Hold your noses and vote, GOP/Tea Party—there is no man on horseback on the horizon

Steve Schmidt, on MSNBC: 


"Four years ago with Democrats, the tension in that race was which of two historic candidates the Democratic party voters all liked. who were they going to put forward in the general election contest? They liked both of them. They would have been happy with both of them. The longer this goes on, Republican voters are saying, 'We don't like any of them, we want somebody new in the race.' And that new person isn't going to appear in the race."

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Election night rumination: BHO is going to win; Mitt Romney is desperately out of touch; Rick Santorum is in touch, but insane

By Jack Brummet, Editor-in-chief

Since Pablo Fanque, our National Affairs Editor and political whiz is M.I.A.(after promising to live blog the Michigan and Arizona primaries), I wanted to mention a couple of things.

In his speech tonight, Rick Santorum once again shows he has what it takes to connect with the voters.  I disagreed with nearly every clause of the speech, but he has a way of reaching out that Mitt Romney will never achieve.  Listen to the cadences and delivery of Mitt Romney's victory speech tonight.  It sounded like his basic $35,000 speech to an insurance convention. 

This should have been Mitt Romney's night. And he blew it.  He came from way behind in his home state to triumph.  But he never even talked about Michigan, or growing up there, or his deep connection to the people of that state.  He didn't mention it at all.  There was no real joy in his speech.  It felt like a candidate that resented he'd been forced to work so hard to win.  He should have laughed and expressed his great delight that his home state pulled through for him.  And he did not.  I don't think Mitt Romney's a scary guy, but I do think he is seriously out of touch, as we've seen over and over again in his foolish, unscripted, utterances. Mitt needs a new speechwriter.  He needs to think about retail politics.  He needs to read Chris Matthews's masterful book on political strategy, "Hardball."

Tonight President Obama delivered a masterful speech to the U.A.W. in Washington (the other Washington).  It was brilliant, inspiring, and it reached out to the voters. . .and connected.  BHO, like Romney, needs to remember to connect.  And he can; it's second nature to him.  Unfortunately, this is the only clip that's online at the moment.  If you get a chance, check out the entire speech.  The crux of it was that "you, the American people, did this."  He didn't talk about his brilliance as a manager; he talked about how people pulled together.  The President is back.  Now, it's on to November 6th!

If you get the chance, look for the entire speech...

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All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).

Now, with 8% reporting, the gap is closing in Michigan (Santorum still leads, by 1%)

Santorum 40% 28,537

Romney 39% 27,968


/pablo

Ex-Senator Rick Santorum leads by 4+% in early returns from Michigan

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

We've been a little down since it looked like Ex-Governor Mitt Romney might actually pull off a victory tonight in Michigan after trailing in all the polls earlier.  In the very early reporting from Michigan tonight, Santorum leads Romney by four+ points (40.8% v. 35.6%).

1% of the precincts reporting:


Santorum 3,622 votes       - 40.8%
Romney 3,162 35.6 votes  - 36.8%
Paul 1,074                       - 12.1%
Gingrich 1,361                 -   7%

Why do we want Santorum to win?  a)  We would love to see him run against BHO; b)  it's kind of fun to watch the Romney campaign unravel; and c)  a Santorum win should make Super Tuesday a whole lot more interesting.

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Mitt Romney reaches out to voters, saying, yeah, I like NASCAR. . .well, the owners

By Jack Brummet

Ex-Governor Mitt Romney was asked by a AP reporter the other day if he follows NASCAR, and Romney responded, "Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners."

 "I don't know people who fish but I know people who own yachts," tweeted Brad Woodhouse, communications director of the Democratic National Committee.

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Santorum: Satan has his sights set on the USA

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All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).

Kos Announces "Operation Hilarity: Let's keep the GOP clown show going!"

Announcing Operation Hilarity: Let's keep the GOP clown show going!

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Rick Santorum visits Seattle

The Ex-Senator swings through Seattle today. 

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The Twilight of Newt Gingrich

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

Newt is spending today in Ohio, whistling past the graveyard

After three contests today where he achieved total irrelevancy, Newt has been spending his time in Ohio, in hopes of salvaging his candidacy. 

But. . .not only Newt is on the ropes.  Suddenly, and unexpectedly, Rick Santorum swept all three contests today...just after Ex-Governor Romney scored back-to-back wins in Florida and Nevada.  Those two victories led most pundits to predict that Romney was on a straight march to the nomination.  Wednesday will be an interesting day.  Maybe not everything has changed, but much has changed.

As for Newt himself,  he'll hang in for a while, and go through the motions in Washington State, Arizona, Maine, Michigan before Super Tuesday on March 6th.  In fact he claims--but, then, don't they all?--that he is staying in throughout the primary-caucus season, all the way to the convention.  But sometime between tomorrow and that convention, he will drop out, get to give a dramatic speech at the convention, and then become become a revived, if not beloved, senior statesman, and go to work for a think tank or as a sort-of-but-not-really-lobbyist.

The end of the road?  Or on the trail to Comeback Number Three?

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It was four years ago, almost to the day, that Mitt Romney ended his first quest for the White House

By Mona Goldwater

Four years ago yesterday, Mitt Romney bailed out of the 2008 Republican Presidential contest.   The people had spoken.

Things were looking better than they did back then until Mittens took a serious body blow in the heartland of America last night.  Sure, they shrug off these primaries and caucuses off beauty contests, but that's not what they were saying last week. . .

What are his spinmeisters saying tonight?  "It's always darkest before the dawn," or "we've only begun to fight?"  The Missouri and Minnesota losses weren't that shocking--these folks are going to vote mainly for the conservative candidate.  But Colorado?  What the Eff happened?  A few days ago, Romney was polling ahead in the double digits.  And tonight, Ex-Senator Rick Santorum whipped him by more than 5%.  Romney had plummeted 16% in a few days?  Maybe you can attribute this to his recent comments about the poor, or his recent financial disclosures, on top of his earlier verbal slips?  Or maybe people are just finally coming to their senses?  But that's not it, because those votes are going to Rick Santorum.

Mitt has been regularly tarred and feathered by his opponents as practically a Molotov-cocktail throwing Bolsheviki, or at best, a shameless flip-flopper and closet liberal, he walks into these next contests almost crippled.  As Bob Dylan wrote "It's not dark yet/but it's getting there."

In the battleground states, however, Mitt Romney and President Obama are polling neck and neck.  And, in the end, the battleground states are all that matter.   The center of the party would like to get focused on Romney and away from the opponent du jour.  But those damned voters keep getting in their way.

This could change rapidly, but in general, Romney now has to score in Arizona, Washington State, and the other states that vote/caucus before Super Tuesday, not necessarily to win, but to at least show he has some stuffing left.  But Super Tuesday is where his focus will be.  Super Tuesday is not as big as it has been in the past, but ten states is a pretty significant data point.  It may tell all.  But that's hard to know in this genuinely fragmented and bizarre nomination contest.

If anything, as a political dweeb,  this is all great news.  We now see the race, presumably with all four candidates, head into the next primaries and Super Tuesday.  No one is going to bail out before then, not now.

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Drawing: The contestants Paul, Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich

By Jack Brummet
[hand drawn on india ink scratchboard; digitized and captioned]

click to enlarge

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Our 2010 Predictions on GOP candidates (all things considered...not bad)

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor
and Jack Brummet, Arts Editor

In late 2010, we guessed who would be running for President from the Republican (and Tea) Party in 2012.  Of our candidates, three are still in the race.  Many of our picks didn't even get off the ground; we missed Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann; Sarah Palin performed a protracted will she?/won't she skit; and several of our picks faltered before the Iowa caucuses.  On the whole, we did a lot better job of guessing than we did in the 2008 contest.

Who is the next candidate to bail?  We are guessing Rick Santorum.  The South Carolina contest is extremely volatile.  Newt has incredibly, surged ahead in the last few days, and in some polls is besting Romney.  But then he was hit with some new dirt from his first wife.  And he even made some hay with that in the most recent debate. 

Despite everything he has said and done, we somehow prefer Newt to Rick Santorum.  We think he will nudge Santorum out in SC.  Ron Paul will remain stable, but will stay in the contest because he has rabid fans that keeping pouring money into the campaign. 

It looks like Florida may be where the rubber meets the road.  Let's see what happens in South Carolina this weekend. . .
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Indecision 2012

Are we “stakeholders,"

Helpless bystanders,

Hostages,

Or, just guests

In a political playpen

That doesn't really belong

To us at all?

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Scott Siepker - Iowa nice (includes a couple of NSFW phrases)

Scott Siepker - Iowa nice.  A response from Iowa to the media and flyover crowd:

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Christine O'Donnell endorses Mittens, pouring salt on his festering flip-flop wound

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor
Illustrations by Jack Brummet

Christine O'Donnell endorsed Ex-Governor Mitt Romney, last week. It's not what Romney's campaign had in mind, even though they probably recruited her for the job.   In fact, it blew up into a minor tempest in the political press.

"That’s one of the things that I like about him — because he’s been consistent since he changed his mind,” O’Donnell said.

She went on to say that Romney is “humble enough” to admit he doesn’t always have the right answers and is open to making the “necessary changes” to his own view points sometimes, but maintained that he never betrays his core convictions.

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Quote of the day: David Axelrod likens Ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich to a monkey's butt

"I told my colleagues yesterday a bit of homespun wisdom I got from an alderman in Chicago some years ago when one of his colleagues wanted to run for higher office and he was really dubious. He said, ‘just remember the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.’ So, you know, the Speaker is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view." - David Axelrod, Obama Campaign Senior Strategist

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Painting: Candidates speak, see, and hear no evil

by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Rick Perry's Presidential quest ends in 53 mortifying seconds

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor
illustration by Jack Brummet

Rick Perry will drop out of the race in the next ten days.  Even if nothing else goes wrong, his campaign funds will surely dry up beginning a couple hours ago. 

This has to be the most pathetic and humiliating debate appearance I have ever seen, except, possibly, Admiral James Stockdale's performance in his 1992 debate with Al Gore and Dan Quayle.  Stockdale opened the debate by saying, "Who am I? Why am I here?"  His opening drew great mirth and laughter, because the audience seemed to think he was joshing about his obscurity and lack of traditional qualifications for the office.  But as he bumbled through the debate, it became clear he was in way over his head.

Tonight, Governor Rick Perry confirmed what most of us knew and the rest suspected--that, he too, is in way over his head,  For one horrible minute, Perry could not recall the name of a government department he is planning to kill off.  I cringed, and actually felt terribly sorry for him as he tried to grin and chuckle his way through it.  But he couldn't.

"It's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: commerce, education, and the uh ... what's the third one, there? Let's see." He then said, "The third one. I can't." And he performed an auto-coup-de-grace by then saying "Oops."  Fifteen long, long minutes later he said "By the way that was the department of energy I was reaching for a while ago." 

Herman Cain, who everyone suspected would be "on the barbie" tonight, got off the hook after Perry's pitiful showing. 

Perry knew the damage was incalculable.  He even showed up in the spin-room post-debate (which is normally handled by staffers) and said   "I'm sure glad I had my boots on because I sure stepped in it out there."

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Pants on Fire! William Saletan's article in Slate this morning "Herman Cain’s press conference about his sexual harassment accusers is a road map to his destruction."

By Mona Goldwater, Women in the Workplace Editor

This is an excerpt from William Saletan's article in Slate this morning "Herman Cain’s press conference about his sexual harassment accusers is a road map to his destruction."

"You can lie about what you believe. You can lie about what you’d do if elected. You can deny that your tax reform plan would raise taxes. You can get away with all of these things because they’re matters of speculation, interpretation, or argument. But if you make specific factual claims about the past, as Cain did in his Tuesday press conference about sexual harassment allegations, you can be flatly disproved. Worse, you can goad your accusers into backing up their charges with evidence. That’s what Cain has done. His press conference is a road map to his destruction."

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Breaking news: Chris Christie says "no thanks"

By Mona Goldwater, New Jersey Editor

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey once again announced Tuesday that he would not seek the Republican presidential nomination, saying that while he thought seriously about entering the presidential race, "now is not my time."  The Governor said he decided Monday night and told his family and aides this morning.  He said he went to the bed last night "knowing exactly what I wanted to do" for the first time in weeks.

Christie told reporters that he "felt an obligation to earnestly consider" the appeals made by various prominent republicans, up to and including former President George H.W. Bush, and former first lady Nancy Reagan.  Christie closed by saying he wouldn't rule out a run in the future.

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