GOP Ticket Bashes California…Because it is convenient
by Brian Leubitz
Mitt Romney is not going to carry California. Unless something drastically changes, and there is some sort of tremendous landslide (quick, do some superstitious thing right now), President Obama will easily carry California. So why not get a laugh at our expense?
California is the Golden State, home to surfing, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, but it appears likely to become something else entirely for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan: a political punching bag. … (SF Chronicle)
The only problem with the California bashing? Well, how about the reality that California is still the home of Silicon Valley…wait for it, Sarah…
“When I think about the direction our country is rapidly drifting in, I can’t help but look at California as a cautionary tale,” Palin wrote to her Facebook followers. “The Golden State once boasted the entrepreneurial innovation of Silicon Valley – the American creative engine.”
Oh right, there it is for the reality star Sarah Palin. But where is Apple based? And Facebook? And Google? And Qualcomm? And… Get the point? California is still the home of innovation. Sure we have our issues with a real estate market that still has some issues and a structural deficit that needs fixing. But if America is to really come back from the economic malaise, California, like always, will be right at the leading edge. To pretend otherwise is well, Palin-esque.
We at AmericanLP have created a new ad to spotlight Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy on the issue of bailouts. By now, most observers have learned that Mitt Romney was against a bailout for Detroit. But what even many political insiders don’t realize is that Mitt Romney has been the beneficiary of a Federal bailout of sorts. As head of Bain and Co in the early 90s (he had been brought back from Bain Capital to sort out the mess at the mother company), Romney was in charge of keeping Bain from imploding under a huge mountain of debt. In addition to firing lots of people (naturally), Romney also squeezed suppliers and other creditors. What’s more, Bain had a $38 million loan from the Bank of New England, and that the Bank of New England had its own problems and had been taken over by the FDIC.
Romney shrewdly re-negotiated the Bain loan from $38 million to $28 million. So what does that mean, exactly? Well, since the FDIC is an arm of the Federal government, that means, essentially, that the FDIC (ahem, taxpayers) ate the difference. In other words, Romney conned the government into giving him and his cronies a $10 million bailout.
Yes, this was legal for Romney to do-other business people do it all the time. But it was a bailout to the tune of $10 million, Romney did personally benefit, and it’s a bit rich for Romney to be so sanctimonious about other people getting bailouts. Critics of our ad would suggest that it is unfair to imply that Romney benefited personally from the $10, million write-offs. While the money went to Bain and Co, Romney actually benefited to a much greater degree than $10 million. If Bain and Co had not gotten the bailout, it would have likely imploded. If Bain and Co had imploded, it would have likely tainted Bain Capital to such a degree that it would have been destroyed. If Bain Capital had been dismantled, Romney would have never been able to make his quarter billion that has allowed him the life of the perpetual candidate. Yes, this stuff is complicated-but that’s why rich finance guys like Romney are able to play the system to their advantage.
We start the ad with images of Ronald Reagan talking about the Chicago welfare queen in a Cadillac. This was a story Reagan told over and over again in the 1976 and 1980 campaigns. Even though Reagan never specified it was a black woman, it was widely assumed by most observers across the spectrum that Reagan was in fact talking about a black woman from Chicago with 80 different fake names. (It turns out that Reagan didn’t have his facts straight on this-surprise, surprise)
By showing Reagan at the beginning of the ad, we are trying to evoke the warm feelings conservative Republicans have toward Reagan and his beliefs about “welfare queens.” That is why we are literally showing what appears to be a woman driving a pink Cadillac in an inner city. We then show that in fact the “woman” is none other than Mitt Romney in drag. Romney should actually be seen as a modern day welfare queen who ripped off the government for more than any “welfare queen” from the inner city could ever imagine.
By portraying Romney this way, we are attempting to turn ugly racist beliefs on their head and make people realize that the biggest freeloaders on the government system are actually people who look like Mitt Romney.
At the end of the ad, we show Mitt Romney’s vacation mansion worth $10 million. We aren’t suggesting that Romney criminally stole tax dollars to buy his house illegally. But money is fungible, so any money that benefits Romney in one account can be used to purchase luxuries from any other account.
The point is that Romney and his colleagues at Bain were already wealthy by the early 1990s when the difficulties with the loan arose. Because, as we know, “corporations are people,” Romney and his cronies weren’t personally liable for the full $38 million. Instead, just the corporate entity of Bain and Company was liable. But there was nothing stopping Romney or his wealthy colleagues at Bain from paying back the full $10 million out of their own pocket at the time. For that matter, Romney and his colleagues could have paid the Government back in later years, after they’d all become super, super rich.
The bottom line is Romney got the best deal he could, just because he could. And yet he belongs to a political party that says people who do that are evil parasites for not being “rugged individuals” and succeeding on their own merits.
Finally, our goal here is to make conservatives sickened by the hypocrisy of Romney taking bailouts and for moderates and independents to be disgusted by Romney for making himself richer at the expense of average taxpayers. This bailout for Romney is a perfect window into why Romney should be seen as an utterly detestable and phony candidate regardless of one’s ideological position. Please take a look at the ad below.
If you are like me, you are probably still poking your finger in your ear trying to figure out if you heard Mitt Romney correctly when he called himself a “Severely conservative Republican.” That one goes in the gaffe hall of fame for numerous reasons. Here is a new radio ad that my organization AmericanLP has going up on ABC Radio in Michigan later this week.
Who is Mitt Romney?
Voiceover from Romney ‘I was a severely conservative Republican.’
Severely conservative???
The word ‘severely’ is most commonly used to describe the following: Disabled, depressed, ill, limited, injured.
So, Michigan conservatives, Mitt Romney basically thinks conservatism is like a ‘disease.’
If you’re a moderate/independent Michigan Republican, how do you feel about a politician who doesn’t believe in anything, but implies, ‘I’ll pretend to be a diseased extremist, even if I think it’s crazy?’
Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney was a great Michigan governor who always spoke his mind. He stood up to his church and GOP extremists regarding civil rights.
But Mitt Romney? Has he ever stood up for something unpopular?
Mitt Romney, he’s not his father’s son. Mitt Romney thinks he can ‘brain wash’ the rest of us.
Paid for By AmericanLP, not associated with a candidate or candidate’s committee.
Mitt Romney is to be commended for his honesty. This ranks right up there with “I like being able to fire people,” and “corporations are people, my friend.” Romney has shown that while he may have the golden touch for all of his personal investment choices, he has a tin ear for politics. Romney doesn’t even bother trying to mask his contempt for non-rich Americans. Once again, Mitt Romney shows he has the same compassion level for the non-rich that the Mel Brooks’ character King Louis did when he was using live peasants for skeet shooting practice.
Here is a new ad that we are in the process of buying national cable TV news for now.
One of the key issues framing the Republican primary race and one that will certainly be highlighted during the general election if Romney were to get that far is his role in Bain Capital.
The media lesson to be learned is that you must get out in front of issues that can hurt your reputation before your enemies, opponents, and in the world of business, your competitors frame the issue and you are left playing defense instead of offense.
Bain Capital has been discussed ever since Mitt Romney first entered politics in 1994. Many people believe that Bain Capital has done so many nefarious things in a complex manner and this in turn has left most voters confused by Romney’s Bain connection.
The danger that the Romney camp is now faced with is that the media and his opponents have framed the issue in the following way:
1. Bain Capital would plunge a company into massive debt.
2. Bain would pull out massive fees.
3. The company would be pushed into bankruptcy.
4. Bain would then purge the company of hundreds or even thousands of workers.
Romney is basing his entire presidential claim on his ability to “create jobs” and his record at Bain Capital. He’s not running on his record as Governor of Massachusetts. So if voters view Romney’s Bain record in exclusively negative terms, then Romney’s rationale for running for President is completely destroyed.
Partial transcript from an interview with CNSNews.com:
Huckabee: … You know, it’s interesting, the California decision as well as the Massachusetts decision, I don’t think should ever have been implemented by the governors, Schwarzenegger and Romney. They were both decisions that the governors simply could have said the court has said that we have to do it, but let them enforce it. Because those were administrative decisions that had to put that in place and there was no mandate.
Jeffrey: Right, but Governor Romney actually went ahead and certified same-sex marriages without an act of his state legislature.
Huckabee: It should never have happened. It should never have happened. And while we want to blame the courts-
Jeffrey: Does that disqualify him as a vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party?
Huckabee: Well, you know, I’ve not probably been an advocate for him in that position. And, you know, I am going to let him defend himself. And I don’t want to relive the primary. But I think that that was a very unfortunate position that he took in saying that, “Well, I can’t do anything about it.” Oh, yes you can.
Jeffrey: You hold him responsible for the same-sex marriages in Massachusetts?
Huckabee: Not singularly. I hold him responsible for implementing-
Jeffrey: He could have stopped it?
Huckabee: He could have stopped it, and should have stopped it.
Jeffrey: And if you were governor of Massachusetts you would not have gone ahead and-
Huckabee: I would not have done that.
Jeffrey: You would not have had the clerks and justices of the peace – Certify those marriages?
“I would not have done that,” said Huckabee, who taped an appearance on CNSNews.com’s “Online with Terry Jeffrey” on August 15.
In a 4-3 decision issued on Nov. 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry in Massachusetts. The court gave the state legislature until May 17, 2004 to enact legislation to allow such marriages to take place.
In the intervening time, the Massachusetts legislature did not enact a law codifying same-sex marriages. Before the May 17, 2004 deadline, however, then-Gov. Romney directed that the words “bride” and “groom” on Massachusetts marriage applications be changed to “Party A” and “Party B.”
Romney’s chief legal counsel, Daniel Winslow, told justices of the peace in Massachusetts that they should carry out the decision of the court and perform same-sex marriages or resign.
“My message was: ‘You took an oath, and you don’t have to agree or disagree with the law, you took an oath to uphold the law. Your only job is to follow the law,'” Winslow told Pete Winn of CNSNews.com in January. “We’ll leave it to the courts to litigate what the law is, but once the courts have ruled, if you’ve taken an oath under the constitution, you have to follow your oath.”
Welcome to the ProtectMarriage.com coalition.
So much for the Mormon-Evangelical interfaith dialogue. It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?
With friends like these …
And until I get the YouTube working right, the juicy bits are at 31:13 ~ 32:17 in the video over at CNSNews.com.
As for election news in California, the final two polls have been wildly divergent. SurveyUSA shows a 10-point Clinton lead, while Reuters/Zogby has a 13-point Obama lead. The final Field Poll (the gold standard, as everyone knows) went with a one-point lead to Obamatwo-point lead to Clinton, almost exactly in the middle.
Of course, this only tells part of the story, as Marc Ambinder picked up on my caveat that the district-level delegate system will skew the results, particularly in those even-numbered districts, where a high bar is needed to be scaled to get anything beyond an even split of delegates. And if you expect an early answer about them, think again:
So much for having a hard delegate count on Super Tuesday, we’re hearing that CA Dems won’t have final delegate tally ready until Friday.
Debra Bowen’s mantra has been that she’d rather get the count right than get it fast, so everyone’s going to have to wait. I think it’s a small price to pay for voting with a paper ballot. By the way, DTS voters, fill that bubble!
The Cook Political Report did the same district-level analysis that I did yesterday, and found a considerably larger amount of variance. Cook thinks that Clinton can get over the 63% bar in those heavily-Latino districts (I’m not so sure). I understand that the 6-delegate seats require 58.3% of the vote to get a 4-2 split, which seems to me to be possible in Barbara Lee’s CA-09 and Nancy Pelosi’s CA-08, so Obama could be in an even stronger position than I thought. And as Councilman Garcetti said last night, they are paying attention to this stuff, on both sides I would imagine.
Finally, we have somewhat neglected the Republican race. The chic pick is that Romney has come all the way back and will take California. John McCain is apparently worried about it, since it would mean that Romney has an argument to stay in the race. Both candidates scurried back here today for extra bits of campaigning.
And yet McCain’s people fear he may lose the popular vote in California to Romney — even if they haul in the same number of CA delegates — and that the Super Tuesday story will therefore NOT be the crowning of McCain but rather his failure to put away the game, a failure born of his fractious and sometimes unloving relationship with conservatives, especially those millions of conservatives who listen to and abide by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, not to mention Limbaugh and Hannity themselves, and a failure that in turn will be viewed as both a symptom and a cause of the historic crack-up of the conservative coalition that has sustained and nourished the Republican Party for a couple generations.
Which would be fantastic, since it would be desirable for their race to be as screwed up as ours. Could the relentless Rush Limbaugh attacks be having an impact? We’ll soon find out.
UPDATE: Harold Meyerson has further thoughts, and they’re good.
With the February 5th primary election approaching rapidly, in which voters in California and 21 other states will pick which presidential candidates represent each party, we have a rare opportunity to make a monumental decision.
For the first time in years, we have an opportunity to elect a president who will give the global climate crisis the level of attention that is required to tackle it.
But how are we to know where the candidates stand on global warming, if reporters simply refuse to ask the right questions? Of the 2,938 questions asked of the presidential candidates since January 2007, just 6 mentioned global warming (source: League of Conservation Voters).
The California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV) has asked presidential candidates four critical questions about global warming, in short:
If elected, will you allow states to lead on global warming, in the way that California has?
Will you support a cap on greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020 and an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050?
Will you support an all-out federal/state cooperative effort to rapidly expand investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy?
Will you support a federal program to impose maximum technologically feasible, cost-effective controls on ships, trains, and trucks to reduce air pollution that causes global warming and accelerates melting of polar ice caps?
California’s voters, and those throughout the nation, need as much information as possible when deciding which presidential candidate to support. That’s why we’re asking candidates these tough questions.
We’ve asked the presidential candidates to provide their answers by Friday. We’ll let you know before Tuesday what happens.
(XPosted in the BluePalmSpringsBoyz Blog 1/29/2008 7:50 PM PST on MyDesert.com)
The National and local news media usually only focus on who ‘wins’ the caucus or primary race. They provide little information on election night regarding the important race, that for delegates.
This is interesting stuff from CNN.com, see http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#R for the Republican totals and http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#val=D for the Democratic totals.
More below the flip…
The magic number of delegates for the Democratic nominee is 2,025. Thus far, the Democratic delegate scorecard is:
Barack Obama: 63
Hillary Clinton: 48
John Edwards: 26
Mike Gravel: 0
Clinton is now contesting the Michigan and Florida delegate selection process and hopes to pick up a massive amount of delegates when the slates are challenged at the Democratic National Convention. Obviously, Obama and Edwards are none too pleased with that scenario.
When factoring the so-called Super Delegates, 452 Democratic delegates have been chosen, including those from last Saturday’s South Carolina Democratic primary as well as the so-called Super Delegates (e.g., governors, U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives). Only 11.16% of the Democratic delegates and Super Delegates are committed to date. Clinton leads this field far and away. The results are as follows:
Hillary Clinton: 232
Barack Obama: 158
John Edwards: 62
Mike Gravel: 0
Clinton still has more delegates committed to her than all of her challengers combined. However, the Super Delegates’ commitment is somewhat less certain than that of the primary and caucus delegates and are possibly more likely to switch allegiance. Obama follows Clinton with 158 delegates, while Edwards has 62 delegates.
The magic number of delegates on the Republican side is 1,191. Thus far, the Republican Convention delegate scorecard is as follows:
John McCain: 95
Mitt Romney: 67
Mike Huckabee: 26
Ron Paul: 6
Rudy Giuliani: 1
However, when factoring in the so-called Super Delegates, 208 Republican delegates have been chosen. This means that only 8.74% of the Republican delegates are committed thus far. McCain now leads the Republican candidates when including the Super Delegates with 97 because of his primary win today in the Florida primary. The totals are as follows:
John McCain: 97
Mitt Romney: 74
Mike Huckabee: 29
Ron Paul: 6
Rudy Giuliani: 2
Very few Republican delegates have been chosen, but McCain now has almost as many delegates as his challengers combined. The pressure will be on Giuliani and Paul now to withdraw from the race, especially when Giuliani put all of his 9/11 eggs into the Florida primary basket. Huckabee also now seems to be reeling, wobbling off to Tennessee.
February 5, 2008, looms on the horizon when another 22 states including California hold their primaries and caucuses. The picture will be much clearer then, when over 50% of the delegates on both the Democratic and the Republican sides will have been chosen by the end of that day’s primaries and caucuses.
The National and local news media usually only focus on who ‘wins’ the caucus or primary race. They provide little information on election night regarding the important race, that for delegates.
This is interesting stuff from CNN.com for the Republican totals and CNN.com for the Democratic totals (kudos to grodriguez for providing the link in his blog).
The magic number of delegates for the Democratic nominee is 2,025. Thus far, 443 Democratic delegates have been chosen, including those from today’s South Carolina Democratic primary as well as the so-called Super Delegates (e.g., governors, U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives). This means that only 10.94% of the Democratic delegates are committed to date.
More below the flip…
Hillary Clinton leads the field far and away (I have deleted the Democratic candidates who have thus far dropped out of the race). The results are as follows:
Hillary Clinton: 230
Barack Obama: 152
John Edwards: 61
Mike Gravel: 0
Clinton still has more delegates committed to her than all of her challengers combined. And, kudos to Obama and to his Election 2008 team for today’s win in the South Carolina primary. The challenge for Obama is clearly to increase his appeal to the White voters as he apparently only won 24% of the White vote in the SC primary. Obama follows Clinton with 152 delegates, while Edwards has 61 delegates. Edwards has his own challenge: win a primary or caucus state!
The magic number of delegates on the Republican side is 1,191. Thus far, 148 Republican delegates have been chosen including the Super Delegates. This means that only 6.22% of the Republican delegates are committed thus far. Mitt Romney leads the Republican candidates, but John McCain has moved from third place in the delegate count into second primarily because of his primary win in the South Carolina last week. The totals are as follows:
Mitt Romney: 73
John McCain: 38
John McCain: 29
Ron Paul: 6
Rudy Guiliani: 2
Very few Republican delegates have been chosen, but Romney has almost as many delegates as his challengers combined. The pressure will be on Rudy Guiliani next week in Florida’s primary as he has put all of his 9/11 eggs into that one basket.
February 5, 2008, looms on the horizon when another 22 states hold their primaries and caucuses. The picture will be much clearer then, when over 50% of the delegates on both the Democratic and the Republican sides will have been chosen by the end of that day’s primaries and caucuses.
