ROMNEY BREAKS HIS "NO THIRD BID" PROMISE (HILLARY CELEBRATES)

SELFISH ROMNEY BREAKS HIS "NO THIRD BID" PROMISE:

ROMNEY & GOP ESTABLISHMENT LEADERS PLOT "SCREW THE VOTERS" BROKERED RNC CONVENTION.

HILLARY & OBAMA CELEBRATE EARLY VICTORY.

Sources: Newsmax, CNN, Infowars, NBC News, USA Today, Youtube

**** CNN: Romney Plans to Block Trump in Brokered Convention

Mitt Romney is hoping for a brokered Republican convention in July to stop Donald Trump from winning the nomination, CNN reports.

He has instructed close advisers for look into ways to make this happen.

"The goal is to lock him out at the convention," CNN correspondent Jamie Gangel told Wolf Blitzer, citing sources close to the former Massachusetts governor. "Now, they have to get to the convention, but that's the long-term strategy.

"And implicit in that is that Mitt Romney could offer himself up as a white knight to save the party," she said.

Romney slammed Trump Thursday as a fraud who is playing the American public for suckers.

Gangel called Romney's speech "the opening volley" in a GOP strategy that also includes urging all the current candidates to stay in the race to stop Trump from winning the required number of delegates.

"Expect the GOP leadership establishment to hit harder and harder on Trump," she added, primarily on releasing his tax returns.

"There is a thought that he is not as rich or as liquid as he says he is — and they think they can undermine him by doing that," Gangel told Blitzer.

The ultimate goal is to force Trump into a third-party run — and she said that her Romney sources were "willing to take that chance.

"It's better than having him as the Republican nominee."

Rick Perry Woos Young, Conservative Voters At Liberty University

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Rick Perry At Liberty University: Faith And Foreign Policy Mixed In Evangelical Address

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry filled in details of his personal and spiritual biography Wednesday in a speech at the nation's largest evangelical Christian college, and outlined an approach to foreign policy that he said would imitate the nation's 40th president, Republican Ronald Reagan.

Texas Gov. Perry was introduced as a possible second coming of Reagan by Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., who said he appreciated Perry's willingness to talk off the cuff in a way that is politically incorrect. Falwell Jr. specifically mentioned Perry's oblique comments regarding whether Texas might at some point secede from the United States.

Most of Perry's remarks followed the arc of his life. He cast himself as an earthy, common man, pulled himself up from a hardscrabble childhood in Paint Creek, Texas.

"For me, indoor plumbing was a bit of a luxury until I was about five years old," Perry said. "I didn't worry about the latest fashions. My mother sewed most of my clothes. And I didn't know that we weren't wealthy in a material sense. I knew that we were rich in a lot of things that really mattered, a spiritual way."

He made light of his poor performance as a student. Of his 1968 graduation from Paint Creek High School, he said, "I graduated in the top 10 of my graduating class -- of 13."

And he sought to explain why his college transcript was filled with C's and D's, saying he intended to be a veterinarian but found he was not cut out for it. "Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me," he joked.

Perry sketched out a searching, uncertain youth: "I spent many a night pondering my purpose, talking to God, wondering what to do with this one life, among the billions that were on the planet. What I learned as I wrestled with God is that I didn't have to have all the answers, that they would be revealed to me in due time, that I needed to trust him."

But, Perry said, he did not find his own Christian faith until he was 27.

"My faith journey is not the story of someone who turned to God because I wanted to. It was because I had nowhere else to turn. I was 27. I'd been an officer in the United States Air Force commanding a fairly substantial piece of sophisticated equipment, telling men and women what to do. But I was lost spiritually and emotionally. And I didn't know how to fix it," Perry said.

At another point in the speech he said that "Christian values" should be given supremacy over other religions in guiding the U.S. government.

"America is going to be guided by some set of values. The question is gonna be, whose values?" Perry said. "It's those Christian values that this country was based upon."

While many evangelicals will want to hear more about Perry's personal conversion experience, for now the speech was a platform for Perry to regain some of the momentum lost over the last week.

Perry's first two debates as a presidential candidate have left him bloodied. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has attacked him for his past statements on Social Security, accusing him of wanting to end the program. And on Monday night, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) savaged Perry for his 2007 attempt to mandate an HPV vaccine for sixth-grade girls at a time when his former chief of staff was a lobbyist for the drug maker, Merck, which would have manufactured the vaccine.

Polls this week have shown some signs that voters are beginning to doubt his ability to beat President Obama in a general election, though he still maintains a large lead over Romney in national polls. While that data is of some significance, it does not tell the story of the candidate's standing in key early primary states.

Perry also meandered Monday night in his answer on how the U.S. should proceed in Afghanistan. And some saw his call to "bring our young men and women home" as a nod to a more isolationist form of foreign policy that has emerged among some on the right.

But the Texan went out of his way to articulate a vision for engagement with the world, not withdrawal.

"Our response cannot be to isolate ourselves within our own borders but to engage our allies in the quest to build these enduring alliances around the globe for freedom," he said.

The central thrust of his foreign policy message was that the U.S. should be "the world's leading advocate for freedom," addressing the problem of oppression that he said he originally saw first hand as an Air Force pilot flying a C-130 transport plane through the mid-1970s.

"We must do what Ronald Reagan did at the apex of the Cold War, which is to speak past the oppressors and the illegitimate rulers and directly to their people -- the ones who live behind the walls of oppression while yearning to be free," Perry said.

Falwell Jr., the son of Liberty founder Jerry Falwell -- who died in 2007 -- said in his introduction that the current moment is similar to 1980, when Reagan ran against incumbent President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. It was a clear comparison of Perry to Reagan, a parallel that has been discussed recently even in the Wall Street Journal.

"Thirty-one years ago this fall as a Liberty freshman, I sat mesmerized as a conservative governor from a large state told a much smaller convocation about his vision for America," Falwell Jr. said. "At that time, America was mired in an economic malaise and seemed to be waning in its standing in the world. Overreaching government control had fueled double-digit interest rates and inflation. As young college students, we feared -- just as many of you do now -- that our nation's future was in jeopardy. Ronald Reagan was that governor, and he was elected president soon thereafter, and over the following eight years he returned America to prominence and prosperity."

Falwell Jr. then welcomed Perry to the podium saying, "I have a feeling today that history is about to repeat itself."


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Sources: CNN, Huffington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama's 2012 Re-election Team Helping Him To Lose? Horrible At Organizing! New Blood Needed!

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Obama’s Team Is Blowing It

We were told, as I recall, that Barack Obama had to seek a debt deal with the Republicans to please independent voters. Well, the independent voters are speaking, and they don’t appear to be especially appeased. There’s a new Gallup poll just out showing that independent voters hate the deal. Their views on it are far more similar to the GOP’s than to the Democratic Party’s. Combine these data with the president’s approval numbers, which are swiftly heading south, and we have little choice but to conclude that this brilliant stratagem backfired. Isn’t it time for someone to say: this new White House political team is worse than the previous one?

First let me run you through the numbers. Americans disapprove of the deal by 46 to 39 percent. Democrats support it 58-28. Republicans oppose it 26-64. Independents oppose it 33-50. A second question asked of respondents: Was the deal a step forward or backward or neither with respect to “addressing the federal debt situation?” Democrats lined up 30-14-50. Republicans, 15-28-52. Independents, 16-25-50. Finally, independents also align more closely with Republicans on the question of whether the deal will have a good or bad effect on the economy. Whereas 29 percent of Democrats think the effect will be good, just 12 percent of independents and 8 percent of Republicans believe that.

The White House strategy failed, and it failed pretty spectacularly. It reminds me that I’m hard pressed to think of a White House strategy that hasn’t failed in the last several months. The springtime budget negotiation, the one where a government shutdown was narrowly averted and Obama bragged about overseeing the biggest single-year domestic spending cut in history, was a failure too; a success, one supposes, in the sense that the government did not shut down, but another situation in which Obama’s back was pressed to the wall by congressional Republicans.

Let’s see, what else? The immigration speech from May? What, you don’t even remember it? If it was at least partly intended as a sop to Latino voters before the campaign really revs up, it seems to have left them largely unmoved—Obama is below 50 percent with Latinos in some surveys. OK, how about the more recent Midwestern jobs swing? Probably did no damage, but certainly did no good. The Vineyard vacation? I don’t begrudge the man a little R and R, and maybe it’s a small thing, but that destination—a bad symbol, Martha’s Vineyard. He might as well have gone to California wine country. Last I checked, there are golf courses aplenty to be found in North Carolina, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Colorado.

When David Axelrod left to go to the campaign office in Chicago, and Rahm Emanuel left to become mayor, the spin was that David Plouffe and Bill Daley, their respective replacements, would, if nothing else, bring fresh and unwearied perspectives to these admittedly grueling and thankless jobs. But they appear to have given Obama bad advice at nearly every turn. Plouffe, from what I can see, just looks to be in over his head in this job. He was a whiz at organizing a campaign field network. But this is a different game.

The fundamental problem appears to be the excessive fixation on Obama’s (forgive me for even using this word) “brand”—this “adult in the room” nonsense. Whenever I see those words in print anymore, usually in a background quote from a White House aide or a Democratic source trying gamely to be on-message, I hear strong and unsettling echoes of the 2008-vintage messianism. Does anyone buy this anymore, outside of what appears to be an increasingly bubble-ized White House? Those beloved independents certainly aren’t thinking of the president that way these days, and one doubts that even most of his supporters are.

Obama’s brand is and has by now long been determined by events and facts, not by White House spin and set pieces, or by vestigial remnants of the Days of Hope. Those events and facts are almost uniformly grim (except Libya, whose political gains will be fleeting or perhaps nonexistent). Adults get credit when the household is running smoothly and the kids are well behaved and pulling good grades. With none of those things happening, the adult in the room is precisely the last thing to want to be. But they refuse to change gears.

Watching this White House over these last several weeks has been like watching a time-lapse video of an apple rotting. We’re supposed to believe now that the jobs plan to be announced next month will change everything. Maybe. But what needs to change is the way the White House approaches politics. To what? To a simple, blunt, and deeply real-world truth: He’s not nearly as bad as the other guys, who are crazy. That’s all he’s got. That’s his “brand” now. If his people keep insisting on trying to package him the way they did three years ago, he won’t have even that.


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Sources: Daily Beast, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Vs. 2012 Tea Party Selected GOP Candidate: Obama Wins!

Obama in Close Race Against Romney, Perry, Bachmann, Paul

President Barack Obama is closely matched against each of four possible Republican opponents when registered voters are asked whom they would support if the 2012 presidential election were held today. Mitt Romney leads Obama by two percentage points, 48% to 46%, Rick Perry and Obama are tied at 47%, and Obama edges out Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann by two and four points, respectively.

These prospective election ballots -- measured Aug. 17-18, well over a year before the Nov. 6, 2012, election -- indicate that the race for president at this point is generally competitive, with voters fairly evenly divided in their preference for giving Obama a second term or electing a Republican candidate. Even though the four Republican candidates tested have varying degrees of name recognition, they all fare roughly the same.

Gallup's generic presidential ballot -- measured six times this year -- shows a close race between Obama and a generic "Republican presidential candidate," although there have been survey-to-survey variations on this measure, with the Republican candidate leading in June and July.



President Obama's job approval rating is hovering around the 40% mark. This is below the rating that any of the six incumbent presidents re-elected since Eisenhower has had at the time of the presidential election.

However, in August of the year before they were re-elected, Ronald Reagan (43%) and Bill Clinton (46%) were both below 50%. Obama's position of rough parity against leading GOP candidates shows that more Americans at the moment say they would vote for Obama than approve of the job he is doing -- perhaps a reflection of the continuing lack of a strong front-runner on the Republican side.

With the first official votes for the Republican nomination more than five months away, and with the very real possibility that GOP candidates such as Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and George Pataki may jump into the race, much could still change as the election process unfolds. A look at presidential election trial heats conducted in the late summer of the year before previous elections reveals that such change is quite common:

In August 1999, Texas Gov. George W. Bush led Vice President Al Gore by 55% to 41% in a Gallup trial heat poll. That race ended up in a virtual dead heat, with Gore ultimately winning slightly more of the national popular vote than Bush.

In August 1995, Kansas Sen. Bob Dole was slightly ahead of President Bill Clinton in a Gallup poll, 48% to 46%. On Election Day 1996, Clinton beat Dole by eight points.
In August 1983, President Ronald Reagan was ahead of Democrat Walter Mondale by only one point, 44% to 43%. Reagan went on to beat Mondale in a 59% to 41% landslide in the November 1984 election.

In August 1979, incumbent President Jimmy Carter was tied with former California Gov. Reagan -- each getting 45% of the vote. Reagan ultimately defeated Carter by 10 points.

Voters Favor Their Party, but Republicans Lend Less Support to Bachmann, Paul

Democratic and Republican registered voters display strong allegiance for their party's candidate across these election match-ups. Democrats are the most consistent, voting for Obama to about the same degree regardless of who the GOP candidate is.

Republicans exhibit a little more variation, giving their strongest support to Perry (92% would vote for him) and Romney (91%), weaker support to Bachmann (86%), and the weakest support to Paul (82%). Independents tilt at least slightly toward voting for Romney, Perry, and Paul against Obama, while tilting slightly toward Obama when he is pitted against Bachmannn.


Bottom Line

President Obama is at the moment in a rough parity position when registered voters are asked whether they would vote for him in election matchups against four potential Republican candidates. Romney fares slightly better than the other GOP candidates, and Bachmann slightly worse, but these are not large differences. Gallup research shows that these types of election measures at this stage in the campaign are not highly stable, and one can expect changes in the relative positioning of Obama and various GOP candidates in the months ahead.




The Tea Party Will Select the GOP's 2012 Nominee

The tea party movement is the driving force in American politics.

In every aspect of our politics — both in campaigns, in state Houses and up on Capitol Hill — the tea party movement is reshaping the debate on debt and the role and scope of government.

This grass-roots, bottom-up movement completely dominated the 2010 GOP senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial primaries — and won almost every contested GOP race. Even long-time conservative senators were defeated in GOP conventions and primaries because, in the eyes of the tea party, they were “too liberal” on fiscal issues.

But not every tea party GOP nominee won their general election races. The two most notable losers of races that a better GOP candidate would probably have won were Delaware (Christine O’Donnell) and Nevada (Sharron Angle).

With the power of the tea party movement in mind, the best way to analyze the 2012 GOP presidential field is through a tea party prism. No candidate is going to be the 2012 GOP nominee unless the tea party embraces him or her.

Thus, we can begin to eliminate candidates who are unacceptable to the tea party movement:
Mitt Romney has gone out of his way to distance himself from tea partyers; his Romneycare health bill dooms him.

Haley Barbour was a two-decade long inside-the-Beltway lobbyist; the tea party abhors lobbyists, insiders, and those who have lived off the political system.
Jon Huntsman — who, you ask? — can forget it. Known in Utah as a “liberal” Republican who then served as Obama’s ambassador to China cannot win the support of the tea party.

Newt Gingrich? Too self-promoting, too many marriages, too mouthy, and he has no credibility.

Donald Trump? While many agree with his China rhetoric, he is un-electable. He cannot survive serious scrutiny. But, before that happens, he does excite tea partyers with his “outsider” image — it is indeed just an image. Trump has played footsie with long-time Democrat incumbents and funded their campaigns. The tea party doesn’t know that yet, but they will. And they will not embrace him.

Forget the other also-rans, too, like Rick Santorum and Rudy Giuliani. No one digs them at all. They are yesterday’s news.

OK, so who can be the darling of the tea party movement, but not necessarily someone who can win the general election?

Today, they are focusing on Michelle Bachmann, who senses that there is no one else right now who excites the tea party. They have loved Sarah Palin — and still might if she runs. But her recent absence from the scene has opened up the way for others. Bachmann is just Palin 2.0.

Tim Pawlenty is trying to be all things to all people. He’s trying to have one foot in the GOP establishment camp and the other foot in the tea party camp. The problem is that when you try to be all things to all people, you often end up being nothing to anybody. Pawlenty is also boring, which is a fatal problem in the era of TV in politics.

Gov. Mitch Daniels is dithering about running. He has a tea party-friendly economic story to tell, but he appears to lack the fire in the belly for this 2012 race.
Huckabee is still very much alive as a candidate — although rumors abound that he is not going to run because he’s making a ton of dough on TV — and he appeals to Evangelicals and to some tea partyers, but not all. He is the front-runner right now, but a weak one.

Ron Paul is more of a libertarian than a tea partyer, but he does have strong, devoted supporters. He is a good man, but he will not be the GOP nominee or the tea party candidate.

Conclusion: the tea party will select the 2012 GOP nominee. That is not to say that candidate will win the White House. For example, Michele Bachmann could be the Christine O’Donnell/Sharron Angle of the 2012 GOP presidential race: she might win the support of the tea party movement, but she is un-electable in the general election because independent voters will not vote for her.

We on the right have a big problem: we have no one running (yet) who can win both the support of the tea party and can then win over the crucial independent voters in the fall of 2012.

Obama can be beaten, but only if the exact right kind of candidate runs against him.

So we have to keep looking for just such a candidate.


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Sources: Gallup.com, MSNBC, NewsMax, Youtube, Google Maps

Michelle Bachmann Celebrates Elvis Presley's Birthday On 34th Anniversary Of His Death (More Gaffes)

Michele Bachmann's Elvis Birthday Message Comes On Anniversary Of 'The King's' Death

During a stop in South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann wished the late Elvis Presley a "Happy Birthday."

The problem: the message from the conservative congresswoman comes on the anniversary of the death of the "King of Rock and Roll."

"Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today," said Bachmann while speaking in the Palmetto State. "We played you a little bit of promise land when we pulled up. You can't do better than Elvis Presley."

Elvis was born on January 8, 1935.

While it's unlikely the gaffe will cost Bachmann, the presidential contender is no stranger to making questionable remarks. Over the weekend, Bachmann emerged victorious in the Ames Straw Poll, a table-setter for next year's Iowa caucuses.


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Sources: AOL, Fox News, Huffington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Rick Perry's Texas "Economic Boon" A Big Lie? Low Wage Jobs With No Benefits!

The Texas Unmiracle

As expected, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has announced that he is running for president. And we already know what his campaign will be about: faith in miracles.

Some of these miracles will involve things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.

So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.

It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.

Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.

In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.

So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.

For this much is true about Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.

And just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there’s a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and that this is one area where Texas does in fact do something right.

But what does population growth have to do with job growth? Well, the high rate of population growth translates into above-average job growth through a couple of channels. Many of the people moving to Texas — retirees in search of warm winters, middle-class Mexicans in search of a safer life — bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, the rapid growth in the Texas work force keeps wages low — almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average — and these low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State.

So Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population — and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what’s needed.

If this picture doesn’t look very much like the glowing portrait Texas boosters like to paint, there’s a reason: the glowing portrait is false.

Still, does Texas job growth point the way to faster job growth in the nation as a whole? No.

What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.” The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.

In fact, at a national level lower wages would almost certainly lead to fewer jobs — because they would leave working Americans even less able to cope with the overhang of debt left behind by the housing bubble, an overhang that is at the heart of our economic problem.

So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, don’t believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end Texas’s crippling drought.



Is Rick Perry's jobs 'miracle' a lie?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose campaign bus is plastered with the slogan "Get America Working Again," is making his record on jobs the centerpiece of his run for the Republican presidential nomination. As proof that he's the GOP candidate best positioned to beat President Obama, he points to the so-called "Texas miracle" — Perry's state has added, not lost, jobs in the faltering economy. But critics say Perry's claims are "overblown," and that others, including President Obama, also deserve credit for Texas' good fortune. Is Perry overstating the "Texas miracle" and his role in it?

The jobs "miracle" didn't happen: "The Texas miracle is a myth," says Paul Krugman in The New York Times. The oil-producing state entered the recession late, largely because it benefited from high oil prices in 2008. After that "unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else." In June 2011, Texas' unemployment rate, at 8.2 percent, was higher than New York's and Massachusetts', and "one in four Texans lack health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation...."
"The Texas unmiracle"

Perry did create fertile ground for job growth: California has lots of oil, too, says Jeffrey Folks at The American Thinker, yet its economy is "in the Dumpster" while Texas prospers. Why the difference? Texas has no income tax, so working adults and retirees want to live there. And as governor, "Rick Perry helped to create a tax and regulatory environment" that helped businesses flourish. Too bad Obama didn't adopt Perry's policies at a national level.
"Obama and the Perry miracle"

The "Texas miracle" is more complicated than Perry admits: Rick Perry can take credit for a 2003 law capping malpractice awards, says Ezra Klein at The Washington Post, which attracted 20,000 physicians to Texas. But, for the most part, Texas didn't create jobs — it siphoned them from other states by offering sub-par wages and loose business regulations, which is hardly a solution nationwide. And many of Texas' new jobs came from government spending aided by $6.4 billion in Obama stimulus spending, but you won't hear that in Perry's stump speech.
"Breaking down Rick Perry's 'Texas miracle'"


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Sources: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NY Times, The Week, Youtube, Google Maps

Rick Perry Sounds, Looks More & More Like George W. Bush (Decision 2012)

How Rick Perry really differs from George W. Bush

It’s an inevitable comparison.

They’re both Texans. One is a governor; one was a governor. And both of them have been photographed near planes. On the surface, they might be easy to confuse.

But what’s the real difference between Rick Perry, now a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, and George W. Bush?

Simple.

“He’s a Yale graduate. I’m a Texas A&M graduate,” Perry explained to reporters.

Policy differences? Perry wouldn’t say. Instead, CNN reported, he devoured an entire pork tenderloin, calling it “the other white meat.”

But for anyone else wondering about the differences between the two, here is a list I came up with earlier, composed mainly of facts about Rick Perry and occasionally of myths about Rick Perry that Perry has been working hard to disseminate.

George W. Bush: Has not, as far as we can tell, threatened to end Ben Bernanke.

Rick Perry: Has threatened to do Bad Texan Things to Ben Bernanke (“I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas” if Bernanke prints more money).

George W. Bush: Has written a book with a polysyllabic word in the title.

Rick Perry: Has written a book.

George W. Bush: Is probably not carrying a gun.

Rick Perry: Is probably carrying a gun.

George W. Bush: Likes to make up whimsical words.

Rick Perry: If anyone coins any new words, he would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.

George W. Bush: Pardoned some turkeys at Thanksgiving.

Rick Perry: Would never sit by at such a miscarriage of justice; plans to execute several innocent turkeys immediately upon taking office.

George W. Bush: Sometimes cried in public.

Rick Perry: Only cries in public because his tears have the power of job creation.

George W. Bush: Has never fought a coyote.

Rick Perry: “The Second Amendment allows me to go jogging with my daughter’s dog over here. And if a coyote jumps out, I can take care of it.”

George W. Bush: Got misunderestimated.

Rick Perry: Gets misoverestimated.

George W. Bush: Is the son of a president.

Rick Perry: Emerged fully formed from the head of Zeus, clutching a dead coyote.

George W. Bush: Was president.

Rick Perry: Looks like he was president in one of those made-for-TV movies in the mid-’90s.

George W. Bush: At one point controlled the economy.

Rick Perry: Controls the winds!

Hide your wife, hide your kids, because Rick Perry will find them and give them jobs the Texas way, and then afterward he will eat pork tenderloin with them and shoot any coyotes that threaten them, including, but not limited to, Ben Bernanke. If you hand Rick Perry your purse, it will burst into flames. Rick Perry doesn’t hold purses! Wherever Rick Perry walks, thousands of jobs spring up at his feet! Once, Rick Perry visited New York City, and New York City apologized to him.

My point is, Rick Perry is nothing like George W. Bush. Rick Perry Facts have already sprung up on Twitter, but as fast as you can make up erroneous sayings, he is telling us that he is going to take care of coyotes, saying he loves the Second Amendment best of all the amendments (don’t tell the 10th Amendment that!) and blowing kisses to Mitt Romney (don’t tell the 10th Amendment that either).

If George W. Bush had done that, people would have thought it was sort of cute. When Rick Perry does that, it is a terrifying display of dominance that makes donors rush to his feet with piles of bullion.

The real difference is that Rick Perry is George W. Bush without all those sissified East Coast things that George W. Bush used to do, like “not wear cowboy boots everywhere” and “do rather poorly at an East Coast university.” “What do I need to go to the East Coast for?” Perry asks. “I can do that right here in Texas.”



3 Points on Rick Perry

1) Until I saw clips of him in the past two or three days, I hadn't realized how much watching and seeing Perry is just like having George W. Bush back in our living rooms. Maybe this will be an ingredient for strong conservative support. I can't imagine that any sophisticated Republican operative thinks it's a plus in winning 270 electoral votes. When Republicans ran against the first post-Nixon Democratic president, in 1980, they didn't try to find someone who looked and sounded like Tricky Dick.

2) Just after Sarah Palin was nominated three years ago, I argued that anyone who moves all at once from state-level to national-level politics is going to be shocked by the greater intensity of the scrutiny and the broader range of expertise called for. Therefore that person is destined to make mistakes; the question is how bad they will be. For Palin, they showed up in her disastrous first few interviews, especially with Katie Couric. Perry is getting his own introduction to this principle just now.

3) For the past few months, Democrats have had the suspicion that Republicans are playing a double or even triple-game in opposing the Obama Administration on spending and deficit issues. At the most principled levels, they're upholding their belief in a smaller government. At the next level down, they're trying to limit Obama's operational successes wherever they can. And, most cynical of all, they understand the idea of "the worse, the better." The surest path toward beating Obama next year is for the economy to stagnate or decline.

Perry's comments about Ben Bernanke cut through any such subtlety. If Bernanke "prints money" in the next 15 months, toward the end of forestalling a recession or preserving jobs, Perry would consider that "almost treasonous." This is the kind of thing you just don't hear from national-level politicians, and for a reason. (For starters: the punishment for treason is death.)

Obama looks better the more the Republican field displays its outlook and temperament. Romney looks better the more the anyone-but-Romney alternatives come into full view.

UPDATE:

Brad Delong of Berkeley, with whom I usually agree, somewhat snottily contends that Republicans have been saying this all the way along. When it comes to thwarting Obama, and playing the game of "the worse, the better," of course, as many people including me keep pointing out.

But when it comes to presidential candidates making accusations of treason, a capital offense, against (Republican-appointed) financial officials, unt-uh. That is obviously what I was talking about, and that is in fact new. As I am sure Delong will realize on second thought.


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Sources: Fox News, The Atlantic, Think Progress, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Rick Perry Accuses Ben Bernanke Of Treason; Makes Anti-Business Remarks (Video)

Rick Perry's 'shocking' gaffe: Ben Bernanke is 'treasonous'


The Republican governor of Texas begins his presidential campaign by insinuating that a Federal Reserve decision to print more money would warrant violent retaliation

The video:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry ignited the first potential controversy of his fledgling presidential campaign Monday night with some violent words for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. "If this guy prints more money between now and the election," he said while campaigning in Iowa, "I dunno what y'all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas."

He followed up the "shocking" statement by saying that Bernanke would be committing a "treasonous" act if he approved another round of quantitative easing — in which the Federal Reserve creates electronic money to buy up corporate and government debt and keep borrowing costs down.

Treason is a punishable by death.

The reaction:

"This guy may be good for Texas," says Taylor Marsh at her blog, "but he'd be a disaster for America." Calling Bernanke treasonous for doing something that is the very essence of his job is "political knuckle-dragging" at its scariest. Perry didn't do his campaign any favors with this unpresidential threat, says James Fallows at The Atlantic, but any politician is "destined to make mistakes" when moving from state politics to the intense scrutiny of a national race.

Actually, this "hysteria is ridiculous," says Erick Erickson at Red State. Perry's language is no worse than anything scores of politicians have used to criticize Wall Street executives and blast their political opposition.



Why Rick Perry's Ben Bernanke comment matters in the GOP tent

Forget, for a moment, the left's outrage over Rick Perry's comment last night that Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke could be guilty of treason.

The more immediate political danger of the remark is within the context of the Republican race: Perry very much wants a mano-a-mano contest against Mitt Romney and the irresponsible suggestion of frontier justice for a respected Fed chair threatens that match-up.

Why?

Because Perry's comment is exactly the sort of misstep that will worry the many GOP donors on the sideline right now who chiefly want to beat President Obama. The quote reinforces their central fear about Perry — that he has a cowboy problem — and could prompt them to remain uncommitted.

And as long as there are big money types sitting on their wallet there remains the possibility that a Paul Ryan or Chris Christie could get in late and muddle the race. Perry looks a lot less formidable if he's fending off Michele Bachmann on the right and a Ryan or Christie on the center-right to get a clean shot at Romney.

As some conservatives have noted today, the Bernanke line probably won't hurt Perry with a conservative base that is radicalized at the moment. But, at this stage in the race, the Texan's audience isn't just activists. It's donors, also, and they are far more finicky when it comes to picking candidates.


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Sources: AP, Politico, Taylor Marsh, The Atlantic, The Week, Think Progress, Youtube, Google Maps

Tim Pawlenty Quits 2012 Race After Being Eclipsed By Bachmann

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Pawlenty Drops Out of Presidential Race After Disappointing Straw Poll Finish


Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is dropping out of the Republican presidential contest, after a disappointing third place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll yesterday.

“We needed to get some lift to continue on and have a pathway forward,” Pawlenty said this morning in an exclusive interview on “This Week.” "That didn’t happen, so I’m announcing this morning on your show that I’m going to be ending my campaign for president.”

Pawlenty finished with 2,293 votes, giving him 14 percent of the total ballots cast – more than 2,500 votes behind winner Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who finished with 28 percent of the vote, and runner-up Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), who was close behind with 27 percent.

The former Minnesota governor was reportedly planning to spend a total of around $1.5 million on his Iowa campaign from his launch in late May through mid-August.

Despite better resources and organization in Iowa, Pawlenty was only able to beat fourth-place finisher Rick Santorum by just over 600 votes.



Pawlenty sent out an email to supporters last night titled, “Just the Beginning” congratulating Bachmann on the straw poll win, but vowing to continue his campaign.

“As I've said all along, we needed to show progress to do well, and we did just that. This is a long process to restore America -- we are just beginning, and I'm eager for the campaign,” the email to supporters read.

But the weak showing at the Iowa Straw Poll proved to be too large a blow for the campaign to continue.


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Sources: ABC News, AP, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Ames Iowa GOP Straw Poll Still Discredited By Serious Political Pundits; Iowans Disagree

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The Overhyped, Underwhelming Iowa GOP Straw Poll

When Iowa Republicans hold their presidential straw poll in Ames, Iowa, on Saturday, a couple of things will happen. One is that the state party will make a lot of money, including from corporate sources. The other is… well, not much. Yes, several thousand of Iowa’s most hardcore Republican Party activists will cast votes for a 2012 presidential candidate. But what will this tell us?

The Iowa straw poll only dates back to 1979, and in its five prior installments it hasn’t been very predictive of the ultimate GOP nominee. George H.W. Bush won it the first time, but Ronald Reagan went on to win the party’s nomination. Pat Robertson dazzled everyone with a straw poll victory in 1987, but Bush was the eventual nominee. Bob Dole in 1995 and George W. Bush in 2000 both finished first (Dole tied with Phil Gramm, to be exact) and went on to be nominees. But Mitt Romney’s 2007 straw poll did him little good; Romney didn’t even go on to win Iowa. And the man who did, Mike Huckabee, never became a very credible contender for the nomination.



So it’s not clear why the straw poll should be very interesting in the first place. Maybe it’s just fun to have some empirically-measured competition between the candidates. Except that two of the most important candidates aren’t even competing. The GOP’s consensus front-runner, Mitt Romney, has wisely reckoned that he has little to gain by participating (what good did it do him last time?) and won’t even be on the ballot. Neither will Texas Governor Rick Perry, who will announce his candidacy in another state on Saturday, mischievously siphoning away media attention from other candidates and reinforcing the idea that the straw poll is more sideshow than main event. Ditto Sarah Palin, who skillfully exploited the congregation of national political reporters at the Iowa state fair on Friday, but who left her intentions as unclear as ever.



So what does that leave us? Mostly a story about poor Tim Pawlenty. Within the closed system of political media, the main question that the straw poll will answer is whether Pawlenty is deserving of continued treatment as a credible candidate. Pawlenty himself has conceded that a poor showing will merit a reassessment of his campaign, though he stopped short of saying he’d quit the race as have other candidates, like Lamar Alexander and Dan Quayle, who fizzled in Ames. A corollary to this question is whether Michele Bachmann can demonstrate organizational power on the ground to match her star power. Should Bachmann win the straw poll resoundingly, that would indicate she’s more than a “bobblehead” media sensation, and can command the ground troops required to win the Iowa caucuses. And the harder it looks for Pawlenty to win the caucuses, the harder it is to see how he can be the GOP nominee.

It’s also entirely possible that Ron Paul, with his fanatical following, will embarrass the party by beating everyone and winning the straw poll. If that happens, you could see it as a sign that Paul is being wildly underestimated and is en route to becoming the next Republican nominee. Or you could see it as evidence that the Iowa straw poll is a silly exercise, not worth the attention it commands, and that candidates and reporters alike would be better off enjoying a summer Saturday before the campaign finally gets serious this fall.


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Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Politico, TIME, Youtube, Google Maps

Mitt Romney Fights To Remain GOP Frontrunner: Juggles Bachmann, Perry & Paul

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Bachmann wins Iowa straw poll as Perry jumps in

On the day that Texas Gov. Rick Perry formally joined the Republican presidential race, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) narrowly won the Iowa straw poll in a contest that dealt a major setback to third-place finisher Tim Pawlenty.

The events of Saturday marked the opening of an accelerating chapter in a 2012 GOP campaign that has been slow to take shape. With Mitt Romney established as the frontrunner for the nomination, the entry of Perry and the victory here by Bachmann are likely to reorder the field and intensify the competition to emerge as the former Massachusetts governor’s principal challenger.

Romney has dictated the pace of his campaign almost without regard to other contenders, and he has managed to avoid direct confrontations with the other Republicans in the field, most recently in Thursday’s debate. But that could change quickly as the GOP candidates look toward a September calendar that includes three nationally televised debates.

Bachmann captured 29 percent of almost 17,000 votes in the Ames straw poll and was closely followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul, with 28 percent. Pawlenty received 14 percent. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum was fourth with 10 percent, and businessman Herman Cain was fifth, with 9 percent.

“This is the very first step toward taking the White House in 2012, and you have just sent a message that Barack Obama will be a one-term president,” Bachmann told supporters shortly after the results were announced.

Pawlenty’s disappointing finish threatens to end a candidacy that once held great promise. Until only a few months ago, many Republicans saw Pawlenty as a potentially strong candidate for the nomination. He has spent more time and money in Iowa than any other candidate.

In the run-up to the straw poll, which is not a reliable predictor of who wins later in the Iowa caucuses or finally receives the nomination, the former two-term Minnesota governor vowed to keep going no matter what the results were on Saturday. But he will have to reevaluate in light the tallies. By the time they were announced, Pawlenty and his senior team had packed up and left.

Pawlenty issued a statement congratulating Bachmann while claiming he had moved into a “competitive position” for next year’s caucuses. But he added, “We have a lot more work to do.”

Paul, who often runs strongly in straw polls, might have provided the biggest surprise of the day. But he has yet to demonstrate the broad appeal needed to win primaries or caucuses. Still, his finish is recognition that the iconoclastic conservative with the small-government message has greater resonance today than four years ago.

Perry formally announced his candidacy with a speech in South Carolina in which he criticized the policies of President Obama. “I will not sit back and accept the path that America is on because a great country requires a better direction, because a renewed nation needs a new president,” he said.

Perry has served longer than any other governor in Texas history and brings to the race solid conservative credentials, an affinity with both tea party activists and social conservatives, and an unbeaten record as a candidate.

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But he is untested on the national stage and will have little margin for error, because he joins a race in which other candidates have been testing their messages and building organizations for months or even years.

Bachmann, too, is a relatively new candidate, having announced her candidacy only two months ago. But in that short time she has established herself as a politician with a passionate following and a message built around her claim that she has fought harder than almost anyone in the party to oppose the president’s policies.

But Perry threatens to eclipse Bachmann. For the time being, he is likely to take attention away from her candidacy and could drain some of the support she has developed. The two, who will challenge Romney from the right, have overlapping constituencies, though GOP strategists see Perry as having potentially broader appeal and a longer, deeper record, given his 10 years as a chief executive.

Both will visit Waterloo on Sunday, which could offer early clues.

Romney is seen as a less-than-dominant frontrunner; although he is ahead in most of the national polls, his candidacy has not generated much passion among many of the party’s conservatives. But he has one significant advantage over his main rivals: He has run before and knows what to expect.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, was in Ames on Saturday and talked about what the race ahead might look like. On a day when many Republicans were asking what Perry would do to Romney, Huckabee said, “The question may be what Romney does to Perry. One thing Romney’s got going for him is that this is not his first rodeo. It’s a bruising experience.”

The straw poll turnout exceeded that of four years ago but was well below the 1999 record of more than 23,000. Perry was not on the ballot but, aided by an energetic write-in operation, finished sixth, just ahead of Romney, who was on the ballot. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich was eighth, followed by former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan.

A victory by Paul would have been a blow to Bachmann, who brought considerable momentum to the vote and needed the victory to validate her standing as the frontrunner in the state. It also would have hurt the credibility and future of the straw poll, a number of Republicans here said.

Saturday’s straw poll drew a bigger-than-expected crowd, which reveled in the early fall weather, with blue skies, moderate temperatures and a slight breeze. By midday, traffic heading onto the Iowa State University campus was moving at a crawl.Once in the area, the candidates’ supporters faced long lines to vote.

As the voting took place, each of the candidates, flanked by their families and small armies of supporters, filed onto the floor in the Hilton Coliseum. Some of the campaigns played quick videos on the JumboTron above before their candidates took the microphone.

Few generated more enthusiasm than Bachmann, who confidently roamed the stage with a wireless microphone rather than standing still at the rostrum.

“We are going to do it. It’s going to happen — 2012 is ours,” Bachmann said as the nearly full coliseum erupted in cheers. “We’re going to take it back in 2012. All the energy we need to take the country back in 2012 — it’s right here in this room, in Ames, Iowa.”

Bachmann offered few details, delivering instead a sharp critique of Obama and an expression of her conservative principles, economic and social. She drew perhaps the loudest applause when she congratulated Iowans for voting out three state Supreme Court justices last year who had ruled against a law barring same-sex marriage.

Pawlenty, too, offered a withering critique of Obama’s Washington. He promised to reduce taxes, spending and regulation — and, as he has done everywhere on the trail over six weeks of intense campaigning across Iowa, he made the case that his record as governor distinguishes him from the similar promises of the rest of the field.

“Many of the Republican candidates for president are going to say many of the same things,” he said. “They’re going to say, ‘I’m the one who will reduce taxes. I’m the one who stands for the cause of life, I’m the one who stands for traditional marriage.’ But as you know, as we’ve seen with Barack Obama, just saying the words isn’t enough.”

As he has throughout his campaigns for president, Paul set himself apart from Republican orthodoxy. Like Bachmann, he drew a strong response. His ardent supporters, who filled much of the arena, cheered loudly as he made a passionate call for a return to the principles laid out in the Constitution, reforming monetary policy at the Federal Reserve and bringing U.S. forces home from throughout the world.

“We’re into wars that are costing us trillions of dollars,” Paul said. “Those wars are costing us jobs and prosperity.”

Santorum, who moved his family to the state last month and who visited 68 of the state’s 99 counties, called his campaign “the little engine that could,” saying, “This campaign is about scratching and clawing for every bit of recognition we can get.”He implored Iowa Republicans to recognize his conservative convictions as more deeply held than those of some of the others in the race.

Cain gave perhaps the most rousing speech of the afternoon, laying out his solutions for the country’s many “crises” and suggesting he is the product of a movement of citizens ready to take back their government. “This giant has awakened, and it’s not going back to sleep,” he said.

Displays of enthusiasm were even more pronounced on the lawns surrounding the Hilton Coliseum, where Bachmann supporters waited in a two-hour line to gain admission to her tent, eat a “beef sundae” and listen to country star Randy Travis perform.

In Pawlenty’s tent on the other side of the coliseum, organizers dished out 4,000 Dairy Queen Blizzards and 1,750 pounds of Famous Dave’s BBQ, but by midafternoon the crowds had dwindled and more tables sat empty than full inside a cavernous tent.


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Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, Google Maps