...Willard “Mitt” Romney, the “Loser” in the South Carolina Republican Primary
Sometimes with luck, all the positive political events of a single day can just fall into an organization’s lap.
I guess I have to agree with the nation’s progressives who have seemed to be all over the nation’s airwave over the past 48 to 72 hours. Yes, it is very seldom that the Democrats get such a list of political gifts, and it is very rare to have all of them land in their lap, all on the same day.
Just look at the list of the positive events that happened on January 19th, 2012:
>>> The head of the Republican party in Iowa first announced that the Iowa Caucus was not won by Mitt Romney’s 8 votes over Rick Santorum. They instead said it was “a tie between Romney and Santorum” as they could not locate and confirm votes from 8 Iowa voting precincts. Then, just a couple of hours later, that same Iowa Republican leader announced that it was not a tie, but that Rick Santorum had actually won the Iowa Caucus by 34 votes. So now, Mitt is not 2 for 2, but 1 win and 1 loss.
>>> On the same day, Texas Governor, Rick Perry, who had said he was going to stay in the GOP presidential contest to the bitter end, the governor surprisingly announces that he was quitting the campaign and was also endorsing Newt Gingrich as his “conservative choice” for president.
>>> And it doesn’t stop here. Based on four separate political polls in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich was not only catching Mitt Romney, he was passing Mitt as the conservative Republican candidate of choice. (And he won!)
>>> But wait, that’s not all. On this same day ABC TV announces that they will be presenting a DATELINE interview with Newt’s second wife, just before the South Carolina Saturday primary, who in the interview says that Newt had asked her for an “Open Marriage” so that he could continue his affair with his now current 3rd wife, Callista. Of course, wife #2 refused and they were then divorced.
>>> And, while all this is going on, Mitt Romney continued to get assailed due to his previous comment that he would not release his tax returns; that he only paid a tax rate of about 15% (versus regular working American’s ~30% rate), and that his 1 year earnings of over $374,000, just for his speaking fees, was “not much money”. Mitt was also seriously “booed” at the South Carolina Republican presidential debate when he responded to questions about what he paid in taxes and that he only “might” release his tax returns, but not real soon, possibly sometime in April.
But, believe it or not, there’s actually more.
As you may be aware, next Tuesday, President Obama will be giving his 3rd State of the Union speech to the joint session of Congress.
Now, as always, the Republicans will also receive an early copy of the speech so that they can rebut the President’s speech, right after he has finished his presentation.
For a little background history, you might remember that the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal was the one chosen to give the response to President Obama’s first SOTU speech. Jindal’s response was so bizarre that the Louisiana governor went from being a potential rising star in the GOP to a position of relative obscurity.
You might also remember that last year, the crazy Minnesota US Representative, Michele Bachmann, gave an “unofficial response” to President Obama’s 2nd SOTU speech. In her response, she appeared to be hypnotized, she did not look directly into the camera and I don’t think anyone really remembered a word that she said due to her strange performance.
Well, the Republican party has once again selected a questionable Republican to give the response to next Tuesday’s SOTU presentation.
Their selection this year is the second term governor of Indiana, Mr. Mitch Daniels.
Now, why am I questioning the choice of such a well known Republican Governor that is continually presented as future potential presidential material? Especially when the conservative opinion writer David Brooks recently praised Governor Daniels for his “record of fiscal responsibility.”
So, what’s the problem?
For those of you with short memories, you may have forgotten that Mitch Daniels was President George W. Bush’s first Budget Director. Even FOX’s Chris Wallace pressed Daniels on the Fox News Sunday show when he asked: “When you came in, this country had an annual surplus for the first time in 30 years of $236 billion. When you left, two and a half years later, the deficit was $400 billion. You were also there when President Bush launched his Medicaid drug benefit plan that now costs $60 billion a year. I know there was a recession, but do you think it was wise -- at a time when we were fighting two wars -- to have two tax cuts and launch a huge new entitlement?"
And Daniel’s response: Daniels responded with, "It was a recession, two wars and a terrorist attack that led to a whole new category called homeland security," he said. "So nobody was less happy than I to see the surplus go away, but it was going away."
Daniels went on to tell FOX that we shouldn't even look at or consider his record from that era: "If you want to know what I think about fiscal issues, don't look at the 2 1/2 years when I was in the supporting [White House] cast with no vote."
Unfortunately, “that dog don’t hunt”. Daniels had backed tax packages that didn't work and that were a disaster for the federal budget; he backed putting the costs of the wars onto the national credit card in a way no previous administration ever had; and he backed expanding the federal role in health care without even paying for it.
Yet, somehow Daniels has become the "thinking man's" preferred GOP candidate…? But the current Republican crowd is backing the wrong horse.
And Daniel’s responses fail on many other levels.
It's very true that Daniels, as Bush's budget director, was helping “cook the books” during an economic downturn.
But you might recall that the Republicans have concluded that these economic details are irrelevant.
Since President Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, as far as the GOP is concerned, that's still not a good excuse for having large deficits today, even though they were mostly generated by the Bush administration. Therefore, the Republicans didn’t put two expensive wars and an unpaid-for drug bill on the budget, but when President Obama does, the budget deficit is all his fault. That’s an interesting and bizarre thought process at best.
But as usual, the key Republican politicians continue to promote Daniels as “Mr. fiscal responsibility”.
THE HILL newspaper, which is published in Washington while the Congress is in session, has also joined into the complimentary fray: "Governor Daniels, now in his eighth and final year as Indiana's chief executive, has compiled a solid record of effective government and fiscal responsibility, making him well-suited to outline Republicans' better solutions to the challenges Americans are facing in this struggling economy.”
Really? Where’s the proof for supporting that statement?
And the House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined in with all their compliments.
"As governor, he has turned deficits into surplus, reformed government from top to bottom, and created a better environment for private-sector job creation," Boehner said.
"An eloquent spokesman for limited government, Gov. Daniels knows that President Obama's three-year experiment in big government has made our economy worse and our future more uncertain, and he knows that Americans want a government that's simpler, streamlined and secure," Senator McConnell said.
On the other hand, with regards to last year’s SOTU speech, Daniels has admitted that he was not that interested in listening to it and that he had a different agenda for that day. He instead spent that evening watching a college basketball game and didn't even tune in later to hear the re-play of President Obama's remarks or the GOP’s rebuttal. (And this is who has been chosen to give the 2012 SOTU GOP rebuttal…?)
But mark my words, Governor Mitch Daniels will become an even better known and disliked Governor when the up-coming 2012 Super Bowl is played in his home town of Indianapolis on February 5th.
It seems that the good governor has really “pissed off” a lot of his constituents and other American labor union members. He has recently gone from being a governor that was supported by many of the states labor unions to today, sponsoring a bill for making Indiana an “anti-union, Right-to-Work” state.
The highly influential NFL Players Union is very much against what Governor Daniels’ is trying to do in Indiana and there will be some major demonstrations from hundreds of union members from all over the country when the Super Bowl comes to Daniels’ home town.
So, apparently, the choice of Governor Mitch Daniels as the GOP rebuttal presenter will probably also be added to the list of fortunate events for America’s progressives, and it all occurred on January 19th, 2012.
Copyright G.Ater 2012
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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