I just finished watching his CPAC speech, he wasn’t “booed by his supporters.” The only boos where when he mentioned Obama and Clinton’s announcing to the enemy by when we’d leave Iraq should either be elected President.
Left and right, this election has been a preposterous money-spending contest that started many, many months too soon, and as usual it has proved nothing except who can be the biggest sneaky little shit. Sneaky Little Shit for Change, if you prefer.
It would have been easy for Romney to delude himself into dragging this right to the convention. But he’s putting the crack pipe down. If Romney runs for president again, I’ll look on him more kindly because of this.
bq. Romney: â€If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.â€
How very noble. If he feels this way, perhaps he shouldn’t have gotten into the race to begin with.
Perhaps it would have been better had I said, Romney’s decision was booed. I didn’t mean to imply any personal abuse. His supporters just had the rug pulled out from beneath them; Ambinder reported that even members of Romney’s staff didn’t know this was coming. (And doesn’t the first part of Romney’s speech promise to fight on to the convention?)
It strikes me as a pretty volatile situation McCain is entering . . .
Well, this pretty much proves he shouldn’t be president, I think. Anything could happen on the way to the convention. I wonder if he even tries to woo Huckabee?
Time to circle the wagons, although i’ve been thinking about it and _just maybe_ Coulter and Limbaugh are on a double secret mission to put McCain in the WH. The more I think about it McCain may end up netting more votes by being the sworn enemy of people centrists find so irritating.
I still won’t vote for him. How can anyone speak of liberty as his chief guiding factor having pushed McCain/Fiengold into law? How can someone speak of standing for the Rule of Law, and yet push for amnesty for illegal aliens?
The GOP will remain impotent and adrift for the next 20 years until all the worthless scum spawned of the baby boomer generation finally dies off for good.
Well, you didn’t have to wait long for that. What’s going over at CPAC right now is John McCain, and he’s going over quite well. He even got off a joke of sorts: “We ought to do this more often.”
His introduction by Senator Tom Coburn was warm without being Orwellian. He pointed out what McCain’s conservative critics have forgotten, like his pro-life record and his support for judicial conservatives.
McCain got cordial boos only when he mentioned immigration, and he turned it into applause.
Then a fine Reagan litany of fiscal conservatism – Listen, oh ye “staunch Republicans”, “true Conservatives”, and Paul-Bawlers: If you weren’t such a bunch of haters and hypocrites, you’d find much comfort there.
And of course, the war. Which we are winning, and will not apologize for.
Over all, not a bad performance by McCain, and not a bad reaction to it.
bq. The more I think about it McCain may end up netting more votes by being the sworn enemy of people centrists find so irritating.
The Republican brand is toxic at the moment, so any distance that McCain can put between himself and the party that most Americans think is bungling everything from the war to the economy is a good thing. Don’t think politically savvy people like Limbaugh won’t recognize this and play their appropriate roles right up to the very end.
Counteracting this campaign will be the links that Democrats will be able to make between Bush and McCain, which far outnumber those which he has stood in opposition. That touching image of McCain nuzzling Bush’s armpit like a little lost puppy will be ubiquitous in the next few months. And come November, every man, woman and child in America will have been sold on the idea that electing a President McCain is akin to a “Bush Third Term”.
I know Romney knows that he didn’t have a chance, but I still think whatever his motivation, he did an honorable thing. Bowing out and showing more concern for his country than his ego is a class act. Now if both the Democrats go into their convention without the number of delegates needed to win, and there’s a battle over the superdelegates or the unseated FL and MI delegates from which either candidate emerges victorious but bruised, and if McCain picks up the support from moderates, independents, and hawkish democrats that he loses from the hard right, there may just be hope for America.
Gabriel, I think you’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Do you really think McCain is worse for conservatives than Hillary or Obama? Do you really think that Hillary or Obama would be better even on the issues of free speech and immigration than McCain (two words “fairness doctrine”)? Can you possibly be serious?
I know that Obama and Hillary are out to screw me, its their job being a Democrat to ignore and attempt to thwart even moderate conservative thought.
I shouldn’t have to accept that from someone who throws around the “Regan footsoldier” line as much as someone like McCain does.
McCain has done far more damage to conservatives than Hillary has, or Obama for that matter. I see little to differentiate him from those two, other than his war stance, and even then, he wants to go the lawfare way.
The plain fact is, I dont trust him, and hes given me no reason to trust him. At least I know Hillary won’t care about my concerns, I shouldnt have to accept someone who pretends to share my principles, only to have him stomp on them every chance he gets. Thats why McCain is worse, he doesnt care about anything but his ego, and his press. His true constituency is the Washington Elite and the liberal press corps, its not the members of his party who he continually pisses on.
bq. I know that Obama and Hillary are out to screw me, its their job being a Democrat to ignore and attempt to thwart even moderate conservative thought.
This is true only if by “moderate conservative” you mean “radical right wing”. Both have demonstrated a willingness to compromise with Republicans and moderates. In my view, too much so, but so be it.
bq. His true constituency is the Washington Elite and the liberal press corps…
Giving support to the idea that they are anything but “liberal”.
By not burning his fortune down any further, Mitt Romney is better placed to run again later after he’s put in a few years reassuring people who didn’t feel that they knew him this time that he is for real.
By not carrying the fight any further he’s shown good judgment and willingness to believe the numbers. That is how a rational CEO should act. It’s turnaround CEO Mitt, the smart businessman, who I think he should have been selling from day one, not the instant conservative.
By letting the Republican Party start early on the difficult task of coalescing around John McCain, Mitt did the best thing for the party and the country. Hugh Hewitt is right: the stakes are a war and six elderly judges. It’s a lot.
By vacating the field, he should have put an end to the Mormon baiting that was going on. The religious fight in this nomination battle was an ugly thing.
McCain has done far more damage to conservatives than Hillary has, or Obama for that matter. I see little to differentiate him from those two, other than his war stance, and even then, he wants to go the lawfare way.
I can think of quite a few things that differentiate McCain from Clinton or Obama:
1) McCain called for the surge and stood by the war when Clinton was waffling and Obama was telling his supporters the war was a plot cooked up by Karl Rove to distract them from poverty and the uninsured.
2) McCain has been one of the few members of Congress in either party to exhibit any fiscal responsibility by his votes against agricultural subsides, Medicare Part D, earmarks, and the pork-infested transportation and energy bills. Also anyone who can go into Iowa twice and say ethanol’s a boondoggle deserves serious consideration as a fiscal conservative’s fiscal conservative.
3) He’s the only remaining candidate who is serious about fixing the entitlement mess and supports personal retirement accounts for Social Security.
4) He’s never voted for or called for an income tax increase (unlike his opponents who have made it the central part of their campaign) and has pledged to support the Bush tax cuts.
5) He voted to confirm Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.
6) He supports expanding free trade.
7) He supports tort reform.
8) He supports school choice.
9) He supports RTKBA and voted to stop the plaintiff’s bar from bankrupting the firearms industry with frivolous lawsuits.
10) On health care, he supports letting small businesses form association health plans, giving people who buy their own health insurance a tax break, and letting consumers buy policies across State lines without new costly mandates (if you can’t see the difference between that and Hillarycare 2.0 and Obamacare, I can’t help you)
By not carrying the fight any further he’s shown good judgment and willingness to believe the numbers. That is how a rational CEO should act. It’s turnaround CEO Mitt, the smart businessman, who I think he should have been selling from day one, not the instant conservative.
I agree, while the “flip-flopping†accusation was pretty much all B.S., Romney delivered today the speech he should have been delivering all along. It focused on the man he is rather than the man he thought he had to be to run for President. He’s a brilliant accomplished executive with a unparallel record of accomplishment that neither of the one-term Senators competing for the Democrat nominee could ever hope to match.
I was prepared to stay in it as long as Romney was in it but I think he picked the right time and manner to make his exit. It essentially ends the presidential primary and gives McCain added momentum from his victory Tuesday night to launch the national campaign we need to mount to win. And hopefully it may not only lead to him being a contender in four years but hopefully he’ll be able to put his talents and experience to use as part of the McCain administration.
I don’t think it is so much a case of the perfect vs. the good, as an unhealthy fixation on personalities, which is quite contrary to republicanism. That’s republicanism with a small “r”, and it ought to be contrary to the big R, too.
The Democrats gleefully wallow in Great Leaderism – even Great Leaderism as an end in itself, without caring whether it be Stalinist Hillary or Messianic Barack in character.
Republicans, capitalized or not, ought not to be in the market for such shoddy goods, but it is the downside of the Reagan legacy that we often are. We made him into our JFK, and went overboard with it. It’s supposed to be about ideas, not the mortal and imperfect human beings.
Alan: The Republican brand is toxic at the moment, so any distance that McCain can put between himself and the party that most Americans think is bungling everything from the war to the economy is a good thing. Don’t think politically savvy people like Limbaugh won’t recognize this and play their appropriate roles right up to the very end.
I agree with your first sentence, but the second requires a leap of faith that I’m not willing to take. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have always been a royal pain in the ass to centrists, and they’re true to form right now.
bq. I was prepared to stay in it as long as Romney was in it but I think he picked the right time and manner to make his exit.
LMAO….he picked nothing, the voters did. Or rather, they failed to pick him. The notion that he acted “honorably” or otherwise in bowing out at this moment is pure unalloyed spin. He was rejected soundly and overwhelmingly by Republican primary voters. I’m sure you’d agree that he’d have no qualms whatsoever about taking his campaign al the way to the convention regardless of the idiotic faux national security sentiments he expressed today, were he Obama to McCain’s Clinton.
bq. Well done.
Indeed, Thorley. You’ve revealed yourself to be a virtual fountain of naked, unsubstantiated Republican partisanship on this thread…it’s perhaps refreshing to find that your views can be so easily pigeonholed.
bq. The Democrats gleefully wallow in Great Leaderism – even Great Leaderism as an end in itself, without caring whether it be Stalinist Hillary or Messianic Barack in character.
Glen, really. This comment is so far off base I’m wondering whether you live in America or are posting from abroad.
I live in the same country with Chris Matthews, who says “Let me tell you something about Barack Obama. If you’re actually in the room when he gives one of his speeches, and you don’t cry, you’re not an American. It’s unbelievable.”
McCain may or may not be a “true” conservative, but with the Democrats in control of Congress and all but certain to pick up more seats in November, he at least offers the chance, however slim, that he will stand up for conservative principles from time to time in the face of Congressional overreaches, such as bringing back the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”.
Clinton or Obama? No chance. Zero. Zip. Nada. Squat. None.
As much as I dislike John McCain, I’ll take “slim” over “none” any day.
Republicans ??
Democrats ??
Let’s try not to forget that the outcome of US elections are determined by the Independents
I know it is harder to HATE them, but just tryu to stay focused and you can do it
The amount of snark in these comments is unsettling — it is really unbecoming of the level of discussion characteristic of this site.
Didn’t see any of the speeches but I read the texts over at Powerline.
The problem I have long had with John McCain is not so much one or another stand on various issues. The problem for me was that the whole world seemed to revolve around John McCain, both in his mind and among some accolytes in the press. I have been thinking that now that he is the nominee apparent, he really needs to do some political fence mending and take a more conciliatory posture with respect to people he disagrees with.
In his speech today, he did that and more. He gave “straight talk” on how his record did not follow the straight Movement Conservative party line, and he was generous in his recent Super Tuesday victories in ascribing differences of opinion and noble motives to people, many in the audience, who disagreed with him without trivializing those disagreements. He eloquently outlined his values and political philosophy and sharply differentiated how he would lead from the Democrats.
John McCain’s defense of liberty as a core political and social value is in such sharp contrast with calls for vaguely specified change and celebration of grievance. His delineation of the choice he was presenting to the American people was so clear that I feel that if he loses because “Republicans have become toxic”, he will do so honorably because the loss will reflect a choice made by the people rather than a failure for him to mount an effective advocacy.
If John McCain was generous in victory, Mitt Romney was equally generous in defeat. And the attendees of CPAC appeared gracious in receiving each of them. It was a great day for conservatives, for the Republican Party, and for the country that a politics of liberty will get a fair hearing before the voters.
Thanks, Alan. I’ve been working on chapter 6 of your biography, and I was stuck for something to write about.
You might think Matthews is an idiot – you might even be right – but I regard him as an excellent barometer. Of all the soi-disant journalists out there, Matthews is the most perfect partisan robot I’ve ever seen, and he puts the least effort into concealing it.
Before Obama descended upon him in a cloud of cherubim, Matthews worshiped at the Clinton shrine with the best of them. And hated their enemies with the best of them, which is what he’s really good at. Before that, he was a sycophant for the likes of Jim Wright and Tony Coelho.
As an indicator, Matthews beats the Consumer Price Index. If he says it a whole lot of people are thinking it, because he’s anything but original.
But that’s trivia. My original point, if it was not clear the first time, is that Democrats are continually yearning for some individual to come down from on high and change the country (“Take back America!”) into something they like. And of course, stick it to all the people they don’t like.
on second read, I phrased that incorrectly, I meant pretty much the entire babyboomer generation. take a look around at what their “leadership” has wrought, what their public education system turns out as “educated”. how else can so many people be so utterly fooled by an empty suit like Obama?
bq. Thanks, Alan. I’ve been working on chapter 6 of your biography, and I was stuck for something to write about.
You mean “Unauthorized Biography”, I assume….
bq. If he says it a whole lot of people are thinking it, because he’s anything but original.
The only thing his behavior reports are his warped views. If you are using Matthews as some kind of barometer, it is only of a segment of the elitist, isolated and self-important beltway journalists, who most people don’t give a fig about, including me.
bq. Of all the soi-disant journalists out there, Matthews is the most perfect partisan robot I’ve ever seen, and he puts the least effort into concealing it.
Partisan how? He hates the Clintons, loves McCain and is so far affectionate to Obama. I’ve heard him swoon over Rudy and he’s a GWB syncophant. What exactly is the cause that you think he’s advancing, besides his own?
gabriel, I can’t answer you any better than Thorley did. The most important item on his list was McCain’s votes on the Bush supreme court nominees. If those are the kind of judges he’ll nominate (and what reason do you have to believe they’re not?) that alone makes him worth voting for. Do you really think Hillary or Obama would appoint better judges? Of cours, a caveat there is that McCain will have a congress with a Democrat majority. He’ll have to nominate judges that will get confirmed by a that congress, but they would still have to be better than any a Democrat would nominate. The Rush/Coulter wing of the party had better wake up and smell the coffee. McCain is our guy. You guys cost him the election and we get a liberal Democrat president with a liberal Democrat majority in congress for at least the next four years and a liberal supreme court for God knows how long. How can McCain possibly be a bigger disaster than that?
Alan, whatever his motivations, what Romney actually did and said was a class act. Many politicians would have kept going or witheld their support from their former rival. Hell, look at Huckabee. He’s got to know he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, yet he keeps going. For whatever reason, Romney did the right thing. I also detect a slight note of hysteria underneath your vituperation. McCain is probably the most dangerous candidate the Democrats could face. A bit of whistling past the graveyard?
Please allow me to ramble incoherently for a moment:
I held my nose and voted for Bush the second time solely based on SCOTUS seats, and yeah Bush came through (in spite of the Harriet Meir’s debacle) with two solid Justices Alito and Roberts. And I can concede that his handling of the war has been far superior to anything Gore or Kerry would have done, but I still don’t see it being prosecuted seriously enough, and with all of the weapons in our arsenal being utilized. We still refuse to put much pressure on the Saudi’s, Paki’s, or Egyptians in any meaningful fashion in my view. We still allow our borders to be virtually unpatrolled, and allow rampant unchecked illegal immigration (the fence is a good start if it ever gets completed).
Now when it comes to McCain, and the points that Thorley made, some are valid, but many do not reach the level in my view, of top tier issues.
1. Tort reform is dead on arrival. The law lobby is far too powerful, and there are far too many lawyers in Congress to allow it to ever happen with any legitimacy, it’s just like earmark reform, which will never happen under this, or probably any Congress, no matter how much talk there is about it. Also, his “Patients Bill of Rights†is a dream come true for the trial lawyers, and a blatant attack on the Insurance industry. McCain has a long history of pressuring businesses he doesn’t appear to favor, with government mandates and restrictions. Not very Conservative if you ask me.
2. McCain was supportive of the surge, which is true, he hardly “Called for itâ€. It’s the one thing he has been consistent on, besides screwing over our free speech rights.
3. Earmark and spending reform are dead, especially with the gains that the Dems will make in Congress this year. McCain is the champion of “compromise†(funny how the Dems never are asked to compromise, its always the Republicans, but that’s a rant for another day) just like the gang of 14 sham, he will work out some deal to the detriment of the GOP’s positions, but it will get him a lot of glowing press, which is his only true desire anyway. It’s nice that he’s voted against subsidies, why not propose some legislation that removes them altogether? Its easy to vote, its far harder to actually get something accomplished, and so far, I’ve seen far too many “compromise†(aka caving in) bills with McCain – Leftist in the title.
4. I’ll believe that meaningful SS reform will get passed will have about as much a chance of happening as the Paul/Kucinich ticket getting elected. Call me jaded, but Congress has never been serious about reforming any entitlement program, and given the gerrymandered districts across the nation, the same looters and moochers will be in office for a long time to come. I fully expect to get robbed of any monies I’ve paid into the system, never to see a dime myself, as most people my age believe (I’m 35 for the record).
5. In my view, voting against the Bush tax cuts TWICE, is the same as voting for a tax increase, but I’ll let McCain speak for himself about raising taxes on the rich, a nice tactic of the left. He’s flipped all over the place with the Bush tax cuts, at one time saying they shouldn’t be permanent, and then changing his mind when it was politically expedient.
6. I’ll take fair trade over free trade. Personally, I’m getting tired of propping up the economies of developing countries.
Ok so there is a partial rebuttal to some of what you have claimed. I still don’t see much on some of the more pressing issues facing us. I don’t doubt that McCain would do well prosecuting the general WOT, though his stance on water boarding, and his wanting to close GITMO trouble me considerably. It would be nice to have someone in the White House who isn’t beholden to the Saudis for once as well.
I still want to see him call to repeal McCain/Feingold, a horrible disgusting piece of legislation that tramples on the rights of Americans, and has done so much to help fund the Democratic party at the expense of the GOP.
His Gore-esque global warming crap makes me sick to my stomach. We don’t need Man-Bear-Pig Jr. pushing this crap.
His populist rhetoric on profits is another very troubling thing for me. I never want to hear someone talking about CEO pay, its none of the Governments god damn business how much people are paid. McCain-Snowe-Dorgan is another piece of stupid legislation as well. It shows McCains ignorance of free market principles, and his desperate desire to control industry.
Lets not forget the big one, Amnesty for illegals. How a Senator from a border state that has seen so much fiscal turmoil as Arizona can be so utterly wrong on this issue boggles the mind. I never want to hear the words “rule of law†come out of this guys mouth, because he has no intention of enforcing the rule of law. And for someone billed as “Mr. Straight Talk†, his Kerry-esque “Nuance†and Bill Clinton parsing of definitions when trying to say that its not Amnesty is a slap in the face to anyone who can read.
So, come November, I will vote for no one, and we will get a liberal in the White House regardless of who wins. I’m done pushing aside most of my principles just so someone with an R by their name can be in the White House, even when that person’s actions fly in the face of everything the R used to stand for. This goes for most of Congress as well.
bq. Alan, whatever his motivations, what Romney actually did and said was a class act.
Fred, it’s certainly interesting that you believe pretending (lying, really) that the reason to quit campaigning for president is to forestall a “surrender to terror” is “classy”. Hardly.
This type of response can only be interpreted as a tacit agreement with the idiotic and de-stabilizing argument that electing a Democrat is akin to “surrendering to terror”.
If this is going to be the Republican position going forward, then my alleged “hysteria” about McCain will be completely and utterly meaningless, as Americans are absolutely sick and tired of this assertion and those who are stupid enough to continue to make it.
Heck, even Conservatives are looking to cut and run from McCain to insure that his inevitable trouncing by anyone in the fall will not be interpreted as a very public and loud rejection of their “principles” (such as they are…more accurately their branding).
I don’t know Alan. I think you liberal anti-war types might be surprised. I think a lot of opposition to the war was because people are against losing the war (which we were doing for quite a while) rather than against the war itself.
And I congratulate you on your psychic ability. I wish I could see into people’s hearts the way you apparently can. It must be a nice talent to have. In any case, doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right thing.
I think a lot more people than you evidently believe, Fred, have moved long past the simplistic (and undefinable) question of whether we are “Winning” or “Losing” the Iraq war to outright opposition to continued American investment in an enterprise that is so clearly disconnected from anything that it was made out to be in 2003 and that everyone can clearly recognize is doing far more harm than good to American interests and security.
I also found out another interesting detail about Romney’s campaign, from Kevin Drum’s site, which speaks to a much more fundamental flaw in Romney’s character that make him totally unfit for public office, in my view. Romney was largely a self-funded candidate, who typically do not do well nationally but have won a few notable state/local offices (Bloomberg/Corzine). However, Romney spent only a fraction of what these two did to get elected ($13 vs. $60-70 million). Now, I’m no mind reader, of course, but I would venture to say that Romney must have taken into consideration whether the expenditure of further personal resources to become President was “worth it” or “a good investment” given the public’s boredom with his candidacy. Some might view this as a positive example of his “fiscal responsibility” or good sense, but I don’t see the normal tendency to want to preserve one’s own wealth as any special virtue.
Unless you’re a politician or trying to be one, however. In which case, whether you are seeking public office or not should be more accurately thought of as something you are doing FOR the people who support you to promote the ideals you allegedly share. I’m sure Romney would have no qualms about continuing in the race were he able to support his campaign from outside sources, like Huckabee. So as long as it’s his money, he sees no personal benefit in continuing, so out he goes to minimize his losses.
On a related and parallel track, Romney has been out there promoting the Iraq war as strongly as any of the other Republicans. Notably, none of his 5 sons, all of who are of age and capable of enlisting to fight the terrorists in Iraq (the “central front in the GWOT”) have done so. When asked about this early in his campaign, Romney laughingly suggested, but then retracted, that they were in a way “fighting for America” by working on his Presidential Campaign. So, the war is OK, as long as other people’s kids fight it, but for his family, he doesn’t think it’s in their own personal best interests to do so, clearly.
See a pattern here yet? Is this your definition of “class”?
I hope we never see this man raise his head for public office again. He’s despicable beyond words.
Well, Alan – we’ll see, won’t we? If you’re right, then it will be a blowout contra McCain; the polls suggest that it’s balanced on a razors edge – which suggests, of course, that you’re wrong.
Paul, this is a far different blog than powerline. Yes, it gets snarky, but it’s a better attempt to unite those on far different poles than daily kos, or powerline, or the other fringe blogs that might bring in a larger volume of readers.
Sorry Alan, I don’t buy the “chicken hawk” argument and never have. As for winning or losing the war, stabilizing Iraq enough to leave without a bloodbath following our withdrawal is winning as far as I’m concerned. Leaving under the current circumstances would be seen, rightly or wrongly, as surrender by our allies and, more importantly, by our enemies. And they’d have a point. Then again maybe you’re right. Running on abandoning allies and losing a war worked beautifully for the democrats in 1972. Oh wait. . .
According to Ambinder’s blog, Romney was booed by his supporters; they were taken unawares.
I just finished watching his CPAC speech, he wasn’t “booed by his supporters.” The only boos where when he mentioned Obama and Clinton’s announcing to the enemy by when we’d leave Iraq should either be elected President.
I’m just repeating what Marc Ambinder is reporting from the scene. “Link”:http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/crowd_stunned_as_romney_drops.php
Good for Mitt Romney.
Left and right, this election has been a preposterous money-spending contest that started many, many months too soon, and as usual it has proved nothing except who can be the biggest sneaky little shit. Sneaky Little Shit for Change, if you prefer.
It would have been easy for Romney to delude himself into dragging this right to the convention. But he’s putting the crack pipe down. If Romney runs for president again, I’ll look on him more kindly because of this.
bq. Romney: â€If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.â€
How very noble. If he feels this way, perhaps he shouldn’t have gotten into the race to begin with.
Good riddance.
Perhaps it would have been better had I said, Romney’s decision was booed. I didn’t mean to imply any personal abuse. His supporters just had the rug pulled out from beneath them; Ambinder reported that even members of Romney’s staff didn’t know this was coming. (And doesn’t the first part of Romney’s speech promise to fight on to the convention?)
It strikes me as a pretty volatile situation McCain is entering . . .
Well, this pretty much proves he shouldn’t be president, I think. Anything could happen on the way to the convention. I wonder if he even tries to woo Huckabee?
Time to circle the wagons, although i’ve been thinking about it and _just maybe_ Coulter and Limbaugh are on a double secret mission to put McCain in the WH. The more I think about it McCain may end up netting more votes by being the sworn enemy of people centrists find so irritating.
I still won’t vote for him. How can anyone speak of liberty as his chief guiding factor having pushed McCain/Fiengold into law? How can someone speak of standing for the Rule of Law, and yet push for amnesty for illegal aliens?
The GOP will remain impotent and adrift for the next 20 years until all the worthless scum spawned of the baby boomer generation finally dies off for good.
Well, you didn’t have to wait long for that. What’s going over at CPAC right now is John McCain, and he’s going over quite well. He even got off a joke of sorts: “We ought to do this more often.”
His introduction by Senator Tom Coburn was warm without being Orwellian. He pointed out what McCain’s conservative critics have forgotten, like his pro-life record and his support for judicial conservatives.
McCain got cordial boos only when he mentioned immigration, and he turned it into applause.
Then a fine Reagan litany of fiscal conservatism – Listen, oh ye “staunch Republicans”, “true Conservatives”, and Paul-Bawlers: If you weren’t such a bunch of haters and hypocrites, you’d find much comfort there.
And of course, the war. Which we are winning, and will not apologize for.
Over all, not a bad performance by McCain, and not a bad reaction to it.
bq. The more I think about it McCain may end up netting more votes by being the sworn enemy of people centrists find so irritating.
The Republican brand is toxic at the moment, so any distance that McCain can put between himself and the party that most Americans think is bungling everything from the war to the economy is a good thing. Don’t think politically savvy people like Limbaugh won’t recognize this and play their appropriate roles right up to the very end.
Counteracting this campaign will be the links that Democrats will be able to make between Bush and McCain, which far outnumber those which he has stood in opposition. That touching image of McCain nuzzling Bush’s armpit like a little lost puppy will be ubiquitous in the next few months. And come November, every man, woman and child in America will have been sold on the idea that electing a President McCain is akin to a “Bush Third Term”.
I know Romney knows that he didn’t have a chance, but I still think whatever his motivation, he did an honorable thing. Bowing out and showing more concern for his country than his ego is a class act. Now if both the Democrats go into their convention without the number of delegates needed to win, and there’s a battle over the superdelegates or the unseated FL and MI delegates from which either candidate emerges victorious but bruised, and if McCain picks up the support from moderates, independents, and hawkish democrats that he loses from the hard right, there may just be hope for America.
Gabriel, I think you’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Do you really think McCain is worse for conservatives than Hillary or Obama? Do you really think that Hillary or Obama would be better even on the issues of free speech and immigration than McCain (two words “fairness doctrine”)? Can you possibly be serious?
Fred:
I know that Obama and Hillary are out to screw me, its their job being a Democrat to ignore and attempt to thwart even moderate conservative thought.
I shouldn’t have to accept that from someone who throws around the “Regan footsoldier” line as much as someone like McCain does.
McCain has done far more damage to conservatives than Hillary has, or Obama for that matter. I see little to differentiate him from those two, other than his war stance, and even then, he wants to go the lawfare way.
The plain fact is, I dont trust him, and hes given me no reason to trust him. At least I know Hillary won’t care about my concerns, I shouldnt have to accept someone who pretends to share my principles, only to have him stomp on them every chance he gets. Thats why McCain is worse, he doesnt care about anything but his ego, and his press. His true constituency is the Washington Elite and the liberal press corps, its not the members of his party who he continually pisses on.
bq. I know that Obama and Hillary are out to screw me, its their job being a Democrat to ignore and attempt to thwart even moderate conservative thought.
This is true only if by “moderate conservative” you mean “radical right wing”. Both have demonstrated a willingness to compromise with Republicans and moderates. In my view, too much so, but so be it.
bq. His true constituency is the Washington Elite and the liberal press corps…
Giving support to the idea that they are anything but “liberal”.
Well done that man!
By not burning his fortune down any further, Mitt Romney is better placed to run again later after he’s put in a few years reassuring people who didn’t feel that they knew him this time that he is for real.
By not carrying the fight any further he’s shown good judgment and willingness to believe the numbers. That is how a rational CEO should act. It’s turnaround CEO Mitt, the smart businessman, who I think he should have been selling from day one, not the instant conservative.
By letting the Republican Party start early on the difficult task of coalescing around John McCain, Mitt did the best thing for the party and the country. Hugh Hewitt is right: the stakes are a war and six elderly judges. It’s a lot.
By vacating the field, he should have put an end to the Mormon baiting that was going on. The religious fight in this nomination battle was an ugly thing.
I can think of quite a few things that differentiate McCain from Clinton or Obama:
1) McCain called for the surge and stood by the war when Clinton was waffling and Obama was telling his supporters the war was a plot cooked up by Karl Rove to distract them from poverty and the uninsured.
2) McCain has been one of the few members of Congress in either party to exhibit any fiscal responsibility by his votes against agricultural subsides, Medicare Part D, earmarks, and the pork-infested transportation and energy bills. Also anyone who can go into Iowa twice and say ethanol’s a boondoggle deserves serious consideration as a fiscal conservative’s fiscal conservative.
3) He’s the only remaining candidate who is serious about fixing the entitlement mess and supports personal retirement accounts for Social Security.
4) He’s never voted for or called for an income tax increase (unlike his opponents who have made it the central part of their campaign) and has pledged to support the Bush tax cuts.
5) He voted to confirm Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.
6) He supports expanding free trade.
7) He supports tort reform.
8) He supports school choice.
9) He supports RTKBA and voted to stop the plaintiff’s bar from bankrupting the firearms industry with frivolous lawsuits.
10) On health care, he supports letting small businesses form association health plans, giving people who buy their own health insurance a tax break, and letting consumers buy policies across State lines without new costly mandates (if you can’t see the difference between that and Hillarycare 2.0 and Obamacare, I can’t help you)
I agree, while the “flip-flopping†accusation was pretty much all B.S., Romney delivered today the speech he should have been delivering all along. It focused on the man he is rather than the man he thought he had to be to run for President. He’s a brilliant accomplished executive with a unparallel record of accomplishment that neither of the one-term Senators competing for the Democrat nominee could ever hope to match.
I was prepared to stay in it as long as Romney was in it but I think he picked the right time and manner to make his exit. It essentially ends the presidential primary and gives McCain added momentum from his victory Tuesday night to launch the national campaign we need to mount to win. And hopefully it may not only lead to him being a contender in four years but hopefully he’ll be able to put his talents and experience to use as part of the McCain administration.
Well done.
I don’t think it is so much a case of the perfect vs. the good, as an unhealthy fixation on personalities, which is quite contrary to republicanism. That’s republicanism with a small “r”, and it ought to be contrary to the big R, too.
The Democrats gleefully wallow in Great Leaderism – even Great Leaderism as an end in itself, without caring whether it be Stalinist Hillary or Messianic Barack in character.
Republicans, capitalized or not, ought not to be in the market for such shoddy goods, but it is the downside of the Reagan legacy that we often are. We made him into our JFK, and went overboard with it. It’s supposed to be about ideas, not the mortal and imperfect human beings.
Alan: The Republican brand is toxic at the moment, so any distance that McCain can put between himself and the party that most Americans think is bungling everything from the war to the economy is a good thing. Don’t think politically savvy people like Limbaugh won’t recognize this and play their appropriate roles right up to the very end.
I agree with your first sentence, but the second requires a leap of faith that I’m not willing to take. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have always been a royal pain in the ass to centrists, and they’re true to form right now.
bq. I was prepared to stay in it as long as Romney was in it but I think he picked the right time and manner to make his exit.
LMAO….he picked nothing, the voters did. Or rather, they failed to pick him. The notion that he acted “honorably” or otherwise in bowing out at this moment is pure unalloyed spin. He was rejected soundly and overwhelmingly by Republican primary voters. I’m sure you’d agree that he’d have no qualms whatsoever about taking his campaign al the way to the convention regardless of the idiotic faux national security sentiments he expressed today, were he Obama to McCain’s Clinton.
bq. Well done.
Indeed, Thorley. You’ve revealed yourself to be a virtual fountain of naked, unsubstantiated Republican partisanship on this thread…it’s perhaps refreshing to find that your views can be so easily pigeonholed.
bq. The Democrats gleefully wallow in Great Leaderism – even Great Leaderism as an end in itself, without caring whether it be Stalinist Hillary or Messianic Barack in character.
Glen, really. This comment is so far off base I’m wondering whether you live in America or are posting from abroad.
Alan –
I live in the same country with Chris Matthews, who says “Let me tell you something about Barack Obama. If you’re actually in the room when he gives one of his speeches, and you don’t cry, you’re not an American. It’s unbelievable.”
Glen, I despise Chris Matthews…he’s an idiot.
Your point, then (and don’t forget that you slagged Clinton as well in your post)?
bq. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have always been a royal pain in the ass to centrists, and they’re true to form right now.
You may be right, Michael, but the key words here are “right now”…let’s see whether they change their tune come Aug or Sept.
bq. I live in the same country with Chris Matthews…
Geez, how did I miss this one…..where should I begin ;-)…?
McCain may or may not be a “true” conservative, but with the Democrats in control of Congress and all but certain to pick up more seats in November, he at least offers the chance, however slim, that he will stand up for conservative principles from time to time in the face of Congressional overreaches, such as bringing back the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”.
Clinton or Obama? No chance. Zero. Zip. Nada. Squat. None.
As much as I dislike John McCain, I’ll take “slim” over “none” any day.
Republicans ??
Democrats ??
Let’s try not to forget that the outcome of US elections are determined by the Independents
I know it is harder to HATE them, but just tryu to stay focused and you can do it
The amount of snark in these comments is unsettling — it is really unbecoming of the level of discussion characteristic of this site.
Didn’t see any of the speeches but I read the texts over at Powerline.
The problem I have long had with John McCain is not so much one or another stand on various issues. The problem for me was that the whole world seemed to revolve around John McCain, both in his mind and among some accolytes in the press. I have been thinking that now that he is the nominee apparent, he really needs to do some political fence mending and take a more conciliatory posture with respect to people he disagrees with.
In his speech today, he did that and more. He gave “straight talk” on how his record did not follow the straight Movement Conservative party line, and he was generous in his recent Super Tuesday victories in ascribing differences of opinion and noble motives to people, many in the audience, who disagreed with him without trivializing those disagreements. He eloquently outlined his values and political philosophy and sharply differentiated how he would lead from the Democrats.
John McCain’s defense of liberty as a core political and social value is in such sharp contrast with calls for vaguely specified change and celebration of grievance. His delineation of the choice he was presenting to the American people was so clear that I feel that if he loses because “Republicans have become toxic”, he will do so honorably because the loss will reflect a choice made by the people rather than a failure for him to mount an effective advocacy.
If John McCain was generous in victory, Mitt Romney was equally generous in defeat. And the attendees of CPAC appeared gracious in receiving each of them. It was a great day for conservatives, for the Republican Party, and for the country that a politics of liberty will get a fair hearing before the voters.
Thanks, Alan. I’ve been working on chapter 6 of your biography, and I was stuck for something to write about.
You might think Matthews is an idiot – you might even be right – but I regard him as an excellent barometer. Of all the soi-disant journalists out there, Matthews is the most perfect partisan robot I’ve ever seen, and he puts the least effort into concealing it.
Before Obama descended upon him in a cloud of cherubim, Matthews worshiped at the Clinton shrine with the best of them. And hated their enemies with the best of them, which is what he’s really good at. Before that, he was a sycophant for the likes of Jim Wright and Tony Coelho.
As an indicator, Matthews beats the Consumer Price Index. If he says it a whole lot of people are thinking it, because he’s anything but original.
But that’s trivia. My original point, if it was not clear the first time, is that Democrats are continually yearning for some individual to come down from on high and change the country (“Take back America!”) into something they like. And of course, stick it to all the people they don’t like.
gabriel-
Who exactly are you refering to here?
bq. …the worthless scum spawned of the baby boomer generation…
I would like to know.
robohobo:
on second read, I phrased that incorrectly, I meant pretty much the entire babyboomer generation. take a look around at what their “leadership” has wrought, what their public education system turns out as “educated”. how else can so many people be so utterly fooled by an empty suit like Obama?
I think that Romney may have spared us a vice-presidential nominee Mike Huckabee, which was a great service.
bq. Thanks, Alan. I’ve been working on chapter 6 of your biography, and I was stuck for something to write about.
You mean “Unauthorized Biography”, I assume….
bq. If he says it a whole lot of people are thinking it, because he’s anything but original.
The only thing his behavior reports are his warped views. If you are using Matthews as some kind of barometer, it is only of a segment of the elitist, isolated and self-important beltway journalists, who most people don’t give a fig about, including me.
bq. Of all the soi-disant journalists out there, Matthews is the most perfect partisan robot I’ve ever seen, and he puts the least effort into concealing it.
Partisan how? He hates the Clintons, loves McCain and is so far affectionate to Obama. I’ve heard him swoon over Rudy and he’s a GWB syncophant. What exactly is the cause that you think he’s advancing, besides his own?
gabriel, I can’t answer you any better than Thorley did. The most important item on his list was McCain’s votes on the Bush supreme court nominees. If those are the kind of judges he’ll nominate (and what reason do you have to believe they’re not?) that alone makes him worth voting for. Do you really think Hillary or Obama would appoint better judges? Of cours, a caveat there is that McCain will have a congress with a Democrat majority. He’ll have to nominate judges that will get confirmed by a that congress, but they would still have to be better than any a Democrat would nominate. The Rush/Coulter wing of the party had better wake up and smell the coffee. McCain is our guy. You guys cost him the election and we get a liberal Democrat president with a liberal Democrat majority in congress for at least the next four years and a liberal supreme court for God knows how long. How can McCain possibly be a bigger disaster than that?
Alan, whatever his motivations, what Romney actually did and said was a class act. Many politicians would have kept going or witheld their support from their former rival. Hell, look at Huckabee. He’s got to know he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, yet he keeps going. For whatever reason, Romney did the right thing. I also detect a slight note of hysteria underneath your vituperation. McCain is probably the most dangerous candidate the Democrats could face. A bit of whistling past the graveyard?
Please allow me to ramble incoherently for a moment:
I held my nose and voted for Bush the second time solely based on SCOTUS seats, and yeah Bush came through (in spite of the Harriet Meir’s debacle) with two solid Justices Alito and Roberts. And I can concede that his handling of the war has been far superior to anything Gore or Kerry would have done, but I still don’t see it being prosecuted seriously enough, and with all of the weapons in our arsenal being utilized. We still refuse to put much pressure on the Saudi’s, Paki’s, or Egyptians in any meaningful fashion in my view. We still allow our borders to be virtually unpatrolled, and allow rampant unchecked illegal immigration (the fence is a good start if it ever gets completed).
Now when it comes to McCain, and the points that Thorley made, some are valid, but many do not reach the level in my view, of top tier issues.
1. Tort reform is dead on arrival. The law lobby is far too powerful, and there are far too many lawyers in Congress to allow it to ever happen with any legitimacy, it’s just like earmark reform, which will never happen under this, or probably any Congress, no matter how much talk there is about it. Also, his “Patients Bill of Rights†is a dream come true for the trial lawyers, and a blatant attack on the Insurance industry. McCain has a long history of pressuring businesses he doesn’t appear to favor, with government mandates and restrictions. Not very Conservative if you ask me.
2. McCain was supportive of the surge, which is true, he hardly “Called for itâ€. It’s the one thing he has been consistent on, besides screwing over our free speech rights.
3. Earmark and spending reform are dead, especially with the gains that the Dems will make in Congress this year. McCain is the champion of “compromise†(funny how the Dems never are asked to compromise, its always the Republicans, but that’s a rant for another day) just like the gang of 14 sham, he will work out some deal to the detriment of the GOP’s positions, but it will get him a lot of glowing press, which is his only true desire anyway. It’s nice that he’s voted against subsidies, why not propose some legislation that removes them altogether? Its easy to vote, its far harder to actually get something accomplished, and so far, I’ve seen far too many “compromise†(aka caving in) bills with McCain – Leftist in the title.
4. I’ll believe that meaningful SS reform will get passed will have about as much a chance of happening as the Paul/Kucinich ticket getting elected. Call me jaded, but Congress has never been serious about reforming any entitlement program, and given the gerrymandered districts across the nation, the same looters and moochers will be in office for a long time to come. I fully expect to get robbed of any monies I’ve paid into the system, never to see a dime myself, as most people my age believe (I’m 35 for the record).
5. In my view, voting against the Bush tax cuts TWICE, is the same as voting for a tax increase, but I’ll let McCain speak for himself about raising taxes on the rich, a nice tactic of the left. He’s flipped all over the place with the Bush tax cuts, at one time saying they shouldn’t be permanent, and then changing his mind when it was politically expedient.
6. I’ll take fair trade over free trade. Personally, I’m getting tired of propping up the economies of developing countries.
Ok so there is a partial rebuttal to some of what you have claimed. I still don’t see much on some of the more pressing issues facing us. I don’t doubt that McCain would do well prosecuting the general WOT, though his stance on water boarding, and his wanting to close GITMO trouble me considerably. It would be nice to have someone in the White House who isn’t beholden to the Saudis for once as well.
I still want to see him call to repeal McCain/Feingold, a horrible disgusting piece of legislation that tramples on the rights of Americans, and has done so much to help fund the Democratic party at the expense of the GOP.
His Gore-esque global warming crap makes me sick to my stomach. We don’t need Man-Bear-Pig Jr. pushing this crap.
His populist rhetoric on profits is another very troubling thing for me. I never want to hear someone talking about CEO pay, its none of the Governments god damn business how much people are paid. McCain-Snowe-Dorgan is another piece of stupid legislation as well. It shows McCains ignorance of free market principles, and his desperate desire to control industry.
Lets not forget the big one, Amnesty for illegals. How a Senator from a border state that has seen so much fiscal turmoil as Arizona can be so utterly wrong on this issue boggles the mind. I never want to hear the words “rule of law†come out of this guys mouth, because he has no intention of enforcing the rule of law. And for someone billed as “Mr. Straight Talk†, his Kerry-esque “Nuance†and Bill Clinton parsing of definitions when trying to say that its not Amnesty is a slap in the face to anyone who can read.
So, come November, I will vote for no one, and we will get a liberal in the White House regardless of who wins. I’m done pushing aside most of my principles just so someone with an R by their name can be in the White House, even when that person’s actions fly in the face of everything the R used to stand for. This goes for most of Congress as well.
AL, can you fix my link tag above, thanks.
bq. Alan, whatever his motivations, what Romney actually did and said was a class act.
Fred, it’s certainly interesting that you believe pretending (lying, really) that the reason to quit campaigning for president is to forestall a “surrender to terror” is “classy”. Hardly.
This type of response can only be interpreted as a tacit agreement with the idiotic and de-stabilizing argument that electing a Democrat is akin to “surrendering to terror”.
If this is going to be the Republican position going forward, then my alleged “hysteria” about McCain will be completely and utterly meaningless, as Americans are absolutely sick and tired of this assertion and those who are stupid enough to continue to make it.
Heck, even Conservatives are looking to cut and run from McCain to insure that his inevitable trouncing by anyone in the fall will not be interpreted as a very public and loud rejection of their “principles” (such as they are…more accurately their branding).
I don’t know Alan. I think you liberal anti-war types might be surprised. I think a lot of opposition to the war was because people are against losing the war (which we were doing for quite a while) rather than against the war itself.
And I congratulate you on your psychic ability. I wish I could see into people’s hearts the way you apparently can. It must be a nice talent to have. In any case, doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right thing.
I think a lot more people than you evidently believe, Fred, have moved long past the simplistic (and undefinable) question of whether we are “Winning” or “Losing” the Iraq war to outright opposition to continued American investment in an enterprise that is so clearly disconnected from anything that it was made out to be in 2003 and that everyone can clearly recognize is doing far more harm than good to American interests and security.
I also found out another interesting detail about Romney’s campaign, from Kevin Drum’s site, which speaks to a much more fundamental flaw in Romney’s character that make him totally unfit for public office, in my view. Romney was largely a self-funded candidate, who typically do not do well nationally but have won a few notable state/local offices (Bloomberg/Corzine). However, Romney spent only a fraction of what these two did to get elected ($13 vs. $60-70 million). Now, I’m no mind reader, of course, but I would venture to say that Romney must have taken into consideration whether the expenditure of further personal resources to become President was “worth it” or “a good investment” given the public’s boredom with his candidacy. Some might view this as a positive example of his “fiscal responsibility” or good sense, but I don’t see the normal tendency to want to preserve one’s own wealth as any special virtue.
Unless you’re a politician or trying to be one, however. In which case, whether you are seeking public office or not should be more accurately thought of as something you are doing FOR the people who support you to promote the ideals you allegedly share. I’m sure Romney would have no qualms about continuing in the race were he able to support his campaign from outside sources, like Huckabee. So as long as it’s his money, he sees no personal benefit in continuing, so out he goes to minimize his losses.
On a related and parallel track, Romney has been out there promoting the Iraq war as strongly as any of the other Republicans. Notably, none of his 5 sons, all of who are of age and capable of enlisting to fight the terrorists in Iraq (the “central front in the GWOT”) have done so. When asked about this early in his campaign, Romney laughingly suggested, but then retracted, that they were in a way “fighting for America” by working on his Presidential Campaign. So, the war is OK, as long as other people’s kids fight it, but for his family, he doesn’t think it’s in their own personal best interests to do so, clearly.
See a pattern here yet? Is this your definition of “class”?
I hope we never see this man raise his head for public office again. He’s despicable beyond words.
“He’s despicable beyond words.” Maybe so. But he saved the Olympics.
Oh yeah, he’s also a true conservative.
Well, Alan – we’ll see, won’t we? If you’re right, then it will be a blowout contra McCain; the polls suggest that it’s balanced on a razors edge – which suggests, of course, that you’re wrong.
But facts will, in the end, tell.
A.L.
Paul, this is a far different blog than powerline. Yes, it gets snarky, but it’s a better attempt to unite those on far different poles than daily kos, or powerline, or the other fringe blogs that might bring in a larger volume of readers.
Sorry Alan, I don’t buy the “chicken hawk” argument and never have. As for winning or losing the war, stabilizing Iraq enough to leave without a bloodbath following our withdrawal is winning as far as I’m concerned. Leaving under the current circumstances would be seen, rightly or wrongly, as surrender by our allies and, more importantly, by our enemies. And they’d have a point. Then again maybe you’re right. Running on abandoning allies and losing a war worked beautifully for the democrats in 1972. Oh wait. . .