Mitt Romney is in Michigan so I thought I’d read a Michigan newspaper and see how his campaign is coming.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney begins a swing through Michigan tonight with a dinner fund-raiser, followed by events in Birmingham and Grosse Pointe on Wednesday.
Democratic activists were holding a sign-making event tonight in Detroit targeting Romney for a column he wrote two years ago for the New York Times in which he argued against providing financial investment for Chrysler and General Motors. President Obama and the White House have been using the carmakers’ turnaround as a success story.
Here’s the 2008 NYTimes Romney column that’s getting the activists all worked up in Michigan.
Briefly, he loves cars, he loved his dad, he loved his dad’s cars, everyone everywhere should be either fired immediately or paid much less.
I thought this next part of the column was much more interesting than Romney’s boilerplate business blather.
Out of nowhere, there’s this:
I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration.
20 billion dollars a year in federally-funded research! Science and the like! This he believes. Deeply. I wonder if he’ll stick to it in 2011. If he does, it will be the first time he’s ever stood by anything he ever said or did, but who knows. This was the 2008 Mitt Romney, and he’s a different person now. People change. Some people change a lot, and frequently. Following him is going to be a lot of work. I suggest we identify which version of Mitt Romney we’re talking about by using model years: 2004 Romney, 2008 Romney, 2010 Romney, and finally, the newest model, the 2012 Romney.
cleek
i had a 2002 Romney. fucking thing would only turn left if nobody important was looking.
Davis X. Machina
His dad may have loved cars, but Mitt only drives venture-capital funds.
Kay
@Davis X. Machina:
Oddly, he likes engineers. And designers. Not anyone else, though. The rest of the dead wood must go.
Hunter Gathers
Let’s just refer to him as Romney Mark IV.
Chuck Butcher
I own a 1950 Chevy COE 24K# dump-bed I trust farther than the Mitt whatever model year…
Cliff in NH
Scum:
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/article_b71cf9c8-918c-11e0-86ef-001cc4c002e0.html
MikeJ
He may love cars but his campaign is only for symphorophiliacs. (Thanks JG for the 50 cent word!)
stuckinred
@Chuck Butcher: Wow! I have a 66 longbed fleetside but a 50 COE, just wow! Do you have a cowl?
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: Management, but without labor, with their funny last names and accents, and odd colors.
And engineers and designers with their slide rules and their copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
The Boys’ Club. The White Boys’ Club. The White Boys With Degrees from the Enormous State University Club…
How 1958. He probably drives a Studebaker.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Only 5 days until the debate. Can’t wait to see Bachmann, Blingrich, et al. go after Mittens.
Chuck Butcher
@stuckinred:
It’s a cutie – if you like that sort of thing. Yes, it earns a living…
kay
@Cliff in NH:
It’s going to be brutal. The union busting bills mean a lot to them. I’m assuming Walker and Co. made promises they have to keep to various parties.
The Ohio repeal effort has opposition now, too. It’s the Koch brothers fake grass roots thing. What was nice was that the local paper announced the local launching of the opposition group with two largish photos of the Koch brothers running alongside the column. Hah!
Hello, wealthy libertarian gentlemen who are writing our state law. Are you from around here? :)
Warren Terra
True connoisseurs recognize that only an arriviste or poseur in the venerable field of Romney Appreciation would attempt to classify the different flavors of Romney merely by reference to biennial increments. New versions of Mitt Romney are presented to the public from the injection-molding facility in which they are manufactured at least as often as a new model every season, if not on a weekly basis. The designers hope that with improvements in their technology a new edition of Mitt Romney can be released every time the tide changes, so that reality can at last match metaphor.
jwb
@Cliff in NH: The three recalls of the Democratic senators were also approved today as well.
MikeJ
Saw an article last week I think that Repubs were trying to recruit manic progressives to run and split the vote in the republican recall races.
kay
@Davis X. Machina:
Is that what it is? I generally get along with engineers, socially, although I have never worked with one in any capacity, so maybe the stories are TRUE, and I just don’t know it :)
shortstop
That was a very funny and perfectly paced post, Kay.
D. Cloyce Smith
The Mitsubishi Romney? It’s a lemon in any year.
stuckinred
@Chuck Butcher: A real beauty. Here’s mine right after my paint job.
Cliff in NH
A Reminder that Romney Lied in his announcement speech:
http://blog.4president.org/2012/2011/06/mitt-romney-2012-presidential-campaign-announcement-speech-june-2-2011-stratham-new-hampshire-remark.html
That’s a Fucking Lie, I saw Obama Live on Bloomberg tv saying that unemployment would most likely peak at 10%
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=auTTvgeN294Y
stuckinred
@Chuck Butcher: This was Mr Big, we rescued him and the best we could figure he was a Maremma. Bout 145 and a wonderful playful pupster.
kay
@shortstop:
Thank you. It’s 110 degrees in here, so I’m going outside, where it’s a cool 90 degrees. I have to water the giant garden that I overplanted, because it kills me to pitch excess healthy seedlings. I have back ups to my back ups, and they’re all growing. It’s madness out there.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Romney recently sold two mansions he owned.
But not to worry, he still owns two other mansions.
He’s a picture of the vacation mansion he sold.
http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/998/slide_998_16553_large.jpg
Cliff in NH
It was interestingly hard to try and find my post from just days ago, cause I first put just this into the google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=mitt+romney+liar
MikeJ
@Mike Kay (Team America): More important than how many houses he has is does he know how many houses he has?
Chuck Butcher
@stuckinred:
Cool truck and dog. You may have seen Gus and grandson Brayden.
Anne Laurie
@Davis X. Machina:
Willard doesn’t drive, he is driven. Traffic from Belmont to Boston is brutal, so it’s only time-efficient for Masters of the Universe to spend their commute in the back of the limo, networking with fellow MotUs on how to eliminate American jobs, steal value from the newly unemployed workers’ pensions, and otherwise transform our abused nation into the fiefdom of every Banana Republican’s dreams!
Triassic Sands
Don’t forget the 2013 Mitt sitting in the Oval Office. Any person with as little personal conviction as the 2011 Mitt will be dangerous beyond reckoning if given real power.
jl
I’ve been thinking about buying a Romney, but not sure I want a convertible. Ba da boom!
Ha ha. Get it? Convertible?
I went to the doctor and held my hand up,
and said it hurts when I do this.
And the doc said… then don’t do that.
Take my wife, please.
Twenty-five Republican presidential candidates walk into a bar (two of them for soda pop) and one of them says…
(I am still working on that joke).
But, I think that if Romney wins the nomination, the campaign will be about as serious as that. Except Romney has the best chance of winning, and that is serious.
Malron aka eclecticbrotha
Oh yeah, sure he does. Or did. But even if he still believes it, how long would he stick to it if some scientist discovered a possibility that adding ground lemon rinds to gasoline could increase fuel efficient by 10% but needed further research and some very serious Republican cherry-picked the study as an example of wasteful government?
stuckinred
@Chuck Butcher: I saw the other picture of Gus getting a bath but this one is great! I should have mentioned that was why I posted Mr Big’s mug shot.
JGabriel
Post really should have been titled: This Year’s Model.
.
Malron aka eclecticbrotha
@jl: How about this:
I know. Needs work.
lol
@cleek:
Done in one. No one needed to post after this.
RossInDetroit
@Malron aka eclecticbrotha:
My brother’s a materials scientist. He used to work at Argonne. Did research on lubricants and wear for advanced internal combustion engines. The funding dried up under Bush.
Malron aka eclecticbrotha
Ken Doll/Jindal 2012
Jager
@Chuck Butcher: Nothing like a big, old, stove bolt 292 6. I used to haul grain on my grampa’s farm with a straight cab ’49.
stuckinred
@Jager: Sometimes I wish I had one of those instead of the 350.
Jeffro
@RossInDetroit: Research on lubricants dried up under Bush? Why am I about to bust out laughing?
Mark S.
@MikeJ:
The stupidest statement not made by Mark Halperin during the 2008 election was Hindrocket from Powerline saying that it wasn’t surprising that McCain couldn’t remember how many houses he had because Hindrocket couldn’t remember how many ties he owned.
I see he came back and added an update:
Um, okay. Folks, it’s only going to get exponentially dumber next year.
Martin
Google says we don’t need that.
Google says we don’t need ICE either.
RossInDetroit
@Jeffro:
No advances in lubrication but there was plenty of friction under Bush.
Aaaannnd I’m gonna stop there.
Jager
@stuckinred: Slipped one in a ’54 Sedan Delivery,some work on the head, cam, carbs and headers, sounded like a Jag six at 5,000 rpm. There was a very radical 292 in a G gas drag car called 6 Pack to Go, used 2 aluminum Chevy V8 heads made into 3 cylinder models, really nicely engineered and very fast and exotic. Merkin in-gin-new-ity, yah know!
Chuck Butcher
@stuckinred:
Nah, thing’s great at low speed but it sucks gas like it’s going out of style and doesn’t have the power to get out of its own way above mid-rpm range. That means 45mph is it for anything happening by putting the pedal to the metal.
HL_guy
Normally, when a Republican claims to support something I support, like Mittens did (in this case, quintupling basic research budgets), my respond is to assume they are lying, because these promises never seem to present themselves in actual policies.
With Romney, I don’t believe he’s lying. Instead, I’m pretty sure he has completely lost the thread and doesn’t know what he believes any more, or it simply changes so quickly that it can’t actually be tracked by normal human brains, even his own.
Chuck Butcher
@Jager:
Track I race at has a Gas/Altered 6 banger race – cool stuff but there are a lot cheaper ways to get HP.
stuckinred
@Jager: You, chuck and oldhughmanatee! I grew up loving Stone Woods and Cook, Big John Mazmanian and the rest of the gassers. Can’t really get into funny cars.
stuckinred
@Chuck Butcher: Here’s my 56 GMC Panel that I owned in the 70’s.
shortstop
@kay: mmmm, Ohio jungles! How I do love summer.
ChrisNYC
O/T — Wow. The (fantastic) Solicitor General said today during the oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act: “Maybe it violates the constitution of Ayn Rand but it doesn’t violate the United States Constitution.” (This was after very heartfelt speechifying on liberty and the 10th and 14th As.)
Cliff in NH
This is going out to the parental units:
from http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/6/6/123621/8441
And this:
The Who: Won’t Get Fooled Again
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUbGLVvfB7Y
Jager
@Chuck Butcher: When I was a kid fooling around with cars, a guy a few years older went from V8 to 6’s. He was studying engineering and liked the challenge and he had the skills. He sold me a small block V8, 301 cid cam, heads, etc. I put into a one owner 48 Ford Tudor, slammed it and went through rear ends so many times I could replace the gears and or axles in about 20 minutes. Finally wised up a put a Ford 1/2 ton rear end in and switched to an open drive shaft and leaf springs. I was such a dumb kid, it took awhile to realize the 48 was heavier than any tri-5 and I wasted my time, money and butchered a perfect 48……
Chuck Butcher
Since the ’11 Romney somehow turned this into gearhead thread I give you my wife’s one time daily driver. It is a lot lighter than a tri-5 and on 92 octane this 350 is turning out 425HP and pushing this car with 3.42 gears down the track to 12.75 sec @ sealevel @3150# w/driver. The thing is more of a sports car than drag car.
Chuck Butcher
@stuckinred:
I had a ’59 Chevy Suburban (same thing w/4 headlights) in the late 70s. Former USAF truck. A wonderful thing…
Cliff in NH
First edit, How accurate do you guys think it is? Corrections/Improvements welcome.
cursorial
Maybe we can sort the evolution of Mitt Romney into groups of semi-consistent positions and give them version numbers to make it easier. In the event President Mitt doesn’t work out, we can always revert to an earlier stable version.
Mitt 1.0 (Businessman, centrist, healthcare reform good, abortion ok),
Mitt 2.0 (Healthcare reform evil, abortion evil),
Mitt 2.1 (2.0 + Auto bailouts also evil),
Mitt 3.0 (State Health Reform good but learning from it evil)
Mitt 3.1a (release candidate, Auto Bailouts Evil But Having Them Work Was My Idea)