Mitt Romney Is Driving The GOP To Pieces: Countdown Day 46

[_Kevin Graham]

WASHINGTON -- The attack on Mitt Romney was tough, even vicious.

As expressed at a now-infamous fundraiser in Florida, the Republican nominee's "ideology, pitting the 'makers' against the 'takers,' offers nothing," the writer said. "No sympathy for our fellow citizens. No insight into our social challenge. No hope of change."

"This approach involves a relentless reductionism," the writer argued Thursday in the Washington Post. "Human worth is reduced to economic production. Social problems are reduced to personal vices. Politics is reduced to class warfare on behalf of the upper class."

It was perhaps the most thorough, full-throated denunciation of Romney this year -- and, of course, a conservative Republican wrote it.

The author, Michael Gerson, has impeccable right-wing bona fides: He worked at the Heritage Foundation, served Chuck Colson and Bob Dole, and was President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter.

On this 46th day before Election Day, the story is not the alleged disintegration of the Romney campaign team in Boston. Yes, there is a lot of infighting going on. "It's a shame to see it," said Hogan Gidley, who was Rick Santorum's campaign spokesman. "They're all trying to save themselves." Still, it looks like the band will stick together (and give each other bonuses) until what could be a bitter end in November.

The real story, the deeper story, is the flying apart of the modern GOP into its constituent but rivalrous pieces. The Romney campaign feels like the end of an era in the party, rather than the beginning of one, because there's no center and it cannot hold.

Gerson is just the latest Republican to unload on Romney for what he sees as the nominee's ineptitude, ignorance, confusion, apostasy -- or all four. Others include, in varying degrees, Peggy Noonan, Bill Kristol, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Joe Scarborough, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Frank Luntz, several GOP U.S. Senate candidates, and even Romney's campaign co-chair Tim Pawlenty, who quit that role to become a business lobbyist in Washington.

Behind the scenes, other figures -- from Karl Rove and Charlie Black to the advisers for some silent big-money donors -- are not only nervous about Romney's prospects but irritated at what he has done (or not done) for (or to) the party.

Granted, no political party is always neat, orderly and consistent. Since U.S. elections generally come down to just two parties, each has to be almost mind-bogglingly diverse, either ideologically or demographically or both, to amass a majority.

What it lacks in demographic diversity, the GOP makes up for in breadth of ideas and agendas. By my count, there are no less than seven ideological precincts within the party. Ronald Reagan and to some extent Bushes One and Two were able to hold those pieces and their antecedents together. Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008 could not. Can Romney? Doubtful.

He has two sub-crowds in his corner thus far: the big business/Wall Street group (the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, bankers who took government money and hate themselves for it, trust fund and hedge fund types) and the bombs-away neocons who want to vaporize Iran (led by the likes of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson). Both groups loathe President Barack Obama, but also seem to genuinely like, or at least vaguely admire, the former Massachusetts governor.

Romney is nowhere with -- or regarded suspiciously by -- the other five. The "compassionate conservative" types such as Gerson, moved by a sense of faith-based social obligation, distrust Romney in his current incarnation. Tea Party "small government" advocates distrust him because of his moderate, even expansionist view of the role of government when he ran Massachusetts. Fundamentalist and many evangelical Protestants, as well as many Catholics, remain wary of Romney because of his Mormon faith, although they rarely say so publicly in so many words.

The xenophobic elements within the party -- the anti-immigration crowd, those who fear the "they" (minorities) of America -- might respond to the resentful Mitt of the secret fundraiser video. But Romney is no firebrand, and he has backed away from the more incendiary implications of his Florida comments.

The last piece of the GOP puzzle is the one that should like Romney the most, yet actually has never had faith him: the money people and elected officials in New York and Washington. They just want a winner, but they simply don't think much of his candidate skills, and they're technocratic types above all. Their house organ is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has repeatedly expressed exasperation at how Mitt has run his campaign. While his Boston-based crew has ties to the Washington Republican establishment, they really aren't part of it.

"We saw the party starting to come apart in 2010 with the rise of the Tea Party," said Gidley. "This isn't anything of Mitt Romney's making."

Perhaps not, but unlike Reagan or even the Bushes, Romney so far has not shown the candidate skills, the depth of thought or the ideological commitment that would give him the strength to bind the party into one force.

At a campaign event on Thursday, Ann Romney expressed her frustration at the carping from Republicans and other conservatives. "Stop it!" she commanded on an Iowa radio show. "This is hard. You want to try it? You get in the ring."

Well, they are, but not necessarily to promote her husband.

It would, of course, help if he were ahead in the race. But he is not, and time is running out.

[_Droopy]

It would, of course, help if he were ahead in the race. But he is not, and time is running out.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... -d-13-poll

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer ... ng-has-pre

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer ... blicans-22


Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else can tell what is actually going to happen in November, because the standard polls conducted by the usual suspects are intellectually worthless.

I suspect that, while not a landslide, Romney is going to take the Presidency with a comfortable margin. Given this president's record as a relentless hurricane of destruction through the economy, social fabric, and American national security as a doltish, incompetent, but very clever, dedicated, and single-minded ideologue, the Republican party should be able to run Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel on their own ticked and defeat Obama and his band of merry Alinskyites, neo-Marxists, and progressive authoritarians with disarming ease.

I don't think it will be a landslide, but I don't think, once the the cooked polls are dismissed for what they are and people actually begin to think and come to a decision as election day draws near, its going to be a close election either.

I just cannot believe that the average American's ability to absorb economic decline and suffering, the destruction of their children's and grandchildren's economic future, continual international humiliation and embarrassment, the military and security abandonment of allies around the world, the shepherding and open aiding and abetting of a massive radical Islamization of large sections of the Middle East, the descent of Iraq and Afghanistan into Islamist and anti-American chaos after a precipitous and mindless withdraw of forces from those countries, the abandonment of Israel, and the incomprehensible protection of the Iranian regime's rush to nuclear weaponry, has not been reached.

[_EAllusion]

I suspect that, while not a landslide, Romney is going to take the Presidency with a comfortable margin.

Right now Romney is going for 29 cents a share on Intrade. For every 29 cent share you buy, you'll get one dollar. You'll get that dollar if he wins by a single vote, so a comfortable margin isn't needed. If you truly believed this, you should be sinking your life savings into Romney shares. That's a 244% return on investment in around 40 days. It's impossible to get that kind of return anywhere else.

Why aren't you doing that? I'll tell you why. Deep down you don't really believe the propaganda you desperately want to believe. Who are you trying to convince here?

[_EAllusion]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... -d-13-poll

This link, and by extension you, don't understand anything about poll weighting. The 2008 election registered party ID gap wasn't D+7 because Obama won by 7. And the 2004 election wasn't D+0 because it was essentially a tie. The polls weight Party ID, either by registered voters or through likely voter modeling, for Democrats to Republicans to Independents because of differences in ease of contacting these groups to create a representative sample. Not all polls do this representational weighting, but some do based on this methodology. These numbers shift over time and covary with candidate preference, but not everyone who votes a particular way identifies with a particular party. Democrats have a party ID edge in Louisiana, for instance, but many of them vote for Republican candidates. It's like the Brietbart link isn't aware of the existence of independents. Traditionally, Democrats have an edge in Party ID and polls are weighted accordingly. It was significantly more than +7 in 2008 as Republican party ID had collapsed.

I don't expect much better from the other links.

[_EAllusion]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer ... ng-has-pre

The second link asserts by fiat that Rasmussen and Gallup's party ID numbers are more correct, therefore other polling numbers are wrong. Rasmussen and Gallup, though differing a fair amount, tend to have a Republican lean in party ID and poll results this cycle compared to the overall average of polls. Gallup by a little. Rasmussen by a lot. What basis does this article give to believe that other polling firms measurements of party ID are wrong, but Rasmussen's robocall system is right? None. It appears to be believed on merely on the basis that it gives the most favorable results for what the author would like to happen. That's it. No defense, no explanation supplied. And, by extension, that means this link doesn't defend Droopy's assertion at all. It just reasserts it.

So link number two is dumb. What do we have in store for link number three?

[_EAllusion]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer ... blicans-22

Aaaaaaaaand the final link completes the trifecta of BS. It's mostly a restatement of the logic of the first two links combined. It's new wrinkle it in that it also flat claims there is no support for the weighting, but the support comes in the form of their measuring likely voter P-ID and registered voter P-ID in previous surveys. They don't just invent that. It's based on a particular methodology that anyone is free to look up. Saying it is wrong because you don't like the results isn't a real critique of their methods.

[_Kevin Graham]

Aaaaaaaaand the final link completes the trifecta of BS

Thanks for the legwork EA. I tend to leave these folks to their delusions. In a way it is better for the Left if the Right thinks they are in the lead, so I really don't bother to try proving them wrong.

On Facebook folks like Scott Pierson (owner of ZLMB) declared to the Facebook world that we should all mark his words, that Romney will win in a landslide. It won't even be close. All these pollsters are hired hacks by the left.

But that doesn't even make sense. Even if controlled by the Left, why would they want to hide a Romney lead? You'd think they'd be more interested in making such a reality well known so the Left doesn't become complacent, setting themselves up for a fall.

[_EAllusion]

Romney still has an outside shot of winning, but a landslide is extremely unlikely at this point. That's going to take a dead hooker in a closet moment to make happen. So what happens to Scott's bubble when Romney doesn't landslide?

If he wins, he'll probably just chuckle about it and move on. If he loses, which is the more likely outcome, I bet he goes deeper into a conspiratorial malaise of stolen elections. That's just sad.

As far as all polling houses being leftist propaganda outfits goes, it's so utterly strange. As I pointed out above, there's huge money to be made if Romney is anywhere near a decent shot at just winning the election at this point. The wiseguys would all have to be wrong too, which almost never happens with so much money on the line. Obama is predicted a tenuous, narrow victory by every academic political forecasting house I'm aware of. Absent some truly game-changing moment, like Obama getting assassinated, a Romney landslide would be in defiance of forecast modeling that has been relatively successful for years and years. Things we think we know about how to predict elections on the basis of items like GDP growth would have to be radically upturned.

But more than that, polling firms do have a vested interest in getting it right. It's what allows them to get hired for the next job. In Scott's world, virtually all of them have abandoned that to cook the books for Obama just this one time? At the expense of their credibility and livelihood? Not even Rasmussen, which is run by an open conservative partisan that attaches conservative op-eds to all major poll results, has Romney on the path to landslide. So no one is actually trying to get it right and emerge as the gold-standard in reliability in political polling? Is Scott aware that people pay a fortune for polling house's numbers and the publicly available stuff is just a taste of what they do?

[_Kevin Graham]

Great points EA, I think the only chance Romney has of winning in a landslide, or winning at all for that matter, is dependent upon the success of Republicans enforcing voter ID laws which are designed to suppress the Democrat vote.

[_EAllusion]

Great points EA, I think the only chance Romney has of winning in a landslide, or winning at all for that matter, is dependent upon the success of Republicans enforcing voter ID laws which are designed to suppress the Democrat vote.

Voter suppression/caging laws meant to increase Republican representation are only in effect in a few states that are in play. And while that is a wildcard in the election, sources I respect seem to believe this should only cause a 1-2 point swing at the most. Assuming this is accurate, there's no landslide to be found in that. Now if your state is Florida and 1 to 2 points is plausibly within the range of victory, that matters. But I don't see how it matters enough to create a landslide. A marginal victory? Sure.

Voter suppression laws are far more meaningful for how they impact downticket races, by the way. A few % is enough to determine how the bulk of WI's state government is controlled.