A place for all the fuckery that is the GOP & the 2012 presidential race.
A place for all the fuckery that is the GOP & the 2012 presidential race.
“Maybe I can liquidate Nebraska and redistribute its assets to a more viable investment.”
“But if I HAVE to sell the desk chairs for petty cash, so be it. It’ll help the poor people improve their riding posture.”
With the results in and the pundits having a field day making wild claims on TV about what Florida means for the rest of the primary season, it’s time to get down to brass tacks. The real question isn’t what Florida means for the rest of the primary season, but what did we learn from it? Did Romney finally show he can unite the Republican party and beat President Obama? Is the style we saw in Florida from Gingrich and Romney going to continue? I offer my thoughts:
What did we learn?
We learned that Romney intends to win this process by any means necessary. He didn’t just take off the gloves, he put on boxing gloves and wrapped them in barbed wire. He and his Super PACs spent an absolute fortune, pundits are saying he outspent Gingrich by $15 million in Florida (that means he spent a minimum of 4x more in Florida than Newt), and they spent almost 100% of it on purely negative ads trashing Gingrich. The attack ads (some of which were immediately disproved by Politifact and other sources, but people don’t normally look into things that well) aren’t a new tactic, we saw how well Romney’s negative tactics worked in Iowa when he demolished Gingrich there. What was a new development was how personal he got on the campaign trail. We didn’t see the Romney that promotes his business and leadership experience in Florida, we saw a new Romney that focused his energy on lashing out against Gingrich and pointing out his past in Congress and as a consultant and using that as a platform to make attacks against him. I wondered if Romney would go for the throat after being put on notice in South Carolina, but I underestimated how far he was willing to go with it. We also saw a different side of Gingrich than we’ve seen to date. The skilled orator who highlights his past as a political strategist and conservative while promoting his “grandiose” ideas was missing in Florida. We saw a Gingrich that appeared uncomfortable while under constant attack and failed to defend himself in an effective way against the attacks, whether they were true or false. He appeared frustrated, defensive, and angry and lost his focus on the issues and passion for his ideas we’ve seen so far. The other candidates, Santorum and Paul, barely register as having done anything in Florida. And before you start yelling at me, yes, I know both of them appeared at some events across the state and participated in the debates. Paul wisely skipped Florida to avoid wasting money and Santorum did what he could with the shoestring budget his campaign has been reduced to. We already knew Ron Paul was in this for the long haul, but it now appears Santorum is going to stay in the race as long as he can despite being flat in the polls too. I still don’t think this can continue all the way to the convention despite his claim that it will- Santorum simply doesn’t have the money or the loyal base of Paul to make it that far. He will have to win another state if he wants to build any momentum back up, and although that’s possible, I don’t think it’s too probable.
Did Romney show us he can unite the Republican Party and beat President Obama?
In a word- No. Romney had his strongest performance to date which is certainly important, but he still has a long ways to go to prove he can unite the Republican base and still appeal to any independents in a general election. Florida was a mixed bag for him. Yes, he won the primary and the delegates, but at a great cost. Not only did his campaign spend more than quadruple the amount of money campaigning in Florida than Gingrich (Santorum and Paul won’t register on the spending scale compared to either in Florida), he also lost a lot of his appeal to independents and potential Democratic defectors with the way he spent the money. Polls now show Romney’s likability numbers have been dropping since his scorched earth attack ad strategy started, and most surprisingly polls now show that Floridians would rather vote for Obama than Romney. This puts a whole new kink in the whole process. It has been assumed up until now that Romney was the most electable candidate and polls to date had shown him as the most likely to beat Obama, but that image of inevitability could be shattered if the way he wins the Republican nomination makes him so unlikable he can’t beat Obama. Romney is going to have to find a new way to beat Gingrich if he wants to be the nominee, because his constant negative attacks are taking a toll on his electability and overall appeal. Jabs here and there are fine and are pretty effective, but his current plan is a two edged sword and it will end up cutting him as badly as it cuts his opponents if he isn’t careful.
Is the style we saw in Florida from Gingrich and Romney going to continue?
No, I don’t think so. Gingrich’s concession speech (well, there wasn’t really any concession going on in it but I’m not sure what else you’d call it) after the results were almost all in was probably a signal of how his campaign will be run from here on out. He knows he didn’t handle the attacks well in Florida and that his own counter attacks failed to do any real damage to Romney and he needs to adjust his strategy if he’s going to be the nominee come August. I think Gingrich will stick to what he does best: promote big ideas, rail against Obama and the media when it’s beneficial to him, and lay out his vision for “rebuilding” America. He’ll have to get some jabs in against Romney here and there, but he needs to appear to rise above the attacks to beat them and I think he now knows that. Romney’s campaign machine is too big and well funded not to know that although they won the delegates in Florida, their current direction could cost them the election in November even if it succeeds in getting them the nomination. I think you’ll see Romney focus more on railing against Obama and trying to paint himself as someone the “common man” can connect with, because right now he’s still not making them believe he is the one that can make the economy work for them again. I think too many of his Gingrich attacks have been called out in Florida and Newt will theoretically be wiser from the mess of Florida and be better prepared for future grilling by the Romney ad machine, so there’s no logic in continuing in the vein of relentless negativity. The Super PACs for both will probably keep the anger dialed up for the rest of the process though, and the candidates will of course claim there’s nothing they can do about that.
So, like I said after South Carolina: Things are getting fun, and it will be interesting to see where things head. Luckily for my study habits February is a pretty slow month for the campaigning, but let me know what you think and I’ll do my best to respond.
-M
OK, you all need to check out this twitter page: RepubGirlProbz
I don’t think the hashtag started as a joke, but it has become one in the past few hours (THANK GOD-PLEASE COME TROLL WITH ME). Part of me wants to upload every tweet to tumblr so they can all be shit on , but it might just be better for my sanity if I direct you guys to the page.
~*~PRINCESSxREPUBxGIRLxProBz~*~* white rich girls with access to the internet. check it out if you can stomach it.
Seamus Romney for president.
Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian , has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, according to three people with direct knowledge of Paul’s businesses.
The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.
But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.
“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.
The newsletters point to a rarely seen and somewhat opaque side of Paul, who has surprised the political community by becoming an important factor in the Republican race. The candidate, who has presented himself as a kindly doctor and political truth-teller, declined in a recent debate to release his tax returns, joking that he would be “embarrassed” about his income compared with that of his richer GOP rivals.
Yet a review of his enterprises reveals a sharp-eyed businessman who for nearly two decades oversaw the company and a nonprofit foundation, intertwining them with his political career. The newsletters, which were launched in the mid-1980s and bore such names as the Ron Paul Survival Report, were produced by a company Paul dissolved in 2001.
A person involved in Paul’s businesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a former employer, said Paul and his associates decided in the late 1980s to try to increase sales by making the newsletters more provocative. They discussed adding controversial material, including racial statements, to help the business, the person said.
“It was playing on a growing racial tension, economic tension, fear of government,’’ said the person, who supports Paul’s economic policies but is not backing him for president. “I’m not saying Ron believed this stuff. It was good copy. Ron Paul is a shrewd businessman.’’
Read the full article at the Washington Post
Obama is a weak leader.
When stumping for Romney, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has a familiar theme: “We need a leader who will lead us to the moment . . . not to be cautious and safe and sit back and wait for someone else to do the hard work,” as he said in December. Then he attacks Obama for health-care reform and for not endorsing the work of the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission.
Huh? Saying the Affordable Care Act reflects a lack of leadership is like saying the Iraq war shows that Bush wasn’t a leader. Leading in the wrong direction should not be confused with not leading. In truth, Obama has often been a bold president, rolling the dice on health care and launching the attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound, in both cases over the objections of some advisers. He didn’t back Simpson-Bowles — for political reasons — but neither did Romney or other Republicans who reject the commission’s proposed tax increases. Are they weak leaders, too?
Obama is a tool of Wall Street.
It’s true that the president bailed out banks and let their executives resume making millions without using the leverage he had in early 2009 to restructure financial institutions and hold them accountable for wrecking the economy. He also hired Clinton-era retreads such as Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, despite their roles in the 1990s deregulatory policiesthat helped create the crisis.
However, there’s no evidence that the president did these things because he was beholden to Wall Street. Obama genuinely believed that closing banks would worsen the crisis and cost as much as $1 trillion in further bailouts. Time has proved Geithner’s “stress tests” to be smart policy; they stabilized banks and allowed almost all of the TARP money to be repaid. In the meantime, Obama fought for a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, pushed the “Buffett rule” to prevent fund managers and other top earners from paying lower tax rates than ordinary Americans, and backed a 5 percent tax surcharge on millionaires.
In his reelection bid, Obama is not nearly as dependent on Wall Street money as past Democratic and Republican nominees. He has raised about $30 million from 100 Wall Street bundlers, but the bulk of his campaign money has come from more than 1 million contributors averaging less than $100 each.
