Obama campaign highlighting the First Pet to embarrass Romney

And they should. While it might look petty, it says something about a man, the way he trust the most vulnerable among us (so the saying goes). I remember my uncle, who was Greece's UN ambassador at the time, telling me that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats animals. And I think it's very true. Watch someone interacting with a child, or a pet - especially one they meet for the first time. It speaks volumes.

Romney plays to nation's racial subconscious

Presidential politics is an increasingly exact science. Words are carefully chosen, poll-tested and fine-tuned before being used, and every catchphrase, slogan and sound bite is designed to maximize the campaign's appeal to their target audience.

This appeal takes place on two different levels- one conscious and one subconscious. While the term "subconscious" alludes to subliminal advertising, it generally only means appealing to implicit attitudes that are not consciously processed (although subliminal ads have entered presidential campaigns before). The best way to think of the distinction between the two is to consider what a candidate says as a conscious appeal, but how the candidate says it, or the choice to say it in the first place, a subconscious appeal.

Following the 1980 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan launched his general election campaign with what have since become boilerplate GOP talking points. Here's an excerpt of what he said:

I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.

On a conscious level, what Reagan said was fairly innocuous. But how did he say it? The speech was framed around Regan's "[belief] in states' rights," and was delivered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the same place where three civil rights workers had been killed for attempting to register African-American voters.

The Reagan campaign chose the location under the advice of Strom Thurmond (who, ironically, was later found to have fathered an out-of-wedlock child with his African-American housekeeper), and used the frame and location of the speech to make an appeal to the "Dixiecrats" of the South. Jimmy Carter failed to call Reagan out for the implicit racial appeal, and Reagan went on to cream Carter, winning every Southern state which Carter had won in 1976, except for Georgia, Carter's home state.

Fast-forward to 2012.

Mitt Romney is the front-runner for the Republican nomination but has showed signs of weakness with rural voters, particularly in the South. Many Republican strategists are worried that Team Romney will not be able to generate enough enthusiasm to win crucial states such as North Carolina and Virginia. Moreover, the rhetoric necessary to generate such enthusiasm among the GOP base will likely alienate independents in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. How has the Romney campaign attempted to confront this dilemma? With a catchy, multi-faceted slogan:

The black guy "isn't working" - get it?

As Tommy Christopher of Mediaite notes:

When I first saw the banner...the multiple meanings were clear: President Obama's policies aren't working, the Obama presidency isn't working, President Obama...isn't working, as in, doing any work. That's not a nice thing to say about any president, but like it or not, it becomes a more loaded accusation when leveled at our first black president.

Subconscious appeals are called dog-whistles for a reason: Three different people can read the above phrase and get three very different messages. "Obama Isn't Working" has economic connotations for some and racial connotations for others. For the surprisingly high amount of Americans who hold implicit racial biases, the phrase also can trigger negative subconscious associations regarding President Obama based on the color of his skin, aka racism.

Because of the slogan's multiple meanings, the Romney campaign has plausible deniability when its racial component is brought up. However, given its history, the GOP has forfeited its right to the benefit of the doubt when it comes to race. Considering the level of scrutiny placed on every word used by a presidential candidate, and the emphasis Romney is placing on this new slogan (in addition to appearing on stage, it has its own website), I find it hard to believe that the racial connotations of "Obama Isn't Working" went unnoticed before the phrase was unveiled.

Moreover, considering the benefit Team Romney gains from being able to trigger implicit racial biases without getting taken to task for it on a conscious level, it is far more likely that the creation of the slogan was a deliberate play to America's dark, but very real, subconscious biases and prejudices based on race.

If Mitt Romney had his way, Osama bin Laden would still be alive

I'm paraphrasing George W. Bush.

The Republicans have a problem with President Obama taking credit for Osama bin Laden's death.  But they had no problem with George Bush taking credit for capturing Saddam, and on September 11 no less.

From USA Today on September 11 (no less) of 2004:

In a harsh new attack on rival John Kerry, President Bush said Friday that if the Democratic presidential candidate "had his way," Saddam Hussein's regime would be running Iraq and threatening the safety of other nations.

The newest wrinkle is that Sen. Kerry has now decided we are spending too much money in Iraq even though he criticized us earlier for not spending enough," Bush said. "One thing about Sen. Kerry's position is clear ... if he had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be a threat to our security and to the world."

As I pointed out in the earlier post, Mitt Romney didn't want us going into Pakistan to catch bin Laden, which is in fact where we got him. Good thing Mitt Romney didn't win the presidency in 2008 or Osama bin Laden still might be alive.

Obama calls out Romney for chickening out on going after Osama bin Laden

Meow.  Now that's the guy I voted for. Here's Obama today:

As far as my personal role and what other folks would do, I'd just recommend that everybody look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden.

I assume that people meant what they said when they said—that's been at least my practice. I said that I'd go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it.

Here's Romney in 2007:

"I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours... I don't think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort," Romney told reporters on the campaign trail....

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops "shouldn't be sent all over the world." He called Obama's comments "ill-timed" and "ill-considered."

I do get a kick out of how the Republicans are all upset that the President is taking credit for the Obama kill. And they should be upset. It was one hell of a victory, and something George Bush failed to accomplish in eight years in office (not to mention, Bush actually let Osama get away at Tora Bora). So it's understandable, and typical, that the GOP would freak out over Obama even mentioning Osama. It's what they do - go after you on your strengths so you're afraid to mention them. Remember who the Republican party demonized John Kerry for being a war hero? That was his strength, so they had to take it down. Same goes for Obama taking out Osama.

Romney didn't even want to go after Osama in the first place, he said he wouldn't go into Pakistan to get him, and that's exactly what Obama did, go into Pakistan and kill him. So the Republicans need to do everything they can to neutralize the issue lest the public catch on that under President Romney Osama bin Laden would have gotten away again.

 

Is Obama-Romney Kerry-Bush in reverse?

Jonathan Chait at New York Mag:

The parallels between this year’s presidential election and the one we had eight years ago are striking. Incumbent president with middling approval ratings faces rich guy from Massachusetts with a reputation for flip-flopping. Hilarity ensues. By “hilarity” I mean, specifically, that people get extremely worked up about a series of procedural controversies, and then the two parties trade places on them the next time around.

Yes, but. John Kerry was, in my view, a weak candidate. I don't think he exuded much strength or personality, and came off as a bit of a patrician as well. Romney has far more personality than Kerry, on "strength" the jury is still out, though Romney has done a pretty good job selling himself as an elitist. So perhaps the comparison is valid.

Romney tells youth to take risks, borrow money from parents

Uhhhh, sorry Mitt but not everyone was raised in a household where dad had millions just laying around to be handed out to the kids. In yet another sign of his complete lack of understanding of the real world, Romney is missing the point that the parents of regular kids have been hit hard during the last few Republican recessions and are still trying to recover. Romney needs to take a few spare dollars of his own and buy a clue because he is so hopelessly out of touch. I took plenty of risks joining the startup software world but could never have imagined borrowing money from my parents. This latest blunder is as silly as Cheney talking about selling on eBay as a way to get rich a few years back. Really, Mitt?

"This kind ofdivisiveness, this attack of success is very different than what we've seen in our country's history," Romney told students and supporters gathered at Otterbein University in central Ohio. "We've always encouraged young people — take a shot, go for it, take a risk and get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business."

Romney set to make 97th pivot

Flip Romney.  From Buzzfeed:

Mitt Romney's big speech here Tuesday night is billed and staged to mark his pivot to the general election, intended to set the tone for the Republican's campaign, and to lay out his overarching message. The title of the speech: "A Better America Begins Tonight."

But this isn't the first time the Romney campaign has tried to "pivot" to his upcoming contest with Obama — particularly according to the press. He tried it last January after winning the New Hampshire primary. He tried it in his Florida victory speech. He tried it throughout his cakewalk campaign in Nevada, then in Michigan, then, again, after Super Tuesday, when aides declared that it would "take an act of God" for Romney to lose the primary — and it was now time to focus on beating Obama.

A quick LexisNexis search returned 96 articles written since the first vote was cast in Iowa discussing a "pivot" to the general election on Romney's part.
Will the 97th time be the charm?

Romney foreign policy concerned about country that doesn't even exist

Romney's foreign policy expert on a call today expressed concerned about President Obama's policies concerning Czechoslovakia.  And he should be concerned, as Czechoslovakia ceased existing nearly 20 years ago.

Perlstein: Is Obama's "religion of Secular Humanism" this election's viral RW meme?

Yes, you read that right. Seems really stupid doesn't it, that something so ... stupid ... could suck all the air out of an election campaign. Yet that's exactly what happened in 2004, with the swiftboatage of John Kerry. Stupid; and so very effective.

For Perlstein, the Kerry part of the story — the analogy that sets up the Romney prediction — started with a stupid little self-published booklet he discovered in 2004 floating around the fringes of a right-wing event.

Here's his intro (my emphasis and paragraphing):

Once upon a time, in early 2004, I attended one of hundreds of "Parties for the President" organized nationwide for grassroots volunteers who wanted to help reelected George W. Bush, at a modest middle class home in Portland, Oregon.

At one point, a nice old lady politely pressed into my hand a grubby little self-published pamphlet she had come upon, purporting to prove that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had faked the heroics that had won him three purple hearts in Vietnam. I added it to my mental store of the night's absurdities that I expected to hear rattling across the wingnutosphere the entire fall: "I still believe there are weapons of mass destruction"; "There is an agenda—to get rid of God in this country"; "John Kerry attended a party in which there was bad language!"

What I didn't expect was to see Kerry's war-hero cred earnestly debated night after night on CNN. Then came August and "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" — and that little old lady's fever dream began dominating the media discussion of the campaign, and the rest, as they say, is history.

That's the way, in my experience, the ecology of right-wing smears works: Insane horror stories – Clinton is running cocaine out of an Arkansas airport! Barack Obama had gay sex in the back of a limo! – bubble up from the collective conservative Id at the outset of an election year; professional conservatives in Washington identify the ones that seem most promising and launder them through the suckers in the "balance"-hungry mainstream media; and presto, before you know it, it's death-panel-palooza, 24/7.

Presto; yet this is not magic, but art. These are professionals. Watch and learn — here's how the process breaks down. They:

• Figure out how the rubes want to be lied to
• Figure out which lies have "legs"
• Figure out which lies also advance the Movement Conservative Project
• Focus-test all of the swamp-meat prose they come up with
• Deliver the stinkiest rot to the eager flies using the fly-seeking "professional" press
• Count the money (note to students: the MoveCon Project pays extremely well)

This is how it's done when the pros do it. There is nothing uncalculated about advertising. (Hint: Ask yourself why there are so many black men in the "can't get hard" ads. Go ahead, ask. There's an answer, and it's perfectly thought through.)

Perlstein has much more. He traces the history of this particular fantasia — from a 1961 Supreme Court decision footnote; to a 1974 near-miss court challenge to the "religion of Secular Humanism"; to its demonization in a 1984 right-wing classic; to ... well, read on. It's Perlstein doing what Perlstein does quite well — tell a great story.

I can't close without giving you this, the current season's seed, from the Rolling Stone article I've been quoting and Crooks and Liars. (If by chance you listen to this vid twice, ask yourself if the questioner isn't a shill, a ringer.To my ear she sounds way too focused on asking the question from a very precise angle.)

Romney in Wisconsin (that's Paul Ryan on stage with him):



In defense of Perlstein's prediction, the Catholic Bishops PAC is all over this one. I agree with Perlstein — it's not going away on its own.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
 

8 reasons why Romney is more right-wing than Bush

From ThinkProgress - here's three of the eight:

1. Bush passed a huge tax cut plan, mostly benefiting the wealthy. Romney’s tax cut plan is four times larger, more heavily weighted to benefit ultra wealthy.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Passed $2.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years, 12.5% benefiting the top 1/10 of 1%. [ThinkProgress, 2/22/12; David Cay Johnston. 3/1/12]

MITT ROMNEY: Proposing $10.7 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years, 33% benefiting the top 1/10 of 1%. [ThinkProgress, 2/22/12; David Cay Johnston. 3/1/12]

2. Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Romney supports repealing virtually all campaign finance laws.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Signed into law the landmark McCain–Feingold campaign finance reform, which put restrictions on “soft money” and limitations on spending from outside groups. [White House, 03/27/02]

MITT ROMNEY: Strongly defended the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which overturned key provisions McCain–Feingold. Supports repealing virtually all campaign finance laws. [Mitt Romney, 2/18/10; ThinkProgress, 12/21/11]

3. Bush supported comprehesive immigration reform, a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants and provisions of the DREAM Act. Romney opposes all of it.
GEORGE W. BUSH: Supported comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants and provisions of the DREAM Act. [Reuters, 6/29/07; White House, 10/24/07]

MITT ROMNEY: Opposes comprehensive immigration reform and opposes providing a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants and the DREAM Act. [Fox News, 04/03/12; ABC, 12/31/12]

If the GOP candidates were teens on Twitter

From College Humor (an excerpt):

Video: Mitt Romney's awkward bonding tour of America

This is awfully good.  And it just get worse and worse as the video goes on.  Watch the entire thing.

Mitt Romney's plan for the nation is so secret even he doesn't know it

The Obama campaign has been hitting Romney hard on his "secret strategy" for America - meaning, they're hitting Romney hard for not dealing plans for much of anything. Romney would understandably prefer to keep the conversation on Obama.  But at some point, the man needs to spell out his vision for the country.  And having run for President, and office, for so many years, it's disturbing that he doesn't seem to have one.

AP really lets Romney have it in this rather long story detailing policy after policy about which Romney has little detailed to say.

Mitt Romney's Latino Problem

Mitt Romney has a Latino problem. No, it's nothing along the lines of disgraced Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu's affair with an undocumented Mexican immigrant. Mitt's problem is that while he desperately needs Latinos to make up for his voter deficit to President Barack Obama, Latinos just don't like Mitt very much.

In fact, Fox News' own Latino division found that if the general election were held today, only 14 percent of Latino voters would cast their ballots for Romney (assuming Republicans hadn't already forced those voters to self-deport). A whopping 70% would cast their ballots for incumbent Obama.

Mitt's problem with the Latino voting bloc mostly likely stems from a deep distrust in his attitudes towards them - and that is "attitudes," as in plural. Over the course of the GOP primary, Mitt's stances on immigrants and Latinos have shifted ever more to the right to compete with the lunacy of the now-dead campaigns of Rep. Michele "Double Fence" Bachmann and Herman "Electrocute Them Already" Cain. Remember Mitt's "self-deportation suggestion," gente?

So what's Mitt to do? Always in search of his own bailout (like when he asked the federal government for cash in order to save his Winter Olympics), Romney may be hoping that possible VP pick Marco Rubio, the Cuban freshman senator from Florida, will come to his rescue.

There's just one problem with Mitt possibly picking Rubio as his running mate: Latinos aren't falling for the pandering. Recent polling finds that even with Rubio on the ticket, Mitt loses Latinos to President Obama in the general election. In fact, the GOP ticket loses to the Democratic ticket by seven points in Rubio's own home state of Florida.

Part of the problem lies with Rubio's own disingenuous attempt to duplicate the Democrats' popular DREAM Act, while still trying to keep a rabid, anti-immigrant GOP base at bay. Rubio's proposed alternative, which John called the Ream Act, would offer no path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States against their own volition as kids. This isn't even including the fact that Mitt himself refuses to comment on whether or not he endorses his possible running mate's legislation.

Latinos' distrust of Mitt could ultimately lie with Arizona's infamous "Papers Please" law. While he named its author Kris Kobach an "advisor," and called the law a "model for the nation" as recently as February, Mitt has pulled out the Etch-A-Sketch and changed the mariachi tune, saying that he was only referring to the E-Verify system. He even threw the author under the bus, saying that he was a "supporter" and nothing more (Mitt's spokesperson was later forced to recant).

Kobach himself tried to staple down Mitt's position, saying that in reality Mitt does want the "Papers Please" law nationwide. “He stated very publicly that Arizona’s law should be a model for how the federal government enforces its immigration laws. And he’s correct there too."

Only Mitt knows how much pandering is left for a man who flips more than a jumping bean (someone please let Mitt know that that's not Mexico's national symbol). He's already claimed his Mexico-born dad was a poor immigrant (minus that whole actually being Mexican stuff). He'll continue to erase and distort, even though we all remember he's someone who fired an undocumented gardener - a man simply trying to make a living - just to save himself some GOP votes.

Say, Mitt, you think Menudo needs any new members?

Romney spokesman made sexist and homophobic remarks about Mrs. Obama, Hillary Clinton

Would you expect anything less from the Republican nominee?

Interesting that we haven't heard boo from Mitt or Ann Romney.  You'll recall two weeks ago they were more than happy to talk non-stop about how they felt Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen had shown disrespect to women.  But when the Romney campaign's own spokesman - and mind you, Hilary Rosen doesn't even work for the Obama campaign, this guy does work for Romney - is found to have tried to cover up a series of sexist and homophobic comments about First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, and the wife of Romney's remaining serious (well, somewhat serious) opponent in the GOP primary, you don't hear boo from Mr. or Mrs. Romney.

Wonder why that is?  Maybe Mitt and Ann Romney don't care about women at all. We'll find out if they keep this spokesman on staff.

Romney, flip flopper or "severe conservative"?

President Clinton is urging the Obama campaign to label Romney a "severe conservative," as Romney recently described himself, rather than focusing as much on the flip-flopper label.  The thought is that Romney is going to redefine himself to the middle for the general election, and this preempts him from doing that.

I've always been concerned that Romney's flip-flop nature would help him in the general election.  I've heard more than one Democrat or Independent say that Romney wouldn't be that bad a President since we all know he's "really" a liberal who's just pretending to be a conservative.  The thing is, how do we know that Romney wasn't simply pretending to be a liberal all those years he was in Massachusetts?  After all, what better beard for someone who wants to rise in Massachusetts politics?

And ultimately, that's the great danger of a Romney presidency.  It's not entirely clear whether he'd govern as a liberal Democrat or a "severe conservative," as he oddly, and comically, put it.  And while President Obama hasn't always been as wedded to his convictions as we'd like, Romney makes Obama look downright mono-maniacal.


More here.

Romney's slogan isn't working

As you might have heard, Romney's latest campaign slogan is 'Obama isn't working'. This appears to be both a reference to the famous 'Labour isn't Working' slogan created by the brothers Saatchi for the 1979 Conservative campaign in the UK, and a none-too-subtle dog whistle to remind voters of a common racist stereotype (i.e., the black man doesn't work).

The Saatchi slogan was also a double entendre. It pointed to the fact that UK unemployment had reached over a million under Labour, and the country had been crippled by strikes for months, the so-called 'winter of discontent'. It was a powerful slogan because it reminded voters of the two facts that were central to the Tory campaign.

While the Romney campaign is also attempting a double entendre, neither meaning is likely to resonate outside the Conservative base. Most voters remember that the recession started under the Bush administration (that didn't stop Romney from trying to blame President Obama for a factor that was closed under Bush). Claiming that Obama has not done enough to clean up the mess made by the last Republican President does not have quite the same punch as pointing to the collapse of British manufacturing under Labour.

There is also the fact that voters don't (at least not yet) seem to think Romney has any better economic expertise than Obama. A recent MSNBC poll found that there was essentially no difference between voters assessment of Romney and Obama on the economy. The Romney slogan might even backfire if people consider the Thatcher government as precedent: 18 months after the 1979 election, UK unemployment hit three million as the country's manufacturing base was destroyed and Britain became a net importer of manufactured goods for the first time since the industrial revolution.

The dog whistle aspect of the slogan might also backfire. Does it really make sense for a man who left business in 1999 and hasn't had a real job since 2007, because he's so rich he doesn't need to work, to accuse the President of being lazy?

Romney blames Obama for factory that closed under Bush

Are all Harvard MBA's as clueless about facts as Bush and Romney or are they the exceptions that prove the rule? D'oh!

Mitt Romney visited an Ohio factory, closed when President George W. Bush was in office, to make the case that President Barack Obama’s economic policies prevented the facility and others like it from reopening.

Standing in the middle of an empty warehouse floor yesterday, Romney blamed Obama for promoting measures that have slowed the economic recovery.

“It would have reopened by now, but it’s still empty,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said. “It underscores the failure of this president’s policies with regards to getting the economy working again.”

Romney flip-flops on immigration

Romney's short dalliance with conservatism seems to already be dead.  Boy, no one could have predicted that one. NYT:

The Romney campaign appears to have begun shifting to the center on immigration, after staking out a position to the right of opponents like former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

During the primary fight, Mr. Romney said he would veto the existing version of the Dream Act, or the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which would grant illegal immigrants brought into the country as children by their parents a pathway to citizenship. He labeled it a magnet for illegal immigration. And he criticized Mr. Perry for granting young illegal immigrants in-state tuition to Texas universities.

On Thursday, campaign aides said Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, was not referring to the most draconian portions of Arizona’s immigration law when he said during a debate that Arizona could be a model for the nation. He was referring specifically to the “E-Verify” measure that requires employers to check the legal status of job applicants electronically.

Last weekend, in a comprehensive list of advisers provided to The Boston Globe, the Romney campaign did not include Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and co-author of the Arizona immigration law. During the primary campaign, the Romney campaign had referred to Mr. Kobach as an “informal adviser.”

Romney to give commencement at Falwell's Liberty U

Romney 2002:

"I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard."

Romney 2012:

"I believe people understand that I'm firmly pro-life," he said in a debate that same month.

Keep in mind that this isn't just a speech. It's the commencement address. Meaning, you get a speaker that you know clicks with your values. And Mitt Romney does not click with any of the values held by the Jerry Falwell crowd.

Now sure, the Mormon leadership clicks quite well with the Falwell crowd - both are extreme agents of intolerance. So on a basic hate level, the religious right and the Mormons have a lot in common. But not only is Mitt Romney untrue to the religious right, he hasn't exactly toed the Mormon line on gay rights or abortion over the years (which is typical Romney trying to have it both ways). Sure, he does toe the line now that's he's trying to win the nomination of a political party over-run by extreme conservatives. But historically Romney has been uber pro-gay and pro-choice.

Then what the heck is he doing speaking at Liberty University?

The answer is in the invite. The religious right is about as true to Christianity (and their own professed values) as Mitt Romney is to any of his previously professed beliefs. The very fact that the Falwell crowd would invite Mitt Romney, an arch liberal who shares none of their values, a man who once claimed to be more pro-gay then Ted Kennedy, to give a speech only given by those who share their values, shows why in the end Romney and the religious right are really the perfect fit.

Both are family values posers.