This last flip flop, of Mitt Romney coming out for John McCain, is one that even a trained dolphin couldn’t pull off.
The 12th Commandment states: If thou hast sullied a fellow Republican, thou shalt put it between thy legs and endorse thy fellow Republican when he beats thou.
Governor Romney, those about to flip, we salute you.
Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund opines:
In some ways Mr. McCain resembles Nicolas Sarkozy, the French conservative who won last year’s presidential election even though the retiring president, Jacques Chirac, was unpopular and a member of his own party. “Like Sarko, who was of Chirac’s party but not of Chirac, America’s swing voters have intuited over the years that there is little love lost between McCain and George Bush,” says the blog Race42008.
Mr. Sarkozy was able to convince a majority of French voters that he represented real change that would improve conditions, while his socialist rival, Segolene Royal, represented risky change that could make matters worse. That is precisely the challenge Mr. McCain faces this year against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
Oh great. So, French conservative beats lady liberal, immediately proceeds as first Act of State to divorce old wife and all but reach up the skirt of hot new babe. Is this what we have to look forward to under a McCain presidency? Senator McCain hopping on the Straight Talk Express away from his second wife and moving in for engagement ring number three?
Yeah, pretty much.
Sometimes, as we boys need reminding, it takes a woman to inject some common sense into complicated decision-making like “Should I run for higher office?”
(Sometimes, not.)
Maybe the evidence is all circumstantial, but it’s there. First there’s the oft-cited story about Ann Romney not wanting all of Mitt’s money, so hard earned laying off every worker he could find, to go into the hands of the genius political consultants who came up with bright ideas like “Mitt should run against Massachusetts,” and “I’m withdrawing from this race because staying in it will aid and abet terrorists by electing a Democrat.”
The idea that Mrs. Romney was worried more about Mitt’s money than about his desire to win was brought up at the Daily Telegraph:
His wife Ann made him agree to keep to a personal limit of $40 million, which he exceeded by up to $10 million in the past week of the campaign.
“What was he going to do? Just carry on spending his sons’ inheritance,” said a member of the McCain campaign at the conference.
But I think there’s more to it than that. Our man Mitt seemed to be a little bit defensive about the prospect of fighting with his old lady before Super Tuesday. Check out this statement and immediate back-up from it when Romney discussed stretching out and sleeping on the floor of his airplane:
There are no flat-bed seats in Romney’s charter plane. He does enjoy a wide business class seat in the front row but he said he planned to spend the red-eye flight on the floor.
“It’s been a while since I slept on the floor,” he told reporters on the flight to California. “Usually if I’m in trouble I sleep on the sofa,” he said.
A father of five who frequently talks about family values, Romney quickly took back the suggestion that he gets in trouble with his wife, Ann.
“Actually I’ve not been in trouble to sleep on the sofa. But sometimes in the middle of the night if I wake up and can’t sleep, instead of bothering Ann by tossing and turning, I sleep on the sofa,” he said.
“Camping is probably the last time I slept on the ground,” he said, adding that was perhaps a decade ago. “It’s been a long time.”
You’ve got to hand it to him. Mitt sure was an acrobat everyday on the campaign trail.
But I think there was more evidence of some tension between the two. How about when Romney started out his concession speech on Tuesday night by saying that his wife was WRONG:
Ann came to me and she said, ‘You know, the one thing that’s clear tonight is that nothing’s clear.’ But I think she’s wrong. One thing that’s clear is this campaign’s going on. I think there are some people who thought it was all going to be done tonight. But it’s not all done tonight. We’re going to keep on battling. We’re going to go all the way to the convention. We’re going to win this thing, and we’re going to get to the White House.
I’m sure she loved that. “My wife doesn’t believe in me!” is what starting off a major speech like that screams out. Dr. Phil would not be pleased.
But ultimately, Mitt really is all about his family. Word is Mitt and Ann talked this over last night. And when he says, “I’m doing this because I love America,” he really may mean “I’m doing this because I love my wife” as much as he means, “I’m doing this because I love my money.”
And let’s face it – Mitt was never a very good candidate for the Republican nomination. Even if Anne Coulter was lining up Big Love-style to be his second wife, he had too much non-conservative baggage to be bought into by the real GOP crowd, and just about everyone on both sides saw him as a phoney.
What this campaign was really about for Romney was ego. That ego was evident when he declared on Tuesday, “That’s pretty fun. First time I’ve ever voted for myself for president.”
Ultimately, it seems like it took the Mrs. to put that ego away. She probably said to Mitt, “This election is making you into a dick, and I don’t like it when you’re being a dick. I need you to drop out.”
And to that, we all can say, “Thank you, Ann, thank you.
You see, now even his campaign says so. Everything bad is good, two plus two equals five, and failing to be endorsed by anyone or anything of any note in the state you’ve staked your presidential bid on means you are qualified to be America’s main man:
My grandfather always said that after three days, houseguests and fish start to smell the same. I guess in the case of Florida and the presidential election, it’s three months.
It’s been close to three months since Rudy Giuliani declared that his road to the White House marched up the Florida Turnpike. And now Governor Charlie Crist has said, “Hey Rudy, it’s been nice having you here. If you could take the sheets off the bed and put them in the laundry hamper on your way out the door, we’d appreciate it.”
How else can we read Crist’s endorsement of Sen. John McCain to be the Republican nominee yesterday? He’s saying to Giuliani that it’s time to pack your bags, get on that Fort Lauderdale to JFK flight on JetBlue, and head back to New York and the private sector.
All those cafe con leches and all that key lime pie didn’t mean much to Florida’s political establishment.
This comes as something of a shock to Team Rudy. Giuliani believed he had brought the best possible gift to his hosts – a promise that he’ll set up a National Catastrophic Insurance Fund for the hurricane-prone state, which is Crist’s favorite policy hobby horse. By promising to help property-owners recover their losses from big storms, Giuliani was convinced that he’d get Floridians, including Crist, in his pocket.
After all, according to Giuliani, McCain says that he’s opposed to a national catastrophe fund. How could Crist, or Floridians, support a candidate who opposes one of their top national policy priorities?
Instead, it’s apparently been more like Hurricane Rudy moving up the length of the peninsula. Most Floridians have simply been ducking for cover, waiting for the storm to pass, and hoping the Spanish tiles will still be up on their rooftops when it’s over.
The calculation here seems to be one of viability. According to Fox News, Crist had promised Giuliani an endorsement until New Hampshire, where the New Yorker finished so poorly in the polls. And so it appears that Rudy’s last one out of the gate, first one across the finish line strategy caused Crist and other Republican Party leaders to question his real chances of picking up across the country.
But what’s most significant about this endorsement is what it means for McCain. As a former official in the Jeb Bush administration, Crist is closer to the Bush dynasty than many of McCain’s supporters. Crist’s thumbs up will allow the Arizona senator to put on the mantle of true conservative and party leader with the backing of his party’s power structure. And if Crist can help McCain appear closer to the Bush family and their core Republican supporters, it will allow him to once and for all overcome the argument that he only gets the votes of independents and moderate Republicans. That’s what he must do if he’s going to build the coalition he needs to credibly claim he can defeat the Democrats in November.
Just like it’s impossible to boycott Iran, Burma, or Communist China, one ex-Fred Thompson staffer’s effort to boycott Chuck Norris seems doomed to failure:
I want you to join me in boycotting all of the products that Chuck Norris endorses and some of the national companies that run advertisements on the show in which he starred and currently rerunning on the USA cable network, Walker, Texas Ranger. I also ask that you tell these companies why you are boycotting them. (See list to the right with contact information and post below for a sample e-mail.)
Darrell Ng reasons that Norris is endorsing Mike Huckabee, who at one time favored rounding up people with AIDS, and doesn’t believe in evolution, and that deserves consumer oppobrium.
Ng targets Total Gym, Geico, and KFC. Oh, and Tylenol, which advertises during reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger on USA. Which is a shame because watching reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger to find out who actually advertises during the show would give me a headache.
He’d better hope Aleve and Advil don’t run commercials in that time slot, too.
That is the important question that needs answers based on Paul Kiel’s report on a new anti-Hillary group, excerpted below:
A couple of days ago, a group called Citizens United Not Timid filed papers with the IRS as a “527″ organization….
[...]
It’s this simple: it’s all about the group’s acronym, which, used in conjunction with Hillary Clinton, is supposed to be irresistibly humorous. That is the beginning and the end of it. The group will not be running ads in any form and will not be making any robocalls. They’ll be making T-shirts. That’s it. You can buy them for $25 on their website
Oh my. Hillary’s got no hopes of overcoming this onslaught. But even if they choose other candidates, we can imagine the possibilities:
Citizens Lose if Obama Triumphs
Help Edwards Reap the Presidency, Eat S**t
So, I think the only solution is to come up with some acronyms to counter the GOP candidates:
Giuliani Reeks Of September Sorrow
Choose Huckabee And Fight Evolution
McCain Earns Republican Disdain Everytime
Romney Always Flip Flops, Is Still Here
It’s a start toward acronym-based victory.
The campaign for the Republican nomination doesn’t have any clear winners yet. But it does have its obvious losers. Minor candidates like Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo have bowed out, and Fred Thompson’s exit can’t be far off. What we’re all waiting for now is to see whether Jan. 29’s contest in Florida will confirm that Rudy Giuliani has become as irrelevant as Thompson, or give him the shot in the arm he’s hungering for.
But it need not be that way. The current front runners who have worked to capitalize on the calendar’s early votes can make Republican primary goers forget Giuliani if they bypass the state the way that Giuliani has sat out the contests in which they have succeeded. Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee should skip Florida.
The conventional wisdom now says that Florida’s primary will crown a leader heading into Feb. 5’s Super Duper Tuesday and it’s 1000+ delegates. And if you look at the calendars for McCain and Romney, their strategists would appear to agree.
But Florida will do no such thing. Even if Giuliani is defeated by one of his competitors in the Sunshine State, the contest is likely to be a close one. It will be difficult for any of the candidates to claim strong momentum from a decisive victory if they only take the state’s 57 delegates by a few thousand votes.
Instead, a victory in Florida that appears hard won by Giuliani will move him back into the column of seeming viability. And lack of viability for Giuliani’s campaign appears to be confirmed over and over again in recent polls results. While Romney more or less closed up shop in South Carolina, he still received a reasonable share of votes. Giuliani, on the other hand, came in behind Ron Paul once again, showing that all but the zaniest of Republican primary voters think that “America’s mayor” isn’t the right man to lead their party.
Giuliani wants to be out of that column, and he’s setting up Florida as his Waterloo. He’s sort of like an 18-year-old bully with a muscle car. He’ll challenge you to a game of chicken on the outskirts of town late at night to show you up in front of all the other kids in town. And because his car is meaner than yours and he spends every day working on it, he very well could win.
But that victory will only mean a lot if he runs you off the road in front of that big audience. And if you don’t show, and they sit out the game of chicken, too, the bully’s cry of victory sounds pretty hollow.
A collective decision to skip Florida would be a lot like everyone deciding they have something better to do than watch the bully play chicken. It would represent the three leading candidates saying they aren’t willing to play the game as the Giuliani campaign is trying to dictate it. Instead, the candidates could say they were getting ready for the big dance, which won’t come until Feb. 5.
Thus the other Republicans ought to really make Florida a knock-out punch against Giuliani’s campaign. The latest polls seem to indicate that even if Rudy wins, it’s going to be a close one for him. And that’s after the other candidates have done the hard work of winning contests in other states and haven’t spent too much time in Florida. Giuliani achieving a difficult victory against challengers who don’t even bother showing up will complete his transformation into an eccentric irrelevancy who is unproven in other states. By letting him have this one and focusing on the national primary day, Romney, McCain, and Huckabee can spend the next two weeks proving they are nationally palatable to the Republican Party and further thin out their herd.
A top right wing group may be trying to hit the emergency brake on the Straight Talk Express.
Sure, things have been looking up for John McCain. He pulled out a major victory in New Hampshire and he’s polling well in South Carolina. If he wins in the Palmetto State tomorrow, McCain may be able to demonstrate at last that he’s licked the obstacles erected to his victory in 2000 by the Bush wing of the Republican Party.
But they’re still out there, and they still want to stop him. And the threat appears to be emerging that if John McCain becomes the Republican Party’s likely nominee, top conservative infrastructure will not get behind him.
While the GOP itself is struggling with fundraising going into 2008’s cycle, a powerful network of conservatives is emerging in the form of politically unaccountable non-profit groups. The Bush White House-linked Freedom’s Watch is one example, and another is the Coalition for a Conservative Majority, launched by indicted ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The group appears to be directly targeting McCain, spreading a message that he is non-viable, and a non-starter for the Republican Party.
DeLay spoke yesterday to Congressional Republicans, all but warning that that he will not back a McCain candidacy according to The Hill:
During a private luncheon with Republican chiefs of staff on Capitol Hill, DeLay — who has criticized McCain for years — stepped up his attacks in the wake of the senator’s reemergence as a top presidential contender. DeLay said McCain has no principles and indicated he would not endorse the senator if he won the GOP primary.
“If McCain gets the nomination, I don’t know what I’ll do,” DeLay said at the Capitol Hill Club, according to a source in the room. “I might have to sit this one out.”He added that a McCain triumph for the GOP nomination would destroy the Republican Party. DeLay delivered his luncheon address to Republicans Assuring Mutual Support (RAMS), a group of current and former chiefs of staff and staff directors.
But DeLay isn’t alone from the group in warning against a McCain nomination. Ken Blackwell, ex-Ohio Secretary of State and the Coalition for a Conservative Majority’s Chairman, hinted in a Jan. 10 column that conservatives will not get on board with McCain if he doesn’t become “one of them”:
It’s absolutely essential that Mr. McCain understands that these voters will not simply “get on the bus.” Hostilities run too deep for that. While millions of conservatives can be counted on to support the GOP nominee, literally millions more will sit out unless that nominee makes enough of a connection for those voters to say, “He’s one of us.”
So what? Well, the Republican institution is not what it used to be. It’s fundraising has been less impressive and its ability to organize and turnout voters is depressed. Groups like CCM are emerging to traffic funds from major financial backers of the conservative movement into vote-getting activities that are not officially linked to the GOP, but will help it out. And if they say they won’t invest in a McCain candidacy, it could cripple his ability to fight a better-oiled and organized Democratic presidential operation through November.
On the other hand, perhaps DeLay and Blackwell’s bluster can be shrugged off. For top Republicans it will be a question of whether they want to back a winning McCain, or follow along with an indicted ex-congressmen and loyal party operative who couldn’t turn Bush’s 2004 win in Ohio into his own election as governor of the state in 2006. For Republicans in the the weeks and months to come, it appears they will be confronted over and over with this question of “whose side are you on?”
Mike Huckabee gave an interview to BeliefNet. And the legalization of gay marriage came up. Oh, look what he said! Who exactly is this line from the Baptist minister and former Arkansas Governor intended for:
I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic. [Emphasis added]
It’s a love letter from Huck to Rick Santorum, that’s what it is!
Let’s not forget Rick Santorum, 2006 Senate election loser who hyped the danger we all faced from “man on dog” sexy sex if Chuck was allowed to marry Larry:
In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.
Santorum has not yet made an endorsement. He slammed John McCain recently on the radio, and if this column in the Philadelphia Inquirer says anything, he could believe that Mitt Romney is his main orange-colored man. But he has also said all the candidates had “serious problems,” on Fox News and predicted a brokered convention this summer. And Huckabee may be hoping that by waving the Santorum-smeared shirt of hot bestial inter-species action, he might be able to pick up some of those Pennsylvania delegates with the help of the gay and lesbian communities favorite ex-senator.
Or, it may just be that he doesn’t particularly care for gay men.
I could go either way.
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