Archive for the ‘Romney’ Category

History and the numbers say Barack Obama will be re-elected tomorrow. History and the intangibles suggest Mitt Romney will unseat him. Which will prevail?

Let’s look at each.

The numbers have moved solidly in Obama’s favor. He caught Romney in the Real Clear Politics average of national opinion polls on Halloween after trailing for the better part of the previous three weeks. More importantly, he holds leads — usually narrow leads, but leads nonetheless — in enough swing states to push him past the threshold of 270 electoral votes (EVs).

There’s been much parsing of the polls this year, much of it focused on the partisan-ID breakdowns that various pollsters were using. A poll of “likely voters” inherently tells us something about who the pollster believes will actually bother to vote, and that’s as much art as it is science. Many pollsters have been forecasting an electorate similar to that of 2008, a wave election that saw Obama rack up 365 EVs and the Democrats claim a huge …

Continue reading Presidential prediction: The candidate who defies history and wins will be . . . »

David M. Walker has been touring America talking about the need to face facts about our federal debt. Walker, who was U.S. comptroller general under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, came to Atlanta with former Clinton staffer Alice Rivlin and other members of the bipartisan Fiscal Solutions Tour last March: Here’s what I wrote about it at the time (quoting Rivlin but not Walker). He has even been mentioned as a possible independent presidential candidate in the near future; the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman actually wrote a column suggesting that Walker run this year.

So when Walker says he’s endorsing one of the two men who are major-party candidates for president this year, it’s worth listening. Here’s what he wrote in an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Times:

From a fiscal perspective, I am convinced that both major presidential candidates want to achieve a “grand bargain,” although they clearly differ on how to get there. Unfortunately, while I would prefer to make a …

Continue reading 2012 Tuesday: A real deficit hawk endorses . . . »

Politicians are not always good at the “telephone” game. Witness Mitt Romney.

“Telephone,” as you may remember from your childhood, is the game in which one person whispers a phrase to another person, who whispers it to another, and so on, until the last person in line. When the message reaches the final set of ears, it’s usually been misspoken so many times as to be unrecognizable to the original speaker.

That game came to mind this week when a video surfaced, depicting Romney speaking at a May 17 fund-raiser in Boca Raton, Fla. Romney is recorded saying, in part:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government …

Continue reading It’s the spending! Romney muddles the message on non-taxpayers »

So it appears that, with the Muslim world burning and reports that some but not all embassies were on alert for possible security threats on the 9/11 anniversary last week, with unemployment still so high and the Obama administration’s policies still so ineffective that the Federal Reserve has resorted to a new round of printing money — with all that, we’re nevertheless doomed to another round of debate about another “gaffe” by Mitt Romney.

That gaffe consists of Romney’s remarks, during a a closed-door fund-raiser four months ago, when he said, in part:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. …

Continue reading 2012 Tuesday: What Romney got right about Obama and dependency, where he went wrong »

TAMPA — The enduring image from the 2012 GOP convention may well be an empty chair, the prop Clint Eastwood used to represent Barack Obama’s presidency during a prime-time performance that was at turns bizarre and bitingly effective.

That empty chair — an apt symbol for a president known during his legislating days for voting “present” and during his White House tenure for being MIA on the country’s most pressing economic and fiscal issues — is already a social-media icon. It’s already spawned a meme of people photographing themselves talking to unoccupied furniture: “Eastwooding.” Plus, at least two new snarky Twitter accounts: @InvisibleObama and @ClintsChair.

But if that’s the only visual people take away from this past week, it will be a shame. The picture burned in my mind is of a yellow legal pad.

That’s because the week’s emotional peak came a couple of hours before Dirty Harry interrogated the air. It came from a retired firefighter and his wife as …

Continue reading Eastwood’s empty chair, and Mitt’s Mormon moment »

TAMPA — So I’m sitting at the gate in the Tampa airport, Sunday column filed, and finally have time to put down some quick thoughts about Thursday night’s finale at the RNC.

First, Clint Eastwood’s performance is a good example of why (I presume) he insists that the actors in his movies follow a script. There were some grand moments in there — “You, we, we own this country. … Politicians are employees of ours” being one of them — and the image of President Obama as an empty chair is going to have staying power in this campaign. But his 12-minute bit could have been done in much less time and been even more effective. As rambling and bizarre as Eastwood was at times, I don’t think he hurt Mitt Romney with his performance. He just didn’t help as much as he might have.

Second, there were a few primetime-worthy appearances earlier in the evening that would have done much more to burnish Romney’s public image. The first was a trio of speeches by members of Romney’s church in …

Continue reading RNC 2012: Summing it up »

Hours before Mitt Romney takes the stage to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign released nine new videos on YouTube about his successes in business. Could they represent a preview of the case he’ll make tonight? Here’s one of them, about that staple of shopping malls across the country: Brookstone.

A robust defense of his business career has been a long time coming. Will these help do the trick?

(H/t: Hot Air)

– By Kyle Wingfield

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Continue reading RNC 2012: Before Romney’s speech, campaign releases a bevy of Bain videos (see one here) »

TAMPA — Giving a glimpse at Mitt the man was Ann Romney’s job Tuesday night, and she framed her story as one about love: hers for him and his for her, their family and his fellow man.

Defining the choice between the Romney Republicans and Barack Obama’s Democrats was Chris Christie’s job immediately afterward, and he framed his story as one about respect: the kind, as he said his mother taught him, a person sometimes has to seek instead of love. The kind that leads one to make tough decisions, to say “no” when it’s right, even if “yes” would be easier.

“Look into your hearts,” Ann Romney implored.

“I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved,” Christie intoned, not so many minutes later.

And any number of people watching the first full night of the 2012 Republican National Convention must have thought, Um, THAT’S awkward.

But the two messages were not as incongruent as they appeared at first blush. Christie explained why early in his …

Continue reading RNC 2012: For Romney, voters’ love would be nice — but their respect may suffice »

I was out of the house all morning and didn’t have a chance until now to blog about Mitt Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as a running mate. But now I have time, and I must say: Ryan is an excellent pick.

I have made a few mentions during the past couple of months about my enthusiasm for putting Bobby Jindal on the ticket, and I still think he would have made a good choice. But he and Ryan, who for a long time didn’t appear to be on Romney’s short list, are like a No. 1 and No. 1a for me.

Some people will say Ryan is a risky pick because he has laid out the most detailed plan of just about any elected official — from either of the two major parties — about how to put Washington’s fiscal house in order. That means he brings a lot of targets with him onto the ticket, about Medicare in particular. To those people I say: You are crazy if you think the Obama campaign wasn’t going to make Romney answer for Ryan’s plan anyway.

For one thing, Romney already had endorsed the biggest aspects …

Continue reading Why I like the Ryan pick »

Liberals have seized on a single study by the Tax Policy Center as proof that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would cut taxes for “the rich” and raise them on the rest of us. The study is a work of wishful liberal thinking.

First, it’s wishful liberal thinking because the study’s authors acknowledge Romney has not laid out his plan in detail. After reviewing Romney’s plans for cutting rates across the board by 20 percent, along with eliminating certain other taxes, the study states:

According to statements by Governor Romney and his advisors, the remainder of the plan will include policies to offset this revenue loss, although there are no details on how that would be achieved. (emphasis added)

Now, it may or may not be a good thing for Romney’s electoral prospects that Romney has yet to explain this part of his plan. It may or may not lead voters to believe his plan would “offset this revenue loss” by getting more money from them, via the closing of certain loopholes and elimination …

Continue reading ‘Romney Hood’ tax claims are wishful liberal thinking »