‘Where’s Mitt?’

National Review Online ^ | 10/28/08 | Kathryn Jean Lopez

[Reaganesque]

It’s been the most frequently asked question I’ve gotten from National Review Online readers and conservatives over e-mail and in person since the market chaos and subsequent bailout circus began.

My answer these last few months has always been: Turn on MSNBC. Turn on FOX. Google a conservative candidate for Congress. Romney is liable to turn up.

And yet, a ridiculous item on the Internet yesterday suggested that he’s been in hiding, keeping a “low profile nationally” and unwilling to help out Republicans who aren’t a sure thing.

There are problems with that contention: Why do I keep seeing the man on television? Is any Republican a shoe-in this year? Someone get Norm Coleman on the phone with the good news! Because Romney is scheduled to campaign with the Minnesota senator, who is fighting for his political life against the not-so-funny prospect of Senator Al Franken. The images on his website blog do not suggest someone who’s decided to sit out the election — they suggest someone still engaged in the election year. Nor does his travelog, as he’s been doing McCain surrogate events everywhere from Pennylvania and Colorado to Nevada and Texas (among other places including Oregon, Georgia, Nashville ... ). Nor do his post-debate spin-room appearances or his interview on The Laura Ingraham Show this morning suggest that Mitt is standing down on election 2008.

Romney’s been in Virginia helping Keith Fimian in that newly blue-leaning state. He’s campaigned for Michele Bachman, now a favorite of MSNBC. He’s raised money for John Sununu in New Hampshire and Oregon senator Gordon Smith — both of whose reelection prospects are far from guaranteed. The list goes on.

Since Romney suspended his campaign and subsequently formed the Free and Strong America political action committee in April, he has donated approximately $202,000 to 75 GOP candidates, according to numbers made available to NRO from the PAC. Romney has also made an additional $173,000 in donations through flexible spending accounts to five affiliated state PACS, including $10,000 to the National Organization for Marriage, which is working to pass Proposition 8 in California, and $5,000 to stop a ballot initiative in Massachusetts to decriminalize marijuana.

And when the McCain campaign famously withdrew from Michigan, Romney contributed $50,000 to the demoralized GOP there. According to his PAC, “The total amount of financial support to GOP candidates and conservative causes through Romney-controlled state and federal PACs is $375,000.”

The web piece further blamed former Romney aides for being the source of the Sarah-Palin-is-a-diva complaints coming out of the McCain camp, presumably meant to damage her post-election prospects should the Republican ticket lose next week. The problem with that is: Most of Romney’s inner circle is still his inner circle — some having come from the business world, others being Massachusetts people now running his PAC. Others returned to Washington, and are doing McCain surrogate work, but are far from campaign insiders. Whomever is shooting at Palin from the McCain camp is not doing Romney’s bidding.

The good news for Mitt Romney is folks care what he’s doing. And someone out there sees him as enough of a threat to their ambitions to try to wound him. That rarely happens to irrelevant also-rans.

When longtime Romney spokesman Eric Fernstrom was asked about the former Massachusetts governor’s future on Monday, the longtime aide suggested Romney’s 2008 presidential ambitions weren’t running his life: “Gov. Romney had his shot at the White House, and he lost fair and square.” After a hostile primary season that highlighted some shameful instincts hostile to religious liberty both in the mainstream media and on the Right, you might not blame Romney if he went into retreat. But he never did. Romney got on the campaign trail for John McCain, defending the free-market policies that this successful businessman could no doubt run with, if he were in the driver’s seat.

Romney’s been a team player. Is it because he wants a Cabinet seat? Ask him — but I doubt it. There are easier jobs that taking over a massive bureacracy with limited freedom. Is it because he wants to be president? Ask him, but I don’t think that’s it either — and only time will tell, anyway, who will be Right prospects in a few years.


Watching him these past few months, he acts like a man who found a home on the Right, who both personally and philosophically appreciates those who were open to what he brought to the campaign trail, and continues to want to serve his country in whatever capacity she needs him. Right now, that’s by fundraising, contributing, and campaigning for conservative candidates and causes like the Susan B. Anthony List and Proposition 8 in California.

In his final primary-campaign speech in February, Mitt Romney said:

I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.

I will continue to stand for conservative principles. I will fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of those things is that we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face of evil extremism.

And so he campaigns for candidates who share his general vision of the world. Romney was with McCain in Ohio on Monday. He’ll be in New Hampshire on Wednesday campaigning for congressional candidates Jeb Bradley and Jennifer Horn. And then he’ll take off for get-out-the-vote rallies.

If you’re wondering where Mitt is — and you can suspend some of your cynicism — the answer might just be: Where he can be of use. If you take him at his word and his schedule, that’s what it reads like anyway.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

[Reaganesque]

I think not.

Clearly.

[Diogenesis]

Agreed. You and Romney are cowards, who will hide under a rock until that moment to attack again.

[Reaganesque]

From another thread today: Palin vs. McCain: Palin Insider Names Names. Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt. Both of the McCain camp. David Frum says the leaks likely come from Nicole Wallace. None of the above ever worked for Mitt Romney. Your little story is falling apart.

[Diogenesis]

Despite your claim, the facts say otherwise.

First, finding a sentence with the absence of evidence,
does not defeat the plethora of evidence showing Romney
behind every backstabbing innuendo and scheme in Election2008
from his phoney badges, to his pushpolls, to his using
other people from his Hive to attack a GOP candidate's children for his own.

Second, Steve Schmidt is another M4-Romney RomneyAttackBOT plunging a knife into
Gov. Palin and her children for the pooch- and GOP-screwing Mitt-Romney,
the venal shapeshifting backstabbing malignant admitted socialist and fascist.

"Schmidt was importuned by several of the Republican aspirants for president earlier this year.
Mitt Romney sent him an antique chair to symbolize a seat at the table."

Would you share with FReeRepublic a picture of that chair your Master sent his minion?

[Reaganesque]

A chair?!?! HOLY CRAP!! ITS PROOF! PROOF THAT MITT ROMNEY IS A COMMUNIST!!! PROOF THAT EVERYONE WHO EVER MET ROMNEY IS A COMMUNIST TOO!!! IF ONLY I HAD BEEN MORE PERCEPTIVE AND SEEN THAT THIS GIFT WAS SO DAMNING! OH THE SHAME AND HUMILIATION!! I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT AND WILL FLOG MYSELF 90 TIMES IN PENNANCE. 'CAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS THAT ANTIQUE CHAIR GIVING IS WHAT COMMIES DO!!!

[Diogenesis]

The Chair is only a barometer.
Election 2008 was LOST because of Mitt ROmney attacking the VP Candidate mercilessly.

ROmney, and his servants, illegal aliens, and RomneyBOTs, played his "Meadow Mountain Massacre 2008" Card.

[Reaganesque]

Here's a link to another thread. See post #6.

[Diogenesis]

There have been so many connections between the incessant attacks on Gov. Palin and Team Romney,
that it is clear that there is only one GOP, reprehensible, malevolent, candidate who decided to rape America
after it correctly refused to choose Romney, no matter how much he spent trying to buy Election 2008.

[Reaganesque]

This from Newsweek via CNN and Hot Air:

"With the gossipy attacks on Sarah Palin spreading, people have asked:cui bono? Who benefits from tearing down Palin at the end of this campaign? Some have speculated that Mitt Romney benefits in 2012 from having Palin sidelined, and that aides from his campaign that worked for John McCain might be behind the attacks. Not so, says Katie Connolly of Newsweek, where most of those attacks got reported:

Mike Galanos, CNN: Katie, a report I read, help me out here on this one, Im not sure if you heard this, there was some Romney aides that now came into the McCain campaign and it was the Romney aides that began spreading the dirt about Sarah Palin and basically in a fight already to see who is going to lead the party in the future. Any truth to that?

Katie Connolly, Newsweek: Absolutely not. Not from what I know. I think that’s completely false."

Click here for video.

So, yet more evidence that Romney staffers are likely NOT the sources of the leaks. Of course, this evidence is no match for your vague, anonymous and unsupported speculation, is it? Anonymous sources always trump identified and reliable ones, eh? I have evidence and have presented it. Show me yours or are you only capable of overheated verbal abuse?