Posted on 10/05/2007 2:26:25 PM PDT by Josh Painter
Whether it's because of the Mormon factor, his slipperiness on the issues (more on that in a moment), the fact that he's a Republican from Taxachusetts, the story about his taking a long drive with his dog on the roof of his car, an irrational dislike of people named "Mitt," or some other assorted factor or combination of factors, the American public is not warming up to Mitt Romney.
Once you get outside of Iowa and New Hampshire, where he has been spending much of his time and campaign war chest, Mitt's numbers are frighteningly bad.
Nationally, other than in August of this year, when Mitt surfed a wave of positive publicity about his victory at the Ames straw poll in Iowa, he has been mired right around the 9%-10% range in national polls. In fact, if you go all the way back to April of this year, you'll find that Mitt's national numbers are at about the same level. Just as a point of comparison, remember John McCain? You know, the guy everyone is saying can't raise money and has no chance to win? He has been -- and is still -- consistently outpolling Mitt Romney nationally.
Things get even worse for Mitt when you look at state polls against the Democratic contenders. Romney, like Giuliani, has been touting himself as a candidate who can give the Democrats problems in 2008 because he can compete with them in the blue states. However, for that strategy to work, the candidate has to be able to hold red states against a liberal Democratic nominee while he tries to bring more blue states into the fold. Rudy Giuliani, at least at this early point, has poll numbers that indicate he might be able to pull it off. Romney doesn't.
In fact, his numbers are much worse than those of Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani. How much worse? He actually ties Hillary in Kentucky and loses to her in Kansas and Oklahoma.
If the GOP has to struggle in 2008 to even hang onto red states like Kentucky, Kansas, and Oklahoma, we might as well just give up on retaining the presidency right now.
It's very difficult for Mitt's opponents to point out particular ideological positions of his that they have a problem with because he doesn't seem to have any firm ideological positions. You get the feeling that almost every position he holds today might change based on what office he's running for, what the polls say next week, or what audience he's talking to today.
While a little pandering to conservatives isn't such a bad thing or out of the ordinary -- all the candidates have done it to one extent or another -- Mitt has taken flip-floppery to positively Kerryian levels...
When Mitt ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994, he came across as a squishy RINO of the sort that you typically expect to be running for office in states like Massachusetts. Yet today, he sounds like a cross between Newt Gingrich circa 1994 and Rush Limbaugh. Did Mitt have a road-to-Damascus conversion to conservatism during that relatively short period of time or is he just pretending that he did to sucker conservatives into voting for him? The problem is that it's impossible to really know. The idea, I suppose, is that conservatives should get him into the White House and then we'll find out where he really stands.
And this is not just about abortion, where Mitt's position seems to have radically shifted, it's about a whole host of issues. He used to try to disassociate himself from Ronald Reagan and the Contract With America, but now he assures us that the Gipper and the Contract are close to his heart. He used to be pro-gun control and wanted nothing to do with the NRA, but now he's against gun grabbers and thinks the NRA is peachy. He came across as a member of the open borders and amnesty crowd whose position wasn't much different than that of John McCain on illegal immigration -- until it became a hot political issue -- and now he's running ads that make him sound like Tom Tancredo on the subject. Then there are the Bush tax cuts, embryonic stem cell research, and the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. There have been so many flips that the flops are still running about two blocks behind, trying to catch up.
Are these shifts genuine? Are they purely for politics' sake? Is Mitt Romney a conservative or is he a squish telling us what we want to hear while planning to take 3 or 4 steps back towards the middle once he feels less pressure to pander to the base? Probably the former, but there's no way to really know the truth. Do we really want a nominee in 2008 that we have this sort of questions about?
While Mitt Romney is certainly not all bad as a candidate, chances are he couldn't win a general election and even if he did, it would be difficult to know whether he would be a Reagan Republican or a Rockefeller Republican when he gets into office.
John Hawkins is also a PAID consultant for the John McCain for President campaign.
Rudy, Mitt and McCain.....all RINOs. Can’t we do better than this? Can Fred win? Duncan Hunter definitely sounds best but is considered a second/third tier candidate. Eight years of Hillary Cliton will be the death of this republic. Mark my words.
Thank God!
Got any proof of that claim?
If that’s true, then McCain is wasting his money on someone who opposes him.
http://www.rightwingnews.com/category.php?ent=5365
I suspect Pissant will find it first.
I would REALLY like to see Hunter as VP or in cabinet. However as far as the campaign goes in the last few months I just get the feeling he's a broken record on the fence and sounding more and more like a single issue candidate, even though I know he isn't.
Yes that is an important issue, but recently the only thing I've heard is "I'll build the fence", "my law says the fence must be built", "my fence in San Diego is a beautiful fence". Okay Duncan, I get it, you're first on the fence.
That's primarily why I consider him a second tier candidate. In the current field I only put Ron "Tin Foil Hat" Paul and Senator "Switchback" Brownback in the third tier never to have even a shot at anything.
Someone needs to ask Mitt Romney if he agrees with and would support the official statement of Bain Capital, the company he founded and that will be brokering the deal, that the merger between 3Com Corporation and Huawei Technologies of the People’s Republic of China “presents no risks to national security”.
Thank you for an excellent link. The author wisely supports my prejudices, namely that Romney and Rudy both sold their hindermost parts down the liberal river in order to get elected in Massholeland, and that Third World Hellhole full of rich people that Rudy somehow managed to save from itself for a short while.
He is a flip flopper.He is also against the fair tax.He is from taxacussets.Forget him.I have.
elizabetty wrote: “Opps, he jumped from McCain to Duncan Hunter. So John Hawkins is a paid consultant for the Duncan Hunter for president campaign.”
You’re wrong three different ways, LOL. Hawkins never consulted for the the McCain campaign. He was a paid consultant for the Hunter campaign for a few months, but he is no longer working for Hunter in any capacity.
“Thank you for an excellent link. The author wisely supports my prejudices, namely that Romney and Rudy both sold their hindermost parts down the liberal river in order to get elected in Massholeland”
Abortion, though, presented a formidable obstacle. In Massachusetts, he had famously invoked his mother and the story of a relative who had died from a botched back alley abortion to convince the state’s socially liberal electorate that he was pro-choice. But even the hint of such rhetoric would sink him in Utah, where G.O.P. nominations are essentially awarded through a state convention dominated by fanatical abortion foes.
And so, not for the first time, Mitt set about shifting his public posture on abortion. After the Salt Lake Tribune wrote about Mitt’s stated interest in political office in Utah – and singled out his abortion position as problematic at any state G.O.P. convention—he responded with a cryptic letter to the editor. “I do not wish to be labeled pro-choice,” he wrote, words that instantly breathed life into the Romney-for-Governor-of-Utah talk.
Mr. Romney elaborated no further in the letter, citing his non-political Olympics role—but one his closest friends (who now bundles money for the Romney presidential campaign) told the Tribune that Mitt’s Massachusetts abortion rhetoric had been “a carefully crafted position intended to sound more firm than it was,” as the paper put it.
By keeping his letter to the editor vague, Mr. Romney kept his options alive in both liberal Massachusetts and conservative Utah. And as it turned out, Governor Swift’s administration unraveled in Massachusetts, and when the Olympics wrapped up in February 2002, the Bay State’s G.O.P. begged Mitt—awash in glowing national press coverage—to come home and rescue them.
And when he returned, he promptly downplayed his half-step to the pro-life side, returning to the passionate pro-choice pleadings that he had espoused before but had muted in Utah. He began bringing up his mother again, praising her “courage” for speaking pro-choice language in the pre-Roe era and promised the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League that he would “respect and will support a woman’s right to choose.”
Just like now, his sincerity came into question. And just like now, he feigned exasperation. In ’02, he told his Democratic opponent, Shannon O’Brien, that it was “unbecoming” of her to suggest he had been less than forthcoming on his abortion views. Last week, when the consistently pro-life Sam Brownback raised the same concern, Mr. Romney harrumphed that “I get tired of people that are holier than thou because they’ve been pro-life longer than I have.””
http://www.observer.com/2007/mitt-romneys-convenient-truths
elizabetty wrote: “Are you going to post his article titled, ‘The Conservative Case against Fred Thompson?’”
He hasn’t written one. And if, by chance someday he does, I’m sure someone from your camp will post it, as they have posted many articles critical of Fred in the past.
No, wait. On second thought, pissant will have have it posted here before the ink is dry. LOL!
Hell, pissant may ghost write it...
Romney wasn’t a conservative before he was....
http://exposingtheleft.blogspot.com/2007/09/romney-flip-flops-gaffes-and-other.html
Doesn’t make his points any less poigniant!
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