make decisions for the welfare of its citizens than local and state government? And, who is more accountable to their voters than local and state government?
You can yammer on and on about this and that you did as governor, or that this governor had this much or this little job growth in his state, but it’s just a waste of time. Just once I’d like to see a candidate point out that an ever-encroaching Federal government endangers the individual and his liberty. The growth of the Federal government is, in fact, a move toward oligarchy; rule by the few over the many. Moreover, it’s an oligarchy that favors certain people and groups over others, destroying the concept of equality before the law. The bailouts, stimulus and health care bamboozles are striking examples of this inequality created by cronyism.
Still, I don’t know how much you can blame the candidates for their shallow answers. The moderators made it quite difficult to provide any depth by purposely pitting one candidate against the other and framing the questions to make it sound as if they were defending the indefensible. “Rick Perry, Romney said or did this. Respond,” or, “Why are Republicans so heartless?” Bullshit. Ask them a real policy question.
Speaking of BS, how about that brief foray into “science”? The Charlie Crist-like Huntsman took a sideways swipe at Perry, playing the ever-so-reasonable-and-moderate Republican card. He’s pro-science because he has not an ounce of skepticism about the wild-eyed lunatic-fringe claims of a madman (Al Gore)?
Meanwhile, Perry’s response was less than adequate. Once again, a golden opportunity to put the nail in the coffin of the climate change debate wasted. Will anyone rise to the occasion and point out simple logic? As a reminder, logical and thought-provoking arguments Perry could have made include:
- The sun may have something to do with our climate, given that it accounts for 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system
- The climate has been changing for more than four billion years; it always has and it always will. This would mark the first time in the history of earth that a species was willfully unable to adapt to a changing climate. Who’s more stupid, the dinosaurs who simply didn’t know they needed to adapt, or human beings who drown in extremely slow-rising water because they thought the government was going to do something about it?
- Do Climate Changelings/Global Warmongers really believe that we have the power to regulate the earth’s thermostat, and if we did, what is the proper setting?
- Further, if we had the power to regulate the climate, who makes the decision about where to set the thermostat and who benefits from the settings? Will the entire earth be like San Diego, or will only those parts the enviro-nitwits care about live eternally in San Diego’s climate?
- Global warming is far better for life on earth than is global cooling. You can look it up. But the beauty of “climate change” is that you can claim the climate’s changing no matter what’s going on globally or locally. A little warmer this year? Climate change! Unusually cold another? Climate change! No change? Climate change!
The whole thing is absurd, as is the case for a larger and more meddlesome federal government, and yet it’s nearly impossible to get a cohesive, coherent and concise answer on either subject from the candidates. Immigration? I know that Rick Santorum’s grandparents were immigrants, but that doesn’t tell me jack diddly about his plan.
Perhaps most absurd, and also the best part of the debate, was the commercial produced by Californians for Population Stabilization, which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there’s a special interest group for anything and everything these days.
Californians for Population Stabilization is against legal immigration. That’s right, legal immigrants are taking jobs away from Californians and Californians for Population Stabilization wants to end this travesty. What’s next? Californians against Seeing Eye Dogs and other Working Dogs?
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryd1-xco9cg
I just finished watching the GOP debate on MSNBC. It was a painful exercise. There are too many people on the stage that have no chance of being elected. The questions were often from outer-space. Every question to Ron Paul was a joke. It’s as if Brian Williams has never heard libertarian theory. He asked Paul about abolishing FEMA, TSA, and Homeland Security. All of the questions were phrased as if “you don’t really believe that do you?” Paul has a reason to be insulted. However, Paul also claimed that a border fence is dangerous because it could be used to keep Americans in the country!
I suppose the biggest talking point from the debate will be Rick Perry stubborn insistence that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. The fact that this is even remotely controversial is the reason the nation is in the predicament it’s in. The fact that Mitt Romney is willing to pander on this issue may mean he’s more electable, but ultimately I’m not going to vote for someone who believes that Social Security is successful when it’s taking over 12% of my income, income that I’ll never see a dime of in the future.
My last observation is on climate change. Jim Huntsman, who had no business being on the stage, claimed that 98 of a 100 climate scientists agree that humans are causing the Earth to warm at an alarming rate. Instead of pouncing on this ridiculous claim Brian Williams asked Rick Perry to name prominent skeptics! Really unbelievable stuff. That’s pretty much all I have. It was nice of MSNBC to have a Hispanic news anchor come on stage to ask questions about illegal immigration Apparently, MSNBC believes the only issue Hispanics care about is illegal immigration. Lean forward!
Winners: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry
Losers: Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, MSNBC
After a week-long absence, I’m back. It was my sixth trip to Priest Lake, Idaho. The weather was perfect and I was detached from all news. It’ll take a few days to catch up, but I have to write the obituary for Tim Pawlenty, who swore he’d run an honest campaign. Well, he’s giving up because, frankly, he doesn’t have a chance. I could have saved Pawlenty a lot of time if he would have read this blog last October.
Now he’ll just wait around to see if the eventual nominee will pick him as VP candidate. I’m not sure what Pawlenty will offer, but he’s boring and won’t draw much attention away from the top of the ticket. He’s kind of the anti-Biden. Pawlenty finished third in the Ames Straw Poll. This is the same influential straw poll in which the eventual 2008 GOP nominee John McCain finished 10th.
Pawlenty needed a win at the the Ames Straw Poll just to create some buzz for his candidacy. As it is, he’s got nothing. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul were first and second and neither candidate has a realistic shot at the nomination.
One last observation about the Pawlenty announcement… How is he out of the race before Jon Huntsman?
The news cycle is still consumed about the debt ceiling. I don’t have much to add to this debate. If you’re educated about the current fiscal problems this whole charade is a joke. There are no real cuts being offered. The left is upset about miniscule reductions in the rate of growth. I don’t understand how anyone could think this is victory for the Tea Party. Ron Paul has an article that puts it all in perspective. I’m done with this issue.
No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the “cuts” being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family “saving” $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.
We can certainly raise taxes and reduce defense spending. That will eventually happen; however, that’s not even close to being enough to solve our fiscal issues. The sheer amount of debt is almost unfathomable. Apparently, the average American is too distracted to pay attention.
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