Mitt, We Hardly Knew Thee
We love you Mittens Kthxbai
By Ben Domenech Posted in 2008 | Mitt Romney | Save the Last Round for the Windows | The Hard Goodbye | Trevino — Comments (33) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
We can all agree on this at least: we are sad to see how things turned out for Mitt Romney, but respect his speech today at CPAC, which serves as a sign of what might have been, in some alternate American universe. Josh Trevino's take, though, is acidic and accurate:
In the run-up to, and aftermath of, the shocking Huckabee victory in Iowa, the Romney-aligned media responded to the overreaction within the Romney campaign itself by going nuclear against the Arkansan. This was a critical error, especially as there was some chance that Romney could have made signifiant inroads into the Huckabee base — see, for example, the Florida exits breakdown I analyzed, in which Romney actually won social conservatives in meaningful numbers.
Instead of paying respect to Huckabee and his message, Romney’s media surrogates delivered a contemptuous broadside, in effect saying: “You support an ignorant cretin, and you are yourselves rubes who like God too much — and we suspect many of you are bigots — but Mitt Romney is on your side!” Political scientists will doubtless labor for years to come trying to figure out why this didn’t work.
I know I speak for all the RS Directors when I say that we wish Mitt all the best in his future endeavors.
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Mitt, We Hardly Knew Thee 33 Comments (0 topical, 33 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
As long as he's concentrating on raising money and doing microtargeting, he'd be good.
i cant think of a better man when it comes to raising money and building of a structure.
i think we need ours back to where it was.
Mitt, I know, can do it.
Picking Howard Dean seems to have been a good choice for the DNC .
Evil prevails only when good men do nothing.
That was a lousy piece. Huckabee had about as half as much mud thrown on him as Romney, but was twice as sensitive. Romeny ran as a faith based cosnervative long before Huckabee had any traction. It was Huckabee that insulted Mormans and non-evangelicals alike.
It was Huckabee that insulted Mormons and non-evangelicals alike.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
They that are with us are more than they that are against us.
Aye, to that. Huck has been insulting my intelligence since I first heard him speak. I can only hope that he isn't the VP that McCain selects to run with.
The "Third Worst Person in the World" and aiming higher.
of his own choice while ahead in that man to pretender match up. I hope Josh's piece when Huck, who has probably hurt this parties image and organization more than any candidate,is ascerbic enough to burn the screen.
Huck's the real mud slingin, original, "what the heck is a Mormon anyway" creep. Romney's people may have been wrong, at some point, but Huck is our very own philisophical Katrina.
"Nec Aspera Terrent"
bene ambula et redambula
Contributor to The Minority Report
It's mathimatical impossible for Huckabee to win. There are only 998 delegates left and huckabee only has 181 delegates left. So, if he wins them all, he can only get 1179 delegates. However, with McCain's and Romneys Delegates together, McCain has 1,000 delegates. Uncommitted delegates are enough to put McCain over the top. Also, McCain will easily pick up the remain delegates he needs. So, the only thing Huckabee can do is force a convention fight. But, in a convention fight, Romney would instruct all of his delegates to support McCain. So, its over.
Current Delegate counts.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/candidates/
Primary schedule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_2008
Huck's still in because he isn't spending his own money.
The "Third Worst Person in the World" and aiming higher.
Yeah, that's the kind of attitude we need to beat Hill or Barack. Onward, upward, whatever.
Yeah, getting conservatives to support McCain is obviously less important than insulting Romney. Classy.
What's a KTHXBAI?
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.
I had no idea what his sub headline meant either.
“We love you Mittens Kthxbai”
I then looked it up in the urban dictionary, and was pretty shocked that Ben would use it. A totally immature move.
Accoridng to the Urban Dictionary:
kthxbai is an insult.
K Thanks goodbye
kthxbai can also be used as an insult to someone, like a n00b or someone you just don't like.
N00b1: omg liek u wana c my fab nu jurnal?
Dude: No, you make me sick n00b Kthxbai
kthxbai
k thanks bye
"nobody loves you, so why don't you just die, kthxbai"
-------------
These are all their words, not mine.
I am a mitt supporter and today is a bad day..but to mike huckabee..Please drop out now..you wont win it..lets just get this whole primary thing over so we can start getting $$$ for one guy and get ready for november.
Huck will pull enough delegates to keep McCain from getting the nod and then carry the true conservative cause right into the convention. The brokered convention will most likely result in Huck being his VP, but that would be just fine.
Give McCain 4 years to prosecute the war, and Huck 4 years to sell the FairTax to the nation.
I support Governor Mike Huckabee for President.
And Huckabee is a fringe candidate.
Have fun paying 32% tax on every good you purchase. Have fun trying to buy a home or car and having to pay an addition 32% in taxes. And have fun dealing with the black markets that arise when the flat tax goes into effect.
I'm all for abolishing the current tax code, but the Fair Tax is a fringe idea, which is why it has been around forever and has gone nowhere. It would be defeated in the house by over 350 votes and in the Senate by over 95 votes.
What dark hole in your body are you pulling 32% from? It's 23 percent if you compute it like an income tax, 30 percent if you compute it like a sales tax. Plus, you're totally ignoring all the other taxes that it gets rid of, and that the FairTax is only charged on new items.
The FairTax is getting more and more support all the time. Even John McCain is giving it serious thought now.
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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
Wow! 32% is WAY more than 30%, isn't it? Let's rise up in arms about an estimated number.
It isn't an income tax (Isn't that the whole point?), so it shouldn't be calculated like one.
The proper way to calculate any tax rate is to divide the amount of the tax by the value being taxed. The income tax is intentionally opaque, but marginal tax paid divided by marginal income will produce the marginal rate printed on your 1040 instructions.
The Fair Tax collected on a transaction divided by the price of the item sold will yield about 30% or so.
The only reason to claim that the tax amount should be added back to the price before division to calculate the rate, is to make it appear to be a lower rate than it is. If the price is $10.00, the Fair Tax will be $3.00. To claim that it's a 23% rate because $3/$13 = 23% is ludicrous. The tax rate is 30% of the amount being taxed.
This computation method you wish to use (that comes up with a 23% rate) is the same one that consumer advocates have been decrying for at least 40 years regarding the loads on mutual funds.
It's wrong for mutual funds, and it's the wrong way to compute the "FairTax." The Fair Tax is EFFECTIVELY a sales tax, and it should be analyzed as such.
Will my mortgage payment have some Fair Tax added? Yes.
Will those pimps and prostitutes hat are now going to pay taxes add the Fair Tax to their price and then remit it to the government? No. Will their price go down? No.
Will there be a guarantee that the income tax will not return? No.
Will laid-off IRS agents be transferred to the new Fair Tax Collection Service? Yes.
Oh, yes. You're only hoping that it will get rid of other taxes, and you're forgetting the biggest flaw of all in the rationale--the total amount of tax collected will have to be the same as before, all else being equal. That means the same amount of tax will be paid, just out of different people's pockets.
The "Third Worst Person in the World" and aiming higher.
For anyone thinking McCain is unacceptable, here's the alternative: http://www.slate.com/id/2183930/
"We'd want a (SCOTUS) nominee who would do what John Roberts did," one (Obama) staff member said. "You go through the process and say 'Hey, I'll look at each case as it comes.' You have a moderate temperament. You're affable and everybody likes you. And then you get up there, and after a year and a half, you vote on the opposite side from John Roberts in every single case where that's warranted and it matters."
STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SCALIA, J., joined.
His speech today was great. He should have used this speechwriter more often.
I also noticed that a lot of times Mitt's PR team was giving him bad advice. Three in particular come to mind:
1. the "Nixonian tactics" charge because McCain used his own words against him. It might have been a misleading charge, but "Nixonian"? It was also strange that attacking McCain using a Republican's memory came to mind rather than, say, a more recent Democratic example like Bill Clinton.
2. the "mommy, they're picking on me" press release out of West Virginia was really unfortunate. Sort of screamed "NOT READY FOR THE BIG LEAGUES" early enough in the day to become part of the decision-making process for undecideds on 2/5.
3. I'm also not sure who approved the robo-calls in Florida attacking McCain for voting against the prescription drug bill. That action cost him any claim he might have had to having integrity the others lacked. His attempt to backpedal later only made it worse.
If you're a Mitt fan, and I wanted to be early on, then you have to hope he will learn from this go-round and come back better-prepared next time.
You can't afford the price of free corn.
The real "Nixonian tactics" were the lies perpetrated against Mitt around Mitt's position in the war. These lies were so obvious that it even gave McCain supporters pause to re-consider their support.
It only demonstrates what I already knew about McCain... when the chips are down he gets angry and lashes out against the conservative base with untruths.
'nough said.
Fernando Caballero
Here's a Latino that will never vote for McCain... Stop dealing in stereotypes and discuss real issues.
The moment that Romney lost the nomination was when Huckabee aired his now famous quote...
"I believe most Americans want their next president to remind them of the guy they work with, not the guy who laid them off."
Whatever you feel about this quote, it was a brilliant assessment of the zeitgeist of the American public right now. The American people right now either know factually or in their gut that a recession is upon them and they fear rightfully that it is going to be long lasting and bad. In fact, in the housing sector, it will be a full blown depression and collapse. And Romney was the poster boy for everything wrong about American Capitalism.
But more than that, everytime Romney opened his mouth to praise himself over his business acumen and how he was uniquely qualified to right the American economy, the American people did not see Romney the Republican but another Republican. A Republican who has spent more tax money than Clinton, Carter and LBJ COMBINED! A Republican who has allowed the largest trade imbalances in our nation's history, both in dollar amounts and percentages of GDP, to rage through our manufacturing sector like a runaway fire. A Republican who has devalued the dollar not seen in generations. A Republican who has allowed unbridled and rappacious greed to infect the entire economy by setting the example through his use of unrestrained spending and the issuance of debt to prop up an ever weakening country. A Republican who has allowed NAFTA/GATT to utterly gut this country into nothing more than a slave-wage service economy servicing an undisciplined people hell-bent on going into debt to buy crap not even made in this country. And finally, a Republican who now prays and begs that this undisciplined, undereducated people now takes back a tiny bit of the money stolen from them in taxes to go out and buy even more crap not made in this country in order to pull our collective butts out of a fire of his and our own making.
That Republican is none other the George W. Bush. If you really want to blame somebody for the defeat of Romney...if any of you can be honest enough for 2 seconds to quit knee-jerking around and blaming Huckabee, liberals, Communists, Hillary, Osama Bin Laden or little green men from Mars...then your blame must firmly and finally come to rest with Bush.
When Hillary or Obama become President...you can also look towards Bush for that blame too. Because, in the end, if the American people are given the choice between a true Democrat and a RHINO such as Bush and his protege' McCain...they'll vote for a Democrat everytime. For at least the Democrat is honest about being a liberal...the RHINO is lying all the time.
How can you possibly blame Gearge W Bush for any of the past 8 years? Wouldn't that mean that people who had supported him so loyally...so patriotically really...were wrong?
And that would include me who voted for him in 2000 (although I voted the Constitution Party in 2004).
Bush had a Republican House. Bush had a Republican Senate. He had the love and support of the American People who but for a brief, shining moment after Sept. 11 believed him to be the Second Coming of Reagan. But he squandered it on a total mismanaged War On Terror. He has given the Democrats EVERY THING THEY WANTED except for any oversight or control of this war. He has not vetoed one thing, except for those things which he believed would impede him in this mismanaged war.
***Note to you Knee-Jerkers...I said MISMANAGED WAR, not folly, not illegal, not immoral...unless you claim that having our sons and daughters killed for the expediency of politically correct rules of engagement drawn up by State Dept. lawyers as immoral...ok, you've got me there!***
He has blantantly allowed a foreign invasion on to our soil and has imprisoned people who after swearing to defend our homeland and in the prosecution of doing so harmed a drug runner from a foreign land who was trying to kill our own people with drugs manufactured in that same said foreign land...Mexico. That right there alone is grounds for impeachment for the blantant breaking of his Presidential vows to protect this nation from enemies both foreign and domestic.
Bush as Commander in Chief was...still is, by default, the leading representative of the Republican Party. And because of his complete and utter failure to prosecute this just war, to secure our homeland first by the sealing of our borders, to protect not only the effacy but the honor of our capitalist system, to putting our sovereignty first and not gutting our manufacturing base by sustaining and strengthening NAFTA/GATT and the coming economic union with Canada and Mexico...in short...his failure to preserve, uphold and promulgate the Reagan Revolution and the Constitution....he has destroyed the Republican Party, whose best example now is John McCain, at least in the eyes of the voting public.
Which means ultimately, WE THE PEOPLE now have three viable candidates for the Presidency of the United States....
And they are all Liberals. Thanks G.W.!
of reason in a troubled world. Incidentally this could also be entitled: How Mitt Romney made John McCain.
Great post.
"Beyond the breaking of trust between the social conservatives and the right-wing media — which is now, unfortunately, exposed as the largely coastal, largely urban, largely fiscally-oriented complex it is — there is the simple matter of judgment. The average Republican voter never could quite figure why we should take Romney at his word, and the average Republican voter was quite right: and so it was mystifying, for example, to see Hugh Hewitt proclaim “Romney Rising” dozens of times unto the end; and it was baffling as to just why National Review believed “he is now on our side — and we trust him to stay there.”
This sums it up.
"We love you mittens kthxbai"?
A lot of you directors are pretty classless people and objectively uninterested in party unity.
You throw around classless a lot.
Perhaps you should look in the mirror.
"I ain't never votin' fo no Democrat so long as I draw breath! I'll vote for a dog first!" - Leola Thomas
There's been a lot of classlessness here in the last 24 hours. Maybe you should read the comments I'm responding to.
Good luck finding anywhere that I made tasteless or insulting comments when any of the other candidates stepped down.
and as usual agree with josh.
I also agree with his anaylsis. good read.
I also think that while Mitt Romney would be an awesome guy as the head of the RNC - he - at least to me- is not the standard bearer for the conservative moment.
excellent speach today, but lets not push it.