Steve Benen and Jonathan Chait are flagging an excerpt from Mitt Romney’s new stump speech (Chait calls it “Glenn Beck-level insane”):
Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.
In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government….
Add this moderate-liberalism-equals-socialism crap to the Birtherism Lite of Romney foreign-policy attacks on Obama — frankly, I don’t care whether he said “keep America American” or “keep America America,” he’s still accusing Obama of not being loyal to his country — and we’ve got … well, what have we got?
In all likelihood, we’ve got 2000 all over again. Romney now, like Bush then, hasn’t always spoken like a flaming wingnut throughout his political career (and didn’t fully behave like one in the governor’s office) — which means that Romney now, like Bush then, is going to be called a “moderate” during the general election campaign no matter what he says in his speeches. Romney’s Massachusetts past, like Bush’s cooperation with Texas Democrats and prattle about “compassionate conservatism,” is going to give him carte blanche to say anything without the mainstream press grasping the fact that if he’s talking wingnut, it means he intends to govern as a wingnut.
Some beat reporter from 2000 — I think it was Adam Clymer — said after Bush took office that his right-wing leanings were obvious all through the campaign if you just bothered to read his policy proposals and listen to him on the stump. This stuff was hiding in plain sight. Everyone just ignored it. And they’re probably going to ignore it again.
****
Kevin Drum asks:
But what about the general election? Independents aren’t going to go for this stuff. They’ll just shake their heads and wonder what the hell he’s talking about. So is he going to ditch this stuff completely after he’s won the nomination and pretend that he never said it? Or will he keep pressing, literally hoping that if you say anything often enough you can get people to believe it?
Oh, he can keep saying it. The political cost Republicans have paid for calling Obama a commie and an America-hater is precisely zero: “socialist” is simply this decade’s synonym for “liberal” said with a sneer, and all that Kenyan/Muslim/anti-colonial/bows-to-world-leaders stuff is the new “hippie peacenik appeaser.” Romney’s “nice” version of it will be to preface it by calling Obama a “nice man.” That confers blanket immunity.
****
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog).
DougJ
I agree, he’ll pay no price for it in the general.
rlrr
I still can’t figure out why being anti-colonial in the USA should be considered a negative…
Veritas
Yup, better get used to that sickening feeling, liberals, cause SteveM just nailed this one.
Romney will win next year, thanks in large part to Citizens United and the Koch Brothers, and also the neutering of ACORN and the new election integrity laws.
And there’s nothing you can do about it.
Obambi is a loser. LOSER. L-O-S-E-R.
Zifnab
I wouldn’t even really go that far. He’s playing the quintessential classic conservative by standing up and saying “Change is bad! Change is scary! Everything is fine in America so whatever you do, don’t change anything or you’ll wreck the place.” This rhetoric will go out the window the moment Romney gets a chance to gut Medicare or Social Security. But on its face, it is textbook conservative. Saying its an attack on Obama’s patriotism is a stretch.
Comrade Javamanphil
Call me a hopeless romantic but I believe that there are at least a few percentage points of independents who will hear this stuff and rightly conclude that the man is a loon or a liar regardless of what David Gregory or Chuck Todd say. The price won’t be as large as it should be for such blatant dishonesty, but I still think there is one and am hopeful that it is sufficient.
Egg Berry
@rlrr:
Anti-colonial = anti-American exceptionalism
Yutsano
@Veritas:
So you freely admit the only way you win is by cheating? Good to know you can’t win on ideas and integrity.
Veritas
I’m hoping for another 2000 or 2004 election, actually. The bitter disappointment among leftists and the cries of “THEFT!” and empty threats to move to Canada will be a sweet, sweet savor.
JMG
As we have seen in the primary campaign, people don’t warm up to Romney — for good reason I may add as a Mass. resident. That’s his problem, not lying and rhetoric. But for once I agree with Steve M. The desire of Official Washington Press to be governed by a “moderate” (will cut MY taxes, won’t mess in MY sex life) Republican is so strong, they’ll call any Republican that who manages to get nominated. Well, maybe not Michelle.
Veritas
@Yutsano
Keep crying and whining, loser. Democrats: The Party of Losing.
Emma
@Veritas: Considering your demonstrated predictive ability, we’ll have four more years of Obama.
Though it warms my heart to see a Republican admitting that the only way they can win is by rigging the game.
Veritas
@Emma
Using the right of free speech is “rigging the game” now? Protections against voter fraud through election integrity laws is “cheating”?
More Democrat Newspeak, I see.
rb
DNFTT. For FFS DNFTMFT.
Yutsano
@Veritas: It’s your confession. I’m not whining. I’m demonstrating ideas that improve lives and make things better for all of us. You got cheating.
Veritas
So who will be responsible for “stealing” the election this time? The Kochtopus? “The Korporashunz”? Will it be the “stupid Americans”?
I know, plan on ranting about moving to Canada or Europe or New Zealand! That’s always sweet to read after your losses.
gogol's wife
@Yutsano:
I love the euphemism for vote suppression: “election integrity laws.”
Villago Delenda Est
When Mitt the Parasite goes down in spectacular fashion, approaching Goldwater’s burial under the LBJ landslide of ’64, the cowardly shit UnrealityCheck/Veritas will not be found in these parts.
I look forward to doing a Snoopy dance on his grave.
Veritas
@gogol’s wife
Here in Indiana the Obama campaign in ’08 bused in homeless people from Kentucky and Chicago to come and vote–no questions asked, in exchange for cigarettes and booze.
Is that OK in your book?
Yutsano
@gogol’s wife: Frank Luntz must have come out with that new talking point for his minions.
@Veritas: [citation needed]
Neddie Jingo
@Veritas:
Bookmark it, libs!
slag
With all due respect…
It’s amazing what a tie, a deep voice, and a pale complexion lets one get away with in this country. For starters, it lets you pretend that being born on third means you hit a triple. Good gig, if you can get it.
Hill Dweller
What does shortening the early voting period and implementing draconian registration laws that force non-partisan organizations like the League of Women Voters to stop registering people?
This is nothing more than voter suppression, which gives you insecure, self-loathing authoritarians a chubby.
Veritas
@slag
Aaaaaand the race card gets played!
I think the sweetest part of the coming Obambi defeat will be the non-stop whining, hand-wringing, and shouting about “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISM!”
Dave
I disagree for a couple of reasons. First, Obama is a much better campaigner than Gore ever was and will know how to hang Romney’s far-right shit around his neck like a weight.
Second, compare the media of 12 years ago to today. In particular, the maturation of multiple video and social sites on the Internet. It will be hard for Romney to get away from sounding like a Tea Party psycho when the video clips are run repeatedly on YouTube and posted constantly on Facebook.
Comrade Mary
Yutsano, you mistyped “medication needed”.
Bex
@Veritas: Save your chain emails for the idiots who believe them.
Dave
@Veritas: The only question in 2012 is how much Obama will win by.
rlrr
I’ll go one further. Does Veritas have any evidence that even one vote for Obama was fraudulent.
Hill Dweller
Sorry, part of my last post got cut off. It should say:
What does shortening the early voting period and implementing draconian registration laws, forcing non-partisan organizations like the League of Women Voters to stop registering people, have to do with voter integrity?
This is nothing more than voter suppression, which gives you insecure, self-loathing authoritarians a chubby.
Veritas
@Dave
And he will “win”, but not be reelected, because the election will have been “OMG STOLEN BY TEH DIEBOLD AGAIIIIN!!!”, amirite?
sherparick
A complete Movement Conservative strawman creation of course. Also, spoken by a man who is completely cynical and indifferent to the truth. From Greg Sargeant’s Plum Line and Steve Benen’s Political Animal.
“A b.s. artist doesn’t much care what’s true or false, because facts are extraneous details that have no bearing on the person’s larger agenda. Liars care what’s true and deliberately say the opposite; b.s. artists are indifferent to what’s true and tend to see facts as inconveniences that simply get in the way.
In this case, the Republican campaign has been quite candid about it perspective on this, and has repeatedly said that the dishonest ad “worked” and was “effective” because it generated attention and an angry response…
Truth, facts, evidence, reason, decency, fairness — for Romney and his team, none of this matters. It’s not that they’re considering whether to be honorable; they’ve convinced themselves that the question itself is irrelevant.”
I would note that one difference between Romney and Dubya. For some reason the MSM media high school fell in “love” with cool kid “Dubya” and despised that geek, Al Gore. So, despite the fact that Dubya’s campaign was one deception and Rovian howler after another, Al Gore was the the candidate who “lied” and “bragged.” However, one thing is clear this year, even though it often focuses on the most trivial (see Gail Collins and dogs), the MSM has come to detest Romney.
Veritas
Getting a driver’s license is “Draconian”?
Whatever.
JGabriel
There’s an uncalculated cost for that coming down the pike — it’s making actual socia1ism much acceptable to the younger generations. They keep hearing Obama is a socia1ist and think, “Well, socia1ism must be pretty cool then. Maybe we should try to be more like Europe with respect to socia1ist health care and all that helping people in financial trouble socia1ist shit.”
It makes the base happy to call Dems “socia1ists”, but it doesn’t sway independents, and it makes actual social democracy more acceptable to young voters.
I can live with that.
.
Veritas
I mean I know standing in line at the DMV sucks and everything, but stop crying.
Dave
@Veritas: No, you’re not. Obama will win the popular vote, win the electoral college and make whichever idiot comes out of the GOP Clown Car look like a fool in the process.
Veritas
@JGabriel
Yes, let’s be more like Italy, Greece, Spain, etc., in debt up to our eyeballs through spending on things we can’t afford. That’d be great.
Chyron HR
@Veritas:
Can we have a different troll, please? This one is arguing with itself.
JGabriel
@Veritas:
Hey, Veritas, spoken to your fellow right-wing religious-fundamentalist America-hater Osama bin Laden lately?
Oh, yeah, not. Because Obama KILLED him.
Some loser, eh?
.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Veritas: Stop crying? You first. I know it must be incredible butthurt to know you’ve attached your wagon to a clown car and another four years of Obama, but seriously get some Preperation H at least.
jackmac
@Veritas: “Romney will win next year, thanks in large part to Citizens United and the Koch Brothers, and also the neutering of ACORN and the new election integrity laws.”
Shouldn’t you be spewing this bullshit over at Redstate. Or did they ban you for being an idiot?
Veritas
@Chyron
I just love rubbing it in your face that the Koch Bros. have UNLIMITED, CORPORATE CASH to run a negative campaign against Obambi without Mitt so much as getting his hands the slightest bit dirty.
Sucks for you, don’t it? Mad?
dmsilev
This troll is boring. Can we get that hyper-Nader “burn it all down so that Progressivetopia can rise from the ashes” guy back instead? At least he was different.
gbear
@Veritas: You’ll find out when your old enough to get one.
Villago Delenda Est
This is an interesting passage from the Romneybot’s new stump speech:
Given that he wanted all sorts of entitlements to insure that if he fucked up, there would be no consequences, when he was given the mission of starting up Bain Capital, this is indeed a curious thing for the Romneybot to be spouting about.
Do as I say, not as I’ve done, says the cowardly shitstain Mitt Romney.
schrodinger's cat
I find this defeatism and constant negativity tiresome. Since odds are stacked up against us, should we just curl up into a ball and die?
ETA: The base loved Bush while they hate Romney. That’s why we have these flavor of the week candidates. It is rather stupid to extrapolate from elections past. Just because something happened in the
past doesn’t mean it will happen again.
lamh35
Pres. Obama shopping at Best Buy in Alexandria, VA. (Pool photo by Shawna Trhomas).
yfrog.com/kjttnxnj
dmsilev
@jackmac:
Being an idiot has *never* been a bannable offense at RedState. If it was, they wouldn’t have anyone left.
Hill Dweller
This is just another another example of Romney’s glass jaw. Obama’s poll numbers start rising, Romney panics and goes full on teahadist.
It took the entire Republican establishment destroying Gingrich to prevent Romney from losing. I can’t wait to see Willard Howell III try and pretend to represent the middle class.
Oh, and Huntsman is hammering Romney in NH today for his involvement in Bain laying off people in that state.
slag
@Veritas: Actually, that would be the class, gender, and race card.
And why are my comments getting eated? I’m starting to take it personal.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Veritas: Pay attention kids, this is what the kid who got picked last in kickball sounds like. Enjoy him before his mommy comes home and kicks him off the computer.
BGinCHI
Hey Veritas, do us a favor and list Romney’s strengths and why you’ll be voting for him.
Thanks.
FlipYrWhig
@Veritas: Also, they brought these animals back from Mexico because they thought they were dogs, but they were actually giant rats, and then some of them woke up in bathtubs full of ice missing one kidney. I only found out about it from this guy with a hook for a hand who was hanging out on my car roof one foggy night.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@FlipYrWhig: Have you told Adam and Jamie about this?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@BGinCHI: You’re assuming he’s old enough to vote.
rlrr
@Dave:
A part of me hopes Obama loses the popular vote and wins the electoral college. The howls of outrage from the right would be deafening as will the whining about how the will of the people should be respected. The contortions Fox “News” and conservative talk radio would have to go through to explain how such an Obama victory is different then Bush in 2000 would be a source of amusement…
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Thread needs better troll. This one just talks about pie.
slag
@lamh35: Ugh. What a shitty place to shop. Doesn’t he know he can buy whatever cheap crap he needs from the comfort of his own residence and have it delivered directly to him? It’s called the Internet, President Obama!
KG
@Veritas: you’re right, we should cut spending on things we don’t need. How much do you want to cut Defense spending by? I think if we half it, we’d still be spending more than all of Europe and China combined. That a good place to start?
Veritas
@Slag
Ah, yes, the Holy Trinity of Leftist–Class, “Gender” (which as far as I’m concerned doesn’t exist, only sex does) and Race.
Blessed be Leftism: Class, Gender, and Race, and blessed be their Kingdom, now and forever!
Chyron HR
@Veritas:
Do Republicans actually think this would work, or are you just that desperate for a silver lining to the cloud that is Mitt “Waiting for the Spaceship to Moroni” Romney?
Villago Delenda Est
@rlrr:
The Rethugs had a plan in place in 2000 to do exactly that, if the deserting coward won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College.
They didn’t need to use it, mainly because five traitors on the Supreme Court intervened to install the worthless cowardly shit in Al Gore’s office.
Citizen_X
Because that worked out so well for the country.
terraformer
My, the professional trolls are out in force as of late.
Must be getting hot around here, the inverse correlation between one party’s chances and the other’s.
And with the added bonus that people tend to leave a discussion when overrun by said trolls’ penchant for leaving substantive questions or points unanswered, opting instead to continually hit the ‘Submit’ button.
Veritas
@Villago
Waaaah, waaah-waaah, whine some more about the 2000 election, crybaby. I’m Lovin’ it!
Hill Dweller
@Veritas: Can you read? I said draconian registration laws.
All these winger governors have made it impossible for non-partisan organizations like the League of Women voters and the Boy Scouts to hold registration drives. These organizations have been registering voters for decades, but they are stopping because of the insane hurdles and fines imposed by crazy legislation meant to ultimately suppress turnout.
BGinCHI
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: I can feel the old Hoosier Hysteria from here.
We’ve got a really porous border with those insurgents coming over for our culture all the time.
Even Peyton Manning couldn’t stand them so he pretended to be injured this year.
Veritas
@Villago
BTW, did the “Rethuglicans” also “steal” the 2000 election through satanic diebold machines secretly controlled by Dick Cheney in the basement of the Naval Observatory? Do tell. I want to hear all your crackpot theories.
rlrr
@Villago Delenda Est:
I remember reading an article back in 2000 detailing that very strategy…
JGabriel
@Veritas:
To be fair, I was thinking more along the lines of social democracies like Norway (where you’re pal Anders Breivik shot socia1ist kids), Sweden, Finland, Germany, France … all of whom grant their citizens better health care, have less income inequality, and none of whom are doing significantly worse than we are, and most of whom are doing arguably better than us financially.
Seems like a much better route to take than becoming like the Somali libertarian paradise (I have cholera!) Republicans want to lead us to.
.
Chyron HR
@Veritas:
Whine some more about the 2008 election, crybaby. Have it your way!
David
Romney’s campaign is doomed as he will be forced to pick an admitted fringe Wingnut/Birther as his VP nominee.
Veritas
@BGinCHI–
You live in a dying wasteland of a city that will be Detroit South in about 20 years.
Comrade Dread
I know truth doesn’t matter much in politics, but here are some quotes from Teddy Roosevelt (the only Republican I would consider voting for these days. Yes, even his rotting corpse would be a better candidate than Romney.)
“Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the ‘the game belongs to the people.’ So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.”
“This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.”
“There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.”
“No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective — a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”
The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.
We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the businessman is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.
Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
“We stand equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob. There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with “the money touch,” but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.”
JGabriel
@Veritas:
You know, you do a flawless imitation of yourself.
.
lamh35
Does the pie filter work for iPad?
Comrade Dread
@JGabriel:
But I’d be an excellent pirate. I can hold my breath for 10 minutes!
j
Adam Clymer. He’s the one Bush called a “major league asshole” and Cheney replied ” yeah, big time”. (In front of an open mic at a rally of “conservative Christians”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8w7Yz1Htz4
JGabriel
@Veritas:
And you live in a dying wasteland of a mind that looks like the photographs from Terri Schiavo’s autopsy report.
.
Veritas
Come on, guys, was 2004 a “stolen” election too?
slag
I love it when conservatives pretend that race, class, and gender play no role whatsoever in how this country is run. Even after they were expressly written into the founding documents of this country. Into the CONSTITUTION, no less!
And yet, God is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, but we just know he’s in there. An upperclass, middle-aged, white daddy figure in the sky.
Fascinating.
Veritas
@Slag
I’m an atheist. You worship the Trinity of Class-Gender-Race, like all leftists.
auntieeminpaz
Sometimes the desperation among Republicans amuses me, but mostly it disgusts me.
lamh35
I here POTUS called out Boner by name
Posted at 02:50 PM ET, 12/20/2011
Obama directly calls out Boehner: Stop the games
By Greg Sargent
Satanicpanic
Veritas is a parody troll. He gave it away in his first post- here:
No real troll spells loser with only one O.
lamh35
@lamh35: Damn can’t edit, i meant to add that I saw this on the news just now in NOLA. So it seems that local news are leading with Obama’s callout to boner yesterday?
Chyron HR
@Veritas:
Do you still think Herman Cain is going to be Romney’s VP pick, or did you finally notice that he only fits two of your three criteria?
Calouste
@Comrade Dread:
Monkey Island reference FTW.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Getting away from infants tossing shit across the thread and back to the topic…
The media wants their bloody horse race, and if it means burying all of Mittens’ pandering to the Tea Party then so be it. The problem is, as its been blatantly advertised over the summer and fall, that not even his own party trusts Mitt Romney. Not even after spending four plus years running for President. You couldn’t make his fraudulence more transparent if you replaced him with Claude Rains. Hell, he could get jacked by Ron Fucking Paul in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The media desperately wants him to be That Guy but they desperately wanted Secretary Clinton and Senator McCain to be That Guy as well. And we all know how well that worked out for those two.
slag
@Veritas:
If recognizing reality is called worshiping, I guess I also worship the space-time continuum, gravity, and evolution. Damn! I’ve got a lot of human sacrificin’ to do!
carpeduum
Yawn….more random dot connecting and crystal balling from Wrong Again Cole’s typing monkeys……yawn.
About as accurate as cutting the head off a chicken….
JGabriel
@Veritas:
Sure you are, you Jesus-loving homophobic freak. Don’t you get it? It’s not possible to vote Republican and NOT be a racist Conservofascist Jesus-loving closeted homophobic freak — that’s what Republicans idealize!
Therefore, you must worship and adore the holy GOP trinity of Jesus, Ayn Rand, and Nathan Bedford, any denials not withstanding.
.
Roger Moore
@slag:
I suspect that he is shopping in person because it gives him an excuse to go out and do ordinary person stuff (and press the flesh with Real Americans(TM)) for a change.
Judas Escargot
@Veritas:
And I love how the GOP House just blew the only chance of the Keystone Pipeline being approved anytime this year.
Hand, overplayed: Beauty.
That’s a little bit less ‘unlimited cash’ lining the Koch Bros. pockets, just in time for Xmas.
Ab_Normal
Tangential: Were I not so lazy, I’d rewrite Jonathan Coulton’s Tom Cruise Crazy as Glenn Beck Crazy.
chopper
man, continuously trying to rationalize voting for romney is really rotting veritas’s brain.
poor mitt. he went to grab the dog whistle and picked up a duck call.
dmsilev
@chopper:
Objection! Assumes that there was a brain present to rot in the first place.
LAC
@Veritas:
Did someone order the second plate of crazy ass?
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est:
Gotta admit, Dim Son did get 100% of the minority vote, and how often can a Republican claim that?
dmsilev
And meanwhile, Brave Sir Romney won’t commit himself on the political issue of the day. I know you’re all gasping with shock.
In fairness to Romney, he’s already flipflopped once on the payroll tax (he used to want to get rid of the cut entirely), and probably hasn’t decided yet whether to flipflop a second time, and if so in what direction.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
I must concur with my colleague. It’s pretty obvious that the inside of UnrealityCheck/Veritas’ cranium is a void. What kind of void? Well, an empty void.
The little reptile brain, though, is working overtime, and it may overheat and cause a cascading meltdown throughout his entire twitchy nervous system.
Which should be most amusing to observe.
Mnemosyne
Can John hire some new trolls for the new year? The ones we have are old and boring. It’s like when your Chatty Cathy doll breaks and can only say one phrase over and over again no matter how many times you pull the string.
dmbeaster
Though Obama has his own tact for dealing with the non-stop right wing lies, for us, take a page out of the successful right wing playbook on this. Just non-stop call the media in the tank for R’s. Hit back hard on the rhetoric by calling right wing scum for what they are. That includes out favorite trolls here. This is not about careful nuance, but messaging.
For example, yesterday Kevin Drum was splitting hairs about the Politifact nonsense re Medicare. That is 100% ridiculous and stupid. Take back the memes with your own, and press it forward.
We can still debate the fine points here, but the public perception and voting are going to be based on simple messages. There is no reason to dilute the simple message about the bad behavior of the Rs. Go for it and retake the message. Call Romney the liar that he is. Dont grab hankies when he does it, or the media cluelessly doesnt engage it. Call them out for being patsies. Its a rhetorical war in which careful reasoning is unfortunate collateral damage.
Bex
@carpeduum: Yawn…carpeduum…yawn.
slag
@Roger Moore: I’m sure you’re right. But Best Buy? I find it disturbing that being a Real American (TM) is so closely tied to buying cheap electronics from China. It feels feeble and trite. Besides…I hear they’re commies over there.
cmorenc
@DougJ:
The damaging thing Romney WILL pay for, regardless of any media tendency to fluff him with a “moderate Republican” narrative, is that unlike George Bush, Romney has repeatedly proven unable to conceal or convincingly camouflage his true nature as an entitled, utterly insincere prick of the sort who sets off instinctive red flags across a huge swath the middle-class electorate. It isn’t so much any remaining variances between his current positions and ones fully compliant with current right wing true-conservative ideology that cause him so much difficulty winning over tea party and other hard-core factions within his own party; it’s that their reading of the man is that they don’t trust him, personally.
Ironic, isn’t it that progressives and tea-party conservatives so closely share the same damaging insight about Romney’s character, albeit the reasons this is respectively troubling to them are quite different (for conservatives, they don’t trust him to reliably pursue conservative policies, for progressives, they don’t trust him to depart from them despite any purported “move to the middle” he may attempt in the general election). George Bush didn’t have anywhere remotely near this sort of problem throughout the 2000 campaign, though his true character nearly caught up with him near the very end. His election was only saved by two slivers of frayed thread: the manipulations of the Florida Secretary of State and a corruptly dishonest partisan faction within the US Supreme Court.
JGabriel
@LAC:
In ConservoFascist Veritas, you don’t order Crazy Ass; Crazy Ass order you.
.
Jager
As a former Masshole, I never got Romney. While he was Governor, he would fly off to South Carolina, Texas, Georgia or some other red state and make a speech that would piss all over Massachusetts and then act surprised when he got back to the Statehouse that he’d be questioned on his comments. Tone deaf, brain dead shitty governor. He did look good compared to Jane Swift, though.
jibeaux
Sweet jebus, the troll santorum in here. Start over with an unmolested thread, please, and FFS BJ DNFTFT IMI (I Mean It)
lamh35
Sign of the times when this happens and makes no splash at all. Know hope??
2 women share 1st kiss at US Navy ship’s return
Kiss marks first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen for homecoming tradition
FormerSwingVoter
The troll ratio seems high today.
Mnemosyne
Though I do love that, in the previous thread, Veritas was calling for widows to be cut off from their dead spouses’ pensions in the name of budget-cutting. Because, really, if we can’t cut elderly widows off from their sole source of income, how can we call ourselves Americans? Let those 80-year-old women get jobs if they don’t want to starve to death, amirite, Veritas?
lamh35
BJ will be happy to know Obama bought a toy for Bo. It cost $24.99. I know cause a reporter actually asked the Press Sec what did t mean that POTUS was out buying such an “expensive” toy as that? Expensive??? Compared to what a million dollar mansion (mittens) or a $500,000 credit at Tiffany’s?
My god this press corps is stupid.
Martin
@lamh35: SEE! LESBIANS MAKE YOU FORGET HOW TO EMBED LINKS. TEH GHEYS RUIN EVERYTHING!
lacp
It might be amusing to do a remix of all the Romneybot’s hits for the last 20 years, stick in a couple of quarters, and listen to what comes out.
Kane
Team Romney appears to have adopted a familiar theme similar to the one often offered by Bush and McCain and others for the defense of their Iraq policies. Instead of wrapping himself in the American flag and accusing critics of the war of being unpatriotic dividers, Romney is wrapping himself in the flag of “Free Enterprise” and arguing that any criticism of his actions at Bain of destroying American jobs and outsourcing jobs abroad is an attack on free enterprise itself and that you’re dividing Americans.
It’s a narrative that we can look forward to hearing a lot more of unless some smart people start drawing a distinction between captains of industry and corporate raiders and parasites.
Roger Moore
@chopper:
LOL.
Montana
Disagree with Steve M. He believes the right is the nightmare in the closet we cannot beat. So, he gives up before every battle. He contributes little but shaking knees. I quit reading his posts months ago. Sorry to see him here.
Montana
Disagree with Steve M. He believes the right is the nightmare in the closet we cannot beat. So, he gives up before every battle. He contributes little but shaking knees. I quit reading his posts months ago. Sorry to see him here.
ruemara
@lamh35: None of your links are working right. No Obama pic porn and your link on the kiss heads back here. :(
lamh35
Aww damn. Stupid iPad & my aunts cheap Internet connections
daveX99
I beg to differ: “Kenyan/Muslim/anti-colonial/bows-to-world-leaders” means “Blackity-Blackity-Blackity-UnAmericanAppeaser”
Betty Cracker
@Montana: Aw, Montana, that’s just mean. While I do think of Steve as the “Eeyore of the Leftosphere” sometimes (I say that with love, Steve!), I think he’s a good writer who offers excellent insights on many topics. I’m glad he’s here.
BGinCHI
@Veritas: I can’t hear you because of the jazz and the rock and the classical and the opera and the cheering fans at the games and all the people chatting about the food at all the restaurants and bars and I need to get over to the lakefront for a ride and then coffee.
But hey, you enjoy your Butterburger.
And you know how I know all that? Born and raised in rural Indiana, you stupid, lazy dipshit. I know more about that place than you ever will.
amphodale
I have this feeling a lot of the horse-race charades happening now will be exposed during the first general election debate. You know, when Obama says:
“I passed a health care law just like yours. Refute that.”
Or
“We killed Osama. Refute that.”
Romney would just pretzel himself into looking like a jackass.
boss bitch
Oh look, another BJ post swallowed up by a resident troll.
BGinCHI
@amphodale: Or jackass himself into looking like a pretzel.
He likes to have it both ways.
David Hunt
@rlrr:
I like the sentiment, but it’s been well documented that Bush won the 2000 election 5 to 4.
S. cerevisiae
@lamh35: Has that shithead reporter ever been to Petco? Twenty five bucks is about right for a really nice dog toy and besides Obama can afford it. We got our dog a toy with 3 squeaky birds and a birdhouse for them and Maggie just loved trying to get the birds out of the house. I don’t remember how much it was but I do remember her soft frisbee alone was about twelve bucks.
A Humble Lurker
@Roger Moore:
Maybe this is 11-dimensional chess talk, but alongside that I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes to regular folk hangouts to boost their business. Sort of a mini-stimulus. Like, if you knew the President had come to or was in an area in your town, you might be inclined to stop by. Maybe buy a few things.
MikeJ
@lamh35: I think it means that Obama is doing his part for the economy by buying stuff. The real question is why isn’t the reporter buying stuff?
Mnemosyne
@A Humble Lurker:
I know he specifically did that on “Small Business Saturday” (or whatever it’s called) by going to a locally-owned bookstore in DC with his two girls.
Suffern ACE
He’s cribbing Bill Bennett’s speeches for the past 20 years. I wonder if he won those from the Moralism Czar in a bet.
j
@Davis X. Machina: “Dim Son”
FOR THE WIN!! I have never heard that one.
WereBear (itouch)
The President bought Bo a dog toy? He’s got my vote!
A great time for an enterprising journalist to compare and contests these two likely candidates on the subject of dog care. Too bad we don’t have any such journalists.
SRW1
Would somebody please be so kind to pick up the pacifier and stick it back into the trolls mouth?
j
@BGinCHI: Rankings
The 25 Most Economically Powerful Cities in the World
Chicago: Number 4
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/09/25-most-economically-powerful-cities-world/109/#slide4
Beat Paris, Madrid, Mexico City, Singapore etc.
BGinCHI
@j: Exactly.
And the troll probably lives in Martinsville or someplace with a proud Klan heritage from the ’20s.
Powerful in white supremacy if not in actual production of anything useful.
forked tongue
@Veritas: ENOUGH ABOUT PIE, ALREADY!!!
redski
if i missed it upthread, i’ve said it before–Clymer is one major-league asshole.
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
I was hoping you’d do that. Chicago is by far the best city in the country. This troll just really gets my goat so much more than all the other ones.
Emma
@slag: Can you say “symbolism” class? I know you could!
BGinCHI
@gogol’s wife: I tried to resist but it’s the holidays so my fuse is worn down to a nub.
Plus, you should keep your goat. The troll already has a girlfriend probably.
Emma
@Veritas: Voter fraud? Interesting that the most recent indictments on voter fraud have been against Republican operatives.
Suffern ACE
@lamh35: Oh good grief. It means the family likes the dog. How can you try to drum up controversy over someone who likes their own dog?
slightly-peeved
So how much money are the Koch brothers going to have to spend to convince the American public that rich people should get tax cuts? I’m guessing they might not have the money – certainly to do that and convince the American public Romney has the slightest amount of charisma.
Even if the MSM ignore what he’s saying now, he still loses – he’s running against an incumbent, for pete’s sake. Obama won’t lose the election, Romney has to beat him. I’ve seen no feasible strategy where ol’ multiple choice does that – either based on the issues, or just on personality. It seemed the Republicans were relying on a bad economy sinking Obama, and (touch wood) that doesn’t look to be happening
Montana
@Betty Cracker: Yes, he is a good writer. But, the conclusion is almost always something along the line of the right is too powerful, we libs cannot match them…so we give up. Just my opinion. Love Rumproast though, you guys are fighters.
Jason
No politician has ever paid a price for dog-whistling about the stupid lazy niggers. Which is the implication, after all: if equality of opportunity doesn’t in fact lead to rough equality of outcomes, it could only imply that one group or another is inherently inferior.
Bruce S
“Glenn Beck-level insane” is the new normal in GOP circles. I’m not a bit surprised by this crap coming from Romney’s empty shell.
AxelFoley
@Veritas:
Romney-poo is a cocksucker. COCKSUCKER. C-O-C-K-S-U-C-K-E-R.
Lojasmo
@Veritas:
Kerry was a horrible candidate. Think Romney, but with gravitas.
dww44
@Comrade Dread: Thanks for this. I’ve got a number of Republican relatives with whom I will share these TR quotes at the most opportune moments.
pattonbt
@Veritas: What does driving a car have to do with voting? Why should I prove that I can or can not drive a car so I can vote? I don’t get it.
AA+ Bonds
This OP is really defeatist. Thumbs down
AA+ Bonds
I mean God Almighty why would you ever compare the reelection campaign for your guy to 2000
AA+ Bonds
This is also untrue and man, you don’t want to win in 2012, do you? Intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?
Why don’t you fuckin fight?
El Cid
I am working with my local ACORN and New Black Panther Party sections to get poor and minority residents free photo ID’s, voter registration, and handgun permits.