Category: Mitt Romney

Secret Service Code Name: ‘Dreamy’

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MANASSAS, Virginia — Just left a Romney-Ryan rally in downtown Manassas. The crowd was huge, numbering in the thousands. Other reporters kept trying to make an estimate of the numbers, and all I could say was, “overflow.”

The crowd filled the pavillion and overflowed off in every direction. People stood in line for blocks in the hot August sun, and there were still people in line at the metal detectors when the rally started. Smitty was there with his video camera and I managed to get a few photos myself.

The next polls you see out of Virginia . . . Well, look, the “gender gap” will evaporate instantly now that Paul Ryan’s on the ticket. Trust me on this — chicks dig him. It was like Sinatra with a crowd of bobby soxers at the Paramount in 1944. Elvis at the Overton Park bandshell in Memphis in 1956. Total swoonsville. As I explained it on Twitter:

I’ll be back to update with actual news in a few minutes.

UPDATE: This video just in from Berlin:

UPDATE II: The headline at the Washington Examiner:

Huge crowds line Manassas
streets for Romney-Ryan

Click the headline to read the article by Mark Tapscott.

UPDATE III: Here’s a photo from the rally:

This was the first event where they distributed “Romney-Ryan” signs and the lady holding it is Prince William County resident Donna Widawski, who was a Secret Service agent during the Reagan presidency.

UPDATE IV: By now, I’m sure some of you are wondering, “Yeah, Stacy, but what did they actually say?” Details, details.

My notes show that both ruggedly handsome Republican candidates spoke without a teleprompter. Ryan said that Obama’s policies are “just not working,” that Obama wants a “government-centered society and a government-run economy.”

“Hope and change has now become attack and blame,” Ryan said of the president’s message. The tall blue-eyed GOP running mate then spoke of the American dream on the horizon, “the dream you have for yourself and your children,” and introduced the square-jawed presidential candidate, describing Mitt Romney as “the kind of person made for this moment.”

“Today was a good day for me, I gotta tell ya,” Romney said, flashing his magnetic smile and praising his young running mate for providing “intellectual leadership” for the GOP.

There were huge cheers when Romney promised to “get rid of ObamaCare,” and boos when he spoke of Obama’s claim that small business owners “didn’t build that.”  Romney got another huge cheer by citing the Declaration of Independence’s statement that people are endowed with rights by their Creator, and when Romney said the rest of the famous preamble — the part about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — the crowd loudly recited it with him.

“We’re going to stand for America,” Romney said and drew more cheers when he shouted, “I love this country!”

The postlude music was Kid Rock’s “Born Free.” Kid Rock, a Michigan native, endorsed his fellow Michigan native Romney in February.

Is that enough details for you? Gee, so demanding . . .

UPDATE V: To help satisfy your insatiable demand for details, I refer you to Marooned in Marin’s report on the “large enthusiastic crowd” with photos, videos, etc.

UPDATE VI: Matt Vespa on the liberal media’s plan to “assassinate” Paul Ryan. They’re just jealous, because chicks dig him.

UPDATE VII: Michelle Malkin digs Paul Ryan:

Paul Ryan is fresh, young, energetic, smart, courageous, and ready for prime time.
Paul Ryan is a policy wonk AND a front-line warrior whose budget and long-term entitlement reforms have the entire Dem-Soros-lapdog media machine unhinged.
Paul Ryan is ready to fight false media narratives.
Paul Ryan is battle-tested against the White House.
Paul Ryan won’t cut and run when the going gets tough.

And she didn’t even mention his dreamy blue eyes!

 


Manassas, VA #RomneyRyan2012 Event

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by Smitty

The announcement in Norfolk, VA, with the USS Wisconsin in the background was a nice touch, as the Romney campaign tours this battleground state, going through the Obama-Biden ticket in proverbial fashion today:

I’m off to go cover the Manassas rally. If fortune smiles, I might link up with Stacy and try to work on a Downfall parody. I can foresee various tidbits to include, but, if you have any ideas, leave them in the comments.

New Democrat Campaign Message: Grandma, Cliff, Some Assembly Required

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Members of the Democrat-Media Complex like Charles Pierce of Esquire and James Fallows of the Atlantic are already registering their disdain of Paul Ryan, and the Democrats are busy e-mailing their massive oppo-research PDF dossier to reporters, so the media attacks on Ryan are pre-scripted dictation from the DNC research department.

This is predictable, and is the best argument for picking a conservative like Ryan: No matter whom Romney had chosen, the Democrats would have demonized the GOP running mate as a Jekyll-and-Hyde combination of Dick Cheney and Martin Bormann.

In that kind of situation, why not go bold?

So we’ll have a few days of “evil heartless Paul Ryan,” then the Democrats will go back to the “clueless rich guy Romney” message and then, if the Romney-Ryan ticket moves ahead of Obama in the polls, they’ll start playing the Mormon card with frenzied desperation.

It’s predictable, and you shouldn’t be surprised.

UPDATE: Democrats hold a monopoly on Civility™!

The Hashtag That Changed History

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“This is an emergency post. . . . Mitt Romney must choose Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee, period.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 4, 2012

Who would have thunk it, huh? Friday night I went to bed early, and Ali Akbar kept calling to tell me the news, but my wife couldn’t get me to wake up. The headlines in the order they appeared at Memeorandum:

From Boston to Janesville
— Robert Costa, National Review

Romney Prepares to Pick Ryan
— Weekly Standard

ROMNEY TO ANNOUNCE RUNNING MATE
SATURDAY IN VA.
— Associated Press

Romney To Unveil Vice Presidential Pick On Saturday
— Think Progress

The Angel and Devil in Paul Ryan
— ABC News

Mitt Romney Set To Pick
Paul Ryan As Running Mate
— Jon Ward, Huffington Post

BREAKING: Romney to announce
vice presidential pick Saturday
— CNN

Mitt Romney picks Paul Ryan as running mate
— Politico

Romney to announce running mate on Saturday morning
— The Hill

NBC: 3 sources indicate
Romney will pick Ryan
— NBC News

Everybody I talked to last Friday night at the Americans for Prosperity Summit — Aug. 3, at the terrace bar of the Washington Hilton — said it was going to be Tim Pawlenty.

That inspired a sort of panic: “Good Lord, not T-Paw!” When I heard that Marco Rubio had been eliminated due to “vetting” issues, I started an all-out push for Paul Ryan. One of the first people I spoke to was Suhail Khan of Americans for Tax Reform who told me, “Ryan vets. The worst thing they could come up with was that he worked as a bartender at Tortilla Coast when he first came to D.C.”

That clinched it. Driving home from the AFP Summit Saturday afternoon, I called Ali Akbar, who quickly minted the #GiveUsRyan hashtag, and I pulled off the highway to stop at a Burger King and write that “emergency” post, which was linked by Jackie Wellfonder, Daley Gator, Roderic Deane and Troglopundit, among others.

That was Saturday afternoon. In addition to pushing Ryan on Twitter, Ali was busy behind the scenes. After a long conversation with him on Tuesday, I reported the final three:

VP Tea Leaves: Is Mitt’s Short List Now
Down to Pawlenty, Portman or Ryan?

That post was linked by Jackie Wellfonder, Bob Belvedere, Andrew J. Patrick and others. By then, the conservative drumbeat for Ryan was getting loud enough that headlines were popping up left and right. When Alex Moe of NBC News reported that Ryan was planning a “vacation”? Yeah, that was a tea leaf. And by Thursday, the choice was clear:

Hey, @MittRomney: This #GiveUsRyan
Hashtag Is Becoming Kinda Popular

When I finally woke up and called Ali about 3 a.m. today, he was driving to Norfolk to attend the rally where Mitt Romney will announce this morning that Paul Ryan will be the next vice president of the United States. Did the #GiveUsRyan hashtag have as much influence as, say, Bill Kristol pleading on Ryan’s behalf? No, but it definitely had an impact: Ali has friends on the Romney staff and, when the word started leaking out Friday, the Romney staffers told him, “Good work, Ali.”

Your Tweets — and you know who you are — definitely made a difference. As I explained Thursday, Romney’s people pay attention to their online metrics. Every Tweet to @MittRomney with #GiveUsRyan was a signal that Ryan was the grassroots consensus.

So far, only Nice Deb has acknowledged the difference you made.

You may never get full credit, but as Ronald Reagan said, “You can accomplish much, if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

When your kids and grandkids ask someday, “How did Paul Ryan become vice president?” you can say, “I picked him!”

 

UPDATE: The Rio Norte Line reminds us of how Ryan defended his budget against Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

UPDATE: Instalanche! BTW, there are some retroactive hindsight claims by GOP “insiders” that Mitt picked Ryan before Aug. 4, but don’t believe it. That’s just the Establishment trying to deny credit to the conservative grassoots.

UPDATE II: Linked by William J. Hoge, Daley Gator, Jackie Wellfonder, The Lonely Conservative and Da Tech Guy.

 


Romney Ad: ‘America Deserves Better’

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My shock at the raw dishonesty of the Democrats — and polls indicating that Americans have become indifferent to truth — is evidently shared by the Romney campaign:

The Romney campaign supplies the script of the ad:

AD FACTS: Script For “America Deserves Better”

VOICEOVER: “What does it say about a president’s character when his campaign tries to use the tragedy of a woman’s death for political gain?”

VIDEO TEXT: “A President’s Character?”

VIDEO TEXT: “Scraping Bottom”

Chicago Tribune Headline: “Scraping Bottom” (Editorial, “Scraping Bottom,” Chicago Tribune, 8/9/12)

VIDEO TEXT: “Disgusting” 

  • · ABC News: “‘Disgusting’ Pro-Obama Ad Criticized By Democrat” (Steven Portnoy, “‘Disgusting’ Pro-Obama Ad Criticized By Democrat,” ABC News, 8/9/12)

 VOICEOVER: “What does it say about a president’s character when he had his campaign raise money for the ad then stood by as his top aides were caught lying about it?”

VIDEO TEXT: “Obama Campaign Admits Knowing” 

  • · ABC News: “Obama Campaign Admits Knowing Story Behind Man In Super PAC Ad” (Mary Bruce, “Obama Campaign Admits Knowing Story Behind Man In Super PAC Ad,” ABC News, 8/9/12)

VIDEO TEXT: “Unfair Attack” 

  • · CBS News: “Due Diligence: An Unfair Attack On Mitt Romney” (Brian Montopoli, “Due Diligence: An Unfair Attack On Mitt Romney,” CBS News, 8/9/12)

VOICEOVER: “Doesn’t America deserve better than a president who will say or do anything to stay in power?”

VIDEO TEXT: “Doesn’t America Deserve Better?”

MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”

* * * * *

I’m Robert Stacy McCain, and I approve this message, too. We’ve got to get these lying Chicago scum out of the White House. They’re not just ruining the economy, they’re corrupting our nation’s soul.

UPDATE: Paul Lemmen has some philosophical ruminations on the transcendant evil of Obamunism.

 


Polls Confirm: America Loves Liars

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Is anyone else troubled by the evidence that this lie-a-minute strategy by the Obama campaign is working? The CNN poll shows Obama leading by 7 points and the Fox News poll shows him ahead by 9 points, and I’m at a loss to think of anything in the past couple of weeks that could have moved the polls this way except that Democrats are telling a bunch of shameless lies.

UPDATE: Allahpundit at Hot Air does the heavy lifting, analyzing the internals, and concludes:

The two sides aren’t similarly situated; Romney’s an unknown quantity for most while Obama’s been the most famous man on the planet for four years. Not only does that make it harder for the GOP to define him than it was for him to define Mitt, but it gives O a much simpler task with regard to the shrinking pool of undecideds. Those people are already wary of reelecting him (that’s why they’re undecided), so they’re essentially Romney persuadables. Romney needs to persuade them, but all Obama needs to do is keep Romney on the defensive and keep the campaign dumb and nasty so that those persuadables stop caring and stay home. It’s incredibly cynical but it’s his best bet. If you believe these two polls, it’s working okay so far.

This isn’t encouraging and, unlike some previous polls, there is no way to arrange the numbers and find good news for the GOP.

Hey, @MittRomney: This #GiveUsRyan Hashtag Is Becoming Kinda Popular

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When Ali Akbar came up with the #GiveUsRyan hashtag — Saturday afternoon, after I made an emergency stop at Burger King to blog about the importance of making Paul Ryan the Republican VP candidate — I was severely skeptical about the ability of a bunch of bloggers to influence events.

Four days later, my skepticism is beginning to evaporate. By Tuesday evening, the tea leaves indicated that what had merely been suspected during the weekend — the veepstakes was coming down to a three-way contest between Ryan, Tim Pawlenty and Rob Portman — had become a reality. Even I was shocked Wednesday morning, however, when I saw that MSNBC had confirmed this. There’s a difference between reading tea leaves and getting it confirmed as actual news.

The key was figuring out that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, despite being on the official short list, had a “vetting” problem that eliminated him from being a finalist for the nomination. The fact that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal praised Ryan on Sunday was also a pretty big hint of which short-lister was the real conservative favorite. So it was either the two “safe” choices (Pawlenty and Portman) or else the last remaining “bold” choice, Ryan. The other names being bounced around in public were just distractions, and Bill Kristol’s push for Ryan was a clear signal that the insiders knew what the real running mate discussion was about.

Allahpundit’s Tuesday “Quote of the Day” post was a series of items about the Ryan VP buzz. This morning, the Wall Street Journal editorial page came out for Ryan, Rich Lowry joined the chorus, the New York Times picked up on the pro-Ryan push and — here’s a big endorsement — David Frum hates Paul Ryan.

Well, is this all because of Ali and the #GiveUsRyan hashtag? No, of course not. There are lots of conservatives working independently in different ways to make this happen.

But your Tweets do matter. They do make a difference. Just remember to direct your Tweets to @MittRomney and include the #GiveUsRyan hashtag — Mitt’s online campaign keeps track of their mentions, and every Tweet counts.

C’mon, @MittRomney — #GiveUsRyan!

 


VP Tea Leaves: Is Mitt’s Short List Now Down to Pawlenty, Portman or Ryan?

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There are signals — both in terms of actual evidence and what might be called “absence of evidence” — that Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential choices have now come down to three Midwesterners: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

It appears that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has been eliminated from consideration and, most importantly, that talk of Tea Party favoirite Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as Romney’s running mate is just talk. Neither Jindal nor Rubio have taken the steps that would indicate they are finalists for the VP slot. Jindal, for example, has accepted an invitation to appear at an event during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, an acceptance he would not be able to make if he were indeed obligated to keep his schedule clear as the potential running mate.

Meanwhile, at the Weekly Standard — where Bill Kristol and Steve Hayes previously offered either Rubio or Ryan as the “bold” conservative choices for VP — the balance appears to have tipped toward Ryan, indicating that Kristol and Hayes have indications that Rubio is not among the finalists for the spot. (There has been widespread talk among GOP insiders that despite Rubio’s popularity, “vetting” proved problematic for the Florida senator.)

This week’s trial-balloon suggestions about other possible running mates — including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Gen. David Petraus — are regarded as irrelevant distractions by well-informed observers, who now believe the “veepstakes” to have been narrowed to the trio of Midwesterners. Pawlenty and Portman are viewed as the “safe” picks, while talk about a “bold” Republican choice now focuses exclusively on Ryan, the conservative chairman of the House Budget Committee. Tuesday, Robert Costa of National Review cited “sources close to the Romney campaign” as saying that Ryan had risen from “dark horse” to “contender” for the running-mate pick.

Conservatives pushing Romney to go “bold” have a key ally in Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a Wisconsinite who is said to be quietly exercising home-state influence on Ryan’s behalf. Meanwhile, there may be bad blood brewing between the two “safe” alternatives: Some supporters of Portman blame the Pawlenty camp for pushing reports that Portman once worked as a lobbyist for notorious Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier. (ABC News debunked that claim last month.)

How much longer will the GOP veepstakes speculation continue? Probably not too long. Some say Romney’s pick could be announced as early as Wednesday, but the Weekly Standard points to Thursday as the likely day, while Republican strategist Karl Rove says not to expect a selection before Friday.

UPDATE: Alex Moe of NBC News reported today that Paul Ryan’s planning a “vacation.” Just a coincidence?