More Mormon Infighting

Now billionaire Jon Huntsman, Sr. (whose son’s presidential campaign flamed out pretty spectacularly) is calling on fellow Mormon Mitt to release more tax returns.  Mitt and Huntsman, Jr. were rivals to head the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

We’ve already seen the fighting between Mitt and Mormon Harry Reid.  In fact, some are guessing that the source who told Reid that Mitt didn’t pay taxes for ten years is none other than Jon Huntsman, Sr.

The Desperate Politicians of Mormonistan.  A reality show, perhaps, after Mitt loses?

Mitt the Milquetoast

Well, this has the Iranians shaking in their boots (or shaking with laughter).  Here’s Mittens in Israel today being his usual milquetoast-y self:

“I respect the right of Israel to defend itself, and we stand with Israel in peace.”

He sounded more concerned about, and critical of, British preparation for the Olympics than Iranian preparation for nuclear weapons.

Whatever the issue, the right words and tone seem to elude him.

 

London’s Mayor Makes Fun of Mitt

I don’t think Mitt’s plan in coming to London was to be ridiculed in front of 60,000 people gathered for the finish of the torch relay, but that’s how it turned out:

“Speaking in front of 60,000 assembled in Hyde Park at a concert to mark the end of the Olympic Torch relay, the London Mayor tonight reaffirmed the city’s zeal for the event.

“‘There are some people coming from around the world who don’t yet know if we are ready,’ [Boris] Johnson roared. ‘There’s a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we are ready. Are we ready? Yes we are!’”

Emily Allen and Damien Gayle, Daily Mail

There Goes the Special Relationship

Let me begin by saying, “Thank you, God.”

From The Guardian:

“Mitt Romney handed Barack Obama a priceless gift for the U. S. presidential election campaign when the presumptive Republican nominee blundered on his first diplomatic outing by questioning whether London was capable of staging a successful Olympic Games.

“In a move that astonished Downing Street, hours before it laid on a special reception for Romney at No. 10, he told NBC there were ‘disconcerting’ signs about the preparations for the Games.

One senior Whitehall source said:  ‘What a total shocker.  We are speechless.’

“David Cameron wasted no time in slapping down Romney hours after his remarks were broadcast.  On a visit to the Olympic Park, the prime minister said:  ‘We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world.  Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.’”

Cameron gets the rhetorical gold, Mittens gets the rhetorical lead.

And, GOP, don’t you think you need to get a new nominee?  Wouldn’t you agree there are “disconcerting” signs about him?

Mitt Puts Rafalca Up on the Roof

Although Mitt will be at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, he is quick to distance himself from the rich guy taint of his dressage horse, in effect banishing poor Rafalca to the roof of the car, metaphorically speaking:

“This is Ann’s sport.  I’m not even sure which day the sport goes on.  She will get the chance to see it, I will not be watching the event.  I hope her horse does well.”

Notice he says “sport,” not “dressage.”  Notice it is “her horse,” even though the horse was paid for with his Bain money.

 

 

The Great Mitt-dini Escapes Agains (or Tries to)

OK, so Mitt isn’t responsible for the bad stuff that happened at Bain between 1999 and 2002 because he was off being in charge of the Olympics and then he “retroactively retired.”

So then I’m sure he’ll be happy to answer our questions about all the records from those Olympics.

Um, wait, no, he can’t answer those questions because he wasn’t there!  WTF?  According to his campaign, he left to run for governor of Massachusetts before they made the final decisions about the Olympic records.

Seriously, this is what his campaign is saying.  Can’t take the heat about Bain because he was at the Olympics, can’t take the heat about the Olympics because he was back in Massachusetts.

But those Olympic records were in good hands when Mitt left.  He had a Bain guy, Fraser Bullock, deal with them.

What happened to the records?  Many of them were destroyed.  The rest are at the J. Willard Marriott library at the University of Utah.  But before you head over to the campus, let me warn you that — yeah, you guessed it — you can’t see those records.  J. Willard has them sealed up nice and tight for Willard M.

This guy is just one giant red flag, practically screaming out, “Don’t trust me, don’t vote for me.”

Another Blast from the Past Hits Mitt

We know how Mitt has been running around taking President Obama out of context, so that the President’s remarks that you didn’t build the infrastructure that supports your business in Mittspeak became you didn’t build your business.

Well, the L. A. Times points out* that in his remarks at the opening of the 2002 Olympics, Mitt emphasized that the athletes didn’t get there on their own:

“You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power.  For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers encouraged your hopes.  Coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions.  All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them.”

This is the same point the President was making in Roanoke on July 13:  “Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.”

When Mitt says it, it’s the simple truth.  When Obama says it, it’s straight out of Das Kapital.

* “Romney in 2002:  Olympians ‘didn’t get here solely on your own power,’” Morgan Little

If You Give Me $1.3 Billion, I Could Run the Olympics

Mitt is heading to London for the Olympics, hoping to remind us of his days running the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.  That’s pretty much all he has left.

In 2008, he ran on Bain, the Olympics, and Massachusetts governor.

Now, Obamacare has made it impossible for him to run on his record as governor, since Romneycare was his big achievement.  He was trying to run on his experience at Bain, but that just opened a whole can of worms which are wriggling all over his campaign strategy.

So he’s lost two legs of his three-legged stool, and now the last leg is about to get sawed off.

The Dems have just released a great video* showing that Mitt got $1.3 billion from the federal government for his Olympics.  That compares to $609 million for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and $75 million for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.  There is devastating footage of John McCain decrying the $1.3 billion as “outrageous,” “a national disgrace,” “an incredible pork-barrel project,” and “a rip off of the taxpayer.”

The video closes by saying that Mitt didn’t save the 2002 Olympics, the American taxpayer did.

His trip to London is going to remind us that Ann “You People” Romney goes to Europe to shop for dancing horses costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and that he wrote off almost $80,000 for one horse on that little peek at his tax returns he gave us.

I’m sure Mitt will get the dressage vote.  I don’t think they’re losing sleep over that in the White House or Chicago.

* “The Olympic Bailout,” DemRapidResponse, YouTube

Mitt Not Throwing Stones on Olympic Uniforms

Mitt has refused to join the outcry over the fact that the U. S. Olympic Team’s uniforms were made in China.

That’s probably because the uniforms for his Olympics in 2002 were made in Burma, which produced lots of protests from human rights activists.

His media team at the time was so incredibly ignorant that their response was “What do you mean the uniforms were made in Burma, they were made in Myanmar!”

I guess Burma and Myanmar could be different places in the same universe where Mitt was simultaneously running and not running Bain Capital.

Was Mitt Set Up on Bain?

I’m wondering if Mitt has been set up over Bain to make the story not about jobs, but about honesty.

Mitt ran twice in Massachusetts, with the story of how he’d caused workers to lose their jobs and benefits used against him both times.  Ted Kennedy used it effectively to defeat Mitt and keep his Senate seat.  But it didn’t work as well for Shannon O’Brien, who lost to Mitt for governor.

So the sad stories about the folks whom Mitt callously fired weren’t a sure thing for the presidential race.  Might work, might not.  Voters understand about the “creative destruction” part of capitalism, that jobs and industries come and go.  Mitt might have been especially ruthless about not giving folks notice and severance pay, but Americans realize that very few of us work at the buggy whip factory anymore.

But the Massachusetts history also offered another way to attack Mitt on Bain — Mitt’s insistence that he had left the company in February 1999 to run the Olympics and wasn’t involved in or responsible for anything that occurred after that date.  At the time it was called a part-time leave of absence, consistent with two prior leaves he’d taken — one to fix Bain Capital’s parent company when it was near bankruptcy and another to run for Senate.  It was assumed he’d return, as he had both other times.  Would he really cut off any involvement with this company he owned and was still head of and let it possibly be run into the ground?

So going into the 2012 race, Mitt was stuck with his unequivocal claims about when he’d left Bain, dating back both to his Massachusetts run for governor and his 2008 run for president.  But those claims are inconsistent with all kinds of documentary evidence, from SEC filings to candidate disclosures to contemporaneous newspaper articles.

I’m wondering if someone saw that the real way to catch Mitt was not to focus on his trail of lost jobs, but rather on his trail of lies.  I’m wondering which political party that someone belongs to.