Mitt Romney’s come undone:
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change.
“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,” he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.
“It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”
The former Massachusetts governor fielded questions on topics ranging from the debt ceiling to abortion on his first full day of campaigning for 2012 Republican primary nomination.
Mittens has now sided with science and hedonism and embraced reality, so with that mistake, RomneyCare, and belonging to the wrong religious cult, that should pretty much be the end of him. He’s basically just waiting now for Haley Joel Osment to point out the obvious, and we haven’t even had a chance for the Talibangelicals in South Carolina to start emailing folks about funny underwear or whatever smear they will use against him in their pursuit of a true conservative nominee.
beltane
Maybe Mitt has changed his mind and now wants to run for the Democratic nomination. It’s his only chance of ever being president.
cathyx
Mitt isn’t going to win anyway, so he might as well be truthful.
billgerat
Tomorrow he’ll be on his knees asking Mr. Viagra for forgiveness, then he’ll say that’s not what he meant at all. It won’t matter – Mittens just torpedoed his own ship.
cokane
I wouldn’t write off Romney. He still has the best chance of winning the nomination. Who else is there to challenge him? Pawlenty? Cain? Gingrich? Give me a break, none of those guys have run a national campaign before. Romney is raising more money than anyone else, has the biggest name recognition of anyone who has already declared, and has been organizing his campaign since Nov 2 2008. To write him off from making this claim is to give in to stereotypes about the Republican party.
Do you know who else accepted that humans contributed to global warming? McCain, W Bush, H W Bush, and Reagan.
cleek
that is awesome. Mitt was the last, though faint, hope of the Serious Daddy GOP.
now they’re left with T-Paw & The Loons.
auntie beak
talibangelicals? did you just make that up, or have i missed yet another internet meme?
Davis X. Machina
You’re looking at the nominee. Or someone who looks like the nominee.
40% of the country will vote for a bale of peat moss for president if the GOP nominates it, that’s true.
But give or take you need 11% more of the electorate. And that’s where Mr. and Mrs. “Independent” voter live. The “Oh, I always vote the man, not the party” people. The low-information/high mis-information voters. The ones who make up their mind in the six weeks before the election.
White guys in suits. Normal-looking white guys in suits. Guys they’ve seen before, or who look like guys they’ve seen before.
This is a country of chain restaurants.
Applebee’s. Romney. Chili’s. Pawlenty.
Once in a while, they’ll go all ethnic and crazy. P.F. Chang’s. Obama.
mr. whipple
Toast.
beltane
@Davis X. Machina: The bale of peat moss is looking like their best candidate right now. Mr. Peat Moss might even peel away some hippie votes from Obama.
Cliff in NH
This is OT, but Seriously WTF is wrong with these assholes/bigots
Fox News – Elmo & Big Bird Are Too Liberal & Make Gay Boys Want To Be Prom Queens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ypsojc5vFg
I can’t type anything near a transcript cause they are so Fucking Sick.
edit: The Intro:
“Yea I kinda wanna take ’em (big bird and sesame st) out back and cap ’em” (paraphrase of the gist of the Opening statement)
mclaren
@cokane:
Hey, I’ve got this amazing bridge you’ll want to buy. Prime location, in Manhattan, it’s an incredible bargain.
RossInDetroit
Palms just hit faces in GOP back rooms all over the country. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and he’d have had a chance.
But nooooo!
Jenny
As Rachel Maddow asks – why won’t the so called liberal media ask him about RyanCare?
beltane
@Cliff in NH: This means that one of them will shortly be discovered dressed as a prom queen with a dildo collection. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
eemom
@mr. whipple:
and not just any old toast. Burnt to a crisp, smoking, oh shit this toaster’s FUCKED, toast.
bwaahaaahaaaahaaaa. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer dog-abusing wax-doll pretty boy billionaire empty shell of a human being.
Kobie
Well, so long Mittens. Nice knowing you.
No way the orcs will let THIS one go.
Kobie
@cokane: Yeah, and the GOP has turned about 18 more shades of crazy even since McCain.
some other guy
@cokane:
Indeed. I remember that the crazies HATED McCain in ’08 due to his earlier support for campaign finance reform, cap-and-trade, anti-torture legislation, and the like. Rush and his ilk kept saying over and over again that there’s no difference between McCain and any Democrat. But McCain still won the primary, even with the nutters holding their breath, stomping their feet, and threatening to stay home in November if he was the candidate.
Jenny
wait for it… Romney will say he was “brain washed”.
The acorn really doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Cliff in NH
@Cliff in NH:
Ok, I’ve had to listen to this several times to get it .. WTF?!!
Spaghetti Lee
@some other guy:
Isn’t it just great? “You don’t like corporate money taking over politics, poison in the air, or terrorists getting their balls electrocuted, therefore you’re not really a Republican.” Just a good distillation of where the GOP’s moral compass is pointing these days.
beltane
@Jenny: The media would never say anything so harsh about a Republican candidate today. Things really were different in 1967.
Xecky Gilchrist
“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,”
Doesn’t he know it snowed in Buffalo this year, disproving the global warming theory once and for all?
But yeah. Remember how fast this guy flip-flops? He’ll have always disagreed with AGW by tomorrow.
Jeffro
@cleek: That’s a good point – let’s see what Pawlenty says in response. As in, is it a full death-spiral or one of them there slow death by a thousand (in-party) cuts
Violet
@auntie beak:
Ancient internet meme. Been around for quite some time.
Maybe Romney’s taking a flier, hoping that all the crazies will cancel each other out and he’ll be the only candidate they’ve got left. Then he can be the Conservative Obama, now with added White.
RossInDetroit
With the front runner shooting himself in the foot, all of a sudden the GOP nom is an interesting race again.
Who’s for popcorn?!?
me
@Jeffro: T-paw already got in trouble for saying he didn’t want criminal charges for doctors who perform abortions.
Redshift
Well, I guess we’ll soon have our answer for whether any of them can pivot to non-crazy enough to attract support from independents without the howler monkeys devouring them.
Violet
If you haven’t already, go check out #PalinHistory on Twitter. Sample:
Good times.
handy
C’mon Mittster. You’re doing it wrong. It’s not “I believe the world is getting warmer,” it’s “Teach the controversy!”
cat48
These teabaggers are not happy!
Suffern ACE
@some other guy: Yet McCain and Romney combined got 68% of the primary votes cast. I’m thinking he’s going to try to pick up McCain’s share and let the others fight for the rest.
handy
Also too, is this some kind of signal that the Goopers aren’t quite willing to go all the way and burn Rome down just to beat Obama? It’s a common assumption around these parts that the entire party is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but somebody upstairs in Repub Inc. must realize that you gotta tack to the Less-Crazy in order to win the general.
Violet
@Suffern ACE:
The teabagging was not yet strong among the wingnuts in 2008. McCain could never win the nomination now.
beltane
@Suffern ACE: The teabaggers are going to make things hellish for the few non-clinically insane people who show up at the Iowa caucuses. It won’t be pretty.
Scotty
Very apt title… Like Weezer, Mitt will play the right tune to be a nominee in the beginning of his 2012 career, but in the end no one in the GOP will be willing to listen to his tunes as they sound too programmed and don’t deviate from the same musical framework. (See Blue album and Pinkerton vs. every other Weezer albums for musical/political metaphors)
John O
The Money in the Money Party is going to run desperately towards Romney by default. Some of those people are reality-based. I still can’t see who else but Romney.
me
@Violet: Patton was pursuing Pancho Villa who had converted to Islam and burned down the White House killing Grover Cleveland.
handy
@Scotty:
Sold out, jumped the shark, drank the Kool-Aid, whatever you want to call it–this band pretty much epitomizes it. So disappointing, too. For more recent examples, see also: Bloc Party, Interpol, and the Killers.
joeyess
I can’t seem to gin up sympathy for any GOP nominee that isn’t sufficiently hick-a-fied. South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida et al have all gone ’round the twist in their zeal to resurrect the Confederacy and embrace serfdom, even if it includes a denial of the science of climate change that will ultimately and quite literally drown all or at least the most southern parts of those states. If the price for being a collection of know-nothing, science denying fools because your local and national talk radio wurlitzer critter tells you to, well, then go ahead, ignore the problem that the above post has labeled the last nail in Romney’s coffin and drown like the stupid fucking rats you are. Better sooner rather than later. Then we can get on with the business of governing with a modicum of sanity and rid ourselves of a political party that will hopefully be held responsible for the decimation of an entire sector of our economy and our nation. It seems to me that we almost have to allow the region to be destroyed in order to save it. I know that sounds cold and some fine progressives will be hurt. Some will leave, some will die, but until we can convince these people that have been bamboozled by hate, fear and demagogues, we need to write them off with the hope that they will come to their senses and repudiate their elected leaders. Either that or erect a cable news/talk radio infrastructure that completely dominates the right-wing’s current megaphone and changes minds the old fashioned way: one at a time. I don’t think we have the patience for that task and the clock is ticking relentlessly. So, I have absolutely no sympathy for a constituency that re-elects Little Patrick McHenry every two years because he punches hippies for a living. Sorry. I just can’t muster the compassion any more. I’m done.
Cliff in NH
@Cliff in NH:
another Partial Transcript of that disgusting clip.
I’m Disgusted typing this, cause I think my morality is so superior.
…Yuk… Evil…
micah616
Who would have thought that Multiple Choice Mitt would be the Last Honest Man in the GOP? Poor sucker.
beltane
@Cliff in NH: It’s not that our morality is superior, it’s that there’s is inferior. There is a difference.
tofubo
he has 5 kids that are doing the lords work, trying to get his dad elected, quitit about the enlisting shit
***
only NSFW if you can read english
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zrhkCs9PDo
or understand the language
Jenny
Greatest Romney commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elx3UWmyAY4
joeyess
And, yes, I know that if South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida et al all drown, we’re probably past the point of return. I still have a deep, deep disdain for this kind of tribalism. Call me a misanthrope, sociopath, whatever. I don’t see us coming to any conclusions, solutions or proposals without something far, far worse than Katrina. I just don’t.
aimai
@Davis X. Machina:
Great post. Applebee’s, Romnee’s, Pawlentee’s.
aimai
Vixen Strangely
@Jenny:
OOOOhhhh–just what I was thinking. I thought George Romney’s opinion on VietNam was initially an honest one, and then….
But Romney fils is so regularly a flip-flopper, I find his temporary honesty re: climate change so tenuous. I wait for another shoe to drop, so to speak. And yet–what if he held his ground? What if he stuck to his guns? What if he decided to embrace his earlier commonsense solutions re: MA healthcare, etc? It would show the mad balls he never showed before. I don’t know if he’d win a primary on it, but I’d give him a little respect. It might make for an interesting, reality-based run. And maybe even set an example for other conservatives who wanted to give the old “truth” thing a go.
(Naaaahhhhh, I don’t think this is a real thing. But it’s a neat thought re: benefit of the doubt, right?)
Cliff in NH
@tofubo:
LOL
Suffern ACE
@Cliff in NH: Well there’s nothing in there I haven’t heard before. But you found the theme for the summer. They’d probably be attacking Glee, but what network is that on again?
Cliff in NH
@Cliff in NH:
Remember These ASSHOLES are talking about F’n Sesame St.
Seriously, there is something demented about these people.
They can’t even understand what the word Equality means.
Citizen Alan
I remain convinced that if Romney gets the nomination, Obama can win in Mississippi. Most of the Talibaptists down here have a nearly pathological fear of Mormonism. You really have to spend some time down here talking to Baptists to really get a feel for the revulsion that Mormonism triggers among Baptist preachers. I once saw a preacher interrupt his Mother’s Day sermon to go on a three minute tangent (literally a tangent, it was completely unrelated to everything else he’d been talking about) on the fact that Mormonism is a cult.
Quiddity
I for one, hope that Romney does well in the campaign to get the Republican nomination. I hope he wins it. Romney is one of the very few Republicans that has a chance of turning the crazy party around. I’d say he’s somewhat like Nixon. The Republicans had Goldwater-insanity, and then Nixon led the party. Nixon was one of the last New Deal presidents and managed, for a while at least, to stifle the hard-right of his party.
That said, I would not vote for him – even though he’s basically a moderate-technocrat Republican (which, while not optimal, isn’t all that horrible) – because the rest of the party is so bad.
Yeah, the guy comes off as insincere and all that, but I’d say that’s largely because of the situation he finds himself in. If the Republicans were like they were in the 1980s, Romney probably would be more forthright and appealing. But he wants to be president and he’s dealing with the situation as best he can.
Spaghetti Lee
@joeyess:
It seems like you’re the one doing the tribalism.
In times of stress or upheaval, people tend to run towards the right, with all their comforting qualities of authority, tradition, etc. Any disaster big enough to wipe out the whole south would send us back to the Dark Ages, politically speaking. Conservatives can hope for disasters in that way, but sadly, liberals have to make gains bit by painstaking bit.
Spaghetti Lee
@Citizen Alan:
MS/AL/SC, I think, are all out of reach for good, they’ve been going GOP since ’64 or whatever. I could see a few nominally GOP southern states like Tennessee or Arkansas going Dem in ’12 if Obama plays his cards right and if the GOPer is someone unpalatable.
UncertaintyVicePrincipal
Ah well that’s the end of that then.
Curious though isn’t it, what single, seemingly random piece of his soul he’d try to hang onto after abandoning everything else he ever stood for.
As anyone who’s ever lost one knows though, mittens work in mysterious ways.
Vixen Strangely
@Jenny:
I like that Mitt, though. I wish he was a real boy, and not made of wood.
Suffern ACE
@Cliff in NH: Well remember how the school board in Texas decided that the kids (especially the minority kids) were getting too much self-esteem and went and changed the curriculum to make it more “true.” They’re looking at the time bomb and wondering “why are our kids not paying us mind.” They’ve managed to turn off their own children and need something to gripe about. Must be something other people did to their children…couldn’t be that the kids after all those years riding around listening to Dad rant about what he heard on Rush, have figured out that the “feminazis” haven’t actually destroyed much of anything. Nope. Must be kids watching sesame street and elmo.
cyd
I don’t think Romney faces any significant political cost to admitting the existence of anthropogenic climate change, so long as he ignores, blocks, or otherwise de-prioritizes all efforts to address the issue.
(Which, BTW, is not too far from what the Obama administration is doing…)
El Cid
‘What the Governor was clearly saying, before there was a lot of spin made of this by the media, is that human activities have indeed contributed to the sinfulness that we see around us, and the Word of God Almighty is very clear that this sort of activity is closely related to the temperature and punishments of Hell.’
cyd
Oh, and by the way, the last president who successfully pursued vigorous liberal solutions to environmental issues, instead of offering up empty platitudes, was Richard M. Nixon (who also proposed a health care reform plan significantly to the left of Obamacare, only to have it blocked by Ted Kennedy). In many ways, environmental policy in the US is coasting along on the institutional structures left behind 40 years ago by the Nixon administration.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Cliff in NH:
…
Kinder, Kirche, Kuche.
But they missed the kitchen in that one. Ugh.
dogwood
@Suffern ACE:
“Yet McCain and Romney combined got 68% of the primary votes cast. I’m thinking he’s going to try to pick up McCain’s share and let the others fight for the rest”
Your’re exactly right. Romney’s decided to talk crazy enough to be palatable to some of the wingnuts who might think he’s electable, while being the only option for hardcore republicans who aren’t at war with science. I think it will work. I actually think he’ll sew up the nomination pretty early and the wingnuts will fall in line just like they did for McCain. Romney will have more money and more discipline than McCain that’s for sure. But he’s already indicated that his campaign is going to be about Obama destroying America, and I don’t think that’s gonna work in the end. Economic anxiety aside, the majority of Americans like, trust, and admire the president. They might be persuaded to vote against him if someone offers an alternative positive agenda, but they’ll stick with him if all they get is questions of character.
Cliff in NH
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Ewww. I Missed that stream of thought, Maybe I subconsciously didn’t miss it though, since the whole vid is so disgusting to me, that would fit though eh?.
joeyess
@Spaghetti Lee: I understand and agree. I just don’t see how our political and social trends change without a complete and total decimation of the current GOP. And I don’t see that happening unless something comes to pass that they have been denying, no, make that demonizing for years: the death and destruction of civilization as we know it thru massive climate collapse. They’re just living in the now, getting rich and livin’ large at the expense of the entire planet. They have a gridlock on our media narrative and nothing will change until a catastrophe of epic proportions occurs. It just won’t. Then they’ll lie about their role in the denial and demand that we “look forward, not back”.
This is going to be a disaster.
Triassic Sands
Apparently, Mittens has no interest in the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. He must be positioning himself for a later time, when the effects of climate change have devastated the world, and everyone but Palin, Bachmann, Trump, and Erick son of Erick of the Erickson clan has finally admitted what was pretty obvious all along.
I think Romney would be a horrible president, but I am willing to give him a tiny good-for-you on this one. Still, when a Republican publicly accepts the reality of man-induced climate change (as opposed to Man-on-Dog climate change), the appropriate next sentence out of his or her mouth should be:
Petorado
First Gingrich attacks Ryancare, now Mitt admits to anthropogenic global warming. Methinks some Frank Luntz focus groups have had enough with rightwing-nutification. Have we reached peak wingnut?
joeyess
@cyd: well, truth be told, the EPA was created in Nixon’s era, but he did his best to see it wasn’t fully funded nor was it effective. As to his “healthcare plan”? It was based on getting everybody hooked on HMO’s and his close friends in the medical field that stood to profit.
El Cid
@cyd: That is correct. Domestically, Nixon had among the most liberal programs since LBJ.
cokane
@mclaren: Nice snark. I wish you had marshaled some facts to support any of your suppositions.
Elie
Many laughs tonight reading your comments.
I don’t think Romney is fit to be President and I am not worried about who that leaves for the Republicans. Its singularly telling that Palin opened her mouth again and Paul Revere ran through it…Maybe she got confused with the headless horseman…
Geez, can’t the Repubs even look like they have semi intelligent and honest potential candidates? Romney is a complete liar and flip flopper (as is Palin) but then she adds a measure of the most pure and high density stupidity known for any politician. Honestly, really, how did this country get here? How?
Steeplejack
@dogwood:
I think you’re right about this.
WyldPirate
@Spaghetti Lee:
Good gravy are you on crack, or what?
No way in hell Obama gets more than 45% in either state. No way.
I’m from Tennessee. It had one of the bigger shifts towards the McCain and the Rethugs when compared to the margins in ’04.
If you look at the county break down, there is a huge red swath that swept down Appalachia, hooked west in Tennessee and went straight through to Oklahoma.
The minority population in Tennessee is just far too low for Obama to even begin to carry that state.
Joe Buck
Careful. Remember when we were all confidently predicting that the Republicans would never nominate McCain, after all his infractions against the wingnut narrative?
I think Romney might think he has a shot running as the electable alternative, and if there are multiple crazy candidates running against each other and he can get corporate money to back him, he might have a shot.
Romney will do terribly in caucus states, but in many states you can vote in whatever primary you want, and the Dems won’t be having a presidential contest, so a lot of independents are going to be voting in the Republican primary. If it’s Bachman, Palin, the Godfather Pizza Guy or Mitt, who do they pick?
Kane
I was born in the day, but I wasn’t born yesterday!
In the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush also made similar comments. He then selected Christine Todd Whitman to head the EPA, only to publicly embarrass her and force her to resign after she stated that human activity is a real cause of the greenhouse effect.
In the 2008 campaign, McCain spoke about the issue of climate change throughout his campaign, telling voters that he was “convinced, without a doubt” in his mind that climate change is real. He argued for an increase in green technology and the importance of cap and trade system. Five months after losing the election, McCain was ripping Obama for his climate change proposal because it included a cap and trade system, which McCain described as a “giant government slush fund.”
Romney, like many in the Republican party, is more than willing to say or do anything to get elected. He has no intention whatsoever of addressing climate change.
Kane
NY Mag posted some of the comments found on the conservative blog Weasel Zippers:
“This should be the straw that broke the RINO’s back.”
“Thanks for playing. Please take your consolation prize (a year’s worth of car wax!) and leave the stage.”
“Throw Mittens on the scrap heap with the rest of them, his Presidential campaign is over before it even started.”
“Get lost loser. Rinos like Romney can kiss both sides of my hairy ass.”
“Nicely done… a 24 hour campaign comes to an end. Gotta be a record of some kind.”
“Yep, he pulled the plug.”
“Another nail in the coffin that holds his Presidental aspirations. Nope, never, no way should he be the nominee!”
“Stick a fork in him, he’s done.”
jonas
I don’t know if this will blow up in his face like Gingrich’s brief flirtation with criticism of the Ryan Plan, but he’ll be walking this back and fast. I know he’s trying to appear “not batshit insane” so as to distinguish himself from the likes of Bachmann and Cain, but there’s a name this year for not batshit insane Republicans who suggest climate change might be an issue we need to address — “not the nominee”.
Svensker
@Kane:
Agreed. If he gets the nom, which I think likely at this point given the choices, the nutwits will vote for him, as they did for McCain, just not very enthusiastically. He might pick up some cred by choosing Cain or Bachmann or similar insane person as VP. That’s what McCain did with Sarah, although do we know whether that was deliberate planning or just dumb luck?
sdhays
I think this is a smart move by Romney. All of the other loons in the race are falling over each other to prove who is the bigger fool for the tea partiers that they think run the party now. Romney is positioning himself as the moderate, electable Republican above the clown show, betting that, when push comes to shove, Republican primary voters aren’t going to go Goldwater this time. He may lose that bet, but it’s his best chance.
It all comes down to this: has Obama’s election in 2008 pushed enough Republican primary voters so over the edge that they can’t stop themselves from voting for another pure Goldwater-esq nominee, has the Money Party lost control of the Republicans, and will enough talibangelicals let Mormons into the “tribe”? I guess at least Mitt’s going to give it the old college try.
Like @some other guy said, conservatives hated McCain in 2007, and then they “held their nose” and nominated him like the good children they are since Daddy had made it clear that it was McCain’s turn. And don’t forget that Romney himself was the “conservative candidate” in 2008, despite being from Taxachusetts and running to the left of Ted Kennedy in 1994. Republicans are able to swallow anything once they get the signal that that’s what they supposed to do; David Vitter comes to mind.
WereBear
What does it matter? Republicans lie all the time anyway; it’s their default.
They could nominate anyone and the proles would fall into line; that’s what they do. They pulled the lever for “the maverick” and they will pull the lever for the “floppy Mormon.”
They don’t have to like it, geez. Where else will they go?
Shaqsquatch
Who is this Pete Moss fellow I keep hearing so much about and what’s his position on the Ryan plan?
Davis X. Machina
@Shaqsquatch:
Like all good Republicans, that’s not his real name. (A GOP tradition, from now — Willard “Mitt” Romney — all the way back to H.R. “Bob” Haldeman…)
He’s actually Sphagnum “Pete” Moss….
Tonal Crow
How many times do I have to say that the loons are running the GOPsylum before you accept that Palin’s going to be the GOP nominee?
Tonal Crow
@Kobie:
Are there any non-Orcs in the Republican party? Oh, sorry, yeah…there’re Ringwraiths too.
Keith G
@Tonal Crow: She wont; and those laughing Romney out of contention are laughing way too soon.
priscianusjr
“I’d rather be right than president.” — Henry Clay (1777-1852)