Apparently he didn't bother to inform his staff in advance. A bit of campaigning against token opposition from Mike Huckabee should allow conservative elites to reconcile themselves a bit to John McCain, since that crowd seems to hate Huckabee more.
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Romney's Out
07 Feb 2008 12:33 pm
Comments (38)
Its funny to see Laura Ingaram at CPAC basically trashing the other two candidates before introducing Romney. Wonder if she knows he's out.
McCain says to tell Matthew that he didn't show up for the Senate Vote on the Stimulus package because he got diverted into ripping off Romney's head and pissing into the skull.
He's a feeble old man and gets tired easily.
Well thats it then. McCain gets the nomination. Its funny. Months ago, McCain was written off as dead. Its McCain now, because the GOP was first and foremost looking for someone that could win in November.
Are the democrats going to follow suit and nominate Obama? Or are they going to do the GOP a huge, huge favor and nominate HRC?
Oh no! What will poor K-Lo do? On the other hand Huck's "its a two man race and we are in it" takes a whole new meaning.
Meh, its a shame...Romney was my first choice both in terms of electability (huge downsides to all Dems), and also as the least offensive Repub candidate.
Apparently he didn't bother to inform his staff in advance.
What is Ambinder talking about? Anybody reading The Corner realizes that the staff knew. Maybe Ambinder should try looking at what actual conservatives are reporting rather than just existing the liberal media cocoon.
Of course Romney's out. We are a nation at war, and so the honorable thing was for him to withdraw, so the nation could rally behind McCain. What else did you expect him to do?
Doesn't these mean its going to be Obama v. Mccain?
Democratic primary voters would have to be really freakin dumb to prefer Clinton v McCain over Obama v McCain in a general election.
Does he seem like he is interested in the VP spot?
Anyone ever read the Odyssey?
If you see McCain supporters closing the doors at the Republican Convention and locking them, then RUN!
McCain should have worn Salvation Army rags during his "hopeless campaign"-- that would have been a classical touch.
Democratic primary voters would have to be really freakin dumb to prefer Clinton v McCain over Obama v McCain in a general election.
So its 50-50 you think?
Kim,
I think he's more interested in 2012 then VP.
I think he's more interested in 2012 then VP.
What's the difference?
--I think he's more interested in 2012--
good, then he can spend even more of his creepy brood's trust fund to find out a lot of people really don't like him.
garbage in, garbage out.
Maybe McCain can sing us a Homeric epic:
Something like "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot Who Will Have His Own DEA Task Force After I'm Elected"
Note the 1976 reference in Romney's CPAC speech: He's casting himself as GOP nominee-in-waiting after the current standard-bearer, McCain, loses.
Don, are you suggesting that McCain is going to slay all the conservaties who opposed his nomination with his bow?
If so, I may have to make a point of tuning in to the Repub convention.
Apparently he didn't bother to inform his staff in advance.
Well, he did call himself the CEO President. There's your proof of that.
RE Greg's question "Don, are you suggesting that McCain is going to slay all the conservaties who opposed his nomination "
------------
Oh, this feud goes WAY back farther than just this race.
WHY do you think Daschle and Edwards were courting
McCain strongly in 2001 to switch to the Democrats?
An example, From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3295472.ece
"A few years earlier she [Cindy McCain] had visited Bangladesh with a different charity and decided on the spur of the moment to help a little girl with a cleft palate whom she met in Mother Teresa’s orphanage.
The McCains eventually adopted the girl, named her Bridget and raised her as their daughter. She is now 16, but during McCain’s ugly presidential primary fight against George W Bush in 2000, voters in South Carolina began receiving telephone calls suggesting the senator had fathered an illegitimate black child.
The authors of the smear have never been identified, but Bush was the beneficiary and went on to win the South Carolina primary and the Republican nomination. The McCains have never publicly blamed Bush and their relations have been outwardly cordial. But Cindy recently admitted that she keeps a “grudge list”. "
The idea that Romney thinks he's gong to be the GOP nominee in 2012 is entertaining. He couldn't win in the weakest Republican field in generations.
I also think this really has to force Dems to consider whether Hillary Clinton is Dukakis 2.0, a candidate who looks great within the confines of the Democratic Party but has real, obvious weaknesses in the general election.
I mean, we already know exactly what the 2008 campaign will be like with Hillary as the nominee. She'll be strong in the Northeast and West Coast (like any other Democrat), noncompetitive in the South and only a bit less worse in the Mountain West. She'll do even better with women than past nominees but do even worse with men. Which means, just like 2000 and 2004, the election will be decided in 8 to 12 swing states and Hillary will have to win the majority of them to win the White House. And that means the Republicans' lack of money and energy won't matter as much, and McCain's ability to attract independent voters will be more important than ever.
Now, President Bush and the GOP has fucked things up to such an astonishing degree that it may not matter. But you can see exactly how Hillary could lose.
Mike
Too bad. The smartest and most competent candidate in either party is out.
"good, then he can spend even more of his creepy brood's trust fund to find out a lot of people really don't like him."
"Creepy brood" must be lefty for "perfectly normal, well-adjusted family". More broadly, that has always been a liability for Romney: he's too perfect. Married his high school sweetheart, still married to her after 40+ years; has five law-abiding sons who get along with him; earned hundreds of millions of dollars building businesses; has no conflicts of interests with donors, etc.
no, i called them a "creepy brood" because they are five, young, seemingly healthy young men, who support their Dad, who just loves this Iraq war, but are unwilling to sign up and fight. as long as OTHER kids are fighting, this war's peachy, Dad!
i don't like McCain, but if he beats Hillary or Obama on the merits of each of their positions, fine.
but the minute i saw Romney proudly holding that "say no to obama/osama" sign, i smelled the stench of brimstone.
Does either Clinton or Obama have any significant advantage over the other in regards to the electoral college map? They are pretty close to each other in how they poll against McCain. Which one is more likely to carry which states that Kerry and/or Gore lost? Or are we simply counting on the fact that an unpopular war, a recession, and an old candidate will doom the GOP anyway?
Another question: what happens if Huckabee starts beating McCain? It's always been two-on-one against McCain and he doesn't win a majority.
More broadly, that has always been a liability for Romney: he's too perfect
Exactly. America wasn't ready for him.
Sorry Mitt, it wasn't you, it was us. You were too good for us.
Someone on MSNBC went on at length to compare Romney and McCain to Reagan and Ford back in '76. That four years from now, nobody is going to be throwing his positions as governor at him, and that today's CPAC speech will be Romney's Mein Kampf. Or, something to that effect.
At first, I mocked the TV emitting this nonsense. But, a considerable number of conservative voters seem to have bought into Mitt's BS about being a real conservative. The radio propagandists go through the act of singing his praises. I'm sure the rest of the big money in the GOP are into his schtick, and forgive his actions as Governor as the sort of pandering the situation called for at the time.
If McCain does flame out in November, we'll just have to see if this phoney is willing to put in the time working the Party to make another go of it in four years.
"Creepy brood" must be lefty for "perfectly normal, well-adjusted family".
Well I didn't realize billionaire Mormons were "perfectly normal". But then republicans have always entertained My Two Sons fantasies about what qualifies as "normal" in this country.
Born on home plate AND well-adjusted too!
More broadly, that has always been a liability for Romney: he's too perfect. Married his high school sweetheart, still married to her after 40+ years; has five law-abiding sons who get along with him; earned hundreds of millions of dollars building businesses; has no conflicts of interests with donors, etc.
Oooh! They're law-abiding! That is so goddamn admirable. So is earning hundreds of millions of dollars, of course. I admire the shit out of investment bankers. Salt of the earth.
Romney's competent the way plastic is competent. Malleable too!
""Creepy brood" must be lefty for "perfectly normal, well-adjusted family". More broadly, that has always been a liability for Romney: he's too perfect. Married his high school sweetheart, still married to her after 40+ years; has five law-abiding sons who get along with him; earned hundreds of millions of dollars building businesses; has no conflicts of interests with donors, etc."
And he calls himself a Republican! He needs to have an affair with his press secretary, or solicit gay sex in a bathroom or something.
If Mitt Romney is the best the conservative establishment has to offer in '12, I feel really good about President Obama's chances of a landslide re-election.
Another of Ron Paul's adversaries bites the dust. If they continue dropping out at one or two per month, he should have the nomination sewn up by March - April at the latest.
Romney was so obviously reversing/faking his positions, and had the Mormon thing besides; that the powers in the far right ended up backing him is a sign of how thin the field was for them this year.
But why was this so? You look at the way the GOP Senators and Congressmen vote (in lockstep), and it seems like they have nothing but hard-core right-wingers. Yet everyone who competed for the nomination had at least one serious flaw -- McCain the multitude of slights over the years; Huckabee the feint to economic populism; even Brownback his vocal objections over the war. I guess Fred Thompson was the closest to their ideal; if only he were alive.
My theory for how it happened: there were too such potential "unifiers of the right" -- Santorum and Macaca/Allen -- but both went down to defeat (in the latter case, a surprising one). And by that time, it was apparent 2008 wasn't going to be a good year to run as a Republican, so those with realistic political assessments just stayed out of it.
McCain is in one of the weirdest positions I've ever seen for a politician: he's clinched a nomination relatively easily without every having been embraced by a significant portion of his party or having any vocal cheering section (even McGovern at least had anti-war fervor behind him -- and had to fight much harder for the nod). Dole is possibly the closest analogy, but I don't think even his weakness compares to McCain's.
For the record: I think Obama is a bit of a better bet for this election, but I think the whole Hillary Will Lose It For Us hysteria is silly. Every historic precedent says the GOP will lose badly this year -- it said that even before the recession started. The alleged American Hillary Loathing will be no more decisive than the Fear of Reagan was in 1980 -- when times are bad and a presidency's gone to hell, voters switch parties. Period.
"I think Obama is a bit of a better bet for this election, but I think the whole Hillary Will Lose It For Us hysteria is silly. Every historic precedent says the GOP will lose badly this year"
It might be overdone, but history didn't forecast the GOP takeover of Congress in 94, Bill Clinton being unable to get 50% of the vote running as a peace and prosperity incumbent in 96 or Dems picking up seats in the 98 offyear elections. And I think people tend to forget that Dukakis was WAAAY ahead of Bush Sr. coming out of the Dem convention in 88.
My concerns about Hillary have really increased since he campaign is apparently going to not fight hard in the next several Obama-favorable contests and instead are going to "go all in" with Ohio and Texas. That reminds me too much of the Democratic approach in the 2000 and 2004 general election.
Mike
"history did forecast ... Dems picking up seats in the 98 offyear elections."
I remember how much I enjoyed listening to Limbaugh's show the next morning, after weeks of blather about a GOP-sweep.
hey, now that Romney's creepy brood are no longer needed to help him get elected, i guess we can expect a five-man surge headed its way to Iraq, right?
or are they, like their dad, too "perfect" for the military?
MBunge, I make no historic predictions on off-year elections, only presidential ones -- that's where the precedent is the strongest. As far as Clinton getting under 50%...the point is, he won by a ton. That's all peace and prosperity promises, and it came through.
The Dukakis situation actually makes my argument, which is to bet circumstance, not personalities or conventional wisdom. Dukakis did lead polls after the Dem convention in '88 -- but a few of us said, believe the precedents (booming economy, overwhelming primary victory, foreign policy success with Gorbachev = good electoral environment), not the polls. I never thought Bush was anything but the likely election winner.
Take a look at Alan Lichtman's Keys to the Presidency book; he predicted an easy Bush win in the late Spring of '88 -- when Dukakis Poll Mania was at its peak. Lichtman's a bit anal about his system -- he thinks six negative keys mean an automatic incumbent party loss, where I would be hesitant about any close call. But this election ISN'T a close call. The GOP is sure to lose 8 or 9 of his keys, perhaps 10 or 11. That's Jimmy Carter/Herbert Hoover territory, and neither St. John nor Demon Hillary can stave defeat off.
"As far as Clinton getting under 50%...the point is, he won by a ton. That's all peace and prosperity promises, and it came through."
The fact that Bill Clinton, supposedly one of the best politicians of his age and running against Bob Dole (who ran the worst presidential campaign in modern history) and Ross Perot (who was almost totally discredited as a serious candidate in 96), still couldn't get 50% of the vote sure as hell says something. Especially since Hillary isn't a better politician or candidate than Bill.
And what did Lichtman say about the 2000 election? I'm not a fan of the view that individuals are irrelevent to the course of history and that things will happen because of larger "forces" regardless of who does what.
My point isn't that Hillary will lose or even that she's more likely to lose than the Obamessiah. It's that everyone can already see exactly how the election will play out with Hillary and exactly how she might lose. Yet a lot of Democrats aren't even thinking about it.
Mike
"Obamessiah?" Very cute. Maybe it's an island thing, but I prefer "Hapa papa".
Romney's out.
One less moron whose speeches we have to read about here. Equally important, we will hopefully have less of Matt's "parsing" of that moron.
Comments closed February 21, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
"Romney's Out"
Oh wow, you're joking . . .
Oh. You mean of the race. Ah.
Posted by Dan S. | February 7, 2008 12:45 PM