Romney

[Uncle Ted]

ABC news on Romney...

[YOUTUBE]EDX1Lrjykt8[/YOUTUBE]

[pellegrino]

ABC news on Romney...

[YOUTUBE]EDX1Lrjykt8[/YOUTUBE]

I don't know that I care that much about this. It's one thing to play the game all governors are playing and do their best to get as much revenue as possible. It's entirely another thing to be the politicians responsible for setting up the rules of the game and ensuring its perpetuation.

[Pelado]

I don't know that I care that much about this. It's one thing to play the game all governors are playing and do their best to get as much revenue as possible. It's entirely another thing to be the politicians responsible for setting up the rules of the game and ensuring its perpetuation.

Yeah - the title says "Tapes Show Romney as Washington Insider." All that he indicates there is that he hired good lobbyists at the Olympics. As you suggest, there are 50+ governors trying to do the same thing every year - are they also Washington insiders?

[YOhio]

Mitt Romney in the Dayton area.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs...bama_duri.html

[Pelado]

[YOUTUBE]cRqW0VodVAU[/YOUTUBE]

[oxcoug]

Mitt Romney in the Dayton area.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs...bama_duri.html

There's a thread about Dayton already.

[LA Ute]

Mitt Romney in the Dayton area.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs...bama_duri.html

Did Mitt do well in the Dayton, Washington caucus tonight? If not, YO is responsible.

[myboynoah]

"Bar" making robo calls for Mitt. Totally freaking awesome!

[YOUTUBE]kQfPNYlIAyk[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]cXlKFPClyrA[/YOUTUBE]

[CJF]

Does this quiet some of the chatter for Jeb and a brokered convention?

[Jacob]

Does this quiet some of the chatter for Jeb and a brokered convention?

Barbara and George have been endorsing Mitt for a while now. Didn't stop Barbara from saying a few months ago that she had wanted Jeb to run.

Also, as I've asked before, what's so great about Jeb? No thanks.

[pellegrino]

Barbara and George have been endorsing Mitt for a while now. Didn't stop Barbara from saying a few months ago that she had wanted Jeb to run.

Also, as I've asked before, what's so great about Jeb? No thanks.

he is the son that they had the highest hopes for. While GW was out partying with his buddies and Jeb was the respectable son, working hard.

[YOhio]

Walter Kirn serves it up right in GQ.

The literal tarring and feathering of Mormons back when tar and feathers were closer to hand—before the job could be done using an iPhone—was often provoked by the church's early progressivism. Joseph Smith and his followers' opposition to slavery as well as their fondness for proto-communist living didn't sit well with nineteenth-century rednecks from states such as Missouri and Illinois. After being driven west to Utah, threatened with invasion by the U.S. Army, and forced to renounce its experiment with polygamy, the church gave up its nonconformist ways, its bearded prophets took up razors, and Mormonism eventually emerged as an Eisenhower-era travesty of Wheaties-eating Caucasian conservatism. It's hard to keep pace with white de-evolution, though, and now, in the person of Brother Mitt, the insufficiently Christian, Harvard-educated, French-speaking architect of America's first socialistic public health care system, the sect's most conspicuous adherent is, to many of his fellow Republicans, an egghead radical, a liberal mole.

They can't win for losing, the Mormons. Or win for winning. When Romney prevailed in Michigan, the hydra-headed pundit beast that has devoured cable news was quick to pronounce the accomplishment underwhelming, a tiny step forward that followed some big steps back and preceded, it was predicted, some future steps sideways (i.e., yet another Gingrich comeback). In the language of EZ literary criticism that the beast now favors when explaining stuff, the win was interpreted as another episode in a larger ongoing 'narrative' about Romney's failure to 'fire up the base' and 'inspire passion among evangelicals.' That leaving such a base unfired up amounts to a great public service went unremarked upon. The biggest story of the campaign so far—the simple miracle of Romney's survival as an exotic spiritual outsider in a party of mega-church populist orthodoxy—was missed again. No, the fellow may not inspire Big Love, but he's gotten along on Big Like, and that's surprising.

The irony is that Romney's fringy Mormonism, much like JFK's Catholicism, insures against him going too far out. Santorum, for one, may be able to delude himself that his beliefs are normal and widely shared and that policies based on them are moral givens. Romney can't afford to think that way. Whatever the Founding Fathers thought of God, nobody can reasonably claim that they conceived of him as a former human who, by developing over many millennia and bearing countless spirit children with a super-woman of the same ilk, transformed himself into earth's chief magistrate—just one among a vast host of fatherly deities who are spread out across the universe. Nor can Romney expect his countrymen to steer clear of Starbucks on religious grounds or venerate Independence, Missouri as the likely site of the Savior's Second Coming. He's on his own with this sectarian wackiness, much of which he dare not mention, let alone make the basis for legislation (let me disclose here that I'm a baptized Mormon, converted to the religion as a teenager but only observant for a few years.) It's only when Mormonism's teachings accord with those of the broader religious right, as they do in the case of homosexuality, that a public figure from the faith can hazard writing them into law. That's scary enough for some folks, and it should be, but Romney the centrist won't go there, I suspect—not if he's actually elected president. As the bearer of Mormonism's long-standing yearning for mainstream modern acceptance, he'd be well advised to sit out the Culture Wars and leave them to more established bands of bigots.



Read More http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blog...#ixzz1oIXy1jbv

[Jacob]

Walter Kirn serves it up right in GQ.

I really enjoyed that piece. I liked this description:

Romney's church is not, in the minds of most Christians, all that Christian. The doctrinal details behind these charges tend to swap around or go unspecified, but they seem to boil down to this: while Mormons claim to worship Jesus, they don't handle poisonous snakes while doing so, casting doubt upon their credibility.

[Surfah]

Walter Kirn serves it up right in GQ.

Great find. I really dig Kirn's style. I never knew he was Mo.

[LA Ute]

Walter Kirn serves it up right in GQ.

That's probably the most offbeat, and funny, take on that issue that I have ever seen.