2012 republican presidential nominee III: can romney get santorum out of his hair?

His parents must have hated him to name him that.

it was the villain in nicholas nickleby wasn't it?

i call him criscriscristie

http://image.lyricspond.com/image/k/artist-kris-kross/album-totally-krossed-out/cd-cover.jpg

Chris Christie-Christie-Christie-Stan

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/mitt-romney-penis-c-span-prank-new-hampshire-primary-280731?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

this is a headline on the front page of CNN.com right now:

Ticker: Gingrich 'dogs' Romney in video

um I am guessing the people who wrote this have either A) never been to the UK, or B) live in London and have been in hysterics since the story went up

Jesus Christ the nostalgia the floods me when I see that Kriss Kross sleeve is very intense

the full king of bain show is on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrKlj4Q3nSQ

“See, beware, this is a warning, this is a cautionary tale, be inspired by someone who has built a life that America can be proud of, not by a Chicago ward politician,” Christie said. “I doubt he is, but I hope the president’s watching. I have a message for you Mr. President. This is the type of disoriented anger your cynicism and your division is causing in our country. Bring our country together, stop dividing it, Mr. President.

this reaches a level of hypocrisy and unintended irony that is just surreal, even from the 2012 GOP. i mean, christie - self-proclaimed jersey tough guy - calls out obama as a ward politician? you're from new jersey, buddy. and this asshole's entire schtick revolves around inflaming disoriented anger, creating divisive vibes by scapegoating govt employees. republicans talk about christie's winning personality and i'm like waht all this man does is fucking yell at people.

Like any good Republican, he knows his Nixon.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Vicki_Cole.jpg

clemenza otm but yeah m coleman it's like -- shocking, kinda, to hear a guy who's intentionally stoking anger & division then say "your policies are at fault for how grotesque we are"

When South Carolina Tea Party types get annoyed with each other.

That reminds me of the This American Life story about fighting Tea Party members in the UP.

^ pedantic / overly prideful Yooper here - that was in the northern lower penninsula

Sorry, I misremembered it.

@georgelazenby
Paul: Piter De Vries; Romney: Shaddam IV; Huntsman: Princess Irulan; Gingrich: Guild Navigator; Perry: Beast Rabban; Santorum: Water of Life

Which means Obama has drunk from Santorum and seen visions.

Tried and died, wot wot?

this is fucking awesome

Angered by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s slur on Romney as a “vulture capitalist,” deep-pocketed GOP donor Barry Wynn abandoned Perry and endorsed Romney yesterday, saying attacks on Romney’s tenure heading the private equity firm flies in the face of a political party that champions free-market capitalism.

I tried to find a shot here of Charlton Heston & the other astronaut being forced by mutant psychics to fight each other but couldn't, but you get the idea

http://spreadingromney.com/

http://d14.zedo.com/OzoDB/w/7/1107994/V3/Romney_DoYouLike_336x280nb.jpg

One suspects that the “vulture capitalist” line resonates because it serves, for many, not only as a description of Romney’s career but of his personality. It captures something about him—the way he seems to embody the least attractive qualities of both the animal and the automaton. Listening to Romney, one sometimes feels trapped in a science-fiction story that has been written to explore the question of whether robots can lie, or be greedy.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/01/shouting-toward-south-carolina.html#ixzz1jLAXHEyj

is there any evidence that it's resonating?

i sorta saw it as more as why it seems poignant rather than why it's proving effective - you're right that idk whether it seems to be a persuasive line of attack - but i think it maybe does sum up what's unlikeable about him

ja

He's pretty much the embodiment of the guy who fired your dad.

republicans just doing the obamas work for him, p lol

dream on

yep, all this inside baseball is sure to defeat Romney the way the Air National Guard manipulation defeated W.

stick to being morally superior morbs, you have no knack for understanding this stuff

you dont even get what 'inside baseball' means lol

I think he has a point here.

in a prez race, goony, it's anything that happens before September

Morbs yr wrong here - all this stuff really does fragment the right - their version of disgruntled progressives is disgruntled wingnuts, and Romney is exactly the kind of guy to make them acquire critical mass. He is the guy who fails to apostrophize his "ing" words: they hate that shit. Your core Republican voter hates perceived "snobs"; positing that Obama is one has really been stock-in-trade for them for a while. They liked Bush; they thought he seemed like the kind of guy they could vote for 'cause he was just folks. They liked McCain less, but most of them could still stomach him, because he was folksy. Romney is a catastrophic choice for this segment of the GOP base; literally every attempt he makes to relate to them is going to look like the pandering it is.

It doesn't determine the race, of course, there's plenty of fight left, but the GOP has basically awarded itself the 8 in several 10-8 rounds and is, by its own choice, now fighting from a disadvantage, which is lol considering what a terrible president they're running against - all they had to do was nominate somebody who wasn't insane that their own people didn't hate. WHOOPS, TOO HARD. this is lol! have a lol for heaven's sake!

if the republicans get a head start on painting romney in the exact light obama is planning on, then that helps obama, thats obvs, its not desisive or anything, but its not nothing, and it is a lol

Not that Morbs doesn't have a point, but the National Guard manipulation probably did cost Bush votes, just as the swift-boaters lost Kerry votes. The essence of negative attacks is to peel off a segment of voters, however large or small, and erode the opponent's total support.

To make up an example, let's say a candidate voted against some bill that included money for research into ocular cancer (I don't even know if ocular cancer exists, tbh), then blasting that candidate's vote might peel off a certain percentage of people whose had a family member with ocular cancer, because this one issue carries enormous emotional weight for those few people and they literally can't imagine voting for that candidate any more, based on that single fact.

Repeat this tactic over and over again and you'll pick off tens of thousands of one-issue voters. And in these days, with a billion dollars of campaign cash on either side, and so many ways to filter this info into voters's minds, it becomes possible to go negative both wholesale on tv and retail via the web. They do it cuz it works.

I note the fact that some of the commenters at places like Hot Air are apparently serious in hoping that Colbert's president-of-South-Carolina run massively fractures Obama's voting base. If they're THAT desperate...

off topic: Is @georgelazenby a friend of ours? He is a winner.

doubt this arc is gonna run til November

xp

there's the meta-effect of determining the grounds and bounds of 'conversation' about the candidate. the media and public chase each other in these things and candidacies try to control the perceptions of both. mitt romney does not want his character or the election to be about leveraged buyouts or private equity firms; chances are everyone will be talking about something else soon anyway, but even conservatives have to admit that everyone hates bankers and managers at the moment. the hysterical treatment of all of this from places like NR is clear enough.

note how romney responded to the attacks from gingrich about bain capital by saying, in his acceptance speech, that obama wants to put all of free enterprise on trial

"I think anytime a job is lost, it's a tragedy," the candidate admitted. "For the family, for the individual that loses the job, it's just devastating. And every time we invested in a business, it was to try to encourage that business to have ongoing life. The idea of making a short-term profit doesn't really exist in business."

wd've linked Giuliani on Fox calling Newt an "ignorant" anti-capitalist, but why spoil everyone's lunch?

doubt this arc is gonna run til November

it's not, but it does its work! I'm sticking with my early-rounds metaphor man. Don't get me wrong I'm w/you on the bigger question of what's the fuckin difference but to switch sports, from a handicapping-the-race standpoint the GOP horse looks pretty washy at its morning workouts

Meanwhile (consider the links Sullivan provides):

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/does-romney-have-a-mormon-problem-with-evangelicals.html

Consider that any attacks made by Obama on Romney's Bain connection would have to be made by surrogates atm, it is highly convenient that his surrogates happen to be Republicans. Romney is still struggling with how to answer these. Of course, if he solves this puzzle now, it will help deflect the attacks in Sept and beyond, when it counts.

I don't think there is a 'solve this puzzle', rich people who fire poor people will be a sore subject in nov 2012 absent uh 10% gdp growth every month til then

isn't the answer to call everyone a commie, like Giuliani and Limbaugh have been doing?!

the politics of "envy" stuff still plays well with some stubborn dittohead folks who won't admit Wall Street and mortgage industry folks did anything sleazy