US PoliGAF 2012 | The Romney VeepStakes: Waiting for Chris Christie to Sing…

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Jason's Ultimatum said:
I hope not only Obama gets reelected, but Democrats win a majority of both houses. That way we can get shit done. FFS, get rid of the Bush tax cuts.
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He doesn't need them to get rid of them. He just has to let them expire and not sign an extension into law, unless Congress has a veto proof majority in favor of it.
 
Jason's Ultimatum said:
I hope not only Obama gets reelected, but Democrats win a majority of both houses. That way we can get shit done. FFS, get rid of the Bush tax cuts.
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Jonathan Bernstein thinks its highly likely that the next time one party controls Congress and the Presidency, the filibuster will get a major overhaul.

Tried to find the relevant article/blog post. No luck.
 
Drek said:
Romney kills the right's momentum though. In a cycle when their base should be whipped into a frenzy, pouring money into the coffers and bodies to run a ground campaign, he will take the wind out of their sails.

Evangelicals do not like him. This is why they've tried a host of other candidates before settling behind Santorum.

Libertarian minded conservatives don't like his war hawk attitude and have long since aligned themselves behind Ron Paul.

The Tea Party types view him as another big government Taxachusetts wealthy elitist who uses the system to his personal gain.

He can't break that ~25-30% barrier in the vast majority of primary states because nearly 3/4ths of registered republicans just flat out dislike his core views. That isn't going to change when he gets into a general election and needs to start pulling his narrative towards the middle.

Meanwhile Obama is at an all time low with the democratic base due to complaints about him "not doing what he promised" (massive misrepresentation of the facts, but regardless). Those people will ultimately get in line though when they see Romney pick up the Pro-Life cause, continue opposition of gay rights, and give stump speeches about invading Iran.

Obama will have much more money than Romney come the general, even if Romney doesn't get drug into a slug fest of a primary. Obama's campaign staff has long been building on their '08 groundwork.

Early small leads in a handful of polls could get Romney the nomination, but its going to make the far right feel really damn bitter when they plug their noses, vote for a guy they really don't think represents them, and he still loses the general. Which will happen as long as we continue to see another 12 months of slow but steady economic improvement.
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Interestingly CNN has an article about the very thing you're talking about. It's pretty critical of Romney by CNN standards:

Can Romney be more than an opening act?
Even so, one cannot escape the sense in New Hampshire that if he is the nominee, Romney and his team still have serious work to do if they want to defeat President Obama. That was instantly apparent Sunday afternoon when Romney appeared with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at a rally in Exeter, New Hampshire, drawing one of the biggest crowds of his campaign.

While supportive of their guy, the crowd seemed relatively quiet, almost subdued, a sharp contrast to the electric rallies that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama held four years ago. Granted, the Democrats were locked in a much closer race. But several veterans of New Hampshire politics say that the energy isn't flowing as it has in years past.

That is consistent with a Pew poll announced Monday that found only 51% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters nationwide rating this year's candidates as excellent or good, compared to 68% four years ago (and compared to 78% on the Democratic side in 2008).

Another striking (and related) impression on Sunday came with the speaking lineup. Normally, as a special guest, Christie would have taken the microphone first, warmed up the crowd, and then introduced the candidate, who would turn up the juice and send people marching into the night.

Instead, Romney spoke first, delivering a fairly boilerplate homily before handing off to Christie, who delivered a barn-burner (listening, one got the sense the GOP convention keynote may be in his future).

More than one united front, the Grand Old Party right now looks more like a group in the midst of a heated battle between at least three camps: the old-line, more moderate "Establishment" Republicans (a group that clearly favors Romney), the growing libertarian movement (exemplified by chief hero Ron Paul), and the more communitarian, religious phalanx of social conservatives (who propelled Santorum to near-victory in Iowa).

What casts the fissures in the party in such sharp relief is how little fondness these groups seem to have for one another: Not only is it easy to imagine a typical Romney voter looking down his nose at a Ron Paul candidacy, but evangelical voters are exactly the type Romney has so singularly struggled with (as Ron Brownstein notes, he even lost ground with them from 2008 to 2012, judging from exit polls), while Paul and Santorum themselves have appeared substantially more at odds with one another in the debates than either has been with Romney.

As with the 2008 race for the Democrats, Romney's biggest advantage this cycle is that the various voters punching ballots in the GOP primaries do have one thing in common: They desperately want a new president in the White House. For many evangelicals and libertarians, opposition to Obama will ultimately outweigh distaste for Romney, if he wins the nomination -- so he is likely to be competitive as the nominee no matter what. But winning the presidency (especially against a campaigner as able as Obama, who has been shoring up his own base of late) requires generating enthusiasm from voters, and governing well requires generating even more.
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Clevinger said:
He doesn't need them to get rid of them. He just has to let them expire and not sign an extension into law, unless Congress has a veto proof majority in favor of it.
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And how would he do that without contradicting the argument he has used to support extending the payroll tax cuts: ie the recovery is so fragile we shouldn't be raising taxes on the middle class. The Bush tax cut is going to get renewed again, count on it. Might as well call it the Obama tax cut at this point, as democrats had a chance to address it but didn't.
 
PhoenixDark said:
And how would he do that without contradicting the argument he has used to support extending the payroll tax cuts: ie the recovery is so fragile we shouldn't be raising taxes on the middle class. The Bush tax cut is going to get renewed again, count on it. Might as well call it the Obama tax cut at this point, as democrats had a chance to address it but didn't.
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Raise taxes/stop tax cuts, raise minimum pay.
 
empty vessel said:
There's nothing semantic about it. What you said doesn't accord with the observable world.
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There is no free market in the world that compares to the internet. So, while the kernel of it was created via the military, what has come forth has had almost no interference to become what we know today. Also, public research and spending that was funded by the 'free' market in the first place.
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..
 
Dax01 said:
Jonathan Bernstein thinks its highly likely that the next time one party controls Congress and the Presidency, the filibuster will get a major overhaul.

Tried to find the relevant article/blog post. No luck.
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I agree, it will. It will be an evolution, but the wheels are already turning. Congressional process reforms took place at the start of this Congress, and I'm expecting them to be a part of every Congress for a while. Either to counter ongoing obstructionsim, or in retaliation.
 
My friend pointed out to me that we are starting to seem like the senate in the Star Wars prequels.

The only question is who is the evil emperor going to be? You decide tonight! On Fox News fair and balanced!
 
The Paul campaign commissioned a consulting firm called CanDo.com to try to find out where it actually came from. CanDo concluded, “it is likely that the video came from a source within or closely tied to the Huntsman campaign.”
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I like how they can do this, but who knows who really wrote those newsletters? It's a mystery for the ages!
 
GhaleonEB said:
if-us-land-were-divided-like-us-wealth-14991-1319811170-1.jpg


Dat prospertity.
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Gonna have to show this one around.
 
Tom_Cody said:
Right.

I may be naive here, but I'm kind of hoping this becomes the key topic of debate for the general election. Do we as a country want a colder more efficient capitalism that values GDP above all else or a kinder socialistic capitalism that most values good middle-class jobs.

This may seem overly obvious, but even in his most progressive posturing Obama still seems shackled by America's unflinching love for pure capitalism. This election seems like a real opportunity to put our core economic beliefs up for debate.
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Jobs all the way. Full employment is more important than anything else.
 
Great column from David Brooks today (sorry if it has been posted). This bit stood out to me specifically:

"Worse, in an attempt to match Republican rhetoric, Democratic politicians are perpetually soiling the name of government for the sake of short-term gain. How many times have you heard Democrats from Carter to Obama running against Washington, accusing it of being insular, shortsighted, corrupt and petty? If the surgeon himself thinks his tools are rancid, why shouldn’t you?

In the past few weeks, the Obama administration has begun his presidential campaign by picking a series of small fights with the Republican-led House over things like recess appointments. These vicious squabbles may help Obama in the short term by making him look better than Republicans in Congress. But they will only further discredit Washington over the long run.

Life is unfair. Republican venality unintentionally reinforces the conservative argument that government is corrupt. Democratic venality undermines the Democratic argument that Washington can be trusted to do good."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/opinion/brooks-where-are-the-liberals.html
 
AlteredBeast said:
Meh. Who knows what he meant by his remark. To automatically assume that he meant something misogynistic is unwarranted unless he has said something like that before.
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Kosmo thought he was telling the lady to blow him, and he thought it was hilarious for an elected official to respond that way to someone. Just thought I'd point that out.
 
RustyNails said:
Interestingly CNN has an article about the very thing you're talking about. It's pretty critical of Romney by CNN standards:

Can Romney be more than an opening act?
[/B]
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Its really getting pretty obvious.

Though they would've given a more holistic picture if they commented on the surge in support Obama will see come the general.

Romney is going to get the "pinch your nose and vote" republicans who will stay at home every day until election day. All it takes is one war hawk stump speech by Romney about making the middle east safe for Israel by taking out Iran (which he will definitely give) for the similarly unenthusiastic democrats to go running for Obama's local headquarters to pick up their packets.

The far fringe of the GOP is not politically mobile in a traditional election sense. They're more like Tea Party members who prefer like minded rallies with high rhetoric. Have for a long time. The far fringe of the democratic party is an activist group at it's core and as soon as they have the clear picture of a GOP candidate + GOP congress + war in Iraq + assault on Roe v. Wade directly in front of them they'll get back on the HOPE AND CHANGE bandwagon real quick.

A big part of this to me is that many of the libertarian/evangelical types will also possibly embrace another four years of congressional v. presidential log jams over Romney.

You're asking evangelicals to vote for a guy who many of them believe is part of a cult that promotes plural marriage and don't believe in the holy trinity. Try getting the southern Christians charged up to campaign M-F when their pastors tell them all day Sunday that Romney doesn't think Jesus is the son of God.

Then even harder, try to sell the Ron Paul/Libertarian on Romney and his pro foreign war stances and big government history when the alternative is voting for 4 more years of gridlock. Libertarians fucking LOVE gridlock. I wouldn't be surprised to see many of them actually vote Obama and view it as a vote for continued government stagnation. Hell, I could see Paul run 3rd party because he himself would GREATLY prefer that stagnation over 4 years of Romney with a blank check congress and a weak, fragmented democratic party with a small majority in the senate.
 
Tom_Cody said:
Great column from David Brooks today (sorry if it has been posted). This bit stood out to me specifically:

"Worse, in an attempt to match Republican rhetoric, Democratic politicians are perpetually soiling the name of government for the sake of short-term gain. How many times have you heard Democrats from Carter to Obama running against Washington, accusing it of being insular, shortsighted, corrupt and petty? If the surgeon himself thinks his tools are rancid, why shouldn’t you?

In the past few weeks, the Obama administration has begun his presidential campaign by picking a series of small fights with the Republican-led House over things like recess appointments. These vicious squabbles may help Obama in the short term by making him look better than Republicans in Congress. But they will only further discredit Washington over the long run.

Life is unfair. Republican venality unintentionally reinforces the conservative argument that government is corrupt. Democratic venality undermines the Democratic argument that Washington can be trusted to do good."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/op...-liberals.html
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I borrowed my brother's new year's resolution to stop trolling myself, so I try not to read Brooks anymore. Predictably, this column features the same false equivalence nonsense that he's made his name on. Obama and other democrats can criticize Washington for being broken, but they do not think it is incorrigibly or necessarily so; many conservatives, on the other hand, insist that government is inherently dysfunctional, and as such there can be no wrongheaded attempts to dismantle it. They're not the same thing at all.
 
Wolfgunblood Garopa said:
Unintentionally? Ha.

Proving that government can't work for the people is a priority for Republicans in order to continue to win elections.

It's a win-win.
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Our government has shown time and time again they don't do a lot of things well, or efficiently. No Republican help is needed to come to that conclusion.
 
Matt Taibbi is one of my favourite journalists these days and his take on the primaries is as insightful as it is depressing.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/iowa-the-meaningless-sideshow-begins-20120103

Here's the salient points

This caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.
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..the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.
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The auctioned election process is designed to reduce the field to two candidates who will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from the same pool of donors. Just take a look at the lists of top donors for Obama and McCain from the last election in 2008.

Obama’s top 20 list included:

Goldman Sachs ($1,013,091)
JPMorgan Chase & Co ($808,799)
Citigroup Inc ($736,771)
WilmerHale LLP ($550,668)
Skadden, Arps et al ($543,539)
UBS AG ($532,674), and...
Morgan Stanley ($512,232).

McCain’s list, meanwhile, included (drum roll please):

JPMorgan Chase & Co ($343,505)
Citigroup Inc ($338,202)
Morgan Stanley ($271,902)
Goldman Sachs ($240,295)
UBS AG ($187,493)
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher ($160,346)
Greenberg Traurig LLP ($147,437), and...
Lehman Brothers ($126,557).

Obama’s list included all the major banks and bailout recipients, plus a smattering of high-dollar defense lawyers from firms like WilmerHale and Skadden Arps who make their money representing those same banks. McCain’s list included exactly the same banks and a similar list of law firms, the minor difference being that it was Gibson Dunn instead of WilmerHale, etc.
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Your vote means nothing at this point in our history.
 
PhoenixDark said:
I don't believe Romney will suffer a huge loss of support in the final hours of NH, I'm just pointing out he might not win as big as others think due to his recent gaffes; but as Kosmo pointed out, Romney is rebounding in the last minute polls.

Republicans will rally around Romney by the end of this thing, it's inevitable. And with a good VP choice he should be able to ease/shut up Evangelical leaders. He's their best shot at being president, and while he's clearly not a conservative I think it's safe to say he'll govern as one with respect to many issues (abortion for instance, which is 90% of what Evangelicals care about). I maintain he'll probably work with democrats if he wants to get anything big done, and in some ways he will be more effective than Obama. Every candidate went on record in support of federal infrastructure during the Saturday debate, yet would reject any infrastructure plan Obama proposes. If a Romney presidency means we get some (re-named) stimulus spending that's a good thing. It's certainly not going to happen with Obama in office, especially considering we'll most likely continue having divided congress after the election
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PD, I think you're painting too rosy a picture of a Romney presidency. Romney has shown that he has no integrity whatsoever and is very pro-business and for gutting regulation. Having to appeal to his base (especially to the very vocal far right in the house) during his presidency will not magically cause that pendulum to swing to the left by any notable degree. I'd like to be wrong but (minus the wars) I don't expect a Romney presidency to be any less destructive to middle class or poor than the previous Republican administration.
 
Dyno said:
Matt Taibbi is one of my favourite journalists these days and his take on the primaries is as insightful as it is depressing.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/iowa-the-meaningless-sideshow-begins-20120103

Here's the salient points
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Matt Taibbi is a mixed bag. He does some good reporting, but can come to some remarkably debatable conclusions, like this:
This is a choice between two different versions of the status quo, and everyone knows it.
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I didn't realize getting rid of Medicare was a version of the "status quo."
Your vote means nothing at this point in our history.
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Baloney.
 
Kosmo said:
And we will not hear a peep of this from the media in the election.
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Your point?

We never hear a peep about it. Not against a republican or a democrat. Its a traction-less story because as soon as you trot it out against one person the plethora of "he has opposite public stances but the same donors" stories come pouring in.

Everyone assumes politicians are corrupt now. This is why 60 Minutes ran a piece pointing out how both Pelosi and Boehner used insider knowledge gained from being in political office to further their financial portfolios and no one generally gave a shit.
 
maximum360 said:
PD, I think you're painting too rosy a picture of a Romney presidency. Romney has shown that he has no integrity whatsoever and is very pro-business and for gutting regulation. Having to appeal to his base (especially to the very vocal far right in the house) during his presidency will not magically cause that pendulum to swing to the left by any notable degree. I'd like to be wrong but (minus the wars) I don't expect a Romney presidency to be any less destructive to middle class or poor than the previous Republican administration.
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Romney's not going to campaign like he has been and suddenly switch to how he governed in MA if he wins the presidency. "What they say is how they'll govern."
[P]residents usually try to enact the policies they advocate during the campaign. So if you want to know what Mitt Romney or the rest of the Republican crowd would do in 2013 if elected, the best way to find out is to listen to what they are saying right now.

I suspect that many Americans would be quite skeptical of the idea that elected officials, presidents included, try to keep the promises they made on the campaign trail. The presumption is that politicians are liars who say what voters want to hear to get elected and then behave very differently once in office. The press is especially prone to discount the more extreme positions candidates take in primaries on the expectation that they will “move to the center” in the general election.
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Dyno said:
Matt Taibbi is one of my favourite journalists these days and his take on the primaries is as insightful as it is depressing.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/iowa-the-meaningless-sideshow-begins-20120103

Here's the salient points

Your vote means nothing at this point in our history.
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You could argue (and I would) that often times that money follows the opinion of the people. Money is often to secure favor once that person is in office not to always influence elections. Not that it doesn't most most of the big money goes to both sides.

And if our vote means nothing why isn't hilary president? I'm pretty sure she was the establishments' choice in 2007.
 
Drek said:
You're asking evangelicals to vote for a guy who many of them believe is part of a cult that promotes plural marriage and don't believe in the holy trinity. Try getting the southern Christians charged up to campaign M-F when their pastors tell them all day Sunday that Romney doesn't think Jesus is the son of God.
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What you are saying is a muslim like Obama is technically more Christian than Romney. Damn these people are a fickle group.
 
Drek said:
Your point?

We never hear a peep about it. Not against a republican or a democrat. Its a traction-less story because as soon as you trot it out against one person the plethora of "he has opposite public stances but the same donors" stories come pouring in.

Everyone assumes politicians are corrupt now. This is why 60 Minutes ran a piece pointing out how both Pelosi and Boehner used insider knowledge gained from being in political office to further their financial portfolios and no one generally gave a shit.
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I don't buy that. Congressional approval ratings say you are wrong.

In the end, 99% of the people can't control how Pelosi's or Boehner's district will vote (nor can most voters in that district as they are so gerrymandered one way, it takes a huge scandal to usurp the dominant party).

So, they can't punish them for whatever they perceive they have done wrong anyways. Enter: apathy.
 
BruiserBear said:
Our government has shown time and time again they don't do a lot of things well, or efficiently. No Republican help is needed to come to that conclusion.
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Ironic, given history, that Americans seem to be uniquely incapable among industrialized countries of governing themselves, no?
 
I get the feeling that that "I like being able to fire people" thing might end up helping Mitt more than it will hurt him. Now he can release the full clip and say, "this kind of disingenuous trickery is exactly the corrupt behavior I want to root out in Washington"
 
Tom_Cody said:
I am stunned at the attacks on Romney being made by the other GOP nominees. Not only are they crippling his chances for the general election, they are undermining core principles of the republican party. What is going on?

I can sort of make sense of Newt Gingrich is doing this, since he has self-destructed before, but I don't understand why his supporters aren't abandoning him en masse.

What a mess.
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I think its fantastic.

Especially how they went after him for firing people.

Thats like GOP 101: Right to work is amazing because we can fire people, wheeeeee!
GOP 102 of course is: Never speak ill of job-creators (aka, rich)



Romney is a lose-lose-lose

Evangelicals will stay home, as they did with McCain. And thats when Obama was the big scary kenyan muslim. Why would they vote for a mormom, who had gay marriage be legalized under his watch, and saw marijuana laws loosen?

Tea Party will stay home. Their number 1 hate is "business as usual" washington types. Aka: Mr establishment Romney. Their number 2 hate is wall street. Aka: Mr wall street romney.

People with standards will stay home, because they dont support a flip-flopper.
 
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