Category: Mitt Romney

Is America Ready For A President Who Can Humbly Say I Was ‘Completely Wrong’?

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by Smitty

NRO hasn’t got any embed code I can find, but Mitt on Hannity definitely mowed on crow for his 47% remark. What a refreshing development, after four years of “There is no personality conflict: I’ve got the personality, you’ve got the conflict” from #OccupyResoluteDesk.

The Romney campaign should find subtle ways to underscore the idea that, unlike the incumbent, Mitt is not an insufferable, peevish clown.

The New Yorker Cover Lays Down A Stone Cold #Eastwooding

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by Smitty

Via Drudge, here’s one for the books:

Debating from an angry chair
Angry pout that steals the air
Ego hurts and I don’t care

What do I see across the way, hey
See my job molded in clay, oh
Stares at me, yeah I’m afraid, hey
Changing the shape of his face, ah yeah

Commies red I have a pair
Numbers dancing everywhere
Polling on the angry chair

Little boy made a mistake, hey
Racist reference to young Craig, oh
All that he wants is to play, hey
Get on your knees, time to pray, oh

[Chorus]
I don’t mind, yeah
I don’t mind, I-I-I
I don’t mind, yeah
I don’t mind, I-I-I
Lost my mind, yeah
I don’t mind, I-I-I
Can’t find it anywhere
I don’t mind, I-I-I

Dodd-Frank prison, we stay, hey
I’m a dull boy, work all day, oh
Racist reference to young Tagg, hey
Loneliness is not a phase
Field of pain is where I graze

Shoulda prepared debate side
Saw my reflection, no pride, hey
So little hope that polls died, oh
But Matthews lies, mouth so wide, hey
Weight of ideology, not the size, oh

[chorus]

Pink cloud has now turned to ralph
All that I want is to golf
Get on your knees cry to Wolf, boy

Update: more at Evil Blogger Lady

ROMNEY IN COAL COUNTRY
UPDATE: You Call This a ‘Recovery’?

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ABINGDON, Virginia
Mitt Romney spoke to a crowd of nearly 4,000 people here in a midday rally, where he emphasized for the coal industry, a vital part of the economy in southwest Virginia. There was a strong representation at the rally from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

While at the rally, I got a chance to talk with an award-winning local reporter, Debra McCown, who explained that some 1,200 coal workers in the area had been laid off recently because of EPA regulations that have curbed the use of coal in electrical power plants. McCown explained that during the 2008 campaign, Obama made two trips to the area, as did his running mate Joe Biden, while John McCain’s only visit to the area was an airport stop at the Tri-Cities Airport in Sullivan County, Tennessee — just south of the Virginia border — the day before Election Day.

During his speech, Mitt got a cheer from the crowd when he mentioned the debate, and said that Obama’s statements during Wednesday’s debates were essentially “a reiteration of the status quo.” The biggest cheer during the entire rally was when Romney promised to repeal ObamaCare. Citing the latest employment report, Romney said, “We can do better.”

Ali Akbar gave me a ride to the event and has posted an entire Facebook page of photos from the rally.

UPDATE: Romney’s rapid response press operation is  already online with this video clip of Mitt’s speech at Abingdon:

“My priority is creating jobs. I will help small business do that with everything I can do. Now, we can do better. We don’t have to stay on the path we have been on. We can do better. There was a report that just came out this morning on job creation this last month. There were fewer new jobs created this month than last month. The unemployment rate, as you know, this year has come down very, very slowly, but it has come down nonetheless. The reason it has come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work. And if you just drop out of the workforce, if you just give up and say, look, I can’t go back to work, I’m just going to stay home, if you just drop out altogether, why, you’re no longer part of the employment statistics. So, it looks like unemployment is getting better, but the truth is if the same share of people were participating in the workforce today, as on the day the President got elected, our unemployment rate would be around 11%. That’s the real reality of what’s happening out there. And then, of course, even those that have jobs are having tough times. The middle class is being squeezed with higher and higher costs and with incomes that have gone down by $4,300 a family. This can’t go on. I’ll tell you this: when I’m President of the United States, when I’m President of the United States, that unemployment rate is going to come down, not because people are giving up and dropping out of the workforce, but because we are creating more jobs. I will create jobs and get America working again.”

The Left is now claiming that criticism of the economy — the decline in the official unemployment rate caused by people dropping out of the work force, a statistical oddity — is “job trutherism,” as if Jack Welch doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Look, I mentioned this same phenomenon, as demonstrated by recent reports of employment in Crawford County, Ohio, earlier this week:

Americans have become accustomed to this sort of “good news” in the Obama era, and there was more of it in that small-town Ohio paper. “Unemployment remains the same,” declared the headline across the top of the front page. The story explained that, although the official unemployment rate in Crawford County, Ohio (population 43,389) declined from 9 percent in July to 8 percent in August, it wasn’t because more people were working. “Since the number of employed stayed the same, 200 people went off of unemployment because their time limit is up and they have not found work yet,” Dave Williamson, director of the Crawford County Economic Development Partnership, told the Bucyrus paper. “We have no more people working than we did last month.”
Extrapolate such statistical hocus-pocus at the local level across the entire state of Ohio, or nationwide, and you understand how some people might be deceived into believing that the Obama administration has actually produced an economic recovery.

Statistics that “hide the decline” (i.e., the shrinking workforce, as more and more discouraged workers cease to be counted in the official unemployment number) do not fool anyone who actually looks at the underlying data. Anyone who is confused about this should consult James Pethokoukis at The American Enterprise Institute.

 





 


Sweet, Sweet Gratuitous Cartoon Violence

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by Smitty

Your completely unnecessary nearly-guilty-but-just-at-the-last-second-OH-YEAH pleasure, via the Tatler:

Next week the question will be whether Paul Ryan can show the masterful restraint Romney did, when confronted with Uncle Choo-Choo. Hopefully they’re coaching Ryan to throw back his head and laugh, rather than come across the stage and deliver the flogging that Biden may secretly crave.
And then the 16 October event:

In the Oct. 16 town hall at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., “citizens will ask questions of the candidates on foreign and domestic issues,” the Commission on Presidential Debates announced today. “Candidates each will have two minutes to respond and an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate a discussion.”

Candy Crowley has the moderation chores. Will she do a credible job of appearing dry while parked in the tank for Obama?

Troglopundit expects some sort of ‘comeback kid’ narrative. But wouldn’t you need more than just a sack of crap to build that narrative? I just don’t see any way that Obama delivers credibility to support whatever line of hooey Crowley and crew can spin.

Via Daily Pundit, beware: the unfair chair is in the air:

HotAir brings some delicious self-abuse:

Fire-Code Capacity: INCREDIBLE Crowd for Romney-Ryan Rally in Virginia

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Mitt Romney speaks Thursday at campaign rally in Fisherville, Virginia
(Associated Press photo by Charles Dharapak, via Ken Gardner.)

Last night’s rally in Fisherville, Virginia, was so crowded, I couldn’t even get inside with media credentials, and really was lucky to get there at all. When I turned off the ramp from I-81 onto I-64, I was confronted by an absolutely gridlocked traffic jam, backed up all the way to Exit 91, more than four miles away. There was a similar backup toward Charlottesville to the east of the exit, as well as on both of the state highways leading to the event site.

It took nearly an hour to get from I-81 to Exit 91 and, seeing the long line of cars headed up the mile-long road to the venue, I decided to park at the McDonald’s right next to the exit and walk the rest of the way. It was past 7 p.m. at that point, and I could hear the music playing in the distance — good news, as it meant that country music star Trace Adkins was still onstage and they hadn’t started the speaking program yet. As I headed down the road to the venue, I found myself walking alongside some others who had parked their cars on the other side of the expressway.

Nearing the rally, we encountered a crowd of thousands — yes, thousands — standing on a hillside across from the open-air arena, where a speaker for the National Rifle Association was talking about Second Amendment rights. I went up to the gate entrance and the cops said no admission, not even to the press, citing orders from the fire marshal. Another reporter was there, likewise shut out, and said he was waiting on someone with the campaign staff whom he’d contacted to try to get in, but he wasn’t hopeful.

Well, this was the story, you see.

The speeches of the candidates are just speeches — anybody could find the videos and transcripts online later — whereas this massive crowd was something you really had to see to believe, and something that the national press was unlikely to report.

While we were standing beside the entrance, a group of young men in white military uniforms arrived and got the same “no admission” response from the cops.

“Not even for VMI cadets?” they asked, but the head cop replied, “Don’t even try to pull that with me.” He had his orders from the fire marshal, and there were Republicans with VIP tickets who, arriving late, were similarly locked out.

So I asked one of the cops about the arena capacity, and he said officially it seats 5,000, but I could see there were easily another thousand people standing, inside the security perimeter, but outside the seating area. A Secret Service agent said she’d been told the campaign had issued 10,000 tickets online. Walking back out to the road, where the crowd was standing on the hillside, I estimated at least another 2,000, and the cars were still lined up bumper to bumper coming in.

And these people were totally fired-up. The Shenandoah Valley is the absolute bedrock of Republican strength in Virginia. A statewide GOP candidate has to get maximum turnout in the Valley (and in the Southside, below Richmond toward the North Carolina border) in order to offset Democrat votes in Richmond and the close-in D.C. suburbs. So the big turnout in Fisherville (in the heart of the Valley, near Harrisonburg and Staunton) was a very encouraging sign for the Romney campaign. Continue reading Fire-Code Capacity: INCREDIBLE Crowd for Romney-Ryan Rally in Virginia →

It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again

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“How long, O Lord, how long? Where will it end?
“All I ever wanted out of this campaign was enough money to get out of the country and live for a year or two in peaceful squalor in a house with a big screen porch looking down on an empty white beach, with a good rich coral reef a few hundred yards out in the surf and no neighbors. . . .
“What worries me now . . . is the strong possibility that my involvement in politics has become so deep and twisted that I can no longer think rationally about that big screen porch above the beach except in terms of an appointment as Governor of American Samoa.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Savor the moment. I’ve been up all night doing the Snoopy dance in the Gloat Zone. Ace says we should worry: The MSM’s already preparing the “Obama Comeback” narrative.

But I’m too grateful and happy to worry now. There is deliciousness everywhere this morning. Byron York serves it up:

Just seconds after the presidential debate ended here at the University of Denver Wednesday night, Mitt Romney’s advisers and surrogates rushed to the press room to take reporters’ questions and tout their man’s performance. They were eager, happy, and ready to talk because they believed their man scored a clear win in his first face-off with President Obama.
After a few minutes of interviews, and the arrival of still more Romney surrogates, some reporters looked around and asked: Are there any Democrats here? Where are the Obama advisers and surrogates eager to speak for the president?
It took a while for them to show up. And when they arrived, they were on the defensive from the get-go about the president’s performance. . . .

Read the whole thing. Last time I saw Byron was in Toledo, when the polls had Obama up 10 points in Ohio and everybody was on the verge of abandoning hope. This evening, I expect to see him in Fisherville, Virginia — 6 p.m., doors open at 4 p.m. — and imagine what a complete change in mood we’ll see! Imagine how everybody will be laughing about how Chris Matthews melted down:

Nobody — and I mean, nobody — expected such a one-sided ass-whupping. And let’s sober up enough to say, “Answered prayer”:

Really, when you see this kind of unanticipated miracle, it’s necessary to consider the possibility that this was not coincidental. With 33 days to go until Nov. 6, suddenly the sun is shining. My American Spectator column today:

How decisively did Mitt Romney win Wednesday night’s debate? All you had to do was watch the most pro-Obama network to see it. “I personally do not know who won this debate,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said as soon as the debate ended. She was obviously the only one who didn’t know.
When Maddow brought on her colleague Ed Schultz, he moaned that President Obama “created a problem for himself tonight on Social Security. He agreed with Mitt Romney.… I thought he was off his game.” Nor did the president’s performance send a thrill up the leg of Chris Matthews. “I don’t know what he was doing out there,” Matthews complained. “He had his head down. He was enduring the debate rather than fighting it.”
If ever there were a night when conservatives wanted to watch MSNBC, this was it — an all-you-can-eat buffet of schadenfreude, as one after another of the liberal network’s personalities tried to come to grips with what was perhaps the most one-sided presidential debate since JFK beat a shifty-looking Richard Nixon in 1960. “In terms of debate tactics, Romney was on the offense most of the night,” a glum Howard Fineman acknowledged, while a shell-shocked Chuck Todd admitted that the result “automatically elevates Romney as a credible alternative” and later added, in reference to the Obama camp’s post-debate mood: “They know they lost tonight.”
Everybody knew it. . . .

Please read the whole thing — and hit the freaking tip jar!

 





 

UPDATE: “Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell!”

 


MITT ROMNEY WINS FIRST DEBATE

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UPDATE 10:32 p.m. ET: Damn. Mitt won it straight-up. I’ve turned my TV to MSNBC to watch their reaction.

Rachel Maddow: “I personally do not know who won this debate.” This means . . . yeah, Mitt won. He beat the hell out of Obama.

Ed Schultz: “[Obama] created a problem for himself tonight on Social Security. He agreed with Mitt Romney. . . . I thought he was off his game.”

UPDATE 10:25 p.m. ET: Jim Lehrer babbling like an idiot about time running out. He wants Obama to get re-elected so ObamaCare will cover treatment for his senility.

UPDATE 10:22 p.m. ET: “Mr. President, you’re entitled to your own house and your own plane, but not your own facts.” Zing!

UPDATE 10:06 p.m. ET: They’ve been going back and forth about ObamaCare for 10 minutes. If you believe what Obama says — as opposed to the actual facts — then you’ll probably think he won this part of the debate. But if you believe what Obama says, you’re probably too stupid to read this anyway.

UPDATE 9:55 p.m. ET: More Twitter:

Instapundit is blogging a bit of the debate, and also links to the classic Vodkapundit drunkblogging.

UPDATE 9:45 p.m. ET: Been watching and Tweeting, so let me stick some of the Tweets in here:

Mitt just hit Obama on the Medicare issue. Obama hit back. Score it a draw, I think.

UPDATE 9:31 p.m. ET: Now they’re talking debts and deficits, and Obama’s worst broken promise: He claimed he’d cut the deficit in half and, instead, has doubled it.

UPDATE 9:20 p.m. ET: Obama and Romney are going back and forth on taxes. This is getting so good, I’m going to stop the frequent updates for a few minutes and just watch a while.

UPDATE 9:16 p.m. ET: Damn it, Obama keeps claiming to have given a “tax cut” to the middle class, but there was no rate reduction. Instead, he’s put in a series of tax credits, which are not the same as tax cuts.

UPDATE 9:13 p.m. ET: Romney gets a chance to hit back at Obama. Does pretty good, but gets a bit too “into the weeds” for my tastes.

UPDATE 9:11 p.m. ET: Obama comes back talking a lot of details, claiming Romney’s plan will “cost” money and have to be “paid for.” The government-centric point of view.

UPDATE 9:09 p.m. ET: Mitt opens with humorous anniversary congratulations, then goes into his 5-Point Plan for economic recovery. Having followed Mitt on the trail, I’ve heard this a zillion times, but for many of the 50 million people watching, it’s new.

UPDATE 9:07 p.m. ET: Obama opens with anniversary shout-out to Michelle. Then gets all into class warfare, blaming Bush, etc. He sucks.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

* * * PREVIOUSLY (8 p.m. ET) * * *

This verdict may shock some readers, seeing as how I’m publishing it a full hour before the debate actually begins.

Everybody’s playing the “expectations game” (notice Nate Silver trying to raise the ante for Romney) which, like a lot of what goes on in politics, is transparent bulls–t. Once you realize they’re trying to manipulate your perceptions, you should not be deceived, e.g.:

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is doing his part for team Obama to make sure that Mitt Romney’s performance at Wednesday evening’s debate is a disappointment, one that will surely lead to his losing the election in November.
On Tuesday morning’s Good Morning America, the former Clinton Administration staffer sternly warned that if Romney doesn’t exceed expectations in the debates, he’s finished.
Why? Because Romney is under “huge, huge” pressure, Stephanopoulos says. And “he’s behind right now,” so if he doesn’t overperform, he’ll be considered a failure.

Give that everyone else is at it, therefore, I’m getting out ahead of this psychological gamesmanship with the pre-emptive declaration of Romney’s unquestional triumph.

And so this is your official “Debate Thread.”

Bite me, Nate. And bite me, George.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: Linked by the Lonely Conservative — thanks!