This is going to be a fun political season.
Tag: Mitt Romney (Page 6 of 7)
CNN did a terrible job with this debate. With so many candidates, it would have worked much better with one or two moderators. Instead we had to listen to simplistic questions from the audience, and we rarely got most of the candidates to answer the same question.
I didn’t agree with hardly anything that was said by the candidates, but most of them did fine for the first debate. Tim Pawlenty, however, looked weak as usual when he passed on the opportunity to slam Romney on health care. I just don’t think he has what it takes to survive the primaries.
Mitt Romney did fine, but nobody really challenged him tonight, so we’ll see how he does if Rudy Giuliani enters the race. Giuliani will hammer him. Romney also talked in circles about the auto bailout.
I was surprised by Michele Bachmann. Again, I don’t agree with anything she says, but she was very comfortable onstage and she handled herself well. This is terrible news for Pawlenty who is trying to get some of the evangelical vote, and so it’s also good news for Romney, who would love to have Bachmann draw the evangelical vote from more viable candidates.
Herman Cain was very erratic, so we’ll see if the Tea Party crowd remains impressed with him.
Chrysler announced today that it is repaying $7.5 billion to the U.S. government years ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, GM has announced it will hire thousands of new workers in the U.S. after a successful IPO.
The bailout of the U.S. auto industry in 2009 by the Obama administration was very unpopular, but it will go down as one of the shrewdest decisions of President Obama. Letting GM and Chrysler go through a bankruptcy liquidation would have killed thousands of jobs and possibly turned the recession into a depression. Thousands of auto suppliers would have been insolvent immediately, thus creating even more job losses.
Most on the right, including presidential candidates Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney, opposed bailing out the auto companies. Mitt Romney even penned an op-ed arguing that we should let Detroit go bankrupt. They look like fools now, and the Democrats just released a preview of how this issue will be highlighted in the 2012 campaign, particularly in the Midwest.
He got off to a slow start, but Mitt Romney got the crowd going with some clever lines and some cheap shots. For a party that is going crazy over the thought of family members being in the news, Mitt Romney took another shot at Michelle Obama.
I’m surprised he didn’t take any real shots at Obama. I suspect this is coming, particularly from Giuliani, but we’ll see how tough they get with him.
All the red meat attacks seem to be against “liberals” and the East Coast elite. I don’t know if this is going to work. Sure, the base will get excited, but will independents and young voters react to this? Is this starting to look a little like 1992?
Anyways, I wish McCain had picked this guy. He’s such a putz.
Due to the large Mormon population in several Western states, it raises the question of whether adding Mitt Romney to the ticket would help McCain hold these states.
Romney performed well in many Western states during the GOP primaries, but his faith proved to be a big liability among the evangelical Christians who make up the base of the Republican Party. Many are deeply suspicious of Mormons, forcing Romney to give a speech explaining his beliefs in an effort to quell their concerns.
For the general election, the West, especially the Southwest, rises in strategic significance for both candidates, and Mormons are gaining more attention given their wide dispersion across the region. Although church members are heavily concentrated in Utah, where they make up more than 70 percent of the population, according to church figures, they also top 7 percent of Nevada’s population and 2 percent of Colorado’s, enough to tilt a tight race.
Romney should give McCain a boost in the Mormon community, though McCain should already be doing well with those voters.
As Janey Napolitano points out, the Hispanic community is much more important.
“Obviously, if he picks Romney, it makes a strong play for the Mormon vote, but I don’t know that that decides the West,” said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, an immensely popular Democrat in McCain’s home state. In an interview, Napolitano said Romney’s reputation for changing his position on issues will not play well with Western voters, who she said tend to like independent pragmatists.
What matters more, Napolitano said, are Latinos, who constitute more than 38 percent of the voters in New Mexico and about 27 percent in Arizona. She argued that McCain’s disavowal of his own failed attempt at immigration reform will cut into his support with this more powerful voting bloc.
Romney was outspoken on the immigration issue, and this would further alienate Hispanic voters. Thus, he could be a net negative in those states.
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