Tag: Campaign 2012

Romney Fails at Diplomacy on Day One of European Tour

Jon Ponder

Mitt Romney is in Europe this week for two reasons. He is there to watch his wife’s horse compete in a dressage event at the Olympics, and, by the way, to show that he has the diplomatic chops and foreign-affairs know-how to be president of the United States.

“You know, it’s hard to know just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting.”
– Mitt Romney in London

On the latter bit, he has already failed.

Romney’s trip got off to a rocky start even before he left the country yesterday. Two of his advisers anonymously told the London Telegraph that Romney, whose father was born in Mexico and was white, is “part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage,” implying that President Obama, whose father was a born a British citizen but was black, was not. Now Romney has insulted his hosts by criticizing the London Olympics even before the opening ceremonies have gotten underway:

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NBC News Flogs Horse Race: President Up by 6 Points in Poll, But NBC Leads with Obama’s ‘Weak’ Favorable Rating, Even Though It Is 14 Points Higher Than Romney’s

Jon Ponder

One metric that never gets factored into presidential election prognostication is the degree to which the media manipulates facts in order to keep the race as close as possible. Folks like Chuck Todd, the top poll watcher at NBC, certainly have a motive to promote a tight race — imagine what their ratings would be if it were crystal clear now that the race was going to end in a rout in November.

“Romney would be the first GOP presumptive presidential nominee since 1996 to head into his nominating convention with a net-negative favorable/unfavorable score.”
– NBC News, burying the lede

The release of data from the new NBC Wall Street Journal poll this week is a case in point. The full results of the poll were embargoed until Tuesday, so on Monday, Todd and others at NBC teased the poll by releasing the most dire result for Pres. Obama they could find in the data. After weeks of bearing the brunt of Mitt Romney’s negative and spurious advertising, the president’s negatives were up a bit.

Whoah. That’s bad news, right. Well, on Tuesday, when the top line of the poll hit the news, it revealed that Obama leads Romney by 6 points, 49 percent to 43 percent. In 2008, Obama-Biden beat John McCain and Sarah Palin by 7.2 points (52.9 to 45.7 percent) that was considered a walloping. But in describing the president’s 6 point lead over Romney now, NBC said, “The horse race remains tight.”

Compared to what? […]

Romney to Olympic Athletes in 2002: ‘You Didn’t Get Here Solely on Your Own Power’

Jon Ponder

You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities. All right! [pumps fist].

— Mitt Romney in 2002, several shakes of the Etch-A-Sketch ago.

That Didn’t Take Long: Star of Romney “Built It With My Hands” Ad Exposed for Getting Government Loans and Contracts

Trish

The truth is, no matter who Mitt Romney had used for his spliced and diced ad misquoting Pres. Obama and claiming that there is such a thing as making it totally on your own in America would have been shown to be…let’s call it “inaccurate,” since that’s a much nicer word than what it really is.

But quicker than you can strap a dog crate to a car roof, The New Hampshire Union Leader got the goods on Jack Gilchrist of Gilchrist Metal.

In 1999, Gilchrist Metal received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority “to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment,” according to a New Hampshire Union Leader report at the time…

He also said his company received a U.S. Small Business Administration loan totaling “somewhere south of” $500,000 in the late 1980s.

He said his business has also received matching funds from the New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (NETAAC), which is federally-funded.

Gilchrist said about 10 percent of his company’s contracts are defense-related.

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Pres. Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments

Jon Ponder

The fact that Washington Note writers Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu felt it was important to come up with a list of Pres. Obama’s top 50 accomplishments is emblematic of two countervailing political factors in the Obama era.

Taxes are the lowest they have been in 30 years, and the rate of spending growth is radically slower under Obama than it was under Big Government Republicans like Reagan and the Bushes.

First, it is demonstrates how adept the right wing message machine has become at rewriting history in real time as it happens. For example, Fox viewers are outraged at the “fact” that Obama has raised taxes while simultaneously accelerating government spending at a rate unparalleled in history.

Both of these two seemingly indisputable Fox News talking points are false. In fact, taxes are the lowest they have been in 30 years and spending growth is radically slower under Obama than it was under Big Government Republicans like the Bushes and Reagan. (Politifact: Obama has overseen “the lowest annual increases in spending of any president in 60 years.”)

But some of the responsibility for Republican propagandists’ success in distorting the president’s record lies with Obama, his top aides and, especially, the White House political shop. If Team Obama had been telling their story effectively all along, there would be no need for this list.

In any case, you’ll find the list of the president’s top 50 accomplishments at the Washington Note website. Here are the top 10:

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Romney Is Lying Again – Obama Was Right, ‘Business’ Does Not Build Roads, Bridges And Did Not Create the Internet

Jon Ponder

If conservatism were a legitimate ideology, Republicans would not have to lie and lie and lie to get elected. The Romney campaign, its adjunct propagandists at Fox and right-wing bloggers are having a field day claiming that Pres. Obama dissed small businesses when he said it was the government, not small businesses, that funds and builds roads and bridges, and that it was government-funded research that developed the Internet.

Here’s the snippet they have taken out of context:

PRES. OBAMA: If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

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Oxycontin-Addict Limbaugh Attacks Obama’s Casual Drug Use 30 Years Ago

Jon Ponder

There is no clearer sign that the attacks on Mitt Romney’s contradictory statements on his tenure at Bain Capital are working — on whether he was in charge when the company off-shored thousands of jobs, as he suggested in sworn testimony in June 2002 or whether he “retroactively resigned” from the company after taking a leave of absence in 1999 — than the fact that GOP’s most listened-to propagandist offered Romney this advice on what to say to the president:

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Look, pal, when I was out creating jobs, investing in businesses, and growing this economy, you were at Columbia smoking weed and snorting coke.

This is rich coming from Limbaugh, who, just three years ago, reached a deal with prosecutors related to charges he purchased 2,0000 Oxycontin tablets over a six months period, a practice that may have been going on for years. It’s possible that Limbaugh’s voracious gobbling of opiates may have cost him his hearing.

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