Presidential Campaign

"I'm not familiar, precisely, with exactly what I said,
but I stand by what I said, whatever it was."
 
Candidate Romney might have finished this perceptive remark with"... unless I don’t. Or can't. Whatever."

Who's his speech writer? George Orwell? His words display a confused mind and an intellectual compass that has sprung its springs, so confused, meaningless and representative of a position-less aspirant for leadership. Whoosh! I’ll say whatever it takes, whatever it means.

1) Did the New York Times story on Joe Ricketts's supposed plans to attack President Obama's ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (which Ricketts now denies), help Republicans get Wright back in the spotlight? Or did the whole episode create another distraction for Obama from his record and afford his campaign an opportunity to attack extremists in the GOP?

2) Did House Speaker John Boehner's announcement on Tuesday that he would not agree to raise the debt ceiling again without a greater amount of spending cuts make House Republicans look like they are seriously concerned about the fiscal cliff we'll arrive at in December, when $8 trillion in tax cuts expire while spending cuts go into effect?

From George Clooney doing a blockbuster fundraiser for Obama to the huge number of small donors sending money in April to make Nancy Pelosi the Speaker again, you better believe the Democratic base is being roused again. The strange alliance between the nutcase wing of the Republican Party that spreads the lie that the president was born in Kenya and fearful Republican operatives who again push the Jeremiah Wright story is the secret weapon for Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Want to know how to energize the Democratic base, create a massive turnout of Democratic voters, cause a major surge of Democratic donors, and alienate America's political independents?

As Karen Finney has suggested here, Joe Biden’s accidental announcement on gay marriage might have been staged. This incident and the Obama follow-up announcement seemed almost dumb and dumber compared to the standard format of press relations and revelations. It could have been a tactical ploy: staging a diversion, only to head off in a completely new direction. Possibly they hoped to nail the same-sex marriage issue and leave it behind entirely by tacking in an entirely new direction a week or so later. Leaving gay marriage behind with Joe Biden. Such a move would be both tactically inspired and ethically insidious.

If “Julia” taught us anything, it’s that the Democrats' agenda — a set of cradle-to-grave policies designed to “protect” women and keep them under the auspices of government control — is doomed to fail come November.
 
Yesterday’s CBS/New York Times poll that found that women support Romney over Obama 46-44, revealing that playing gender politics actually doesn’t win you women’s — or men’s — votes. The fact is this “gender split” really just mimics the general vote split, suggesting that these ideas are widely unpopular.

Many believe that President Obama will be reelected regardless of our economy. It is the mentality of individuals like state Rep. Emitt Burns (black minister from Maryland), who has forcefully come out against Obama's approval of gay marriage, but will still vote for him.

This is a man who was morally outraged by what he perceived as something that was in total opposition to biblical and moral belief. Yet he and many like him are willing to subjugate such an important part of their belief system to blind political allegiance. There are many individuals in the black, Hispanic, gay and lesbian communities as well as those who are easily frightened by rhetoric who will blindly vote for Obama, regardless of what is best for their own interest.

When the Obama team blungeoned Mitt Romney with a statement he made in 2007 about Osama bin Laden — that it was "not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person” — Romney shot back that of course he too would have tried to take out bin Laden. In an exasperated tone, Romney added, “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”

I’m not a particular fan of Carter’s, but still ... Romney’s gratuitous putdown has an ugly, bullying quality to it. Why say it? Especially given that in the spring of 1980 Carter did order a high-risk attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran. The fact that helicopter equipment malfunction rendered it a failed mission — eight people died — doesn’t change the fact that Carter had the guts to give it a go.

In my column this week about the great populist wave, I challenged the pseudo-capitalism of the right. A new example has emerged with  the disclosure that JP Morgan has lost $2 billion from blunders very similar to those that caused the financial crash. I recognize that in some circles on the Republican right my opinion is not welcome, but a majority of voters agree with me, whether conservative politicians or their media allies like it or not. The dangers of the vulture capitalism of Mitt Romney and the Ayn Rand extremism and glorification of greed by Ron Paul are more obvious than ever today.

I agree with the fair criticism of President Obama by A.B. Stoddard in her column today regarding President Obama's winding road to his gay-marriage decision, but I strongly disagree with her conclusion. Barack Obama looks like George Washington and Gen. Patton compared to Mitt Romney, if consistency is the test of character for the presidency. Romney has spent a lifetime double-talking, double-dealing, changing positions, weathervaning and Etch-a-Sketching.

Mitt Romney heads to Liberty University this weekend to deliver the commencement address, walking a tightrope as he switches gears from the “severely conservative” rhetoric required in the GOP primary to the more moderate rhetoric needed to appeal to independent voters in the general election.

The crowd at Liberty U is no doubt expecting to hear his reaction to the president’s announcement on marriage equality and the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina. Romney’s campaign has billed the speech as part of his efforts to make inroads with social and religious conservatives he will need to win the election. As noted by Liberty faculty members Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski on the Huffington Post, with 50,000 students, the school is affiliated with the largest evangelical denomination in America, the 16 million members of the Southern Baptist Convention.