The Mormon, Mitt Romney, held his convention in Tampa, Florida and supposedly saved his candidacy with a great debate performance in Denver, Colorado. Yet, Barack Obama just received endorsements from the editorial boards of The Salt Lake Tribune, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Denver Post.
Here’s how Utah’s paper explains their reasoning:
In considering which candidate to endorse, The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board had hoped that Romney would exhibit the same talents for organization, pragmatic problem solving and inspired leadership that he displayed here more than a decade ago [for the 2002 Winter Olympics]. Instead, we have watched him morph into a friend of the far right, then tack toward the center with breathtaking aplomb. Through a pair of presidential debates, Romney’s domestic agenda remains bereft of detail and worthy of mistrust.
Therefore, our endorsement must go to the incumbent, a competent leader who, against tough odds, has guided the country through catastrophe and set a course that, while rocky, is pointing toward a brighter day. The president has earned a second term. Romney, in whatever guise, does not deserve a first.
Those who know Romney best still don’t know him well enough or like him well enough to endorse him.
Saw that editorial. Thought it was one of the best, most succinct summaries of Mitt’s shortcomings. My thought was, “Wow, in this man’s heart of hearts, if he has one, that has got to hurt.”
Here’s Mother Jones’ take:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/10/romney-salt-lake-tribune-endorsement-obama
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Great stuff from the Salt Lake tribune!
I loved the description at the Al Smith Dinner of the similarity between Romney and Cuomo:
“Both are sons of a governor, won the election for governor as a Democrat in a Northeastern state and both have the ambition to become President one day.”
Mitt Romney has the Mormon missionary to thank for his
deceptiondodging serving in the Vietnam War. Mormonism and wealth are solidly embraced as seen by his truthful speech before his benefactors.It seems to me Mitt Romney has not been paying attention to the modernization in the Mormon religion. Latest revelation in 2009, LDS mission change – Care for the Needy.
The LDS Church is adding “to care for the poor and needy” to its longstanding “threefold mission,” which is to preach the
LDS gospel, purify members’ lives and provide saving ordinances such as baptism to those who have died.
Mormon feminists? Yes they exist, and they’re for Obama – The Exponent II
Some excellent comments too! It’s just Romney and not the Mormon religion .. there is still hope.
The one endorsement that slipped away was The Orlando Sentinel. They went for Romney this time. The reason that this has me miffed is that Orlando includes the district where Alan Grayson is trying to reclaim his seat, and he’s up against a real dingbat and a pile of Koch Brother’s money. I hope the endorsement isn’t representative of how Orlando is feeling towards the Democrats as a whole. Grayson is a lightning rod for conservative ire, he’s interesting to have around, and I’d really like to see him return to the House of Representatives.
Expect a lot of endorsements along those lines:
“Things are bad.
Obama didn’t fix them.
Romney won’t fix them either.
But Obama didn’t fix them.”
It’s consonant with what the paper’s bosses want, and it mirrors the ‘thinking’ of your swing voter.
So everyone’s happy who matters.
I gave up on the wingnut rag OS years ago. The paper is so far slanted to the right the words fall off. Now, The Daytona Beach News Journal sucks too. I subscribed to both, but no more. All we’re left with is The TBT.
Thanks for the info on The Orlando Sentinel and The Daytona Beach News. When my parents were still alive and living in retirement in Sarasota, I think they used to get The Sarasota Herald or something along those lines. I used to take a peek at it while visiting. There were so many Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Boston retirees in Sarasota that the Herald couldn’t shift too much to the right.
I moved here from Boston 20+ years ago. This place(I-4 corridor) while getting more diverse had gotten worse as far as partisan politics goes. The Davidson family lost control of the NJ, the replacement editor is a Cox lackey.
Brutal. One really couldn’t ask for much more than that.
While by no means a far-leftie paper, the Tribune is by far the more liberal of the two major papers in Salt Lake City. The Deseret News is the Mormon Church-owned one, and I haven’t seen their endorsement (if they’ve done one) but I don’t doubt it will be what everyone expects from a Utah paper.
Still, this is a nice thing to wave in Republicans’ faces, especially they – like Democrats outside of Utah – think we’re a bunch of troglodytes here.
Yes, Obama has garnered virtually every newspaper endorsement that counts. Unfortunately, these things no longer appear to matter much to the “independent” voter–they may not follow politics too well, but they won’t listen to people like newspaper editors, either. Everyone’s an expert now. Even about subjects they despise and largely ignore.
For some time now prez politics has been “explained” by the likeability factor–the final post-mortem was that people (independents) didn’t “like” Kerry, remember, so they re-elected the worst prez in history. Similarly, people didn’t “like” how Gore acted in the debates, and he was “too stiff” according to our pundits, etc. So these Dems lost to a sputtering boob because, while they were obviously more qualified and competent (Gore was the most qualified candidate ever to run), the good folks of America didn’t “like” ’em.
Now of course in 2012 we have a positively dislikeable pushy arrogant asshole elitist plutocrat (and part time Mormon bishop) as the REPUB candidate, and it appears that the “likeability” factor ain’t mattering too damn much. That he is very weakly qualified AND an asshole doesn’t seem to be held against him too decisively. Why?
It will be interesting to examine all this after the election, but it seems right now that Dems (and Obama) have incredibly not “won” the argument over the economy and that an abusive plutocrat bozo like Rmoney can yet again propose huge tax cuts benefiting the rich (just like Bush and Reagan and every prior braindead “conservative” clown), while simultaneously yapping about the deficit and debt. Preach that gub’mint austerity is the recipe, while austerity takes Europe into a second recession.
And when the dust has settled on the three domestic policy debates, most polls indicate that Rmoney/Ryan (of all idiocy) are seen as “best for the economy”—when prior polling had indicated (for example) solid majorities for INCREASING taxes on the rich. Not so much, somehow.
It’s all quite perplexing, frankly and makes me wonder about the rationality of most voters. Perhaps the reality is that they do indeed “like” Rmoney and his alpha dog antics. But at least we got the newspaper endorsements!
In Tampa Bay, the Times is the left-leaning paper and the Tribune is the right-leaning paper. The Trib is paleocon and refused to endorse Bush II in 2004, much to my amazement and pleasure. Having lived in Tampa for a few years and understanding their perspectives on race, I’d give it about a 0% chance of the Trib failing to endorse Romney. If Romney loses the Trib’s endorsement then you’ll know with certainty that the gig is up.
Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. It is a serious oversimplification. The truth of the matter is that no one with much in the way of brain power likes Mitt Romney.
From an article in today’s LA Times about the reading habits of Obama and the Zombnie:
And there it is.
“…radiantly unsophisticated…”
The Zombnie glories in his ignorance. He lives in a time bubble, protected by his immense wealth and his lack of much of a functioning left brain from having to deal with the increasingly complex realities of this evolving universe.
But a huge number of Americans also live in that make-believe world…you don’t have to be rich to be stupid…and as a result the media-enforced fix will fail if they actually go out and vote.
Let us pray that they are too busy watching Honey Boo Boo to go to the polls on November 6th.
Let us pray.
AG
I hate it when I go up against an ally, but the writer you quote is an embarrassment. (the link doesn’t work, so I didn’t read the whole article or find out who the writer is.) Huckleberry Finn is some kind of “pure escapism” where “good and evil are clearly defined? Tell that to all the grad students trying to define it for the last century or so. Compared to the lugubrious and predictable religious struggle that is Gilead’s whole plot? That may be the most pathetic takeaway I’ve ever seen. I doubt that Romney really read any of those books, or that this writer did either.
Ender’s Game is OK genre fiction, with a few interesting insights about power, war, and forgiveness. I doubt that a good little Mormon would be wasting his holy time reading shoot ’em up trash like Battlefield. Science fiction is not all trash, as the writer, in his/her ignorance, seems to assume. Any candidate would do themselves a favor reading Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land or Neuromancer or Left Hand of Darkness among many others.
If we want to make reading list comparisons, I suggest considering that Obama was reading Reinhold Niebuhr while Ryan, and presumably Romney, were being enthralled by Ayn Rand. The thing that’s precisely most sickening about them is that they probably never wasted time on any “lively, breezy stuff” or experienced the delight that great thought and great writing inject into previously callow minds.
I dunno. The link works for me. <http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-obama-romney-reading-20121021,0,1421008.story?track=lat-pick>
“What to read into Obama and Romney’s favorite books”-Los Angeles Times, by Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2012, 12:25 p.m.
Yeah. Mark Twain is deeper than that. But I’ll bet the Zomnbie missed the depth and read “Huckleberry Finn” as a clomp-clomp-clomping adventure story.
He’s stupid, Dave.
What else can I say?
Is this guy Hector Tobar as deep as is Noam Chomsky?
Most likely not…after all, he’s working for the mainstream media. But nevertheless, he pinned it. And I have no doubt at all that the Zomnbie is capable of reading Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” and Hubbard’s “”Battlefield Earth” on the same level. Low like a motherfucker!!!
I stand by my post.
AG
P.S. And yes, Ayn Rand is only slightly higher on the IQ level than is L. Ron Hubbard?
So what?
Since when did IQ matter in the public arena?
Not since I came to some sort of consciousness.
Bet on it.
I don’t think either AG or Dave has recently read “Atlas Shrugged”. I won’t get into the politics or political philosophy of the book.
The book is bad. Truly a piece of shit literature. Devoid of any redeeming literary values. Mein Kampf is better written, has a tighter plot line and a more believable ending.
I doubt very much that Romney or Ryan has ever truly sat down and read the book cover to cover. It’s just too boring.
Well, it’s been so long that I can’t even remember if I read Atlas or Fountainhead or (most likely) both. I do remember being briefly enthralled at the ancient, childish images she channeled, the lone ubermench standing righteously against the crowd of doltish sheep. Strong tonic for a geekish kid steeped in science fiction.
The aftereffect was much like what happens when a vegetarian pigs out on big macs. What had been excitement turned to disgust as the reality of bad writing, fractured logic, suffocating self obsession, and arrogant no-nothingness began to erode the adolescent high. It left a permanent brake on any future assumptions about my own perspicacity.
Like I said, I highly doubt that Romney ever really read anything that didn’t single-mindedly bear on attaining his ambitions. Ryan probably did. And it stuck. This appears to be one of those times when “forty-something adolescent” = “sociopath”.
I doubt Romney ever read more than a CliffsNotes summary of Rand’s works – and only to understand what his fellow aspiring greed-head peers were talking about. In fact I doubt most Mormons would ever admit to reading such blasphemy even if they had. Paul Ryan, on the other hand, has spoken of it as if it’s the finest erotica ever written, which is very disturbing. No doubt he has read it many times over and committed key passages to memory.