STUDY: Ron Paul Never Attacked Romney Once During 20 Debates, But Attacked Romney’s Rivals 39 Times
In recent days, attention has focused on the unusual relationship between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, who are purportedly competing against each other for the Republican presidential nomination. The New York Times reported recently that Romney has “worked to cultivate” a friendship with Paul. The candidates talk on the phone frequently. And when Paul’s “campaign jet broke down last year,” Romney “offered his jet to take them home to Texas.”
Rick Santorum has directly accused Paul and Romney of working together, noting “their commercials look a lot alike, and so do their attacks.” A review by ThinkProgress of the 20 GOP debates suggests Santorum might be onto something.
This is particularly striking given that Paul and Romney do not agree on virtually any policy positions.
Paul has gone beyond merely refraining from attacks. He has actively defended Romney on some of his biggest vulnerabilities. For example, when Rick Perry attacked Romney for “Romneycare” during an October 18 debate, Paul interjected:
First off, you know, the governor of Texas criticized the governor of Massachusetts for “Romneycare,” but he wrote a really fancy letter supporting “Hillarycare.” So we probably ought to ask him about that.
Paul has also run advertisements attacking Romney’s key rivals at critical times. He ran hundreds of thousands of dollars in brutally negative ads attacking Gingrich in Iowa. Paul now is using his scarce funds on a television ad attacking Rick Santorum in Michigan, a key state where Paul is a non-factor.
Paul is effectively acting as Romney’s on-stage surrogate during the debates. The key question is: what is Paul getting out of it?
Source: occupyallstreets
Chart: Contributions from military members to presidential candidates.
Not quite what you expected, eh? Full story here.
Source: motherjones
Are GOP Candidates Against Birth Control?
Last night’s GOP debate saw a surprising amount of consensus on the evils of birth control.
“Which candidate believes in birth control, and if not, why?” asked host Jonathan King - a question clearly aimed at Santorum’s unfashionable approach to contraception.
The audience loudly booed, and the other candidates, who’d previously been tearing each other a new one over fiscal issues, closed ranks and defended Santorum. Gingrich explained that Obama was the dangerous radical on sexual health matters, not Santorum:
In the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide. OK? So let’s be clear here. If we’re going to have a debate about who the extremist is on these issues, it is President Obama.
The question referred to a moment late last year, when Santorum promised to talk about what “no president has talked about before - the dangers of contraception.” Speaking at last night’s debate, Santorum elaborated on these dangers:
Children being born out of wedlock in America, teens who are sexually active…children being raised by children… The family is fracturing.
Source: topix.com
Santorum Digs Himself a Hole at GOP Debate
Earmarks are one thing that all voters loathe, and the GOP crowd at the Arizona debate was no exception.
When Santorum got deep in the weeds defending earmarks, the audience reacted with uneasy silence, in contrast to the loud applause that followed his previous demolitions of Romney. Even Santorum looked like he was thinking, “why the hell am I saying this out loud?” and started tripping over his words.
“Earmarks” are “the wacky system whereby individual congresspersons can tack on unrelated spending to bills,” writes the Guardian’s Richard Adams, leading to bloated bills involving hundreds of lines of federal spending.
Romney also came out of the tangle looking the worse for wear, after Gingrich got off a zinger about his double standards. Romney essentially said, “earmarks are bad when you guys do it, except for my earmarks, which were awesome.”
GINGRICH: “I just think it’s kind of silly for you to then turn around and run an ad attacking somebody else for getting what you got and then claiming what you got wasn’t what they got because what you got was right and what they got was wrong.”
The skirmish turned into a circular firing squad, with candidates shouting over each other and a lot of head-shaking and derisive laughter. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Santorum to Romney. “I didn’t follow all of that,” retorted Romney.
Watch it here (7:40).
Source: topix.com
Why Catholics are upset about Obama’s birth control policy
Catholic bishops have been raising hell over a rule that forces Catholic hospitals to include free contraception in the health coverage they provide employees.
There’s a good FAQ piece in today’s The Washington Post that explains why Catholics are upset. The birth control rule, part of Obama’s healthcare law, says that all employers have to offer free preventive care to employees as part of their health insurance - and birth control comes under the header of “preventive care.”
The rule makes some exceptions: religious organizations can opt out if most of their employees are religious too, writes The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff. But that opt-out isn’t available for Catholic hospitals, because they employ so many non-Catholics.
Newt Gingrich - a convert to the mother church - toured the Sunday talk shows to fume over the policy, calling it
the most outrageous assault on religious freedom in American history.
Source: bit.ly
Romney Hits the Jackpot in Nevada
To literally no one’s surprise, Mitt Romney swept the board in the casino state.
Romney’s Nevada caucus victory was always on the cards, and with 71% of precincts reporting, he’s raked in 48% of the vote. He’s trailed by Gingrich at 23%, Paul at 19%, and Santorum at 11%.
Romney went in to the caucus with two, ahem, trump cards - Donald Trump’s endorsement, and Nevada’s Mormon voters. Mormons made up more than a quarter of Nevada caucus-goers, and broke over 90% for Romney.
Source: topix.com
Trump fired speculation with his promise of a “major announcement” at a Las Vegas press conference last Thursday.
Would he re-enter the race? Release Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate?
The media widely - and incorrectly - reported the Gingrich camp’s claim that Newt was about to snag the coveted Trump endorsement.
But embarrassingly for Gingrich, Trump announced that Mitt’s his guy. Romney, looking profoundly uncomfortable, professed himself “delighted” and wrapped up the event so fast that it was over five minutes after it began. In thanking Trump, Romney said
“There are some things you can’t imagine happening in your life. This is one of them.”
His tone suggested he didn’t mean this in a good way. (Watch it here.)
Pundits have questioned Romney’s wisdom in tying himself to a man known in pop culture for the catchphrase “you’re fired!”
(Photograph: Michael Nelson/EPA)
Source: topix.com
Media Desperately Hoping Romney-Gingrich “Mortal Kombat” Won’t End
Jon Stewart calls it “Mortal Kombat.” Other journalists describe it as ”a mutually assured destruction that late-night comedians can’t get enough of.”
With today’s Florida primary in the background, journalists have been gleefully speculating that the Romney-Gingrich face-off will turn into a “blood feud for the ages” lasting all the way through to August.
Magazines like the New Yorker and Bloomberg Business have been illustrating the candidates as defeated prize-fighters, and Newsweek’s delightful Feb 6 cover showed Newt and Mitt as Spartacus-style gladiators. (The Bloomberg cover didn’t actually go to press.)
Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi sees the Gingrich-Romney feud more as a farce than a war, calling it
An unscripted fuck-up of heroic dimensions. … If you’re not a conservative voter with a dog in this fight, watching Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and whoever else … has been great slapstick, like watching a cruel experiment involving baboons.
Source: topix.com
Why Gingrich Will Keep Fighting to the Death
There’s been a flood of stories today on why Gingrich won’t drop out of the race, even though he’s almost certain to lose Florida. (See Politico, “Why Gingrich Won’t Quit”.)
In response, NYMag’s Dan Amira has come up with a semi-satirical list of “Five Reasons Why Newt Gingrich Should Keep Running, Forever.” Here are three of them:
1. Polls since last summer that show Republican voters leaping gladly onto one non-Romney candidate after another, which has given Newt two surges – so far.
2. When Santorum drops out - as he inevitably will - Gingrich hopes to hoover up all of Santorum’s voters.
3. The best reason of all - Mitt Romney:
“There’s no telling what horrible things could befall Romney in the coming months. Maybe some damning tax revelations will leak out. Maybe a former Bain executive will turn up and admit that he and Romney used to smoke cigars filled with $100 bills as they laughed maniacally about the companies they’d looted. Maybe Romney will be caught on camera insisting that corporations are more personlike than fetuses. You can never know.”
Source: topix.com
More from the polling booths of Miami Beach, as Chris McGreal talks to some colorful characters – which is putting it mildly – having voted in the Republican primary:Next into the polling station is George Balsamo. He’s in a feisty mood. So how will he be voting? “Anybody who’s not a fucking Cuban,” he said.Since none of the candidates is a Cuban, who will it be? “Gingrich.”
Why? “Because he’s not a fucking Cuban.”
Standing close by is a security guard, Andy, who happens to be Cuban. He came to Florida as a young man 40 years ago. He’s a registered Republican and the persistent claims by Romney and Gingrich that Obama is trying to impose “European-style socialism” on America has put the wind up Andy. He says the most important thing is to stop America going communist, and that’s where Obama’s taking it.
“They say this country is going to be socialist like Europe. Socialism is communism. We need to keep this country free,” he said. “If people don’t wake up they will be living like slaves. Obama is a socialist. He’s a very great danger. In three years he’s done nothing. He broke everything.”
An Italian immigrant turned US citizen called Rocco declined to say how he voted but it was neither for Romney nor Gingrich.
“I am against Gingrich because of his behaviour in the past, when he was in Congress,” he said.
Rocco rejected Romney because he is a Mormon, or as Rocco put it: “He’s a religious nut”.
- From Richard Adams’ Election 2012 Liveblog in The Guardian.
Source: Guardian
Ron Paul won the coveted Snoop Dogg endorsement this Sunday. (Source: Buzzfeed.)
Source: tpmmedia
Twitter users respond to Sarah Palin’s reference to 1990s ultra-left-wing rock band Rage Against the Machine.
On Sunday Palin appeared on Fox News and urged GOP voters to “rage against the machine, vote for Newt, annoy a liberal.”
Over at the New York Magazine, Dan Amira asks, “is this the most wrong Palin has ever been?” He came up with a precise estimate of where “a vote for Newt” in Florida actually ranks on the list of “things that annoy liberals.” See above.
This is not an elaborate hoax, but Newsweek’s Feb 6 cover.
Source: facebook.com
