David Weigel at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Saturday, 11:45am:
[…] Nancy French’s Evangelicals for Mitt has been offering around 200 tickets for free, for anyone who wants to come and support Mitt Romney. At the party before Sean Hannity’s live taping of his TV show, French’s group handed out 800 copies of their man’s book, “No Apology,” and countless piggy banks. It’s hard to say how many of the people grabbing those favors will back Romney — one woman I spoke to, clutching two piggy banks, snorted when I asked if she’d vote for Romney.
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“These are for my grandkids,” she said.
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… [W]hile the outcome won’t matter in the long run, there’s a big difference between the narrative of a Paul victory, say, a Palin victory. Few, however, expect Romney to pull it out.
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“Evangelicals for Mitt,” laughed one GOP strategist who wasn’t backing any particular candidate. “You notice that their signs mention everything except religion.”
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David Weigel at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Saturday, 7:01pm:
In a surprise, Mitt Romney edged out Ron Paul to win the SRLC straw poll by a single vote.
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Romney took 439 votes (24 percent) to Paul’s 438 votes (also 24 percent), a result that disappointed a Paul-heavy crowd that had stuck around to watch the results. Sarah Palin came in third with 330 votes (18 percent), and Newt Gingrich came in fourth with 321 votes (18 percent); Mike Huckabee, who did not attend the event, scored 4 percent. Total ballots cast: 1,806.
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Romney, who also did not attend the conference, benefited from a grassroots effort from Evangelicals for Mitt, a group run by David and Nancy French — who’d helped Romney score a second-place finish at the 2006 SRLC. They’d purchased around 200 tickets, 800 copies of Romney’s book “No Apology,” and 2000 piggy banks with the Evangelicals for Mitt logo. Before the vote, French soft-peddled the meaning of the exercise, stressing that it was “not binding.” After the vote, French held court near the press boxes as his small team hugged and high-fived.
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“Is that not incredible?” French said into a cell phone. “Our guy wasn’t even here!”
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When I spoke to French, he stuck by his “not binding” comment, then basked in his victory. “We just wanted to show that Mitt has friends down here.”
Remember how offended the Repubs got when Michael Steele suggested their votes could be bought for “tchotchkes”? Looks like Mitt’s Minions gambled, correctly, that just enough of their votes could be bought with re-giftable doorstoppers and piggy banks for the kiddies.
Willard Romney will be the death of me yet. A Romney/Palin or Palin/Romney ticket, barring total societal breakdown, would be crushed by the Obama 2012 team like a grape beneath a juggernaut, but I’m not at all sure my blood pressure could survive 18 months of toxic smarm poured over a word-salad of equal parts MBA-jargon and Talibangelical-tongues.
These are the days of miracle and wonders… a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and babies…
Arclite
You’re from MA, aren’t you Anne Laurie? How bad was it when he ran for governor back in the day?
BTW, I love the description of how Romney talks…
Platonicspoof
“Don’t want to end up a cartoon,
In a cartoon graveyard ….. ”
. . . .
“You know, I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore …. “
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Win the morning!
Basilisc
I alway thought it was “millionaires and billionaires, and, baby …” The vocative case, as in, “Hey, baby.” But whatever.
Good piece by EJ Dionne on the mine disaster:
It’s all tied together, isn’t it?
Tattoosydney
@Basilisc:
I suspect it was intentional snark referring to the Palinator’s tendency to drag Trig on stage at every opportunity…
Bill E Pilgrim
One should never lose sight of the hard fact that the “Tea Party” is nothing more than a Republican party marketing ploy, and one that essentially worked, when you consider the beyond negative hole they found themselves in after last November.
Given that, if they can find some equally labyrinthine campaign to market Mitt to the crazies in their ranks, no one should be that surprised if people buy it. We can sit back and marvel at it as we trace the clew path through the labyrinth, but those following the thread just follow it.
And then the fun starts. Mitt strikes me as one of those figures who can pull it off only to a certain height, but after enough scrutiny (and hollowing out his soul) he becomes the very definition of an empty haircut.
Nancy Irving
Mitt would never run with Palin, in either slot. He is insanely ambitious, but hardly stupid.
Mark S.
Are those piggy banks for when Mitt privatizes Social Security?
I still think Mitt is the odds on favorite. The fundies might not like him, but they sure as hell didn’t like McCain either. The GOP doesn’t do dark horses.
Cacti
@Mark S.:
But McCain wasn’t Mormon.
I don’t think the Mormon factor can be overstated for Mittens.
Citizen Alan
Point one: There will never be a Palin/Romney ticket or a Romney/Palin ticket. Neither of their monumental egos will ever allow them to settle for being a VP candidate. Palin’s already done that, and to my knowledge, no one has ever run as VP candidate for two different nominees. And while Romney would probably crawl naked through broken glass to become President, I don’t think even he is willing to degrade himself by becoming Palin’s running mate. Finally, it’s a long time to November 2012 and it’s going to be a vicious primary. I suspect the two of them will despise each other before it’s done. That’s assuming that the two aren’t already privately bigoted against each other over religious differences. Which brings us to …
Point two: If Mitt Romney wins the nomination, I anticipate Obama carrying Mississippi. Baptist preachers loathe Mormons, and if he gets the nom, you will see preachers across the South openly calling him a cultist from the pulpits during Sunday morning services.
Mike Kay
Big Loss for Palin.
She appeared and spoke at a convention of southern confederate activists, and she came in 3rd, behind a glibtard and a crypto-pro-choice morman, who brought socialized medicine to Massachusetts.
if the dogs ain’t buying the dog food, then it’s time to take palin off the shelve.
brettvk
So Palin is wildly unpopular and probably doesn’t have the self-discipline to run; Romney’s Mormonism will alienate the evangelicals; Gingrich is widely hated, isn’t he?; and Ron Paul is the GOP’s Kucinich [sp]. Who will they end up nominating?
Mike Kay
I still don’t see how the hillbilly runs in 2012.
She’s lazy and greedy.
Running would mean hard work and giving up the cash.
Mike Kay
@brettvk: They might go with the wacko governor of virginia.
Sly
@Mark S.:
For the fundies, there’s a world of difference between a Mormon and an Episcopalian-turned-lukewarm-Baptist. McCain may be an overly-secularized, “unchurched” member of the flock, but Mittens is a full-fledged heretic in their eyes.
stuckinred
Jeb Bush
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
The Southern Strategy has reached its peak and can no longer give the GOP a win at the national level. I see the teabagger bit as a logical extension of the Southern Strategy, taking it to the national level in the quest for regaining control of the White House. Right now I see the GOP in big trouble and the teabaggers are nothing more than a Hail Mary pass. If they pull off some upsets this fall it will feed the beast and could lead to a resurgence of the GOP. If they fail the GOP will have nothing left to fall back on.
They are going to make this fall a referendum on Obama because they have nothing else to offer the voters. They are going to try to gin up voter anger at Obama and the Democrats by throwing everything they can against the wall in the hope that something sticks. That’s why their focus is on Obama and not so much the individual members of the Democratic party but rather the party as a whole (under Obama).
IOW, similar to the shit Clinton had to endure but this time with racism sprinkled on top.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Sly: Yeah but when they criticize him they’ll spell it “Morman” on their signs and I wouldn’t want to miss that.
Mark S.
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
That’s pretty much how I see it. 2010 will probably be the GOP’s last hurrah. They pick up some seats in both houses, Tweety and the other Village idiots will be proclaiming a paradigm shift, and then they’ll get their asses handed to them in 2012.
Believing that conservatism cannot fail, they’ll get even crazier after that. By that time, they will have alienated every minority in the country. The long term outlook doesn’t look very good for them.
MikeJ
I don’t buy that being a Mormon is going to hurt Mitt, at least in a general. Nixon was a Quaker. He just had to prove he was as nasty as the Baptists.
The people who will hold being LDS against Mitt will vote against him in the primary, but they’d rather have him than a Kenyan soçialist.
Geoduck
Ditto the “Palin ain’t gonna run” comments. She’s on the gravy train now, and campaigning is work. I think Romney has more of a chance than some do, but yeah, the Mormon thing will be a stumbling block. General Petraeus could have the nomination in a heartbeat if he wants it, but I suspect he’ll at least wait until 2016.
Nethead Jay
Since it’s an open thread: Just saw a new tagline at the top, “Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!”, and this is the first one I totally don’t get. Can anyone enlighten me.
MikeJ
@Nethead Jay: Amazon says it’s a YA book, but I’d never heard of it either. Of course it was published after I had aged out of the demo.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Mark S.:
I’m not in a hurry to dismiss the Republicans just yet since there are more than just several ways that this could play out this fall and in 2012. One thing I have learned over the years is that you don’t turn your back on a wounded animal. Same thing when dealing with crazy people, you can live to regret turning your back on either group. They are going to do anything they can to strike out and injure and now is not the time to drop our guard.
Right now they are desperate for something to save the day and that is good for us since it means that they are going to be crying “WOLF!” every single time they think they have something. As long as they don’t actually get something handed to them (Dem scandal of whatever sort) then people will get tired of the continuous yowling and tune them out. But with about 30% of our country supporting the crazies we don’t have much of a margin of error for scandals.
One good thing for us is the money related scandals the Repubs are going through. The mess with the Florida Republican party is absolutely heartwarming to see. Shit like that and the bondage club-type outings are going to cost them dollars this fall and I am happy to see money being rerouted into other new ’causes’ on the right. The more fragmented this money is the harder it will be for them to get anything done. The repubs who engage in this fundraising shit are building their little empires and they are going to flex their newfound political muscle to show everyone that they matter. Once the money and power start building you can bet that they are not going to give it up easily. Each of these little power groups are going to demand their pound of flesh from the party in exchange for cash, further weakening it.
Our chances against the Repubs this fall are looking good but we still have to deliver for the Democrats to make it happen. The election of 2008 was important but 2010 could make or break 2012 for us.
asiangrrlMN
So, Ratface Pawlenty isn’t even on the radar? Good to know. Palin will not run. She may, at most, start to run, and then realize (insert whiny voice), “Campaigning is haaaaaaaaard!” Her goal is to be famous and make tons of money. She can do that already. Mitts–ugh. Just ugh. Paul Ryan? Double ugh.
David
They’re stuck on Palin.
They want her to be the nominee because they know she can’t win. Being a loser is a feature not a bug. For 35 years, the Republicans will talk about how she could have won and American would be a paradise were it not for the media and black men attacking them in parking lots and scratching backwards B’s on their faces.
Picking an obvious loser is about as low as you can go.
SGEW
re: Palin’s self-discipline and/or endurance for a national campaign.
Remember – a candidate only needs self-discipline or a desire for hard work if they want to win a general election. Semi-regular appearances on sycophantic television programs and the occasional public pep rally won’t win you the electoral calculus, but it can generate several metric shit tons of money.
Former half term Governor Palin doesn’t want to actually become President (something on which both of us can agree!), but she certainly seems like she’s amenable to (and capable of) generating the media attention and personal revenue stream an ultimately unsuccessful national political campaign would require.
Hells bells, Eugene V. Debs and Lyndon LaRouche ran for president when they were in prison; how much work does it actually require if you never expect to win?
[ETA: What David said (above) also, too. Should reload page before posting.]
Svensker
@MikeJ:
Different days. Evangelicals didn’t have much power or voice back then.
asiangrrlMN
@SGEW: True that. However, Ms. Palin is pretty damn thin-skinned, and she’s already famous. If she ran at all, there would be a pretty bright light trained on her. Either way, the idea of President Palin is not terrifying me at the moment.
TooManyJens
@Citizen Alan:
Sure, but do they hate Mormons as much as they hate Democrats?
Grumpy Code Monkey
Beware Rick Perry. He’s making noises about 2012. He could be a legitimate threat.
Texas weathered the recession better than most of the country, although that was due as much to the Homestead Act (which the state GOP would repeal in a heartbeat if it wouldn’t also be political suicide) as it was low taxes and spending.
Perry may not be an intellectual, but he’s shrewd and he knows how to campaign.
When my wife was talking about the Homestead Act (which places relatively strict limits on the amount you can borrow against your home; in fact, until the state constitution was amended in 1998, you couldn’t borrow against your home at all), I found a neat summary to contrast Republican and Democratic views towards regulation:
Republicans oppose regulation because they want to maximize returns when times are good; Democrats support regulation because they want to minimize losses when times are bad. Which is the more “responsible” viewpoint?
CynDee
Excellent post, Anne. Thank you.
kay
@Citizen Alan:
It’s a problem, in my opinion. Republicans can’t talk about it, pundits can’t talk about it, but it’s a problem. I had fundamentalist religious Republicans tell me here they couldn’t support Romney because he’s “not a Christian” and this isn’t Mississippi, it’s northern Ohio.
Redshirt
Sister Sarah came in third, eh? Fascinating. Over and over I see that she’s not very popular, anywhere. Sure, she’s got a dedicated following, but it’s exceedingly small. Loud, yes. Small, very much. It’s just we’re force fed her presence by Fox news and thus the rest of the “news” media. She’s a media-created story now, and as long as the media wants to keep pushing this narrative, she’s not going anywhere.
Seriously – they’re just making this up. Extremely few people actually support Palin – even Wingnut confederate nutjobs for FSM’s sake!
flukebucket
Nethead Jay “Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack” was mentioned by Cole as a book that had an early influence on his world view. After reading it I was left confused as to how if it was so influential he remained a Republican as long as he did.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Aw fuck. One of our cats, Tommy, died in my arms about fifteen minutes ago. He had been having breathing problems starting late last night. At first I thought it might have been a stuck hairball but when he started yowling in agony I called the vet. He too thought it was a hairball (and I clearly described everything I was seeing) so he told me to give him a bit of butter on the tongue and call him later in the morning if it got worse. That was at 2:30 and he died at 5:48.
He was a rescue so we had no idea how old he was but I knew he was old. When we got him he was less than six pounds and three of his remaining five teeth had to be pulled. He had been acting his usual self up until late last night (like an cat experiencing his second kittenhood). He was a big old orange and cream Maine Coon, almost three feet long from nose to tail tip. At least we made the last year of his life heaven for him and he for us. I am going to miss my bud who napped on the ‘annex’ (footrest) of the couch whenever I laid down. My wife loved him and at least she also got to see him when he passed. He was her knitting buddy, always attacking the knitting needles or yarn as she would knit.
The other two cats, Sammy and Bobbi, know he is gone as they came and checked it out as we were saying our goodbyes to him.
Sucks but that’s life. We will miss our Big Orange Cat.
SiubhanDuinne
@DougL: I am so sorry. But you gave him comfort in his last hours and a good life since you rescued him. But it sucks, and it hurts. Condolences to you all, including the other cats.
WereBear
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): It’s so sad to hear, and my condolences to the household; but you made him very happy.
With Maine Coons, that’s a lot of happy.
mightygodking
Everybody celebrating Palin’s third-place poll result should remember that the last time they did this poll, in 2006, Bill Frist was the big winner with 37 percent, followed by Romney with 14 percent, then George Allen and Dubya (yes, despite the fact that Dubya wasn’t allowed to run again) with ten percent, and McCain got like, five.
How’s that Bill Frist political juggernaut coming along, huh?
This poll is meaningless. It’s always been meaningless. It’s good for a little hype early on to attract donors if you work it right and that’s about it.
SGEW
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): My sincerest condolences.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): awwww, man– condolences.
Comrade Mary
Oh Doug, I’m so sorry. But you were there for his last year and his last moments, and I’m sure he knew he was loved.
CalD
Talibangelical… Ooh, I like it.
Point of order though, “equal parts MBA-jargon and Talibangelical-tongues” would be a fairly apt description of the 2000 presidential campaign of one George W. Bush. But my blood own blood pressure was always at a lot more risk from his presidency than it ever was from his candidacy. Had Bush ever been treated with anything like an appropriate level of seriousness as a candidate, the whole episode would have wound being more entertaining than enraging. It’s the appropriate level of seriousness part that we need to work on.
gbear
Doug, so sorry for your loss. I’ve got a rapidly aging 15 year old kitty here. I’m afraid I’ll be going thru the same thing before the year ends. My previous cat died of cancer and we went thru a two-week period where I thought every day was going to be the last. It seemed like she might go peacefully but then suddenly it became agony for her and I had to bring her to the vet to be put down. That whole month was awful. It’s so hard to loose a pet.
Tim Pawlenty only got 3% in that straw vote. I wonder when he’s going to realize that no one gives a fuck about him, and that maybe he should pay some attention to MN for a while. He’s created a lot of damage that needs fixing.
4jkb4ia
I will crib from Nate and accept that 2012 is “the Republicans’ to lose” when the Republicans can get a candidate who beats the generic Republican in polls.
Although Mitt Romney was great entertainment for at least TBogg and Josh Marshall, I don’t particularly want the risk of having him as near the presidency as a nomination or anything . Would Is just be depressed by an election like that?
4jkb4ia
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
I am sorry.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Thank you very much for the wishes and thoughts. We did give him a good home and he was spoiled rotten right to the end. I just broke the news to our daughter and still have the son to tell when he gets up. We are all going to miss his welcoming chirps every morning when he would remind us that it was time for his bit of morning milk. He was a real loverboy of a cat.
The wife and I will be getting another cat soon, not to replace him but rather to rescue another poor soul who needs a good home. A friend of ours took over the rescue operation that the lady who killed herself least year (which led to our adoption of Tommy, Sammy and Bobbi in the first place) used to run.
@gbear:
That’s the only good thing about his passing, he didn’t linger and suffer. I am pretty sure that it was age and the malnutrition he suffered from when we got him that finally did him in. He tripled his weight but never regained the wasted muscle tissue on his back and you could tell when he walked that he had some problems.
Best wishes to you and your cat gbear, and the same to the rest of you pet caregivers. Love them while you have them and remember them fondly afterward.
Josh
Oy, I remember when Nancy French lived here in Philadelphia and wrote newspaper columns about being harassed and spat upon by liberals and having to deal with the filthy homeless Negroes that lined the streets. Also.
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! was the first venture into YA fiction by Patricia Highsmith’s ex-girlfriend Marijane Meaker (Whisper His Sin, Shoebag, A Guide to the Hangover, Take a Lesbian to Lunch). Don’t remember the plot, really.
Craig
@David: They’re stuck on Palin. They want her to be the nominee because they know she can’t win. Being a loser is a feature not a bug.
I agree. Republicans are comfortable being the minority party because they get all the perks of being congressmen with NONE of the work. P.J. O’Rourke once said that Republicans say that government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.
I say this as a person who has voted Republican in the last four elections, but probably won’t vote for them any time soon. The Republican party is in self destruct mode: and its core wants them to be the A-Fertilized-Egg-Is-A-Human-Being-And-The-Universe-Is-7000-Years-Old party. A losing strategy.
Calouste
@Craig:
I don’t think it makes much difference in the amount of work for the Republicans if they are minority or majority. If they are majority, they just do what they are told by the White House, like under the Cheney administration. And if they have a majority in Congress but don’t have the White House, they just shut government down. Neither of them requires much work or thinking on the part of the Republican Congresscritters.
Jesse Ewiak
Of course, the best thing about an Obama smackdown of a Romney ticket is that it’ll convince the GOP that Romney was “too moderate” and they need to go farther to the right in 2016. Coburn/Santorum 2016!
Mike
@Nancy Irving: I agree, If Romney won’t even show up to this event because Palin is present, then I don’t seem them becoming running mates in the near future. Honestly, I’m not sure either are really capable of bringing back the republicans to power. http://bit.ly/975W2l