Andrew Kohut: The GOP Might Be Out Of Step With Some Voters, But Mitt Romney Was An Unusually Unpopular Party Standard-Bearer.

Misreading Election 2012 The GOP might be out of step with some voters, but Mitt Romney was an unusually unpopular party standard-bearer.
By ANDREW KOHUT

Postelection talk of "lessons learned" is often exaggerated and misleading, and so it is in 2012.

A week after President Obama won re-election, two themes are dominant. First, that Mr. Obama kept his job because key elements of his base—notably young people, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans—turned out for him. Second, that the growing size of these voting blocs represents a decisive challenge for the Republican Party.

Both points are true, but most observers are overstating the gravity of the GOP's problem. In particular, they are paying too little attention to how weak a candidate Mitt Romney was, and how much that hurt Republican prospects.

Here is what the exit poll found. Mr. Romney's personal image took a hard hit during the primary campaign and remained weak on election day. Just 47% of exit-poll respondents viewed him favorably, compared with 53% for Mr. Obama. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Romney's favorable ratings were among the lowest recorded for a presidential candidate in the modern era. A persistent problem was doubt about his empathy with the average voter. By 53% to 43%, exit-poll respondents said that Mr. Obama was more in touch than Mr. Romney with people like themselves.

Mr. Romney was never fully embraced by Republicans themselves, which may have inhibited the expected strong Republican turnout. Pew's election-weekend survey found Mr. Romney with fewer strong supporters (33%) than Mr. Obama (39%). Similarly, a much greater percentage of Obama supporters (80%) than Romney supporters (60%) told Pew that they were voting for their candidate rather than against his opponent.

Surprisingly, Mr. Romney proved unable to exploit Mr. Obama's biggest weakness: the economy. Seventy-six percent of exit-poll respondents rated the national economy "poor" or only "fair," and just 25% said their finances were better off than they were four years ago. Yet voters expressed roughly equal confidence in Mr. Obama's ability to handle the economy (48%) as in Mr. Romney's (49%).

Mr. Romney was hurt by the perception—reinforced by Democratic attack ads and his secretly recorded comments about the "47%"—that he wasn't for the average voter. With 55% of voters in the exit poll saying they think the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy, a large majority believed that Mr. Obama's policies favor the middle class (44%) or the poor (31%). By contrast, 53% thought Mr. Romney's policies would favor the rich.

Despite their weak candidate, Republicans increased their share of the presidential vote among many major demographic groups. Compared with 2008, they made significant gains among men (four percentage points), whites (four points), younger voters (six points), white Catholics (seven points) and Jews (nine points). Mr. Romney also carried the independent vote 50% to 45%. Four years ago, independents voted for Mr. Obama 52% to 44%.

Republicans can take some solace from these gains. In addition, only 43% of voters this year said they wanted an activist government (compared with 52% in 2008), and 49% continued to disapprove of Mr. Obama's health-care law (compared with 44% approving).

In short, the current American electorate is hardly stacked against the Republican Party. But Republicans should recognize that, on balance, Americans remain moderate—holding a mix of liberal and conservative views. They generally believe that small government is better and that ObamaCare is bad. But the exit poll shows that 59% believe abortion should be legal, 65% support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and a surprising plurality support legalizing same-sex marriage in their states.

Threading the ideological needle with this electorate is vital for the Republicans in the future—and for the Democrats, too.

— Mr. Kohut is president of the Pew Research Center.
EDITOR'S COMMENT: MITT ROMNEY IS A PHONY OF THE WORST KIND, BAR NONE!

MICHAEL COHEN: GOOD RIDDANCE TO [PHONY] MITT ROMNEY.

Good riddance to Mitt Romney
BY MICHAEL COHEN

On Tuesday night, as I watched the election returns roll in, there were moments of great joy – but one of the happiest moment came after the losing candidate delivered his concession speech and disappeared through the backstage curtains at the Boston Convention Center. I realized at that moment that I would likely never again have to write or even, for that matter, think about Mitt Romney.

Now, I understand that, as a general rule, you don’t hit a guy when he’s down. Romney suffered a crushing defeat, one that according to aides he was completely unprepared for.

But at the end of the day, Romney’s campaign should be assessed in the most accurate possible manner. Its failings should not be sugarcoated or glossed over. Instead, it should be described precisely as it was: One of the most cynical, dishonest and disreputable presidential campaigns in modern American history.

From the Republican primaries to practically the final days of his failed presidential campaign, Romney was either blatantly lying about his opponent’s record, adopting policy positions of convenience that ran counter to his past positions, regularly misleading Americans about his own plans or stirring racial acrimony. I don’t feel sorry that Romney lost on Tuesday night; I feel sorry that a great nation had to be subjected to his presidential campaign.

Think I’m being too harsh? Well, harken back to the GOP primaries and the ad run by Romney ran against Rick Perry. It attacked Perry for allowing illegal immigrants to attend Texas state universities and then used a supporting statement from former Mexican President Vincente Fox as a bludgeon to castigate Perry – as if being endorsed by Mexico’s president were a scarlet letter.

Over the summer, he produced an ad attacking President Obama for lifting work requirements for those on welfare – a charge that not only wasn’t true but was almost certainly intended to promulgate the notion that Obama was providing government benefits to people who didn’t work. Anyone who questions the racial implications of this charge is severely unfamiliar with decades of Republican welfare politics.

Later, when toxic curmudgeon and Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu went on television and insinuated that Obama needed to “learn how to be a real American” he wasn’t upbraided by the Romney campaign - he was sent back out on television to make such cheery arguments like the only reason Colin Powell endorsed Obama was because they both were black.

Then there was the “you didn’t build it” charge – an out-of-context statement uttered by Obama but in the hands of Romney and his minions became proof positive that Obama hates the free market and entrepreneurship.

This was all at pace with Romney’s regular assaults on the truth, such as his oft-repeated charge that Obamacare would lead to government-run health care; that the President had doubled the deficit; that he intended to cut more than $700 billion from Medicare; or that Obama had ventured on a global apology tour. All were untrue, but none of this stopped Romney from repeating them over and over and over again on the campaign trail.

Indeed, Romney finished his campaign on yet another lie – an ad claiming that Chrysler was intending to move its Jeep production to China. Once again, even after being called out by reporters who pointed out that the assertion wasn’t true, Romney was unfazed – as he ran another radio ad that made the exact same false charge.

Now to be fair, President Obama had his share of truth-stretching assertions, but it was hardly endemic to his campaign. For Romney, daily assaults on the truth were not simply par for the course; they were reflective of his campaign’s overall political strategy. Over the past several years, conservatives have created their own alternate reality with their own set of “facts” about President Obama and the federal government. Romney regularly fanned the flames of conservative delusion, recognizing that an angry, misinformed yet enthusiastic GOP electorate was key to his political aspirations. It was a cynical ploy – and in the hands of a more competent politician it might actually have succeeded.

Finally, there was Romney’s extraordinary and unprecedented refusal to engage in traditional campaign transparency. He never released his tax returns. He refused to reveal the names of people who raised money on behalf of his campaign. He was even less forthright about his plans of he were to be elected. The cornerstone of his economic plan was a proposal for a 20% across-the-board tax cut, which he claimed would not explode the deficit and would be paid for by closing loopholes and capping deductions. Never once did he detail what those loopholes or deductions might be.

Quite simply, Romney and his campaign were simply allergic to truth, veracity and openness.

Now as Romney fades off into the sunset he will likely be little remembered. Democrats feel no affection toward him, but neither do Republicans. Romney was a distinctly unloved presidential nominee. During the GOP primaries he was forced into a protracted political struggle against a motley collection of cranks, also-rans and mediocrities. In the end Republicans accepted him as the party standard bearer because frankly they didn’t have much of a choice.

He was just a means to an end for Republicans desperate to defeat the President they hated, a warm body that if he was lucky enough to win the presidency could sign the legislation they pined to enact.

Beyond that, Republicans had little use for Mitt Romney.

Like Michael Dukakis in 1988, Romney will almost certainly fade into political oblivion, rarely to be heard from again in the realm of national politics. In the end, I’d like to feel a little sorry for a man who suffered such a public defeat and humiliation. But sometimes in life, you get what you deserve.

AT TONIGHT'S DEBATE WITH POTUS BARACK OBAMA, ONE HAS TO WONDER WHICH MITT ROMNEY WILL SHOW UP ...

... THE REAL MITT ROMNEY OR THE EVER PRESENT PHONY ONE? HINT: THERE IS NO REAL MITT ROMNEY!

Mitt Romney Gives Democrats Support For "Politically Manipulated" 2011 Tax Deductions Claim. .

Romney gives Dem support for tax deductions claim

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks to supporters during a rally Friday, Sept. 21, 2012, in Las Vegas.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney has given Democrats plenty of support for their claim he manipulated his deductions to keep his overall 2011 federal income tax rate above a certain threshold for political purposes.

The Republican presidential nominee, whose wealth is estimated as high as $250 million, seems hemmed in by a comment to reporters in August that he had never paid less than 13 percent in taxes in any single year over the past 10. Had he taken the full charitable deduction last year, it would have pushed his tax liability below 13 percent.

The former Massachusetts governor and his wife, Ann, could have claimed more in deductions, the trustee of Romney's blind trust said when the candidate's 2011 tax returns were released.

But, Brad Malt acknowledged, the couple "limited their deductions of charitable contributions to conform to the governor's statement in August, based on the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13 percent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years."

The tax returns had become a distraction for his campaign, with Democrats and even some fellow Republicans this summer urging Romney, who earlier had released 2010 data and a preliminary 2011 return, to disclose more than two years of information. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had kept the issue alive by making an unsubstantiated and roundly criticized claim that Romney had not paid any taxes for 10 years. Romney's statement about the 13 percent level had come in reaction to Reid's assertion.

Romney probably also will be reminded by the Democrats by something else he said in August. Defending his right to pay no more taxes than he owed, he said, "I don't pay more than are legally due, and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president."

The decision of Romney's trustee to limit the use of charitable deductions in 2011 in order to adhere to the candidate's claim raised the eyebrows of several tax law experts. They noted that the trustee's use of numerous tax strategies gives Romney the rare ability to loosen or limit his tax payments at will.

The Romneys donated roughly $4 million to charities last year, but only claimed a deduction of $2.25 million on their tax return, filed with the Internal Revenue Service on Friday.

That information, Reid said, "reveals that Mitt Romney manipulated one of the only two years of tax returns he's seen fit to show the American people - and then only to 'conform' with his public statements. That raises the question: What else in those returns has Romney manipulated?"

Romney made $13.7 million last year and paid $1.94 million in federal income taxes, giving him an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. That was a bit above the 13.9 percent rate paid on 2010 income.

More precisely, the returns showed that the couple paid $1,935,708 in taxes on income of $13,696,951.

Romney, one of the wealthiest candidates ever to seek the presidency, paid taxes at a rate lower than taxpayers whose income was mostly from wages, which can be taxed at higher rates.

He released his 2010 returns in January, but he continues to decline to disclose returns from previous years — including those while he worked at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded.

The Obama campaign and other Democrats have pushed for fuller disclosures, reminding the Republican candidate that his father, George Romney, released a dozen years of returns when he ran for president.

Overall, the Romneys' main tax return and separate forms for blind trusts totaled more than 800 pages. The blind-trust income came from hedge funds and other complex investment vehicles. The couple also reported $3.5 million in income "from sources outside the United States," citing "various countries." Their forms included filings on holdings in Switzerland, Ireland, Germany and the Cayman Islands.

The Obama campaign accused Romney anew of profiting from millions invested overseas and "loopholes and tax shelters only available to those at the top." Apparently hoping to resolve basic questions voters might have, the Romney campaign released a letter from his accountants saying that in the 20 years prior to 2010 the Romneys paid an average annual effective rate of 20.2 percent, never lower than 13.66 percent.

On average, middle-income families — those making from $50,000 to $75,000 a year — pay 12.8 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation. But many pay a higher rate.

Romney is aggressively competing with Obama for the support of middle-class voters.

Obama's tax return for last year showed that he and his wife, Michelle, paid $162,074 in federal taxes on $789,674 in adjusted gross income, an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent. Their income plunged from $1.7 million in 2010, with declining sales of the president's books. In 2009, the Obamas reported income of $5.5 million, fueled by the best-selling books.

The Romneys' tax bill could have been lower. They gave $2.6 million in cash to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the documents show. They gave just over $2 million in noncash charitable contributions, including donations of stock holdings in Domino's Pizza, Dunkin Donuts and Warner Chilcott, to a family trust.

"It's interesting he didn't take the full charitable deduction," said Victor Fleischer, a University of Colorado law professor who has testified before Congress urging tightened oversight of private equity firms. "You're in a pretty lucky position when you can pay more tax" to get up to a 13 percent rate. Fleischer and several others said it was doubtful Romney could later take any unclaimed deductions in future years.

The Romneys had obtained a filing extension beyond the usual April 15 tax deadline.

Most of their income is from investments held in a blind trust, and campaign aides have stressed that he makes no decisions on how his money is invested. Capital gains and dividend interest is now generally taxed at 15 percent whereas the top marginal rate for income from wages is 35 percent.

The Romneys reported $6.8 million in capital gains, such as from the sale of stocks and other securities, and $6.37 million from dividends and taxable interest.

Several tax law experts said the newly released tax returns would not be much help in resolving critics' questions about his finances: whether he used aggressive tax-deferral strategies, what might be the specifics and tax advantages of his numerous offshore investments, what was the source of his massive retirement account and what are the details behind his now-closed $3 million Swiss bank account.

Analysts said details about his investments could emerge only if Romney provided far more of his tax returns, including files dating back to his years at Bain, the private firm he left in 2001. Romney, who initially refused to disclose any tax returns, has drawn the line at providing those from the past two years.

The Republican vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and his wife, Janna, whose returns were also released Friday by the Romney campaign, paid $64,764 in taxes on $323,416 of adjusted gross income in 2011, for an effective rate of 20 percent.

Just over half of their income came from Ryan's congressional salary. Other income flowed from rental real estate and other investments, including a trust inherited by Janna Ryan. They donated $12,991 to charity, including to the Boy Scouts of America.

The [Mitt] Romney Campaign Implodes After Libya.

The Romney Campaign Implodes after Libya
By BRUCE BARTLETT

As I discussed last week, I think Barack Obama will win the election easily. Now, with Mitt’s Romney’s gross miscalculation in politicizing the Libyan massacre, thereby failing the 3:00 am phone call test, the election is shaping up as a rout for Republicans. This new reality undoubtedly will affect the campaign’s final days and how both parties will adjust to it.

Republican frustration with Romney for failing to clinch what they have long viewed as a slam-dunk election was already evident among right-wing talk radio hosts even before the Libyan business. On Monday, Rush Limbaugh said, “If the Republican Party cannot win in this environment, it has to get out of politics.” That same day, Laura Ingraham said, “If you can’t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party.”

MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough succinctly listed the reasons why conservatives are disappointed with Romney in a Sept. 12 commentary:

Barack Obama has sunk America $5 trillion deeper into debt, has enacted the largest stimulus plan ever, pushed through the biggest health care boondoggle in U.S. history and posted trillion-dollar deficits every year of his presidency.
And yet unemployment is still over 8 percent.
Two-thirds of Americans still think their country is headed in the wrong direction.
And Mitt Romney is still losing.
Really???

How can it be that this man who turned around countless businesses, saved the 2002 Olympics and ran Democratic Massachusetts like a pro be the head of such a disastrous campaign?
Who was responsible for burying his moving convention video behind the bumbling bluster of Clint Eastwood?

Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander in chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?
And who decided that Romney would use his general election campaign to stand for absolutely nothing? The Wall Street Journal described this ideological listlessness as a “pre-existing decision.” The question conservatives should be asking is whether that strategy was hatched by a misguided consultant or the candidate himself.

This points to a problem I have discussed previously entered this election cycle overconfident of their prospects. As a consequence, electability was not as significant a factor in the primaries as it should have been. Republicans indulged themselves by searching for the purest, most principled conservative to represent them. As the RealClearPolitics poll compilation shows, at different times Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum all led in the polls before Romney finally pulled ahead late in the game.

Say what you want about these various competitors for the Republican presidential nomination, but none made their electability a factor in why they deserved it. It was always about how they would push harder to implement the agenda of the party’s most conservative members than the other guys would, whether the issue was abortion, tax cuts, spending cuts, being tough on Russia, terrorists, drugs or whatever.

Only Romney really made electability an issue, but he did so very, very quietly. The reason is that the primary basis of his electability was his moderate record as governor of Massachusetts, where he implemented a health care reform very similar to the one Obama enacted in 2010. The problem is that the protracted Republican primary forced him far to the right and required him to bury or repudiate just about everything he did as governor.

Many political observers nevertheless assumed that Romney would tack to the center at the Republican convention. But since tacking to the center for a Republican means moving to the left, this was not really doable. Romney’s position within the GOP is still too tenuous to allow him the flexibility of doing that. Indeed, given the issues he has emphasized during and since the convention, he is still working to solidify the Republican base, rather than reaching out to independent and undecided voters.

Personally, I suspect that Romney knows that he can’t win the election and is, at this point, trying to protect himself from personal blame for losing an easy election. I think that is one reason why he picked Paul Ryan as his running mate. The right loves him, because to them Ryan is everything Romney isn’t—charismatic, principled, versed in conservative/libertarian philosophy and dogma, detail oriented, charming and so on.

Having Ryan on his right flank means that Romney can’t be blamed for not running the sort of campaign the Tea Party wing of the GOP wanted. But it should have also given Romney the running room to tack to the center. Ryan would keep the natives from getting restless while Romney softened his party’s hard edges and put together a winning coalition that must necessarily include moderates. I think it is now too late for that.

In the near term, it is likely that some Romney contributors may hedge their bets by giving to Obama as well. This could even the money disparity between the two campaigns, although I have never thought that Romney’s money advantage was as valuable as commonly believed.

I also think that there will be some shift in the fortunes of Democrats running for House and Senate seats. The more secure Obama looks for re-election, the more Democratic money can be spared to help them. Moreover, I don’t think Democrats have yet fully exploited Republican vulnerabilities on issues such as abortion and sharp cuts in Medicare and Medicaid that Romney and Ryan have promised.

It’s also likely that Democrats will become more engaged in the election and Republicans less so. A Pew poll released this week found sharply rising Democratic enthusiasm after lagging Republicans all year. It is likely that next week’s polls will show a deterioration of Republican support for Romney in light of his Libyan gaffe.

Romney’s reaction to the Libyan crisis shows that not only does he lack the temperament to be president, but has no viable strategy for achieving victory. If there was a better way of turning off moderates than by being sharply partisan at a moment when most Americans wanted nonpartisan unity, I don’t know what it is. Romney deserves to lose.

Read more at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/09/14/The-Romney-Campaign-Implodes-after-Libya.aspx#AdfDYWK5pYpB8oCh.99

Jon Huntsman "Suspends" His GOP Presidential Race, Endorses Fellow Mormon, The PHONY Mitt Romney. What A Shocker: A Mormon Endorsing A Mormon.

Read more here, and check out Soledad's video report.

I'll update this post later with a video of the announcement.

Update: Below's the video. Enjoy:

PHONY Mitt Romney's BAIN Of Contention.

Romney defends Bain work, Obama team joins attack
By THOMAS BEAUMONT

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney cast himself Friday as a job-creating conservative in a new TV commercial that defends his time at the helm of a venture capital firm, private business experience under attack by his GOP rivals and, now, also by President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

At the same time, Romney's allies were assailing rival and former Sen. Rick Santorum in ads in South Carolina and Florida for pork-barrel spending as they worked to keep the challenger, who has avoided criticizing Romney's business past, from catching fire while Romney pushes for a four-state win streak.

"Mitt Romney helped create and ran a company that invested in struggling businesses, grew new ones and rebuilt old ones, creating thousands of jobs," says Romney's new ad in South Carolina that lists Staples, The Sports Authority and Steel Dynamics as successes of the Bain Capital venture firm. "We expected the Obama administration to put free markets on trial ... Romney's GOP opponents are embarrassing themselves by taking the Obama line."

That line was a slap at Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, who have gone after Romney over his Bain tenure and drawn criticism from across the GOP for doing so.

As if on cue, Obama's campaign released a scathing memo noting that Bain closed companies and cut wages and benefits, while Romney and his partners became wealthy. The memo amounts to a roadmap of the Obama campaign's general election playbook should Romney win the GOP nomination.

"His overwrought response to questions about it has been to insist that any criticism of his business record is an assault on free enterprise itself," top Obama aide Stephanie Cutter wrote. "But this is just an attempt to evade legitimate scrutiny of the record on which he says he's running."

Romney also rolled out a radio ad about values in South Carolina - likely to counter a TV ad by Gingrich that hits Romney on abortion - and one in Nevada promoting his jobs experience. Romney and his allies are the only presidential campaign entities on the air in Florida, running moderate to heavy levels of ads.

With the Bain issue now spreading across both the primary and general election campaigns, Romney was looking to blunt the force of attacks on the central rationale for his candidacy in hopes of preventing those criticisms from taking hold, if they haven't already. It's unclear whether attacks by Gingrich and his allies are having an impact on the race in South Carolina, where unemployment is high.

Gingrich and Perry, looking to right their struggling bids ahead of the state's Jan. 21 presidential primary, have described Romney as a greedy corporate raider, not the business-savvy job creator he has tried to portray himself as.

They've been aided by an outside group that supports Gingrich and has pledged to run $3.4 million worth of ads attacking Romney on this issue in South Carolina. So far, less than $1.5 million in airtime has been bought for the ad, which features snippets of people talking about how they lost their jobs when Bain intervened at their companies.

Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, has steered clear of the Bain fight and is aggressively competing in South Carolina, where polls show Romney leading.

Some Republicans think Santorum is well positioned to rise in South Carolina, much like he did just before the Iowa caucuses, where he narrowly lost to Romney. Santorum fared more poorly in New Hampshire but South Carolina is more friendly terrain for the champion of culturally conservative issues.

The Romney-aligned super PAC called Restore Our Future, which is running $2.3 million in TV ads in South Carolina alone, is taking no chances of allowing a more conservative alternative to Romney to emerge and drag the race into a long slog through the spring nominating contests. The group, which spent nearly $3 million on advertising in Iowa attacking Gingrich, was seen as effectively ending Gingrich's rise in Iowa before the caucuses.

In addition to ads critical of Gingrich in South Carolina, the group run by former Romney aides is also now targeting Santorum on fiscal issues with TV ads and direct mail here and Florida, which holds the next primary on Jan. 31 and where Romney is considered the one to beat.

The commercials assail Santorum's support for pork-barrel - or earmark - spending while in Congress and votes to increase the federal debt limit. Both were common positions among Republicans, but have become flashpoints for conservatives angry about spending and the federal budget deficit.

"So how will Santorum beat Obama? Obama knows he can't," the ad says.

A flier filling mailboxes in South Carolina makes a similar pitch, stating: "America is in a financial mess because of politicians like Rick Santorum."

Santorum has stepped up his own advertising and a super PAC supporting him also is airing ads in South Carolina, although so far they have been upbeat messages about the candidate. The group confirmed Friday it was adding an additional $600,000 in advertising time in the state.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/01/13/2027242/romney-defends-bain-work-obama.html#storylink=cpy

PHONY Mitt Romney.

PHONY Mitt Romney, As Seen By John McCain BEFORE His Endorsement. Watch Video. Doesn't This Video Tell You ALL You Need To Know To Reject The PHONY?

More Breaking News: U. S. Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Arizona's "Immigration" Law Case.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Arizona's law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration, SB 1070, violates the Constitution by intruding into an issue traditionally regulated by the federal government. The court's consideration of the issue could inflame the debate over illegal immigration in the 2012 election year and highlight the Obama administration's opposition to state immigration-control laws, which are popular with the general public but viewed with suspicion by many Latinos.

For more information... http://www.politico.com

Breaking News: PHONY Mitt Romney Acknowledges Newt Gingrich Is The New GOP Presidential Leader Of The Pack, Suggests He'll Stay In Race To June, 2012. Ok, I'll Say It: Good Riddance, PHONY!

POLITICO Breaking News
-------------------------------------------------
Mitt Romney, who just a month ago had hoped to seal the GOP presidential nomination with Florida's primary on Jan. 31, tells POLITICO that he now foresees an epic fight with Newt Gingrich that could last through the California primary on June 5. Asked if the former House speaker is the front runner, Romney replied bluntly: "He is right now."

Romney made clear that he would rather lose than make incendiary charges about Gingrich that could help President Barack Obama in the general election.

"I am what I am," Romney said. "I don't tend to say outrageous things about other people that I don't believe in order to win political points."

For more information... http://www.politico.com

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Read More About "PHONY" Mitt Romney And Barf.

Change agent or flip-flopper? The evolving ideology of Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney was firm and direct with the abortion rights advocates sitting in his office nine years ago, assuring the group that if elected Massachusetts governor, he would protect the state’s abortion laws.

Then, as the meeting drew to a close, the businessman offered an intriguing suggestion: that he would rise to national prominence in the Republican Party as a victor in a liberal state and could use his influence to soften the GOP’s hard-line opposition to abortion.

He would be a “good voice in the party” for their cause, and his moderation on the issue would be “widely written about,” he said, according to detailed notes taken by an officer of the group, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts.

“You need someone like me in Washington,” several participants recalled Romney saying that day in September 2002, an apparent reference to his future ambitions.

Romney reached out in similarly assertive ways to activists for gay rights and the environment, according to people familiar with the discussions, both as a candidate for governor and then in the early days of his term.

The encounters with liberal advocates offer some revealing insights into the evolving ideology of Romney, who as a presidential candidate now espouses the hard-line opposition to abortion that he seemed to disparage less than a decade ago. He has spent the years since leaving office courting conservative support.

Some details of his interactions with liberal activists were first reported in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, when Romney was introducing himself on the national stage.

This time, Romney is widely viewed as the GOP’s front-runner. His past positions remain fodder for critics as polls show that he has yet to win over many conservative primary voters, and rivals in both parties brand him a flip-flopper.

Now, as they watch Romney’s ascent from his old stomping grounds in Boston, many of the liberals he encountered wonder whether his transformation has been sincere or a matter of sheer politics. Not only did he espouse more liberal views at the time, but Romney presented himself as a change agent who could soften the GOP’s rough ideological edges.

Melissa Kogut, then the NARAL group’s executive director, recalled that as the group’s meeting drew to a close and participants packed their belongings, Romney was “emphatic that the Republican Party was not doing themselves a service by being so vehemently anti-choice.”

The abortion-rights supporters came away from the meeting pleasantly surprised. Romney declined to label himself “pro-choice” but said he eschewed all labels, including “pro-life.” He told the group that he would “protect and preserve a woman’s right to choose under Massachusetts law” and that he thought any move to overturn the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision would be a “serious mistake for our country.”

“We felt good about the interview. He seemed genuine,” said Nicole Roos, the NARAL official who took the notes and shared them with a reporter.

Romney aides declined to comment Wednesday. Aide Eric Fehrnstrom referred to quotes he provided the Los Angeles Times four years ago in which he said that Romney had been true to his words and that the activists’ recollections were colored by their political agendas.

“People’s memories change with time, and change depending on which way the political winds are blowing,” Fehrnstrom said then.

In this year’s campaign, conservatives have tried to make some of Romney’s past ties to liberals a liability. They note that Gina McCarthy, a top Obama official responsible for greenhouse-gas-reduction policy, worked as a senior aide in the Romney administration. McCarthy, in her role at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, has angered many Republicans and business groups.

Romney’s approach to reassuring the left was first evident in 1994, when he tried to unseat Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy by offering himself as an unconventional Republican in the mold of the popular and socially liberal Gov. William Weld.

In a widely publicized letter to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group, he touted himself as a stronger advocate on gay rights issues than the liberal lion himself.

In an Aug. 25, 1994, interview with Bay Windows, a gay newspaper in Boston, he offered this pitch: “There’s something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation,” Romney said, according to excerpts of the interview posted on the newspaper’s website. “When Ted Kennedy speaks on gay rights, he’s seen as an extremist. When Mitt Romney speaks on gay rights he’s seen as a centrist and a moderate. It’s a little like if Eugene McCarthy was arguing in favor of recognizing China, people would have called him a nut. But when Richard Nixon does it, it becomes reasonable. When Ted says it, it’s extreme; when I say it, it’s mainstream.”

In his campaign for governor eight years later, he again courted Log Cabin Republicans, meeting with them at a gay bar in Boston and sitting for another interview with Bay Windows.

In that interview, he called himself the “token Republican” who could use the power of his office to push lawmakers toward supporting certain domestic-partner benefits. He singled out the speaker of the state House at the time, who opposed legislation on that issue.

“I will support and endorse efforts to provide those domestic partnership benefits to gay and lesbian couples,” Romney said.

One participant in the Log Cabin session said Romney simply seemed opposed to the word “marriage” being used for same-sex couples.

“I certainly inferred from that that he didn’t have a problem with me as long as I called it something other than the M-word,” said Boston businessman Richard Babson.

Another participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Romney “left the impression of being friendly to the concept of some sort of same-sex union and not being vehemently opposed to gay marriage.”

Several attendees said they were shocked two years later, when Romney issued a stern rebuke of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage.

On the environment, Romney seemed interested in carving out an agenda largely in line with the state’s most fervent activists on the left.

After he took office in 2003, some state employees and activists were nervous about how the new governor would approach the climate-change issue. Massachusetts had already reached an agreement with other Northeastern states and some Canadian provinces on a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Romney surprised them by taking a hands-on approach, personally helping craft a “Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan” that he unveiled in 2004.

He reorganized the state government to create the Office of Commonwealth Development, with the former president of the liberal Conservation Law Foundation, Douglas Foy, as its head, to better coordinate climate work and sustainable-growth activities among different agencies.

As he worked on the plan, according to people familiar with the process, he even overruled some objections by his chief of staff, who criticized the plan as potentially too burdensome on industry.

Romney backed incentives for buying efficient vehicles, tougher vehicle emissions rules and mandatory cuts in emissions linked to global warming.

The plan not only called for reducing the state’s overall greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 and cutting them another 10 percent by 2020, but it said that “to eliminate any dangerous threat to the climate ... current science suggests this will require reductions as much as 75-85 percent below current levels.”

Sonia Hamel, who headed climate work for the state as special assistant to the Office of Commonwealth Development, said her former boss “saw the huge economic and environmental opportunities for the commonwealth inherent in the shift away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy.”

Romney “was very thoughtful about the development of our climate plan,” she wrote in an email, adding that he was most enthusiastic about efficiency measures that would save money and “spent many hours reviewing them with his staff and cabinet members.”

Romney did hedge his bets on one aspect of the report, however. He rewrote his cover letter the night before the report was released, emphasizing that it was a valuable plan, whether or not global warming was real.

“Rather than focusing our energy on the debate over the causes of global warming and the impact of human activity on climate, we have chosen to put our emphasis on actions, not discourse,” Romney wrote in the final version. “If we learn decades from now that climate change isn’t happening, these actions will still help our economy, our quality of life and the quality of our environment.”

Beyond the state climate plan, Romney repeatedly pushed to promote clean energy and cut fossil fuel use.

In March 2003 he pledged to buy up to $100 million worth of electricity from renewable sources. That month, he declared, “the global warming debate is now pretty much over.”

Environmentalists were disappointed when Romney, late in his term, pulled the state out of the regional greenhouse gas agreement.

Still, he appeared consistent on the global warming question as recently as June, when he officially launched his 2012 campaign. He said then that “the world’s getting warmer,” adding: “I believe that humans contribute to that.”

But last month he appeared to back away from that stance: “We don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”

Editor's comment: Mitt Romney is a BIG PHONY, who is hoping to use his money to buy office, while punking us in the process, and then CRAP on us when he get's to the White House.

WAKE UP, people!