Latest Reason to Be Against Romney… Eric Cantor

Yes it is True…. Eric Cantor…. one of the main people who have helped destroy my Republican Party has endorsed Mitt Romney on Meet The Press this morning…. and then he went on to do the  thing he does best that makes independents go against republicans and that is the HARD LINE RADICAL RIGHT WING rhetoric he is known for.. and the promulgation of lies and misinformation….IT HAS TO STOP!!!!

DAMN IT..  I WANT MY REPUBLICAN PARTY BACK .. the one that had values and principles and  knew  what it was the american public wanted and needed and was willing to work to  make it happen…

It’s the 0.000063% of the US Who REALLY Deciding the Presidential Election

How US politics became the politics of the “super rich”.

New York, NY - At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation – drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99 per cent - electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the one per cent. Or, to be more precise, the .000063 per cent. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80 per cent of the money raised by Super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.

These political action committees, spawned by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010, can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, or unions for the purpose of supporting or opposing a political candidate. In theory, Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating directly with a candidate, though in practice they’re just a murkier extension of political campaigns, performing all the functions of a traditional campaign without any of the corresponding accountability.

If 2008 was the year of the small donor, when many political pundits (myself included) predicted that the fusion of grassroots organising and cyber-activism would transform how campaigns were run, then 2012 is “the year of the big donor”, when a candidate is only as good as the amount of money in his Super PAC. “In this campaign, every candidate needs his own billionaires,” wrote Jane Mayer of The New Yorker.

‘This really is the selling of America,” claims former presidential candidate and Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean. “We’ve been sold out by five justices thanks to the Citizens United decision.” In truth, our democracy was sold to the highest bidder long ago, but in the 2012 election the explosion of Super PACs has shifted the public’s focus to the staggering inequality in our political system, just as the Occupy movement shined a light on the gross inequity of the economy. The two, of course, go hand in hand.

“We’re going to beat money power with people power,” Newt Gingrich said after losing to Mitt Romney in Florida as January ended. The walking embodiment of the lobbying-industrial complex, Gingrich made that statement even though his candidacy is being propped up by a Super PAC funded by two $5 million donations from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. It might have been more amusing if the GOP presidential primary weren’t a case study of a contest long on money and short on participation.

The Wesleyan Media Project recently reported a 1,600 per cent increase in interest-group-sponsored TV ads in this cycle as compared with the 2008 primaries. Florida has proven the battle royale of the Super PACs thus far. There, the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future, outspent the pro-Gingrich Super PAC, Winning Our Future, five to one. In the final week of the campaign alone, Romney and his allies ran 13,000 TV ads in Florida, compared with only 200 for Gingrich. Ninety-two per cent of the ads were negative in nature, with two-thirds attacking Gingrich, who, ironically enough, had been a fervent advocate of the Citizens United decision.

With the exception of Ron Paul’s underdog candidacy and Rick Santorum’s upset victory in Iowa – where he spent almost no money but visited each of the state’s 99 counties – the Republican candidates and their allied Super PACs have all but abandoned retail campaigning and grassroots politicking. They have chosen instead to spend their war chests on TV.

The results can already be seen in the first primaries and caucuses: an onslaught of money and a demobilized electorate. It’s undoubtedly no coincidence that, when compared with 2008, turnout was down 25 per cent in Florida, and that, this time around, fewer Republicans have shown up in every state that’s voted so far – except for South Carolina. According to political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar, negative TV ads contribute to “a political implosion of apathy and withdrawal”. New York Times columnist Tim Egan has labelled the post-Citizens United era “your democracy on meth”.

The 0.01 per cent primary .

More than 300 Super PACs are now registered with the Federal Election Commission. The one financed by the greatest number of small donors belongs to Stephen Colbert, who’s turned his TV show into a brilliant commentary on the deformed Super PAC landscape. Colbert’s satirical Super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, has raised $1 million from 31,595 people, including 1,600 people who gave $1 each. Consider this a rare show of people power in 2012.

Otherwise the Super PACs on both sides of the aisle are financed by the one per cent of the one per cent. Romney’s Restore Our Future Super PAC, founded by the general counsel of his 2008 campaign, has led the herd, raising $30 million, 98 per cent from donors who gave $25,000 or more. Ten million dollars came from just ten donors who gave $1 million each. These included three hedge-fund managers and Houston Republican Bob Perry, the main funder behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, whose scurrilous ads did such an effective job of destroying John Kerry’s electoral prospects. Sixty-five per cent of the funds that poured into Romney’s Super PAC in the second half of 2011 came from the finance, insurance and real estate sector, otherwise known as the people who brought you the economic meltdown of 2007 to 2008.

Romney’s campaign has raised twice as much as his Super PAC, which is more than you can say for Rick Santorum, whose Super PAC – Red, White & Blue – has raised and spent more than the candidate himself. Forty per cent of the $2 million that has so far gone into Red, White & Blue came from just one man, Foster Friess, a conservative hedge-fund billionaire and Christian evangelical from Wyoming.

In the wake of Santorum’s upset victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri on February 7, Friess told the New York Times that he’d recruited $1 million for Santorum’s Super PAC from another (unnamed) donor and upped his own giving, though he wouldn’t say by how much. We won’t find out until the next campaign disclosure filing in three months, by which time the GOP primary will almost certainly be decided.

For now, Gingrich’s sugar daddy Adelson has pledged to stay with his flagging campaign, but he’s also signalled that if the former Speaker of the House goes down, he’ll be ready to donate even more Super PAC money to a Romney presidential bid. And keep in mind that there’s nothing in the post-Citizens United law to stop a donor such as Adelson, hell-bent on preventing the Obama administration from standing in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, from giving $100 million, or for that matter, however much he likes.

Before Citizens United, the maximum amount one person could give to a candidate was $2,500; for a political action committee, $5,000; for a political party committee, $30,800. Now, the sky’s the limit for a Super PAC, and even more disturbingly, any donor can give an unlimited contribution to a 501c4 – outfits defined by the IRS as “civic leagues or organisations not organised for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare” - and to make matters worse, that contribution will remain eternally secret. In this way, US politics is descending further into the darkness, with 501c4s quickly gaining influence as “Shadow Super PACs”.

“Forty per cent of the TV ads in the presidential race so far came from these tax-exempt ‘social welfare’ groups.”

A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that, at a cost of $24 million, 40 per cent of the TV ads in the presidential race so far came from these tax-exempt “social welfare” groups. The Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads, a leading conservative Super PAC attacking Democratic candidates and the Obama administration, also runs a 501c4 called Crossroads GPS. It’s raised twice as much money as its sister group, all from donations whose sources will remain hidden from US voters. Serving as a secret slush fund for billionaires evidently now qualifies as social welfare.

The ‘income defense industry’

In his book Oligarchy, political scientist Jeffrey Winters refers to the disproportionately wealthy and influential actors in the political system as the “income defence industry”. If you want to know how the moneyed class, who prospered during the Bush and Clinton years, found a way to kill or water down nearly everything it objected to in the Obama years, look no further than the grip of the one per cent of the one per cent on our political system.

This simple fact explains why hedge-fund managers pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, or why the US is the only industrialised nation without a single-payer universal healthcare system, or why the planet continues to warm at an unprecedented pace while we do nothing to combat global warming. Money usually buys elections and, whoever is elected, it almost always buys influence.

In the 2010 election, the one per cent of the one per cent accounted for 25 per cent of all campaign-related donations, totalling $774 million dollars, and 80 per cent of all donations to the Democratic and Republican parties, the highest percentage since 1990. In congressional races in 2010, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, the candidate who spent the most money won 85 per cent of House races and 83 per cent of Senate races.

The media loves an underdog story, but nowadays the underdog is less likely than ever to win. Given the cost of running campaigns and the overwhelming premium on outspending your opponent, it’s no surprise that nearly half the members of Congress are millionaires, and the median net worth of a US Senator is $2.56 million.

The influence of Super PACs was already evident by November 2010, just nine months after the Supreme Court’s ruling. John Nichols and Robert McChesney of The Nation note that, of the 53 competitive House districts where Rove’s Crossroads organisation outspent Democratic candidates in 2010, Republicans won fifty-one. As it turned out, however, that election was a mere test run for the monetary extravaganza that is 2012.

Republicans are banking on that Super PAC advantage again this year, when the costs of the presidential contest and all other races for federal posts will soar from $5 billion in 2008 to as high as $7 billion by November. (The 2000 election cost a “mere” $3 billion.) In other words, the amount spent this election season will be roughly the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Haiti.

The myth of small donors

In June 2003, presidential candidate Howard Dean shocked the political establishment by raising $828,000 in one day over the internet, with an average donation of $112. Dean, in fact, got 38 per cent of his campaign’s total funds from donations of $200 or less, planting the seeds for what many forecast would be a small-donor revolution in US politics.

Four years later, Barack Obama raised a third of his record-breaking $745 million campaign haul from small donors, while Ron Paul raised 39 per cent from small dollars on the Republican side. Much of Paul’s campaign was financed by online “money bombs”, when enthusiastic supporters generated millions of dollars in brief, coordinated bursts. The amount of money raised in small donations by Obama, in particular, raised hopes that his campaign had found a way to break the death grip of big donors on US politics.

In retrospect, the small-donor utopianism surrounding Obama seems naïve. Despite all the adulatory media attention about his small donors, the candidate still raised the bulk of his money from big givers. (Typically, these days, incumbent members of Congress raise less than ten per cent of their campaign funds from small donors, with those numbers actually dropping when you reach the gubernatorial and state legislative levels.) Obama’s top contributors included employees of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup, hardly standard bearers for the little guy. For obvious reasons, the campaign chose to emphasise the small donors over the big ones in its narrative, as it continues to do in 2012.

Interestingly enough, both Obama and Paul actually raised more money from small donors in 2011 than they did in 2008, 48 per cent and 52 per cent of their totals, respectively. But, in the Super PAC era, that money no longer has the same impact. Even Dean doubts that his anti-establishment, internet-fuelled campaign from 2004 would be as successful today. “Super PACs have made a grassroots campaign less effective,” he says. “You can still run a grassroots campaign but the problem is you can be overwhelmed now on television and by dirty mailers being sent out … It’s a very big change from 2008.”

Obama is a candidate with a split personality, which makes his campaign equally schizophrenic. The Obama campaign claims it’s raising 98 per cent of its money from small donors and is “building the biggest grassroots campaign in American history”, according to campaign manager Jim Messina. But the starry-eyed statistics and the rhetoric that accompanies it are deeply misleading. Of the $89 million raised in 2011 by the Obama Joint Victory Fund, a collaboration of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Obama campaign, 74 per cent came from donations of $20,000 or more and 99 per cent from donations of $1,000 or more.

The campaign has 445 “bundlers” (dubbed “volunteer fundraisers” by the campaign), who gather money from their wealthy friends and package it for Obama. They have raised at least $74.4 million for Obama and the DNC in 2011. Sixty-one of those bundlers raised $500,000 or more. Obama held 73 fundraisers in 2011 and 13 last month alone, where the price of admission was almost always $35,800 a head.

An increase in small donor contributions and a surge of big money fundraisers still wasn’t enough, however, to give Obama an advantage over Republicans in the money chase. That’s why the Obama campaign, until recently adamantly against Super PACs, suddenly relented and signaled its support for a pro-Obama Super PAC named Priorities USA.

A day after the announcement that the campaign, like its Republican rivals, would Super PAC it up, Messina spoke at the members-only Core Club in Manhattan and “assured a group of Democratic donors from the financial services industry that Obama won’t demonize Wall Street as he stresses populist appeals in his re-election campaign”, reported Bloomberg Businessweek. “Messina told the group of Wall Street donors that the president plans to run against Romney, not the industry that made the former governor of Massachusetts millions.”

In other words, don’t expect a convincing return to the theme of the people versus the powerful in campaign 2012, even though Romney, if the nominee, would be particularly vulnerable to that line of attack. After all, so far his campaign has raised only nine per cent of its campaign contributions from small donors, well behind both Senator John McCain (21 per cent) in 2008, and George W. Bush (26 per cent) in 2004.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Romney outraised Obama among the top firms on Wall Street by a margin of 11 to one. His top three campaign contributions are from employees of Goldman Sachs ($496,430), JPMorgan ($317,400) and Morgan Stanley ($277,850). The banks have fallen out of favour with the public, but their campaign cash is indispensable among the political class – and so they remain as powerful as ever in US politics.

In a recent segment of his show, Stephen Colbert noted that half of the money ($67 million) raised by Super PACs in 2011 had come from just 22 people. “That’s seven one-millionths of one per cent,” or roughly 0.000000071 per cent, Colbert said while spraying a fire extinguisher on his fuming calculator. “So, Occupy Wall Street, you’re going to want to change those signs.”

Are Republicans Liars or Just Stupid When They Blame Obama for High Gas Prices

In a blistering election-year attack on his political foes, President Barack Obama charged Thursday that Republicans are “licking their chops” over painfully high gas prices that threaten the fragile economic recovery.

“Only in politics do people root for bad news and they greet bad news so enthusiastically,” he said in a combative speech at the University of Miami. “You pay more, and they’re licking their chops.”

The defiant rhetoric came after days in which the White House has worked to get off the defensive over high gasoline prices, insisting that Obama has done everything he can to bring those costs down. The administration blamed sticker shock at the pump on unrest in the Middle East, speculative trading, and heightened demand in China, Brazil, and India.

Obama assured Americans that he feels their pain, saying the rise in gas prices “hurts everybody” and “means you’ve got to find even more room in a budget that was already tight.”

The president accused Republicans of seeing “a political opportunity” and mockingly described them as “dusting off their three-point plan for $2 gas.”

“I’ll save you the suspense:  Step one is drill, and step two is drill, and then step three is keep drilling,” he said. “Well the American people aren’t stupid.  They know that’s not a plan — especially since we’re already drilling.  That’s a bumper sticker.  It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge.  It’s a strategy to get politicians through an election.”

Republicans angrily shot back that the president was the political opportunist.

“Facing an election, the President would like everyone to forget that gas prices have doubled over the past three years while he consistently blocked and slowed the production of American-made energy. From his drilling moratorium to his denial of the keystone pipeline, the President has time and again sided with his liberal base over American families” said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

Obama said there were “no quick fixes” and “no silver bullets” to solve the situation and called for a “sustained, all-of-the-above” approach to develop domestic energy.

“Anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about — or just isn’t telling you the truth,” he said.

Obama explained that he had expanded drilling and pushed for continued investments in American-based energy — “oil, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels, and more” — and the development of more fuel-efficient vehicles and buildings. And he warned the problem might take more than a decade to solve.

Ahead of the speech, Republicans sent reporters findings from independent fact-checking organizations that show the drop in oil imports, which Obama ascribes to his policies, actually stems from declining demand, which has resulted from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

And Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell scoffed at Obama’s call to end government subsidies to hugely profitable oil companies — a stable of the president’s campaign rhetoric.

“If someone in the administration can show me that raising taxes on American energy production will lower gas prices and create jobs, then I will gladly discuss it,” said McConnell. “But since nobody can, and the president doesn’t, this is merely an attempt to deflect from his failed policies.”

McConnell pushed Obama and congressional Democrats to “open their eyes to the opportunity presented by the Keystone XL pipeline” designed to carry oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Obama administration postponed a decision on the pipeline, which is expected to come after the November election.

Are Republicans Really ANTI – WOMAN or Just Prudish Chauvinists

The social conservative wing of the Republican Party has also long contained a strong strain of hostility to sex for purposes other than procreation and a fear of women being able to control their bodies without the dominance of men.

As the GOP rushes headlong to the extreme right in order to satisfy its base primary voters, that strain is now manifesting itself in the mainstream of the Republican Party as active hostility to protecting the basic health of women, particularly in areas that have anything to do with reproduction.

Republicans are now transforming themselves into a party that is dangerous to the health and safety of American women.

The fight over whether Catholic institutions that hire non-Catholics and serve the general public like universities and hospitals must follow the general law and provide contraception under their employee health plans — which should have been resolved by President Obama’s compromise that the insurance companies and not the Catholic employers would provide it — is just the tip of the iceberg.

• All 8 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which was first enacted in 1994 with bipartisan support and was last reauthorized in 2005 by unanimous consent in the Senate and with 415 votes in the House and signed by George W. Bush. VAWA is aimed at improving criminal justice and community-based responses to domestic violence, date rape, sexual assault and stalking. Although some Senate Republicans like Mike Crapo of Idaho did co-sponsor the bill, all 8 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted no. Among other things, the Republicans wanted to defund the Office on Violence Against Women in the Justice Department, and objected to provisions which extended the protection of the Act to gays and lesbians, and provided protection to abused women who are illegal immigrants to come forward. Apparently Senate Republicans don’t believe that gays, lesbians and illegal immigrant women who are raped or sexually assaulted deserve the protection of VAWA.

• Under a new law passed by the Virginia State Legislature, and expected to be signed by Republican Governor Bob McDonnell (a contender for the Republican vice presidential nomination), women who want to have a legal abortion will be required to have a transvaginal ultrasound in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, legally forcing a woman to be penetrated for no medical reason. A Republican lawmaker justified this on the grounds that women had already made the decision to be “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.” The law is almost certainly unconstitutional as an “undue burden” on women’s rights, but that hasn’t stopped Virginia Republicans from passing it.

• From 1976 until this year, there has been a de facto bipartisan truce between anti-abortion and pro-choice supporters in Congress under which taxpayer dollars could not be used for abortion except in the case of rape, incest, or when the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. 173 House Republicansco-sponsored a bill that would drastically redefine “rape” and “incest”. Incest wouldn’t be included in the exemption unless the girl is under 18. The definition of “rape” would be limited to “forcible rape.” Rapes in which women are drugged, or given large amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with diminished mental capacity, and many date rapes wouldn’t be covered. Nor would statutory rape — so a 30-year-old man having sex with a 12 year old girl wouldn’t count. This attempt by the Republican House to redefine rape downward stands in stark contrast to Democratic Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent announcement of an expanded definition of rape in the Uniform Crime Report to mean “the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetrations by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim”. Faced with a firestorm of pressure, the House GOP eventually decided to remove the forcible rape redefinition from the bill, but that doesn’t take away from their initial impulse to include it.

Moreover, it may come as a shock to many women that in 2012, their access to birth control should become a political issue in the Republican primary. But as recently as 1965, 30 states outlawed or limited the right to use birth control. In that year, the Supreme Court overturned such laws in the case of Griswold vs. Connecticut which held that the Constitution implies a right of privacy which prohibits states from interfering with the right of married people (later extended to all people) to use birth control in the privacy of their bedroom.

One of the leading Republican presidential contenders, Rick Santorum, has stated that contraception is “not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Moreover, Santorum told ABC’s Jake Tapper that the Supreme Court was wrong in Griswold and states should have a right to ban birth control.

Mitt Romney, the supposed moderate in the Republican race, is not far behind Santorum when it comes to a woman’s right to contraception. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Romney, “Do you believe that states have a right to ban contraception? Or is it trumped by a constitutional right to privacy.” Romney evaded the question, responding “I don’t know whether a state has a right to ban contraception.” Romney — like Barack Obama a graduate of Harvard Law School — would have learned the Griswold case in Constitutional Law 101, so he was being ingenuous.

More recently, Romney has started calling certain birth control pills “abortive pills,” joining Michele Bachmann in denouncing Plan B “morning after” pills as abortion. But Romney is just joining Bachmann in her ignorance. The Plan B pill is not an “abortion pill” or an “abortive pill” and the label on its package already warns pregnant women not to take it because “if you’re already pregnant, it won’t work.” The Plan B pill uses the same active ingredients as regular birth control pills and works in the same way as regular birth control pills by preventing the implantation of an egg in the uterus. So if Romney thinks that Plans B pills cause abortions — which he now opposes — then he must also be opposed to ordinary birth control pills.

Put aside whether you’re anti-abortion or pro-choice — many people have good faith and strongly held disagreements on abortion. But recent Republican attacks on a woman’s right to obtain contraception, on laws protecting against violence on women, Republican-backed legislation to require women seeking legal abortions to have medically unnecessary ultrasounds which penetrate the vagina, and Republican attempts to redefine “rape” as only including forcible rape, should raise serious concerns that the GOP is becoming dangerous to the health and safety of American women.

Romney Continues to Bring Yawns to GOP aka BORING

If Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination for president, he’ll face the urgent task of inspiring the party’s conservative core and rallying them to beat President Barack Obama.

Judging by his performances in the primaries and caucuses so far, and the challenge he faces next week, he’s got his work cut out for him.

Even Republicans who think he’ll be the nominee worry about whether he can generate the intensity required to beat the Democratic incumbent.

These party leaders and activists, from the states voting Feb. 28 and the most contested ones ahead in the fall, say Romney has made strides toward addressing this problem. But, they say, he needs to do more to convince the Republican base that he’s running to fundamentally reverse the nation’s course, not simply manage what they see as the federal government’s mess.

“I think Romney will be the nominee, but there is still tremendous work to be done,” said Sally Bradshaw, a Florida Republican and adviser to former Gov. Jeb Bush. “He has got to find a way to unify the party and increase the intensity of support for him among voters who have supported Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum or Ron Paul or someone else. And that is going to be the key to how he does in the fall.”

Romney leads in the delegate count for the nomination, and by a wide margin in private polling ahead of the Arizona primary Feb. 28. But the rising challenge from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in the contest also that day in Michigan, where Romney was born and raised, underscores doubts about Romney’s ability to ignite fervor in the GOP base.

He nearly tied Santorum in Iowa, although entrance polls showed that more of Santorum’s backers than Romney’s said they were strongly behind their chosen candidate.

Romney lost the primary in South Carolina last month to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. More of Romney’s supporters in that state said they would support him with reservations in the general election than would support him enthusiastically.

Santorum swept caucuses Feb. 7 in Colorado and Minnesota, and the nonbinding Missouri primary.

Romney’s challengers have risen by sounding more conservative and displaying sharper differences with Obama, while nipping Romney’s appeal as the most electable against Obama.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor with a moderate past, has campaigned more as the likely GOP nominee, portraying himself as acceptable to swing voters in a race where polls show voters prizing most a candidate’s perceived ability to beat Obama.

Romney has pivoted toward the GOP’s conservative base in light of Santorum’s surge.

He dove into the debate over whether birth control ought to be covered by health insurance provided by church-backed employers by faulting the Obama administration’s original push to do so as an “assault on religion.” But Romney was accused of overreaching after recently telling influential conservative activists, “I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”

“In Romney’s case it’s like the difference between someone who grew up speaking Spanish and someone who went to school to speak Spanish,” said Constantin Querard, an Arizona Republican operative. “The moment Romney starts speaking, people know the difference.”

A Pew Research poll taken last week shows the Republican voters nationally who think Romney is a strong conservative has dipped to 42 percent from 53 percent in November.

Romney’s campaign aides say it’s unrealistic to think conservatives staring at the possibility of a second Obama term will not unify behind Romney. “President Obama is the best unifier the Republican Party could ever hope for,” Romney’s political director, Rich Beeson, told The Associated Press.

The campaign points to recent conservative opinion leaders who have signed on to his campaign, and his support from popular rising conservative figures such as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as evidence of Romney’s newfound buzz.

Michigan Republican Holly Hughes, who supported Arizona Sen. John McCain in the 2008 primary, said Romney is more passionate than during his failed bid that year.

“He’s a different candidate than he was four years ago,” said Hughes, a Republican national committeewoman from Muskegon County. “There wasn’t the excitement there.”

Hughes and others also point to Romney’s winning the straw poll at the recent Conservative Political Action Convention in Washington, which attracted thousands of the nation’s most ardent conservative activists.

Yet Michigan GOP consultant Tom Shields said Santorum, now ahead of Romney in polls Romney’s native state and where his father served as governor, is exciting people where Romney isn’t.

Establishment Republican figures are lining up behind Romney in Michigan, including Gov. Rick Snyder. But in 2000, Gov. John Engler promised to deliver the state as George W. Bush’s firewall; McCain won the primary that year.

“For whatever reason, Romney’s not objectionable. But people just haven’t fully warmed up to him,” said Shields, who conducts public opinion polling in Michigan. “They’ve just refused to take the next step and marry the guy.”

It foretells problems assuring the die-hard GOP activists will be lining up in November, when their phone-banking and door-knocking could make the difference in a close election against an Obama re-election campaign projected to have $1 billion to spend.

“I voted for him. I don’t want to screw around because he’s who we’re going to end up with,” said former Arizona GOP Chairman Mike Hellon, referring to his absentee primary vote for Romney. “But I talk to people who are generally reluctant to pull the trigger for him. More than anything else, that’s’ a problem of intensity which could be a problem in the fall.”

Romney could spice things up with his running-mate choice, although some say an August announcement might be too late to lock in the GOP foot-soldiers.

“There’s a lot of speculation that Marco Rubio could be the vice presidential nominee,” Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad told the AP, referring to the freshman Florida senator and tea party favorite. “I think somebody like him could add some real excitement to the ticket, would be kind of a help to Romney if he does wrap up the nomination.”

Candidates historically do not win close elections based on their running mate, although they have in recent elections received a temporary bump in their national poll standing. The choice can ignite passion among the party base, as did McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in 2008.

Concerns about the enthusiasm Romney generates correspond with a general dip in excitement among Republicans in a nominating campaign that has lurched one way and another in nine contests over the past six weeks.

A CNN/ORC International poll published Wednesday showed 51 percent of Republicans nationally were extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for president in the election, down from 64 percent in October.

But the dip in GOP enthusiasm, and especially Romney’s three-way loss this month, is a stark warning to Romney that he cannot wait or rely on public unpopularity with Obama to provide momentum for him.

“He cannot bank on the anger against Obama among Republicans to create the turnout we need in the Fall,” Florida’s Bradshaw said.

Republicans Secretly Hope for Another Candidate Soon

Could the battle for the Republican nomination go all the way to the Republican convention in August? Could we see an entirely new candidate getting into the race?

One long-time Republican leader tells ABC News the answer to both questions is yes.

“If the Republican primary voters continue to split up their votes in such a way that nobody is close to having a majority, then there is a chance that somebody else might get in,” former Republican Party chairman Haley Barbour said in an interview with ABC News.

Barbour calls such a scenario unlikely, but not out of the question.

“I think the odds of having a contested convention are not good but the fact that we are where we are and there is actually a possibility, I guess this is why there is so much talk,” he said.

A contested convention would mean another six months of Republicans battling Republicans, but Barbour says that’s not necessarily bad for the party.

“It is not accurate to say that a hotly contested convention is necessarily bad,” Barbour said. “I am not saying it is necessarily good, but I don’t think it is accurate to say it is necessarily bad. Let’s just see.”

Barbour, who has not endorsed any candidate, says Mitt Romney has never really been a true front-runner.

“In our primaries the more conservative candidates have an advantage,” Barbour said. “Doesn’t mean they always win. But that is just a fact and I think Romney is showing himself to be moderately conservative. We still have a long way to go with three candidates who are to the right of Romney.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that he thinks Romney cannot win.

“In our party it is an advantage to be more conservative, but at the end of the day I think most Republicans want somebody who can beat Barack Obama,” Barbour said. “And nobody in my opinion has made that case to the Republican voters yet – Romney, Santorum, Paul or Gingrich. I don’t think any of them has made the case that ‘I am the guy who has the best chance to beat Obama.’”

Comparison between Mormon and Christian Doctrines

A Comparison Between Christian Doctrine and Mormon Doctrine

by Matt Slick

“Take up the Bible, compare the religion of the Latter-day Saints with it and see if it will stand the test,” (Brigham Young, May 18, 1873, Journal of Discourses, vol. 16, p. 46.)

Following is a comparison between Christian doctrine and Mormon doctrine. It will become very obvious that Mormonism does not agree with the Bible. In fact,Mormonism has simply used the same words found in Christianity and redefined them. But with a proper understanding of what Mormonism really teaches, you will be able to see past those definitions into the real differences between Christianity and Mormonism.

The difference is the difference between eternal life and damnation.

Topic	Christian	Mormon
GOD	There is only one God (Isaiah 43:11; 44:6,8;45:5).	“And they (the Gods) said: Let there be light: and there was light (Book of Abraham 4:3).
	God has always been God (Psalm 90:2;Isaiah 57:15).	“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!!! . . . We have imagined that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil, so that you may see,” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith,p. 345).
	God is a spirit without flesh and bones (John 4:24; Luke 24:39).	“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s,” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22; Compare with Alma 18:26-27; 22:9-10). “Therefore we know that both the Father and the Son are in form and stature perfect men; each of them possesses a tangible body . . . of flesh and bones,” (Articles of Faith, by James Talmage, p. 38).
TRINITY	The Trinity is the doctrine that there is only one God in all the universe and that He exists in three eternal, simultaneous persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.	The trinity is three separate Gods: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. “That these three are separate individuals, physically distinct from each other, is demonstrated by the accepted records of divine dealings with man,”(Articles of Faith, by James Talmage, p. 35).
JESUS	Jesus was born of the virgin Mary (Isaiah 7:14; Matt. 1:23).	“The birth of the Saviour was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood – was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers,” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 8, p. 115). “Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers” (Mormon Doctrine, by Bruce McConkie, p. 547).
	Jesus is the eternal Son. He is second person of the Trinity. He has two natures.He is God in flesh and man (John 1:1, 14; Col. 2;9) and the creator of all things (Col. 1:15-17).	Jesus is the literal spirit-brother of Lucifer, a creation (Gospel Through the Ages, p. 15).
THE HOLY SPIRIT	The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. He is not a force. He is a person. (Acts 5:3-4; 13:2)	Mormonism distinguishes between the Holy Spirit (God’s presence via an essence) and the Holy Ghost (the third god in the Mormon doctrine of the trinity). “He [the Holy Ghost] is a being endowed with the attributes and powers of Deity, and not a mere force, or essence,” (Articles of Faith, by James Talmage, p. 144).
SALVATION	Salvation is the forgiveness of sin and deliverance of the sinner from damnation. It is a free gift received by God’s grace (Eph. 2:8; Rom. 6:23) and cannot be earned (Rom. 11:6).	Salvation has a double meaning in Mormonism: universal resurrection and . . . “The first effect [of the atonement] is to secure to all mankind alike, exemption from the penalty of the fall, thus providing a plan of General Salvation. The second effect is to open a way for Individual Salvation whereby mankind may secure remission of personal sins,” (Articles of Faith, by James Talmage, p. 78-79).
	Salvation (forgiveness of sins) is not by works (Eph. 2:8; Rom. 4:5;Gal. 2:21).	“As these sins are the result of individual acts it is just that forgiveness for them should be conditioned on individual compliance with prescribed requirements — ‘obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel,’” (Articles of Faith, p. 79).
BIBLE	The inspired inerrant word of God (2 Tim. 3:16). It is authoritative in all subjects it addresses.	“We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. . .” (8th Article of Faith of the Mormon Church).

This is only a sample of many of the differences between Christianity and Mormonism. As you can see, they are quite different doctrines. God cannot be uncreated and created at the same time. There cannot be only one God and many gods at the same time. The Trinity cannot be one God in three persons and three gods in an office known as the Trinity, etc. These teachings are mutually exclusive.

This is important because faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed. Is the Mormon god the real one? Or, is the God of historic and biblical Christianity the real one?

Mormonism is obviously not the biblical version of Christianity. It is not Christian, and Mormons serve a different god than do the Christians — a god that does not exist.  Paul talks about this in Gal. 4:8, “when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods.”  Only the God of the Bible exists.  There are no others.  Mormonism puts its faith in a non-existent god.

Comparison of Mormonism to Christianity

Whether Mormons should be considered “Christians” is a controversial and rather complicated issue. Many Catholics and Protestants do not consider Mormons to be Christians because they believe the differences in doctrines are larger and more fundamental than those between Christian denominations.

On other hand, religious studies books tend to group Mormons in with Christians because: Mormons regard themselves as Christians; Mormonism emerged in a Christian context; and Mormonism shares much in common with other forms of Christianity.

Mormons also consider themselves Christians for much the same reasons as listed above. However, they consider themselves to be significantly different from other branches of Christianity. They regard themselves as neither Catholic nor Protestant, viewing both of those faiths as corruptions of true Christianity, which has been restored by Mormonism. 1

The following chart provides a quick-reference guide to the major similarities and differences between the beliefs and practices of Mormonism and mainstream Protestant Christianity. As is always the case with charts, the information is simplified for brevity and should be used alongside more complete explanations. The beliefs listed for both Mormons and Protestant Christians represent those of most, but not all, churches or individuals within each tradition.

	Mormonism	Mainstream Christianity
Religious Authority	All sacred texts equally, continuing revelations	Bible (all), ecumenical councils and creeds (Catholic and Orthodox), official papal pronouncements (Catholic), continuing revelations (Pentecostal)
Sacred Texts	Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price	Bible (some include Apocrypha)
Trinity	Rejected – Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct beings who are “one in purpose”	Affirmed - Father, Son and Holy Spirit are of the “same substance”; three persons in one being
God	Heavenly Father, who has a physical body	Trinitarian God, who does not have a body
Jesus Christ	Son of God, Savior, originally one of the spirit beings that all humans used to be (see Jesus Christ). Has a physical body.	Son of God, Word of God, God, second Person of the Trinity (see Christology)
Holy Spirit	A spirit being who is a separate being from God and Jesus.	God, Third Person of the Trinity
Original sin	Denied (see Human Nature)	Affirmed (by most denominations)
Free will	Free to do good or evil	Free will to do good is seriously impaired
Purpose of Christ’s Incarnation	Teach about God, provide a model for right living, die sacrificially for human sin	Teach about God, provide a model for right living, die sacrificially for human sin, reveal God directly to humanity
Resurrection of Christ?	Yes	Yes
Salvation	Both faith and works; works emphasized	Both faith and works; faith emphasized (in most denominations)
Second chance after death?	Yes, during a period of “learning and preparation” after death	No
Afterlife	All spirits go to the spirit world, undergo preparation, then rejoin with bodies in the resurrection (see Afterlife). The good spend the intervening time in spirit paradise, while the wicked go to spirit prison.	Souls of wicked sent to Hell, believers go to Heaven for eternity (see Afterlife). In Catholicism, many believers will suffer in Purgatory before going to Heaven.
Hell	The wicked enter an unpleasant “spirit prison” prior to judgment; after that, only the most obstinately wicked (like Satan) will be consigned to “Outer Darkness” for eternity.	Place (or state of being) of eternal torment and distance from God.
Place of Worship	Chapel or Temple	Church
Meaning of Sacraments (Chr) or Ordinances (LDS)	Ordinances are covenants between man and God and a means of grace. Some of them are necessary for salvation.	Symbolic acts commanded by Christ (some Protestant); means of grace if received with faith (Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant).
Sacraments (Chr) or Ordinances (LDS)	Include baptism, confirmation, the sacrament (Lord’s Supper), laying on of hands, ordination, temple endowment, and marriage sealing (see Temple Ordinances)	Two common to all denominations: Baptism and Lord’s Supper. Total of seven in Catholicism.
Symbols	No official symbol; cross is not used; the angel Moroni raising a trumpet is seen atop Mormon temples	Cross, fish and others
Holidays	Easter, Christmas, national and local holidays, birthdays, celebrations of events in Mormon history	Easter, Christmas, saints’ days, several others
	Mormonism	Mainstream Christianity

 

Is Mormonism Christian?

Is Mormonism Christian? This may seem like a puzzling question to many Mormons as well as to some Christians. Mormons will note that they include the Bible among the four books which they recognize as Scripture, and that belief in Jesus Christ is central to their faith, as evidenced by their official name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Furthermore, many Christians have heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing Christian hymns and are favorably impressed with the Mormon commitment to high moral standards and strong families. Doesn’t it follow that Mormonism is Christian?

To fairly and accurately resolve this question we need to carefully compare the basic doctrines of the Mormon religion with the basic doctrines of historic, biblical Christianity.

To fairly and accurately resolve this question we need to carefully compare the basic doctrines of the Mormon religion with the basic doctrines of historic, biblical Christianity. To represent the Mormon position we have relied on the following well-known Mormon doctrinal books, the first three of which are published by the Mormon Church: Gospel Principles (1997), Achieving a Celestial Marriage (1976), and A Study of the Articles of Faith (1979) by Mormon Apostle James E. Talmage, as well as Doctrines of Salvation (3 vols.) by the tenth Mormon President and prophet Joseph Fielding Smith, Mormon Doctrine (2nd ed., 1979) by Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie andTeachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

1. Is There More Than One True God?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that there is only one True and Living God and apart from Him there are no other Gods (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 43:10,11; 44:6,8; 45:21,22; 46:9; Mark 12:29-34).

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that there are many Gods (Book of Abraham 4:3ff), and that we can become gods and goddesses in the celestial kingdom (Doctrine and Covenants 132:19-20; Gospel Principles, p. 245; Achieving a Celestial Marriage, p. 130). It also teaches that those who achieve godhood will have spirit children who will worship and pray to them, just as we worship and pray to God the Father(Gospel Principles, p. 302).

2. Was God Once a Man Like Us?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that God is Spirit (John 4:24; 1 Timothy 6:15,16), He is not a man(Numbers 23:19; Hosea 11:9; Romans 1:22, 23), and has always (eternally) existed as God — all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present(Psalm 90:2; 139:7-10; Isaiah 40:28; Luke 1:37).

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that God the Father was once a man like us who progressed to become a God and has a body of flesh and bone (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22; “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” from Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 345-347; Gospel Principles, p. 9; Articles of Faith, p. 430; Mormon Doctrine, p. 321). Indeed, the Mormon Church teaches that God himself has a father, and a grandfather, ad infinitum (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 373; Mormon Doctrine, p. 577).

3. Are Jesus and Satan Spirit Brothers?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that Jesus is the unique Son of God; he has always existed as God, and is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father (John 1:1, 14; 10:30; 14:9; Colossians 2:9). While never less than God, at the appointed time He laid aside the glory He shared with the Father (John 17:4, 5; Philippians 2:6-11) and was made flesh for our salvation; His incarnation was accomplished through being conceived supernaturally by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin (Matthew 1:18-23; Luke 1:34-35).

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that Jesus Christ is our elder brother who progressed to godhood, having first been procreated as a spirit child by Heavenly Father and a heavenly mother; He was later conceived physically through intercourse between Heavenly Father and the virgin Mary (D&C 93:21; Journal of Discourses, 1:50-51; Gospel Principles, p. 11-13; Achieving a Celestial Marriage, p. 129; Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, pp. 546-547; 742; Ezra Taft Benson, Come unto Christ, p. 4; Robert L. Millet, The Mormon Faith: Understanding Restored Christianity, p. 31). Mormon doctrine affirms that Jesus, all angels, Lucifer, all demons, and all human beings are originally spirit brothers and sisters (Abraham 3:22-27; Moses 4:1-2; Gospel Principles, pp. 17-18; Mormon Doctrine, p. 192).

4. Is God a Trinity?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost are not separate Gods or separate beings, but are distinct Persons within the one Triune Godhead. Throughout the New Testament the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as the Father are separately identified as and act as God (Son: Mark 2:5-12; John 20:28; Philippians 2:10,11; Holy Spirit: Acts 5:3,4; 2 Corinthians 3:17,18; 13:14); yet at the same time the Bible teaches that these three are only one God (see point 1).

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three separate Gods (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 370; Mormon Doctrine, pp. 576-577), and that the Son and Holy Ghost are the literal offspring of Heavenly Father and a celestial wife (Joseph Fielding McConkie, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, vol. 2, p. 649).

5. Was The Sin Of Adam and Eve a Great Evil Or a Great Blessing?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that the disobedience of our first parents Adam and Eve was a great evil. Through their fall sin entered the world, bringing all human beings under condemnation and death. Thus we are born with a sinful nature, and will be judged for the sins we commit as individuals. (Ezekiel 18:1-20; Romans 5:12-21).

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that Adam’s sin was “a necessary step in the plan of life and a great blessing to all of us” (Gospel Principles, p. 33; Book of Mormon — 2 Nephi 2:25; Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 1, pp. 114-115).

6. Can We Make Ourselves Worthy Before God?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross we are spiritually “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1,5) and are powerless to save ourselves. By grace alone, apart from self-righteous works, God forgives our sins and makes us worthy to live in His presence (Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5-6). Our part is only to cling to Christ in heartfelt faith. (However, it is certainly true that without the evidence of changed conduct, a person’s testimony of faith in Christ must be questioned; salvation by grace alone through faith, does not mean we can live as we please — Romans 6:1-4).

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that eternal life in the presence of God (which it terms “exaltation in the celestial kingdom”) must be earned through obedience to all the commands of the Mormon Church, including exclusive Mormon temple rituals. Works are a requirementfor salvation (entrance into the “celestial kingdom”) — Gospel Principles, p. 303-304; Pearl of Great Price — Third Article of Faith; Mormon Doctrine, pp. 339, 671; Book of Mormon — 2 Nephi 25:23).

7. Does Christ’s Atoning Death Benefit Those Who Reject Him?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that the purpose of the atoning work of Christ on the cross was to provide the complete solution for humankind’s sin problem. However, those who reject God’s grace in this life will have no part in this salvation but are under the judgment of God for eternity (John 3:36; Hebrews 9:27; 1 John 5:11-12).

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that the purpose of the atonement was to bring resurrection and immortality to all people, regardless of whether they receive Christ by faith. Christ’s atonement is only a partial basis for worthiness and eternal life, which also requires obedience to all the commands of the Mormon church, including exclusive Mormon temple rituals (Gospel Principles, pp. 74-75;Mormon Doctrine, p. 669).

8. Is The Bible The Unique and Final Word of God?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that the Bible is the unique, final and infallible Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 1:1,2; 2 Peter 1:21) and that it will stand forever (1 Peter 1:23-25). God’s providential preservation of the text of the Bible was marvelously illustrated in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that the Bible has been corrupted, is missing many “plain and precious parts” and does not contain the fullness of the Gospel (Book of Mormon — 1 Nephi 13:26-29; Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, pp. 190-191).

9. Did The Early Church Fall Into Total Apostasy?

The Bible teaches and orthodox Christians through the ages have believed that the true Church was divinely established by Jesus and could never and will never disappear from the earth (Matthew 16:18; John 15:16; 17:11). Christians acknowledge that there have been times of corruption and apostasy within the Church, but believe there has always been a remnant that held fast to the biblical essentials.

By contrast, the Mormon Church teaches that there was a great and total apostasy of the Church as established by Jesus Christ; this state of apostasy “still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel” of the Mormon Church (Gospel Principles, pp. 105-106; Mormon Doctrine, p. 44).

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Conclusion: The above points in italics constitute the common gospel believed by all orthodox Christians through the ages regardless of denominational labels. On the other hand, some new religions such as Mormonism claim to be Christian, but accept as Scripture writings outside of the Bible, teach doctrines that contradict the Bible, and hold to beliefs completely foreign to the teachings of Jesus and His apostles.

Mormons share with orthodox Christians some important moral precepts from the Bible. However, the above points are examples of the many fundamental and irreconcilable differences between historic, biblical Christianity and Mormonism. While these differences do not keep us from being friendly with Mormons, we cannot consider them brothers and sisters in Christ. The Bible specifically warns of false prophets who will teach “another gospel” centered around “another Jesus,” and witnessed to by “another spirit” (2 Corinthians 11:4,13-15; Galatians 1:6-9). Based on the evidence presented above, we believe Mormonism represents just such a counterfeit gospel.

It has been pointed out that if one claimed to be a Mormon but denied all the basic tenets of Mormonism — that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, that the Book of Mormon is true and divinely inspired, that god was once a man who progressed to godhood through keeping the laws and ordinances of the Mormon Church, and that the Mormon Church was divinely established — the Mormon Church would reject such a person’s claim to being a Latter-day Saint. One cannot fairly call oneself a Mormon if one does not believe the fundamental doctrines taught by the Mormon Church. By the same token, if the Mormon Church does not hold to even the basic biblical truths believed by the greater Christian community down through the ages, how can Christians reasonably be expected to accept Mormonism as authentic Christianity?

If the Mormon Church believes it is the only true Christian Church, it should not attempt to publicly present itself as a part of a broader Christian community. Instead it should tell the world openly that those who claim to be orthodox Christians are not really Christians at all, and that the Mormon Church is the only true Christian Church. This in fact is what it teaches privately, but not publicly.

Newts South Carolina Win Brings 5 New Possible Scenarios

Gingrich steamrolled Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP presidential field in Saturday’s Palmetto State primary. What happens now?

Just a short week ago, Mitt Romney had made history by sweeping the Iowa and New Hampshire presidential nominating contests, and was poised to go three-for-three when he picked up a seemingly inevitable win in South Carolina, says Dan Balz at The Washington Post. Then his Iowa win was revoked because of a vote-counting error, followed shortly by Newt Gingrich’s “stunning victory in South Carolina” on Saturday, when he crushed Romney 40 percent to 28 percent. Here, five ways Gingrich’s come-from-behind win changed the GOP contest:

1. Romney’s GOP sprint is now a long, hard slog

“If Romney had won South Carolina, the race for the Republican presidential nomination would have almost certainly been over,” says Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. Now it’s a marathon. After Gingrich’s Palmetto State romp, “we are in for — at least — another six weeks of campaigning,” through Super Tuesday on March 6. Probably longer, says John Heilemann at New York. Romney has plenty of money, and he won’t drop out because “this is his last chance to be president.” Gingrich has little cash but a “magnet-like capacity to draw free media,” plus an outsized sense of his own destiny. And Gingrich and Romney “are quickly coming to hate each other. So buckle up; this should be fun.” But better now then in the general election as there are a lot of issues around Romney that never got full viability before Newt. 

2. Florida is the new tiebreaker

Rick Santorum (belatedly) won Iowa, Romney won New Hampshire, and now Gingrich has taken South Carolina. That means Florida’s Jan. 31 primary “will almost certainly decide the nominee,” says Hugh Hewitt at National Review. The upcoming Florida “brawl” could well be “the pivotal moment of the campaign,” agrees Alexander Burns at Politico. With his money and organizational advantages, Romney starts out as the “muscular favorite” to win the Sunshine State, and he’ll need the victory to reassure his panicking backers. But Newt’s a good fit for Florida’s Tea Party–leaning GOP electorate, and if he can ride his wave of momentum to a win — the latest polls show Newt skyrocketing into the lead — Gingrich’s “back-from-the-dead candidacy could become a true juggernaut.”  Obviously a te breaker as the top 3 all had one wine each, but there is always Ron Paul’s outside chance to make it 4 winners in 4 primaries  (I am not counting Colbert or Herman Cain obviously) 

3. Santorum’s prospects look bleak

Newt didn’t just crush Romney in South Carolina. By dominating “the other not-Romney candidates, Gingrich took a big step toward consolidating that part of the electorate,” says Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post. Santorum’s 17 percent third-place showing is probably enough to keep his campaign alive through Florida, but if he “can’t catch either Romney or Gingrich in Florida his campaign becomes problematic.” With its large evangelical Christian vote, South Carolina “was Santorum’s best chance” to stay in the race, says William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection. If he doesn’t drop out, he’ll just “play the spoiler, continuing to split the conservative vote.”  YET he may win in a brokered convention or a floor fight if Romney and Newt both seem too damaged to win.

4. The GOP elite may panic and court a “white knight”

If Gingrich crushes Romney in Florida, “the Republican Establishment is going to have a meltdown that makes Three Mile Island look like a marshmallow roast,” says New York‘s Heilemann. Rather than risk Gingrich rolling over the more-electable Romney in other states, says Steve Kornacki at Salon, the panicking GOP elite might just try drafting a “white knight” candidate to swoop in and win late big-state primaries to at least stop Newt from winning outright. South Carolina already proved that the GOP base won’t accept a “milquetoast moderate from Massachusetts” like Romney,says Erick Erickson at RedState. So if the party leaders won’t accept Gingrich, they should force “a brokered convention and find someone acceptable to everyone.”. This is similar to how #3 ended.. and it MAY be the best case scenario for the GOP given the in fighting  in the party itself. 

5. The race is about to get really ugly

Despite its reputation for dirty politics, South Carolina “was, by historical standards, decidedly tame” this year, says The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza. But things are “going to get real nasty, real quick” now. Romney has $19 million to spend on making sure Gingrich doesn’t win Florida, and his super PAC allies have millions more. If Gingrich can raise money off his South Carolina win, he “will respond in kind” and “fight Romney to the political death in Florida.” Bottom line: “If you hate negative campaigning, you may want to turn your television off for the next few weeks. Or maybe months.”. No matter what happens it has already and will continue to be until after the convention.

Is Santorum a Distraction for Gingrich??

He may not have much money or a ground game to speak of in Florida but Republican Rick Santorum will not pull out of the presidential race – much to the chagrin of rival Newt Gingrich and probably to the delight of a bruised Mitt Romney.

After Gingrich scored a resounding win in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, the former U.S. House of Representatives speaker badly wants to unite conservative and Tea Party elements of the Republican Party behind him ahead of Florida’s January 31 vote.

That would be easier to do if the socially conservative Santorum slipped away, especially in the face of a well-financed

Florida campaign by Romney. But Santorum vowed to keep his shoestring campaign alive as it heads to the country’s fourth most populous state after finishing third on Saturday.

“This is a long haul,” Santorum said early on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

But the former Pennsylvania senator with a penchant for sweater vests has battled from the back of the pack to a surprise win in Iowa’s caucuses and a respectable 17 percent of the vote in South Carolina.

“A few weeks ago, this may have seemed implausible,” said Jack Glaser, a professor at University of California, Berkeley. “But with his showing in Iowa and Romney’s slide in South Carolina and with the very deep flaws and vulnerabilities in both Romney and Gingrich as candidates, it is not laughable.”

Moving on to Florida, Santorum picked up on attack lines he employed against his former congressional colleague last week. He called Gingrich “erratic” and “a very high-risk candidate” who is out of step with the many Republicans on Wall Street bailouts, health policy, immigration and global warming.

At a rally in Coral Springs on Sunday, Santorum laid claim to being “the real conservative – the (Ronald) Reagan model,” and said he was best placed to win what he termed “the states that matter” – 10 or 12 swing states, including Florida, that could be key to the November general election against Democratic President Barack Obama.

“His staying around is much to Romney’s delight and possibly Gingrich’s dismay. If Gingrich had his way, he would want Santorum out,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist.

“And Romney would say, ‘Oh, don’t leave the race so soon’ … It’s like Cold War politics: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Santorum could be playing off the roller-coaster nature of the Gingrich campaign, which has been declared next to dead a few times since spring, as well as Romney’s stumbles going into the South Carolina vote.

“I think he might think he has a shot. He’s one (state) for three and so is everyone else except Ron Paul,” said Chris Galdieri, a political science professor at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Santorum is in third place in Florida with about 15 percent support, behind Romney at 40 percent and Gingrich at 22 percent, according to surveys aggregated by Real Clear Politics. Those polls were taken before the South Carolina vote.

Michael Phillips, Santorum’s state director for Florida, said the campaign had only two offices for now, in Sarasota and in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, but had “very engaged” volunteers.

A SHOT AT REDEMPTION

“He might not be able to raise money, he might not be lining up endorsements in Florida, but he’s probably holding out hope that if Romney has a couple more bad weeks, it’s better to be in the game than out of it,” Galdieri said.

“He’s probably thinking that Gingrich, even though he won South Carolina, is not acceptable as a nominee because of various things in his personal and political background. He might be thinking that if a bunch of dominoes fall in the right order, he could be the other alternative candidate to Romney.”

Santorum has been praised by some for recent performances in Republican debates, and with fewer candidates on the podium as the field has dwindled, his national exposure will only rise as the debates roll on.

The four Republicans still standing will debate on Monday in Tampa and Thursday in Jacksonville.

Four more debates are scheduled by mid-March, all of which could better position Santorum for whatever comes next.

“He’s angling for some political capital, whether it’s a Cabinet position or it’s a run for another office down the road,” O’Connell said. “All you need is a plane ticket to move to the next spot. So why get out when you can still be a factor in this?”

Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Santorum said he felt “absolutely no pressure” to drop out, adding that after the South Carolina vote, Romney was “no longer the inevitable candidate.”

“Our feeling is that this is a three-person race. The conservatives are polling better than Governor Romney is. The real conservative is yet to emerge and that’s me. We think we present the finest opportunity for conservatives to win,” Santorum said.

In Coral Springs, the small crowd warmed to Santorum’s message. “We feel he’s genuine, more personable – more for the common citizen than for corporations,” said Lydia Usategui, 57, a psychiatrist from Miami.

Galdieri said there was a redemptive element to Santorum’s campaign. The social conservative lost his 2006 Senate re-election bid by a crushing margin.

“Instead of being the guy who lost by 18 points in his own state, he can be the guy who made a credible run,” Galdieri said.

Poor Rick Santorum… I mean that Literally

Newt Gingrich has the momentum.Mitt Romney has the money.

Rick Santorum? He has neither at the moment.

Not that he’s going to let details like that stop him from pressing ahead in his White House quest. Or, for that matter, hurdles like scant cash in an expensive state and a rapidly disappearing opportunity to emerge as the consensus candidate of conservative voters now that Gingrich has emerged as the leading anti-Romney candidate.

“Our feeling is that this is a three-person race,” Santorum insisted on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added that he felt “absolutely no pressure at all” to abandon his bid given Gingrich’s rise.

Still, Santorum acknowledged a hard road ahead in what he called “a tough state for everybody.”

“It’s very, very expensive. It’s a very short time frame,” he said.

The former Pennsylvania senator placed third in Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

Gingrich scored his first win, entering the Florida campaign with the political winds pushing the former House speaker from behind. Romney, who has raised mounds of cash, came in second and was ready to regroup with sophisticated political machines in the upcoming states, Florida included.

Underscoring Santorum’s challenges, he was taking a few days away from the campaign trail in Florida this week to restock his thin campaign bank accounts. He plans fundraisers in other states, leaving Gingrich and Romney with free rein in Florida, while he stops in states such as Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Money is a necessity in a state like Florida with numerous expensive media markets and where campaigns are usually won on TV.

That’s not a natural fit for Santorum, who has run his campaign on a shoestring and won the Iowa caucuses — albeit narrowly — by spending more than a year making house calls to voters and traveling the state in a pickup truck.

To make up ground and perhaps earn some free media, Santorum is going on the attack.

Standing in a strip mall’s parking lot here Sunday before heading to fundraising events, Santorum cast Romney as an inconsistent figure who would not be an effective foil to President Barack Obama’s re-election bid and argued that Gingrich was too “high risk” to be the Republican standard-bearer.

“Trust is a big issue in this election,” Santorum told several hundred people. “Who are you going to trust when the pressure is on, when we’re in that debate? It’s great to be glib, but it’s better to be principled.”

He also met privately Sunday with pastors and delivered a sermon at Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, where he emphasized his conservatism. Santorum, who sprinkles his campaign speeches with his Catholic faith, is banking on evangelicals to coalesce around him over the thrice-married Gingrich or Romney, a Mormon.

“Can he win? Only God knows,” said David Babbin, a voter here who works at the nearby children’s hospital and likes Santorum. “But I believe in miracles.”

Still, he noted one of the candidate’s challenges: “Rick Santorum is one of us. And that’s his biggest flaw … We live in a society that is ‘American Idol’ and Rick Santorum is not like that.”

Santorum has other hurdles beyond what even admirers call his lack of charisma.

His tough talk on Social Security and Medicare — ending benefits for wealthier retirees, cutting payments to those who don’t need them — is going to dog him here in a state of 3.3 million seniors, or 17 percent of the population. AARP estimates that more than a third of those seniors would have incomes below the poverty line without Social Security and one in three seniors rely on Social Security as their sole source of income.

Santorum didn’t mention those proposals at his first public campaign event since the primary in South Carolina.

Is Newt Gingrich Mentally ILL? Lee Siegal of The Daily Beast Thinks So.,

Newt’s Delusions of Grandeur

By Lee Siegel | The Daily Beast – Fri, Jan 20, 2012

Hypocrisy is one thing. Mental illness is another.

Watching Newt Gingrich excoriate the media for making his personal life an issue in Thursday’s presidential debate, you realized that he wasn’t merely guilty of not practicing what he preaches. The real issue isn’t that Gingrich has done things that he castigates others for doing. The real, disturbing issue is what seems to be his deeply embedded pattern of finding his own sordid nature in other people, and then mercilessly persecuting them.

“Projection” is a psychological commonplace. The person suffering from depression will find depression everywhere. The person in the grip of lust will see randiness in everyone he meets. And on and on. We all see, in one degree or another, the world in terms of our own condition. Our sanity depends upon the degree.

Borderline personality, clinical narcissist, megalomaniac, sociopath—however you want to characterize Newt Gingrich, he clearly has difficulty distinguishing his own reality from that of other people. The man who cheated on his first wife as she lay in a hospital bed with cancer proclaimed in 1992, just as the Democratic National Convention was taking place, “Woody Allen having non-incest with a non-daughter to whom he was a non-father because they were a non-family fits the Democratic platform perfectly.” The man who then went on to cheat on his second wife compared Democrats, two years later, to Susan Smith: “I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. The only way you get change is to vote Republican.”

The man who brought down Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright on ethics charges in 1988 for an improper book deal himself used political funds to promote the sale of his own book.  As House Speaker, Gingrich had 84 ethics charges filed against him. And this compulsive philanderer and morally challenged legislator routinely accuses American teenagers of immorality and poor blacks of lax moral natures.

If all this were only hypocrisy, Gingrich might legitimately expect voters to shrug off his lapses of decency and humanity. As he thundered to the debate audience sitting inside the Charleston arena Thursday night (a pathetic tin parody of Joe Welch’s “Have you no sense of decency?”), “Every person in here knows personal pain.” Because of the law of projection, we often stumble privately and then try to restore our sense of moral dignity by harping on precisely the same deficiencies in other people. As petty and sometimes mean-spirited as that may be, it is a run-of-the-mill hypocrisy. It is simply a psychological convenience for getting through life.

But hypocrisy becomes mental illness when we seek to punish people for our own tendency to hurt other people. When Gingrich treats his wives worse than chattel and then turns around and attempts to demonize others for what he declares are their hurtful moral missteps; when his projections have the potential to cause harmful concrete consequences—that is a diseased relationship with the world that puts him on a par with every tyrant who ever wreaked his damaged personality on the society he governed.

Perhaps Gingrich’s sickness—what Santorum nicely called that “worrisome moment” in Gingrich—is what led him to commit political suicide in 1996. That was when he blamed his obduracy during the government shutdown over the budget on being snubbed by Clinton on a flight to Israel. People who cannot separate themselves from the reality around them go berserk when that reality turns and bites.

But, then, lacking a solid core, projectors like Gingrich secretly lust after the identities of the people they persecute. Gingrich lashed out at Clinton for the latter’s moral trespasses during the Lewinsky scandal, but he had long fancied himself Clinton’s legislative soulmate, as the two worked on making Social Security and Medicare solvent. His fury at Clinton seemed to be fueled by a desperate desire to inhabit Clinton’s charm, his intellect, his “vision thing,” his grandness. The echo of Clinton’s “I feel your pain” was unmistakable in Gingrich’s “Every person in here knows pain.”

Clinton was, however, at his worst, a wily rogue. Gingrich is the projector/persecutor so proud of his “grandiosity” who has replaced human relations with abstract ideas, and whose sagging posture and enervated demeanor seem propped up by spitefulness and revenge. This Gingrich is no slick rogue. He is, to bluntly state the ugly fact of the matter, a very sick man.

Gingrich Courts Disenfranchised Evangelical Christians in Florida

 Newt Gingrich’s presidential hopes may rest among the pews of Florida’s ministries and mega-churches.

The former House speaker is looking to Florida’s religious conservatives to counter rival Mitt Romney’s organizational and financial might in a state where so-called “values voters” could constitute more than a third of the Republican electorate in the Jan. 31 primary.

“There’s no question Gov. Romney will always have more money,” Gingrich says when asked about his Florida campaign. But he’s quick to add that his team has between 5,000 and 6,000 volunteers. Aides say many of them are evangelicals.

Thrice-married, Gingrich may not be the obvious pick for church-goers here. But the network of religious activists he’s assembling has far greater concerns about Romney’s inconsistent history on abortion and gay rights than they seemingly do about Gingrich’s two divorces and acknowledged marital infidelity.

And that gives Gingrich an opening as he challenges Romney in the aftermath of Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, where the polls suggest Gingrich may end up winning.

Seeking to capitalize on Gingrich’s burst of momentum, one of his top evangelical backers in Florida planned to lead a conference call in the coming days with 1,000 pastors. Others are spreading Gingrich’s message in the state’s many churches and Baptist publications. And Gingrich has already lined up appearances with the religious community for next week.

“The evangelicals are not going to wrap their arms around Romney in this primary or the general election,” says John Grant, a Baptist leader and one of Gingrich’s Florida evangelical chairmen. “Gingrich is pulling these people together quite nicely.”

The power of Florida’s evangelicals depends on their ability to unite. And while they’re nearly united against Romney, they’re not wholly united behind Gingrich. Some prominent religious conservatives are rallying around Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator long known for passionate social conservatism, but generally considered a longshot in the race to challenge President Barack Obama in the fall.

Santorum is showing no signs of bowing out, especially after the final tally suggested he edged Romney in the Iowa caucuses even though there is no officially declared winner.

The continued division leaves the political power of Florida’s evangelicals fractured, just as anti-Romney conservatives have been in other early voting states all year.

“We have to figure out how we’re going to come together,” said John Stemberger, a Santorum supporter who led the 2008 push to amend Florida’s constitution to ban gay marriage.

Stemberger hoped a recent meeting of national evangelical leaders in Texas would do just that. The group held a nonbinding vote that showed overwhelming support for Santorum. But in Florida, there are serious questions about the viability of Santorum, who hired a Florida staff just last week.

Gingrich’s organization pales when compared to Romney’s, which has been years in the making. But Gingrich’s team is working to capitalize on doubts about Santorum, as well as on Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent exit.

Gingrich’s Florida operation is led by Jose Mallea, who managed Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2010 race.

Even before Perry’s exit, Gingrich’s team had been quietly courting key staff and supporters from both the Perry and Santorum camps to boost an organization that was stood up in December.

Underscoring the challenge Gingrich faces, he has yet to run any television ads in Florida, where Romney and his allies have had the airwaves to themselves since mid-December. Mallea said Gingrich will advertise in Spanish and English soon.

Gingrich also faces renewed attention on flaws in his personal life that could turn off evangelicals here.

In an ABC News interview broadcast Thursday, Gingrich’s second wife said he sought an “open marriage” arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife. Asked about his ex-wife’s assertions during a debate that night, Gingrich said it was false and lashed out at the media.

“I wish he didn’t have that background, but I honestly believe he’s had a real renaissance experience,” said Grant, the Gingrich supporter.

In recent years, Gingrich has publicly acknowledged mistakes, converted to Catholicism and says prayer is an important part of his life.

Gingrich’s team estimates evangelicals will represent between 25 percent and 40 percent of the Florida GOP primary electorate.

Exit polling from the 2008 GOP primary shows that approximately 39 percent of voters identified themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. They were almost evenly split that year, with 30 percent for Sen. John McCain, 29 percent for Romney, 29 percent for Mike Huckabee and 7 percent for Rudy Giuliani.

Romney would be happy with a repeat performance. His team has organized weekly conference calls with a group of social conservative leaders it hopes will produce at least some of the evangelical vote.

But Romney is not going out of his way to appease this group. He recently declined to respond to the Florida Family Policy Council voter guide, which Stemberger organized. The guide highlights Romney’s non-answers on key social issues prominently and was emailed to 100,000 Florida evangelicals this week. It also is expected to be faxed and emailed to about 8,000 churches.

While Stemberger and Grant don’t agree on a Romney alternative, they share deep concerns about him.

“I hear that if it’s Obama and Romney, evangelicals have no place to go. But there’s a third choice: It’s called home,” Grant said.

Gingrich Pierces Romney Veil of Electability. Questions arise.

Newt Gingrich didn’t just beat Mitt Romney in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, the former House speaker kicked away one of the main pillars of his rival’s election campaign.

Exit polling data shows Gingrich convinced voters he would be the toughest Republican opponent against President Barack Obama in the November general election.

Electability – Republican campaign-speak for a candidate’s ability to beat Obama – had been one of Romney’s top selling points until Saturday.

Conventional wisdom was that the former Massachusetts governor’s emphasis on jobs and the economy and his perceived appeal to independents would help him against Gingrich, who is often seen as erratic and divisive.

But Gingrich’s combative style in debates resonated with voters keen for a heavyweight debater to take on Obama, who is grudgingly respected by Republicans as a formidable campaigner.

This may also be helping Gingrich’s message on the economy gain traction, exit polling data showed.

South Carolina’s Republicans rated the ability to beat Obama as a candidate’s most important quality, an exit poll on CNN showed.

Forty-five percent of voters said that was the main attribute they sought in a nominee. Of that group, 51 percent voted for Gingrich compared to 37 percent for Romney.

Twenty-one percent of South Carolina voters said the quality that mattered most to them in their candidate was that he had the right experience.

“It is electability, and that is measured in your ability to effectively debate and prosecute your case against Obama,” said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak.

Exit polls also showed that for 63 percent of South Carolina voters the most important issue was the economy. Gingrich won this group by a margin of eight percentage points over Romney.

The attraction of Gingrich as an anti-Obama candidate may be the factor that increased his ratings on other issues like the economy, Mackowiak said.

Attacks on Obama in recent weeks, including dubbing him “a foodstamp president,” endeared Gingrich to voters in a state with unemployment of almost 10 percent.

OLD TIMER WITH EXPERIENCE

“He is an old timer with a lot of political experience. He’s the only one who can beat Obama,” said Jim Walters, a retired marine owner in the town of Aiken.

Gingrich slammed Obama as “truly a danger to the country” in his South Carolina victory speech and promised to bring down Obama in a series of long debates.

A master of the sharp turn of phrase who talks in big broad sweeps, the former House speaker was the clear star of the more than 20 Republican debates in recent months.

He left Romney floundering, particularly during two televised contests in South Carolina this week where the millionaire former executive stumbled over questions about his personal finances.

Republican voters in South Carolina, a conservative state with a taste for rough and tumble politics, lapped it up.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people really want to see Newt debate Obama,” Mackowiak said.

“It reminds me of gladiators. You see an amazing gladiator have a string of victories in the middle of the Coliseum so you really want to see him go up against the biggest, baddest gladiator there is.”

In a sign that Gingrich’s well-documented marital infidelities might have created a problem with female voters, exit polls showed Gingrich held an advantage over Romney of 16 points among men but only 9 points among women.

Republican 4 Go On To Florida to Fight Another Day

After a bruising clash in South Carolina, Republican presidential frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich will take their battle to a bigger stage when the campaign moves to Florida on Sunday.

Gingrich, a former U.S. House of Representatives speaker, thrashed Romney in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, suggesting the race for their party’s nomination and the right to face President Barack Obama in November may last months more.

The largest of the early voting states by far, Florida presents logistical and financial challenges that appear to give an advantage to Romney’s well-funded campaign machine.

But Gingrich has momentum after coming from behind in South Carolina to win around 40 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 28 percent. Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator, was in third with 17 percent and U.S. congressman Ron Paul in fourth with 13 percent.

“We proved here in South Carolina that people … with the right ideas beats big money,” Gingrich told supporters after his victory in the conservative state.

After strong performances in a series of debates, Gingrich was seen by South Carolina voters as the most likely Republican to beat Obama, a Democrat, in the November 6 election.

They also rejected millionaire former businessman Romney’s pitch that he is the best bet to fix a broken U.S. economy and win the White House.

Romney and Gingrich, who have attacked each other mercilessly in a series of negative television ads since December, face off in a debate in Tampa, Florida, on Monday night.

ROMNEY TAX SOLUTION?

Romney has stumbled over questions about his personal finances in recent debates and acknowledged last week that he only pays a 15 percent tax rate, much lower than that of most working Americans.

The former Massachusetts governor has so far resisted calls from rivals, and even ally New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to release his tax returns.

To try to put the tax return controversy behind him, the Romney campaign has a plan to settle the issue next week, a Republican official said.

That is part of a strategy to be more aggressive against Gingrich, a formidable debater who nevertheless has personal and professional baggage that the Romney team could exploit. Romney accuses Gingrich of being a Washington insider.

“The choice within our party has also come into stark focus. President Obama has no experience running a business and no experience running a state. Our party can’t be lead to victory by someone who also has never run a business and never run a state,” Romney said on Saturday.

Romney saw his aura of inevitability erode in South Carolina after leading opinion polls by 10 percentage points a week ago.

In Florida, he leads Gingrich by 40.5 percent to 22 percent, according to a poll of polls by RealClearPolitics.com. Santorum, a social conservative who is from Pennsylvania, is third with 15 percent.

Campaigns must spend at least $1 million each week to reach voters in the sprawling southern state, according to local political officials. Romney’s allies have already spent $5 million, mostly on ads attacking Gingrich. No other candidate has a significant presence in the state.

 

Romney’s South Carolina Loss Shows Weakness in November

Echoing a worn adage, Mitt Romney said on Saturday night after conceding defeat to Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina primary that a longer, more competitive battle for the Republican presidential nomination would only make him stronger.

“I don’t shrink from competition. I embrace it. I believe competition makes us all better,” Romney told supporters.

That’s a standard talking point from a frontrunner who hasn’t yet locked up the nomination. But in fact, the weaknesses exposed in Romney’s candidacy by the South Carolina results and, perhaps more important, in the days leading up to the primary, are cause for concern among Republicans, including some of Romney’s own supporters.

More than one-third of South Carolina primary voters identified themselves as very conservative, according to exit polls conducted on behalf of the television networks and the Associated Press. Mitt Romney won only 20 percent of their votes, compared to Newt Gingrich’s 45 percent.

Among the 60 percent of the electorate who are evangelical Christians, Romney was able to grab roughly 20 percent of the vote, while Gingrich captured 40 percent.

These groups of voters are part of the core of the Republican Party. But it’s clear that Romney, still the favorite for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination, could enter the general election campaign without the full embrace of his party’s base. That does not put him the position he needs to occupy in order to woo independent voters in the middle of the ideological spectrum.

The soft support among the Republican base is of less concern to Romney’s high command than the narrative beginning to take shape around him–a storyline being fed by both the Obama and Gingrich campaigns. It paints Romney as a wealthy corporate raider who is out of touch with the economic reality faced by most Americans.

Team Romney is convinced, with historic trends and current data to back it up, that the antipathy toward Obama among Republicans will be sufficient to rally the party faithful around Romney in the fall. Anti-Obama energy, however, will not solve Romney’s inability to put his income tax issue to bed or to break the perception that he struggles to connect with the needs of middle-class families.

The Romney campaign is quick to point out that winning campaigns are those that survive tests like this. That’s true. A presidential nomination is never handed to the frontrunner without him (or someday her) being knocked back on his heels once or twice.

But there is a substantial difference between what’s happening with Romney and the challenges that Barack Obama and George W. Bush faced. When Obama emerged from a long and bruising battle with Hillary Clinton, he did so looking like a dragon slayer. And the body blow that George W. Bush took from John McCain came from the center, and allowed Bush to shore up his strength with the Republican base.

Yes, if Romney emerges as the Republican nominee, he will appear as a winner who overcame significant challenges. And an elongated nomination fight may improve his ability to take a punch. But those strengths will come at the expense of exposing not only Romney’s soft support among evangelical Christians and very conservative voters, but also the concern among donors and establishment figures in the party that he is being defined by not by himself and his team, but by his opponents.

A Brief History of “State Capitalism”

Something old, something new

A brief history of “state capitalism”

IN SEPTEMBER 1789 George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as America’s first ever treasury secretary. Two years later Hamilton presented Congress with a “Report on Manufactures”, his plan to get the young country’s economy going and provide the underpinnings for its hard-fought independence. Hamilton had no time for Adam Smith’s ideas about the hidden hand. America needed to protect its infant industries with tariffs if it wanted to see them grow up.

State capitalism has been around for almost as long as capitalism itself. Anglo-Saxons like to think of themselves as the perennial defenders of free-market orthodoxy against continental European and Asian heresy. In reality every rising power has relied on the state to kickstart growth or at least to protect fragile industries. Even Britain, the crucible of free-trade thinking, created a giant national champion in the form of the East India Company.

The appetite for industrial policy grew with the eating, and after the second world war intervention became a mark of civilization as well as common sense. The Europeans created industrial powerhouses and welfare states. The Asians poured resources into national champions.

This long era of state activism has left a surprisingly powerful legacy, despite the more recent fashion for privatisation and deregulation. The rich world still has a large number of state-owned or state-dominated companies. For example, France owns 85% of EDF, an energy company; Japan 50% of Japan Tobacco; and Germany 32% of Deutsche Telekom. These numbers add up: across the OECD state-owned enterprises have a combined value of almost $2 trillion and employ 6m people.

The new kind of state capitalism started in Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew, its founding father, was prime minister for more than 30 years and a tireless advocate of “Asian values”, by which he meant a mixture of family values and authoritarianism. He rivalled Beatrice Webb in his faith in the wisdom of the state. But he also grasped that Singapore’s best chance lay in attracting the world’s most powerful corporations, though he rejected the laissez-faire ideas that flourished in Asia’s other great port city, Hong Kong.

Singapore could easily have remained a tiny oddity but for a succession of earth-shaking events. The first was the oil embargo imposed by the Arab petrostates in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, quadrupling the price of oil and shifting the balance of power in the world economy. Arab governments tightened their control over the newly valuable oil companies and amassed growing financial surpluses. For them the economic shock was proof of the power of their oil weapon. For the Chinese it demonstrated the importance of securing a safe supply of oil and other raw materials.

The second event was Deng Xiaoping’s transformation of China. Deng borrowed heavily from the Singaporean model. He embraced globalisation by creating special economic zones and inviting foreign companies in. He espoused corporatism by forcing state enterprises to model themselves on Western companies. And he concentrated resources on national champions and investment in research and development. By doing all this, he plugged 1.3 billion people into the world economy.

The final event was the collapse of Soviet communism. This was initially seen as one of the great triumphs of liberalism, but it soon unleashed dark forces. Communist apparatchiks-turned-oligarchs grabbed chunks of the economy. Between 1990 and 1995 the country’s GDP dropped by a third. Male life expectancy shrank from 64 to 58. Once-captive nations broke away. In 1998 the country defaulted on its debts.

The post-Soviet disaster created a craving for order. Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s president, reasserted direct state control over “strategic” industries and brought the remaining private-sector oligarchs to heel. But just as important as the backlash in Russia was the one in China. The collapse of the Soviet Union confirmed the Chinese Communist Party’s deepest fear: that the end of party rule would mean the breakdown of order. The only safe way forward was a judicious mixture of private enterprise and state capitalism

As Romney so eloquently has stated  that there has been a frontal assault on Capitalism, we should begin this debate on how Capitalism has been  for centuries and later to discuss how it has evolved.  I do not think there is ANY candidate that does not believe we need to have capitalism at the core of our  society. It is how it has become perverted and has gone against the other cores of our society  those being humanity, equality and the protection of the health well-being and rights of all citizens of the United States is above all  … even CAPITALISM. We now must seek a balance  for all these values to peacefully coexist again.

It is my intention to bring this  need to the forefront of the rest of this presidential election cycle

Bad Day of Rain Fitting ending to a BAD week for Romney

The scene at Harmon Tree Farm didn’t feel like the usual Mitt Romney rally. Situated next to an old barn dressed up with a large American flag, there was a live band performing old AC/DC classics, including “You Shook Me All Night Long,” prompting supporters to hoot and dance.

“Shake it girl!” the band’s frontwoman called out to a wildly dancing lady in the audience at one point.

Just before Romney’s campaign bus pulled up, the torrential rain began. Some people ran for cover, to their cars and to a nearby building, while others simply stood in the rain shielding themselves with blue and white Romney for President signs.

As Romney disembarked from his bus to his now familiar entrance song—”Born Free” by Kid Rock—an aide tried to shield the candidate from the pouring rain, but he pushed forward, shaking hands and waving at supporters as he took the stage in the pouring rain.

After an introduction by Nikki Haley, the South Carolina governor whose dark hair was soon sopping wet, Romney took the microphone, his face glistening with moisture but his slick hair unmussed.

“Wow! Pull out the umbrellas,” Romney declared, eying the dark skies.

Motioning to folks who were waving his campaign signs, he said, “Use those signs for what they were made for: To keep your head dry!”

“My oh my,” he bellowed, as the rain poured.

On any other day, Romney’s campaign might have tried to move his rally elsewhere. But the image of the candidate stumping in the rain for every last vote wasn’t so bad for a campaign now worried that Saturday’s pivotal primary here won’t go their way.

Romney stood on stage for nearly 15 minutes and shook hands along the soaked rope line for another 20 minutes more. His aides and closest supporters looked on, at least one admitting some anxiety about Romney’s standing among voters here on primary eve.

“I feel good,” Nathan Ballentine, a Republican state representative and one of Romney’s early supporters in the state, told Yahoo News. “But it’s going to be close… It was always going to be close.”

There has been a change in the air around the Romney campaign in recent days. When Romney arrived in the state 10 days ago, he was coming off his victory in New Hampshire and what was then a win in Iowa. On the stump today, he acknowledged for the first time that he had suffered a “slim defeat” in the Hawkeye State—a notable admission given his campaign refused to describe his phone call to Rick Santorum on Thursday about Iowa’s election results as a “concession.”

Stuart Stevens, a Romney adviser, told reporters Thursday that the campaign had always viewed South Carolina as a tough race—noting that Romney had placed fourth here four years ago. He said he expected the primary go well beyond Florida, where he added that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were also waging “tough” campaigns.

In Gilbert, Romney also seemed to join in setting expectations for Saturday’s election, emphasizing to reporters that he came to the state with the odds stacked against him.

“I had a lot of ground to make up …  Speaker Gingrich is from a neighboring state, well-known, popular in the state, so I knew we’d have a long road ahead of us, and frankly to be in a neck-and-neck race at this last moment is kind of exciting,” Romney said. “I think I said from the very beginning South Carolina is an uphill battle for us.”

The candidate added that even if he doesn’t finish first in Saturday’s primary, he expects to walk away with “a lot of delegates.”

“We have a long process ahead of us,” he said.

Romney Still Front Runner in HoHum Primaries

The fundamentals of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign are strong. Even in the wake of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s surging momentum in South Carolina, the fact remains that Romney is the overwhelming front-runner for the Republican nomination — and Saturday’s primary won’t do anything to change that.

That’s not to poo-poo Gingrich’s comeback. The former speaker’s recovery in South Carolina has come against all odds, including sustained attacks from a pro-Romney super PAC, a damaging tell-all interview from his second wife, a sustained push by social conservatives to unite behind Rick Santorum, and the fact that Gingrich is still running a campaign virtually bereft of the infrastructure that past serious candidates have needed to win key primary states.

Gingrich’s roller-coaster ride in public-opinion polls began its initial climb thanks to strong performances in debates in November. His revival, after a barrage of attack ads in Iowa, came thanks to two more strong performances this week and his wise decision to abandon a high-road strategy that has never been rewarded in presidential politics in favor of mixing it up with front-running Romney.

But Gingrich is living a hand-to-mouth existence, while Romney has sowed seeds he can reap later on in other states. The Republican presidential campaign is, at the end, a race for 1,144 delegates, and the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign is in a far better position to harvest those delegates in later primaries.

So far, Romney has collected an estimated 14 delegates, thanks to his performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, while Gingrich has just two. South Carolina will award 28 delegates, likely split between the four remaining candidates. The first real delegate prize comes on Jan. 31, when the winner of the Florida primary collects all 50 of the state’s delegates.

Gingrich campaigned in Florida briefly last week. Romney has competed in Florida before, and a super PAC that backs his campaign is helping to give him a jump. Reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC, spent about $300,000 on mailings and $1.5 million on television in Florida this week alone; the filings suggest the television time is dedicated to negative ads focused on Gingrich.

Gingrich gets his chance to share the stage with Romney twice, first on Monday at a debate cosponsored by National Journal, NBC News, and the Tampa Bay Times and then again on Thursday at a CNN/Republican Party of Florida debate in Jacksonville. He will have to hope that once again, strong debate performances will overcome the rush of negative advertisements that has already begun.

After Florida, Gingrich’s outlook becomes even more bleak. The February calendar presents Romney with the opportunity to do to Gingrich what Barack Obama did to Hillary Clinton in 2008. Caucuses in Nevada, Colorado, and Minnesota will benefit a more organized campaign, giving Romney and Rep.Ron Paul a boost over Gingrich. The two primaries that month, in Arizona and Michigan, will take place on Romney-friendly turf; Arizona has a sizable Mormon electorate, while Michigan is Romney’s home state. By the end of February, Romney is likely to have the majority of the 274 delegates awarded to that point. Paul’s focus on caucus states means Gingrich may not even be in second place by the end of the month.

Then comes Super Tuesday, when 10 states will allocate a total of 407 delegates. With few debates left on the horizon, Gingrich won’t have the time, the exposure, or the money to build the type of national campaign Romney has already started to build (Gingrich isn’t even eligible for the 46 delegates from Virginia; his campaign didn’t submit enough valid signatures to make the ballot there).

In short, South Carolina presents Gingrich’s last real chance to be on equal footing with Romney before the race goes national. Barring a sustained surge in campaign contributions for Gingrich and a real stumble by Romney’s campaign, the reality is that the race for the Republican nod is as clear today as it was before Gingrich’s revitalization: There will be no extended fight for delegates a la Obama-Clinton, there will be no brokered convention, and Romney will be the Republican nominee. The deck is stacked too much in Romney’s favor to give Gingrich’s campaign anything more than a temporary reprieve.

As the South Carolina Voting Comes to a Close … Some Thoughts

 In the 11 days since Mitt Romney tried unsuccessfully to leave the rest of the GOP field behind in New Hampshire, the presidential race has served up a scattershot cast of angels and demons as the candidates try to strike a chord with different slices of the electorate.

Capitalism was in, then out, then in again. Insurance companies got a sideways sympathetic nod. Mike Huckabee and Betty Whiteproved to have some cachet. The press was an ever-popular whipping child.

Europe and entitlements, felons, food stamps and French: All were on the outs with one candidate or another.

Newt Gingrich even ran an ad faulting Romney for his language skills: “Just like John Kerry, he speaks French,” it warned ominously.

The GOP challengers went after Romney’s venture capitalist credentials with a vengeance — most memorably when Texas Gov. Rick Perry rebranded him a “vulture capitalist” — then eased up somewhat when they caught grief from the defenders of free enterprise.

For a little while, even insurance companies — typically a popular target for politicians of any stripe — got a little love after Romney said he liked the idea of being able to fire them for poor performance. The other candidates summoned a chorus of outrage at the notion that Romney would relish firing anyone.

Republican strategist Terry Holt said it all adds up to “a blizzard of buzz words” as candidates try to deliver a headline-grabbing quote that will get people’s attention.

But does it work?

“Ultimately, it all blends together into a general sense of the candidate,” says Holt. “The back-and-forth is lost on most people.”

And there’s been a lot of back-and-forthing.

Romney and Gingrich both ran ads trying to claim a little luster from popular conservative Huckabee by rolling out nice things he’d said about them. But it turned out Huckabee hadn’t endorsed either of them, and both got a scolding from the former Arkansas governor.

President Barack Obama, watching the GOP race from the sidelines, had to be hoping that a little of Betty White’s uncanny popularity would rub off when he taped a video piece for her 90th birthday in which he joked that the actress looks so good she should cough up her long-form birth certificate to prove she’s really that old.

The GOP candidates trotted out plenty of reliable enemies — “Obamacare,” federal regulations, big government, the Dodd-Frank financial regulations — but added some new ones to the mix as well.

Gingrich, catering to South Carolina sensibilities and its port communities, singled out the Army Corps of Engineers, complaining in Thursday’s debate that the corps “takes eight years to study — not to complete — to study doing the port. We won the entire Second World War in three years and eight months.”

Candidates’ messages zig-zagged all over in search of a winning line that would work with voters.

Earning money was good — except if your name was Mitt Romney.

A super PAC supporting Gingrich made a half-hour movie attacking Romney for reaping “massive rewards for himself and his investors,” complete with sinister music and a baritone-voice narrator.

Romney defended his capitalist credentials by lining himself up with the philosopher known as a father of capitalism, proudly announcing, “Adam Smith was right.”

Perry managed to turn the news that U.S. troops had apparently been captured on video urinating on corpses in Afghanistan into an indictment of the Obama administration. The Texas governor accused the Obama team of piling on against “kids” who sometimes make “stupid mistakes.”

It didn’t do him much good: He was out of the race within days.

Then came the issue of infidelity: Gingrich chose not to comment on the details of his marriage to his second wife after she claimed that he’d asked her for an “open marriage” in which he could have both a wife and a mistress.

Gingrich managed to steer that conversation to the one enemy that all the candidates love to beat up on: the media.

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country,” he declared.

But even rival Rick Santorum saw through the tactic, urging voters not to be swept away by Gingrich’s blast at the press.

Republicans should “get past the glib one-liners, the beating up of the media, which is always popular with conservatives,” Santorum said.

Democratic strategist Karen Finney said the Republicans’ random list of friends and foes has emerged as candidates “try to pick off pieces of the Republican electorate” with very targeted appeals that will add up to an overall win in each primary or caucus state.

“The narrative is shifting based on the audiences they’re speaking to,” she said.

“There’s always, ‘Who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy,’” she said.

In this campaign, that lineup changes every day.

How to BUY an American Presidential Election

And then there were four, and as the field narrows so does the flow of money…. but NOT the amount… as much much more will be flowing in the comming months.

So HOW can a President of the United States and an entire political party be bought…. lets look  below and see shall we…..

Ahead of the South Carolina Republican primary set for Saturday, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced Thursday he is dropping out of the race and throwing his support behind Newt Gingrich. That leaves Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum to duke it out in the last debate Thursday night before the vote over the weekend.

Before Perry called it quits, polls by both CNN and Politico showed Romney with a shrinking lead over Gingrich with Paul in third and Santorum in fourth (Perry had been dead last).

The other big news on the trail Thursday is Santorum’s official win over Romney in Iowa. A certified tally of the vote shows Santorum won by 34 votes.

Whoever wins the South Carolina primary on Saturday, a lot of attention will no doubt be focused on the Super PAC ads that have run non-stop in the state, just as they did in Iowa and New Hampshire and have started in Florida.

The pro-Romney “Restore Our Future” Super PAC is credited with dragging down Gingrich’s poll rating in Iowa, which resulted in Gingrich losing to Santorum, Romney and Paul. One of the recent ads claims “Newt has a ton of baggage,” criticizes him for his “30 years in Washington flip-flopping on the issues” and shows him siding with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming.

Super PACs are a relatively new phenomenon and definitely new to Presidential elections. As with anything new, there are a lot of questions surrounding what exactly Super PACs are and why they are now part of the country’s democratic election process.

John Dunbar, managing editor for The Center for Public Integrity’s online web publication, joined The Daily Ticker’s Aaron Task in the accompanying interview to help us answer these questions and to discuss the impact Super PACs are having on the race.

What Are Super PACs?

The PAC in “Super PAC” stands for political action committee. PAC have been around for a long time but Dunbar explains what makes these new groups “super” is they “can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and labor unions, and take those funds and spend them to elect or defeat a federal candidate.”

“These are called independent expenditures,” he continues. “The bulk is spent on advertising, though they can include direct mail and other costs. These committees cannot coordinate with the candidate they are supporting. They affect the election the same way any political ad can affect an election — by convincing voters to support or oppose a candidate.”

It is the unlimited nature of these organizations’ fund-raising that separates them from PACs of the past.

What’s the Financial Impact?

Total expenditures by presidential Super PACs in the early primary states is $26.5 million as of January 18, according to The Center for Public Integrity.

Romney has benefited the most. To date, $9.5 million has been spent on his behalf, much of it coming from Restore Our Future. Gingrich is the second-biggest benefactor with roughly $4.5 million thrown to his cause, mainly through Winning Our Future, which has run ads depicting Romney as a corporate raider and job killer.

Who Is Behind The Super PACs?

Many of these organizations are founded and run by former employees of the candidates they support, which makes it easy for them to coordinate a message without direct communication from a candidate.

As for the money flows, only the contributions made through first six month of 2011 are currently public. The next disclosure report comes at the end of the month after many of the primaries will have ended and the GOP candidate is likely already named.

But what we know so far indicates the mega rich are the prime contributors to these Super PACs. Here a list compiled by The Center of Public Integrity:

• Restore Our Future: The pro-Romney Super PAC received $1 million from hedge fund manager John Paulson and $1 million from Bain Capital managing director Edward Conard, which was originally reported via a shell corporation.
• Winning Our Future: The pro-Gingrich Super PAC received a $5 million check from billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
• Red White and Blue Fund: Wyoming billionaire Foster Friess gave half a million to the pro-Santorum Super PAC.
• Priorities USA Action: This Super PAC favors President Obama. Dreamworks chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg contributed $2 million and Fred Eychaner of Newsweb Corp. gave $500,000.

Where Did Super PACs Come From?

“The Citizens United Supreme Court decision and a lower-court ruling in 2010 allowed corporations, individuals and labor unions to make unlimited contributions to independent organizations that use the money to support or defeat a candidate. The ruling led to the creation of super PACs,” writes Dunbar.

A handful of states are trying to fight back by introducing legislation that would amend the constitution. Five states in 2011 introduced bills to amend the constitution, and 7 states did so in 2010, according to FreeSpeechforPeople.org. This week the “Occupy” movement takes this message to courts and corporations around the country. (Stay tuned for additional Daily Ticker coverage Friday)

Why Should You Care?

Proponents of Super PACs will tell you these committees are good for America as they promote free speech by allowing people and corporations to spend as much money as they want to support whatever candidate they want.

Dunbar disagrees. “That’s a terrific argument [only] if you’re a billionaire,” says Dunbar.

Bain and Dirty Tricks Business??

Bain The Betrayer

William Cohan has an interesting take on Mitt Romney, which is completely distinct from the policy and left/right issues. According to Cohan, who did deals with Bain during the Romney years, the company specialized in dirty tricks.

Specifically, Bain would make the high bid for a company being offered for sale — then, after the other bidders had been sent away, would start finding things to complain about, and haggle the price down. This was, I gather, a major sin, since believe it or not Wall Street wheeling and dealing requires a high level of trust in one’s personal word.

This isn’t a policy issue; it’s the kind of thing I usually try to stay away from, the supposedly character-revealing nature of someone’s personal history. But as these things go, it’s especially interesting. Would you buy a used company — or a used ideology — from this guy?

The Real Romney: Questions of Character and Truthfulness

COLUMBIA, S.C.–With the Republican nomination shimmering just over the horizon, Mitt Romney dominated the news at noon Tuesday on WIS, the NBC affiliate here. A flashback to Monday night’s Republican debate described it as “Mitt Romney against the rest.” A new South Carolina poll, sponsored by Monmouth University, showed Romney leading the GOP five-pack, even among evangelical voters. Sid Bedingfield, a journalism professor at the University of South Carolina, cautioned, “It’s no secret that conservatives are not in love with Mitt Romney.” And there was no break from the midday Mittathon when the newscast paused for commercials: A 30-second spot sponsored by a shadowy independent group called Citizens for a Working America PAC heralded Romney as the only Republican who could beat Barack Obama.

Barring a dramatic upset in next Saturday’s South Carolina primary or a political upheaval soon thereafter, voters will have more than nine months until the November election to contemplate Romney as the nation’s 45^th president. No White House candidate can stand public scrutiny for that long without new revelations or, at least, new theories about what makes him tick. But the contours of the Romney story are unlikely to change–a devoted son of a failed presidential candidate; devout Mormon and dedicated family man; data-driven (and maybe cold-hearted) business consultant and leveraged buyout executive; non-ideological one-term governor of Massachusetts; and disciplined right-wing presidential candidate who has been running virtually nonstop since 2007.

Assuming Romney is indeed the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, the jumping off point for all future explorations into his political and business record will be The Real Romney by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, which was published Tuesday. The authors, Boston Globe reporters assisted by the rest of the newspaper’s staff, have written a shrewd and fair-minded biography of the cautious and unruffled front-runner, a candidate who appears to be basing every public comment and gesture on research from a PowerPoint presentation (his favorite form of briefing).

The Real Romney contains little that is likely to dominate the headlines this week or influence Saturday’s voting in South Carolina. But make no mistake, this book is important. It offers intriguing insights about Romney, who would be the first president to see the world through the prism of quantitative business analysis rather than backslapping politics. (George W. Bush, who was a year behind Romney at Harvard Business School, also had an M.B.A., but as a presidential candidate in 2000 and 2004 he campaigned as a decisive C.E.O. rather than a dedicated quant who believes that cosmic truth can be found in numbers.)

Here are some thoughts about how man in The Real Romney might govern from the Oval Office:

“It was good training for how life works. I mean, rejection of one kind of another is going to be an important part of everyone’s life.”

That was the mature Romney, running for governor in 2002, looking back on his two and a half years as a Mormon missionary in France during the late 1960s. What comes through in the Globe’s telling was the austere isolation of the missionary experience: no television, no telephone, and minimal contact with home. Just a regimented life of prayer, French studies and knocking on doors in quest of converts.

Most presidents (think Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton or both Bushes) have never spent more than a stray afternoon living the contemplative life. But looking ahead to the November election, it is fascinating that Romney’s missionary years have an eerie similarity to Barack Obama’s stint as a community organizer in Chicago. (Yes, their motivations were starkly different). Like Romney, who found between 10 and 20 French converts, Obama had minimal success in creating anything lasting amid the abandoned steel mills of 1980s Chicago. Although, Obama was not under religious discipline, his life in those days was monkish. As Obama wrote in Dreams from My Father, “When I wasn’t working, the weekends would usually find me alone in an empty apartment, making do with the company of books.”

Holding oneself aloof may be a Romney tradition. In a 1967 magazine profile, Life described presidential candidate George Romney as “a loner who is really close to one person, Lenore,” his wife.

“A wall. A shell. A mask. There are many names for it, but many who have known or worked with Romney say the same thing: he carries himself as a man apart, a man who sometimes seems to be looking not into your eyes, but past them.”

In this passage, Kranish and Helman are summarizing dozens of interviews depicting Romney as driven and task-oriented, congenitally impatient with the small social niceties that leaven day-to-day life. Outside his family and a small group of longtime, mostly Mormon friends, Romney tends to regard other people as data points rather than as objects of curiosity. At Bain Capital, where he made his fortune, Romney encouraged debate and disagreement within the formal structure of company decision-making. As Romney explained his management style at a 2007 conference, “Get people of different background and experience who disagree with each other and are willing to debate and argue.” This adversarial method combined Romney’s law-school training and the case-study method central to the Harvard Business School.

There is no single personality type that automatically produces successful presidents. But, as we have glimpsed with Obama, there is a downside to a leader who is swaddled in bubble wrap of his own making. Anyone elected without close political intimates (truth-tellers like Senator Richard Russell for L.B.J. or Jim Baker for George H.W. Bush) can be victimized by the sycophancy that naturally surrounds a president. Even if a President Romney were to demand candor, aides would be apt to bow to his whims and tell him what he wanted to hear. That is how it is in all White Houses, as bad news has a way of being diverted and distracted before it gets to the Oval Office.

Driving around New Hampshire in the months before the 2008 primary, Romney insisted on traveling in a personal Fortress of Solitude, accompanied only by his longtime press secretary, Eric Fehrnstrom. In contrast, most presidential candidates use drive time as a way of cementing the loyalties of party activists and picking local political intelligence. Romney did not “apply the old adage about management by walking around,” Brian Keough, who headed Romney’s 2008 New Hampshire primary campaign, complained to the Globe reporters. “If you want to know how things are going on the factory floor, go talk to the factory workers.” Unless the cameras are on, such unstructured banter is the antithesis of the Romney style.

“This start was nothing like the typical small business. It was a nearly risk-free opportunity with substantial financial backing — and a lucrative fallback plan in case of failure.”

The candidate’s more than two decades at Bain, as The Real Romney summarizes them, did not fit into either the create-jobs mythology that he pushes in campaign debates or his critics’ portrait of a gimlet-eyed cost-cutter distributing pink slips like confetti. Romney, who the biography describes as “deeply risk averse,” was hesitant to leave the structured environment of business consulting to head the company’s new private-equity arm. Ultimately, Romney the Reluctant Capitalist negotiated a sweetheart deal under which the partners at Bain Consulting would provide the seed funding to launch Bain Capital. And, if the new venture somehow went south, Romney would get his old consulting job back complete with retroactive raises. Romney, in fact, was so cautious that he concocted in advance with the firm’s founder, Bill Bain, a cover story to explain away any future failure.

What should not be lost in the campaign debates over Romney’s activities at Bain is how adroit an investor he was. According to a private analysis of Romney’s record conducted by Deutsche Bank, Bain Capital made money on roughly half of its investments. “Overall, though, the numbers were stunning,” Kranish and Holman write. “Bain was nearly doubling its investors’ money annually, achieving one of the best track records in the business.” Bain Capital tended to concentrate on the industries that 1950s auto executive George Romney might understand: makers of wheel rims and photo albums. For all of Romney’s political boasting about helping launch Staples, Bain invested only a paltry $2.5 million in the company before selling its interest after three years for $13 million.

Romney’s greatest business triumph had nothing to do with creating new companies, and everything to do with saving the Bain brand. In the early 1990s, the eight original partners, who pre-dated Romney at Bain Consulting, wanted to cash out. The company foolishly borrowed $200 million to buy back their holdings just as the 1991 recession hit. With Bain Consulting on the cusp of bankruptcy, Romney was brought in from the sister firm down to the hall to devise a rescue plan. The Romney solution inflicted a heavy dose of pain on all concerned: the original partners had to give up $100 million in equity; nearly 20 percent of Bain’s worldwide work force were laid off; the compensation for the remaining business consultants was cut; and creditors were forced to take 80 percent on the dollar. But Bain survived and eventually prospered. It was, in the words of Kranish and Helman, “the very definition of the kind of ‘turnaround’ for which Romney would claim expertise.”

“My usual approach has been to set the strategic vision for the enterprise and then work with the executive vice presidents to implement that strategy.”

Those were Romney’s words to a group of state legislators in 2003, a few weeks after he was sworn in as Massachusetts governor. In the annals of governing, it is hard to imagine a more maladroit way of courting independent legislators than likening them to executive vice presidents in a Romney-run enterprise. This disdain for politics had its virtues. Romney as governor ran a virtually scandal-free administration in which patronage took a back seat to merit. And although it would be a tad embarrassing to stress this point on a debate stage while other Republicans are threatening activist judges, Romney’s judicial picks as governor were shaped far more by merit than ideology.

The unanswered question in The Real Romney is how much has this relentless businessman learned about how politics really works in his decade as governor and presidential candidate. As Kranish and Helman tell it, after his failed 2008 presidential bid, “Romney closely analyzed the campaign … he wallowed in the data, crunched the numbers and evaluated the results thoroughly.”

It is hard to imagine another politician analyzing defeat in such a systematic manner. It is also hard to capture the essence of politics through such a bloodless exercise. Romney, in fact, brings to mind Louis Armstrong’s immortal response to the question of what is jazz: “If you don’t know, don’t mess with it.” Maybe these days, Romney knows. Or maybe the Republican Party is embarking on a grand experiment to test whether business methods can really succeed in the political arena–and, ultimately, if Romney is lucky, in the White House.

Southern Baptist Evangelicals Declare “Mormonism is heretical to Christianity”

Mormonism is heretical to Christianity??  Well that is the Claim of a Southern Baptist Evangelical Leader… read below for more:

The Theological Differences Behind Evangelical Unease With Romney

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The Rev. R. Philip Roberts, the president of a Southern Baptist seminary in Kansas City, Mo., is an evangelist with a particular goal: countering Mormon beliefs.

Mr. Roberts has traveled throughout the United States, and to some countries abroad, preaching that Mormonism is heretical to Christianity. His message is a theological one, but theology is about to land squarely in the middle of the Republican presidential primary campaign.

As the Republican voting moves South, with primaries in South Carolina on Saturday and in Florida on Jan. 31, the religion of Mitt Romney, the front-runner, may be an inescapable issue in many voters’ minds. In South Carolina, where about 60 percent of Republican voters are evangelical Christians, Mr. Romney, a devout Mormon and a former bishop in the church, faces an electorate that has been exposed over the years to preachers like Mr. Roberts who teach that the Mormon faith is apostasy.

Many evangelicals have numerous reasons, other than religion, for objecting to Mr. Romney. But to understand just how hard it is for some to coalesce around his candidacy, it is important to understand the gravity of their theological qualms.

“I don’t have any concerns about Mitt Romney using his position as either a candidate or as president of the United States to push Mormonism,” said Mr. Roberts, an author of “Mormonism Unmasked” and president of the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said he had no plans to travel to South Carolina before the voting. “The concern among evangelicals is that the Mormon Church will use his position around the world as a calling card for legitimizing their church and proselytizing people.”

Mormons consider themselves Christians — as denoted in the church’s name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yet the theological differences between Mormonism and traditional Christianity are so fundamental, experts in both say, that they encompass the very understanding of God and Jesus, what counts as Scripture and what happens when people die.

“Mormonism is a distinctive religion,” David Campbell, a Mormon and an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in religion and politics. “It’s not the same as Presbyterianism or Methodism. But at the same time, there have been efforts on the part of the church to emphasize the commonality with other Christian faiths, and that’s a tricky balance to strike for the church.”

On the most fundamental issue, traditional Christians believe in the Trinity: that God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all rolled into one.

Mormons reject this as a non-biblical creed that emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries. They believe that God the Father and Jesus are separate physical beings, and that God has a wife whom they call Heavenly Mother.

It is not only evangelical Christians who object to these ideas.

“That’s just not Christian,” said the Rev. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, a liberal Protestant seminary in New York City. “God and Jesus are not separate physical beings. That would be anathema. At the end of the day, all the other stuff doesn’t matter except the divinity of Jesus.”

The Mormon Church says that in the early 1800s, its first prophet, Joseph Smith, had revelations that restored Christianity to its true path, a course correction necessary because previous Christian churches had corrupted the faith. Smith bequeathed to his church volumes of revelations contained in scripture used only by Mormons: “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ,” “The Doctrine and Covenants” and “Pearl of Great Price.”

Traditional Christians do not recognize any of those as Scripture.

Another big sticking point concerns the afterlife. Early Mormon apostles gave talks asserting that human beings would become like gods and inherit their own planets — language now regularly held up to ridicule by critics of Mormonism.

But Kathleen Flake, a Mormon who is a professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt Divinity School, explained that the planets notion had been de-emphasized in modern times in favor of a less concrete explanation: people who die embark on an “eternal progression” that allows them “to partake in God’s glory.”

“Mormons think of God as a parent,” she said. “God makes the world in order to give that world to his children. It’s like sending your child to Harvard — God gives his children every possible opportunity to progress towards this higher life that God possesses. When Mormons say ‘Heavenly Father,’ they mean it. It’s not a metaphor.”

It is the blurring of the lines between God, Jesus and human beings that is hard for evangelicals to swallow, said Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., who has been involved in a dialogue group between evangelicals and Mormons for 12 years and has a deep understanding of theology as Mormons see it.

“Both Christians and Jews, on the basis of our common Scriptures, we’d all agree that God is God and we are not,” Mr. Mouw said. “There’s a huge ontological gap between the Creator and the creature. So any religious perspective that reduces that gap, you think, oh, wow, that could never be called Christian.”

Mormons tend to explain the doctrinal differences more gently. Lane Williams, a Mormon and a professor of communications at Brigham Young University-Idaho, a Mormon institution, said the way he understands it, “it’s not a ‘we’re right and they’re wrong’ kind of approach. But it’s as though we feel we have a broader circle of truth.

“My daily life tries to be about Jesus Christ,” he said. “And in that way, I don’t think I’m much different from my Protestant friends.”

In a Pew poll released in late November, about two-thirds of mainline Protestants and Catholics said Mormonism is Christian, compared with only about a third of white evangelicals. By contrast, 97 percent of Mormons said their religion is Christian in a different Pew poll released this month.

Mr. Mouw said that only a month ago he was called to Salt Lake City to mediate a theological discussion about Mormonism among four evangelical leaders who had collaborated with Mormon leaders to pass the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage in California. After two and a half days of discussions, the group was divided on Mormon theology, Mr. Mouw said.

“Two concluded that while Mormons are good people, they don’t worship the same God,” Mr. Mouw said. “Two concluded that Mormons love Jesus just as the evangelicals do, and they accepted the Mormons as brothers and sisters in Christ.

“That’s the split,” Mr. Mouw said, “and it’s very basic.”

Evangelical Leaders Go Against Romney on Religious Grounds

I have blogged about this before… but no one wants to admit that being a Mormon is a hurdle that Mitt Romney cannot overcome in a Presidential Election…. so Here is part one of 2 for today Sunday the 15th of January 2012

January 14, 2012

Evangelicals, Seeking Unity, Back Santorum for Nomination

By ERIK ECKHOLM and JEFF ZELENY

BRENHAM, Tex. — Evangelical leaders pursued a last-ditch effort on Saturday to exert influence in the Republican presidential primary race, voting to support the candidacy of Rick Santorum in hopes of undercutting Mitt Romney’s march to the nomination.

A week before the South Carolina primary, a group of more than 100 influential Christian conservatives gathered at a ranch here and voted overwhelmingly to rally behind Mr. Santorum. An organizer described the vote as an “unexpected supermajority,” a decision that was intended to help winnow the Republican field and consolidate the opposition to Mr. Romney.

But the broader effect on the contest is less clear, particularly if the Republican field remains fractured. If the support had come earlier in the primary campaign, before Mr. Romney emerged as the leading candidate to beat, it could have had greater impact. In most surveys, Mr. Romney outpaces his rivals when respondents are asked who has the best chance of defeating President Obama.

Mr. Santorum, who fought Mr. Romney to a draw in the Iowa caucuses and has stirred enough concern in the eyes of a pro-Romney group to warrant a negative television ad in South Carolina, beamed when asked about the endorsement at a campaign stop on Saturday.

“They’ve looked at not just what we’ve been able to accomplish during this primary season so far,” Mr. Santorum told reporters in Mount Pleasant, S.C. “But they’ve looked at the track record of someone that’s been a strong, consistent voice across the board on all the conservative issues.”

Conservatives, after finding success in Congressional elections two years ago, are under significant pressure to reassert themselves in hopes of blunting the rise of Mr. Romney, who is derisively referred to by his opponents as a “Massachusetts moderate.” They openly question his consistency on social and fiscal conservatism.

Evangelical leaders, along with many other components of the conservative movement, have been fractured over the race, which contributed to Mr. Romney’s success in Iowa and New Hampshire. But with time running short and Mr. Romney holding considerable advantages, the leaders sought to table their divisions and chose, by a wide margin, to support Mr. Santorum over Newt Gingrich or Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

The extent to which those attending the meeting will be able to mobilize their followers behind Mr. Santorum remains unclear. The group’s vote is not binding on participants and the leaders did not directly ask Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Perry to drop out of the race.

“There is a hope and an expectation that this will have an impact on South Carolina,” Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and a spokesman for the group, said in a telephone news conference after the private meeting concluded.

The decision here in Texas came on the eve of the final Sunday church services before the South Carolina primary on Saturday. Mr. Santorum said that he raised $3 million in the last week and expected that the support would likely help him raise even more money and strengthen his campaign organization in the state.

“People are trying to assess not just who’s the most electable conservative, vis-à-vis Mitt Romney, but who’s the most electable, period,” Mr. Santorum said Saturday, adding that he was “not going to call on anybody to drop out of the race.”

The moment that word spread about the decision in Texas, allies of Mr. Gingrich forcefully pushed back against the suggestion that Mr. Santorum won the group’s support outright. They noted that many evangelical leaders remain firmly divided and have little sway over their congregations or members.

The power of the support for Mr. Santorum will be tested over the next seven days in South Carolina. In the Republican presidential primary there four years ago, exit polls found that 60 percent of voters said they considered themselves “born again” or evangelical Christians.

Evangelicals tend to be better informed and more independent that they were a generation ago, when the endorsement from a leader like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson held huge sway, said Rev. Paul Jimenez, pastor of Taylors First Baptist Church in Greenville, S.C.

“People will take note of what the leaders say, but the days are gone when you could stand up and say this is our guy,” said Mr. Jimenez, who previously worked in Washington for the late Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. “Evangelicals have so many voices now.”

But organizers of the Texas meeting said they expected to see new endorsements and fund-raising efforts for Mr. Santorum before Republicans in South Carolina vote on Saturday, followed by the Florida primary on Jan 31. Their hope is that if evangelicals unite around one candidate, they can head off the nomination of Mr. Romney, whom they regard as too moderate.

At a forum for Republican presidential candidates in Charleston, S.C., which was broadcast Saturday evening on the Fox News Channel, Mr. Romney refuted the suggestion that he had a moderate record as governor of Massachusetts. He told a woman who said she was an undecided voter, “I don’t know whether in a minute I can convince you, but I have a conservative record.”

Mr. Romney did not mention the decision by the evangelical leaders at a campaign stop Saturday afternoon. A spokeswoman declined to comment.

The meeting in Texas began Friday afternoon at the ranch of Paul and Nancy Pressler, who are longtime patrons of conservative causes. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, Donald E. Wildmon, the founder of the American Family Association, and Mr. Perkins were among the organizers.

After an evening and a morning of what Mr. Perkins called “cordial but passionate” discussions, including presentations by advocates for each of the major candidates except former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, the group held a series of three secret ballots.

The field was narrowed to Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich after the first vote. By the third ballot, Mr. Perkins said, 114 people voted, with Mr. Santorum receiving 85 votes to 29 for Mr. Gingrich.

Mr. Perkins declined to explain why participants moved toward Mr. Santorum, other than to praise his consistent record on social and economic issues. In the discussions, Mr. Perkins said, participants were as concerned about repealing Mr. Obama’s health care law and fighting the national debt as they were about abortion and same-sex marriage.

And many evangelicals have said they are bothered not only by Mr. Gingrich’s three marriages, but by his attacks on Mr. Romney’s work in private equity, which they believe amounts to attacks on free enterprise.

In the interest of unity, Mr. Perkins said, some people who had previously supported Mr. Gingrich, or who were on the fence, switched to Mr. Santorum. But he added that perhaps a quarter of the participants continued to support Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Perkins stressed that participants would happily support Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Perry — if they emerged victorious — but he was less certain about Mr. Romney.

Rick Tyler, a longtime adviser to Mr. Gingrich who now runs a “super PAC” supporting the Gingrich campaign, dismissed the vote. He called it “a straw poll that had questionable methodology.”

“Rick has a very good record on evangelical issues, but has no ability to beat Mitt Romney and less so for Barack Obama,” Mr. Tyler said of Mr. Santorum. “Endorsing Rick only serves to help Romney, who has a terrible record on the issues evangelicals care about.”

The shared goal, many participants said, was to see if it would be possible to unite conservative Christians around a single alternative to Mr. Romney and avoid repeating the experience of 2008, when their disarray helped Senator John McCain, whom they considered a moderate, to take the nomination.

“I think in the end,” Mr. Perkins said, “it was not so much what was wrong with one candidate but rather what was right about the one that people ended up rallying around.”

Erik Eckholm reported from Brenham, Tex., and Jeff Zeleny from Mount Pleasant, S.C. Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Sumter, S.C.

Dear Media Coverage of the IOWA CAUCUS

Please be advised that  the vast majority of this country is NOT interested in the  ridiculousness they call an event taking place in Iowa… in past presidential elections it may have mattered.. but most of us find it a best a joke.. and at worst a national disgrace.

INSTEAD OF THE IOWA CAUCUS can we please watch  reruns of 1960 bowling championship games.. or  maybe how to cook food from Uzbekistan…  or even I LOVE Luck episodes 1 through a gazillion…. ANYTHING BUT THE CRAP that is taking place in IOWA

Watching people hand knitting sweaters has more appeal than what you are showing us in IOWA

The Republican Party Destroyed Itself for 2012 Elections

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2012!

I love each new year because it is a time of renewal and optimism, and I enjoy speculating about our future. The big story in 2012 will be the presidential election, and optimism is something I do not have.

So let’s just jump right in.

Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. I like this guy. He is Obama light, which might be a good thing for our country. He is smart, well educated, a successful businessman who knows the investment side of the economy. He was a conservative governor of Massachusetts, a liberal state, to say the least. I am familiar with his background and his father, George Romney.

George Romney was chairman and CEO of American Motors Corp. back when there was a Big Four of American auto makers. He went on to be a successful two-term governor of Michigan and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Mitt Romney comes from good stock and, as they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I could live with Romney as my president. Unfortunately, he can’t get elected because factions of his own party won’t support him. That’s too bad. And As I blogged earlier, Mitt is Mormon and Americans are too bigoted to readily accept a Mormon

Barring some scandal of major proportion or a national disaster he cannot control and flubs the response, President Barack Obama will be re-elected in November. And I can live with him as my president.

Romney will lose because his party has shot itself in the foot by backing the tea party movement and other radical right-wing efforts. The tea party now owns the Republican Party. The problem is that mainstream Americans and independent voters simply do not identify with these radical beliefs. Look at the success of Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, right-wing extremists all. They make for good theater, but, trust me, thoughtful Americans don’t want anything to do with any of them running the country.

The other thing the Republican Party has done is to willfully damage and hold back the American economy as a way to oust Obama. That is just this side of treason, and befitting a Shakespeare tragedy. The party has no one to blame but itself for this predicament. Opportunists egged on the tea party and other right-wing radicals when it could have rejected them. Now it has to live and die with them.

Sadly, I do not see political moderation in our immediate future. Republicans spent the last four years undermining Obama, rather than working with him for the good of the country. I expect them to continue down this dead-end path after he is re-elected.

The majority of Americans are frustrated and angry, and that applies to moderates in both political parties and to independents. They want action, not ideology. They see gray, not black and white. They would rather leave issues such as abortion and gay rights to individuals to ferret out for themselves. They are frustrated by the growing gap between the super wealthy and average working Americans. They are worried about the future of health care and programs such as Social Security and Medicare. They are hungry for answers from competent leaders who put the nation’s wellbeing before their own or that of their political party.

Look around you. What do you see? Your family, your friends and your neighbors just want to get on with their lives. They are America’s realists. I believe they are willing to sacrifice to solve our nation’s problems, if only someone will speak to them in language they can understand and agree with. Our nation has done this before, and with great success. Surely we can do it again.

If you want to get your new year off to a good start. I suggest reading “That Used To Be Us” by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. It is a sensible book that will help you face the facts, understand the challenges we face, and give you an optimistic view of how we can solve our nation’s problems. It’s time to replace nonsense with common sense.

TRUTH: MITT ROMNEY CAN NEVER BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Lets be real…Mitt Romney… WHY??  That is the most ironic part… Why Ironic?? Because we  are a nation that has supposedly addressed it’s biases and prejudices…. and we have not.. and it is because of these biases and prejudices that Mitt Romney will never be President of the United States of America (UNLESS a national scandal  erupts just before the election).

I am a Republican… and  I am shocked how STUPID the Republican Party has become the last  10 or 15 years… and  as if stupidity was not enough a failure to  really understand what the last presidential  election meant. and the meaning of the midterm election.

I will address my parties stupidity later.. but on to Mitt Romney… Dont get me wrong.. he is a nice guy.. good family man… but he has a major problem … and only John Kennedy overcame that type of problem 50 years ago… and even then it was because of something called charisma.. which Mitt , as nice as he may be, does not have. …. so what is this major problem Mitt Romney has that will prevent him from being the  president of the United States .. even IF he gets the Republican nomination… it is RELIGION and not just any religion… it is because he is a Mormon… and the people in this country do not know or understand what  that is…  Ohh trying to call this the Church of Jesus Christ and Later Day Saints did not help either.. makes it sound NON CHRISTIAN.

No the  Mormon religion is an albatross around Mitt Romney and the MEDIA will not talk about it because it makes them sound  like they are against  the Mormon religion. If there is anyone group to balm for the lack of understanding of the Mormon religion it is the Mormon religion itself… I believe less is known about  being a Mormon then about being a Muslim or Islamist in general…  and it is too late to educate the public. even trying to go into a place of worship when I lived in California I was told I could not go in unless I was Mormon or there was a function where  I was invited… humm did not leave a good taste in my mouth.. but I will not and have not discriminated based on this or other involvement with  followers of this religion….

The Christian coalition cannot rally  people for Mitt Romney  against Obama   this election.. at least not with enthusiasm… as Obama is a proven Christian… and Mitt Romney is not.. Ohh yes he may be.. but the PUBLIC in general will not see him that way.. and as push comes to shove over politics… being a Mormon is  going to be more of a hindrance for Mit Romney then it is  a help as being a mainstream Christian would have been.. .. in the eyes of the average American Obama was a muslim  BEFORE he became president… again stupidity…  but  also in the eyes of the average American they wonder what the F is being a mormon… and why 2 names like the Church of Jesus Christ and later day saints… and  they certainly cannot be Christian…   and now most Americans  do believe that Obama is a christian…

So simply.. ignorance, stupidity, bigotry and  prejudices will prevent Mitt Romney from being President.. and mostly because NO ONE want to talk about these issues…

Now if you ask my opinion of some of the Mormons I have encountered… that might be a different story.. but for now the story is Mitt Romney and  the Mormon religion in general and in the United States of America today…  they do not equal the ability to be President of the United States of America…  sad, but true.

AND WHAT MAKES IT EVEN MORE TROUBLING IS THE MEDIA IS AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT THIS.  It is not a fairy tale.. it is factual truth… A Mormon   running against an established christian of any other faith  has virtually no chance of being President of the United States of America

Can I fix this problem in the line of work I do… yes I think so… but I am not even sure as a Republican  that I like Mitt  as a candidate even if he were mainstream Christian Conservative…

So.. what  idiot do we as republicans have  that  I can talk about next… stay tuned as I am going to hit them all… and sadly I dont  know of any I like… so be prepared for  a through thrashing of  our idiot candidates.

Message to my republican party… GET ME A GOOD CANDIDATE OR I AM VOTING FOR OBAMA AGAIN… YES AGAIN.. MCCAIN WAS SO SO.. BUT SARAH..  COMMON MAN!!!

THE GREAT AMERICAN RIFT

THE GREAT AMERICAN RIFT

3 years ago I said that as far as our economy was concerned it did not matter who won the presidential race because we were in for very difficult times… I just never realized myself HOW difficult those times would become.

Across the country Americans are still in shock that they are so much worse off than they were in 2006… and most do not see it getting better although the all hope it will… but in reality I see nothing to indicate it will get better… OHH yes I see SOME economic reports that show this thing or that thing  is getting better…  only to find out  later that  it as not as great as reported originally… This makes most of us think that we cannot trust the economic data being provided anymore.

Let’s take the rate of inflation… for most of us that means the CPI or the Consumer Price index… most of us see greater inflation in our household budgets than what the government reports… this is not new… in fact the government over the past 30 years or so has CHANGED how this inflation figure is calculated 19 times.. . Yes, you read that correctly, that is not a typo…..  NINETEEN times, each and every time decreasing the actual inflation that a normal household really experiences. Don’t believe me… look at your utility bills that last few years… or see how much your food Costs are… and the size of the package your food is in… it may not appear smaller… but if you look at the actual weight on the package it is… you are paying the same or MORE for less.

Gasoline, food, utilities insurances (Health and auto and homeowners) and much more that are most of the actual budget of a home are sky high and wages are not up… and taxes have risen in some areas like the so called penny tax School taxes in many places are HIGHER than property taxes… and we are not getting the bag for our buck there… but I will save education issues for a later post. Even my cable bill with Comcast or the new name X-finity is outrageously high… and like most Americans I am fed up, frustrated and feel helpless when my elected officials are getting good paychecks and NOT helping the people who they were elected to serve… Politics which was always a dirty word has become so bad that I fear some people will cause physical harm to me if I bring it up in a conversation….

OK so I hope most of us can agree with the into here… now for what I see as the GREAT AMERIAN RIFT.

No surprise that Politics is to blame for where we are… the only difference we may have is WHO or Which Party you feel is responsible… and to tell you the truth I don’t care which side you’re on… it is bad. Politics used to be negotiating from an ideological viewpoint the ways in which to make this country great and keep it great… NOW however I see it as just an argument on Ideology… and the polarization of this country has never been so great since the Civil War that tore this country apart and took decades to recover economically and more than a entry to mostly heal the social divide (which unfortunately still exists in areas of racism, homophobia, religion, women’s rights,  and the Right to Life movement, etc) we are a nation divided to the point that if we could  see one state on one side of the issue I would not be surprised if a succession movement evolved again. But geographical divides will never be tolerated… and so, because of politicians, we find ourselves involved and on the brink of another civil war in this country… the GREAT RIFT will cause a great divide that may never heal under our current form of government.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease… or so they say… but Politics has become a situation of such Ultra extremists in both parties controlling the entire party and hence setting an agenda that is not in keeping with the actual real beliefs of those in that party…. And WORSE… not being honest loyal Americans FIRST.  IF they were good Americans I believe they would want and FIGHT for is best for the PEOPLE of America….  It is PEOPLE who make America great… and sadly we are losing that greatness because of cowardly politicians. They bow to those motivated to vote… so I say with a loud voice the GREATEST THREAT TO THE AMERICAN WAY IS VOTER APPATHY

Children of parents who constantly fight and call each other names and LIE never fare well in life Citizens of a country whose politicians are so intransient in their positions suffer from that as well…  Unless your party gets 80% of a vote where at least 80 percent of the registered voters voted… THEN YOU DO NOT HAVE A MANDATE FROM THE AMERICAN PUBLIC…you simply won an election… so get over your self-grandioseing and get on with helping America… you incessant BS is aggravating to most Americans to say the least.

Someone needs to come out and speak for the SILENT MAJORITY and the loud mouths and liars are in control lately… I believe 80 percent of Americans are not happy with either party the way they are behaving… and this polarization of America MUST STOP. Am I angry?? DAMN right I am.

I am a lifelong Republican… and quite frankly I am pissed off at my party… and the Tea Party in particular … for what they are doing to America today. BACHMAN… oh for crying out loud… Spineless politicians who will not say the truth about her obvious ignorance in the things she says… WHY… “OH well… She is a Republican and we can’t call her out on false statements!”… Most of America knows what you our LEADERS are afraid to say and would welcome honesty and straight talk for a change… at least I know I would… you lose my respect every day when you allow this type of behavior in OUR party…

I voted for Obama… why?? Because I tough he was better then what you put up for President… I like John McCain… but Sarah Palin… come on guys did you intentionally want to lose??

Taxes.. Can any republican say with all honesty that it is right for a Hedge Fund manager to make millions… sometimes hundreds of millions and only pay 15% taxes when his staff pays 30-40 percent in taxes.  And don’t give me the BS that he creates jobs with lower taxes… he creates NOTHING but profits a leach on society…. Shaving pennies from hundreds of trades a day in rapid computer generated trades… the Stock market is no longer a free and fair market with these types of shenanigans going on.

I would LOVE less regulation from Government… but greed and corruption exists and Corporations cannot be trusted to do what is right… they incentivized by one thing and one thing only profits… and who can blame them when you have corrupted the system so much as to let them fail the people of this country and demonize anyone who dares speaks up for the human condition in this country… instead encourage them to do what is right with financial incentives if need be… and then and only then will I support a reduction on regulations.. I said it above and I will repeat it again now: PEOPLE make America Great.. NOT businesses or corporations… we have the most creative and innovative collection of minds in this world… yet it appears they get sucked into how to maximize profit and to disregard the human condition.  I cannot begin to say how ashamed I am sometimes for being Republican… but yet I will not become a Democrat… for they are besieged with equally distasteful ideas… and will drive their party into the ground unless they learn to compromise and negotiate for the benefit of the American public … even if it is at the expense of some of their pet projects.  Simply put.. BOTH of your parties are more damaging to AMERICA then IRAN… because you have lost your souls for your ideology to the detriment of this country

China: China is NOT our friend,, and dependence on them for the benefit of business has NOT helped America.. Ohh yes it may have reduced some costs to the American Public… but in reality we lost more in jobs and wages and disposable income and reduced our GDP by doing so. And WHAT DID WE GAIN.. Corporate profits at the expense of our country… the same for NAFTA and other free trade agreements.. And now in our current situation we have no ability to create jobs for our unemployed as there are fewer factories to employ the people we need to give jobs to. WTO is basically a fare to the Hourly wage earner in the industrialized world.

Government is NOT the same as Households or business… and it not the same at FEDERAL level as it is on the state level… IN Economic down times like these GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO SPEND MORE TO HELP CREAT JOBS AND BRING BACK A TAX BASE OF EMPLOYED PEOPLE (Do I have to remind you of Roosevelt’s initiatives that helped bring us out of the Great depression) … Cutting Corporate taxes does NOT create jobs as you have told people or by extending the tax cuts last time around you have not seen a real increase in hiring… and why is that.. Well Mr. Politician… our economy is more than 70% consumer driven: no jobs, no spending… no spending then no company wants to invest in plant, equipment or hiring… so where do the jobs come from…ONE word… INFRASTRUCTURE  as these projects are critical in America today when our infrastructure is crumbling and jobs are just not available anywhere else… and they have to be paid for by our government through HIGHER taxes on those that can afford and on corporations…

Why is it so hard for you to understand BASIC economics and tell the truth instead of pandering to a minority base of zealots who will destroy this country?

SO… what is the RIFT we are facing in America today? It is Class Warfare… based in steep and entrenched Ideology that is not often based in reality or honesty. It is the division in America not just between political parties but in the haves and have-nots… It is politically driven and fueled by greed and fear and is clouded by lies and distortions of truths… it is the worst of all types of warfare.. it is the kind that fuels revolutions in other countries… and destroys nations… it is  the warning bell to the fall of America as   great nation and we will not even know until we have fallen so low as  to not be able to pull ourselves up.  And it seems to be savored not only by our enemies and countries jealous of our success…. But also by the Media who likes conflict and sound bites and lacks the same courage to set things straight and to further polarize this country based on ideology.

So as this election season now seems to be starting and we have 15more months of this slander and false statement season and cowardly politicians on both side.. Remember this… WE are ultimately responsible for what is about to happen.. WE the SILENT MAJORITY… who has failed to speak up… who accepts  the media on face value… who blindly believes their parties rhetoric… and then the PEOPLE who FAIL to VOTE… as I said above the GREATEST threat to America today is Apathy.. a failure to vote and to make your voice head at the voting booths.. WE are responsible for the future of this Country….

Who among you will raise to the occasion and do the simplest thing to help it by voting… and who among you will just lay down and accept whatever happens… From the Primaries where you will select your candidate (*where I fear the most for my party in getting a BAD candidate again because the radicals get their supports to the polls and the majority of republicans just sit back and watch and then find out they have a  fool for a candidate)… to the General election where you should vote for the BEST person for President as opposed to your Party’s CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT…. WILL YOU STAND UP FOR AMERICA??

A final note to my Republican Party.. If you give me someone like Bachman as  our candidate I will NOT vote for her… but I will vote. Republican or not I am an American first… and that woman has no business even being in Congress let alone holding the office of President of the United States. Until you  my fellow republicans find your backbone and speak truth and care for the AMERICAN people I will not be able to vote Republican .

Greetings Ms Shelly, Whoever and wherever you are.

7500 DOW Possible??

The simple answer is YES!!!

I know I wrote in December 2007 that I expected a 9,000 DOW and believed that an 8,000 Dow is where I said it should be… but 7,500 is panic and that is what I am seeing around the world… people are afraid… plain and simple.

DO NOT sell you 401K or other funds now… it is far too late for you to do that… your best bet is to hold on and try to read and watch something other than economic news… at least until AFTER the election.

I am working on my economic predictions for the rest of 2008 and 2009… and in some cases even into 2010. I should release that November 5 or 6, AFTER the Elections… there is nothing good in store… except that we will know more about where our Government is taking us… and at least THAT will restore some stability to the financial markets in the USA and give a good indication of the future of the economic health of the Country.

You will see great swings in the market… mostly down for now… but you will get high upswings as well… do not take any of these seriously at this point… we really are at about the right pricing given the full economic data….

Additionally you will see a more bad economic news and then a few good pieces… but overall it is glum out there… so stop reading things like this and others and concentrate on what is important to you.. your life and your family… the rest will settle out soon… just not as soon as you would like.

Craig

NOTE:  This is MY OPINION. I make no assurances of this actually being the way the market will go. You should do your own research and make your own informed decisions!!!