Report: Christie, Ryan, Axelrod to headline Romney retreat

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), and Obama strategist David Axelrod will headline a retreat being planned by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Boston Globe reports.

The June forum will also feature former senators Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who chaired their eponymous debt-reduction commission, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, according to an e-mail obtained by the newspaper.

“As I indicated in your invitation, I have drawn speakers from government and business to identify key opportunities ahead,” Romney writes. “And I have made sure to invite presenters from both sides of the aisle.”

The event, dubbed "Experts and Enthusiasts," will be held in Park City, Utah and is sponsored by Solamere Group, the private equity firm where Romney now serves as chairman. The firm was founded by Romney's son, Tagg, and Spence Zwick, the finance chair of his campaign.

Last year, Romney held a similar retreat in the Utah resort town for hundreds of his campaign's top donors. Campaign staff and major Republican political figures including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice briefed donors.

According to the Globe, attendance to the event is expected to run $5,000, although is not considered a political donation.

The event will be Romney's first foray back into public life since his electoral defeat, with the exception of an appearance earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference. At that time, Romney pledged to remain active in public life.

“I am sorry that I will not be your president,” he said. “But I will be your co-worker, and I will work shoulder-to-shoulder alongside you."

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Romney: Boston Marathon bombers ‘demented’

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney expressed disbelief Thursday over the act of terror that rocked his home state of Massachusetts earlier in the week.

“Why would people be so demented, so stunted in their intellectual capacity that they would do something so horrible?” Romney asked on CNN.

At least three people were killed and more than 170 were injured Monday when two explosive devices detonated near the finish line of the 117th running of the Boston Marathon.

Romney served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007, and in the 1980s and 1990s he was a major figure in the Boston-area Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community. He presently has a home in Belmont, Mass.

Romney on Thursday also praised President Obama for a speech he gave earlier in the day at a memorial service for the victims.

?"I thought the president gave a suburb address," Romney said. "It was an inspiring day."

Obama spoke at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, about a mile from where the twin blasts went off. The president paid tribute to both the city of Boston and to the victims who died or were injured in the attack.

"I have no doubt: you will run again,” Obama said. “You will run again 'cause that's what the people of Boston are made of. Your resolve is the greatest rebuke to whoever committed this heinous act. If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us … it should be pretty clear right now they picked the wrong city to do it."

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Michigan Republican: GOP Killed Election-Rigging Plan in 2012 Because They Thought It Would Hurt Romney

Republicans in several blue states are currently considering a plan to rig the next presidential election by changing the way electoral votes are allocated to candidates. Under the Republican Plan, key blue states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would assign electoral votes one-each to the winner of the state’s heavily gerrymandered congressional districts. If this plan had been in effect in Michigan last year, Mitt Romney would have won 9 of the state’s 16 electoral votes, despite losing the state as a whole by nearly 10 points.

Although the Republican Plan is picking up steam among GOP lawmakers right now, several of them backed the plan during the 2012 election cycle in an attempt to rig that race for Mitt Romney. According to Michigan Rep. Pete Lund (R), however, Republicans in Michigan decided not to back the plan largely because they misjudged Romney’s chances of winning Michigan:

Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township, confirmed this week he plans to reintroduce legislation that would award all but two of Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes according to congressional district results. The remaining two would go to the candidate winning the statewide majority.

“I believe it’s more representative of the people — closer to the actual vote,” said Lund, who proposed a similar bill in 2012. “It got no traction last year. There were people convinced Romney was going to win and this might take (electoral) votes from him.”

So Republicans were unwilling to back Lund’s plan when they thought it would benefit Democrats. Now that it’s clear that the plan rigs the election for Republicans, however, it is suddenly experiencing a renaissance.

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Romney: Obama’s reckless spending fans a ‘prairie fire of debt’

Speaking in Des Moines, Iowa this afternoon, Romney took President Obama to task for his incessant spending and borrowing:

“Today America faces a financial crisis of debt and spending that threatens what it means to be an American. Here in the heartland you know in your hearts that it’s wrong.  We can’t spend another four years talking about solving a problem that we only make worse every day. When the men and women who settled the Iowa prairie saw a fire in the distance, they didn’t look around for someone else to save them or go back to sleep hoping the wind might blow another direction. They knew their fate was in their hands and so it is today.  A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation and every day we fail to act we feed that fire with our own lack of resolve.”

Romney went on to hit Obama for the so-called stimulus, the ever unpopular ObamaCare and the more than five trillion dollars the Obama deficits have added to the national debt:

“President Obama started his days in office with the trillion-dollar stimulus package – the biggest, most careless one-time expenditure by the federal government in history.  And remember this: the stimulus wasn’t just wasted – it was borrowed and wasted.  We still owe the money, we’re still paying interest on it, and it’ll be that way long after this presidency ends in January.

Then there was Obamacare.  Even now nobody knows the exact cost of that new program.  And that uncertainty has done great harm to our economy.  Employers aren’t hiring, entrepreneurs are worried, all because of a massive, European-style entitlement that Americans didn’t want and can’t afford.

Through his own decisions, this President has added more than five trillion dollars to the national debt, which now stands at 15.7 trillion dollars.”

Then Romney promised to lead us out of this debt and spending crisis:

“As president, I will approach debt and spending differently.  My time spent building businesses and leading state government taught me that we need to hold every department and agency to a simple test: If something can be done better and more efficiently outside the federal government, then that’s where it belongs.  Wherever we have the option of returning functions back to the states, to local governments, or, better still, to the private sector, that’s what we will do.  We will make the federal government simpler, smaller, smarter – and, by the way, more in keeping with the vision of the Framers of our Constitution.”

The excerpts are from Mitt Romney’s speech as prepared for delivery.  The excerpts are from Mitt Romney’s speech as prepared for delivery. The entire transcript is available here.

Last month the Romney campaign released a video highlighting President Obama’s broken promises on spending, deficits and the national debt. You can watch the “Broken Promises: Spending” video here.

Today the national debt is 15,674,182,767,474.36 or $15.7 trillion, it was when President Obama took office it was $10,626,877,048,913.08 or $10.6 trillion.

In 2004, when the deficit was $413 billion and the national debt was $7,419,244,676,835.15 or $7.4 trillion, Obama said the “monstrous federal deficit” was an “enormous problem.” On July 3, 2008, presidential candidate Obama said that adding $4 trillion in debt was “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.” Nevertheless, President Obama added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in three years.

President Obama has promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first time at least five times:

February 23, 2009: Obama Pledges to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.February 24, 2009: Obama pledges to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.May 26, 2009: Obama pledges to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in officeDecember 8, 2009: Obama pledges to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.February 14, 2011: Obama pledges to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.

Despite those promises Obama has racked up the largest deficits in U.S. history:

FY2009: The federal budget deficit was $1.413 trillion, the highest in U.S. history. (“Monthly Budget Review: November 2011,” Congressional Budget Office, 11/7/11)FY2011: The federal budget deficit was $1.299 trillion, the second highest in U.S. history. (“Monthly Budget Review: November 2011,” Congressional Budget Office, 11/7/11)FY2010: The federal budget deficit was $1.294 trillion, the third highest in U.S. history. (“Monthly Budget Review: November 2011,” Congressional Budget Office, 11/7/11)The CBO projects the deficit at the end of Obama’s first term will be $1.253 trillion, Obama’s fourth straight trillion deficit. (“An Anlysis Of The President’s 2013 Budget,” Congressional Budget Office, 3/16/12)

You shouldn’t be shocked by Obama’s failure to reduce the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office. He did warn us there would be “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.”

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Count Romney, Ahh Ahh Ahh

Background: Because Mitt Romney worked for Bain Capital, and one of Bain’s acquisitions went out of business 10 years after Bain took over, Obama says Romney is a vampire. The only vampire I see is the one in charge, spending our money, while thousands of people remain out of work. Read more Here.

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Mitt Romney Finds A Problem-Solver

“What I’m hearing from folks around the country is: ‘Game on, we’re in, we will do whatever is necessary to elect Mitt Romney now because Obama has shown where he really stands,’” Brown said.

(HT: Politico.com)

A lot of Social Conservatives looked askance at Mitt Romney’s relatively easy victory in this year’s GOP Primary race. I endorsed Rick Santorumin the GOP Primary myself. Then conceded to reality and decided to suck it up. Thus, I refrain from whinging over various primary season butt-hurts and support my party’s inevitable nominee.

Then yesterday happened – now it’s time to commit even for the Mitt! At least that’s what some recent polling suggests is now happening in the GOP.

What’s funny is that Mitt really didn’t have to do much to earn this burst of enthusiasm. He just had to stand by his record as a moderately Republican Governor of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This made him look like an absolute Rock of Gibraltar athwart Barack Obama’s shameless, gutless and toothless pander to the homosexual community concerning same sex marriage. This in advance of a Big Hollywood fundraiser. Way to sell yourself and not in a good way.

So much for President Gutsy Call. Roger Stone blogs on behalf of Libertarian Presidential Candidate and Turncoat Former Republican, Gary Johnson. However, he describes Barack Obama’s gutlessness to a tee.

Once Gay Americans are through celebrating President Barack Obama’s “personal” support of Gay marriage equality, they will learn that Obama’s “evolution” changes nothing…This comes on the heels of an cynical Obama campaign pirouette where Team Obama trotted out first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then Vice President “Crazy” Joe Biden to say they support gay marriage and imply that the President would too–after the election. Now, incredibly, Obama says Gay marriage is a state issue.

This benefits Mitt Romney who displayed a quiet, yet firm stick-to-itiveness on the issue of same-sex marriage. Mitt Romney fought homosexual marriage all the way to the State Supreme Court as a governor and has decided not to veer from that stance on the issue.

“My view is that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” Romney said. “That’s the position I’ve had for some time, and I don’t intend to make any adjustments at this point. … Or ever, by the way.”

Mitt Romney did nothing more than remain Mitt Romney. Barack Obama herded disaffected social conservatives in Mr. Romney’s direction like the Tail-End Charlie on a cattle drive. Then, Mr. Obama ran away from his own panderation to his base after pocketing the checks and hob-knobbing with George Clooney. Thus, this becomes more than just a debate on same-sex marriage. It becomes a discussion of who these two men are and how each is faring with their respective party base.

Barack Obama is the unprincipled flip-flop artist that everyone accuses Mitt Romney of being. Mitt Romney hasn’t had to move an inch. Barack Obama sold out to his base and quite literally sang for his supper in the Palatial Clooney Mansion, amongst the pampered 1%. The GOP Base may not totally agree with Mitt Romney, but at least they no longer have to ask themselves how he is different than Barack Obama. Barack Obama’s pathetic moral cowardice has offered Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign a contribution-in-kind.

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Washington Post Story On Romney Begins To Unravel

Dispatches from the Meme Wars.

So this morning the Washington Post runs a story detailing what kind of a jerk Mitt Romney was in high school. This is a surprise, right? A high school kid being a jerk. This has never ever happened before. Why, you might well ask, would the Washington Post devote valuable time and space to writing about this event? And why, you might well follow up, is this worth posting about when everyone should be talking about the environment?

The answer is easy. It builds a meme and it translates Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage from a liability into a perceived strength.

If you missed this is the graf that has the left exercised:

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Of course the story gets much sadder with Romney presumably responsible for the guy’s failed life and death from cancer.

He came out as gay to his family and close friends and led a vagabond life, taking dressage lessons in England and touring with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders. After an extreme fit of temper in front of his mother and sister at home in South Bend, he checked into the Menninger Clinic psychiatric hospital in Topeka, Kan. Later he received his embalmer’s license, worked as a chef aboard big freighters and fishing trawlers, and cooked for civilian contractors during the war in Bosnia and then, a decade later, in Iraq. His hair thinned as he aged, and in the winter of 2004 he returned to Seattle, the closest thing he had to a base. He died there of liver cancer that December.

He kept his hair blond until he died, said his sister Chris. “He never stopped bleaching it.”

There are unanswered questions here, like what this has to do with anything, how a high school dropout bummed around Europe taking dressage lessons and, my favorite, how getting an “embalmer’s license” led to a culinary career? But the Post doesn’t address them.

The main source for this vignette is a former classmate of Romney’s named Stu White. According to the Washington Post:

“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident.”

But ABC News reports

“White was not present for the prank, in which Romney is said to have forcefully cut a student’s long hair and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post.”

From this it is pretty clear that the Lauber incident did not unfold in the way the Washington Post describes, if, indeed, it happened at all. (h/t to the Daily Caller)

Why this and why now?

As we’ve mentioned before this is all part of a process to brand Romney as a vicious, thoughtless, out-of-touch rich guy. It is really Obama’s only hope as he can’t possibly win if he runs on his objective accomplishments.

This story has obviously been in the works for a while but the news value of it is questionable. It is the basic oppo dump material that the Washington Post obediently churns out on Republicans. As Major Garrett reports in National Journal, the whole Biden-evolving postion idea was a scam to allow Obama to support gay marriage:

Did Obama sacrifice huge swaths of swing voters? Probably not. The polls have shifted to net favorable on the question of same-sex marriage and independents are unlikely to punish Obama for a policy position consistent with everything else he’s done on gay issues. Social conservatives will, of course, be aggrieved. But they were already.

Also, consider this on the gay-marriage pronouncements: Biden was first, Obama second. That the two happily reversed the common order of things ought to tell you something about their relationship (solid), their understanding of tactics (advanced), and how they can play Washington’s chattering class for fools (easily).

But suddenly, the nothingburger story developed by the Post had a hook. In fact it had a hook that could effectively frame the entire story to fit into the overarching Obama campaign. Obama was against gay marriage, but then he met parents of friends of his daughters who were gay and the subject was discussed at family dinners and he changed his mind. Another “gutsy call” in which he took an unpopular position after carefully weighing everything, and, of course, consulting his deeply held Christian faith.

Romney, on the other hand, when he went to an elite private school for elite rich kids relentlessly bullied a kid who was gay and continues his bullying and homophobia to this day by not supporting homosexual marriage. It all fit. And the Post was able to make good on its investment.

The ABC story makes it clear that there are other Romney classmates lining up to dish on him, presumably after they sign with a literary agent:

One former classmate and old friend of Romney’s – who refused to be identified by name – said there are “a lot of guys” who went to Cranbrook who have “really negative memories” of Romney’s behavior in the dorms, behavior this classmate describes as “evil” and “like Lord of the Flies.”

The classmate believes Romney is lying when he claims to not remember it.

“It makes these fellows [who have owned up to it] very remorseful.  For [Romney] not to remember it? It doesn’t ring true.  How could the fellow with the scissors forget it?” the former classmate said.

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Communists, Cop-Killers, and Cocaine: Why the Washington Post Focuses on Romney Instead

Let's Focus on Undocumented Fifty Year Old Events Because Otherwise We'll Have To Talk About The Economy

Now this is just silly. The Washington Post can’t be bothered to worry about Barack Obama’s college years, college transcripts, communist friends, cocaine use, or cop-killing plotters in whose living room he first launched his major political career, but they can get in the really way back machine to 1965 and Mitt Romney’s high school years.

Mitt Romney cut a hippy’s hair at his preparatory high school. A day after Barack Obama caved on gay marriage, the Washington Post “coincidentally” says Mitt Romney cut the hair of a boy who “was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality.”

Let’s leave out the fact that the kid who got his haircut was subsequently thrown out of school for smoking one cigarette, but we’re to believe that the assailants of his hair, witnessed by many, were ignored. Oh, and the guy who got is hair cut never, ever, ever mentioned it, including to family, and died in 2004 so it can’t be verified. But a handful of students who now probably support Barack Obama have a crystal clear memory of events from 50 years ago. The people who were adults at the time of the incident and still alive have no memory of it, but remember Romney and said he was never a disciplinary problem.

N*gg*rhead rock, anybody?

After four years of ignoring Barack Obama’s bullying of religious groups and others from inside the White House, it’s fair game to go after Mitt Romney as a supposed high school bully.

I guess we won’t hear the left whining any more when we mention Barack Obama eating a dog since, as they are quick to point out, he was a kid when it happened.

We have now had more in depth examination of Mitt Romney by the Gang of 500 than of Barack Obama.

We do not really know much about Barack Obama’s constituent record in the Illinois Legislature.

We still don’t know his college transcripts.

We still don’t know what exactly he did for ACORN in his community organizing time.

We still don’t know all the details about the depth of the cocaine use Barack Obama admitted to in his book. Likewise, we know very little about his drug use in high school beyond just a few lines of reporting from 2007.

We know very little, outside of his own autobiographical spin, about how he overcame his rage at white people — something he wrote about, but again, as a politician in an autobiography.

We still don’t know about just how many communists Barack Obama chose to surround himself with.

We still know very little about Barack Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers and the media sure hates to talk about Barack Obama getting his major political start in Bill Ayers’ living room.

But the press is perfectly happy to go back several decades to tell us every salacious detail about Mitt Romney the teenager.

This reminds me of 1992 all over again. The George H. W. Bush team wanted to go focus on Bill Clinton the draft dodger from Vietnam because they couldn’t fight on the economy. Unlike 1992, Barack Obama has the media doing it for him.

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Mitt Romney and the ‘vision’ of #julia.

This is pretty much exactly what I want to hear coming out of Mitt Romney’s mouth when it comes to things like that ridiculous ‘Julia’ slideshow* from the Obama campaign.

Have you seen President Obama’s vision of the future? To help us see it, his campaign has even created a little fictional character, living an imaginary life filled with happy milestones for which she will spend the rest of her days thanking President Obama. It’s called “The Life of Julia.” And it is a cartoon.

Julia progresses from cradle to grave, showing how government makes every good thing in her life possible. The weak economy, high unemployment, falling wages, rising gas prices, the national debt, the insolvency of entitlements – all these are fictionally assumed away in a cartoon that is produced by a president who wants us to forget about them.

What does it say about a president’s policies when he has to use a cartoon character rather than real people to justify his record?

I won’t belabor the point: unlike President Obama, I trust that the people reading/viewing this are functional adults. Check out the rest of Mitt Romney’s speech here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*For those who missed it: the Obama administration just recently put out a slideshow that purported to demonstrate the Democrats’ devotion to women’s causes by… suggesting that the only thing that would save one half of the population from utter, nihilistic DOOM would be a slavish devotion to a cradle-to-grave paternalistic slew of government programs.

This slideshow was, as you might imagine, very soundly mocked. Not even the media is trying to pretend that this one was a win for Team Obama.

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Mitt Romney is Batman. And knows kung fu.

This is an old story – one that Jim Geraghty (via the Morning Jolt) reminisced about while noting the time that Mitt Romney saved a bunch of people* from drowning – that relates the time that Mitt Romney had somebody take a swing at him on a flight. Supposedly, Romney had asked the guy in front of him to put his seat up before takeoff (Romney and his wife flew economy class, by the way**), the guy swung on him, situation resolved by local security forces. Nothing unusual, right? …No, that’s just what THEY want you to think. There’s a conflicting report.

[Alleged rapper] Sky Blu says Romney drew first blood. Well, he said Romney grabbed him after angrily telling him to move his seat up.

“He grabs my shoulder .. and I just react BOOM get off me!” Blu told the video camera. “He put a condor grip on me. What am I supposed to do?”

“That’s like a Vulcan grip,” offered his bandmate Redfoo.

“Like a Vulcan grip,” Blu concurred. “I’m not your prey. I’m not a salmon going upstream. You’re not going to grip me up.”

Well… I am forced to note, sir, that in fact Mitt Romney was indeed going to grip you up for violating both the laws of decorum and our shared sense of American civics. And that if you do not like it then you should keep your seat upright until the flight attendant informs you that you can recline it. Because if you don’t, then you may receive a condor grip from… hold on. Millionaire businessman. Carefully maintained public persona. Strong positions on law and order. Goes around saving people using high-tech vehicles. Engages in principled low level vigilantism designed to make the world a better place on a street level.

Dear GOD.

MITT ROMNEY IS BATMAN. And knows kung fu.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*And, as I am forced to point out by the current zeitgeist, their dog. I am likewise forced to point out that Romney did not save the dog for dinner later.

**When’s the last time Barack Obama flew coach, anyway? …And if the answer is “more than two years before he ran for President,” well, I can’t help it if people might think that that reflects badly on him.

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The Plusses, Minuses and Pleasant Surprises From Mitt Romney

Romney Has Looked Better Under The Spotlight Than I Initially Feared....

Did you know that the GOP held five Presidential primaries yesterday? Maybe; maybe not. However, given that data point, you all can tell me exactly who won all five of them. Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee.

My five or so constant readers know well that I’m not turning handsprings over this final outcome. After deciding Mitt wouldn’t fit, I had to commit. Hence I endorsed the unsuccessful candidacy of Rick Santorum. Needless to say, I was vaguely resigned to four more years of Obamocracy after Santorum failed to break through in Michigan and Ohio.

Yet somewhere out on the trail Romney’s sensory perception broke through the smug cloud of his obnoxious coterie of condescending online strap-hangers. It’s like he actually listened as he shook hands and kissed babies. He’s pleasantly surprised me by learning a thing or two from being challenged in the 2012 primary. He gets partial credit for the speech he gave last night to celebrate his five cake-walk victories.

“Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one?” he said, as the crowd cheered “NO!” “Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more AT your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Are you paying less at the pump?” “It’s still about the economy,” Romney added, bluntly. “And we’re not stupid.”

The positive here is the recognition that a lot of us are just no longer included in anything good that happens in America. People get priced out of credit, home ownership, college and even the basic necessities of life such as food and gasoline. This provokes the Obama to describe how “unlike some people” he and Michelle were not to the manor born. They were just regular folks who both had to work outside the home and scrimp and save to get by on $450,000 per year.

This brings us to an argument that Mitt Romney has unfortunately not yet made. The United States truly is becoming a 1% society. (Even #OWS occasionally has a point). He gets close to this reality when he excoriates Barack Obama’s Government-Centered Society. The “moderate” right which apparently objects only moderately to injustice, was quick to criticize Romney for being such a Big, Red Meany.

I hereby criticize Mitt for not jamming this concept further down Barack Obama’s throat. A government-centered society could actually manage to be decent and fair in its bureaucratic ineptitude. What we have today is a Post-Modern Feudalism. Senator Scott Brown, in his reelection campaign against Elizabeth Warren – to the Hahvad Manor born, properly calls the baronial arrogance of the 1% Left. Here he decries Elizabeth Warren’s interest free loans from Harvard

“Let me get this straight: struggling students and families pay more, so multi-millionaire Warren can pay nothing? This sweetheart deal adds insult to injury for the students whose high tuition costs have already made Warren a wealthy one-percenter, and reveals yet again Professor Warren’s hypocritical idea of fairness,” wrote Brown’s campaign manager Jim Barnett

(HT: Boston Herald)

Every time we hear about Bain Capital, we need to hear back about Barack Obama’s Swiss Bank financial backing. All us plain-Jane, Roll-up-the-sleeves working class Americans have the head of UBS out beating the bushes to send us piles of money. It’s as easy as having a relative give us an eight year free ride through The Punahou Academy.

In conclusion, Mitt Romney has shown a pleasantly surprising willingness to go after Barack Obama on the over expansion of central government. I went into this season thinking Romney would welcome just such an activist government. What Romney has missed on has been the proper approbation of the hypocrisy that our elite Leftist Ruling Class has shown in taking liberties that stop just short of Prima Noctem in every area of their lives. Emperor Barack I has not only expanded government, but he has also used it to fuel a Visigoth Holiday for his friends and pet interests. Mitt Romney will have to drive that point home if he wants to unseat our corrupt and dishonest incumbent President.

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Romney Must Coalesce Around Conservatives, Not Vice Versa

There is an interesting factoid that was overlooked from last night’s largely pro-forma presidential primaries.  According to University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier, Romney was the first GOP frontrunner who failed to reach 60% in contests “conducted after his last major challenger dropped out of the race.”  Romney won just 56% of the vote in Delaware and 58% in Pennsylvania.

Over the past few months, we’ve been implored by the GOP establishment to coalesce around Romney in the all important battle to defeat Obama.  Undoubtedly, despite my serious concerns about the presumptive nominee, I plan to fully support Mitt Romney in the race for the White House.  The alternative is just too perilous. I suspect that there are millions of Republicans who feel the same way.  However, we must remember that ultimately it’s not conservatives who must coalesce around Romney; it’s Romney who must coalesce around conservatives.

During the Bush years Republicans in Congress (and many outside of Congress) abrogated their conservative principles to conform to the policies of the Republican president.  We must not make the same mistake this time around.  Again, it is vital that we replace Obama with Mitt Romney, but we must not corrupt our cherished principles in order to accommodate him.  Quite the contrary, it is he who must accommodate our principles.  After all, he is running as the Republican nominee.

It is in this vein that I call attention to this article from Alexander Bolton at the Hill about Republicans caving on the issues of Violence Against Women Act  (VAWA) and student loans:

Senate Republicans, seeking to avoid a public policy dispute with Mitt Romney, will let legislation on domestic violence pass the upper chamber despite having concerns about its constitutionality. […]

Senate Republicans lost political leverage last week when Romney’s campaign said the candidate supported the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. He stopped short of endorsing the bill Democrats crafted, however. […]

Senate Republicans have also closed ranks with Romney on Obama’s proposal to extend for one year low-interest loans for low- and middle-income college students, despite misgivings about the program.

Romney endorsed Obama’s proposal on Monday. On Tuesday, McConnell told reporters that Republicans would likely support it.

As we noted earlier this week, VAWA is unconstitutional and socially corrupt.  The student loan boondoggle will merely continue the inflationary pressure on the costs of higher education, engendering a further need for government assistance in a circuitous cycle of government/Big Education collusion.  Nonetheless, congressional Republicans are ready to go along to get along in order to accommodate Romney’s election strategy.

Yes – we know that this is all a grand strategy to take Obama’s demagoguery of “popular” issues off the table until the elections.  After Romney wins the election, we’ll really stand by our principles.  But will we?

At some point we have to be willing to draw a line in the sand and tell Romney not to cross it – before we endure 5 or so years of compassionate conservatism.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

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“It’s pretty clear Governor Romney is going to be the nominee.”

Yesterday, Governor Romney swept all five primaries, including Delaware, which was Newt Gingrich’s last best hope for continuing his campaign – and in Delaware, he got stomped.  Today, Gingrich announced that he is ending his campaign for the Presidential nomination.

In his announcement, Newt had some pretty interesting things to say – things that we all should be paying close attention to.  From the CBS News report:

“I think you have to at some point be honest with what’s happening in the real world, as opposed to what you’d like to have happened,” Gingrich said. “Governor Romney had a very good day yesterday. He got 67 [percent] in one state, and he got 63 in other, 62 in another. Now you have to give him some credit. I mean this guy’s worked six years, put together a big machine, and has put together a serious campaign.

“I think obviously that I would be a better candidate, but the objective fact is the voters didn’t think that,” Gingrich said. “And I also think it’s very, very important that we be unified.”

(bold is mine)  As has been written here on these pages several times, the voters are the ones who chose Governor Romney.  He is going to be our nominee.  And as Newt says, it IS very important (now that the primaries have indicated our choice) that we are – or become – unified.

This has been a pretty nasty GOP primary season.  There are a lot of us (myself included) who don’t particularly like Mitt Romney as a candidate.  But our candidate he is.  We can lament what might have been and we can fret a bit about what kind of president Mitt might be.  But in the end the mission is now to focus all of our efforts on defeating Barack Obama by supporting Mitt Romney as our nominee.  And it’s not just the “us” here at Redstate and in the trenches of the electorate…it’s also the other former candidates:  Perry, Cain, Bachmann, Santorum, Huntsman -  and Gingrich.  The GOP must now line up behind Romney.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t push Romney to adhere as closely as possible to conservative principles.  He doesn’t just get a pass.  Daniel made a good point earlier in his diary “Romney Must Coalesce Around Conservatives…”  He’s making the case to us, not the other way around.  Let’s keep the pressure on…but remember who the real target is, now that the primaries are pretty much over.

From here on out, I support Mitt Romney for President.

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The Momentum Finally Shifts, Slightly, To Romney

I’ve previously looked in detail at the breakdown of GOP primary votes here, here and here; for purposes of this series, I’ve broken out the votes in three groups – the five conservative candidates (Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann and Cain), the two moderate candidates (Romney and Hunstman) and the libertarian (Paul) – for reasons explained in the first post. In my second post, I detailed the signs to look for to see whether and when Romney would start putting the race away with the voters rather than simply plodding through the accumulation of delegates.

After the March 24 vote in Louisiana and Tuesday’s votes in Wisconsin, Maryland and DC, we can see the signs of that momentum shift, but only slightly, with stubborn resistance to Romney still continuing. Not-unrelatedly, we can see the collapse of Newt Gingrich’s campaign to levels even lower than he was getting in February, the last time he went a month without being on the ballot in any Southern state (recall that Newt was not on the Missouri ballot). Let’s start with the month-by-month running tally:

CandidateJANUARY%FEBRUARY%MARCH%APRIL%Romney1,071,678 40.5%741,495 40.6%2,181,105 37.6%466,928 45.4%Santorum378,995 14.3%692,296 37.9%1,748,498 30.1%358,668 34.9%Gingrich817,770 30.9%160,360 8.8%1,219,154 21.0%72,509 7.0%Paul278,729 10.5%215,023 11.8%578,435 10.0%111,129 10.8%Huntsman50,049 1.9%2,817 0.2%15,387 0.3%6,851 0.7%Perry23,592 0.9%6,293 0.3%23,581 0.4%1,041 0.1%Bachmann10,856 0.4%3,480 0.2%8,688 0.1%6,054 0.6%Cain10,046 0.4%3,555 0.2%39 0.0%– 0.0%Rest4,742 0.2%1,528 0.1%29,142 0.5%5,416 0.5%Conservatives1,241,259 46.9%865,984 47.4%2,999,960 51.7%438,272 42.6%Moderates1,121,727 42.4%744,312 40.7%2,196,492 37.8%473,779 46.1%Libertarians278,729 10.5%215,023 11.8%578,435 10.0%111,129 10.8%TOTAL2,646,457 1,826,847 5,804,029 1,028,596

This looks like a significant shift to Romney after the deterioration of his numbers in March, but as with his rough showing in March, you have to bear in mind the calendar: all three primaries on Tuesday were in blue territory (deep blue in the case of Maryland and DC, plus Santorum wasn’t on the ballot in DC, whereas Wisconsin has been much more favorable lately to Republicans, with Tea Party-backed Republicans Ron Johnson and Scott Walker winning statewide in 2010). The real dynamic remains mostly the same, with Romney’s supporters and opponents just not evenly distributed geographically. Let’s update the red/blue/purple numbers, previously broken out here, again excluding Virginia because none of the conservatives were on the ballot:

Romney1,273,119 30.0%1,399,566 41.8%1,630,401 46.7%Santorum1,270,691 30.0%752,636 22.5%1,155,130 33.1%Gingrich1,260,389 29.7%764,660 22.9%244,744 7.0%Paul357,218 8.4%325,541 9.7%392,965 11.3%Huntsman7,706 0.2%55,362 1.7%12,036 0.3%Perry15,892 0.4%28,595 0.9%10,020 0.3%Bachmann9,959 0.2%10,390 0.3%8,729 0.3%Cain8,677 0.2%3,722 0.1%1,241 0.0%Rest34,938 0.8%4,600 0.1%33,427 1.0%Conservatives2,565,608 60.5%1,560,003 46.6%1,419,864 40.7%Moderates1,280,825 30.2%1,454,928 43.5%1,642,437 47.1%Libertarians357,218 8.4%325,541 9.7%392,965 11.3%TOTAL4,238,589 3,345,072 3,488,693

As you can see, the vote totals for April are actually slightly more favorable to the conservatives in general, and less favorable to Romney, than the overall blue-state numbers. That’s not to say that Romney underperformed, per se; Santorum had been leading him in Wisconsin until the campaign and its related advertising blitz started there in earnest after Louisiana, and while Romney had won narrow primary victories in Michigan and Ohio, Santorum had previously won caucuses in Minnesota and Iowa. So, Wisconsin was far from a natural gimme for Romney, and his win there – while hardly overwhelming, with he and Huntsman still combining for less than 45% of the vote – can’t be ascribed solely to being on blue turf. Sean Trende went in more demographic detail the day before the vote to explain why Wisconsin could be a sign of momentum shift. On the other hand, Romney was unable to muster a majority in deep-blue Maryland, where John McCain won almost 55% of the vote against Mike Huckabee on February 12, 2008; McCain also won almost 55% a week later in Wisconsin. Thus, the break to Romney is happening at the margins, and is not yet the stampede that McCain was enjoying by mid-February in 2008, when a smaller bloc of social conservative voters were holding out for Mike Huckabee (McCain would go on to win majorities in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island on March 4 before Huckabee dropped out). The sense that Romney is winning over the objections of a majority of the party’s voters will not be dispelled any time soon; the best he can hope for is a determined resignation to put the primary slog out of its misery and move on to the general election.

The collapse of the Newt campaign may also be overstated somewhat here (he’s been getting clobbered in the blue states all year), but there really seems to be no life left in Newt’s cash-strapped operation besides protest votes (full disclosure: I cast a vote yesterday for Newt by absentee for New York’s April 24 primary, purely as a protest; I might have voted for Perry if he’d been on the ballot). Amusing, neither-here-nor-there detail: with Perry and Cain not on the ballot, Michele Bachmann actually drew more votes in Wisconsin than she has in any other state, 8 more than she got in Iowa.

Finally, let’s update the state-by-state tally – Virginia and DC are marked with asterisks because of the absence of major candidates from the ballot, Guam and American Samoa are excluded because I couldn’t find popular vote totals:

STATE (Date)CategoryTypeConservativesModeratesLibertariansGA 3/6REDPrimary67.1%26.1%6.6%KS 3/10REDCaucus65.9%21.1%12.6%LA 3/24REDPrimary65.7%26.8%6.1%MS 3/13REDPrimary65.0%30.5%4.4%AL 3/13REDPrimary64.4%29.2%5.0%OK 3/6REDPrimary62.1%28.3%9.6%TN 3/6REDPrimary61.8%28.3%9.0%SC 1/21REDPrimary58.9%28.0%13.0%MO 2/7REDPrimary*57.7%25.8%12.2%MN 2/7BLUECaucus55.7%16.9%27.2%IA 1/3PURPLECaucus53.2%25.1%21.4%CO 2/7PURPLECaucus53.2%34.9%11.8%OH 3/6PURPLEPrimary52.3%38.5%9.2%ND 3/6REDCaucus48.2%23.7%28.1%FL 1/31PURPLEPrimary46.1%46.8%7.0%MI 2/28BLUEPrimary44.9%41.3%11.6%IL 3/20BLUEPrimary43.6%46.7%9.3%WI 4/3BLUEPrimary43.5%44.8%11.2%AK 3/6REDCaucus43.4%32.5%24.1%AZ 2/28REDPrimary43.2%47.3%8.4%MD 4/3BLUEPrimary40.2%49.8%9.5%WY 2/29REDCaucus39.9%39.2%20.9%HI 3/13BLUECaucus36.3%45.4%18.3%WA 3/3BLUECaucus34.1%37.6%24.8%VT 3/6BLUEPrimary32.8%41.7%25.5%NV 2/4PURPLECaucus31.1%50.1%18.8%ME 2/11BLUECaucus24.7%38.0%36.1%ID 3/6REDCaucus20.3%61.6%18.1%NH 1/10PURPLEPrimary19.8%56.1%22.9%MA 3/6BLUEPrimary17.3%73.1%9.6%DC 4/3BLUEPrimary*10.7%77.2%12.0%PR 3/18TerrPrimary10.7%88.0%1.3%USVI 3/10TerrCaucus10.7%26.3%29.2%NMI 3/10TerrCaucus9.6%87.3%3.2%VA 3/6PURPLEPrimary*0.0%59.5%40.5%

It’s nearly three weeks until the next set of primaries on April 24, all in the deep-blue Northeast (New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware) except for blue Northeast/Midwest hybrid Pennsylvania, where Santorum – as the hometown favorite son – looks to make his last stand. Santorum trails badly in the polls in all of them besides Pennsylvania, where the polls are moving against him. The others should be be easy wins for Romney even without a momentum shift, but if Santorum loses Pennsylvania, it should convince Santorum – and Gingrich, who should have already – to throw in the towel and admit that, whether the voters like it or not, Mitt Romney is the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.

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Mitt Romney For President

This has been an extraordinarily difficult primary season for many conservatives, me among them.

Against what is probably the weakest incumbent president since Herbert Hoover, we have managed to field an array of candidates worse than those we had in 2008 and perhaps worse than those competing for the nomination at our low point of 1996.

Our best candidate, Texas Governor Rick Perry, was torpedoed by a lack of preparation on his part. Sure the patent dishonesty of Michele Bachmann’s Tardasil nonsense had an impact as well as the demagoguing of a state educational issue as a soft-on-immigration stance but let’s not excuse the fact that these attacks should have been anticipated by anyone participating in a GOP primary.

For some months I have held the view that conservatives could very well be better served by a President Obama opposed by a Republican Congress than a President Romney working in concert with a decidedly un-conservative Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The events of the past few weeks have convinced me I was wrong. We are one election away from entering the death spiral to status as a Third World kleptocracy and I believe Governor Mitt Romney, for all his manifest faults, is the best man left standing to prevent that from happening.

To be clear, my endorsement and support of Romney is a function of the actions of President Obama rather than any eighty-leven point plan Romney’s campaign staff has devised to technocrat our way out of a philosophical and moral morass because our fiscal difficulties are merely the symptoms of the true problem.

I developed misgivings about my original strategy in January when Obama made patently illegal recess appointments. These misgivings have increased day by day as the EPA has essentially declared the coal industry illegal, religious liberty has been tossed under the bus in favor of consequence-free sexual gratification, Egypt and Libya have been turned over to either al-Qaeda or its sympathizers, billions of dollars have disappeared into the wallets of Obama donors in the guise of “green energy”, and our European allies have heard Obama tell a fellow kleptocrat that their security is up for grabs in a second Obama term.

None of these actions could have been prevented by a GOP Congress that could not override a presidential veto and there are no circumstances I foresee that gets us to that number of seats in the House and Senate. In the final analysis, the president controls the regulatory agencies and the policy making apparatus of the United States. A determined president can do pretty much what he will so long as he commands at least 35 votes in the United States Senate and the Congress is unwilling to impeach.

I’d feel a lot more comfortable with Governor Romney if I actually had a sense that he believed in anything. I don’t have that feeling and there is nothing in the man’s record that indicates he values principle over expediency. I don’t think bailing out the Salt Lake City Games by digging deep into Uncle Sugar’s pockets demonstrates very much skill, I find his record at Bain nauseating, and the disarray he inflicted upon the Massachusetts GOP gives me pause for the fate of the GOP under a Romney presidency.

On the other hand I have no doubt that the Romney’s will restore a dignity and grace to the White House and the Office of the President that has been trashed by the gauche, nouveau riche, and monumentally entitled Obamas, both the Mom-jeans, weenie-armed Barack and the hulking, hectoring Michelle.

In that way the situation will be similar for Governor Romney as it was for George Bush when the Clampetts departed. I think the Justice Department will again to begin to resemble a place where “justice” is a concern rather than peddling guns to Mexican narcotraficantes, arresting various Walter-Mittyesque groups as terrorists, and engaging in race-baiting of the worst sort. I don’t think the nation’s GPS system will be hamstrung to make a campaign donor very wealthy. We won’t be “investing” in solar panels and other cutesy technologies that have little demonstrable value. The Department of Defense will not be used as some sort of social laboratory to test out the latest academic theories. I will no longer fear for any of our basic rights. In particular, Ann Romney would be a stellar first lady.

This was a difficult choice as I find a lot to like in both Newt Gingrich, whom I have met, and Rick Santorum, whom I have not. Mr. Gingrich, in particular, embodies the enthusiasm for tomorrow that has long been a quintessentially American trademark. Mr. Santorum has demonstrated that morality matters to the electorate and it should not be shunted to the side in either the Fall campaign or in governance.

Unfortunately, both men have flaws that have convinced me they cannot win in November and that if they did win they would be ineffectual. The purpose of this is to not enumerate those flaws beyond the point of saying I have concluded that they outweigh any advantage either man brings to the table.

In closing I wish to acknowledge the surprise this endorsement is sure to cause some RedState readers.

For the past four years I’ve been very critical of Governor Romney and I continue to stand by those criticisms (read above if you have any doubts). Significantly for blogging in his support, I continue to find his supporters, with the possible exception of those I’ve yet to encounter, to be among the most ignorant, dishonest advocates of any candidate, anywhere, anytime possessing a blindness to facts and a subservience that borders on cult-like. I intend to continue to ban them at the slightest opportunity.

So after much soul searching I’ve decided to climb up on the roof, snuggle in beside Seamus, and enjoy the ride.

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