Romney's Embarrasing Announcement

At least he didn't tweet pictures of his cock.

That's less embarrassing to a liberal.

Oh dear. I'd sure like to know what compelled you to pull me into this discussion...and what you're trying to imply. \

His original flamebait fizzled. He had to try to liven things up.

I can think of a host of other reasons not to vote for Romney. This is just lame.

I'll take the bait here just for fun. Why is this "embarrassing?" I think you'd LIKE it to be embarrassing...that's what you must have meant.

Does he drive GM vehicles, too?!?

Ok \

Lame thread.

Romney is a boring and plastic person who will never win the presidency.He has no aggressive attitude at all for a politician.

Since when has that become forbidden? Has Romney taken a position against ALL government assistance?






He's the frontrunner, both in the polls and financially. His strength is Obama's weakness....the economy. I disagree with you here.

If I were Obama I would be embarrassed.

Poll: Among all Americans, Obama and Romney are knotted at 47 percent each, and among registered voters, the former governor is numerically ahead, 49 percent to 46 percent.

That guy isn't running for president.

See this kind of thing is ok if it's a Republican.

Not even close.

False. Unemployment is much higher than it was under Bush.


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The Democrats' perception of the electorate is pretty well vetted. But..who is jealous? Of whom? Wait you mean conservative posters are jealous of Obama's success?


I hope they do too (for the sake of the country itself), but it's unlikely that unemployment is going to drop by 2-3% in the next 18 months. I also see no economic reason why it would happen. Businesses are scared of the coming Obamacare mandates and know full well that Obama has pledged to let the Bush tax cuts finally expire. Businesses don't act on uncertainty.


You don't think Romney has a chance, based on what? He's the strongest according to the polls, and is in a dead heat with Obama. What you fail to understand is this is not just about generic polling and popularity. I believe based on present data, Romney will win the GOP nomination and have a good shot at defeating Obama. Here is why:

For the nomination:

--Romney has a huge financial and organizational advantage over the rest of the GOP field. He raised $10 million in one DAY last month.

--Romney no longer has to worry about competing for conservative votes with Huckabee nor moderate votes with John McCain. Last time, he was in between both of these candidates. He was more moderate than Huckabee and more conservative than McCain. He is also a Mormon, which may have negatively affected him given that Huckabee offered an alternative.

---Romney already has great name recognition. The GOP also likes to nominate second place finishers for future runs. See Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.


For the general: A lot of this could change, but here is where things stand:


---Obama's popularity is sliding back down to the mid to low forties. That is not good enough..plain and simple. If he's not close to 50%, he's in big trouble.

---The enthusiasm among his base is very depressed. Conservatives and moderate Republicans see him as very beatable. In other words, the enthusiasm gap is going to be big.

--Without the aforementioned enthusiasm, Dems simply don't vote in the numbers that Republicans do.

---He's alienated many moderates (and formerly non-political types) and some on the left. Moderates don't like Obamacare and extreme deficit spending, nor do they like his persona and statements about the American ideal, so to speak. The Left does not like that he extended the Bush tax cuts, kept Gitmo open, and started a 3rd war. So who's left? Party loyalists, lifetime Democrats and the core constituencies of blacks, low-income seniors, labor, etc. The waves of collge students who were caught up in the cult of personality and who wanted to say they'd voted for the first black President are gone. This is what many of those folks thought being "progressive" meant. This man is just not cool anymore.

---The visible results of his policies have been poor, if not disastrous. Most important: The economy and our fiscal situation. The electorate is now awake on the issues of big government, debt and deficits. Obama has exploded the deficit and debt. He and his party have not passed a budget in over 750 days. The stimulus has unquestionably failed. Unemployment is at 9.1% officially, with the real number being far higher. The data is just not good. Now granted, that could change. But as I said, businesses are not going to hire in this environment.

---This is my own judgement and not support by data per se, but: I think Obama has grossly underestimated the number of people that are turned off to him completely. Anecdotally, I've spoken with several people that voted for him in 2008 that now claim that will not even consider voting for him again. Most of them are very moderate people and/or not interested in politics. All they know is that the economy is bad, they may not have a job, and Obama's background/ideals don't match with theirs. They don't like Foreign Apology Tours, being told they are clinging to their guns and religion, being told that high gases prices and high unemployment are the new norm, and that America needs to be not a leader, but a voice in the a chorus of nations.

The facts are these: If no "big surprise" candidate runs, Romney will win the nomination. And if the economy does not improve dramatically in the next year, Obama will lose.

The only Republicans I would vote for are Ron Paul or Gary Johnson. If Romney wins the nomination, I will vote for a 3rd party candidate.

I agree that Obama's approach to unemployment has been theatrical, but I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that unemployment has been "tamed."

First, let me give you a math quiz: Is the number 10.1 higher or lower than the number 7.2? Your answer to this question will help us understand your statement.

Second, have you see this chart?



Those red dots are what has happened on Obama's watch. In fact it almost looks like the rate of increase...increases, slightly.



What's funny is someone accusing others of being dumb while claiming that Obama actually "dramatically tamed" unemployment!



What is it with the left and their over reliance on hope in opposition to economic reality?!?!

Oh, look: Only 24% share Obama's views. Put this in the "vast underestimation of the problem" department.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...olitical_views

What does Mitt Romney have to do with me (or jazzguru) or what do I have to do with him?

You seem to be implying some connection that doesn't exist.

What is funny is the claim that the area being touched by government money means any attempt to use it is now embarassing if you have any disagreement about government spending.

How does that lame reasoning make any sense?

What would be really sad though is when we are so overspending as a nation is to try to find something we could touch that ISN'T influenced, controlled or touched in any form or fashion by government spending.

That has probably become almost impossible.

I was teasing with my friends on Facebook after getting to watch some cable television over a weekend that in addition to not missing it, I'm upset since apparenty I'm the only person left on the planet without a television show.

Crab fisherman have a show. Ice road truckers have a show. Tattoo artists have a show. People from Jersey have a show. People who buy crap out of storage containers have a damn show.

How can I not have a show by now?

I guess I ought to be as ashamed as Mitt Romney should be. In a world full of crap, how dare you not stink or only stink a little or suggest we ought to stink a bit less.

Is Romney a hypocrite for paying taxes while advocating smaller government?

Except that he didn't turn it around. More than 2 years later unemployment is at least 2 percentage points higher than when Obama took office (and that's after dropping from hitting 10%)!

Spending is higher. The deficit is higher. The debt is higher. Unemployment is higher. Inflation is higher.

Obama hasn't turned anything around. Economically-speaking almost everything is worse!

Here is a more complete and accurate telling of the story under Bush:


After Obama took office, unemployment rose to a peak of 10.2% a full 3 percentage points higher then when he entered office. It has declined slightly and basically stagnated now sitting at 9.1%.

The first "economic stimulus package" was passed under Bush with the blessing of Obama and McCain. Obama merely continued Bush's economic policy. If you are going to credit Obama with anything as it pertains to the economy, you must also credit Bush.

I would argue that the "economic stimulus package" has, in fact, prolonged and deepened the economic turmoil and ultimately made things worse. Arbitrarily expanding the money supply tends to have that effect. Any recovery that may have happened is in spite of - not due to - government intervention in the economy.

Kindly do not cloud his mind with facts.

The stimulus failed, though I think much of TARP was successful at preventing disaster. That's because the help was almost immediate. The stimulus, on the other hand, was a complete disaster for two reasons:

1. Keynesian stimulus (government spending on shovel-ready infrastructure, etc.) doesn't work.

2. Assuming for a second that Keynesian stimulus DID work, the Porkulous/Slushfund-u-lous Boondoggle didn't work because it didn't even adhere to Keynesian principles! Instead of frontloaded and immediate stimulus, it contained both unrelated funds and backloaded funds. It was nothing but a trillion dollar public relations ploy that was really a slush fund for getting Democrats elected down the road. Money was targeted to certain areas not based on need, but for political reasons.

I disagree. If we are going to have capitalism, we are going to have failures for bad decisions. TARP was to Wall Street what the bailout to GM was. Essentially it did several bad things: 1) It institutionalized the idea of "too big to fail" and so has created a new level of moral hazard that will be hard to back away from when something like this happens again, 2) it actually prevented a much needed re-structuring and re-allocation of capital, 3) it systemized the idea of privatizing profits while socializing losses...it was basically corporate socialism/state capitalism.

TARP was one of the first mistakes in the more recent* fiasco.

*As I and trumptman and others have pointed out there are deep and long-running structural issues that go back well before Bush and Obama (think way back to Hoover and FDR) that laid the foundations for the problems we have today.

It goes back to 1913...and the Federal Reserve Act.

I agree. If there is one single point in US history I'd point to it is 1913. Creation of the Fed and the 16th amendment. The effects of these two evils did not start to get felt for a few years. It wasn't really until the early 30's where they started to be a real problem.

This should be a warning for us. It took a couple of decades before the bad stuff started happening.

I disagree on several points. First, AIG and other really were "too big too fail." They were. The government decided it had to let Lehman go, but that it couldn't go any further. If Merrill and AIG failed, our entire financial system would have collapsed. It would be the end of the world.

Now, I hate to pull a jimmac here and use a movie reference, but I will in order to illustrate a point. In the movie "Too Big To Fail," William Hurt plays Hank Paulson. At one point, he's seen talking to his wife about what's going on. She asks him if he's done all he can do, and he says yes..but it's not enough. She tells him that's all that can be expected. He tells her she doesn't understand how bad it is. She asks him to explain it. He tells her that if "[Merrill and AIG fail], the markets collapse, credit markets seize completely, businesses cannot make payroll or have cash to do business at all. In week, there will be no milk on the store shelves." That's where we were going. Is that what we should have let happen?

I disagree as well that this is akin to the auto bailouts. Those were incredibly stupid. First, we propped them up with billions in loans and then they declared bankruptcy anyway. I agree we should have let GM and Chrysler go into bankruptcy--perhaps with some assistance in expediting it and setting terms. They wouldn't have gone into Chapter 7 as some predicted. They would have reorganized and emerged stronger. Of course now, we have GM's moronic CEO telling us it's a good idea to raise the gax tax up to $1.00 per gallon more (presumably to they can sell more failed Chevy Volts).