Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

About That Deep Field…

I’m no fan of Mitt Romney, but Mittens was right when he looked at the GOP field  and was not impressed.  The field is certainly wide.  But deep?  Not so much.

First of all, aside from entertainment value, you can safely ignore Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Ben Carson.  None of these guys is going to be the 2016 Republican nominee.  Okay, maybe if Hillary finds a magic lamp in some Upper East Side antique store…  But let’s assume Alladin isn’t Ready for Hillary.

Ted Cruz probably falls in that group too.  Just because you breathe fire, doesn’t mean you’re going to catch fire.  “Clueless” and “obnoxious” aren’t high on the list of what voters look for in a candidate.

As for his fellow Texan, Rick Perry, he’ll do better than 2012, being off the pain meds and all.  So he’ll be able to remember a list of three.  Hell, maybe he’ll do four or five.  But he still comes across as dumber and goofier than George W. Bush.  He’ll have a less bizarre and humiliating, but still unsuccessful, go this time around.

As for Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, the eyes have it.  Watch a clip of Scott Walker with the sound off and just look into his eyes.  Not a helluva lot going on there, he’s the poster boy for “dumb look.”  Rubio?  Watch the water grab in the SOTU response and look at the absolute terror in his eyes.  If he panics over a sip of water, how is he going to fare in a room with Putin?  Vlad, by the way, wouldn’t give a damn if he needed a sip of water — or vodka — during a speech.  Anyone going to snicker at Mr. KGB?  I think not.  I don’t entirely write either off the way I do the others — Walker could unite the Establishment and the Tea Party and Rubio has some foreign/defense policy chops (especially compared to Walker) in an election where the Mideast Morass will feature prominently.  But really, neither one has what it takes.

Chris Christie?  Mittens knows more about him than we do from his Veep vet in 2012, and Mittens didn’t like what he learned.  Skeletons aside, Christie won’t wear well, we’ll be sick to death of him long before the NH primary.  Mitt has been gone just a few days, and Christie is already spouting nonsense about vaccines.  When his mouth isn’t full of food, it’s full of bluster and BS.

We come to Jebbie.  Mitt looked at him and saw a much less successful version of himself as a businessman.  But as a politician, Jeb is far less awkward and off-putting than Mitt.  He doesn’t make you cringe.  He’ll be the grown-up on the debate stage.  He’ll have all the money he needs.

So there you have it, America.  A “wide and deep” field — of one.

Mitt Being Obliviously Ironic

Mitt Romney complained to USA Today that one problem with the Olympics is “government personalities are promoting themselves…with someone else’s money.”

Um, didn’t Mitt mention his running the Salt Lake Olympics when he ran for governor of Massachusetts and then for prez as one of his main qualifications?  Anybody else remember all that stuff about how he turned around a failing enterprise and showed amazing executive and leadership skills?

But at least stray dogs weren’t murdered for the Salt Lake games.  Mitt personally drove each stray to Canada on the roof of his car.

Third Time’s the Charm?

A new Purple Strategies poll in New Hampshire shows Mitt leading for the 2016 GOP nomination, with 25%.  He’s followed by Rand Paul at 18%, Chris Christie at 17% (that won’t last), and Jeb Bush at 13%.

I really can’t imagine that Mittens would try again.  He didn’t even want to run again in 2012.  But those results show how weak and uninspiring the Republican field is right now.

Dear Mr. Bezos…

When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post last August, the former ombudsman for the paper, Patrick Pexton, did an open letter to the new owner about what he considered “the good, the bad, and the ugly” at the paper.  The ugly was reserved for WaPo’s conservative political blogger, Jennifer Rubin.  Some excerpts:

“Have Fred Hiatt, your editorial page editor…fire opinion blogger Jennifer Rubin.  Not because she’s conservative, but because she’s just plain bad.  She doesn’t travel within a hundred miles of Post standards.  She parrots and peddles every silly right-wing theory to come down the pike in transparent attempts to get Web hits. …

“Rubin was the No. 1 source of complaint about any single Post staffer while I was ombudsman, and I’m leaving out the organized email campaigns against her by leftie groups like Media Matters.  Thinking conservatives didn’t like her, thinking moderates didn’t like her, government workers who knew her arguments to be unfair didn’t like her.  Dump her like a dull tome on the Amazon Bargain Books page.”

I too can’t stand the woman. During the 2012 campaign, Rubin was basically a Romney campaign staffer embedded at a major media outlet, writing gushing schoolgirl love letters to him.  She also focuses so much on Israel that she seems to think she works at the Jerusalem Post.

I’m citing the letter today because she has a post up at WaPo called “The scandal is MSNBC,” in which she says Chris Christie’s problems are all MSNBC’s fault.  She criticizes their allowing Hoboken’s mayor, Dawn Zimmer, to claim that her city was denied Sandy aid because she wasn’t playing ball on redevelopment for property belonging to Port Authority chairman David Samson’s law firm’s clients. 

The thing is, everyone is trying to figure out Chris Christie’s motivation for acts that seem punitive and retaliatory, like the Fort Lee lane closures.  That’s because the Governor himself isn’t offering an explanation beyond “mistakes were made.”  If he had wanted to come on the air before, during, or after Dawn Zimmer, or send a spokesman, MSNBC would have been delighted to have him.  Until he ‘splains in full, the non-Fox media are going to be searching for reasons.

In Rubin’s cock-eyed world, Watergate was the fault of her newspaper, not the Nixon administration.

Jen Rubin Is in Love Again

During the 2012 election, Jennifer Rubin’s “Right Turn” bloggy-column thing at WaPo essentially functioned as a gauzy ad campaign for Mitt.  How Jen loved Mitt, despite the fact that she is Jewish and he is Mormon, despite the fact that they are married to others.  Every day, Jen rose and faithfully posted her school-girlish love letters to Mittens.  So sweet, so sad.  So charming, so creepy.

Right till the end, she refused to believe those annoying, Obama-biased polls, and was devastated when the Kenyan Muslim who hates Israel (the country our Jen loves most) won.

But 100 days into O’s second term, with spring upon us, Jen has recovered and found herself a new man.  Her bloggy-column thing today is a love letter to Chris Christie worthy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Sorry, Mittens.

Luntz Speaks the Truth, Thinking He’s Off the Record

GOP evil genius Frank Luntz spoke to a student group at the University of Pennsylvania.  He offered some fluff, making jokes about Nancy Pelosi and face lifts.  When asked about political polarization, he became more serious and replied he had something to say, but not on the record.  So the student reporter from the college newspaper turned off his recording device.  But another student started to record on his iPhone with Luntz, who I guess never heard about Mitt’s 47% video, unaware.  Luntz, feeling a little too comfortable and confident, then blithely went off on right-wing talk radio:

“And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it’s really problematic.  … And so that is a lot of what’s driving it.  If you take — Marco Rubio’s getting his ass kicked. … He’s getting destroyed.  By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others.  He’s trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn’t the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him.”

And now talk radio will kill Luntz.

For more, see “Secret Tape:  Top GOP Consultant Luntz Calls Limbaugh ‘Problematic,'” David Corn, Mother Jones