I didn’t see Mitt Romney’s appearance this morning on Face the Nation but it appears that he refused to say whether he would or would not reverse Obama’s new immigration policy and refused several invitations to explain how he would pay for his tax cuts, going so far as to say that he has no intention of answering that question prior to standing for election. He also confirmed that he would not accept any budget deal that included tax increases even if they were accompanied by tens times as much in spending cuts. So, basically, he’s running as a Tea Party candidate who won’t share any of the details of how he’ll make people suffer. I think that’s going to present some problems for his campaign.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
He would be a nightmare for the economy. Tea Party foreign policy? I can only imagine the horrors. Everything this guy says is a sound bite. Nothing behind it. He is one crazy individual.
The more problems his campaign has, and the faster they multiply, the better. Total creep.
Totally plastic.
Could you spell out why you think his refusals will hurt him? If most of the undecided voters in swing states are low information voters, and they’re getting most of their election information from the bazillion SuperPAC-funded TV ads, anything outside those ads would be relevant only if major media outlets hammered on it, which they won’t. And if the Obama ads accuse Romney of not being specific (which they may or may not do), it’s just one guy’s ads vs. another guy’s ads – and media will most likely cover it that way, too.
I wish I weren’t this cynical, but if the last ten years have taught us anything it ought to be that a candidate – particularly a Republican candidate – can say any damn old thing and never be held accountable for it by voters. And Romney is taking that approach to 11. Maybe 12.
Well, through all the media and ads there is still a basic reality about the candidates that remains the single most important factor in any high profile election. If you are basically a weasel, then that is going to shine through.
People might like tough talk, even from an idiot. But I’ve never seen people respond to weasels.
You haven’t?
Oh.
Planet Booman.
The weasels never win.
Oh.
AG
He didn’t weasel. He flat-out lied. There is a difference. The public loves bold liars—if the liar can get away with it. ‘Tis why they loved the Gipper.
Please.
He was the front man for a whole den of weasels.
AG
A repentant alcoholic who “one could have a beer with”.
That’s how he ran in 2000. Both parts were lies. The public knew it, and the public rewarded him enough for him to steal it. Meanwhile the public perception was that Gore was the weasel. Because of Clinton.
Not because if Clinton. Because of Gore.
Here’s a guy who bragged about working with tobacco to tobacco farmers while using his sister’s death from lung cancer to make himself a hero of the anti-smoking club.
A guy who introduced the Willie Horton issue.
A guy who shrugged off his serial violations of campaign finance law by arguing that there was ‘no controlling legal authority’ to prosecute him from his crimes.
A guy who ran a populist campaign and then selected the moral scold and DLC head Joe Lieberman as his running mate.
Al Gore defined weasel. George W. Bush wasn’t a weasel. He was a frontman fro a vicious pack of jackals.
I know about the other examples but when did he introduce the Willie Horton issue? During the ’88 primary against Dukakis?
.
Did Gore Hatch Horton
Okay, thanks. Still I can’t be certain from that article that this is what Gore meant to do. It seems that it was just another attack from a DLC candidate against a “liberal” one from the Right. A DLC specialty at the time.
This isn’t “cynical,” Geov. It’s merely accurate.
William S. Burroughs’s definition of a paranoid:
Oh yes.
Bet on it.
AG
That’s the kind of thing that’s ripe for leftie-activist action, don’t you think? I mean, some ongoing, cleverer-than-this campaign, where MoveOn or someone who Boo doesn’t hate assails Romney at every stop, asking him what he’s going to cut? Other than gay kids’ hair.
I mean, just relying on the media, no. The fact that Romney has a Secret Plan to lower taxes and increase revenues without cuts won’t interest them at all. But if we add some drama …
200 pretty young long-haired leftie women willing to shave their heads bald outside Romney campaign stops while asking, ‘What will Romney cut’ might do more than all the ‘journalists’ in the world.
As many of you know, I do not consume much major media unless it is skimmable and not unavoidably infested with advertising memes and tropes. But one thing that I do quite regularly is look at the images that are being widely broadcast of various candidates and other people of…interest…to my survival and to that of the nation.
As many of you also know, I believe that our major elections are fixed…fixed by the corporate-owned Permanent Government and its hypnomedia outlets. They control the “undecideds,” and the undecideds pretty much control who wins and who loses. I thought that the fix was in for Obama, but now I am not so sure. By the images, Romney is being portrayed as the good guy…the strong, square-jawed American…and Obama is increasingy being portrayed as an overwrought, Nervous Nellie kind of hectoring professor/politician who is stressed past his limits. More images of greying hair and angles that emphasize his thinness are showing up.
Hmmmmm…maybe it’s the old switcheroo fix. You know…where the apparent designated “loser” pulls an upset and becomes an instant hero?
Or maybe they’re just keeping the “Obama wins!!!” conclusion hidden, as does a good pitcher regarding which pitch he’s about to serve up to the unsuspecting batter.
Or maybe…just maybe…it’s going to be a double switcheroo.
Another thing that I have been noticing in the image wars…the only media wars that really count with the totally confused, so-called “centrist” sleeple, who are not really centrist but rather completely in the dark about everything but whatever the media feed them…is that there are only two major national pols in the country who are being given the hero image treatment. Two and a half, really…one of them has two heads.
Mitt Romney and Hillary/Billary Clinton.
Hmmmm….
Watch.
My wonderful, gentle old Irish grandmother told me again and again, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.”
Yup.
The cup’s only about an inch off of the saucer so far.
We shall see, won’t we.
Man…Fats got that one right, didn’t he?
Yes he did.
Watch.
One never knows, do one?
It ain’t over until the fat media
sling…errr, ahhhh…sing their tale.Watch.
AG
The only question for the fate of the Republic is how far downticket his weaseling will affect his coattails.
My suspicion is that the downticket incumbents are going through the motions and hoping that state and local sentiment plays more for them in November.
I fervently hope you are right.
I don’t think it’s going to go far downticket for the reason I stated. That’s not what is needed to break the gridlock.
Good for Romney!!! He actually does have some testicular fortitude.
The deliberate lie told over and over again is that it’s NOT the spending…
Pay for Tax Cuts? Orwellian language, there. Are you serious?
Whatever happened to Liberty For All? I miss those posts.
America, bend over, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye.
Bothers me is he saying the rich will pay their same “share” as Today? He won’t repeal the Bush Tax Cuts? And won’t raise taxes on the top 1% either, because that would mean their “share” would go up.