Category: republican candidate

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Mitt Romney Politics republican candidate

Romney Went From “Growing Up Rich” To “Having No Toilets” In 24 Hours.

Mitt Romney wants you to see him as an average man. After tarnishing that ‘average man’ image in the debate on Saturday, where he offered Rick Perry $10,000.00 on a bet, Romney is now trying to revise the public’s view of him. But is it too late? Can Romney flip-flop one more time to save his campaign?

In the last debate, a viewer asked the candidates if they ever had to give up any of  life’s  necessities to make ends meet. In today’s tough economic times, the question was and is very valid. The average voter wants a president who they can identify with, someone who can relate to their daily struggles. All the other Republican contenders in Saturday’s debate had a story to tell where they “struggled”, but when it became Mitt Romney’s turn to relate, the multi-millionaire couldn’t come up with any such experience.

“I didn’t grow up poor,” Romney answered. “If somebody is looking for somebody who has that background, I am not that person.” This admission by Romney came on the same night he offered Rick Perry the $10,000.00 bet… like it was nothing… pocket change!

After the debate, Romney saw how inappropriate his responses were. He told reporters that his wife came to him and said she enjoyed the debate, but his bet offer was not his strong point.

And sure enough, that Sunday Mitt Romney had to do what Mitt Romney does best – the flip-flop.

Asked by another voter in Iowa the very same question he previously answered, “I didn’t grow up poor,” to, Romney magically did  remembered a poor moment in his life when he was 19 years old and went to France to do missionary work.

Living on no more than $110 a month in France – which Romney said was the equivalent of $500 or $600 in today’s dollars – the former Massachusetts governor said he learned to live simply when he left for France in 1966 at the age of 19, stretching those dollars to cover food, clothing and rent over two and a half years in France. He lived in a series of apartments with little or no plumbing or amenities like refrigeration.

“You’re not living high on the hog at that level,” he said. “A number of the apartments that I lived in when I was there didn’t have toilets – we had instead the little pads on the ground – OK, you know how that works, pull – there was a chain behind you with kind of a bucket, bucket affair. I had not experienced one of those in the United States.”

Romney said he and his fellow missionaries showered once a week at a facility where you could pay a few francs to bathe – “Or if we were got lucky, we actually bought a hose and would hold it there on the sink … and wash ourselves that way.”

Let’s see… a debate on Saturday, where he answered he didn’t grow up poor, so couldn’t share any moments of hardship, then less than 24 hrs later, he was so poor, he was only able to shower once a week and had no toilets. From one extreme to anther in the span of 24 hours?

This has to be a record flip-flop… even for Mitt Romney.

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Newt Gingrich Politics Republican republican candidate

Will The Gingrich Steal Christmas (Or Is Newt Moot)?

Consider: This has been the year of economic gloom, a devastating Japanese tsunami, an earthquake in Virginia, a hurricane in New England, and a destructive East Coast snow storm before Halloween. These are bad enough.

Are we really headed for a holiday season dominated by discussion of Newt Gingrich’s chances in the Republican primaries? The fates are indeed playing a cruel joke on us mere mortals.

The stories and analysis are coming fast and furious. Let’s see…

So which Newt are we going to get? And why should we care? After all, he’s not going to win the nomination.

I still think that ring will be worn by Mitt Romney, the subject of a long story in the New York Times Magazine today. It’s not an especially flattering account, but it gets to the heart of how Romney intends to win next year. From the article:

Mitt Romney’s campaign has decided upon a rather novel approach to winning the presidency. It has taken a smart and highly qualified but largely colorless candidate and made him exquisitely one-dimensional: All-Business Man, the world’s most boring superhero. In the recent past, aspirants and their running mates have struggled to clear the regular-guy bar. Dan Quayle lacked a sense of struggle; Michael Dukakis couldn’t emote even when asked what he would do if his wife were raped and murdered; George H. W. Bush seemed befuddled by a grocery-store scanner; John Kerry was a windsurfer; John McCain couldn’t count all of his houses. 

Romney, a socially awkward Mormon with squishy conservative credentials and a reported worth in the range of $190 million to $250 million, is betting that in 2012, recession-weary voters want a fixer, not a B.F.F. As the Romney campaign’s chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, told me: “The economy is overwhelmingly the issue. Our whole campaign is premised on the idea that this is a referendum on Obama, the economy is a disaster and Obama is uniquely blocked from being able to talk about jobs.” 

What happens when the economy starts improving? This is the oft-repeated conundrum of the candidate running against a recession. Ronald Reagan made it an issue in 1980 and won overwhelmingly. Bill Clinton hammered George H.W. Bush about the economy and defeated him, despite the fact that the economy was improving during the fall of 1992. In 2012, Romney will be in a position where he has to hope that things don’t markedly improve before the election. For an American exceptionalist, it must hurt him to have to root against jobs, rising wages, recovering banks and the success of the euro zone, but I think he believes that if he smiles all the time, voters will forgive him.

And Newt (this is a story about Newt)? Well, Newt is touting his résumé these days.. He’s running on ending communism and getting the economy moving in the 90s, despite voting against (and having every Republican vote against) the Clinton budget of 1993 that set the stage for the decade’s expansion. On that issue, Newt is moot. But, again, it doesn’t matter, because Newt will never be the GOP nominee.

The pundits tell us it’s a two-man race over on the right, now that Herman Cain has dropped out and the other retreads have had their days in the sun and their corresponding sunsets. I feel bad for John Huntsman, who never got his renaissance, and who might qualify as the only reasonable Republican in the race. But this is the year of the uncompromising conservative and I imagine that Mitt and Newt will fight to see who can oppose abortion, taxes and union rights more than the other.

The good news is that the holidays are fast approaching, and this year, we’ve really earned the good cheer.

For more good cheer, visit me at facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives

This post originally appeared on my blog: anjfarmer.blogspot.com

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Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Politics republican candidate

Ron Paul Shows Newt Gingrich’s Speciality – The Flip Flop

We take pleasure in bringing you an ad from Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. The ad puts Newt Gingrich, the present leader in the Republican nomination race, into the spotlight, and, we believe, is meant to show Mitt Romney how the real flip-floppers, flip flop.

The 150-second ad showcases some questionable conservative stances made by the former speaker of the House, such as his agreement with Nancy Pelosi that “our country must take action to address climate change” and labeling Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicare overhaul as “right-wing social engineering.”

The ad uses gritty black and white news clips to slam Gingrich’s work since leaving public office 13 years ago as a lobbyist for the health care industry and for mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

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Climate change Politics republican candidate

Why Chris Christie Cannot Be President If He Runs

Simple answer: Chris Christie, the Republican darling governor of New Jersey,  believes in global warming. And what’s even more unheard of in today’s Republican party is this; Christie believes that humans play a major role in the warming of the planet! This from NJ.com:

In case anyone had any doubts on where Gov. Chris Christie stands on climate change, he made his position crystal clear this afternoon: It’s real and it’s a problem.

In vetoing a bill (S2946) that would have required New Jersey to stay in a regional program intended to curb greenhouse gases — a program Christie plans to leave by the end of the year — the governor said “climate change is real.”

He added that “human activity plays a role in these changes” and that climate change is “impacting our state.”

This position by Christie seems a reasonable one, and is supported by a majority of scientists worldwide. But Republicans in this country will go to the grave holding onto their naive, irresponsible stance that global warming does not exist. So Christie’s coming out and agreeing with science and the thermometer, is in itself, enough to disqualify him from any presidential consideration for 2012.

After Christie made his statement, Doug Powers wrote on the conservative website that this is probably Christie’s way of telling Republicans that he’s tired of them asking him to run, so admitting to global warming is his way of saying move on to someone else. Doug wrote;

Ann Coulter says Christie is the only Republican who can defeat President Obama next November, but if he’s going to keep talking like this, I beg to differ (I beg to differ anyway, but especially now).

Of course, there’s always a chance that Christie’s just tired of Republicans wondering if he’s going to run for president and this is his way of getting them to stop asking.

Move on folks, there’s nothing more to see here.

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