(via JMG)
Tweet of the day: Jason Alexander
Mitt Romney loves everything in Michigan
I love the trees – they’re the right height.
I love the lakes – big and small.
I love cars.
I love cars.
I love cars.
This performance is called pandering. Pandering to the people of Michigan, specifically.
Remember, Mitt Romney said he would have let the auto industry go bankrupt. He has clearly said he wouldn’t have saved those American jobs.
Recently, Michigan Rep. Fred Upton (R) noted that without the rescue, Michigan “would have hit 40 percent unemployment rates.”
What do you think of a “president” who would choose to allow thousands and thousands of American jobs to disappear when they could be saved?
How would you feel about a “president” who would let YOUR job disappear when it could be saved?
Fox News Poll: President Obama leads GOP contenders in swing states
President Obama leads each Republican contender in swing states according to a Fox News Swing State Poll that also suggests a significant shift in the battleground landscape.
The new poll, released Wednesday, shows Obama leads Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich in the all important swing-states.
The registered-voter poll was conducted across 10 states where Obama had small margins of victory in 2008 and are considered decisive in the upcoming presidential election.
These swing states fall into three regional tiers:
• the Rocky Mountain tier includes Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico
• the Rust Belt tier includes Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
• the Dixie tier includes North Carolina, Florida and Virginia
The swing-state voters back President Obama over Romney by 8 percentage points, and over Santorum by 9 points.
President Obama tops Ron Paul by 12 points in the poll.
Gingrich lags farthest behind Obama, as voters in these key states prefer the president to the former Speaker by 20 points.
Overall, swing-state voters look much like the national electorate.
Obama currently holds a 14-point lead over Romney in the Dixie states, and an 18-point edge over Santorum.
Compare that to the more cautious mood in the Rust Belt states where Santorum ties with the president, and voters are almost evenly split between Romney and Obama (+1 point).
Rocky Mountain voters give Obama a 7-point edge over Romney.
Nationally, voters approve of President Obama (48 to 45 percent) — his highest approval rating in more than seven months.
Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney in Michigan
From NBC News: A poll out today shows Santorum leading in Michigan.
This one conducted for the Detroit News/local NBC affiliate WDIV shows Santorum leading Romney 34%-30%, with Gingrich at 12%, Paul 9%. (Poll was conducted by the Glengariff Group – margin of error of +/-4.4%)
A Public Policy Polling survey found Santorum leading Romney, 39 to 24 percent, among likely GOP voters in Michigan — the state where Romney was born and where his father served as governor.
Santorum leads Romney in Michigan
Rick Santorum is now leading Mitt Romney in Romney’s home state of Michigan.
The Public Policy Polling survey found Santorum leading Romney, 39 to 24 percent, among likely GOP voters in Michigan — the state where Romney was born and where his father served as governor.
Santorum, hot off three primary and caucus wins last week, also rocketed to the front in national polls.
A Gallup poll released yesterday showed Rick Santorum with 30 percent support nationally, in a statistical tie with Romney, who had 32 percent.
Mitt Romney wins CPAC Straw Poll
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| Great photo of Mitt Romney |
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the winner of the Conservative Political Action Conference Straw Poll, The Washington Times reports.
The poll provides an indication of where the party’s base is — and it is solidifying behind Mitt Romney.
With Rick Santorum’s three wins earlier this week in Nevada, Colorado and Missouri, some in the GOP were concerned Santorum could actually pull off an upset and become the eventual GOP nominee. This worried some as Santorum’s policies are very far to the right and could have trouble winning voters in a general election.
Romney won the Straw Poll with 38 percent of the 3,408 votes cast. Rick Santorum followed with 31 percent, Newt Gingrich with 15 percent, and Ron Paul with 12 percent.
In a separate national poll of conservatives, Romney took 27 percent of self-identified conservatives, just ahead of Santorum’s 25 percent.
The Washington Times, the poll’s sponsor, notes that Romney’s total is the highest since then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush won the straw poll in 2000 with 42 percent of the vote.
(source)
Mitt Romney on today’s Prop 8 verdict
In 1994, Mitt Romney called for “full equality” for LGBT Americans, but this afternoon his presidential condemned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling against Proposition 8.
“Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court,” Romney said. “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.”
Romney, who’s name has become synonymous with “flip-flop” has changed his position with the LGBT community many times in the past several years.
In 1994, Romney met with the Log Cabin Republicans and pledged, “I’m with you on this stuff… I’ll be better than Ted Kennedy.” Romney promised, in writing, to fight for “full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens,” co-sponsor a federal employment nondiscrimination act, and characterized Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as “the first in a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military.”
While serving as head of the 2002 Utah Olympics, he approved an amended workplace nondiscrimination policy that covered sexual orientation and “later reached out to Salt Lake’s gay community as part of the committee’s effort to enhance diversity in the Olympic workforce.”
As a gubernatorial candidate in 2002, he promised to “promote tolerance and fight discrimination….[and] proposed a thorough review of state laws to see where lifelong gay and lesbian relationships were negatively affected, and how the state could change its practices to make them nondiscriminatory.”
Still, from the very beginning there were signs that the embrace of gay equality represented a calculated attempt to win over votes in a moderate to liberal state, rather than a principled belief in civil rights. Several 1994 accounts published in the Boston Globe reported that just before launching his senate run, Romney told an audience of Mormon Church members that homosexuality was “perverse” and “reprehensible.”
Seven of Ten Americans support raising taxes on millionaires
In the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, 7 out of 10 Americans support increasing the taxes of millionaires.
Other results of the poll:
• Among registered voters – in a head to head match up – President Obama leads Mitt Romney 51-45%.
• President Obama leads Newt Gingrich by 11 points in a head to head match up.
• President Obama has big leads over Romney on the questions of who would better protect the middle class, handle foreign policy and fight terrorism.
Santorum: Mitt Romney is “unqualified”
Rick Santorum, looking for any kind of traction to justify his continued campaign in spite of low numbers in the poll, issued some of his harshest criticism of Mitt Romney to date in Minnesota today.
From CNN: “I really don’t find any legitimate reason why [Romney] would oppose [Obamacare], because the plan he put together in Massachusetts is in fact Obamacare on the state level,” Santorum said during a strongly worded healthcare-centered speech, adding that Romney “should not be the nominee of our party.” He added that Romney is “uniquely unqualified and I would argue disqualified” from making the case against the nation’s healthcare plan.”
I’ve been of the opinion that Rick Santorum is only staying in the race for the GOP nomination in hopes of being the Vice President pick. Clearly he’s not going to have the votes/delegates to clinch the top spot.
However, it’s looking like it will be more and more difficult to take on the VP nom when he’ll have to walk back all these attacks on Romney. Not sure there’s a ‘spin’ out there that can accommodate his attacks.
Lower turnout in early GOP primary states
Via Think Progress: Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian initially predicted as many as 70,000 Nevadans would participate in this year’s caucus, but final results show that fewer than half as many actually turned out.
The 33,000 figure is not only lower than expectations, but more than 10,000 fewer than participated in Nevada’s caucus in 2008. And even though Romney topped 50 percent of the vote for the first time in this primary season in the sate, his vote total was more than 25 percent lower than it was in 2008, and his percentage of the vote fell slightly as well.
The results in Nevada mark the third Republican primary so far where turnout has been below 2008 levels. In a year where Republicans are counting on high enthusiasm to defeat President Obama, that’s not a good sign for the eventual nominee. In Florida, turnout dipped 14 percent, and in New Hampshire, which has an open primary, turnout among registered Republicans fell 16 percent.
Mitt Romney’s campaign is ‘spinning’ this under the premise that people are so happy with Romney that they are staying home confident he will win these state contests.
I’d say folks are staying home because of a lack of enthusiasm for Romney or any of the current candidates.
What do you think?