Romney Makes His VP Case

This is wrong, according to the latest McCain statements.

"...according to the latest McCain statements" of course being the operative phrase here. I'm sure by now he's reversed himself on this. I mean, why would ANWR be the one thing McCain stuck to his principles about?

While I think Mitt Romney would not be a bad choice for VP, I think his talents would be better utilized as part of McCain's cabinet.

Romney is also right on the money with his analysis of Obama's rejection of drilling off shore, his continued inadequacy to recognize the plight of the average American who is now paying over 4 dollars per gallon in gas for their vehicle.

I hope Obama and his advisers continue to take this position, and further anger the American public by not recognizing the need to seek out any relief possible from our energy crisis. The longer the democrats in Congress under Obama's leadership continue to laugh at the American voters plight with gasoline at the pump, it ensures victory in November for McCain.

Thank you Michael for this eye-opening report.

Neither Jesus nor New World Jesus loves me enough for McCain to make Mitt Romney his running mate.

Besides Romney would cost McCain with the ever important "dog lover" vote (at least that's what the AP told me in yet another meaningless poll).

If there is a politician in this country that screams inauthentic more than Mitt Romney they have yet to be manufactured.

I have never understood the media's love for Mittens. He ran a crappy campaign, wasted tons of his own money, and came off as weird and a bit creepy. Not to mention that his corporate job was to take over struggling companies, lay off workers and reap big profits. That ought to be a huge plus in this economy! Mitt also takes the whole flip flop attack on Obama off the table as well.

On the other hand, Mittens as VP gives Obama a great shot at flipping Georgia since many evangelicals will sit home or vote for Barr rather than a Mormon.

Please,please,please!!!

AND he'll make McCain look bad in contrast. Because he can actual construct a coherent sentence, and then repeat it the very next day.

On my knees to ceilingcat, please,please, please!

Mittens!!!

We can haz Mittenz?

Coverup of illegal behavior by Cheney continues:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/07/16/did-bush-invoke-executive-privilege-to-shield-cheneys-interview-with-fitzgerald/

As a die-hard Democrat, I pray that Romney is put on the ticket.

This poll is pretty bad for Obama: Warning large PDF at link.

According to a new New York Times poll, “Mr. McCain is yoked to the legacy of President Bush.” Indeed, a majority of Americans believe that as President, McCain “would continue Mr. Bush’s policies in Iraq and on the economy”:

- 78 percent: McCain would continue Bush’s Iraq policies

- 61 percent: McCain would continue Bush’s economic policies

- 65 percent: McCain would not bring change to Washington

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20080716_POLL.pdf

Did MS say Mc Cain's statements were wrong?

Is Mitt really the best VP the GOP can offer? He was pro-choice than pro-life. Is he pro-dog or anti-dog.

His undistinguished role as Govenor of the Commonwealth should help...not McCain.

You would think Joe Lieberman would be a better choice. He has previous running mate experience?

Yikes, what those GOPers thinking? Oh wait they are likely unencumbered by the thought process.

Didn't polling during the primaries show that the great white machine or whatever rusty calls it hates mormons more than it hates blacks?

MS: Romney's strength in key swing states like Michigan..

Romney's dad is a faint memory here in Michigan, and while Mitt is popular with the Repub base, he's not strong with independents and Reagan Dems.

There's a few areas in Michigan where the Repub brand is still viable, but they're gonna vote Repub/conservative regardless of who the candidate is.

Yes, put Romney on the ticket. Then we can see the clip of Roberta McCain griping about how the Mormons screwed up the Olympics. Plus, get the added benefit of seeing Johnny Mac look like he swallowed a poop sandwich when his Mom was speaking. Priceless!

grape_crush:
And McCain was hurt by his quoting Bruce Springsteen's Hometown a few days before the Michigan primary when speaking to Detroit area voters. Telling them their jobs are leaving and never coming back isn't a way to win over voters. Mittens would make a great VP choice for McCain. Go ahead and put a former hedge fund guy on the Republican ticket. That will make you think better about the Republicans economic policies!!

Marcy has said the housing/mortgage crisis has hit Michiganders especially hard. Is this so, grape_crush?

somewhere---- I forgot Mama McCain hatin' on the Mormons. Good times!

This media Mitten love also reminds me how they were all so sure Rudy was going to be the GOP nominee last year. The public has a much more accurate B.S. Detector than the media and Mitt sets off all the bells and whistles.

Look, the GOP should sit McCain on a park bench with a bag bread crumbs and an M16 (whatever strikes his mood) and give Huckabee a call. Mitt and Huck can then have a knock-down drag-out holy war for the soul of the Republican Party and the winner can cater the Second Coming. Joe Lieberman can run the coat room for Armageddon (because he certainly wouldn't get any farther with that crowd... ).

Mitt says in the interview that McCain distinguishes himself from Obama on drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. This is wrong, according to the latest McCain statements.

The press (or someone) should play a game where they actively try to get McCain to contradict his own statements. The more blatant the contradiction, the more points. Maybe they are already playing this game.

Sign me up for a McCain/Romney ticket! Is it Christmas and my birthday?

I used to think that Romney would be a disaster for McCain - when you're running against an African-American (or a woman) it just seems stupid to pick a minority people are even more uncomfortable with - but I think the MSM may just decide that picking someone who has had thousands of people fired makes McCain the better choice for the economy. And most importantly, Romney has really improved. Throughout the primaries he was trying so hard to be likable that he ended up looking stupid, although he obviously isn't. I remember seeing that argument he had with the radio host about the Mormon thing - when he didn't think he was being recorded - and thinking that he should show that intelligence all the time. It seems that he's starting to do that.

I honestly don't think Romney is a bad choice for the GOP. I'm not sure why some of you folks are celebrating. He can't be pinned down on anything, and as we all know, that kind of politics only hurts Democrats (even when they aren't doing it).

Republicans can change their tune like a piano in the tropics and no one calls them on it. Their base doesn't even care as long as the guns, God, and gays boxes are checked off correctly (fiscal responsibility, foreign trade, immigration... it's all so gray).

The #1 issue is the economy. McCain is rather clueless on the topic and Obama is, well, more clueless but tries to pretend he knows something. Romney would be a great choice for communicating economic policies for McCain (and reformulating some for him), either as VP or in some other capacity.

While picking Romney seems like a good choice to me (compared with Crist or many of their other horrible choices I've heard floating around), I think the Republicans should wait to see who the Democrats unveil as VP choice, so that they can create a fun matchup in a VP debate, assuming there is one (that may be the only important or entertaining thing the VP choice ever does).

I hope to see both parties unveil their runners-up for the presidency as their VP choices: Clinton v. Romney. They are both so brilliant and experienced that their matchup would make the presidential debates seem like child's play in comparison. I thought either Clinton or Romney would be better in the White House than Obama or McCain. Based upon that thought (not who will deliver which state or demographic group), I still think that Clinton or Romney would be the best presidents-in-waiting in case (God forbid) something happens to the president who is elected in November.

jayackroyd: Marcy has said the housing/mortgage crisis has hit Michiganders especially hard. Is this so, grape_crush?

Thanks for asking...

It's a symptom, not the disease, but yes.

The bubble began bursting in Michigan in 2006, and the situation hasn't improved since. The house we just purchased two months ago appraised for a third over the price we paid for it, and I have co-workers - working, mind you - who have had their houses on the market for years, or are considering walking away...That doesn't even touch the number of homes in foreclosure due to ballooning interest payments, or homes bought at the height of the market and are now so upside-down with that they can't be sold unless an owner comes up with $50K at closing.

Not only has Michigan been hit hard, it's been taking hits for a long time.

But again, those are symptoms. The real problem is the lack of gainful employment; a double-whammy consisting of the decline of the Big Three and the resulting job loss in the companies' networks of parts suppliers and services suppliers. Sure there's a few areas that haven't been hit as hard - Ann Arbor, for example - but overall, the economic outlook for the state is not sunny. Michigan's industry profile is not diverse enough for the entire state to withstand a severe downturn; as the auto industry goes, so does Michigan, basically.

I have serious doubts that a candidate with a message stating that the tough economic environment - one which we have been living in for a few years now - is simply a misperception, a "mental recession" brought on by too much teevee, will have a hard time gaining traction.

What is stunning about Michigan is that McCain is in the mix -- with his economic issue message problems (in the primaries ever since), he should be toast there. That tells me that Obama is in trouble if McCain can develop an economic message that is clear and targeted (which is unlikely unless he just makes Romney his spokesperson).

I must admit I'm confused about why people think Mittens is such an easy mark. He's a charismatic demagague, the sort who tends to do pretty well in politics.

He worries me quitea bit, to tell the truth.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

BrooklynGurl, Check all the polls on MI at this site (down on the right hand side.) Obama is comfortably ahead. His projection is 50 - 46.

Ozzie: I must admit I'm confused about why people think Mittens is such an easy mark. He's a charismatic demagague, the sort who tends to do pretty well in politics.

-------------------------

He won very few Republican primaries despite spending $20 million of his own money and those people are generally idiots. ;) If you can't win them over -- as a member of your own party -- you can't win the general public over.

(BTW, I'd use that as the same argument not to pick Edwards, Biden or Dodd as VP on the Democratic side. If they were that good, they would have won. Hillary basically tied so she would be OK as VP.)

Teresa, if the qualification for becoming a VP candidate is having won in the primaries, then there would be no VP candidate as the only winner is the presidential nominee -- not a very logical argument.

ivb, I am well aware of the Michigan polls. A 4% lead in JULY is anything but a "comfortable" lead. I've worked enough campaigns to know that nobody involved in a campaign, especially the candidate, believes a 4% lead in July is sufficient to make anyone feel comfortable.

The 4% tells me only that Obama is favored but still has a lot of work to do to stay ahead in Michigan. Back to my original post on the subject, my contention is that McCain should be waaaaaay down in Michigan but isn't. That means that he is still in the mix, has a shot, could still pull out a win, etc.... in Michigan. It's not a unique thought -- it's considered a battleground state for a reason.

He's a charismatic demagague, the sort who tends to do pretty well in politics.

Ozzie, Teresa is right on the money here. If Romney were as formidable as all that, he wouldn't have gotten smashed during the primaries by a guy who, while a demagogue, is most definitely not charismatic.

A 4% lead in JULY is anything but a "comfortable" lead.

The four point difference is in fivethirtyeight's projections, not in any of the poll numbers. Those projections take into account earlier polls as well as other variables (about which I plead ignorance). The last three polls that fivethirtyeight has listed (scroll down the right-hand side of the page) had Obama +8, Obama +6, and Obama +9.

FastEddie, Romney was double-teamed by McCain and the Huckster's "social conservative" network in the South and Midwest (churches getting out the vote for Huck, often illegally, but that's another topic) -- classic example: The West Virginia caucus. I wouldn't call the way the votes were split a smashing. You can, but I think that's a bit of an overstatement.

Anyway, anyone who is a student of Republican politics knows that it's "McCain's turn" this year..... The surprising thing to me was how well Romney and Huckabee did (vs. McCain and ... Giuliani, who got destroyed using the worst campaign strategy in modern history) given their lack of national name-recognition going into the process (of course, Romney put a solid network in place with his $$$ and Huckabee just used the evangelical churches to act as his campaign staff).

If Romney's wrong about McCain's positions he'd make a perfect choice for the ticket. Half the time McCain is wrong about his own positions.

Besides, this will give the late nite teevee writers so much more material. The "old McCain" stuff is about played out – as far as punch lines are concerned. Once exaggeration has been eclipsed by reality the humor value is lost.

BrooklynGurl --

He Should Be Up By 150 Points!

Indeed, the weird way the press treats Obama as somehow losing because he's not winning by enough in national polls is quite annoying. Barring a career-destroying scandal, it's hard to come up with a scenario (aside from very popular third party candidate) such that either major party candidate drops much more than a point or 2 below 40% in the general election. In those landslide Republican wins, Carter got 41%, Mondale got 40.6%, and Dukakis got 45.6%.

-Atrios 13:20

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_07_13_archive.html#6794939232496818901

So when are we going to have the 200 threads about Romney's dog again?

If Romney is on the ticket, Mormanism comes back into the picture. Then there are all those unpleasant questions about why blacks were considered inferior and weren't able to worship in the same church as white Mormons until 1978. I would think that would be a bit of a sticky wicket considering McCain's approval ratings in the African-American community (unless he just gives up on the AA vote completely).

Somewhere - what is it - 90-92% of blacks are voting for Obama - no racial issue there though - imagine if it were 90-92% of whites voting for mccain - so I really don't think that there is anything McCain can or cannot do that is going to make a difference there.

"Then there are all those unpleasant questions about why blacks were considered inferior and weren't able to worship in the same church as white Mormons until 1978."

Texas: your facts are a little off -- black Mormons could worship with white Mormons in the same church from the beginning of the church. Indeed, one of the reasons why early Mormons were so persecuted was because they were generally anti-slavery. The founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, said or wrote the following:

"I have advised [slaveholders] to bring their slaves into a free country and set them free--educate them--and give them equal rights."

"The Declaration of Independence 'holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.', but, at the same time, some two or three millions of people are held as slaves for life, because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours...The Constitution of the United States of America meant just what it said without reference to color or condition, ad infinitum!"

As an African-American Pentecostal preacher pointed out to me in Wichita, Kansas in 1995, Mormons have no need to apologize for their treatment of African Americans when compared with the sorry history of most "mainstream" Protestant denominations in this country, most notably the Southern Baptists. They are the ones who would not let whites and blacks sit together on the same rows in the same churches for a very long time, while Mormons were being shot and their land stolen by white Americans for, among other things, standing in opposition to slavery and believing that women should be educated. The Southern Baptist Convention voted in 1995 to adopt a resolution renouncing its racist roots and apologizing for its past defense of slavery. They not only had a much more racist past to put behind them than Mormons but they also waited 17 years after 1978.... There is also the history of the AME/Methodist split. We could discuss other denominations, too.

History is a tricky thing. Before anyone throws too many stones at the Mormons, they should take a closer look at the history of various other denominations in this country and around the world, particularly if they worship in one of the glass houses out there. Is Mormon history perfect on the subject of race? No. Is it worse then the religions of past presidents? No.

Somewhere in TIME: Yes, Smith did eventually oppose/reject slavery, but when Mormons first migrated to Missouri, Smith supported/agreed with the slave laws. I do agree that most religions have much to regret RE: how they treated AAs. My takeaway is that Mormanism is still considered a 'fringe' religion by many middle-of-the-road Americans, so it will always be a distraction for Romney.

Your Hubris: I agree that there's probably not much McCain can do to garner anymore of the black vote. I do think he hurt himself, though, years ago when he argued vociferously against the MLK holiday. This would have hurt him with the black vote no matter who his opponent was.

Texas, doubtless Mormonism will be brought up if Romney is the VP nominee.

Since you bring up Smith's position on slave laws, I also want to point out that Smith agreed not to overturn the slavery laws when he and other Mormons arrived in MO and Smith had disavowed radical (violent) abolition (they were surrounded in a slave state, so trying to settle in a slave state and proclaiming abolition upon arrival whouldn't have worked too well). Mormons held no slaves. This was a cause of great concern to slave-holding communities surrounding early LDS (Mormon) settlements and was one of the chief complaints against them made by their "neighbors" in MO.

TIME: I consider myself better educated on Mormonism. Thanks for the info--seriously.

Since you appear to be pro-Mormon (I am totally apathetic about other people's religions.), here's a web site that will make your head spin! http://eddecker.com/mormonism/africanamerican.htm

His web-site doesn't say anything about ANWR, but he does support off-shore drilling:

Expanding Domestic Oil And Natural Gas Exploration And Production

John McCain Will Commit Our Country To Expanding Domestic Oil Exploration. The current federal moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf stands in the way of energy exploration and production. John McCain believes it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use. There is no easier or more direct way to prove to the world that we will no longer be subject to the whims of others than to expand our production capabilities. We have trillions of dollars worth of oil and gas reserves in the U.S. at a time we are exporting hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas to buy energy. This is the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind. We should keep more of our dollars here in the U.S., lessen our foreign dependency, increase our domestic supplies, and reduce our trade deficit - 41% of which is due to oil imports. John McCain proposes to cooperate with the states and the Department of Defense in the decisions to develop these resources.

John McCain Believes In Promoting And Expanding The Use Of Our Domestic Supplies Of Natural Gas. When people are hurting, and struggling to afford gasoline, food, and other necessities, common sense requires that we draw upon America's own vast reserves of oil and natural gas. Within the United States we have tremendous reserves of natural gas. The Outer Continental Shelf alone contains 77 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. It is time that we capitalize on these significant resources and build the infrastructure needed to transport this important component of electricity generation and transportation fuel around the country.

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