Tag: Mitt Romney
Romney at NAACP Convention: Race Baiting Is a Standard GOP Tactic – Reagan Launched His 1980 Campaign at Site of a KKK Murder of Civil Rights Workers
“I think it was a calculated move on his part to get booed at the NAACP convention,” said former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an interview yesterday when asked to react to Mitt Romney’s address to the NAACP earlier in the day. Romney’s motive for race-baiting was to create a moment on video that Fox News can play on an endless loop, showing Romney confronting “angry blacks” at the NAACP, which one Fox pundit referred to as a “hate group” yesterday.
Can Romney Win the Presidency with Favorable Ratings in the 30s?
As you watch cable news coverage of the presidential race, keep in mind the fact that news organizations have a vested interest in keeping the race tight. Logically, a close race produces much better ratings than a race in which the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
With that in mind, here is a factor that I have yet to hear mentioned in the coverage I’ve seen: Voters don’t like Mitt Romney.
The Media Has the Campaign Fundraising Story Wrong … Again
You’d think we were watching a horse race the way the media is reporting on campaign fundraising. But of course that’s because the horse race metaphor is easy to understand and easier still to report on.
But NBC’s First Read makes some important points that involve more nuanced analysis and some actual THINKING to get to the heart of the matter:
Did Leona Helmsley’s Reanimated Corpse Attend Romney’s East Hampton Fundraiser?
Los Angeles Times reporter Maeve Reston went out on Long Island over the weekend to cover the fundraisers for Mitt Romney in the Hamptons. She hit paydirt with a a quote from a woman Reston described as a “New York City donor … who would not give her name” sitting in the “passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits.”
“I don’t think the common person is getting it. Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them. We’ve got the message. But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”
That sounds oddly reminiscent of another poster child of New York 1 Percenters, Leona Helmsley, the billionaire “Queen of Mean,” who was convicted of tax evasion in 1988. During her trial, one of her former housekeepers quoted her as saying, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
Three Questions for Mitt Romney about His Offshore Wealth
The Obama campaign doubled down on its attacks against Mitt Romney’s personal wealth today, releasing a new online video that slams the Republican presidential candidate over his offshore financial holdings in known tax havens.
The video, which features Obama’s campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt, makes some pretty bold claims, basically accusing Romney of using a Bermudan shell corporation to dodge U.S. taxes and hide the extent of his personal fortune.
While the attacks are so far unsubstantiated, the video does raise three interesting questions that Romney has yet to answer about his offshore holdings:
Gov. Romney on Poor Job Growth in Massachusetts: ‘To Suggest That Somehow the Day I Got Elected, Jobs Should Have Immediately Turned Around, Well, That Would Be Silly’
[When] Romney himself was running a government, in his case the state of Massachusetts, he was even more defensive about his lack of control of the employment picture than Obama is today. A new video unearthed by the liberal research group American Bridge shows Romney at a press conference in June 2006 admonishing reporters on disappointing jobs data. “You guys are bright enough to look at the numbers. I came in and the jobs had been just falling right off a cliff, I came in and they kept falling for 11 months,” he explains.
“And if you are going to suggest to me that somehow the day I got elected, somehow jobs should have immediately turned around, well that would be silly. It takes awhile to get things turned around. We were in a recession, we were losing jobs every month,” he added.
The Root of Mitt Romney’s Comfort with Lying: His Mormon Faith
From the series “Republicans on the Couch” by Justin Frank, M.D., at Time Magazine:
I found myself discussing this situation [Romney’s ability to lie with ease] with several colleagues, and we agreed that Romney doesn’t lie. Let me repeat: Mitt Romney doesn’t lie. He is telling the truth as he sees it — and truth it is, the facts notwithstanding. This is not simply a case of Hamlet arguing about point of view, saying, “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This is about a conflict between evidence and faith. There is a long tradition in the Mormon belief system in which evidence takes second place to faith. Examples abound, as when two Mormon elders who were questioned about the inconsistency in passages from the Book of Mormon said, “We know the Book of Mormon is true and that it contains the Word of God even in the face of evidence that appears contradictory,” according to The Mormon Missionaries by former Mormon Janice Hutchison. Thus there are no lies, only faith-based certainty that translates as truth for which no apology is needed, since what was said was not a lie.
