It's The Policy, Stupid

Or more accurately, it's the stupid policy.

Repubs and the Conservative Entertainment Complex are very busy analyzing the Romney Fail, and everybody's talking about everything except the simple fact that the GOP Platform and the GOP Voter Strategy were repulsive to a majority of the voters.

But first, guess what - Obama is the first POTUS to get a majority of the vote in 2 elections since St Ronnie the Reagan did it in 1984.  28 years.

(Just wanted to throw that in because it's kinda important once we get it through our think skulls that there's really only about 10 or 20% of the voting public who actually come under the heading "The Base" in any party)

So anyway, one of my favorite rationalizations for Romneybot's Malfunction is that Obama played Identity Politics to pump up his base and get them to turn out for him.  I think "turning out The Base" is a tired old saw in politics that people just need to let go of.  "The Base" is always there - they show up come hell or high water.  It's everybody else ya gotta worry about.  Which is why the "Identity Politics" crack is so hollow.  First off, it's just another example of (what's become) a trademark Republican tactic of taking your worst shortcoming and projecting it onto your opponent.  But it seems emblematic in that practically every GOP campaign in the last 30 years has been all about Voter Identity, and has worked hard to narrow the party's appeal to the point where they might as well hang a sign on the door - "No Dogs, Jews or Coloreds allowed".

It suddenly occurs to me that Romney felt totally blindsided because he truly felt he'd run the campaign according to the formula you apply when you're selling Goods and Services; he did everything you're supposed to do, but I think the results prove it's a big mistake to base your pitch on Snob-Appeal and Exclusivity, and believe it works in politics the same as it works in Retail Selling.  Cuz it don't.

So, Repubs - if you guys wanna go on losing, all you have to do is keep lying to yourselves (and to each other) about how Party Purity is the best way to expand Party Appeal.

And BTW: Adults stand up and accept responsibility while children point fingers and assign blame.

Any Questions?

Romney The Dodger Extraordinaire

Not that it matters, but here's another clue as to how the big guys like Willard get (and stay) so big.

Via Radio Netherlands Worldwide:

The story goes like this: In 2004, Bain acquired the Irish pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott, which was originally registered in Bermuda but moved to Ireland in 2009 to avoid President Obama’s crackdown on Bermuda’s lax tax rules.

Then two years ago, Bain registered its interest in Warner Chilcott with the private Dutch company Alter Domus, which provides administrative services for multinational corporations and investment funds. If a Dutch company owns more than five percent of the shares in another company, than that other company is exempt from paying taxes on all capital gains.

Through exemptions like that and a host of other complicated tax treaties, the Netherlands offers huge tax breaks to companies like Bain, which is reported to have evaded 80 million euros in dividend taxes by running through the Netherlands.

It's all "perfectly legal" of course, so Romney can skate on by.  Plus, the rubes believe the Gubmint is evil and so nothing you do to fuck over the Gubmint is wrong.  It's a variation on the rationale they use whenever any Repub gets caught in a lie.  He lied to the Librul Press. The Librul Press is evil.  Lying to an evil entity can't be wrong.  Wink wink; nudge nudge; say no more.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Word O' The Day

"Mittdacity" - from The Baffler No 21, by Rick Perlstein:

And then there’s the most delicious kind of lie of them all, the kind that hoists the teller on his own petard as soon as a faintly curious auditor consults the record for occasions on which he’s said the opposite. Here the dossier of Mittdacity overfloweth. In 2012, for example, he said he took no more federal money for the Salt Lake City Olympic Games than previous games had taken; a decade earlier, however, he called the $410 million in federal money he bagged “a huge increase over anything ever done before.”

hat tip = Balloon Juice

Willard Off Air Oops

This all happened off the air - which is the only time this guy says what he means and lets himself behave like the truly entitled aristocratic dick that he is.

At about the 3-minute mark, Romney says he made a political calculation about his stance on abortion.



He's fakin' it - the guy has no soul and no honor.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Leadership

Yeah, OK - Obama has an unfair advantage because he's the Prez and Willard's a silver-spoon legacy puke who apparently doesn't recognize canned food when he sees it, or can't imagine people actually eating that stuff - "why don't they just take a little vacation for a week or so while the service people clean up?"

Leadership

Jag off douchery

It's The Visuals, Stupid

The people running Willard's campaign have to be some of the least adept political operatives ever.  You have to know that Romney's little stunt in Ohio - the one that wasn't a campaign rally at all cuz it was really a food drive event(?) was another stab at making Willard not look like The Rich Guy With No Fuckin' Clue.  Oops.

From Kay Coppins at BuzzFeed, via AmericaBlog:

But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it “did donate supplies to the relief effort,” but would not specify how much it spent.)

Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, “What if we dropped off our donations up front?”The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. “Just grab something,” he said.

Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their “donations” to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest “Thank you.”

If you took maybe three minutes to go the the Red Cross website on your iPhone, you'd know what was going to go wrong with your attempt to look helpful.  Three lousy minutes, and you might've learned something, and you wouldn't leave yourself open to the massive ridicule being dumped on your over-gelled head.  You wanted a good photo op?  You just gave everybody a good look at just how out of touch you are.

And I get it - I really do - you know you get slammed for being a rich-boy jag-off who never thinks about anything but his money and what his money can buy, but this was the one chance you'd get where throwing money at the problem is the right thing to do; and what did you do?  What the fuck did you do, Willard?  You did exactly the opposite of what was needed.  And that kinda sums it all up, doesn't it?

Sandy The Keynesian Hurricane

Wanna see straight up Keynesian Economics at work?  Take a good look at what happens when FEMA and other Federal Assistance is administered properly over the next few months.

We had a little peek at it after Irene, but now we're gonna see it all happen center stage.

From Crooks & Liars:

Now, don't get me wrong. There's no way in hell I'm happy about this storm (in fact, I'd like to send an invoice to oil lobbyists and tell them to split the bill) and after it's done, there will be people who died (sixteen on the East Coast, 69 in the Caribbean as of this writing), and countless others left homeless, but there is a small silver lining in all those clouds.

Because the construction industry has been moribund for a while. Now it will explode, and a lot of people who didn't have jobs will have them.

And those people who have those new jobs will spend money, and that will create more jobs. How many? That depends on how much money the feds put into the recovery. (Don't forget, Wall Street brokers live in these affected areas, too.)

And, oh yeah, let's see what we can learn from comparing Obama's FEMA with Jr Bush's FEMA, and then take a good look at what Willard's been saying about how he thinks FEMA should be scrapped so we can privatize those functions and make Halliburton even fatter and richer - which he then Etch-A-Sketched later.

Lyin' sack o' shit.

People

Lizz and Sarah tell us what it is.

The Real Mitt Romney

"I'm not looking for a colony on the moon, just for someone to blame."

Doing The Laundry

From Rolling Stone Magazine, by Tim Dickinson:

Are Romney's tax dodges legal? It's impossible to say for sure, given how little he has disclosed. But tax experts note that there are plenty of red flags, including an investigation by New York prosecutors into tax abuses at Bain Capital that began on Romney's watch. "He aggressively exploits every loophole he can find," says Victor Fleischer, a professor of tax law at the University of Colorado. "He's pushing the limits of tax law beyond what many think is reasonable." Indeed, a look at Romney's finances reveals just how skilled he is at hiding his wealth – and paying a fraction of his fair share in taxes.

 The more I learn about this guy, the smaller he looks.

Today's Pic

He's comin' for ya, Willard.

Too soon?

The Shot Missed 'Round The World

From Democratic Underground:

My favorite question from the audience was a woman who inquired of Romney could he assure her that if elected he would be different from George W. Bush. Romney made some mealy-mouthed response, but Obama landed a punch on Romney's chin.

(Paraphrasing) There are differences between Mr. Romney and George W. Bush. Bush did not want to voucherize Medicare and he was better on immigration.

I consider Obama's response a true verbal assault on Romney, because in my opinion, there is nothing worse than being compared to George W. Bush and pale in that comparison. What a heck of an insult, but executed so beautifully.

I absolutely loved it.

Sam

And from the comments:

I have been here for 10 years, and I came here ranting and raving about George W. Bush. There is no one I despise more. And for Obama to compare Romney to Bush, with Bush coming off better, was simply priceless. I wish I knew where to write that woman to thank her for that question....

C'mon, Willard

Have you actually reached the point where you don't even know when you're lying?

About that "Binder Full Of Women":

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?

ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"

And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.

I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort.

Not a true story.

What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

Read the whole thing from The Phoenix.

(hat tip =  Balloon Juice)

Confirming

..what we already knew - but just to be sure:

David Stockman on WIllard's "talents":

Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.

Just Ask

WIllard has developed a habit in his stump speech of late - he keeps saying his plan for the economy will create 12 million new jobs right here at home.  He also continues to attack the lazy-ass 47% by saying he doesn't intend to add more people to the welfare roles, and go on giving everything away for nuthin' - he's gonna help you by giving you a great job and letting you keep the money you earn for working that job.  And that's very close to verbatim - "...give you a great job..."

I guess I'm wondering 2 basic things:

1. What are these 12 millions jobs?  What sector?  What businesses?  Who's gonna be doing the hiring?
2. What news organization is going to step up and actually ask Willard for these details?

We hear a lot that Willard has made the claim.  We hear a lot that Obama doesn't seem to have an answer for it.  We hear all kinds of shit about all kinds of shit, but these Press Poodles apparently have become totally allergic to Journalism.

Could somebody just stop him and ask him to spend a lousy 5 or 6 minutes explaining one fucking thing?  Please?

The Debt

Willard and Gilligan have been hammering Obama with a few standard gripes that haven't turned out to be quite as lethally effective as they'd hoped they'd be.

One is "Obama's Promise" of an unemployment figure below 8%.  They started slammin' that one just as the figure slipped below the magic 8% level, and then slipped again to 7.8%, which of course prompted the freakout over Jobs-Report-Gate.

But they still had other "points" to make about the Obama Recovery Recession Horribleness of Socialistic Nazified Commie Redistributing Usurpitude - the meme that the economy sucked - NOT because the Repubs fornicated filibustered everything, but because of the Debt Monster looming over us and our massive off-shore tax havens just waiting for Obama to take the opportunity to swoop in and confiscate all of our Job-Creator Wealth, and the Debt Monster has only grown bigger and scarier (and more politically convenient as a point-scorer) under the Rule of Obama blah blah blah...

But, a ray of hope has appeared. New reports have shown that the nation’s debt has shrunk to a level not seen in 6 years, and the trend is continuing. Now our nation’s debt has dropped to $40 trillion, reducing our debt to GDP ratio to 3.29. While the amount owed is still great, this trend of paying off our debt and not increasing it shows a mental shift in the United States.

Oops.

Read more at Addicting Info.

Correction

In a post I put up yesterday, I ran with the erroneous assumption that Willard is actually the cheatin' douche nozzle that he seems to be.

Right here and right now, I wanna set the record straight - Willard has been, is, and apparently will always remain a lyin' sack o' shit, but of all the examples of Willard being a cheatin' douche nozzle, I chose the wrong one to illustrate what a cheatin' douche nozzle Willard is.   So - he wasn't a cheatin' douche nozzle on that one particular occasion.  He was a lyin' sack o' shit, but not a cheatin' nozzle while on stage for 90 minutes Wednesday night.  I stand corrected.  Sorry for my error.

Pic O' The Day

Obama should win this thing, but don't get cocky.  Make sure your ass is registered today, and in line early to vote on Nov 6th.  And just to be sure - go to the nearest OFA office and make some phone calls or somethin'.  If you want this to stick, then ya gotta help turn people out.  Most people have already made up their minds, so turnout is everything now.

Almost Missed It

So, Willard - that bit about "one nation, under god; indivisible..."?  What the fuck, douche-nozzle?