Conservatives and Mitt Romney

November 8, 2011 — Ron Chusid

There are some conservatives who believe they should rally behind Mitt Romney as the most electable candidate, but I’m seeing far more comments from conservatives similar to the views of Erik Ercikson:

Should Mitt Romney win the Presidency, conservatives will find this pattern play out repeatedly. Romney will head in a direction conservatives do not like and they will bitch and moan repeatedly and maybe, just maybe, he’ll part his hair in their direction.

We’ve seen this play out over and over. Jon Huntsman comes up with the best economic plan of all the candidates, Herman Cain follows up with 999, Perry comes out with a flat tax, and Romney refuses to do anything. Until he does something.

Mitt Romney is not the George W. Bush of 2012 — he is the Harriet Miers of 2012, only conservative because a few conservative grand pooh-bahs tell us Mitt Romney is conservative and for no other reason.

That is precisely why Mitt Romney will not win in 2012. But no worry, once he loses, Republican establishment types will blame conservatives for not doing enough for Mitt Romney, never mind that Mitt Romney has never been able to sell himself to more than 25% of the GOP voters. It’s not his fault though, it is the 75%’s fault.

Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. And his general election campaign will be an utter disaster for conservatives as he takes the GOP down with him and burns up what it means to be a conservative in the process…

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.

I’ve been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled. The man has no core beliefs other than in himself. You want him to be tough? He’ll be tough. You want him to be sensitive? He’ll be sensitive. You want him to be for killing the unborn? He’ll go all in on abortion rights until he wants to run for an office where it is not in his advantage…

To beat Barack Obama, a candidate must paint a bold contrast with the Democrats on their policies. When Mitt Romney tries, Barack Obama will be able to show that just the other day Mitt Romney held exactly the opposite position as the one he holds today.

Voters may not like Barack Obama, but by the time Obama is done with Romney they will not trust Mitt Romney. And voters would rather the guy they don’t like than they guy they don’t trust.

While we might disagree as to whether holding conservative positions is desirable, I do agree with Erickson that conservatives cannot trust Romney to promote their views despite taking a hard line conservative position on many issues. Neither can liberals or moderates count on Romney promoting their views. There is just no way to predict what Romney will do as he has taken such contradictory positions on so many issues.

This raises the question as to whether Romney really is the most electable Republican, despite polls which now suggest that he is. Romney’s character, or lack of character, will probably become the key issue of the election. Many conservatives will support him if he is the Republican candidate, supporting anyone over Obama, but others will stay home. Fabricated charges of flip-flopping against John Kerry created by distorting his statements were harmful enough. Multiple actual examples of flip-flopping should be even more harmful for Romney. George Bush was reelected in 2004 despite a terrible record and a low approval rating due to the right wing base turning out in record numbers. Romney will not benefit from such a conservative turn out, which might also be harmful to Republican candidates down ticket.

Posted in Barack Obama, Blogs & Social Media, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Politics, Republicans. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Quote of the Day

June 24, 2011 — Ron Chusid

“Sarah Palin has canceled the rest of her bus trip around America. She had to quit before she got to Mount Rushmore and somebody asked her to name the Presidents.” –Jay Leno

Bonus Quote:

“John McCain made his claim that illegal immigrants started the Arizona wildfires without doing his research. The last time he did that we got Sarah Palin.” -Jay Leno

Posted in Humor and Satire, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Television. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Quote of the Day

May 8, 2011 — Ron Chusid

“Sen. John McCain met with the CEO of Twitter today. At least that’s what he tried to tweet on his garage door opener.” –Conan O’Brien



Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Humor and Satire, John McCain, Television. Tags: , . No Comments »

Donald Trump Cancels Appearance With David Letterman

May 2, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Donald Trump gets really touchy when someone calls him racist after he makes racist statements. Now he is taking it out against David Letterman, canceling an appearance on his show. The New York Post reports:

In the latest round in the war between Donald Trump and a growing list of the heaviest hitters in show business, the real-estate mogul and “Celebrity Apprentice” host fired back at David Letterman over the late-night host’s on-air suggestion that Trump is a racist.

In a letter he sent to the gap-toothed comic on Friday, Trump canceled an appearance on “Late Show With David Letterman” and lambasted Dave for saying Trump’s prolonged attacks on President Obama had begun to “smack of racism.”

“I was disappointed to hear the statements you made about me last night on your show that I was a ‘racist,’ ” Trump wrote to Letterman. “In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth and there is nobody who is less of a racist than Donald Trump.”

If Donald Trump really had a chance at the nomination, he might consider that Dave showed John McCain that the road to the White House goes through him back in 2008.
This follows after Trump got upset about all the jokes about him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Posted in John McCain, Republicans, Television. Tags: , , . No Comments »

If It’s Sunday…

February 13, 2011 — Ron Chusid

With everyone looking somewhat moderate compared to Fox, and with all the fake cries of media bias from the right, it is often easy to forget the degree to which conservatives dominate broadcast and cable news.  (This includes CNN, which continues to hire far more conservatives than liberals, including one from the Andrew Beitbart school of faking the news). Just one example can be seen most weeks on the Sunday interview shows. Here’s Steve Benen’s count on today’s shows:

Looking over the guest lists for all of the Sunday shows, viewers will see two Republican senators (McCain, Graham), three Republican House members (Boehner, Ryan, Schilling), three likely Republican presidential candidates (Barbour, Gingrich, Pawlenty) … and zero Democrats from Congress or the Obama administration.

It’s a little worse than usual as generally there is at least one token Democrat. In general, if it’s Sunday, its meet the Republicans.

Posted in News Media, Newt Gingrich, Republicans. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

Quote of the Day

November 14, 2010 — Ron Chusid

“In his new book, George W. Bush says he’s happy to be out of Washington. Well, it’s unanimous.” —David Letterman

Bonus quotes from Letterman:

“George W. Bush says he is glad to be out of the Oval Office because he doesn’t have to think all the time. And I’m thinking wait a minute, that was him thinking all the time. Really?” —David Letterman

“In the book Bush says that he lost respect for John McCain when he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. This from a guy whose running mate shot a buddy in the face.” —David Letterman

“President Bush is everywhere talking about his book and he’s being very candid. In one interview, he said that he used to do stupid things while he was drunk. But think about it, who among us hasn’t had a couple of drinks and invaded Iraq?” —David Letterman

Posted in George Bush, Humor and Satire, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Television. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

Quote of the Day

July 3, 2010 — Ron Chusid

”One of John McCain’s former top campaign aides says that when he talked to Sarah Palin after McCain picked her to be his running mate, she said it was ‘God’s plan.’ So, apparently, God wanted Obama to win.” —Jay Leno

Posted in Humor and Satire, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Television. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Media Again Creates False Equivalency Between Democrats And Republicans

May 13, 2010 — Ron Chusid

There is a tendency of the media to confuse equal favorable or unfavorable comments about each party with objective reporting. We often see the media take a comment from the Republican and a Democrat and act as if the truth is somewhere in the middle, even if there is strong evidence that one party is lying (typically the Republicans in recent years) and one is telling the truth. Factcheckers for newspapers similarly try to present equal scores by finding errors on the part of both parties. Often they show huge whoppers coming from Republicans and counter them with cases where a comment from the Democrat is generally true but there are occasional exceptions which were beyond the scope of the limited interviews usually conducted.

The Washington Post has an example of creating a false equivalency between the parties in this editorial on the parties purging their members. Steve Benen explains the error in their comparison between the two parties:

There’s quite a few problems here. The most obvious is the flawed effort to draw a parallel between Bennett and Lincoln. In the former, Bennett has been a reliably conservative senator from a reliably conservative state for nearly two decades. He was purged by the GOP’s right-wing base for only being rigidly dogmatic most of the time.

Lincoln, on the other hand, really has proven herself to be a disappointment to most Democrats, not because of a handful of isolated votes, but because of her departures from party priorities on a wide range of issues, over the course of several years. Utah Republicans had no such beef with Bennett.

There’s also a pragmatic angle — Bennett was a shoo-in for re-election, but was primaried for purely ideological reasons. Lincoln has struggled badly in the polls, prompting Dems who want to hold the seat to consider alternatives.

But it’s the bigger picture that the Post‘s editorial board gets especially wrong, with its description of “the ideological purification of both parties.” I realize that major media outlets have an unwritten rule — all criticism of Republicans has to include related criticism of Democrats, whether it makes sense or not — but the evidence to bolster the Post‘s observation is lacking.

Even if we concede that Blanche Lincoln is facing a competitive primary, at least in part for her lack of commitment to progressive goals, one primary for a vulnerable incumbent does not an “ideological purification” make. If Dems were seriously trying to drive those who strayed from the party line from the ranks, Blue Dogs would be under heavy fire, and the party wouldn’t have rallied behind Brad Ellsworth in Indiana and Charlie Melacon in Louisiana, neither of whom represent the bold, progressive wing of the party.

In contrast, there’s an actual“ideological purification” underway in the Republican Party. Florida’s Charlie Crist was deemed insufficiently right wing. So was Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter and New York’s Dede Scozzafava. In Utah, Bob Bennett was handed a pink slip by his own party, and in Arizona, Sen. John McCain (R) is facing a tough primary challenge for nearly identical reasons.

There are occasional cases of Democrats trying to replace conservative Democrats with more liberal Democrats. The key difference is that the Democrats continue to have large numbers of moderate and conservatives, while the Republicans are trying to eliminate not only liberals and moderates but conservatives who they find are not conservative enough.

Posted in Democrats, News Media, Op-eds, Politics, Republicans. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Social Conservative Nature Of Tea Party Seen As They Attack Sarah Palin For Endorsing Carly Fiorina

May 8, 2010 — Ron Chusid

When the tea party supporters first started getting publicity some portrayed the movement as concentrating on fiscal responsibility and tax cuts as opposed to the wedge issues which the Republicans have campaigned on in recent years. It soon became apparent that the tea parties were really indistinguishable from the far right Republican base. This could be seen by their irrational support for Republicans over Democrats despite the better record of Democrats on fiscal responsibility, as well as their knee jerk hatred of Barack Obama even after he cut their taxes. Polls have also verified that the tea party backers are indistinguishable from the GOP base. We are seeing another sign that they are just typical members of the authoritarian right in their reaction to Carly Fiorina–with the added benefit of seeing some attacks on Sarah Palin.

In the past the tea baggers have loved Sarah Palin’s social conservatism, and they are making it clear that this is what is important to them when they protest Palin’s endorsement of Fiorina:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has made her Facebook page into a bully pulpit, issuing policy statements on such issues as nuclear proliferation and oil drilling. Now she’s learning that social media can be more than a one-way system of message delivery — thanks to an avalanche of comments from tea party supporters taking issue with her Facebook endorsement of Carly Fiorina in California’s upcoming GOP Senate primary.

Many of the supporters of the small-government tea party insurgency regard Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who stumped for the McCain-Palin ticket while serving as its adviser on financial issues in 2008, as a RINO, or “Republican in name only” — a term generally applied to pro-business moderates who don’t always support socially conservative positions.

That was very much a dominant sentiment in the hundreds of comments weighing in on Palin’s characterization of Fiorina as a “Commonsense Conservative.” (Spelling, punctuation and grammar in the originals are retained throughout.)

Many on the far right were willing to overlook her endorsement of John McCain. I’m sure they understood the dyanmics there and how it would be hard for Palin to fail to support the politician who is responsible for her current success. It is harder to understand why Palin would support Fiorina, who during the presidential campaign that Palin couldn’t run a “major corporation.” They are not willing to overlook further transgressions from Palin:

Whatever the reasons behind the endorsement, it’s clear that some tea party activists see it as grounds to scrutinize her future moves. Several of her Facebook detractors used the expression “Strike 2″ — the first strike being Palin’s support for McCain — with the clear implication that a third lurch into the GOP mainstream would fatally harm her credibility among tea partiers.

Some pundits suggest that moment may have already arrived. “Bottom line is that this is yet another endorsement for a non-grassroots candidate, and she’s going to take another significant hit to her credibility with her base in exchange for picking a winner,” Tabitha Hale wrote on the conservative site RedState.com.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Sarah Palin, Social Issues. Tags: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Barack Obama To Give Commencement Speech At Kalamazoo Central High

May 5, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Michigan did not get to see very much of Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. Obama did not compete in the Michigan primary due to Michigan moving up the primary date in violation of party rules. John McCain conceded Michigan during the presidential campaign over the protests of Sarah Palin. Now Michigan is getting more of a chance to see Obama in person during commencement season.

Barack Obama already spoke at the University of Michigan commencement. The White House has also had a competition to have Obama speak at a high school commencement. Kalamazoo Central has won and Barack Obama will be the commencement speaker on June 10.

Other top ranking Obama administration members will be speaking at the schools which were finalists. Will Joe Biden be the booby prize for the losing school?

Posted in Barack Obama, Education, Michigan News. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »
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