If Mitt Romney then Conservatism Dies & Obama Wins

[Dave]

>>I think we know where this is heading -- Bachmann gone, Perry gone, Cain soon to be gone, Ron Paul gone, Gingrich gone, Santorum gone...
>>And now what? A dump Romney by the reddest of the red - Erick Erickson?
>>This is now a contest of hate -- who do the Republicans hate more? Romney or Obama and the answer might be both equally.
>>Not the way to win an election.
>>
>>This isn't a vision of the country. I'll repeat - Erickson doesn't have a vision of the country as a whole, functioning and thriving country. He only has a vision of the Republicans running the country and inflicting only their way of life on the USA. That is significant in his analysis and his blind spot. That is the Republican blind spot.
>>

Mitt Romney as the Nominee: Conservatism Dies and Barack Obama Wins
by Erick Erickson (Diary)
Tuesday, November 8th at 4:45AM EST
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/1...ck-obama-wins/

Mit Romney will not go on Special Report with Brett Baier to answer the tough questions as the other candidates have done. No worries. Conservatives will bitch and moan for a few days and Romney will claim it was a scheduling issue, he’d always meant to go on, and he will go on.

Should Mitt Romney win the Presidency, conservatives will find this pattern play out repeated. Romney will head in a direction conservatives do not like and they will bitch and moan repeatedly and maybe, just maybe, he’ll part his hair in their direction.

We’ve seen this play out over and over. Jon Huntsman comes up with the best economic plan of all the candidates, Herman Cain follows up with 999, Perry comes out with a flat tax, and Romney refuses to do anything. Until he does something.

Mitt Romney is not the George W. Bush of 2012 — he is the Harriet Miers of 2012, only conservative because a few conservative grand pooh-bahs tell us Mitt Romney is conservative and for no other reason.

That is precisely why Mitt Romney will not win in 2012. But no worry, once he loses, Republican establishment types will blame conservatives for not doing enough for Mitt Romney, never mind that Mitt Romney has never been able to sell himself to more than 25% of the GOP voters. It’s not his fault though, it is the 75%’s fault.

Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. And his general election campaign will be an utter disaster for conservatives as he takes the GOP down with him and burns up what it means to be a conservative in the process.

Why Romney Will Be The Nominee

Mitt Romney will be the nominee because the other candidates, right now, are a pretty pathetic lot.

The base will not forgive Rick Perry his immigration sins. In fact, that has hurt him far more than his debate performances, but his debate performances have hurt him badly. Perry, who came out principled and fiery with a record others could only envy, has left others with the impression that he’s a poor man’s version of the village idiot, which in the SEC we call “Aggies”. Maybe he can turn it around.

Newt Gingrich will not be the nominee because, despite his daughter’s rebuttals to the horror stories of how Gingrich divorced his first of three wives, Jackie Gingrich told the Washington Post on January 3, 1985, “He walked out in the spring of 1980 and I returned to Georgia. By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said Daddy is downstairs and could he come up? When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from the surgery.”

Gingrich went on to cheat on the second wife with the third. Regardless of the actual facts or even the spin, he won’t win women.

Herman Cain won’t be the nominee because he can’t win women either. Regardless of what you think of the Politico story, Cain’s handling of the story has been an epic disaster. He’s down at least 10 points with women in Iowa. He’s falling even further and doesn’t even realize it. He’s largely been emboldened by a conservative media that is so used to standing by its men that too few are telling Herman that he is now at the point where he must actually sit and answer questions whether he wants to or not and whether he feels maligned or not and whether I think he should have to or not. If he loses women by as big as he is starting to lose the women, he cannot win.

So Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Conservatives will not rally together with the least of the bad alternatives and Romney, like John McCain before him, will run up the middle to the nomination. But, just like McCain, Romney will not beat Barack Obama.

Why Mitt Romney Will Not Beat Barack Obama

You’d think that given the economy, jobs, and the present angst about the direction of the country that the GOP would have an easy path to victory. You would be wrong.

You forget the electoral college. The vote is coming down to a handful of states and Barack Obama still maintains the advantage of incumbency and not terribly terrible polling in those swing states.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.

I’ve been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled. The man has no core beliefs other than in himself. You want him to be tough? He’ll be tough. You want him to be sensitive? He’ll be sensitive. You want him to be for killing the unborn? He’ll go all in on abortion rights until he wants to run for an office where it is not in his advantage.

Along the way, he’ll drop lots of coin to grease the skids for himself. Mitt Romney is the silly putty of politicians — press on him real hard and he’ll take on whatever image you press into him until the next group starts pressing.

Republican billionaires have a fantastic track record of getting Republican opinion leaders to support them and an even better track record at losing elections. Mitt Romney will be no different.

To beat Barack Obama, a candidate must paint a bold contrast with the Democrats on their policies. When Mitt Romney tries, Barack Obama will be able to show that just the other day Mitt Romney held exactly the opposite position as the one he holds today.

Voters may not like Barack Obama, but by the time Obama is done with Romney they will not trust Mitt Romney. And voters would rather the guy they don’t like than they guy they don’t trust.

Why Conservatism Will Die

Conservatism is already dying. Republicans on Capitol Hill are about to raise taxes on the American people with this Super Committee, but they’ll say they are just “raising revenue,” not taxes. Conservatives will give them a pass as they have on virtually every other major issue. Conservatives keep giving passes to people who shouldn’t be given passes because conservative in Washington have been there so long, they’d much rather get invited to the cocktail parties and avoid awkward encounters.

Washington, D.C. conservatives will also rally around Mitt Romney, just as they kept doing over and over and over with George W. Bush even after steel tariffs in Pennsylvania, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, the GM Bailout, and TARP. At some point the public will cease taking conservatives seriously when the most prominent conservatives — those in Washington who pose as the faces, voices, and writers of the conservative movement at large, keep throwing their lot in with a guy who keeps selling out the very principles conservatives claim to hold dear.

Some conservatives, of course, will not go all in for Romney. These conservatives will be blamed by major Republican and “conservative” mouth pieces for not doing enough to help Mitt Romney. They will be alienated, blamed, and made the scapegoat for the failures of the establishment GOP.

But there is something else too — Mitt Romney is winning the nomination without conservative help. The only time he pays conservatives any attention is when they cry loud enough that the media takes notice and Romney decides the story needs to go away. Once he is the nominee, it will be all about wooing the independents.

Hell, he can give the base Marco Rubio as the veep nominee, just like McCain did with Palin — a token for the base. But don’t delude yourself into thinking he will seriously take conservatives seriously. He got the nomination without them and he’ll only use them when it is opportunistically convenient for him.

Conservatism itself will not really die. But it might as well be dead as even conservatives in the heartland of the country stop taking Washington conservatives seriously.

The Contrast To Be Drawn

It is striking to me that in 2012 there is broad based popular angst against Wall Street and Washington and the Republican Party is on the verge of nominating a multi-millionaire scion of the Rockefeller Wing of the Republican Party whose closest encounters with the common man are accidentally touching one of the many hired hands in one of the many rooms of one of his many mansions. But then many of the DC-NYC Republican “conservatives” who support Romney are the same, only coming into contact with regular people when they are served their breakfast by a steward in the first class car on the Acela Express.

Neither Romney nor the Washington GOP crowd who loves him have very much at all in common with fly over country conservatives who see the GOP and Democrats both as out to lunch tools of K-Street and Wall Street. The party that could lead a conservative, populist campaign against Wall Street and Barack Obama, the former getting fat off the latter, will instead nominate a guy more at home on Wall Street than Main Street.

And enough conservatives will be cheerleaders and rally around him that by November of 2012 the ideological underpinnings of the modern American conservative movement will be coming apart.

I’m starting to think I need to walk it back on my rejection of Jon Huntsman. Because I’m starting to think even he would be more faithful in his conservative convictions than Mitt Romney.
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/1...ck-obama-wins/

[Riverwind]

The guy who wrote this does make some valid points but he has over simplified it. Conservative republicans will vote, and they will vote for who is on the Republican ticket. Don't sell them that short, now if one of these right wing tea party types decided that they are better qualified to lead the conservative movement and splits the republican vote then they will most certainly loose in Nov 12. I think this is more likely then anything else as the right wing really does not like Romney for a lot of reasons religion being one of them, they will put their own man/woman on the ballet.

You know Obama's numbers are not good, he has lost a lot of his support, but the republicans are doing worse. I don't think I have ever seen this in my lifetime or in the history of this country. This is not a good thing.

The election is one year away, time to make predictions.

The tea party candidate gets 30% of the vote no electoral votes.
The republican party Romney will get 30% of the vote and a few electoral votes.
Obama and the Democrat party will get about 40% of the votes and win most of the electoral votes in a land slide.

Democrats will also do well in the House, so well that Nancy may be the new speaker again, may loose some seats in the Senate but with the 60 vote being the majority nobody will have that.

Time to put your foot in your mouth everybody.

River

[A-1]

River,

At this point In 2007, I was predicting that Barak Obama would be our next President. People thought I was nuts, until they didn't and expressed, "...how'd you know that?"

Well, duh!

You left out the part about the anti-Tea Party vote that will supply Obama with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate.

The Conservatives with throw out the Republican/Tea Party candidates because they did not do enough and the Romney-backing Republicans will throw them out because they did too much.

By the time that this is all over even John Kerry could get elected to succeed Obama. Conservatism as we know it would become just like the John Birch Society, pariah-like in nature with most voters and most sensible Republicans rejecting it in favor of some new ideology that has not been formulated...yet.

[Dave]

Erick Erickson is one of the reddest commentators on the scene.

I'm not talking general election here. I'm talking republican primary politics leading up to their nominating convention.

There are at least two parts if not three to the Republican party and no matter how "enthusiastic" they are or seem to be.

The Tea Party third of the republican voters want someone who will drastically reduce government to nothing. They don't understand what government does or they don't care. They want a fire-breathing candidate like Bachmann or Perry or Cain. They want to kill government in all its forms. This group hates Obama more than anything in the world. This is the "do nothing" crowd that wants only the destruction of any opposition at the expense of the nation. The Tea Party was AstroTurfed into existence by Republican money. That's the biggest difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement - - democratic party has not tried to co-opt or fund OWS. The Tea Party is owned by the Republican party.

The "country club" business set of Republicans is sort of in control of the party. It is the old Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, Nixon type republican that actually can govern because they understand the role of government in providing for the good of the nation. These are hte ones you talk to that hated GW Bush and were ashamed by his overspending and arrogance in office.

Then there are the libertarians who fit into the republican party but are not respected, merely tolerated for their votes. Here's where Ron Paul and Ross Perot fit in. When they break with republicans, then republicans lose. So like I said, they are tolerated by the party because hey are needed.

Erickson points out that Romney is a suit of clothes with no substance. One third to one half of the republicans can't stand him and don't want him. But depending which of the subgroups they fit into the republicanism, they can't agree on another candidate. Erickson also understands that the farther right and more extreme these candidates get to gain votes in primaries, the harder it will be for the candidate to pivot and turn into a moderate and gain the independent votes that will elect a president.

What republicans are stuck with are extreme candidates or single issue candidates that can win their primaries but then those same candidates will lose independent support. Then there is Mitt Romney - middle of the road and taking positions on both sides of every issue in the election. There is nothing to Mitt Romney but the audience in front of his face and he supports that audience that minute. Tomorrow, he will change positions to please that audience.

That's what Erickson is talking about.

[A-1]

IT is definitely time to resurrect this thread and to discuss the future of Republicans and their politics.

Please, this is a very, very volatile subject. Please think before you post here...

[Dave]

I'm going to visit family for Easter.

[A-1]

My pit bull has plans on eating a bunny. A REAL bunny, not a chocolate one.

[Riverwind]

Wait its not over yet

Checking Santorum’s delegate math: Are Romney’s numbers really inflated?

According to a campaign strategist for Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney doesn't have anywhere near the number of delegates that both his campaign and most media outlets report.
A memo by strategist John Yob, made public Friday morning, claims that the figures from the Associated Press used by both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, are highly inaccurate. Those totals give Romney 658 delegates to Santorum's 281. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul trail with 135 and 51, respectively.
Those numbers put Romney well over the halfway mark to the 1,144 delegates he needs to secure the nomination. But the Santorum memo projects that under certain contingencies, Romney can only count on 571 delegates to Santorum's 342, making the race considerably tighter.


It just gets better and better

River

[moi621]

IT is definitely time to resurrect this thread and to discuss the future of Republicans and their politics.

Please, this is a very, very volatile subject. Please
think before you post here...

OMD
we need a ROL icon

The calling for ADULT behavior.

On Topic
Okay. I trust Romney to bail out Wall Street, the Banks and make sure the 1% suffer least and without criminal penalty then the hack job Obama's doing. The recovery demonstrates the Democratic Party has lost its' way and is now, Republican lite. Serving the same masters with a little more fluff for the poorest at the expense of the middle middle.
2012 is a duel of who cuts taxes for the rich more.

Obama, "Show Me".
Me, not numbers.

Moi
Fooled Once By Obama '08

[Dave]

...
Checking Santorum’s delegate math: Are Romney’s numbers really inflated?
...

>>It is over except for counting the delegates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...l?ref=politics

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Rick Santorum is as unpopular in Pennsylvania today as he was six years ago when home-state voters kicked him out of the Senate in a rout. That sour public perception may doom his fading chances of sticking around in the GOP presidential race, along with other hurdles that dot his path to a possible, and needed, victory in the April 24 primary.

He failed to heal a rift with fiscal conservatives who had lost confidence in him or reassure party leaders that he could temper his hardline positions on social issues that repel the moderate and independent voters who are crucial to success in statewide elections in this diverse state. Even some who know Santorum say he isn't the best candidate.

The former senator also faces a nearly insurmountable hurdle to stop Mitt Romney, who emerged as the nominee-in-waiting after his sweep of contests this week in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

None of that seems to be deterring Santorum.

"People in Pennsylvania know me," he said this week while campaigning at a Pittsburgh-area diner. "We've got a strong base of support here, and we're going to work very, very hard."

That Pennsylvanians know Santorum may be part of the problem.

He spoke at the state's largest annual gathering of conservatives several weeks ago, yet won a straw vote with less than half the vote. His support in the state also has slipped, according to surveys that highlight his apparent likeability problem.

Santorum is as unpopular now as he was at the time of his defeat. A February poll by Muhlenberg College showed that nearly half the registered voters surveyed viewed him unfavorably. Just 39 percent saw him favorably.

A March 28 poll by Franklin & Marshall College showed Santorum with 30 percent support to Romney's 28 percent among registered Republicans, a significant drop from the 29-point advantage Santorum enjoyed in February.

Santorum's image has suffered under a barrage of negative advertising by the better-funded Romney and his allies. Santorum lately also is battling the perception that Romney will be the nominee. He has complained, at times bitterly, about being badly outspent by Romney in states where he has lost to the former Massachusetts governor.

In 2006, with Democrat Bob Casey comfortably ahead, Santorum met with apprehensive conservative activists who wanted him to explain his enthusiastic support for moderate Republican Sen. Arlen Specter over rising conservative star Pat Toomey in the primary election two years earlier. The activists also sought Santorum's rationale for supporting targeted federal spending, or earmarks, and other fiscal positions they deemed irresponsible.

Santorum, who was his usual combative self and came across as anything but apologetic, argued that his positions should be balanced against everything he'd done throughout his 16 years in the House and Senate.

"The implication was clear that, `You guys have no choice. There is no other conservative in Pennsylvania, no other viable conservative,'" said Bob Guzzardi, a real estate investor and conservative activist from suburban Philadelphia who said he confronted Santorum at the meeting.

Said Ryan Shafik, a Harrisburg-based Republican campaign strategist: "It basically turned into a hostile meeting and Santorum never acknowledged wrongdoing. ... After that meeting, most of those people came away not helping him. They're not going to go door to door for him after the way he treated them."

Santorum has said he endorsed Specter because Specter agreed to support conservatives nominated to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush. Specter has said he never made – and never would have made – such a promise.

The sour feelings toward Santorum are also evident in his lack of endorsements from the state GOP establishment. Toomey, who won Specter's seat in 2010, Gov. Tom Corbett, Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley and state party chairman Rob Gleason all are publicly uncommitted. Former Govs. Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker, four congressmen and GOP national committeeman Bob Asher, are backing Romney.

Even some who know Santorum well say he isn't the best candidate for the times.

"It's fairly clear Mitt Romney is a much better candidate than Rick Santorum to attract swing voters in a year like this," said former Rep. Phil English, a Romney supporter who campaigned with Santorum in 2006.

Santorum lost that election to Casey by 18 percentage points, a defeat attributed in part to the anti-war, anti-Bush mood that took hold that year and in part to a blunt personal style that his constituents didn't always appreciate. Santorum didn't back down from his support for Bush or the war.

"I've been there, I've stood with him and I've gone down with the ship," said English, now a Washington-based lobbyist.

Supporters such as trucking contractor Marlin Schnupp, who showed up to see Santorum at a rally last month in Gettysburg, sees past the criticism that Santorum can't appeal to moderates.

"Maybe they're right, but it doesn't change what I think," said Schnupp, 64, who views Santorum as the only candidate who is honest. "If it meant we lost the national election, I'd still support him."

Romney has more than half of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination, more than twice Santorum's total, according to the latest tally by The Associated Press. Santorum would need to win 80 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination before the GOP's national convention in August.

Santorum is helped some by the fact that Romney is struggling with his image in Pennsylvania, too. The Franklin & Marshall poll found Romney and Santorum with nearly identical unfavorable ratings, 25 percent and 26 percent, respectively.

But Santorum is under more pressure to win Pennsylvania.

"It would be the ultimate black eye to his campaign to lose his home state and really diminish his argument that he can take to the convention that he is an electable candidate" in November, said Muhlenberg College pollster Christopher Borick.

[Riverwind]

Moi
Fooled Once By Obama '08

Moi, you gotta get over pot not being legal, this is a fight he does not need right now, you will have a much better chance of it becoming legal in his second term. Think about it, but please stop you make yourself look foolish and I know you are not that.

River

[A-1]

Moi, you gotta get over pot not being legal, this is a fight he does not need right now, you will have a much better chance of it becoming legal in his second term. Think about it, but please stop you make yourself look foolish and I know you are not that.

River

Well, River, I am glad that YOU are convinced.

[moi621]

Get over the pot retorts.

Obama lied.
People losing their homes unjustly and compensated with $2,000 and shut out from further legal action against the wrong doers.
A rising misery index while the perpetrators get bail out money. Why not administer those small business loans from a government agency. Yup! Then the bankers lose their parasitic take.
I bet he dares not show up on Jon Stewart the Daily Show again after being asked if he had a surprise basket for the American people filled with jobs, etc.
NeoCon Trickle Down economic practices are NOT the Obama I voted for.
Did you?

Moi
River et al, before you diss me on pot again, why not have another beer first. Whatever mellows you.
The frequency has gotten obscene to be used to diss a position put forward. "Obama lies"


C'mon the Bankers got deregulated, gave out bad loans, did not take the hit but got bailed out,
and get more stimulus money to give out, loans.
Called stimulus. It would be funny if people were not suffering over it.
If that is my Democratic Party President, give me a Republican.
Then hopefully we can achieve a true Democratic Party President.

[Riverwind]

Moi, just in case you were not following everything going on in Washington the congress is right winged tea party republicans, and laws are drawn up in the house and senate which then must pass both houses before the president can sign any bill into law. You are blaming the president for something he has no control over, namely the house of representatives. We elect a president and we are a republic, not a democracy, and being such the presidents word is in fact not law. Unless you are like what we had the first 6 years of Bush Jr, where both house and senate were also republican and Bush had a rubber stamp congress. This president has never had that, but then again I would not expect you to say otherwise, as you support, OH dare I say it, Paul.

I guess what were are all getting tired of is your every post saying the same damn thing, its the republican in you that does this, "if I say it loud enough and long enough maybe it will become the truth". If you feel that Obama did you so much harm don't vote for him, its that simple, those of us who see the job he has done and see who is running against him will put him back in office for another 4 years, that is the way our system works.

River

[moi621]

We witnessed capitulations before discussions took place. Repeatedly to where it became a cliche.
We witnessed a President who failed to display Leadership You Could Believe In when he nominally controlled Congress.
We witness all his, "sorry I had to compromise" actions, benefit his major Wall Street contributors.
Deeds, Not Words, Deeds
Sly or Invertebrate? I believe sly.

Moi
The 1% Did Not Suffer enough Under President Obama. Halleluiah. Save the Job Creators.
Make them richer so they are ready when they know it is time to create jobs.

: All so Corporationist. See Bob3 Ex BFF? Corporationism gone amok. Get it yet? Like 1890. The Gilded Age. Whose "gild"?
Did you witness a different recovery then I did, River DEAR