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2012 Election Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 21, 2019 46 Comments
Timing is everything in politics, and Elizabeth Warren received a huge break when a devastating Washington Post investigation of Warren's legal practice when she was a law professor was published on Monday, July 15, 2019. That was the day after Trump's tweets telling four congresswomen "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how...." The investigation confirmed and expanded on Legal Insurrection's reporting from 2012 that in her private legal practice Warren worked against breast implant victims, not for them as she claimed. It was part of a pattern of Warren representing major corporations against the people Warren claims to care about, before she launched her political career.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 19, 2017 21 Comments
At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, the big moment was Joe Biden triumphantly declaring “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive." It turns out that in order to make that narrative stick, Obama had to downplay the actual strength of al-Qaeda.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 07, 2016 193 Comments
While looking though the history of Tea Party posts at Legal Insurrection, I saw this post from April 2011, Sound the Trumpet:
There’s not much I can add to Mark Levin’s explanation of why Donald Trump does not represent the conservative or Tea Party movements.  He wasn’t there when we needed him, and he helped those who were against us.
That was at a time Trump was considering running for President in the 2012 cycle. I made the point then, as I do now, that Trump is not a conservative or a smaller-government individual liberty person. He's a big government nationalist. My point with any big government person, be it Trump, Obama or Hillary, is that once you give them the power, it's hard to get it back and you lose control over your own lives. You end up putting your faith that they will not abuse that power. If that's what you want, so be it. The link in the quote is to a post at The Right Scoop, which had an embedded audio, Levin Rips Donald Trump to Shreds:

Posted by Amy Miller on October 09, 2014 16 Comments
Today's "Worst Administration Ever" story is a throwback to the Great Secret Service Sex Scandal of 2012, in which almost two dozen Secret Service personnel were fired after allegations surfaced that several agents had engaged in misconduct involving Colombian prostitutes. Now, reports have surfaced refuting White House claims that no staff members had been involved in any wrongdoing. The Washington Post reports:
As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved. But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member — yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.... The Secret Service shared its findings twice in the weeks after the scandal with top White House officials, including then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Each time, she and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance-team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong. Meanwhile, the new details also show that a separate set of investigators in the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security — tasked by a Senate committee with digging more deeply into misconduct on the trip — found additional evidence from records and eyewitnesses who had accompanied the team member in Colombia.
According to WaPo, the team member in question was Jonathan Dach, who now is a full time employee with the State Department's Office on Global Women’s Issues. Through a family attorney, Dach denies any "inappropriate conduct":

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 28, 2014 34 Comments
CNN released a poll over the weekend that showed if the 2012 election were held today, Mitt Romney would beat Barack Obama... easily.
According to the poll, if the 2012 election were somehow held again, Romney would capture 53% of the popular vote, with the President at 44%. Obama beat Romney 51%-47% in the popular vote in the 2012 contest. And he won the all-important Electoral College by a wider margin, 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. Last November, an ABC News/Washington Post survey indicated that if the 2012 election were held again, Romney would have had a 49%-45% edge over Obama in the popular vote.
The usual suspects on the left -- like Oliver Willis at Media Matters -- were out in full force blaming Obama's current unpopularity on CNN itself or a space-time continuum breach of some sort. But as Jay Caruso points out, the answer is pretty simple -- buyer's remorse. Obama just isn't popular anymore. Most Americans still believe the economy stinks and think it is getting worse...
Currently, one in five Americans (20%) say the economy is excellent or good, while 33% say it is poor, resulting in a current conditions index of -13. As for the economy's future, 38% say the economy is getting better, while 56% say it is getting worse, for an economic outlook score of -18 -- the same as the previous week's score.
...and the world seems to be in turmoil not seen in a generation. NBC News' Chuck Todd seems to sum up Obama's dilemma quite well: America is fatigued.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on June 14, 2014 37 Comments
The latest frontrunner talk among the Republican insiders and DC media types is none other than Mitt Romney. But are Americans ready for a third run for President by the 2012 GOP loser to Barack Obama? With the economy in virtual stagnation for six years, Russia annexing Ukranian territory and Islamic terrorists on the doorstep of Baghdad -- Mitt Romney (circa 2012) suddenly seems like a wise soothsayer:
“I’m saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation that lines up with the world’s worst actors, of course the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran, and nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough, but when these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop them, when [Syrian President] Assad, for instance, is murdering his own people, we go to the United Nations and who is it that always stands up for the world’s worst actors? It is always Russia, typically with China alongside, and so in terms of a geopolitical foe, a nation that’s on the Security Council, that has the heft of the Security Council, and is of course a massive security power — Russia is the geopolitical foe.” - Mitt Romney, October 2012

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 27, 2014 30 Comments
Dinesh D'Souza allegedly violated campaign finance laws through a relatively small scheme to have friends donate $20,000 to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long, who had little chance of defeating Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012. The alleged illegality was that D'Souza would reimburse them, thereby allowing him to exceed the individual campaing donation limits. It he did it, it's hard to excuse. He must have known about the campaign limits. But such small-scale violations of campaign finance law often are treated as civil matters, with fines. When the Obama campaign turned off credit card security features that would prevent foreign donations, it didn't even get a slap on the wrist. When the Obama campaign was caught hiding over $1 million in excess donations, it merely was fined:
Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violating federal disclosure laws, Politico reports. An FEC audit of Obama for America's 2008 records found the committee failed to disclose millions of dollars in contributions and dragged its feet in refunding millions more in excess contributions.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 15, 2013 14 Comments
Prior to the 2012 election there were claims that the Obama administration was concealing its intentions by deliberately not moving proposed regulations forward so as to avoid campaign controversy. Needless to say, the Obama campaign denied the charges then and now. We reported on how delay of regulations damaged the rollout of Obamacare, Re-election 2012: HHS went quiet on Obamacare regs leading to healthcare.gov tech failure The Washington Post reports on how organized the concealment and delay effort was, White House delayed enacting rules ahead of 2012 election to avoid controversy:
The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according to documents and interviews with current and former administration officials.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 31, 2013 43 Comments

From a highly informative post, Obama, Romney, and GOP Technology: A Chilling Analysis at Red Mass Group: This post is about technology, but is written for a non-technical audience. You may think you know what happened with the technology of the Obama and Romney campaigns because of what...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 10, 2012 28 Comments

Because you still care (?). Via @BarbaraLedeen, I recommend you read the full transcript (excerpts only below) and listen to Rush Limbaugh's segment, Caller: Why Should I Still Care? CALLER: I need some help here. I've tuned out since the election, absolutely tuned out...

Posted by 0387erp on November 27, 2012 17 Comments

Meteorologists who examine their prognosticative skill often notice a curious phenomena.  Forecasts for snow on December Twenty-fourths and Twenty-fifths have higher probabilities than forecasts for Twenty-sixths or Twenty-sevenths.  This disparity is inverted on the Fourth of July, where probabilities for rain are lower than for the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 23, 2012 40 Comments

A point made here before is that we may not fully understand the reasons why Mitt Romney lost. I've proffered a few gut feelings, but have cautioned against adopting Democratic talking points on immigration and other issues -- in other words, becoming Democrat-lite -- based on...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 20, 2012 44 Comments

I bet you didn't realize that conservative media was to blame for Mitt Romney's loss by about 3% of the total vote, much closer in swing states. That's the story line at Buzzfeed Politics, How The Conservative Media Lost The Election.  It is a story with barely a dissenting...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 19, 2012 11 Comments

Obama Enjoys Surge in Positive Coverage the Last Week of the Race; Attention to Romney Drops: In the final week of the 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama enjoyed his most positive run of news coverage in months, according to a new study by the Pew Research...

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