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

was romney's decision to release his tax returns really a good idea?

13.9% is gonna get a lot more press than 'romney still hasn't released taxes'

Romney has a $100 million trust set up for his five sons. The campaign said the Romneys paid no gift taxes on the trust because they were able to use credits related to estate tax.

OFFSHORE INCOME

Romney's investment funds run through Bain are in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, a practice the campaign insists is legal and common but that has come under some criticism during the campaign.

So this is the kind of stuff he did not want to release, earlier.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/24/us-usa-taxes-romney-idUSTRE80N07320120124

13% (well, 15%) was already out there, wasn't it?

xp - yeah, that's the stuff.

hahaha oh Mittens

well it was the logical assumption but now it's 'out there'

No I mean it was out there - he was saying 'I pay about 15% tax' last week.

"Well that's a rookie's mistake on his part."

Says the rookie who lost.

http://thepage.time.com/2012/01/23/palin-christie-made-rookie-mistake/

remember four years ago when every politics head was parsing statements like these every day

sarah palin might not have much political capital today but I think her throught-process on screen there is probably fairly close to yr average 2012 gingrich supporter

gingrich's scandals are essentially a selling point cause they just prove that 'everyone is against him'

re 13.9% -

i guess the only good/interesting thing about a potential Obamney/Rombama match up in the general would be that the insanity of the tax code would hopefully be forced front and center

And if they seem to be unfairly attacking and, you know, kind of going off the deep end with one or two of the candidates, run the other direction, and bolt the other direction because you’ll know what the motivation is behind the media and some of the machine as they attack the one person that they don’t want to see get in there and really effect change, somebody who has experience working on what needs to be done with budgets, with reining in government growth, with cutting taxes.

BOLLING: Governor, when you -- when you say us, you mean the conservative base, right?

PALIN: The conservative base, Tea Party Americans, independents, people there in Florida who understand that what we need is some Reaganesque (ph) there in the White House, and you need a candidate who understands that cutting taxes and has experience in cutting budgets, in cutting taxes and working on both sides of the aisle to make sure that the Democrats understand that cutting taxes and reining in the growth of government does more for liberty and for this economic turnaround that is needed than anything else.

Just paying attention to who that candidate may be is going to be key to really the nation’s success and another toward that success is what’s going to happen in Florida.

lol missed u boo

you need some Reaganesque there you see

defense geeks say romney is full of shit:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/romney-newt-navy/

Romney has made sea power a centerpiece of his national security strategy — and rightfully so, given the Pentagon’s tilt (heavily pushed by Obama!) toward the Pacific. How would President Romney handle the Iranian threat to close the waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil transits?

“So we ought to have an aircraft carrier in the gulf, an aircraft carrier, and, of course, the task force with it in the Mediterranean,” Romney said. “We want to show Iran, any action of that nature will be considered an act of war, an act of terror and America is going to be keep those sea lanes open.”

What Romney didn’t mention is that as of Sunday, there is an aircraft carrier in the Gulf, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, with a second, the Carl Vinson, nearby in the North Arabian Sea. A third, the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, just left and is sailing to the Pacific; it would take mere days to call it back if the need arises.

And all of this follows a fairly routine U.S. naval posture in the Middle East. It’s called “1.5 to 1.7″ — translated from the Pentagonese, it means that there’s an average of at least 1.5 carriers in the region every 12 months. More directly, it means that at any given time, Iran faces more U.S. seapower than most of the world’s navies — especially its own — can offer.

But all Romney sees is a Navy in decline. He reprised an omnibus line of attack on Obama: “Under this president and under prior presidents, we keep on shrinking our Navy. Our Navy is now smaller than any time since 1917.”

This is the sort of thing that’s literally true but meaningless in context. Counting ships is less important than counting types of ships, because they offer different seapower options. In 1917, the Navy did not have any aircraft carriers.

Sully, chest heaving:

Go big, Mr President, tonight. Go big. This is the moment when the transformation away from the old politics happens; when the baby-boom battle recedes; when the extremism of the GOP finally eats itself; and when a saner future can be born. The real moment of transformation will be the re-election of a reasonable president in an unreasonable time. But tonight is the harbinger, the marker, the rally moment.

Seize it.

sounds like a m4m ad scribbled on a Dupont Circle bathroom

This fuckin' guy:

Newt Gingrich insists his fans will not be silenced.

Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, on Tuesday morning threatened not participate in any future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent. That was the case on Monday, when Brian Williams of NBC News asked the audience of about 500 people who assembled for a debate in Tampa to hold their applause until the commercial breaks.

In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech. In what has become a standard line of attack for his anti-establishment campaign, Mr. Gingrich blamed the media for trying to silence a dissenting point of view.

“I wish in retrospect I’d protested when Brian Williams took them out of it because I think it’s wrong,” Mr. Gingrich said. “And I think he took them out of it because the media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate.”

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/gingrich-says-he-will-skip-debates-if-audiences-cant-participate

I mean, aside from the "stifling free speech" baloney, that's some ju-jitsu there. These debates aren't about clarifying the differences among the candidates, they're about "the candidates" vs. "the media." The man is an expert at nursing the traditional grievances.

what's a game show w/out whooping?

sullivan sounds like ralph fiennes in red dragon. "you are witness to a great becoming" etc.

Definition of GRANDIOSE
1
: characterized by affectation of grandeur or splendor or by absurd exaggeration

sometimes I think the first person with a time machine shouldn't go back and assassinate various awful people, but instead make sure they get picked first a few times for the kickball team while growing up

this is absolutely the right thread for that post

it is! (it was in response to the Newt post; I'd forgotten there was a bullying thread running concurrently lol)

I am pretty sure we're about two debates away from people using air horns in the audience

imagine a debate where everyone in the audience has a vuvuzela

Yes Men?

http://selfdeport.org/

!!!

We believe our current laws must be changed to abolish anchor babies, whose children, throughout history, should have never received automatic citizenship to this nation.

this is amazing

A link landed in my spam folder, so I figured it must be a YM parody.

gingrich's scandals are essentially a selling point cause they just prove that 'everyone is against him'

Look how well that worked out for Herman Cain.

so am i correct in understanding that newt fucking gingrich is running as an "outsider"?

Look how well that worked out for Herman Cain.

A destructive strategy that sinks a black man but buoys a white man? Who could have seen that one coming?

DW Griffith

eh cain had the same angry bird trajectory as every other crazy candidate. I think his numbers woulda been similar without his scandals.

FORTYFUCKINGFIVEMILLION DOLLARS A YEAR

just had to get that out

lol "is Mitt Romney an anchor baby?"

"13 percent" is the figure that most delights me.

Ugh--that Sullivan excerpt above is awful. The one thing I remember about Bush's SOTU four years ago was how inconsequential it seemed in the middle of Obama/Hillary: "Hey, everyone, remember me?" I realize that what's going on on the Republican side this year is not...qualitatively equal to Obama/Hillary, but it has commanded the headlines almost as much--and Obama, similarly is automatically edged out of the picture, and is therefore (I believe) similarly diminished. (Especially as he'll invariably be proposing stuff that will go nowhere.)

Yes, but Bush = the lamest of ducks at that point.

True--obvious difference there.

Jennifer Rubin exhibits the 'stopped clock' principle. It's actually as cogent a summary of why Newt is a ridiculous choice as any other from the right.

Gingrich's "anti-media" angle is pretty shrewdly constructed to insulate him from any and all scandals/attacks - but it's a misdirection tactic that will only work for the rabid GOP base

the question is what % of primary voters are 'rabid GOP base'

He's so full of it, though. He goes after the reporter who asks him about his recidivist adultery saying that the 'liberal media' are degrading society (thereby shitting on the a free press with all the gusto that he shits on an independent judiciary) when such tough questions have been happening since the election of 1800 ffs. Then he turns around and insists that a debate which should elucidate should turn into a free-for-all whooping session so he can win not through reason but through emotion. If that's not degrading the tenor of our political discourse, I'm not sure what is. It's crypto-fascist demogoguery and he never fails to stun me with his utter contempt for Americans and for his mind-bogglingly wrong reading of American and republican values.

John Dickerson: "Romney has clearly cracked the seal on the Destroy Newt briefing book. Gingrich is running as a Washington outsider. Romney called B.S. (Or as he says it: Golly No!)"

the media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate

Luckily being 'against the media' doesn't preclude constantly appearing in televised debates & talk shows.

Kinda love the fact that Warren Buffet's secretary is attending the SOTU and sitting next to Michele Obama. Obv. the fact that she pays a higher tax rate than her boss is going to figure prominently in the speech.

that was my first thought too

GINGRICH: "When I was speaker, we had four consecutive balanced budgets."

THE FACTS: Actually, two.

The four straight years of budget surpluses were 1998 through 2001. Gingrich left Congress in 1999, so he only had a hand in surpluses for his last two years. The budget ran deficits for his first two years as speaker.

The highest surplus of that four-year string came in budget year 2000, after Gingrich was out of office.

Overall, the national debt went up during the four years Gingrich was speaker. In January 1995, when he assumed the leadership position, the gross national debt was $4.8 trillion. When he left four years later, it was $5.6 trillion, an increase of $800 billion.