Image 01 Image 03

Onto something, or just making mischief?

Onto something, or just making mischief?

Via Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters:

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

This may be true, but it’s interesting that so many of the Republican Establishment went out of their way to submarine all the other candidates in the primaries more than Romney.

There seems to be some major disconnect.

There is a third possibility (likelihood), Prof.

Another example of Collectivist Cocooning.

They could be roaring up to another gob-smacking in 2012.

The only way Romney wins is if he:
1. Runs the perfect campaign (Hard to do with today’s MSM)
2. Every single Republican falls in-line with him.
3. Ann Romney, Palin, Bachman etc etc go on a tour-de-force.
4. The economy stays in the crapper.
5. The conservatives that stayed home………..come out in droves.

Let the Left believe Obama2 is inevitable. They’ll stay home like they usually do on election day.

StrangernFiction | April 4, 2012 at 11:31 am

Making mischief. Though I do believe the GOPE would rather see Obama for four more years than a non-statist.

Midwest Rhino | April 4, 2012 at 11:41 am

Dick Morris thinks Romney will win, I think Rush has been saying if the election were today, Romney would win in a landslide. This guy is just blabbing.

I think Obama will lose … maybe in a landslide. People are tired of Obama attacking everyone except his base and our enemies. Now he goes after the Supreme Court, scolding them for not understanding how important Obamacare is, even if it is an unconstitutional march against individual rights.

The cops act stupidly, SCOTUS doesn’t understand, the tea party is racist, the 50% that pay all the taxes aren’t paying their share, gun rights and freedom of religion are for bitter clingers, …

Is there any group this guy hasn’t assaulted, except his base?

    scooterjay in reply to Midwest Rhino. | April 4, 2012 at 4:34 pm

    folks, WE also are living in a bubble. It is hard sometimes to comprehend that not EVERYONE is as informed on political topics as we. There are scads of folks that don’t understand all the political maneuvering, primary process etc. etc. yet they all say the same thing…”I’m voting for whoever runs against Obama”. I’ve been informally polling people for the past two months thru casual conversations…people in line at the grocery store, at the DMV, at work, etc. and I can tell you that there is a huge dislike for Obama out in the public. I’d love to see Newt get the nomination but I rest assured that Obumbles polls unfavorably at around 70-30 so it will be an “anyone but Obama” election. I’m convinced that Mitt will get the nod but that is okay, I can deal with him for 4 years as long as the electorate is vocal. Keep your eyes on the House and Senate races, THAT is where our big change will come.

With today’s demographics, no way it will be a landslide!

“The key to a Romney [or any other candidate] victory is not to defeat President Obama; that would be a byproduct. The key is to make the case that the Blue Social Model is truly dead, that a new model is urgently needed and to present the first rough draft of what the new model might look like. Points one and two are an open-and-shut case. Point three is much riskier, obviously, but will (over time and with repetition) sharpen the points of difference.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnellis/wheres-romneys-alternative-5krk

Boy, would it ever “sharpen the points of difference”!!!

    raven in reply to Ragspierre. | April 4, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    I couldn’t agree more. And the GOP holds to a devalued and outdated narrative which Romney, using nostalgic stagecraft, perfectly represents, that is, that this is a race against Obama over the economy, the personalized subtext of which is, “Obama’s a decent guy who’s just in over his head” as an economic steward. And they pathetically attempt to evoke Reagan with all their faux-rousing cheers to “unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of American business” or other empty sloganeering.

    This is a race against an anti-American ideology with totalitarian designs which has forced us to a fateful moment of reckoning. To deny it is no good anymore. And we can’t go back. People, conservatives, feel this deeply. The problem is, no candidate emerged who was able to fully embrace this message and lead us through it. It’s not easy to do. It would have required a candidate both profoundly and equally revolutionary and reassuring, a risk-taker who inspired trust, a highly skilled politician (in best sense of the word) willing and able to explain the failures of our Republican political model.

    When I hear Romney supporters try to explain that he is the perfect candidate because he doesn’t threaten the independents with scary leftist-baiting rhetoric I see how tragically they (and all the rest of us, in all fairness) have blown it, or are in the process of blowing it.

      WoodnWorld in reply to raven. | April 4, 2012 at 5:53 pm

      Dear raven,
      What a rant! You may have “heard” Romney supporters at some point in the last few weeks, months or years but I am quite confident that you have never once “listened.” The only voice, the only opinion that matters is your own.

      Sincerely,
      – “Outed” Trollromneybott1

I’m of the belief that there is actually some establishment Republicans who think that Obama can’t be defeated.

As Neo stated, Rick and Newt have been destroyed royally. If Rick stays in, just wait, Romney will finish him off politically, no matter how much money they have to spend.

[…] a party, we are so screwed.  If Joe Scarborough is correct, then we are totally screwed.  The Dems are going to destroy Mitt Romney during the general […]

I tend to believe there are many realists in the GOP who look at all the data from these primaries and are convinced Romney cannot win. He has outspent his opponents by a substantial margin. Yet, in states where Romney has had any credible opposition, he has a hard time reaching the 50% threshold.
I also believe that his super-PAC spending millions to trash his opponents has left a tough choice for many primary voters to vote for Romney in November or just vote on the ‘down the ballot’ candidates. There is not a lot of enthusiasm in the base for Romney. I daresay, there has not been a lot of enthusiasm since South Carolina in the primary process. I believe this is directly related to the huge amount of money spent by Romney to trash his opponents. Despite all the media attention during this primary process, the number of votes is staggeringly low.

In 2008, John McCain received approximately 46.5% of the GOP primary votes. In the general election, John McCain received approximately 46.5% of the total vote. I think Romney is heading on a similar path. Looking back, I doubt John McCain would have received anyway near 46.5% had he not chosen Sarah Palin as his VP nominee.

    Spartan,

    Obama didn’t win many states with 50% of the vote and yet, if memory serves me right, he won the 2008 presidential election.

      It should be noted that Obama won the Democratic nomination in 2008 because the super delegates anointed him the nominee. Hillary crushed him in many head-to-head primaries. However, Obama kept it close by winning the caucuses and was slightly ahead for the super delegates made their selection.
      The Democrats run their politics quite differently than the GOP. They have the media in their hip pocket and that media will bleat any message for the cause of the Democrats. They sold “Hope and Change” to the public while McCain was searching not only for a message but a messenger. He struck gold with this selection of Palin. As a result, McCain was ahead until the financial crisis hit and decided to suspend his campaign. McCain, eventually supported TARP and limped into November. Palin did her best but it was not enough.
      Obama was protected by the media. Faux pas were tamped down, tough questions were never asked, and his support for TARP was never an issue.

      The gist of my post was point out reasons for the electorate/base to not support Romney in November. I believe his negative ads will play a role in his failure to unify the GOP. I still contend that many still do not trust Romney and are skeptical of his conservatism. This skepticism was also seen regarding McCain in 2008. Unlike McCain, Romney does not have a Palin for his VP nominee. I doubt he will find one. The 46.5% really is more weird trivia than a prediction for November.

      I do not doubt that there is a feeling in this country to oust Obama in November. There are seven months before the election and in politics that is a eternity. A lot can change and if I can put on my historian hat, there are a lot of similarities between this election and the election of 1940. A lot of folks believed FDR would not win the election. Unemployment was very high and government spending was out of control. Wendell Wilkie was a businessman who focused on an economic message. However, world events overshadowed Wilkie and FDR won his third term.

    scooterjay in reply to spartan. | April 4, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    Interesting. that may be why my informal polling of the average joe in casual conversation reveals a 70-30 for the sentiment against Obama. Folks here in SC are fed up with bullshit and are ready for a real change. We aren’t as dumb as the new yorkers make us out to be. after all, they love our beaches and our golf courses!

Probably mischief on Joe’s part, but also could hold a grain of truth.
Romney has made no attempt to reach out to the Conservative base. He has run a primary campaign “not to lose”, continuing to alieniate Conservatives, hoping that the “independents” will save him. The turnout in the primaries has been pitifully low. The average guy who doesn’t follow politics needs a reason to get excited to go out and vote for someone, or they just stay home. Independents don’t get out the vote, raise funds for you, walk door to door, get people registered to vote, and take their neighbors to vote on election day.
Obama is energizing his base with Sandra Fluke and Travon Martin, to ensure his core constituencies forget about the economic disaster that he has wrought. Romney thinks he can win in spite of the Republican base, he is wrong. Romney needs to mea culpa pretty darn fast.

While currently in the state of my birth, Minnesotastan, I’m more a WI product and find yesterday’s result consistent with the polls because the WI GOP is the only seminal outfit under the banner.

Walker’s imminent danger has the party motivated. But given Romney is running 20 pts. down to Jug-eared Dog, that 2008 turnout was light, that Evangelicals that did darken polls doors distributed their votes evenly, etc., probably tells us ‘Not Obama’ is a losing ticket in WI.

Sununu, Coulter, et al., are talking down throwing a bone to the base–probably not going to work anyway–as tho losing is a fait accompli.

They don’t believe the base is turning out and they’d rather win without them if that were possible.

I think a lot of LI and other anti-Romney commenters are so caught up in the Mitt-can’t-win narrative that they can’t see the big picture. Obama is approximately where Carter was in 1980: A substantial majority of Americans see the country going downhill and view the president as a big part of the problem. It’s quite simple: He has failed. Except for liberal activists and Obama’s apologists in the MSM (some overlap there, of course), the country has completely lost faith and confidence in this president.

Romney is going to present himself as confident, competent alternative to Obama, just as RWR did with respect to Carter. I think he’ll end up winning by a comfortable margin.

    gary gulrud in reply to Conrad. | April 4, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    Rags’ link militates against Romany winning comfortably. ObamoneyCare off the table may not help Ogabe as much as McBain but will remove from both their signal accomplishments.

    Willard is reduced to running Republican boilerplate against a shapeshifter, i.e., a more talented liar than himself.

    Effectively the GOP is trying to beat the weakest incumbent it has faced, which it’s done once since Grover Cleveland, with the juggernaut that buried Shannon Obrien, current CEO of the Boston area Girl Scoutss, in his only prior victory.

    Get real.

      Ragspierre in reply to gary gulrud. | April 4, 2012 at 12:46 pm

      You work from the assumption that Romney has to be the actual author of a “anti-blue statist model”. All he has to do is champion one, and I think it MOST reasonable to believe that LOTS of people are writing that model right now. See Ryan, Congressman; see also Gingrich, Newt; see also etc. (LOTS of etc.)

      Conservatives…think Palin…will be pushing for real, basic, reforms.

      I damn sure will be.

    hrh40 in reply to Conrad. | April 4, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    Except that Romney is not a confident, competent alternative to Obama.

    And if he tries to play Reagan that will be excruciatingly obvious.

    Not to mention the legions of opposition research showing that Mitt didn’t vote for Reagan, said Reagan was wrong, ran as the anti-Reagan in 1994, and as recently as 2009 declared that the era of Reagan is over.

    But other than that, yeah, this election is just like 1980.

    scooterjay in reply to Conrad. | April 4, 2012 at 4:42 pm

    very true………pssssst: the left and the MSM will lie to you. 70% of South Carolinians will vote against Obama, even if it was Pee Wee Gaskins running!

damodes said: “Obama is energizing his base with Sandra Fluke and Travon Martin, to ensure his core constituencies forget about the economic disaster that he has wrought”
Fine, but his base-energizing is taking some moderates ‘off the table’
The economic disaster can’t be hidden. It’s right there at the pump, in the unemployment numbers and the dreadful business climate. It can’t be hidden.

    damocles in reply to Joaquin. | April 4, 2012 at 5:58 pm

    True Joaquin. But it is the energized base rather than noncomittals that donate time and money to get your message out to the unwashed populace. I for one have seen my donations to all candidates decrease dramatically, because the whole primary has been disheartening. I got tired of my money and my time being taken for granted and so I have not been anywhere near as involved as I was during the Scott Walker/Wisconsin fight last year. I was phone-banking, giving donations,getting out the vote, blogging on different sites and energized. Frankly, now I am worn out. I will crawl across broken glass to vote against Obama, but I am done trying to persuade anyone else. I realized that I had become an enabler for the GOP, wasting my money and my time on them. I decided to only help a very few people who I believe to be worth helping. Romney is not one of them.

Midwest Rhino | April 4, 2012 at 12:49 pm

Romney is only down by 3 in four core states. Things will change a lot after the primary, won’t they? People love to buy shoes and shirts because of rich people telling them to, like Jordan or some Hollywood star. Will they really hate Romney for his success? I think moderates might long for someone that understands business. And Romney can’t be painted as one of those “radical” conservatives.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/core_four_states/election_2012_the_core_four_states

1. Some time ago I posted, with tongue half in cheek, that the Establishment favored Romney as a placeholder for Jeb 2016. Undercutting Romney is consistent with that scenario.

2. There are reasons why the GOP is called the Stupid Party. IMHO, absent an out-of-the-blue game changer, Hillary 2016 would make mincemeat out of Jeb.

3. Despite the difficulty of removing an incumbent President, the election is worth contesting afaic. Obama has governed so badly that something unforeseen could tip the scales. (Imagine, for example, that the financial crisis had struck in 2004. IMO Bush would have lost—even though Bush was a stronger incumbent than Obama is, and Romney, for all his shortcomings, is a stronger candidate than Kerry was.)

Paul Ryan is making mincemeat of President Pond-Scum’s hateful speechifying…

Excellent.

After engaging just about everyone in the party powers that be in Florida who I’ve had the opportunity to talk with, the most common explanation for supporting Romney seems to be that Romney has promised money, campaign support, or other favors to various individuals and candidates. Where this is not about the individual personally benefiting, it’s about a belief in some overall benefit even if Romney loses.

Hope Change | April 4, 2012 at 2:47 pm

I can appreciate the strong desire people have to see Romney adopt reforms. But there’s no means of enforcement.

The whole point of the Romney candidacy, from the point of view of the monied interests that push him, is to prevent such reforms.

If Romney were once elected, they would jettison any reform that doesn’t suit them. Romney’s communications director was bragging when he said Romney’s campaign is like an etch-a-sketch.

Real change is painful and requires real change. I don’t know if the American People will awaken and choose real change.

If not, IMO, Romney will lose to Obama. I know, that seems almost impossible, but I think Romney can manage to do it.

And if, on the other hand, if Romney were to win, WE would still lose, because conservatives would be once again excluded, impotent, frustrated and shut out, the GOPE having secured its grip on power once again.

Newt’s Team Campaign plan is the only genuine alternative. It would give us the enforcement mechanism of 1. the united capacity & intention of the American People and
2. the election of House and Senate candidates already committed to a clearly-stated agenda of reform.

Romney has to actually win the requisite number of delegates. This is not over unless he does. An open convention would be a powerful learning experience and opportunity for the American People.

There is a powerful, dynamic future in Newt’s plan. I hope the American People choose it.

    WoodnWorld in reply to Hope Change. | April 4, 2012 at 5:46 pm

    Hope, well done. It seems as though you have evolved from declaring Romney’s predicted loss in November as a statement of fact to the possibility of the same merely being your “opinion” or what you “think” will happen. This is progress.

Shouldwe consider what better way for Romney to get approval from the conservative/Tea Party crowd than to make it look like the GOP insiders all think he’s a loser?

The RINO clique has probably figured out that the conservatives think Romney has been shoved down our throats. So maybe they think Romney will be more acceptable if he isn’t seen as the candidate of the establishment?

Or maybe they think he stinks too?

[…] GOP Bubble Brain Posted on April 4, 2012 1:30 pm by Bill Quick » Onto something, or just making mischief? – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion […]

For the past 2 1/2 years Obama has been double digits behind any generic Republican in the swing state of Florida. Since the Jeb Bush-wackers launched their scorched earth politics for Mittnama giving him the primary, Obama is 7 points ahead in the swing state of Florida. Obama will win Florida. I will not vote for Romney I don’t care who the VP is because sadly I despise the GOPe more than I despise Obama.
Last month GHW Bush and little Jebbie spent a nice little quite Friday afternoon at the White House making nice with Obama. I am repulsed. This is not a game.

The Bush-wackers do not believe that Obama is dangerous. They also know that Romney will lose the states he won in the primary to Obama in November. Romney is their patsy. Everyone knows it except for the Romney-bots. This vulgar game of Russian roulette the Bush-wackers are willing to play with our country is despicable. The plan is after 8 years of Obama we will finally be ready for another Bush, Jeb. It will be a Jeb/Rubio ticket.

Dream on GOPe with your Dream Act. As far as I am concerned it is only in your dreams that Americans will elect Jeb in 2016. We will personally hold the GOPe accountable for their recklessness.

JRD, if I could give you 10 Likes, I would.

I believe your “get it” exactly. There was a reason for the Bush visit. In fact, there is a video on youtube that has H.W. talking about the New World Order. I believe this is their end game as horrible as that is.

I firmly believe that Romney will lose the general election, because there is too much apathy out there to him.

The Dems will engage in voter fraud, just like they did in ’08. Then the GOP establishment will come forth and condemn the conservatives for not voting.

    Milwaukee in reply to Scorpio51. | April 4, 2012 at 10:39 pm

    Yes, the GOPE wants the new world order as much as the socialist-progressive-marxist-democrats want it. The GOPE some how believes that the transition to a new world order would still leave them with their hands on the controls, and their luxury perks intact. Little do they know that they are useful idiots, and we know what will happen to them.