“...I’ve seen ads that were more inflammatory than this one, and ads that were in various ways more reprehensible than this one (not many, but some). But I cannot recall a single presidential campaign ad in the history of American politics that lied more blatantly than this one….”
Mitt Romney is going to be an abject disaster for the entire GOP. If we aren’t careful, he’s not only going to give Obama a huge “mandate” by the size of his electoral victory, but he’s also going to cause us to lose the House. Of course, the corrupt tea party House members aren’t helping there, either.
“…You don’t even have to go all the way back to Mitt Romney’s pointed trashing of “Obamacare” at the NAACP convention in July, or his subsequent admonition that people who want “free stuff” should vote for President Obama.
While those are all helpful in understanding why Mitt Romney has chosen to go out of his way to lie this issue into the campaign, you only have to go back a little more than a week, to Romney’s remarks in Israel about the role of “culture” in economic prosperity. He initially came under fire when his remarks were cast as a racist attack on Palestinians, but then the media completely missed the fact that his campaign’s defense was, essentially, that Romney’s cultural bigotry is not confined merely to Palestinians, that he also slammed other cultures for being inferior, and therefore making themselves poor….”
One of the problems is the fact that Mitt Romney is a perfect liar. Every time he opens his mouth, he lies. Those lies are going to not only come back to haunt him, but will come back to destroy the GOP.
Political Animal
It looks like Mitt Romney may have lost Ann Coulter. When he loses Ann Coulter, it’s close to being all over. He’s losing more and more people, on a daily basis, including what The Pink Flamingo calls NORMAL Reagan Republicans. You know the ones. We’re an endangered species, being pushed to the brink of extinction by the extremism of the tea parties, AFP, and the Koch Brothers.
Romney’s poll numbers are tanking. The latest FOX poll has a 9 point spread. Because it is a FOX poll, and they are never complementary to Republicans, I would take it with a grain of salt. The Pink Flamingo was speaking to someone on Thursday evening who thinks the spread is even worse, and FOX is being kind. If the following is true, then the GOP is screwed, big time. (CNN has a 7 point spread). Obama is now also leading with men and independents.
“…While Democrats typically hold a slight edge over Republicans nationally in party identification, this attitude shifts based on events and changing sentiment. These days, voters seem to be even more likely to consider themselves Democrats than Republicans. There has been a five percentage-point Democratic advantage, on average, in Fox News polls this year. In this poll, the Democratic edge is nine points. That may or may not be on the high side, although it is similar to other recent national polls conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, which puts Democrats up 11 percentage points and the Pew Research Center, with Democrats up by 13 percent….”
The little Romneycare debacle on Wednesday may have drawn a major wedge between Romney and some of his more conservative panderers.
On Wednesday, Mitt’s press spokes-bimbo mentioned that someone would still be alive today if they were living in Mass. and had Romneycare. The Pink Flamingo has been telling you that Mitt Romney has no plans to do much of anything with Obamacare, but allegedly – appoint Pam Blondi, Florida’s bimbo-AG, to enforce it throughout the nation. When one considers the combined intellectual capacity of some of the women Romney uses for his campaign, we’re screwed. They make blond bimbos look bad.
Matt Lewis brings up something The Pink Flamingo has been saying for ages. Mitt’s personnel choices reflect his poor policy choices. If he can’t do better, the GOP has a very serious problem. It is also a character question. It is also about judgement. Romney is showing increasingly bad judgment in his rash statements that have serious foreign policy implications. On Thursday, he insulted Japan. Just add Japan to the growing list of inexplicable foreign policy debacles. He has insulted the UK. He wants to revive the cold war, with one of his advisers calling Russia the Soviet Union. The mess he made in Israel is still being felt. The only reason he even went to Poland is because the Mormon Church has a huge missionary effort there he was cutting an ad exploiting the late, nearly sainted John Paul II.
His foreign policy is a disaster.
The Nation
MAKING FOOLS OF CONSERVATIVES
OR
CONSERVATIVES MAKING FOOLS OF THEMSELVES OVER ROMNEY?
Ann Coulter thinks that people don’t need public education. It’s a waste of money.
“...Let’s hope that if Ann Coulter ever needs the help of a police officer of firefighter that neither he nor she was watching Coulter jeer about their overly high salaries on the Hannity show last night. Same thing if she ever needs her road repaired or has any problems with her municipal water or sewage. Because I have a sneaking suspicion that she’d never have the nerve to tell any such workers to their face that they’re living high on the hog, earning just “slightly” less than she does, thanks to her largesse.
Two-time voter-fraud suspect Ann Coulter has made a very nice living throwing around her poisoned darts and her blonde hair from low-cut dresses. But instead of a willingness to give back to the country that gave her a Palm Beach lifestyle in return for sensationalized hate mongering, Coulter demeaned it even more.
Coulter sneered to Sean Hannity:
I mean this idea about ‘investing’ in the public schools! That’s like investing in the horse track! Investing in public sector employees who make more than you do! A lot more than you do! Retire before you do! Have bigger pensions than you do! That’s the fight! Government employees vs. those of us who pay their salaries. So they want to keep us focused on being angry and resentful towards someone who’s just making slightly more than you are….”
Martin Bashir says that Mitt Romney reminds him of the great imposters of history.
“…And this is why Mitt Romney has been described by Britain’s national press as a blundering fool. This is why he arrived in London and immediately insulted the British Olympic Committee and the British government’s handling of the Games. It is because he cannot talk about himself and he lacks the insight required to talk about others. His brief visit became the reverse of Dale Carnegie’s most famous work, a revised version by Mr Romney: ‘How to Lose Friends and Influence Nobody’.
In many ways, he’s reminiscent of the great imposters of history. He has no past that he speaks of — only the ambitions he has for the future. But that’s hardly surprising. Because when an individual is at war with his own biography, what is there left for him to discuss?…”
Is being a phony a virus?
Is it contagious?
Is there something a person can take to inoculate themselves from it?
Are certain groups more susceptible to it than others?
Does it block one’s eyes to factual accuracy?
Does phony allow a person to ignore reality and simply slip into fantasy?
Is phoney DNA altering?
Can it be cured?
Apparently, for the far right, it is quite fatal.
It could be fatal for the GOP.
It is fatal because the right is making fools of themselves, in more ways than one. They refuse to hold him Mitt Romney accountable – for anything.
It is going to be fatal for Rush Limbaugh. Picture this:
But…. Rush is ignoring this….
Little Green Footballs
Or, try this one. To The Pink Flamingo, this is the LAST STRAW.
“…FightBigotry.com, a new Super PAC registered with the Federal Election Commission this week, makes no bones about its aim. It intends to run an attack ad that it says will hit President Barack Obama for “his disturbing, yet crystal-clear pattern of tacitly defending black racism against white folks before and since being elected president.”
FightBigotry.com’s founder and treasurer is Stephen Marks, a well-known Republican opposition researcher whose 2008 book Confessions of a Political Hitman detailed his work in what he called “the dark side of politics.” In 2000, he launched an attack ad under the misleading name “Americans Against Hate,” attempting to tie Al Gore to controversial comments by Rev. Al Sharpton. Another Marks spot in 2004 attempted to link John Kerry to convicted murderer Willie Horton. He was forced to retract a claim in the book about then-Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), acknowledging that “the information was not accurate.”…”
Mother Jones
“...“We have a radicalized, off-the-deep end Republican Party,” the Nobel Prize–winning economist added. Krugman puts the GOP’s latest presidential candidate in that category. “I find myself now, watching Mitt Romney campaign, I find myself wishing for the honesty of George W. Bush,” he said….”
John Sununu was required to retract his comment that Obama needed to learn how to be an American.
Picture this: According to Rasmussen, right now, the GOP has a generic House advantage of two points. T – W – O, 2, dos, as in 1 + 1 = We are So Screwed!
Then there is this: Eric Cantor who should be haunted by various specters of corruptions future (a little hint of what could be coming down with him) is losing in Virginia!
Add to it, the fact that the GOP in the Senate refuses to go along with campaign donation disclosure, things are bad.
Why?
According to a PF source, 196 have given 85% of all GOP money this year. Of that 85%, 60% comes from just 17 “white guys”.
Gary Johnson is scoring 5.6% nationally, doubling his numbers since May 13. Heck, if this trend continues, doubling every two months, then by November, we will have a whole new horse race. Look for Ron Paul supporters to head in his direction now that Romney has managed to betray their fearless leader.
Rush Limbaugh, according to a PF source, wants Romney to go after Obama on his alleged pot use as a teen. Good move. You insult anyone who ever smoked a joint as a teenager and in college. You insult anyone who has an abuse problem and over came it. Oh, wait – Mitt Romney is perfect. Lips that touch liquor would never touch his. No smoking, caffeine, soda, tea, coffee, cigars, or even chocolate for the good Mormon. BUT – antidepressants by the ton are the vogue in Utah. They take more antidepressants
“…Romney’s core problem is this: He heads a party that must win two-thirds of the white working-class vote in presidential elections to compensate for its weakness in almost every demographic category. The white working class is the most pessimistic and alienated group in the electorate, and it especially fears and dislikes the kind of financial methods that gained Romney his fortune.
Romney has a strong potential defense: Bain was in the business of making companies more efficient and profitable. Downsizing and outsourcing were necessary — and often indispensable — means to that end. In a growing economy, the workers who lost their jobs should find new jobs elsewhere, and it’s precisely the relentless search for profitability that causes economies to grow in the first place.
That’s an argument that, to borrow an old joke of Henry Kissinger’s, is not only convincing but has the additional merit of being true. However, it’s not an argument that appeals much to the voters Romney most intensely needs to win. Hence his unleashing of the war room — but in the end, there’s only so much a war room can do. And this time, by trying to do too much, the Romney war room may have blasted its own side with lethal friendly fire….”
There are times when, out of the mouths of liberals, come some interesting observations.
Religious Dispatches
In Kansas, the Koch Brothers basically own the state and control the agenda. The GOP is bought and paid for by them.
Huffington Post
“...Either the British Conservatives have become closet socialists and liberals or—perhaps more likely—the Republican Party has drifted much further to the right since the days Maggie and Ronnie danced at the ambassador’s residence. Meanwhile, having seen a dress rehearsal of tonight’s Opening Ceremony two days ago, I’m not sure how Romney and his supporters will feel about one elaborate dance section that celebrates “socialized health care” and the NHS. But we owe him a vote of thanks. He’s already cheered us all up….”
Several months ago, The Pink Flamingo, aside from being accused of being a socialist, was accused of jumping ship, bailing on the GOP, and contributing to the destruction of the country because I refuse to support Mitt Romney. I was also accused of turning into someone like Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. In a way, that’s a complement. Johnson is honest. I am absolutely convinced the far right and the tea parties are not.
When Harry Reid says something with which I agree, I know there is a disturbance in the Force.
“…”We feel comfortable in the Senate,” he said. “Where the problem is, is this: Because of the Citizens United decision, Karl Rove and the Republicans are looking forward to a breakfast the day after the election. They are going to assemble 17 angry old white men for breakfast, some of them will slobber in their food, some will have scrambled eggs, some will have oatmeal, their teeth are gone. But these 17 angry old white men will say, ‘Hey, we just bought America. Wasn’t so bad. We still have a whole lot of money left.’”…”
WPost
“…“I have to say that I’m frustrated by how much we — I mean the Republican Party — are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes in this moment in history,” he told The Post-Standard editorial board.
Hanna, R-Barneveld, pointed specifically to Michele Bachmann of Minnesota — particularly her suggestion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin be investigated to see if she has ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood that would compromise her loyalty.
Hanna, a businessman who defeated Democratic incumbent Michael Arcuri two years ago, said his first term in Congress left him “sad in a lot of ways” because of the growing divisiveness on both sides of the aisle.
“We render ourselves incapable of governing when all we do is take severe sides…” he said. “If all people do is go down there and join a team, and the team is invested in winning and you have something that looks very similar to the shirts and the skins, there’s not a lot of value there.”
While he blamed the dysfunction on both sides, he said he feels more bitterness coming from the Republican caucus than from the Democrats.
“I would say that the friends I have in the Democratic Party I find … much more congenial — a little less anger,” he said….”
It is now so bad, John McCain and Lindsey Graham are considered socialists.
THE TIDE IS TURNING?
The Dump Romney movement has begun. Steve Baldwin of the Council for National Policy is calling for Romney to step down.
The Pink Flamingo has been telling, you, all along, that Conservative Buyer’s Remorse was going to set in with Mitt Romney. I just never thought it would be happening this soon! Pardon my snarky I TOLD YOU SO, but I TOLD YOU SO! If you think I am enjoying this, well… I am. Then again, I’m not enjoying this at all.
Just train your over-inflated psyche to say “President Obama” for four more years.
When you lose Bill Kristol…. well, there goes the neighborhood.
Weekly Standard
NA NA NA NA NA
“...Kristol cited numbers from a recent Fox News poll, which showed that just 41 percent of voters think the president has a clear plan for improving the economy.
“Not great for an incumbent president — the economy is slow and you’re only at 41-53,” he said. But the numbers were even worse for Romney, Kristol pointed out.
“Do you think his challenger, Gov. Romney, has a clear plan for improving the economy or not? Yes 27, no 55. I don’t think you can beat an incumbent president even if the economy’s slow if 27 percent of the voters think you as the challenger don’t have a clear plan for improving the economy,” he said….”
Politico
“...If Mitt Romney loses his run for the White House, a turning point will have been his decision Monday to absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class. He is managing to turn the only possible silver lining in Chief Justice John Roberts’s ObamaCare salvage operation—that the mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty is really a tax—into a second political defeat.
Appearing on MSNBC, close Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom was asked by host Chuck Todd if Mr. Romney “agrees with the president” and “believes that you shouldn’t call the tax penalty a tax, you should call it a penalty or a fee or a fine?”
“That’s correct,” Mr. Fehrnstrom replied, before attempting some hapless spin suggesting that Mr. Obama must be “held accountable” for his own “contradictory” statements on whether it is a penalty or tax. Predictably, the Obama campaign and the media blew past Mr. Fehrnstrom’s point, jumped on the tax-policy concession, and declared the health-care tax debate closed….”
Blog for Arizona
Mitt Romney invested in a medical waste disposal company that disposed of aborted fetuses.
“…The candidate’s 2010 tax returns listed at least 20 investment holdings besides Sankaty that had not been previously disclosed on federal reports. At least seven were foreign investments. Bain Capital Inc., the holding that posted the $1.9 million earning, was listed on Romney’s state ethics reports in 2001 and 2002, when he ran for governor, but was missing from any annual ethics report until Romney’s trust included it last month on his 2012 financial statement.
Sankaty is the only offshore holding in the Romneys’ portfolio under their full control. On his 2010 taxes, Romney’s blind trust filed an IRS form identifying Sankaty as a “controlled foreign corporation.” That filing is required for any U.S. taxpayer who owns more than 50 percent of a foreign company. Romney’s 2010 tax returns indicate that he and his wife control all 12,000 shares.
Several U.S. Securities and Exchange documents from the late 1990s and 2000s depicted Romney as Sankaty’s owner at the time, but when he ran for Massachusetts governor in 2001 and 2002, Romney did not list the company on annual disclosure forms required by the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission.
The ethics commission would not comment on the omissions. Boston College law professor R. Michael Cassidy, who was a member of the commission at the time, said that if Romney “owned this business before he signed his ethics disclosure, then he was obliged to report it.” The state’s disclosure rules also allow a $1,000 minimum threshold. A six-year statute of limitations covering Romney’s ethics reports has since expired.
Bermuda legal documents show that on Jan. 1, 2003, the day before Romney was sworn in as governor, his wife’s trust acquired 12,000 shares of Sankaty. The transfer was not made public. The month before, Romney had placed his assets in the state-approved trust overseen by Malt. The move legally allowed the trust to describe Romney’s holdings in 2003 only as “various investments and securities” – without providing details. The trust filed similar disclosures between 2004 and 2007, the last year of Romney’s term.
Romney’s use of Sankaty as his partnership stake in Bain deals is documented in several U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reports between 1998 and 2000. The company controlled 50,000 shares of Global-Tech Appliances Inc., a Chinese appliance firm that Bain briefly invested in. Sankaty was also used to manage 385,000 shares in the 1999 takeover of Domino’s, as well as the $75 million investment into the Stericycle waste disposal firm and a $150 million investment in the US LEC telecommunication firm...”
“...The couple’s ties to Mr. Ebeling, 53, have also led to a legal entanglement. In 2010, a San Diego woman sued the trainer, his wife and Mrs. Romney for fraud, claiming that the severity of a foot defect in a horse she bought from Mrs. Romney for $125,000 had been concealed. The case raised questions about whether the Ebelings, who acted as sales agents, intentionally covered up the animal’s condition, and if so, whether Mrs. Romney, a largely absentee owner, knew.
Lawyers for Mrs. Romney and the Ebelings argued that the buyer was aware of the defect, a condition disclosed by a veterinarian who conducted a prepurchase exam, and denied any effort to deceive her. They pointed out that she continued to ride the horse, named Super Hit, for more than a year after the purchase in 2008.
Last September, on the eve of a jury trial, Mrs. Romney was dropped from the lawsuit before it was settled out of court, according to the Romney campaign. “The lawsuit was frivolous,” said Gail Gitcho, a Romney spokeswoman. Lawyers for the Ebelings did not return calls.
One thing is certain: the suit has done nothing to shake Mrs. Romney’s faith in Mr. Ebeling, who continues to enjoy her support as he has competed in international dressage competitions this spring and prepares for the United States Olympic selection trials beginning on June 8 in Gladstone, N.J….”
“…What’s most significant about the public hand-wringing about Romney is that it doesn’t merely reflect transient political circumstances: Fehrnstrom’s error and the overall sloppiness of Romney’s response to the Supreme Court’s health care decision are merely symptoms of what Republicans have long viewed as Romneyland’s shortcomings.
“They have always had big liabilities in their operation when it came to responding to attacks and now those weaknesses are being exposed. The Obama tax hike is one thing, but the slow response to the outsourcing story in the Post was probably one of the biggest instances of political malpractice in recent political history,” said one national GOP strategist, echoing numerous others.
“The campaign needs to become more nimble and forward-leaning ASAP from both a political and policy perspective or it isn’t going to be enough to beat a very beatable and weak incumbent in November,” the strategist said. “Romney’s inability to define himself, in the hopes of keeping this of a referendum election, have turned him into a blank canvas that is rapidly being painted by the Obama campaign.”
Republicans don’t all agree on what, exactly, Romney must do to set his campaign back on the right track. The common theme in their angst is simply: do something.
On her radio show, Laura Ingraham bemoaned Romney’s decision to take time off the trail and rest up at his vacation home in New Hampshire. “This is the advisers telling him, ‘Oh, it’s fine, take a week,’” she said. “Should Romney call the cease-fire or get out there on the trail and get off the jet ski?”
Notably, the headlines have been linked prominently on the Drudge Report, whose proprietor, Matt Drudge, is known to have close ties to Romney’s camp.
The Murdoch commentary, on some level, was not a surprise — the media mogul, according to many people around him, has never been a Romney admirer, going back to his initial presidential run in 2008. And his New York Post was among the earliest media critics of Romney’s Bain tenure this cycle.
Nonetheless, a number of Republicans say the critical mass of public commentary reflects a larger issue. The daylight between Romney’s message on health care and the GOP’s “it’s a tax” mantra underscores the fact that he is not someone with deep ties to the Republican party — and the fact that he is doing little by way of fleshing out his policy plans isn’t helping.
“I worry the absence of policy comes from a general absence of passion/ideas,” said one Republican insider, who asked not to be identified criticizing the campaign. “I mean, what the hell does Mitt care about? What does he want to do? I don’t know.”
There is a bottom line here. The conservative punditry world, who pandered for Romney, is now seeing the disaster that he is. One wonders if they will own up to the fact that they created this monster. They are the ones responsible for the historic debacle facing the GOP in November. In a way, they are going to deserve everything they might get!
