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Romney's Ugly Politics Now Surfacing In Surrogates
Riehl World View ^ | January 22, 2012 | Dan Riehl

Posted on 01/22/2012 4:33:13 PM PST by greyfoxx39

One of the things fellow Republicans and political observers have never liked about Mitt Romney is the wholesome piety he exhibits on the stump, while his hacks and PACs engage in some of the ugliest politics around. He can flash that plastic smile and pretend all he wants, but people know the cold fish doesn't shy away from the politics of personal destruction. If anything, his campaigns embrace it more than most, while feigning ignorance and pretending otherwise himself.

This is why so many people in the GOP have come to dislike Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney backer and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's comments this morning that Newt Gingrich "embarrassed" the Republican Party has the formerr House Speaker's Florida campaign co-chairman, Alan Levine, fuming.

"Far be it from me to tell the governor of New Jersey to focus on his own state, but this isn't a way to begin a campaign in Florida. It's disappointing," said Levine, a former healthcare chief under Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal who is new a private-sector hospital executive.

But now he's panicking because his South Carolina campaign has become a laughing stock. I've talked with some long-time operatives on the ground, in some cases, they've alienated more people than they've pulled in. There's also talk that his people in Florida are starting to panick, now, too.

Mitt Romney can use a legal facade to feign ignorance with his PAC problems. But he can't do that with his surrogates who come with faces and names. He could call, or call-out a Coulter, or Christie and ask them to stand down. But he won't. And even if he did, he wouldn't mean it.

His weak political skills are catching up to him. Unable to truly connect with voters, it now appears he's going to try and rely on some slash and burn surrogates to tear the other guy down.

It won't work. Ultimately, all this vitriol is going to circle back and make him all the more unlikeable to the base, something he already is to a good degree. If he keeps it up, this puppy, Mittens, is going down. The use of surrogates, not PACs for his ugly brand of politics, brings it just a bit too close to home for him to continue to hide it. Voters always reject real ugliness in politics. They'll reject both it and Mitt Romney this time around, too.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Extended News; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: backstabberromney; backstabbers4romney; benedictromney; bishopromney; brutusromney; carpetbaggerromney; dirtytricks; falselypiousromney; imperiousromney; ineligibleromney; mitt; mitt4romney; poorsportromney; romney4dnc; romney4obama; romney4romney; romney4soros; romneydirtytrick; romneydirtytricks; romneyinhiding; romneyusingothers; rovianpuppet; royalromney; saboteurromney; saboteurs4mitt; spoilerromney; spoilsportromney; tokyoromney; usualpractice
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To: Scooter100

hey buddie mock all you want. You won’t be so glib about it when it’s coming from Chris Matthews during the general. You’d be wise to listen to those of us with actual experience on this subject.


21 posted on 01/22/2012 4:59:18 PM PST by SENTINEL (Romney is to Conservatism what Mormonism is to Christianity.)
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To: true believer forever

Our bank for customer birthdays sends out “ON THIS DATE” in a cascade of decades up to “TODAY”, covering consumer prices and relative events. Google up on that angle, as in Prices NOW and THEN, or similar.

“Swarming messages I know were done by the French Resistance, under the Vichey regime who entertained Hitler as quite tolerable.

Great idea. It worked then! Congratulations!


22 posted on 01/22/2012 5:00:59 PM PST by RitaOK (LET 'ER RIP, NEWT. NEWT 2012 / Rick Bachmann=Tool of the RINO/Romney backers)
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To: hinckley buzzard

this is the link for the national phone banks for Newt into Florida. The SC effort was a real success and a lot of people in South Carolina were very happy to hear from people all over the country making calls to them supporting Newt. If you just make 10 calls per day for the next ten days, that will make a huge difference...

http://www.newtsnetwork.com/activism/pb/ Newt’s National Phone Banks

thanks for donating, Mr. Buzzard!


23 posted on 01/22/2012 5:03:18 PM PST by true believer forever (First, they came for the rich.)
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To: greyfoxx39

Scorched earth against Newt Gingrich worked in Iowa.
Don’t let it happen again in Florida!


24 posted on 01/22/2012 5:03:50 PM PST by onyx (PLEASE SUPPORT FREE REPUBLIC - DONATE MONTHLY! If you want on Sarah Palin's Ping List, let me know!)
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To: greyfoxx39
Mitt is ugly but he hates confrontation. He is too cowardly for that.

Mitt is a weak person, which is why Newt is gonna win. Luckily, Newt has got Mitt's number. He knows better than to turn his back on Mitt.

Newt tried to take the high road in Iowa. He learned well how Mitt deals from the bottom of the deck.

Mitt is sneaky...not strong.

25 posted on 01/22/2012 5:07:31 PM PST by RoosterRedux (Newt: "Why vote for the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama?")
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To: Vendome

That’s hilarious...stealing it!


26 posted on 01/22/2012 5:08:50 PM PST by greyfoxx39 (When GOP wants to guarantee a loss, they pick from MA: Dukakis, Kerry and now Romney.)
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To: true believer forever

This cycle has me risk adverse like none other. So phone banks using strangers from nowhere or somewhere, certainly carries some unknown degree of risk as to what they actually will be saying to recipients on the Republican voters list, but guess it could happen anyway, quite outside of any campaign organization and its phone banks. It has to help more than it hurts, right?


27 posted on 01/22/2012 5:09:38 PM PST by RitaOK (LET 'ER RIP, NEWT. NEWT 2012 / Rick Bachmann=Tool of the RINO/Romney backers)
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To: onyx

It is worse than scorched earth in Florida, in one 30-min program there is at least 1 Willard ad on every break... sometimes two. I am not exaggerating... The only thing Willard has is money... and he’s got lots..


28 posted on 01/22/2012 5:10:29 PM PST by true believer forever (First, they came for the rich.)
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To: greyfoxx39
He could call, or call-out a Coulter, or Christie and ask them to stand down. But he won't. And even if he did, he wouldn't mean it.

Overall i agree with the article but that line should have been left out. You won't win over too many people evoking a "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" scenario like the above.

29 posted on 01/22/2012 5:13:47 PM PST by Humbug (the media rule the world and they know it....they are our true foe, not the puppet in the WH)
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To: true believer forever
Bump #11

HELP A FLORIDA FREEPER OUT!

30 posted on 01/22/2012 5:14:14 PM PST by greyfoxx39 (When GOP wants to guarantee a loss, they pick from MA: Dukakis, Kerry and now Romney.)
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To: RitaOK

I can only speak about SC, and I did a lot of calling... the people we so nice and so friendly, and I never had one negative experience... and the last few days, you could feel the tide changing when I started getting about 100% going to vote for Newt, compared to less than 40% on Monday... the women all have these great belly laughs, you can just picture them throwing their heads back as they laugh out loud about the smallest thing, and lots of the old men told me stories about when they were in WWII - and they dont’ make them like Newt anymore... I loved it. but you might be right, because SC is pure southern - and southern hospitality - and Florida more of a mix because of all the influx... But you just should try it... start gently.


31 posted on 01/22/2012 5:17:58 PM PST by true believer forever (First, they came for the rich.)
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To: true believer forever; seekthetruth; Matchett-PI; mojitojoe; Bushbacker1

seekthetruth, MatchettPI, mojitojoe & BushBacker1 PING for information/research!

seekthetruth has FL ping list!


32 posted on 01/22/2012 5:20:40 PM PST by onyx (PLEASE SUPPORT FREE REPUBLIC - DONATE MONTHLY! If you want on Sarah Palin's Ping List, let me know!)
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To: RitaOK

i already got a few really good hits already with those terms, and am going to keep wading through the search results... I even found one for chocolate chip cookies, that’s exactly the kind of thing I was looking for... thanks so much for unjamming my logjam... GO NEWT!!


33 posted on 01/22/2012 5:22:20 PM PST by true believer forever (First, they came for the rich.)
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To: true believer forever

I belong in Florida! I know I do!
I so want to relocate.


34 posted on 01/22/2012 5:22:48 PM PST by onyx (PLEASE SUPPORT FREE REPUBLIC - DONATE MONTHLY! If you want on Sarah Palin's Ping List, let me know!)
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To: greyfoxx39

Mitt and his team of elitist NE Republicans just don’t get it. The biggest thing that should alarm anyone who is considering voting for Romney for the nomination is that the Romney campaign seems to have learned nothing from 2008. They have been running virtually the same campaign as they did in 2008 only a bit time delayed. This shows they don’t understand two key things that they need to win regardless of all the other things that some of us care about like say principles.

The first thing Team Romney doesn’t get is why John McCain beat them in 2008. John McCain was dead, kaput, buried before NH. His amnesty talk had nearly destroyed his campaign but what he did was strongly and clearly say he was wrong and it wasn’t long after that he began to rise. He won NH and we all know the rest of the story. John McCain new that he wasn’t going to win being the otherwise of Romney as John Huntsman tried to play so he leveraged what conservative strengths and military record and ran on them and won not because people loved him but because we at least knew who he was even if he was and is often a pain in the *ss. The Romney team still thinks the 2008 campaign was perfect and that is why they are running it again. They simply believed they peaked too soon. That is where they are wrong. They didn’t peak too soon, they are simply targetting the wrong voters. Moderate/lib GOP amount to less than a quarter of the GOP. That leaves a lot of ways a conservative can win the nomination and only one path to it for self styled moderate reformed conservatives like Romney.

The second thing is they are failing to acknowledge the change in the electorate. The 2008 electorate is not the electorate of today. Today self identified conservatives have grown to be an even greater portion of the electorate not just in the GOP but also with Independents who are more conservative than ever. George W Bush actually picked up on this trend early and took advantage of it to win in 2000 and 2008. Obama is an abberation. He didn’t win because the electorate became more liberal as a whole but because the electorate that turned out was more liberal. The Romney camp is running a race out of time.

What Romney should’ve been doing for the past 4 years is standing alongside Palin and others and proving his worth as a harsh critic of Obama and making the case against Obama. Instead he has tried to run a stealth campaign having it both ways. One day he says Obama has made the economy worse and then when interviewed says he really didn’t say that. Romney only recently began to use words like ‘founder’ and limited government when he should’ve been doing that when the Tea Party was rising.

The Romney campaign is the stupid campaign. He should be reorganizing and firing people right now after his dismal showing in SC. He didn’t just lose he was CRUSHED. I doubt they will because the Romney crowd is an arrogant bunch. They still don’t see their mistakes as mustakes instead they are upset at the voters who dare expect them to win their vote on principle and substance not with peer pressure and talk of inevitability as if we are nominating a class president or country club president.

I think Romney is a ‘dead candidate walking’. No Republican in recent history has won the GOP nomination without SC and I doubt it is going to happen this year and certainly not with a smug bunch of elitists trying to tell conservatives how they have no choice but to vote for them if they want to win.


35 posted on 01/22/2012 5:22:58 PM PST by Maelstorm (Better to keep your enemy in your sights than in your camp expecting him to guard your back.)
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To: greyfoxx39

Mitt is nothing more than a little Morman god. Fundamental right out the Joe Smith play book. The rest of us are gentiles and have no standing in the eyes of the Mittster.


36 posted on 01/22/2012 5:31:33 PM PST by ptsal (E)
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To: greyfoxx39
I would bet money (not $10,000 though) that Mitt plans his glib responses that pop out while he is milling on the stump, waiting for one of his crony's to trigger it.

When he lost track during Thursdays debate when he stumbled and bumbled for a few seconds and looked to Newt for help, Newt said, "Gee Mitt, I don't know". As if to say, I don't know what canned response you should say next. Classic over-prepped and under-knowledged.

37 posted on 01/22/2012 5:35:10 PM PST by bondserv (God governs our universe and has seen fit to offer us a pardon.)
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To: SENTINEL
Hey, pal, I don't care what your buddy Chris Matthews says about Mitt's religion "during the general"......cause Newt will be running. Ya got that clear?

BTW, I AM wising up.....If you're a Romney fan, you need a good zotting.

38 posted on 01/22/2012 5:35:57 PM PST by Scooter100 ("Now that the fog has lifted, I still can't find my pipe". --- S. Holmes)
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To: true believer forever

Actually, I was referring to the call-ERS and not the call-EES. You know what I mean? As in, Paul bots, Axlerod bots, doing the calling and by getting a hold of the Republican phone list to make those calls and promoting their own message of anything, or anyone, but not Newt Gingrich. I finally deduced that such a thing can be done anyway, by any freelancer with a phone, who is unattached to any campaign.


39 posted on 01/22/2012 5:36:55 PM PST by RitaOK (LET 'ER RIP, NEWT. NEWT 2012 / Rick Bachmann=Tool of the RINO/Romney backers)
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To: big'ol_freeper
A FReeper named reaganesque was outed as a paid Romney operative.

I wondered what became of that cur, he/she was over the top and definitely exhibited cult of personality type behavior.

40 posted on 01/22/2012 5:40:36 PM PST by Rome2000 (OBAMA IS A COMMUNIST CRYPTO-MUSLIM)
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