Let’s Hear It For the Girls’ Triple Play
Posted: December 6, 2011 Filed under: Elections, Feminists, House of Representatives, Injustice system, Senate, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: 2012 elections, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Wenona Benally Baldenegro, women on the move 13 Comments
We’ve all been following Elizabeth Warren’s bid for the Senate seat in Massachusetts with giddy expectations. And the landscape looks very promising with Warren gaining substantial contributions from small donors, comprised primarily of women and middle-to-low income voters. No particular surprise. For moderate to liberal women, she speaks their language regarding equity, education, health care and basic fairness. For moderate to low-income voters, she is a champion for economic justice and cleaning up a corrupt system stacked against those left behind economically. She is a woman of the moment and has put Scott Brown and his Wall Street backers into a political scramble. Brown is reportedly 
polling below 50%–not a good statistic this far out.
But in addition to Warren, we have a couple of other very attractive female candidates running for the House and Senate in 2012.
One candidate I recently read about is Wenona Benally Baldenegro, a Native American running for the 1st Congressional District in Arizona. Ms. Baldenegro, having grown up on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona., is intimately familiar with the challenges of poverty and low expectations. She has said quite clearly that current Republican policy would balance the Federal budget on the backs of the middle-class, working class and elderly. Baldenegro is a role model for all Americans. Despite her modest beginnings, she is well credentialed, holding a law degree from Harvard as well as a Masters from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy’s School of Government. If successful in her 2012 bid, she would replace Tea Party darling, Representative Paul Gosar, who recently suggested opening the Grand Canyon for uranium extraction.
Having been to the Grand Canyon [I can still recall the absolute awe experienced], I’ll say without qualification that this is exactly what we don’t need—another national treasure looted for its resources. Think BP’s hit job on the Gulf of Mexico. Or off-shore [because corporate greed and irresponsibility has no boundaries], TEPCO’s response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Enough is enough!
If elected, Ms. Baldenegro would be the first Native American to represent Arizona in DC and the first Native American woman ever to serve in the US Congress.
She’s definitely someone to keep an eye on.
Another promising candidate is Tammy Baldwin [Rep D-Wis], who will be running for Wisconsin’s open senate seat, a spot put into play by sitting Democratic Senator Herb Kohl’s scheduled retirement. Ms. Baldwin has been a vocal champion of the Wisconsin 
fight with Governor Scott Walker, his draconian measures against union employees, the shameless tax giveaways as well as the bitter war Walker has stoked against the state’s working class in general. Baldwin’s announcement early last month made clear that her focus would be on: Wall Street reform, US withdrawal from Afghanistan and economic justice for America’s working class.
Sounds like a winning combo!
Baldwin, holding a law degree from the University of Wisconsin, has served as a US Representative since 1999. It’s interesting to note that she voted against authorizing the invasion of Iraq [her vote’s actually on record unlike the present occupant of the WH] and she co-sponsored a bill calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. Later, she proposed another bill to impeach Alberto Gonzales. She’s been a strong defender of women’s health and reproductive rights and has supported measures to strengthen the laws against sexual violence and violence against women.
She also happens to be openly gay, the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to the House of Representatives and the first woman elected to Congress from Wisconsin.
Btw, if Elizabeth Warren wins the 2012 race, she will be the first woman to represent Massachusetts in the US Senate.
Three women–smart, attractive, progressive. All three candidates hold law degrees, interesting backgrounds and a desire to serve the public, particularly the besieged middle and working-class. All three will attempt to break ground with a surprising series of ‘firsts.’ We should recall that women represent 51% of the population but are sorely under-represented in the halls of power.
We’ve come a long way but . . . obviously not far enough.
That being said, let’s hear it for the girls and their gutsy triple play!
Tuesday Reads
Posted: December 6, 2011 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Republican Tax Fetishists, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Morning reads 27 Comments
Good Morning!!
Lets begin with some really big news. NASA announced yesterday that it has found an “Earth-like” planet, IOW, it could be habitable by Earth-like creatures. Perhaps some of our species can escape to it after the U.S.–or Iran or Israel or India, or Pakistan or China blows this one up. From Scientific American:
NASA’s orbiting Kepler telescope has discovered its first planet in the habitable zone of another star. By “habitable,” astronomers mean that a planet could harbor temperatures conducive to liquid water—and maybe life.
The new planet, Kepler 22b, orbits somewhat closer to its host star than Earth does to the sun. “The star is some 600 light years away.” NASA’s Bill Borucki, who leads the Kepler mission, in a December 5th teleconference.
That star is a bit cooler than the sun. So if the greenhouse warming were similar on this planet, and it had a surface, its surface temperature would be something like 72 Fahrenheit—a very pleasant temperature here on Earth.
Kepler 22b is more than twice as large as Earth. One big caveat is that it may not be rocky, like Earth is. It could instead be a gas planet like Neptune. If that were the case, prospects for life there would be rather dim.
Pretty cool, huh? From Cnet:
Along with the confirmed extra-solar planet, one of 28 discovered so far by Kepler, researchers today also announced the discovery of 1,094 new exoplanet candidates, pushing the spacecraft’s total so far to 2,326, including 10 candidate Earth-size worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.
Additional observations are required to tell if a candidate is, in fact, an actual world. But astronomers say a planet known as Kepler-22b, orbiting a star some 600 light years from Earth, is the real thing.
Artist's rendering of newly discovered planet
Kepler 22-b was one of 54 candidates reported by the Kepler team in February, and is just the first to be formally confirmed using other telescopes.
More of these “Earth 2.0” candidates are likely to be confirmed in the near future, though a redefinition of the habitable zone’s boundaries has brought that number down to 48.
Via The Guardian: About a month ago, graphic artist and screenwriter Frank Miller posted an attack on OWS on his blog. Miller is the author of Sin City. Here’s an excerpt:
The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.
“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached – is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.
This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.
Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.
Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.
I know nothing about Frank Miller or his cartoon creations, but reading between the lines, I’m getting the feeling there’s a whole lot of projection going on in that rant. As you can well imagine Miller’s fans weren’t all that pleased by it either.
Now a much more famous and beloved graphic novelist, Alan Moore, has responded to Miller’s ugly tirade.
Well, Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years. I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided. I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time. Since I don’t have anything to do with the comics industry, I don’t have anything to do with the people in it. I heard about the latest outpourings regarding the Occupy movement. It’s about what I’d expect from him. It’s always seemed to me that the majority of the comics field, if you had to place them politically, you’d have to say centre-right. That would be as far towards the liberal end of the spectrum as they would go. I’ve never been in any way, I don’t even know if I’m centre-left. I’ve been outspoken about that since the beginning of my career. So yes I think it would be fair to say that me and Frank Miller have diametrically opposing views upon all sorts of things, but certainly upon the Occupy movement.
As far as I can see, the Occupy movement is just ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it; they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it. We would definitely have to agree to differ on that one.
Alrighty-then. You can read the whole interview with Moore at the link.
The head of the FAA, Jerome “Randy” Babbitt has been placed “on leave” after being arrested and charged for driving drunk. How unseemly.
The Transportation Department, which oversees the FAA, said it didn’t learn about the incident until Monday, two days later. Deputy Administrator Miguel Huerta will serve as acting administrator while officials consider Babbitt’s “employment status,” the Transportation Department said.
Babbitt, 65, was charged with driving while intoxicated after a patrol officer spotted him driving on the wrong side of the street and pulled him over about 10:30 p.m. EST Saturday in Fairfax City, Va., police in the Washington, D.C., suburb said.
Babbitt, who lives in nearby Reston, Va., was the only occupant in the vehicle, the statement said. Police said he cooperated and was released on his own recognizance.
Babbitt apparently delayed telling administration officials about the arrest. White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama and Transportation Department officials learned of the arrest Monday afternoon, about an hour before a 1:30 p.m. EST statement was released saying Babbitt had been placed on leave at his request.
Separately, Fairfax City police issued a statement on the arrest to the media at about noon Monday. They refused to disclose the results of Babbitt’s blood alcohol test. The legal limit is .08.
At least he wasn’t piloting an airplane…
I really kind of hope that the Republicans nominate Newt Gingrich. He’ll be the gift that keeps on giving for bloggers like me–and for comedians too. In the New York Times, Trip Gabriel discusses Gingrich’s “big thoughts.”
Ideas erupt from the mind of Newt Gingrich — bold, unconventional and sometimes troubling and distracting.
On Monday, Mr. Gingrich sought to do damage control on the latest of his Big Thoughts to land him in hot water — helping children bootstrap their way out of poverty by paying them to mop and clean their schools, and rolling back child labor laws that he has called “truly stupid.”
Mr. Gingrich defended the idea, which critics have labeled Dickensian, as a way to introduce children in housing projects with few examples of working adults to the idea of earning a paycheck.
“This is how people rise in America — they learn to work,” he said at a news conference in Manhattan.
Mr. Gingrich’s tendency to speak bluntly, provocatively and sometime impulsively may be part of his emerging appeal at a time when conservatives seem intent on sending a no-business-as-usual message to Washington. It helps with his attempts to foster an image as a candidate eager to bring about change. But the fallout from his statements often traps him in lengthy digressions from his main messages, and it highlights one of the central questions about him as a candidate and potential president: is he sufficiently disciplined?
The funniest example in the article is Gingrich implying that Donald Trump grew grew up poor and had to work hard as a child. On the contrary, Trump inherited big bucks from his father, “a wealthy landlord.”
“New York’s finest” AKA the NYPD has a Facebook page, and in September they used it to display crude and disgusting comments about participants in New York’s West Indian America Day Parade, referring to them as “animals” and “savages” and suggesting, “Drop a bomb on them and wipe them all out.”
The subject was officers’ loathing of being assigned to the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, an annual multiday event that unfolds over the Labor Day weekend and has been marred by episodes of violence, including deaths of paradegoers. Those who posted comments appeared to follow Facebook’s policy requiring the use of real names, and some identified themselves as officers.
On Monday, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for public information, said he learned of the Facebook group from a reporter’s call and would refer the issue to the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau. The comments, in the online group that grew over a few days to some 1,200 members, were at times so offensive in referring to West Indian and African-American neighborhoods that some participants warned others to beware how their words might be taken in a public setting open to Internal Affairs “rats.”
But some of the people who posted comments seemed emboldened by Facebook’s freewheeling atmosphere. “Let them kill each other,” wrote one of the Facebook members who posted comments under a name that matched that of a police officer.
“Filth,” wrote a commenter who identified himself as Nick Virgilio, another participant whose name matched that of a police officer. “It’s not racist if it’s true,” yet another wrote.
Lovely. The NYPD is one of the nation’s most corrupt, violent, and out-of-control police organizations. And judging by this story and their behavior toward OWS, they don’t mind being up front about it.
Awhile back I wrote about Mitt Romney destroying all of his and his staff’s e-mails from his four years as governor of Massachusetts. In addition, Romney and his aides purchased and took with them the hard drives from their state computers. Apparently there was something they desperately wanted to hide. Now Reuters has learned that the cover-up cost the state almost $100,000.
Mitt Romney spent nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret, Reuters has learned.
The move during the final weeks of Romney’s administration was legal but unusual for a departing governor, Massachusetts officials say.
The effort to purge the records was made a few months before Romney launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He is again competing for the party’s nomination, this time to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012….
When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides bought the hard drives of their state-issued computers to keep for themselves. Also before he left office, the governor’s staff had emails and other electronic communications by Romney’s administration wiped from state servers, state officials say.
Those actions erased much of the internal documentation of Romney’s four-year tenure as governor, which ended in January 2007. Precisely what information was erased is unclear.
Republican and Democratic opponents of Romney say the scrubbing of emails – and a claim by Romney that paper records of his governorship are not subject to public disclosure – hinder efforts to assess his performance as a politician and elected official.
I’m not sure where Reuters got the idea this was “legal.” Massachusetts has a law that public officials must save all public records and turn them over to the state.
The Democrats have been talking about caving compromising with Republicans on the extension of the payroll tax holiday. Naturally, GOP congresspeople smelled blood and immediately went in for the kill. Arizona Senator John Kyl announced that there will be no extension of this middle-class tax cut unless the Bush tax cuts for the rich are made permanent.
The top Republican vote counter in the Senate says extending the expiring payroll tax holiday is a terrible idea and he’ll only do it if Democrats agree to major concessions — in particular, simultaneously extending all the Bush tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire just over a year from now.
On the Senate floor Monday, Sen. Jon Kyl argued that reducing the payroll tax doesn’t stimulate the economy — a claim most economists disagree with — and criticized the Democrats’ plan to offset the cost of the tax holiday with a small surtax on millionaires.
“We should therefore only do it under circumstances that in effect override these objections, one of which would be to extend all of the taxes that expire at the end of next year — at the end of 2012,” Kyl said. “That would be a good idea.”
In November 2009, Kyl felt differently. On CNBC he argued, “What you’re suggesting here is that you can do some things to stimulate job creation and certainly doing something like reducing the payroll tax, which has been written about recently, would accomplish that.”
That’s probably because he senses that President Obama is just about to surrender and give the Republicans everything they want, as usual.
Sigh… That’s all I have for today. What are you reading and blogging about?
Send in the Clowns
Posted: December 5, 2011 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, fundamentalist Christians, GOP, intolerance, Karl Popper, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, Southern Strategy, Tea Party 38 Comments
For decades, the GOP has been courting racists, anti-women’s rights activists
, anti-gay bigots, and fundamentalist christian extremists, in an effort to become the majority party in the U.S. At this point, they may have succeeded, but at what cost?
As Dakinikat has said frequently, this isn’t the Republican Party of Eisenhower, Nixon, or even Reagan. Today’s GOP has become a job without a punch line. Anyone with any basic intelligence is laughing at the party’s presidential candidates! Even Karl Rove has been arguing that most of them are too far right to win a national election. From Fox News on August 15, 2011:
This is the guy who famously encouraged the christian right to believe the Bush administration would fight to enact their most extreme policies, while calling them “nuts” behind their backs.
But it just doesn’t work to invite crazy, intolerant people into your inner circle and then try to remain apart from them. An organization takes on the character of its members. In the years since Nixon’s won the presidency in 1968 with the Southern Strategy, the GOP has consciously chosen to welcome the most hateful, bigoted, and even demented people into the party power structure and now they are reaping what they sowed.
Today Rove lamented the “debate” that Donald Trump is supposedly organizing. (So far the only candidate who has confirmed he’ll attend is Newt Gingrich). Rove wants the RNC to discourage GOP candidates from attending the debate.
Veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said Monday that the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC) should step in to “discourage” presidential candidates from attending the upcoming debate moderated by Donald Trump.
“Here’s a guy who is saying, ‘I’m going to endorse one of you,’ ” Rove said, criticizing the choice on “Fox & Friends.”
“More importantly, what the heck are the Republican candidates doing showing up at a debate [whose moderator] says, ‘I may run for president next year as an Independent’? I think the Republican National [Committee] chairman [Reince Priebus] should step in and say, ‘We strongly discourage every candidate from appearing in a debate moderated by somebody who’s gonna run for president,’ ” he said.
Trump, promoting his new book, released this week, confirmed earlier on the show that he is planning to endorse and that if the candidate he prefers does not win the GOP nomination, he might consider an Independent bid following the conclusion of his reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”
But’s it’s too late. If Karl Rove wants to get back in control of the Republican Party, he’ll have to start over from scratch. The party of Bush has already moved so far to the right that Bush now looks like a moderate, semi-reasonable guy.
Donald Trump as powerbroker? Today a new poll was released showing that New Hampshire voters would be less likely to vote for any candidate endorsed by Trump. Trump was on MSNBC this morning to talk about the poll.
Yesterday, I was rereading Chris Hedges terrific book about the christian right, American Fascists; and I came across this famous quote by Karl Popper:
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
That seems very relevant not only to the GOP, but also to today’s Democratic Party, which is once again welcoming in misogynists, anti-choicers, supporters of torture and anti-constitutional uses of executive power. When you “tolerate the intolerant,” you head down a slippy slope toward a hateful and uncivilized society. It’s seems to me that we are already quite a way down that slippery slope. Send in the clowns indeed.
Thursday Reads: Is It Really Down To Either Mitt or Newt?
Posted: December 1, 2011 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 Republican nomnation, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, PPP poll 66 Comments
It’s been obvious from the polls that Mitt Romney is not very popular with Republicans. As Donald Trump, Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and have risen and fallen, Romney has stayed near 25%. But now PPP Polling says that as voters get to know Mitt, they like him even less than before.
There are 13 places PPP has polled the Republican race in October or November where it also did a poll sometime between January and March. In those places Romney’s net favorability has dropped by an average of 15 points over the course of the year.
On average Romney’s favorability with primary voters was 54/25 in these 13 places at the begininng of the year. Now it’s only 50/35. His problem is partially that his positives have gone down but more than that it’s that as his name recognition has increased, most folks moving off the fence have gone into the negative column.
What’s most remarkable about the decline in Romney’s popularity is how uniform it’s been- he’s less popular now than he was at the start of the year in all 13 places where there are polls to compare. And in 11 out of the 13 places that decline in his net favorability has been at least 14 points- the only places with more modest declines are Maine and North Carolina.
As someone who lives in the state that Romney governed for four long, unproductive years, I’m not at all surprised. This man is more wooden than Al Gore, more up-tight than Callista Gingrich, and more awkward and a far worse flip-flopper than John Kerry. Mitt was for it before he was against it, then for it again, and against it again. He is also more amoral and value-free than Barack Obama. On top of that, he’s been endorsed by Ann Coulter.
Frankly, I rather watch Newt Gingrich run against Obama. At least it would be entertaining. Obama vs. Romney would be sleep-inducing.
Now let’s take a look at Romney’s economic record in Massachusetts. This 2007 op-ed from The Boston Globe sums up Romney’s governorship very well (emphasis added).
Our analysis reveals a weak comparative economic performance of the state over the Romney years, one of the worst in the country.
On all key labor market measures, the state not only lagged behind the country as a whole, but often ranked at or near the bottom of the state distribution. Formal payroll employment in the state in 2006 was still 16,000 or 0.5 percent below its average level in 2002, the year immediately prior to the start of the Romney administration. Massachusetts ranked third lowest on this key job generation measure and would have ranked second lowest if Hurricane Katrina had not devastated the Louisiana economy. Manufacturing payroll employment throughout the nation declined by nearly 1.1 million or 7 percent between 2002 and 2006, but in Massachusetts it declined by more than 14 percent, the third worst record in the country.
While the number of employed people over age 16 in the United States rose by nearly 8 million, or close to 6 percent, between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed residents in the Commonwealth is estimated to have modestly declined by 8,500. Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents. The aggregate number of people 16 and older either working or looking for work in Massachusetts fell over the Romney years.
We were one of only two states to have experienced no growth in its resident labor force. Again, without the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on the dispersal of the Louisiana population, Massachusetts would have ranked last on this measure. The decline in the state’s labor force, which was influenced in large part by high levels of out-migration of working-age adults, helped hold down the official unemployment rate of the state. Between July 2002 and July 2006, the US Census Bureau estimated that 222,000 more residents left Massachusetts for other states than came here to live. This high level of net domestic out-migration was equivalent to 3.5 percent of the state’s population, the third highest rate of population loss in the country. Excluding the population displacement effects of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana, Massachusetts would have ranked second highest on this measure. We were a national leader in exporting our population.
That’s what we’ll get with a Romney presidency. He’d be far worse than Obama has been. Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true.
I know the Republicans started out disliking Romney because they don’t believe he’s a conservative. But once they see him perform on TV or in person, they realize he’s actually a robot pretending to be a man. The media won’t tell them about Romney’s economic failure in Massachusetts, but if he wins they’ll find out he’s dumb as a post and has no clue how to create jobs or improve the economy.
Dakinikat sent me this fascinating article from the NYT Magazine yesterday: Building a Better Mitt Romney-Bot. The article is about the efforts of Romney’s campaign advisers to make him look more like a regular guy. They’re keeping him away from opportunities for the press to ask open-ended questions, because Romney did that in 2008 and it didn’t go well.
“You can’t control the message,” one of Romney’s senior advisers later explained to me. “But at a business round table, it’s much more easily controlled because you’re having a group of businessmen, and you’re talking about the economy and the challenges that they may be facing, and Mitt is very conversant on those points.”
[….]
Mitt Romney’s campaign has decided upon a rather novel approach to winning the presidency. It has taken a smart and highly qualified but largely colorless candidate and made him exquisitely one-dimensional: All-Business Man, the world’s most boring superhero.
Excuse me? “smart and highly qualified?” Then why did he run Massachusetts practically into the ground in four short years? Romney’s closest campaign strategist, Stuart Stevens compares Romney as candidate to Michael Vick as quarterback.
Among Stevens’s colorful analogies, the unlikeliest is one in which he compares Romney to Michael Vick, the dynamic quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles. “Michael Vick’s not a real good pocket guy,” Stevens told me. “So don’t tell him he can’t roll out. Try to make him the best rollout guy that’s ever played.” And indeed, Romney’s staff has endeavored to focus the campaign on his strengths, which are decidedly the opposite of Vick’s. So instead of letting their quarterback roam and improvise, they’re keeping him tightly contained in the business-centric pocket, hoping to God that he does not stray from it.
That’s a pretty unfortunate comparison, considering Romney’s history of cruelty his family dog.
Draper does suggest that Mitt’s biggest problem, as I indicated above, is that he has very poor social skills. He comes off as embarrassingly awkward when he tries to act like a normal human being.
The chief vulnerability of the Romney campaign resides with the understandable decision to keep their anti-Michael Vick in the pocket, thereby limiting our view of the man. Those who at close range watched Romney’s failure to close the deal in 2008 did not witness a rejection per se. Instead, it appeared that Republican voters could not quite envision this decent, clever and socially uneasy fellow governing their country — as opposed to, say, managing their stock portfolios. Stories of Romney’s wooden people skills are legion. “The Mormon’s never going to win the who-do-you-want-to-have-a-beer-with contest,” concedes one adviser, while another acknowledges, “He’s never had the experience of sitting in a bar, and like, talking.”
I never bought the idea that the best president is someone you can talk with over a beer, but seriously, Romney is so divorced from real American culture that he couldn’t begin to identify with working- and middle-class people. He should never, ever be President. And since he could possibly beat Obama, I don’t want him to be nominated anyway.
So that leaves Newt Gingrich. According to a PPP poll taken on Monday night, Gingrich’s numbers are “still rising.”
Last night we went into the field in Florida and Montana- we’ll have the results of those polls out tomorrow after another night of calls but the early indications are that Newt Gingrich will have a double digit lead in both states- he has not peaked yet and is still on an upward curve.
If Herman Cain really ends up dropping out of the race Gingrich’s surge should continue in the next few weeks, unless/until something starts happening to erode his popularity. Why? Because Cain’s supporters absolutely love Gingrich. And they absolutely hate Mitt Romney.
Our last national survey found that Gingrich’s favorability with Cain voters was 73/21. Meanwhile Romney’s was 33/55. That’s the same basic trend we’ve seen in every Republican primary poll we’ve done in the month of November.
So as voters desert Cain, they’re going to Gingrich. Once Cain drops out, Gingrich’s poll numbers will continue to improve. Will Romney even be able to maintain his 25% base?
Also from PPP: Gingrich up big in Florida and Montana
Newt Gingrich’s momentum is continuing to build, and he now leads Mitt Romney by over 25 points in both Florida and Montana.
In Florida Gingrich is at 47% to 17% for Romney, 15% for Herman Cain, 5% for Ron Paul, 4% for Michele Bachmann, 3% for Jon Huntsman, 2% for Rick Perry, 1% for Rick Santorum, and 0% for Gary Johnson.
In Montana Gingrich is at 37% to 12% for Paul, 11% for Romney, 10% for Bachmann and Cain, 5% for Perry, 3% for Huntsman, and 1% for Johnson and Santorum.
These two states really exemplify one of the key emerging trends in the Republican race- Gingrich isn’t just rising, Romney’s also falling. His 17% in Florida is down 13 points from 30% when we polled the state in late September. His 11% in Montana is down 11 points from 22% when we polled the state in June.
I know the election is nearly a year away, but can Romney turn it around? Of course it’s always a good possibility that Gingrich will do or say something so outrageous that he turns even Republican voters off. But to show how serious Gingrich is taking this, his campaign has finally opened an office in Iowa.
Yesterday, the Christian Science Monitor asked: Is Mitt Romney nomination really inevitable anymore? Time will tell, I guess.
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