Blatant Reality

Yep former Governor Mitt Romney has officially dropped out of the race for presidency.

“If this were only about me, I’d go on,” he said during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. “I feel I now have to stand aside for our party and our country.”

 

He made the final decision last night, as he was preparing his speech, a campaign source said.

 

“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose,” Mr. Romney said. “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,” he said during the conference. Members of the audience shouted, “No!” as Mr. Romney spoke.

Well, with Huckabee and McCain as the only two real republican candidates left (Paul being considered a possible libertarian ticket candidate), it will be interesting to see how this all shapes up. One thing to keep in mind is that over half of the delegates have yet to be awarded to any candidate so, technically, Huckabee still has a shot (however unlikely it may seem) to win this.

Remember: Huckabee has pledged to stay in this race until the end so don’t expect him to drop out anytime soon.

Tonight, Mitt Romney came to the campus to speak to a gigantic crowd in the Russel House student union. When I arrived 45 minutes before he was even scheduled to arrive, a crowd of students and adults were already lining up at the doors . In the ballroom were he spoke, there were a few chairs set up for those who might have problems standing but for the rest of us, it was standing room only. By 7:30, the room was packed with everyone jostling to try to get a good view of the stage. I suspect, however, that the size of tonight’s crowd might have been affected by the results from the Michigan primary.

Before Romney arrived, which was roughly 2o minutes after he was scheduled, some of what I think were campaign managers tried to get the crowd going by doing a variation of the “Gamecocks” cheer (For all of you who are unfamiliar with USC, the Gamecock is our mascot and what it is is a fighting rooster). This is where half of the room yells “GAME” followed by the other half yelling “COCKS.” In this new variation, however, one side would yell “MITT” and the other would follow with “ROCKS” but it never really pick up even after multiple tries.

When Romney finally arrived, the crowd started cheering and waving their Mitt Romney signs like you would expect them to do. Be that as it were, if you looked closely around the crowd, you could see many stoic faces interspersed between those who were wholeheartedly Romney supporters. Senator Jim DeMint, one of Romney’s local supporters, introduced Mitt Romney and warmed up the crowd nicely. DeMint started by stating how the democrats may want change, but the change they want includes increasing the size of government. That got the crowd booing. He concluded by saying how he stood up against the amnesty bill over the summer and that he believed Romney would be the best choice to solve our problem with illegal immigration. To see the whole introduction DeMint gave, you can view it here on YouTube.com.

When Romney got up to speak, he talked about how Washington was broke and that we needed politicians that would stand up and fix it. He referred to a “need-to-do” list posted beside the stage that included items from lowering taxes to strengthening the family. I have a theory, however, that the list might have been there just so Mitt could glance over in the middle of his speech just in case he got lost. He also talked about the economy a lot and how he helped fund the guy who started the office supply store “Staples.” In the middle of his speech, he made a statement about how much he supports George Bush which I took as a slight jab at Mike Huckabee’s “bunker mentality” remark.

At one point in his speech, Romney asked the audience if we knew what made us the strongest nation in the world. Before he could answer this rhetorical question, a woman yelled out “in God we trust” to which Romney responded is one of the things that makes us strong. He continued by saying that a majority of people in this country believe in a higher being and that we as a country believe in “big things.” I am skeptical, though, that Romney would have even brought up God if someone hadn’t yelled that out. Anyways, If you want to watch Romney’s whole speech, I have it broken up into three parts (YouTube doesn’t like videos over that are over ten minutes):

Mitt Romney’s Introduction

First Half of Romney’s Speech

Second Half of Romney’s Speech

In between Romney’s introduction and his speech, his son said a few words that really didn’t add or subtract anything from the night. Since it wasn’t that important in the whole grand scheme of things I decided not to upload it to YouTube, but if you were wondering, that is what the gap between the Mitt’s intro and his first half consists of.

After his speech was over, Romney starting pumping the flesh and the reporters, that had been kept at bay until this time, swarmed him.

Thank goodness one of Romney’s campaign managers restricted them to standing on the stage so Romney could walk around without having a protected bubble like what happened at the Lizard’s Thicket when Huckabee came back in December.

When I decided to leave, I happened to run into three older gentlemen who were protesting Mitt Romney’s visit to South Carolina. They had signs that said something to the affect of “Go Home Yankee” and other such things. However, they were nice fellows who did allow me to take their pictures. I would have stayed and asked them a few questions but it was really cold outside and I wanted to get back to my nice cozy dorm room.

No sooner had I gotten back to my dorm then it started to snow, the first of the season in fact. Hmmm… maybe the protesters are right. If we want to keep the south nice and warm, we gotten keep that Romney out. He seems to have brought the northern snows with him. Huckabee anyone?

Mitt Romney is going to be on the University of South Carolina campus tonight at 7:30 in the Russel House student union. I’m going to be there and hopefully taking some video of what he has to say. I should have a post about it on here some time tonight but it all depends on how long the video takes to format and upload to YouTube.com. Check back later to see the post.

Many people are predicting the Romney will have to win Michigan in order to stay viable in this presidential race. Another loss would give the perception that he doesn’t have the chance to win. A quote from a Reuters.com article sums up what might happen to the Romney campaign:

“His campaign his hemorrhaging bad and losing Michigan would be the final nail in the coffin,” said Thomas Whalen, a professor of politics at Boston University. “I don’t think he wants to spend his entire fortune on a national campaign”.

 

Just months ago he was been widely expected to win New Hampshire, where he maintains a summer home. He toiled hard there, holding about 250 events with voters, flooding airwaves with more than 10 television ads a day and vastly outspending his rivals.

 

“He’s trying to get the other donors to contribute now but they will abandon him very easy — I think they are already abandoning him. He has to show them a good showing in Michigan,” he said.

With his father known as a former governor of Michigan, Romney should at least be known throughout the state. However, there is a strong possibility for McCain and Huckabee to pick up a lot of voters in the state. Since the DNC has stripped Michigan of its 156 delegates, many independent voters may turn out to the Republican primary instead. This would surely help McCain as it seemed to have helped him in New Hampshire. This would be reminiscent of McCain’s support there back in the 2000 election.

But McCain probably can appeal to the same pool of voters who gave him a win in Michigan’s 2000 primary and are unlikely to go for Romney: independents and Democrats who admire his record as a Vietnam pilot and prisoner of war and respond to his fiscal conservatism. McCain also is likely to do better among GOP voters than he did here in 2000, when George W. Bush was the establishment favorite.

Huckabee also has the chance of getting the vote of the evangelicals and conservative Christians in Michigan even though he doesn’t have a formal campaign there. However, Huckabee is going to be campaigning in Michigan and has launched a TV ad there.

Romney is going to have to work quickly to repair his tarnished image before the primary in this state if he wishes to have a chance to win.

This article just makes me laugh.

MOUNT VERNON, IOWA — Mitt Romney is never shy about talking about how much he loves his wife Ann, but today he was a bit more uninhibited than unusual.

 

“She’s a cute girl, I’ll tell ya,” Romney told the Iowa crowd that was packed into a small coffee house here. “She’s hot, too. Wow!”

 

Romney then appeared to lick his finger and make a sizzle noise, leaving many attendees and members of the media roiling with laughter (and a few others standing silently with their mouths agape).

I just wish that instead of Romney, it was Fred Thompson that would have said this. Now THAT would have been humorous.

South Carolina residents received fake holiday greeting cards this past week claiming to be from the Romney campaign.

Many South Carolina Republicans got a bogus holiday greeting card this week, purported to be from White House hopeful Mitt Romney, that cites some controversial passages of the Book of Mormon.

 

(…)

 

Such a mailing isn’t surprising for South Carolina politics, a state known for political mudslinging and backdoor maneuvering.

 

Those tactics backfire, said Warren Tompkins, a political consultant who ran George Bush’s 2000 campaign in South Carolina and now is Romney’s top consultant in the state. “Anything this outrageous and childish and nonsensical would have a significant fallout on whoever did it and on whose behalf it was done,” Tompkins said.

It will be interesting to see if whoever did this gets caught and we find out whom they thought it would help. If they do find out prior to the South Carolina primary, I wouldn’t be surprised if the information isn’t release until a few days before January 19th. However, As long as this thing isn’t tied to Huckabee, I doubt that it will give Romney the needed 6.5% boost in the polls to win.

The Boston Globe posted an article today suggesting that Mike Huckabee and John McCain have formed some sort of alliance (or at least a truce) in order to disrupt some of Romney’s plans.

McCain and Huckabee have put aside whatever differences each might have in the interests of blocking Romney, said Dante J. Scala, a University of New Hampshire political scientist. At presidential debates, and whenever they cross paths on the campaign trail, McCain and Huckabee swap compliments. Their campaigns have resisted circulating the sort of “opposition research” and negative news articles on each other that they routinely send out on Romney.

 

“It’s the opponent of my opponent is my friend, at least for the time being,” Scala said yesterday. “Both of them have an interest in derailing Romney early – Huckabee in Iowa and McCain in New Hampshire – and each one stands to benefit from the other’s success.”

 

Scala said the partnership may well rupture in a month, if McCain and Huckabee succeed in knocking Romney off his game plan of winning both Iowa and New Hampshire. But for now, they have no reason to attack each other. Huckabee is busy courting socially conservative evangelical voters in Iowa, while McCain is focused on locking up socially moderate, fiscal conservative voters in New Hampshire. Neither is competing aggressively on the other’s turf.

 

“Down the road, if Huckabee and McCain win the first two contests, then they may well turn on each other because they may be the only two left standing,” Scala said. “But for right now, I think their goal of supplanting Romney is bigger than any disagreement with each other.”

Yep, even though Mitt Romney has been attacked as being the biggest flip flopper in the election 2008 presidential race, the Associated Press released a story that points to Barack Obama as actually being the winner of this honor.

But the AP’s own recitation shows that Obama has changed his position on far more issues than Romney: the death penalty, a ban on handguns, the Patriot Act, socialized (“single payer”) medicine, and repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. As for the AP’s assertion that Obama’s flip-flops haven’t been “major shifts,” why not? He used to be in favor of socialized medicine, but now isn’t. He called the Patriot Act a “shoddy and dangerous law,” then voted to renew it. He opposed a federal ban on same-sex marriage, then supported it. By what standard are these not “major shifts”?

Mike Huckabee says that it would be a mistake to nominate Mitt Romney as the GOP’s presidential candidate because of his past changes on issues.

“Let’s assume everything is hunky dory with his views now,” he said. “The problem is not so much where he is but where he was and the fact that that’s a change and not just on that issue but on a number of others. What’s problematic is that it does represent a dramatic shift and the obvious thing that a Democrat[ic] opponent will do to him is to say he shifted once, will he shift again?”

Its a valid concern.