"My children had Etch A Sketches, they were great for car rides," rival Newt Gingrich, badly trailing Romney in the polls, said in Lake Charles, La. "But you'll notice that their pictures aren't permanent, their pictures aren't locked down. You can redo it any time you want. That's the problem."
"Here's Gov. Romney's staff, they don't even have the decency to wait until they get the nomination to explain to us how they'll sell us out," Gingrich added. "And I think having an Etch A Sketch as your campaign model raises every doubt about where we're going."
Rick Santorum, too, tried to turn Fehrnstrom's comment into an attack line. The former Pennsylvania senator stopped at a toy store in Louisiana to buy one and brought it to a campaign event.
"Gov. Romney's campaign had a real moment of truth today," he told reporters in Kenner, La., after touring a fish processing plant.
"It actually revealed what everybody knew or suspected but now know: Gov. Romney is interested in saying whatever is necessary to win the election and when the game changes, he'll change," Santorum said.
IMO,this latest gaffe just may turn out to be be the greatest political gift since Michael Dukakis decided to get into a tank. Both Santorum and Gingrich were happily waving around actual Etch-a-Sketch toys today at campaign events and I expect that to continue. E-A-S is something that almost everyone can connect with which will be great for getting out the message to low information voters. The possibilities for political ads are going to be endless.
Late night comics will have a field day with and I expect Letterman will do a regular bit based on it
THE recent remark by Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom that upon clinching the Republican nomination Mr. Romney could change his political views “like an Etch A Sketch” has already become notorious. The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder.
The imagery may have been unfortunate, but Mr. Fehrnstrom’s impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.
. . .
The basic concepts behind this model are:
Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time.
Probability. Mitt Romney’s political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible. Thus, for instance, there is at any given moment a nonzero chance that Mitt Romney supports child slavery.
Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”
Entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.
Noncausality. The Romney campaign often violates, and even reverses, the law of cause and effect. For example, ordinarily the cause of getting the most votes leads to the effect of being considered the most electable candidate. But in the case of Mitt Romney, the cause of being considered the most electable candidate actually produces the effect of getting the most votes.
Duality. Many conservatives believe the existence of Mitt Romney allows for the possibility of the spontaneous creation of an “anti-Romney” (Fig. 2) that leaps into existence and annihilates Mitt Romney. (However, the science behind this is somewhat suspect, as it is financed by Rick Santorum, for whom science itself is suspect.)
Funny 'cause it's true.
edge540
Posts : 1165
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/10/2012, 2:09 pm
It's official now, Willard is the GOP nominee:
Quote :
Rick Santorum ends presidential campaign after conceding to Mitt Romney in phone call
After calling Mitt Romney to say he is ending his presidential campaign, Rick Santorum announced the end of his presidential campaign Tuesday during a press conference in Pennsylvania, his home state.
"We will suspend our campaign effective today," Santorum said in Gettysburg, Pa.
That sound you're hearing is Mittens working the Etch-A-Sketch furiously. Isn't he the absolute epitome of what the Republicans are always whining about? A grade AAA certified Elite? I heard he went body surfing last week in La Jolla,Ca where a 4 bedroom home goes for over 2 million and Mitten's beachfront home is equipped with a car elevator.
Scorpion
Posts : 2141
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/10/2012, 9:44 pm
Artie60438 wrote:
That sound you're hearing is Mittens working the Etch-A-Sketch furiously. Isn't he the absolute epitome of what the Republicans are always whining about? A grade AAA certified Elite? I heard he went body surfing last week in La Jolla,Ca where a 4 bedroom home goes for over 2 million and Mitten's beachfront home is equipped with a car elevator.
What's wrong with body surfing? Do you consider that activity to be "elitist?"
Artie60438
Posts : 9728
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/11/2012, 8:21 am
Scorpion wrote:
What's wrong with body surfing? Do you consider that activity to be "elitist?"
No,not at all. However our right-wing friends probably do. What do think their reaction would be if it were Obama doing it at La Jolla,Ca?
My point is that Romney's lifestyle represents just about everything the right claims is "elitist".
Now that Santorum has suspended his campaign is he now the "next in line candidate for 2016?
Artie60438
Posts : 9728
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/13/2012, 7:32 pm
Ooops...
Quote :
In a speech to the National Rifle Association Friday, likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney waded back into the contraception wars, attacking President Obama’s health care provision requiring employers, including religiously affiliated groups, to provide contraceptive coverage to female employees — a requirement Romney vowed to repeal. But in doing so, he elided two key facts about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts: that he enforced a very nearly identical mandate at the state level enacted by his predecessor; and advanced a separate one requiring religiously affiliated hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims. http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/romney-wades-back-in-to-contraception-fight----with-key-omissions.php
Good to see Mittens wading back into the contraception issue and providing another flip-flop in the process.
Artie60438
Posts : 9728
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/17/2012, 10:39 am
Ann Romney laughed while explaining that Seamus, the dog once owned by the Romney family, “loved” traveling on top of the family car.
“The dog loved it,” Romney told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an interview. “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation.
Yeah,just what every family pet dreams of......being crammed into a crate and strapped to the roof of a car. I'm sure that poor dog just couldn't get enough of sudden stops,lurches,and bugs slamming into him at 60+ miles per hour,etc.
Quote :
Seamus is particularly famous for a 1983 trip to a summer cottage in Ontario, Canada, when he became sick and defecated on himself and the windshield of the car while riding on the roof.
Yeah,a fun time indeed!
Quote :
Several years after the diarrhea incident, the Romney family — concerned about Seamus’s predisposition toward wandering about town and concerned he might be hit by a car — gave the dog away to Mitt Romney’s sister Jane in California, according to The Boston Globe.
More like a "predisposition" to get the hell away from his crazy owners.
Kris Kobach has a death grip on Romney's Etch-a-Sketch.
You may not have heard of Kobach, but he is becoming a household name in the Latino community. He is Kansas' secretary of state, but more notoriously, one of the nation's foremost xenophobes and a key player in the hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Kobach wrote the model anti-immigrant legislation adopted by Arizona (SB 1070) and Alabama. More recently, he's the guy who gave Romney the idea of "self-deportation"—harassing Latinos to the point their lives are so miserable that they decide to head back to their home countries on their own.
His presence as a Romney advisor has certainly been an issue in the Latino community, garnering a great deal of attention in the Spanish-language media. It's likely a factor in Romney's dismal numbers with Latinos—numbers so bad, that Romney has no path to victory if they don't improve. It's something he himself now acknowledges, hence the need to bust out that Etch-a-Sketch.
It began in Politico:
Quote :
When I asked Boston if Kobach was still an "adviser," a Romney spokesperson emailed back: "supporter."
Kobach fired back quickly:
Quote :
Reached by ThinkProgress this afternoon, Kobach said, “No, my relationship with the campaign has not changed. Still doing the same thing I was doing before.” Asked what that entails, he said, “providing advice on immigration policy.” “I don’t want to go into great detail, but I communicate regularly with senior members of Romney’s team,” he explained.
Today Kris McBlabbermouth has given the Romney campaign even more reason to cringe.
Quote :
Kobach confirmed to me that the Romney campaign had privately assured him that his status is unchanged. "I’m still providing policy advice on immigration to the governor and his team," Kobach told me. "I spoke with them yesterday afternoon, and they confirmed that nothing has changed."
So to recap, Kobach has seriously damaged Romney's general election chances by becoming a lightning rod in the Latino community, yet when the nominee tries to distance himself now that the primaries are over, Kobach will tell anyone who's listening that the Romney campaign is lying and that he's just as important to them as ever, and he'll say it again, and again, and again.
Even here in California, I can virtually hear Romney's staff in Boston screaming, "Shut the hell up!"
edge540
Posts : 1165
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/20/2012, 11:53 am
Good one Willard. This is further proof that he's an out-of-touch, clueless, multimillionaire robot. The best part about this is that the bakery owner is die hard republican, LOL.
Quote :
Romney’s ‘Cookie-Gate’ Frosts Baker By Lisa Lerer
April 19, 2012 6:06 PM EDT
When Mitt Romney joined some Bethel Park,Pennsylvania, residents around a picnic table on April 17, the conversation was supposed to be focus on rising gasoline prices, falling home value, and other economic anxieties that make up the central theme of his presidential campaign.
But after sitting down at a table covered with cookies, chip, and lemonade, Romney focused on the snacks.
“I’m not sure about these cookies,” he said, referring to a brightly colored plate of five dozen lady locks, thumbprints and other delicacies made by a beloved local bakery.
“They don’t look like you made them,” the candidate said. “No, no. They came from the local 7-11, bakery, or whatever.”
Locals took the remark as tasteless, quickly dubbing the slight as “Co0kie-gate.”
“When I heard it, I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness. This guy has no idea how beloved this institution is that provided these cookies,’” bakery owner and president John Walsh told local ABC station WTAE. “We wanted him to be welcomed with the best in the burgh, and he had no idea.”
The shop quickly capitalized on the episode, offering a “CookieGate Special!” – a free half-dozen cookies with the purchase of a dozen cookies.
Democrats found the whole thing delicious. They crafted a new hashtag — #cookiegate, naturally — to tweet and retweet the remarks. And, of course, they quickly placed an order. The local Pennsylvania office of the Obama campaign bought a platter of five dozen cookies.
Romney, too, is getting his just desserts. Although he never tried the Bethel Bakery sweets, 7-Eleven plans to mail some cookies to his Boston campaign headquarters, in hopes of showing the Republican what he’s missing.
Mitt Romney voted for Scott Brown in the special Massachusetts election to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy (D-MA).
He listed his residence as the unfinished basement of his son's home in Belmont, Mass.
Were Romney to release his tax returns, he would show New Hampshire, not Massachusetts, as his primary residence. He did not live in Massachusetts, and did not pay Massachusetts taxes even on his sheltered or carried-interest income.
Why did he live in New Hampshire? Because New Hampshire has no capital gains or income taxes. So, the Mittster parked some of his money in the Cayman Islands, some in Switzerland, and parked himself in New Hampshire, all to avoid taxes.
Nonetheless, Mitt allegedly voted in the Scott Brown election. Ann probably did too.
To release his 2010 and 2009 returns would raise the real possibility that he committed voter fraud.
And, we all know how deeply concerned Republicans are about voter fraud, don't we?
When is this guy going to hold an actual press conference so questions like this can be answered?
Artie60438
Posts : 9728
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/30/2012, 2:51 pm
Mittens v.2007
Quote :
Romney Said Of Going After Osama Bin Laden: “It’s Not Worth Moving Heaven And Earth And Spending Billions Of Dollars Just Trying To Catch One Person.” “In the interview, Romney also said the country would be safer by only ‘a small percentage’ and would see ‘a very insignificant increase in safety’ if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. ‘It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,’ Romney said. Instead, he said he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.” [Associated Press, 4/27/07]
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized Democrat Barack Obama on Friday for vowing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan if necessary as the Obama camp issued a strident defense of his plan.
Romney on if he'd go after bin Laden: "Even Jimmy Carter would have would have given that order" — @EmilyABC via Seesmic
edge540
Posts : 1165
Subject: Re: Mitt Romney v10.0 4/30/2012, 4:24 pm
And it gets better: Mr. Romney -- you’re no President Obama (you’re not even Jimmy Carter)
Quote :
"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops "shouldn't be sent all over the world." He called Obama's comments "ill-timed" and "ill-considered."
"There is a war being waged by terrorists of different types and nature across the world," Romney said. "We want, as a civilized world, to participate with other nations in this civilized effort to help those nations reject the extreme with them."
Several days later, Romney again criticized then-candidate Obama:
“Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), in particular, was singled out for saying last week that he would act against terrorists in Pakistan without the support of its president. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney contrasted those comments with Obama's remark during a recent debate that he would be willing to meet with all foreign leaders.
"I mean, in one week he went from saying he's going to sit down, you know, for tea, with our enemies, but then he's going to bomb our allies," Romney said. "He's gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week."
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