Mitt Romney

This post is not about New Zealand, it is about the US and Barack Obama…but it does have some lessons for New Zealand.

Nile Gardiner writes at The Telegraph, the top ten reasons why Obama’s presidency is in trouble. Number 7 is perhaps the most telling.

7. The liberal media is less deferential to Obama in his second term

The Washington Post, standard bearer of the liberal establishment in the US capital, has labeled the IRS scandal a “horror story” for the Obama administration. Even The New York Times, the de facto inflight newspaper of Air Force One, recently carried a headline on its front page declaring: “Onset of Woes Casts Pall Over Obama’s Policy Aspirations.” The liberal mainstream media closed ranks behind Barack Obama for most of his first term in office, and relentlessly pummeled his presidential election opponent Mitt Romney ahead of the November 2012 vote, in a shameless display of bias towards their favoured candidate. The big liberal newspapers and the major television networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, have been less willing to bat for Obama in his second term as public opinion has begun to turn against the White House. Clearly, there are some things even the most liberal columnists are finding hard to defend, such as the ruthless targeting of political opponents. Meanwhile, MSNBC, President Obama’s biggest flag-waver on cable news, has seen its ratings plummet in recent months, with Fox News further building its dominance of the ratings.  Read more »

This is a selection of good reactions to the death of Margaret Thatcher. There are some real nasty reactions surfacing out there, I will expose them in a seperate post.

Mark Steyn has this wonderful quote:

In 1990, when Mrs. Thatcher was evicted from office by her ingrate party’s act of matricide, the difference she’d made was such that in all the political panel discussions on TV that evening no producer thought to invite any union leaders. No one knew their names anymore.

Daniel Hannan says Baroness Thatcher took a ruined, dishonoured and bankrupt Britain and left it prosperous, confident and free.

Margaret Thatcher, almost alone, refused to accept the inevitability of decline. She was determined to turn the country around, and she succeeded. Inflation fell, strikes stopped, the latent enterprise of a free people was awakened. Having lagged behind for a generation, we outgrew every European country in the 1980s except Spain (which was bouncing back from an even lower place). As revenues flowed in, taxes were cut and debt was repaid, while public spending – contrary to almost universal belief – rose.

Mitt Romney, defeated by Barack Obama in the 2012 US presidential election, hails Thatcher as a “transformational leader”.

History will enshrine Margaret Thatcher as a transformational leader who helped defeat communism, promote freedom, and bring hope to the oppressed. Her penetrating words and compelling vision will last for generations.  Read more »

In about 15 minutes I will be sitting down with Leighton Smith collecting my winnings from our bet last year.

Readers will remember that Leighton Smith and I made a bet on the outcome of the US presidential election, months ahead polling day. He said that Mitt Romney would win easily, and I said that though i wanted Romney to win I believed that he wouldn’t be able to do it and that Barack Obama would win a second term.

I based my opinions on the mathematical and statistical approach of Nate Silver.

As you all know Obama romped home and I won the bet.

The vagaries of holidays, overlapping commitments, timing and extraneous matters meant that this was the earliest we could do it.

Never let it be said that Leighton Smith doesn’t honour his bets.

I will post photos from the event later.

Newt Gingrich is dreamin’. Someone should get Daryl Kerrigan to give him a call:

Newt Gingrich blames Mitt Romney for being a bad candidate.

More than that, he blames the Republican party for fostering a corrosive culture that produced Romney as its candidate. The former House Speaker argued that the GOP has grown stale and introverted, putting itself on the wrong side of history on issues like immigration and painting itself into a corner on others, like gay marriage.

Romney’s failed candidacy was just the latest illustration of this, the 69-year-old Gingrich said in hour-long interview that dealt, in large part, with the GOP’s problems and what he hopes to contribute to their solution.

Gingrich, whose staying power in the Republican primary has surprised many observers, was Romney’s most acerbic critic during that intraparty contest. He would go on to play the role of dutiful soldier during the general election, only to revert back to form a month and a half after the national contest ended with Romney losing handily.

“I think either [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry or I would have probably done better [against Obama],” said the former speaker, exhibiting a bit of his trademark braggadocio.

Gingrich didn’t go so far as to say he would have won outright as the Republican nominee. But even as he walked himself back momentarily, he couldn’t help but offer another boast.

“[I]f Obama had pounded on my weaknesses as intensely as Romney, who knows what would have happened. So I don’t want to be arrogant and say I would have done better,” said Gingrich. “I would say my impression is that, from the Obama team’s standpoint, the two candidates they found the hardest to cope with were Perry and me.”

At times it’s hard the believe the total absence of limits that stupid people appear to operate under:

A northern Indiana man who had the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan campaign logo tattooed onto his face “to make politics fun” says it’s time for it to come off.

Eric Hartsburg of Michigan City, says he plans to have the red-and-blue “R” removed from its prominent place next to his right eye.

He says a Republican supporter paid him US$15,000 (NZ$18,312) to get the tattoo and keep it until at least the election was over.

Weeks after President Barack Obama defeated the former Massachusetts governor in the November 6 election, Hartsburg says “now to me it represents not a losing campaign, but a sore losing campaign.”

Hartsburg says he reached out to the Romney campaign about the tattoo, but feels snubbed that no campaign staffer ever contacted him.

Leighton Smith would do well to read these wise words about the recent US elections. And before anyone whinges that a left-winger wrote them, they come from The American Conservative site and true fiscal conservative Bruce Bartlett.

At least a few conservatives now recognize that Republicans suffer for epistemic closure. They were genuinely shocked at Romney’s loss because they ignored every poll not produced by a right-wing pollster such as Rasmussen or approved by right-wing pundits such as the perpetually wrong Dick Morris. Living in the Fox News cocoon, most Republicans had no clue that they were losing or that their ideas were both stupid and politically unpopular.

I’m looking forward to that lunch Leighton…

Nate Silver looks at the exit polls and shows just how badly the GOP got rogered by the gay community.

Commenters will not doubt exclaim that no one cares about the gay vote, but then they would by myopic bigoted fools who don’t understand that gay voters are motivated enough to turn out and they also have similarly motivated straight friends and family they carry with them into the voting stations:

While President Obama’s lopsided support among Latino and other minority voters has been a focus of postelection analysis, the overwhelming support he received from another growing demographic group — Americans who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual — has received much less attention.

But the backing Mr. Obama received from gay voters also has a claim on having been decisive. Mitt Romney and Mr. Obama won roughly an equal number of votes among straight voters nationwide, exit polls showed. And, a new study argues, Mr. Romney appears to have won a narrow victory among straight voters in the swing states Ohio and Florida.

Mr. Obama’s more than three-to-one edge in exit polls among the 5 percent of voters who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual was more than enough to give him the ultimate advantage, according to the study, by Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, in conjunction with Gallup.

This is taking your support for Mitt Romney just a bit too far:

An Arizona woman, in despair at the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, ran down her husband with the family car in suburban Phoenix on Saturday because he failed to vote in the election, police said on Monday.

Holly Solomon, 28, was arrested after running over husband Daniel Solomon following a wild chase that left him pinned underneath the vehicle.

Daniel Solomon, 36, was in critical condition at a local hospital, but is expected to survive, Gilbert police spokesman Sergeant Jesse Sanger said.

Police said Daniel Solomon told them his wife became angry over his “lack of voter participation” in last Tuesday’s presidential election and believed her family would face hardship as a result of Obama winning another term.

What a right bunny boiler.

Nate Silver has rated the various polling companies, many of which are included in his algorithms. When you look at their results you can see why Romney conservatives were so far off, they were relying on Gallup and Rasmussen and they were so dreadfully wonky it is lucky they have any credibility at all.

There were roughly two dozen polling firms that issued at least five surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign, counting both state and national polls. (Multiple instances of a tracking poll are counted as separate surveys in my analysis, and only likely voter polls are used.)

For each of these polling firms, I have calculated the average error and the average statistical bias in the margin it reported between President Obama and Mitt Romney, as compared against the actual results nationally or in one state.

For instance, a polling firm that had Mr. Obama ahead by two points in Colorado — a state that Mr. Obama actually won by about five points — would have had a three-point error for that state. It also would have had a three-point statistical bias toward Republicans there.

The bias calculation measures in which direction, Republican or Democratic, a firm’s polls tended to miss. If a firm’s polls overestimated Mr. Obama’s performance in some states, and Mr. Romney’s in others, it could have little overall statistical bias, since the misses came in different directions. In contrast, the estimate of the average error in the firm’s polls measures how far off the firm’s polls were in either direction, on average.

There are reports that Mitt Romney was shell shocked by the result Tuesday….that tells me that his team weren’t steeped in reality and that they were lying to the man…not unlike a certain Machiavellian strategist was doing to Bill English in 2002 and Jenny Shipley in 1999. Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast is scathing….here we would just quote Daryl Kerrigan and “Tell ‘im he’s dreamin’”

Later on, it quotes an aide saying Romney was “shellshocked.”

Um. WHAT?!?

They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night? Who are these people? What were they drinking and smoking? Look, I understand the bubble. I understand seeing those big crowds, which he certainly did have, and thinking you’ve got a great shot.

But a campaign has to keep itself connected to reality, and the reality was always, always, always that the electoral math was tough for Romney. The turnout of D+6 was surprising to most people–to me, even, as I’ve said. But the electoral college was Romney’s Berlin Wall that it was always going to be hard to scale. If you lost purchase on that basic fact, you were in your own little fantasy kingdom (or Rove’s and Morris’s).

And have you read about this ORCA nightmare? Ridiculous.

I wrote Wednesday that I felt some sympathy for Romney on a human level. But having read these two pieces I’m back to feeling the normal healthy contempt for the guy. Good riddance, you dope. Please just stay home now. Or homes.

For all the money he raised and spent they made amateur errors, in strategy, in polling and in the ground game.