Romney starts war in Republican Balkans
I have been trying, as best I can, to sound the alarm about the damage being done by the scorched earth tactics of the Romney campaign and its supporters in the Republican political and media establishments.
The effort long ago left the political realm and has devolved into a collective settling of decades-old communal scores. Romney very adroitly has exploited to his advantage some of the deepest intra-Republican personal and emotional grievances and grudges.
As reported by Zeke Miller at BuzzFeed (h/t HotAir):
“It not about winning here anymore,” one Romney staffer told BuzzFeed. “It’s about destroying Gingrich — and it’s working.”
Humiliation, not mere electoral defeat, appears to be the goal. Much as among warring communities in the Middle East and the Balkans, Romney supporters even have sought to deprive Newt of his own history.
Last night I posted Romney is winning his battles, but losing our war, about how Romney is tearing apart a very fragile coalition which will not easily be put back together anytime soon.
This election did not have to turn so destructive. As in 2008, going negative was a conscious decision by the Romney campaign in response to an opponent rising on a positive message in Iowa. The problem, it seems, is not with the opponents, but with the way in which Romney runs campaigns.
Mark Levin, who supports Rick Santorum, has been a voice of decency and clarity as to the attacks on Newt. Mark has just published a note on Facebook which gets to the heart of the problem, Character matters and Romney’s worries me (emphasis mine):
I am beginning to think that the nature and level of attacks being launched by Mitt Romney against Newt Gingrich, which he would surely use against any conservative threatening his nomination, are going to make it very difficult for Romney to unite the different factions of the GOP and the conservative movement behind his candidacy should he win the nomination. While I have said that I would vote for Rick Santorum, I am appalled at the “anything goes” assault on Gingrich.
Romney is not a conservative in the traditional sense, and he has a record of big-government Republicanism. Even many years after the success of the Reagan administration, he sought to distance himself from Reagan and the GOP, self-identifying as a progressive and independent. Thus, he resorts to spending multi-millions of dollars trashing his opponents, rather than providing thoughtful arguments on conservatism and constitutionalism. Lest we forget, it was Gingrich who was trying to run a positive campaign and who offered to debate Romney one-on-one, asking Romney to stop with the millions in unanswered ads attacking him. Romney declined. I have no doubt that Romney would do the same thing to Santorum if Santorum was rising in the polls, albeit on different issues.
I have said that Romney is in many ways Richard Nixon, and that Romney would not successfully lead efforts to repeal Obamacare but, in fact, would grow the federal government in many respects. Romney’s advisor, former senator Norm Coleman, has now said as much. That is Romney’s record. Despite having been a businessman, he was not a defender of free market capitalism while governor. Romneycare is, as Santorum pointed out, a top-down government health care system with an individual mandate that is breaking Massachusetts’ treasury and destroying private health insurance. It is a disaster. Romney also backed cap-and-trade and TARP (as did Gingrich).
My great fear is, however, that he is the weakest candidate who can face Obama and will go into the general election with a fractured base, thanks to his own character flaws, which are now on display, and his tactics of personal destruction. Moreover, while Romney can swamp his Republican opponents by 3 to 1 or more in every state with his spending advantage, Barack Obama will be raising more and spending more to beat him in the general election, meaning Romney’s financial advantage will be non-existent.
We better start paying a lot more attention to holding the House of Representatives and winning the Senate with a bunch of solid conservatives. I have spent a year on my radio show identifying and interviewing these candidates, and will continue to do so.
Thank you Mark (and Sarah). With your broad audience (and most recent bestseller!), hopefully someone will listen before it is too late, if it is not too late already.
I’ve been struggling to come up with a good analogy. Perhaps this works. I’ve dealt with many businessmen who just can’t leave the last nickel on the table; they not only have to get a favorable deal, they have to get a deal which humiliates those on the other side of the transaction.
I don’t know if Mitt Romney was the type of businessman who could not leave the last nickel on the table. But that is the way he is running his campaign.
And we will all pay the price for it.
+72-3
Comments
[...] Legal Insurrection: Romney starts war in Republican Balkans [...]
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Go ahead, take your ball, go home
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The Wigs disintegrated because the party could not decide how to deal with the central crisis that the nation faced at the time.
If the Republican party cannot, then it to will be replaced.
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With our corrupt and out of touch ‘elite political leadership’ in DC, perhaps it IS time to start a new political party based upon fiscal conservatism and individual responsibility (as opposed to the collective/statist model).
I will not vote for Mitt Romney. He’s the wrong candidate at the wrong time. This field of presidential candidates has been the weakest in 70 years. None of them have the character or strength of will that will be needed to make the fundamental changes this country needs in order to survive.
Rich Vail
Pikesville, Maryland
http://thevailspot.blogspot.com
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Yeah pretty much. The reality is that there is a still hidden struggle for control of the GOP. The establishment Republicans (Romney, Bush, Dole, etc) still have control but fear losing power to the unwashed conservative masses. They need conservatives for the activism, energy, money and votes. But they hate that need.
What I see now with Romney, his superpacs and the full court press by the establishment Republicans in their attack on Gingrich is an expression not just of that need or even the hate for that need. But a desire to stamp out any possible challenge to their power.
Only problem is that the existing fractures in the GOP are now being made immeasurably worse. Add to that the various efforts to undermine or eliminate existing conservatives from positions of power or authority. Anybody can see the writing on the wall.
Frankly I see Romney winning the nomination but uncertain about winning the general election. However the GOP will be judged by Romney’s performance. If he doesn’t win the general election then the whole “electability” nonsense is dead and any “conservative” who tries pushing that will watch as their credibility dies a painful agonizing death. If he does win the general election and governs as he most likely will, a tamer version of Obama. Then again the GOP loses credibility and even more conservatives will declare themselves independent.
Personally I figure the day of reckoning will likely be in the 2014 mid-term elections. That will be when the fractures will really come into focus.
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I can’t stand Romney!!!!! This guy will literally destroy anyone who gets in his way of becoming President. This seems so obvious to me and I cannot understand how Floridians can have him leading in the polls. He will never repeal Obamacare and that will be a complete disaster for all of us.
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I can’t stand Romney!!!!! This guy will literally destroy anyone who gets in his way of becoming President. This seems so obvious to me and I cannot understand how Floridians can have him leading in the polls. He will never repeal Obamacare and that will be a complete disaster for all of us.
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Given what I have seen from the Republican elite / establishment (call it what you will) to this point, I am leaving the Republican Party. I am disgusted beyond measure. I will cooperate with the Republican Party where it is in my strategic interest as a conservative, but I think it now two years beyond time for the Tea Party to start actually turning into a third party, running candidates at the local level to build up strength. Whatever else this primary has taught me, it is that the Republican Party does not represent my interests.
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Romney has seven documented lies (so far) in the second Florida Debate alone. (CNN, Jacksonville 1/26/12)
1. He denied accusing Newt of exaggerating/lying about his part in Reagan’s administration only three days before on Monday night in Tampa.
2. He lied about his own ‘ghetto language’ ad that bore his voice
3. He claimed all his business was run by a blind trust, a tactic that Mitt himself called ‘the oldest ruse in the book’ in a previous campaign.
4. He said he voted for republicans in the past when there was a republican to vote for, but if you look back at the Gingrich ad exposing his lies, it turns out when George H.w. Bush and Buchanan were running, he voted for a liberal democrat.
5. He denied the cost of Romneycare to taxpayers in Massachusetts. “Half of those people got insurance on their own. Others got help in buying the insurance.”
False. In fact, 98% of the additional people insured after Romneycare was passed have it paid for or subsidized by the federal government or Massachusetts government. Of the 412,000 additional people who had health insurance in 2010 who did not have it in June 2006 (pre-reform), only 7K of the 412K (1.7%) had unsubsidized health insurance. The rest were covered through Medicaid, Commonwealth Care, or a program of subsidized care for the unemployed.
6. He denied the impact of Romney care on citizens of Massachusetts. Romneycare has increased the price of healthcare premiums for every citizen of Massachusetts. Premiums have increased by 55 percent since Mitt Romney became Governor, a rate 13 points higher than the national average and the third highest growth rate among the states.
7. He said he lowered taxes in Massachusetts 19 times. Yet he raised fees and corporate taxes twice. No wonder Massachusetts was rated at the bottom of all the states (47-49th) in job and business growth.
Romney’s departures from reality and truth are so frequent, they are disturbing…seemingly pathological.
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Other LIES and liars:
Romney continues a smear/character assassination campaign by perpetuating the lie that Newt was guilty of the congressional investigation though he was exonerated.
Romney is covertly lying by using the media such as Drudge, Coulter, Town Hall and other media resources to spread and perpetuate lies, innuendo and prejudice to shape popular opinion against Gingrich. Turns out, Romney’s Bain Capital owns the company that owns Drudge. Who or what else does Romney own? We have watched stories ‘appear’ around the media in concert…like a coordinated military attack…using the same negative descriptors and slogans. The media has become nothing more than a paid political tool.
As ‘Judge Janine’ interviewed Sarah Palin on Fox News, the smirky smile, snide innuendo, false assertions she used were similar to the snide facial expressions and comments Glenn Beck used when interviewing Newt. This ‘Judge’ has as little respect for the truth as Romney – she asked Palin, “So Newt is planning to make the moon the 51st State?”
This week, we Floridians watched FL Attorney General Pam Bondi sell her soul on the air this week. She has been hired by the Romney administration task force to implement Hillarobamneycare. This is scandalous. She has sold her advocacy for the people of Florida as well – She cannot fight Obamacare with one hand while approving it with the other. She is obviously another liberal pretending to be conservative – like Romney.
Hope these people with no integrity, joining Romney in his campaign of lies, who sell America and its constitutional principles down the tube, are going to get paid well.
Romney and/or Soros have invested enormous amounts of money in attaining power…more evidently than Obama has ‘invested’ in green businesses (crony money laundering schemes) that have gone bankrupt in less than two years.
Why? What do they want? To get richer? To make their names admired or feared? To get their way? Control?
OR IS THERE SOMETHING BIGGER GOING ON?
Is the plan to eventually dissolve the US into a single global economy, government, religion, society, etc.? Is this what the big global players, Ted Turner, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Soros and the big time Goldman Sachs, FED, IMF crowd are working toward? Will they create a gradually-increasing global crisis and then say they can only ‘solve’ it with their globalist solution?
May the Lord have mercy on America and the world with Soros, Obama and Romney and their various puppeteers in charge.
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A final comment (please forgive 3 in a row)
An active Republican Party worker in Virginia, has said that Romney and his people have estranged Republicans in Virginia WITH THE SAME TACTICS we have seen in Florida and nationally:
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2012/01/29/republican-establishment-out-to-get-allen-west/comment-page-1/#comment-884413
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I’m just one person, but I don’t think I’m alone in feeling nothing but disgust towards Mitt Romney. If Romney’s the nominee, I’m sitting at home on election day. Because if that’s the only choice besides Obama, the country’s already gone over the cliff and will soon land right next to Greece in the ash-heap of history.
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I’m still not sure I can the lever for a candidate I do not respect. What is conservative without values? How then can Newt be our our standard bearer (Romney aside)?
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