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Tag: 2012 presidential election (Page 1 of 7)

Mitt’s ‘Out of Context’ attacks

This is going to be a tough campaign season. Both sides are going to level harsh attacks at one another, and many of us will become sick of it as the campaign season moves on.

President Obama has certainly gone negative as he makes Bain and Mitt Romney’s business record an issue, and Romney and the right wing super pacs are being very tough on Obama over the economy.

But it’s rather pathetic, and perhaps a little desperate, when a campaign takes a string of words completely out of context in order to distort what a candidate said. That’s what’s going on with the “you didn’t build that” line of attack against Obama, implying that he said entrepreneurs didn’t build their own business. When you read the entire context of what Obama said, he was clearly referring to the roads an bridges built by society. See the video above as well.

Hopefully we’ll see Obama address this on the stump in a mocking tone of how desperate Mitt has become.

Mitt Romney vs Reality

I’ve been saying for a while that Mitt Romney’s biggest problem will be his compulsive lying. It’s stunning how he repeatedly changes his positions, and then denies ever taking the previous position.

With that track record, the Obama campaign seems to have come up with an appropriate slogan – “Mitt Romney vs Reality.” The first ad has to do with Romney’s hilarious statement in Cleveland that he deserved plenty of credit for the recovery of the auto industry . . . even though he opposed the bailout. The ad is excellent, though coming up with ads against Romney should be pretty easy.

No one likes a liar

Mitt Romney. UPI/Santa Fabio

This is Mitt Romney’s biggest problem.

Projecting moderation while professing extremism is quite a trick, and Romney may perhaps grasp the brass ring. But he makes everyone uneasy. Moderate Republican voters, of whom there may be more than meet the eye, may worry that President Romney will be captive to a GOP Congress beholden to the base. Tea Party types may worry that he’ll shake the Etch-A-Sketch again when dancing to a different piper, the general electorate and/or a divided Congress. No one, in any case, likes a liar, and people across the political spectrum know that Romney lies from sunup to sundown. Democrats know that nothing he says about Obama is true; conservatives know that nothing he says about his past positions and actions is true; and moderates know, or should know, that he’s betrayed them to the base.

Every politician plays the game, but Romney is just shameless.

Bring on the social issues

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum speaks to supporters during a campaign appearance in Fallon, Nevada February 2, 2012. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

You can practically hear the champagne corks popping in the White House as the Republicans in Congress and the presidential candidates start talking about social issues. Rick Santorum wants to go back to 1949, and suddenly the angry right is talking more about contraception that jobs.

While most GOP strategists are horrified by this development, James Taranto tries to argue that this is a good thing for the GOP. Really.

If you’re a Republican in New York or another big city, you may be anxious or even terrified at the prospect that Rick Santorum, the supposedly unelectable social conservative, may win the GOP presidential nomination. Jeffrey Bell would like to set your mind at ease.

Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues in his forthcoming book, “The Case for Polarized Politics,” has a winning track record for the GOP. “Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964,” he observes. “The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in that entire period. . . . When social issues came into the mix—I would date it from the 1968 election . . . the Republican Party won seven out of 11 presidential elections.”

Read the whole thing. It’s a staggering example of selectively picking facts to suit your argument. Listening to this argument, you would think that the Cold War, the economy and the Iranian hostage crisis had nothing to do with Reagan’s win in 1980 (let alone Ted Kennedy’s challenge to Carter in the primaries).

This simplistic view might placate some Republicans, and hopefully enough of them will jump on this bandwagon. Perhaps we’ll see a fall campaign with Rick Santorum railing against contraception and online gambling.

Romney’s Super PAC goes after Rick Santorum

Not surprisingly, Mitt Romney’s Super PAC is now going after Rick Santorum. Romney’s team has no choice, as Romney’s support is plummeting, yet all the negativity surrounding Romney’s attack ads is taking its toll on Romney as well. He’s a lame candidate, and his only strategy seems to be tearing apart even lamer candidates. His support among independents is tanking, and his “severely conservative” speech is making him a laughing stock with conservatives.

As for Santorum, he’s vulnerable to attack for many reasons. In a general election he’ll have to answer for his extreme positions on social issues, but he’s also the poster child for Republican mistakes during the Bush years when they spent like crazy trying to keep their majority.

Yet even with all these vulnerabilities, the Romney ad comes across as a series of cheap shots. Sure, Santorum voted to increase the debt limit, but everyone was voting that way, including practically all Republicans when Bush was president.

I still have no idea how this is going to play out, but whoever emerges from this savage primary season will be very damaged heading into a general election.

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