Posts Tagged ‘eyeon2008.com’
“Mitt Romney is amping up the argument that he — not Rudy — is the Republican who’s truly electable. His campaign just blasted out the following just moments ago,” writes Greg Sargent in a shamelessly pro-Romney TMP ElectionCentral post titled, preposterously, Romney: Forget Rudy — I’m The Real Electable Republican
Willard Milton Romney: STRATEGY FOR A STRONGER AMERICA: THE THREE-LEGGED REPUBLICAN STOOL
“I believe that to win the White House that our candidate has to be somebody who can represent and speak for all three legs of the conservative stool or conservative coalition that Ronald Reagan put together — social conservatives, economic conservatives and defense conservatives.” — Governor Romney
Of course, as Jonathan Martin points out, Rudy is presenting a three-legged stool of his own: National security conservatism, economic conservatism, and in place of social conservatism, Hillary-bashing, that is to say, Rudy’s claim that only he can slay her.
So what Romney’s doing with the above argument is to try to undercut not one, but two of Rudy’s campaign rationales. First, Romney’s trying to dilute the importance of national security issues as a primary driver of GOP Primary voters. And second, he’s simultaneously undercutting Rudy’s I’m-electable-against-Hillary claim by saying that only someone who meets all of these three conservative thresholds can assemble the coalition necessary to get elected President as a Republican … etc., etc.
Romney’s tired furniture metaphor aside, most agree that “conservatism has lots its coherence”; regard:
“But the base is not so happy right now,” writes eye in an eyeon2008.com post titled Just babies, guns, and taxes? Or more?
The party is angry because George Bush isn’t conservative enough. What does that mean? Taxes? Um, no. He cut those. A bunch. Babies? PBA. Judges. A huge number of executive orders. Probably not that. Guns? Well, he let the Assault Weapons Ban expire. Probably not the problem there. What are the problems? Spending. Immigration. Campaign finance reform. Etc.
When someone can count the conservative principles on one hand, I will know what it means to be conservative again. We aren’t there. We need new ideas. Some of that is a reorganization of our existing ideas. Some of it is new stuff. Time to start working … etc., etc.
This is especially true in light of the Romney Question—in light of a “suddenly conservative” super-rich person and his hireling dilettanti—a man who claims to have redefined conservatism in advance of any movement by the movement. See:
The other GOP candidates appear to have a plan of their own to address the Romney Question. Regard:
“On the trail in South Carolina last week, Giuliani said that ‘from California to New York . . . the things that hold us together as a party are a strong national defense and a strong national economy,'” reports Jonathan Martin in a Politico blog post titled Romney’s three legs vs Rudy’s two (and a half?)
So then how does Rudy keep the GOP stool upright?
It’s becoming more obvious that Rudy’s third-leg is no issue at all, but rather something more pragmatic: electability.
As Perry Bacon smartly observes in his piece from the Palmetto State, Rudy has made Hillary-bashing, and the I-can-beat-her narrative it connotes, “the third plank of his brand of conservatism in lieu of orthodoxy on social issues.”
And if McCain and Fred keep focusing their fire on Romney instead of Rudy, he may just get away with it … etc., etc.
Let us pray that he does, as this is probably the best we can hope for at the moment.
Aside: you sort of have to wonder—are the Romneys themselves asking why it is that everyone is against them?—or: do they have the presence of mind or critical self-awareness necessary to even pose such a question? We don’t know.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
“Mitt Romney is seizing the opportunity created by Dr. James Dobson’s threat of a third party candidacy. The Massachusetts pol is positioning himself as the GOP candidate of choice for religious conservatives,” writes the estimable Deal W. Hudson in an editorial for the Post Chronicle titled Has James Dobson Created An Opening For Mitt Romney?
How? In a Boston Globe story from October 5, Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for the Romney campaign, said, “Dr. Dobson is keeping an open mind on Mitt Romney, and I think this is because they do share in common so many values.”In short, Romney wants to portray himself as the only major candidate with Dobson’s approval still in the running.
Romney also wants to portray himself as the emerging choice of the so-called “social right”; see: The Dawning Realization of the Social Right, a breathless and intemperate race42008.com Romney-fantasia authored by someone named Matt C.
Back to Hudson:
Dr. Dobson didn’t take the bait.
We reported on the same event and arrived at a similar conclusion: Romney courts Dobson, fails miserably to persuade
Back to Hudson:
The Boston Globe reporter, Michael Kranish, called Dobson to get a comment on the campaign statement, but he did not return the call.
No one can blame Romney for trying to fill in the vacuum created by Dobson’s negative comments on nearly all the GOP candidates. After all, Dobson has said nothing critical about Romney himself, only that Evangelicals would not be likely to vote for a Mormon.
We reported on that too: Dobson of Focus on the Family sells soul to Satan for a pittance; praises Romney
Back to Hudson:
“I don’t believe that conservative Christians in large numbers will vote for a Mormon, but that remains to be seen, I guess,” Dobson said on a national radio show October 2, 2006.
The signs are not good that Dobson will back Romney. Dobson’s attempt in Salt Lake City to rally other religious leaders to a third party cause came the day after Romney spoke to the same group.
If Dobson had been favorably impressed, he would not have carried through with his plan to lead his colleagues out of the GOP for the 2008 election.
By addressing Dobson publicly, the Romney campaign is taking a huge risk. Fehrnstrom argued that Dobson and Romney “may not agree on theology, but they share in common values like protecting the sanctity of life.”
This is a problematic issue for the Romney campaign to raise with pro-lifers like Dobson and other members of the Council on National Policy. Not only is Romney’s pro-life commitment of a recent vintage, it remains inconsistent on the very important issue of embryonic stem cell research … more
Question: why the indecision from Evangelicals—or, more precisely, why are Evangelical leaders emitting incoherent noise?—answer: the problem of maintaining power and influence. Regard:
” … the leaders of the [Evangelical] movement have a clear hierarchy of preferences [in this election],” writes the estimable eye of eyeon2008.com in a ruthlessly honest analytical discursus titled Why the religious right hasn’t found a candidate
- Support the candidate who wins the White House. Call this the George W. Bush case. Might be the Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney case.
- Support the candidate who wins the primary but loses the general. Call this the Hillary Clinton case or the Mike Huckabee case. It may also be the Thompson or Mitt Romney case also.
- Oppose the candidate who wins the primary, but then be forced to support the candidate in the general. (But probably get no love from the White House if the candidate wins) Call this the John McCain case.
- Oppose the (GOP) candidate in the primary and the general who wins the White House. Call this the Rudy Giuliani case.
Clearly the last two are unacceptable to any interest group leader. They simply lose access when, eventually, their followers will, to some extent, rally around whoever is in the White House. The leader is marginalized over time.
The other two cases are the interesting parts. I don’t know anyone who thinks that Brownback and Huckabee could really win a general election, although that is shifting for Huckabee to some extent. Huckabee would face his own problems; in some sense, Mike Huckabee is to the Club for Growth what Rudy Giuliani is to James Dobson. So conservative Christian leaders are sitting down and asking themselves:
- Can Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney win the nomination?
- Can they win the general?
If the answer to (2) is “no”, then the right strategy is to back whoever allows them to build the strongest organization. Perhaps you could call this the Bob Dole strategy? But if the answer to (2) is “yes”, then they have to figure out which pony to pick, or, at least, which pony not to kill. And, again, there are reasons, in both candidates, for the followers not to follow. In the case of Mitt Romney, it is his religion. (note that I am not defending that, just saying that it is a reality) Increasingly, Fred Thompson has disappointed religious right leaders on gay marriage. And these are echoes of a past that is even more problematic for them.
So you get a hodgepodge … more
So: You also get a Willard Milton Romney attempting to spin the confusion as movement in his favour. This is what happens when leaders—e.g. Dobson—fail to lead: you get non-leaders rising up to fill the void—e.g. Romney.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
The intrepid eye of eyeon2008.com responds to an email message from a reader in a post titled Evangelical leaders moving towards Romney? Not so much.
The writer of the email message is responding to Ralph Z Hallow’s article about Romney in today’s Washington Times. Hallow claims that Bauer and Perkins—two Evangelical “leaders”—are now emitting noise that sounds distinctly pro-Romney.
Using only his thumbs and an iPhone, eye text-messaged the Perkins’ Family Research Council for clarification. They quickly messaged him back, as, apparently, they have lots of free time on their hands:
“We are not moving away from Huckabee or toward Romney …
We just want to reiterate that Giuliani is a disaster … He will destroy the coalition among conservatives. Asking us to accept him as the nominees, is like asking fiscal conservatives to accept a candidate who wants to return to the tax rates of the pre-Reagan era” … more
Translation: We—the FRC—are blithering idiots—that is to say, knuckle-dragging rubes—who want the right to veto the more general will of the conservative movement. Further translation: We want to be king-makers, and the only candidate so far willing to surrender all human dignity, to bow and scrape the dust at our feet, has been Willard Milton Romney in the stately role of Henry IV. (Paris vaut bien une messe, intones Romney the Risible as he transforms himself into the caricature of a conservative.)
“We just want to reiterate” that Tony Perkins has completely sold out.
Hey, Perkins. Here is a question for you: What do you get when you demand that candidates grovel?—answer: you get a candidate who grovels, you super-genius—i.e. you get a formless apparition like Willard Milton Romney. Now, ask yourself, is that what you really want? Here is the problem, Perkins: What if we find ourselves in a crisis and we really need, you know, a leader, and not a belly-crawling ideological cross-dresser?
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
“Does Mike Huckabee think that the financial services industry is today’s robber barrons? Is he right? Certainly in a post-industrial economy, there’s an analogy between railroads and financial services, even if it is somewhat strained,” asks the eye of the influential and precise eyeon2008.com in a post titled Huckabee against the robber barrons?
I contrast this with John Edwards. He targets the rich. Huckabee may be targeting Wall Street. That’s a difference. Perhaps an important one. What would Huckabee have to say about the housing crisis? … more
An interesting question to be sure—some sort of redacted, reconstructed populism seems to be forming itself on the margins of the center-right. BUT: Here is a question that interests us more: who among the GOP candidates springs super-rich from the financial services industry like a venus on the half-shell?—like Athena, fully formed, from the forehead of Zeus, not because of hard work or native genius, but because of an opportunity offered him by a mentor?—answer: Willard Milton Romney formerly of Bain Capital. We have harped upon this string for weeks. See:
Romney’s millions—more on the equity-sector candidate from the NYT
Is it possible—we ask, just possible—that Huckabee is sending a signal to Team Romney and his equity sector and banking industry constituencies?—if so, Huckabee needs to be clearer, plainer, and probably a lot more direct. Team Romney is not known for its subtlety or intellectual rigour.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
P.S. Not since the temple-based, central-storage economies of absolute antiquity—urban concentrations like Sumer, Akkad etc.—has there existed a social and material order the primary basis of which was not production, consumption, and trade, but hoarding and redistribution from a central site or sites. Post-capitalism—with its gigantic pension funds and other vast pools of spare money—seems to be taking us back to the future.
Does anyone remember the story of Joseph and the power that accrued to Pharaoh as he appropriated all the productive instruments of land and labour in exchange for the contents of his granaries?
Our laws and institutions have yet to adapt to the new regime of non-capital and its non-capitalists. It is from this new regime that Romney springs; see: Romney and private equity: the new ruling class. The first historical test of the new regime, already unfolding all around us—as eyeon2008.com intuits—is the so-called housing crisis, which is but the surface irritation of a global crisis of liquidity. See:
Sept. 30, 2007 | WASHINGTON — “A powerful group of conservative Christian leaders decided Saturday at a private meeting in Salt Lake City to consider supporting a third-party candidate for president if a pro-choice nominee like Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination,” writes the estimable Michael Scherer of Salon.com in an article titled Religious right may blackball Giuliani Christian conservative leaders privately consider supporting a third-party, antiabortion candidate should Rudy Giuliani win the GOP nomination.
Various responsa follow:
“Now, I like Rudy Giuliani very much. And lest anyone think I have a vested interest in this Christian Right boycott of America’s Mayor please understand that my guy John McCain is hardly the favored candidate of this same group,” writes Patryck Hynes in an Ankle Biting Pundits post titled Rudy and the Religious Right (Updated).
But I don’t understand why some conservatives think that the GOP is entitled to the votes of the Religious Right and that religious conservatives are expected to act against their interests for the benefit of the partisan good. Indeed, I get the feeling that the Religious Right is the only group within the body politic of whom such a cynical bargain is expected (not that they aren’t also criticized when they do behave with such cynicism) … more
“These leaders may even damage their influence within their own faction,” writes some random guy apparently named Ed Morrissey in a Captains Quarters Blog post titled Christian Conservatives For Hillary.
Right now, Giuliani receives a significant amount of support from the very Evangelicals for whom James Dobson and Tony Perkins speak. If they call for the formation of a third party to oppose Giuliani’s nomination and these voters do not follow them, they will find themselves very lonely in political circles, and the Council for National Policy along with them. Republicans have already figured out that Presidents can’t do much about abortion except appoint strict-constructionist judges, which Rudy has pledged to do already, and that other issues hold more significance in this election — like war, taxes, spending, and beating Hillary Clinton.
Republicans don’t need petulance from its internal factions. Primaries exist for these groups to make their best case to the voters, and the voters decide which candidate fits their agendas. Threatening to take one’s ball and go home doesn’t build respect or confidence in any faction, and it’s getting old from this particular one, even among its own members. The Christian Right needs to find a primary candidate to endorse and make its best case — and then make a mature and intelligent decision about the general election if they lose the primaries … more
“The politician wants his power short-term. The movement activist wants his power long term. One of the great questions will be who voters side with. The politicians purport to offer victory in the war on terror, a 5th judge to overturn Roe, and a couple more things. To a normal person, these could override a greater concern about the candidate’s total vision,” writes eye of eyeon08.com in a post titled Rudy, the conservative movement, their constituents, and power.
The movement activist offers a strategy for moving the country to the right over the long-term. And over the medium-term, the movement activist actually probably grows his organization and his power with a target like Hillary Clinton to attack. And this is the point. Many, many conservative consultants will say in private that they know that they will make a lot of money attacking Hillary Clinton if she is President. And many suspect that she can’t be beat. The one way for them to lose is to lose influence in the party over the short term. And that’s what Giuliani brings, especially if we manages to win … more
In sum—if we read the above arguments correctly: Hynes suggests that the GOP should not take the religious conservatives for granted; on the other hand, some random guy apparently named Ed Morrissey argues that religious conservatives should sit down and shut up as it is their responsibility to forward a candidate or candidates in the primaries etc., etc. To threaten to walk is to hand Sen. Clinton the presidency. eye of eyeon2008.com bases his analysis on the asymmetry of interest between politicians and movement activists—the one thinks, acts, and organizes for the long term, the other for the shorter term. A Rudy victory means short term gains for the politicians and loss of influence for the movement conservatives, although “[movement conservatives] will make a lot of money attacking Hillary Clinton if she is President.” We favour eye’s analysis—we do tend to think long-term, and the term “republican” means very little to us. Hence the threat of another Clinton presidency or else is to us a vain and empty threat. We will not support a candidate or a nominee simply because he or she is not Sen. Clinton.
Our own position has been consistent since the inception of this humble, anonymous vanity web log: as religious conservatives we make compromises all the time. There are no perfect candidates, or candidates that perfectly represent our views—we don’t even expect that there should be. So: based on what know now about the candidates, we would probably vote for any Republican nominee to the general election—McCain, Giuliani, Huckabee, Paul etc.—except Willard Milton Romney.
And here is why:
Were Romney to win the GOP nomination we would be happy to vote for Sen. Clinton or any one else who is not Willard Milton Romney. Party means nothing to us—it is but an organizational means to an end that issues in policy; what has meaning for us is principle, how we live our lives. You simply cannot be a Willard Milton Romney and expect our support—ever. We don’t necessarily need to trust our leaders—we generally don’t—or, put differently, we generally trust that they will behave badly, make wretched decisions, and act in their own interest most of the time, just like everyone else—but we do need to know who they are, to be confident that we know who they are. How can you know a figure who has reversed himself so many times on so many important issues?—what does Willard Milton Romney truly believe!?—we have no idea!—and neither does anyone else, least of all Romney himself!
That said, if Romney wins the nomination we will probably vote Libertarian.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
death by internal memo: how the Romneys assuage themselves for their massive and accumulating losses
“Romney strategist Alex Gage wrote in a Thursday memo that it is likely Romney will hover around 10 percent in national polls and gradually gain ground toward the end of the year,” reports the estimable Steve Holland in a Reuters release titled Romney seeks to assure supporters over campaign
“But we should not expect him to be competitive in national polls with better-known candidates like Giuliani, Thompson or McCain until after Iowa and New Hampshire,” he wrote.
Romney has pursued an “early state strategy,” focusing on Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and hoping to do well in those states to build momentum for February 5, when some 20 states are to hold their primaries, including California and New York.
But Gage cautioned: “By no means do we expect to win both Iowa and New Hampshire — no Republican in the modern era ever has.”
Here is a further problem for the Romneys. Iowa may be irrelevant what with the compressed primary schedule—2008 is not 2004, or so suggests the all-seeing eye in an eyeon2008.com post titled Calendar implications; Iowa less important?—now, back to Steve Holland and his Reuters release titled Romney seeks to assure supporters over campaign
A Republican strategist not attached to a presidential campaign said the Romney campaign was trying to lower expectations about Iowa and New Hampshire.
“Politics is about setting expectations, and this is Romney’s attempt to lower the bar in these two states where he’s done exceptionally well since the spring,” the strategist said.
Gage used as an example the case of Sen. John Kerry, the Democrat who was at about 9 percent in the polls at this point ahead of the 2004 campaign leapt to 49 percent in the weeks after winning the Iowa caucuses. He won the Democratic nomination but lost to President George W. Bush.
Romney has been running as a Washington outsider, criticizing his own Republicans for failing to stop government spending and providing better security for U.S. borders from illegal immigration … more
This is what passes for wailing and the gnashing of teeth at Team Romney’s posh waterfront Pavilion of Dejection and Despair. See:
- Harris Interactive: Romney’s [so-called success] fails to excite or generate support
- Romney’s early primary state strategy falls apart: Giuliani suddenly within margin of error in NH!
- Newport and Carroll: Post-Ames, Romney’s unfavorables higher than ever
- David S. Broder describes the fuhrerbunker-like gloom that hangs over the waterfront headquarters of a besieged Team Romney
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
willard milton romney
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who is willard milton romney? 