Despite Tyler's recent posts about Ron Paul (here and here) and mine about Huckabee (here and here), it's actually Mitt Romney who is the craziest person in race for the torture party's presidential nomination (again John McCain is honorably excepted from this characterization).
Why you ask? Is it the Mormonism? The plastic hair? His first name?
No, it's because (a) Tom Tancredo endorsed him, and (b) he accepted the endorsement.
"Tancredo and Romney met for about an hour today prior to the announcements, Tancredo said. He opted to support Romney after he was reassured that he had clarified his position on immigration.
Tancredo has questioned Romney’s sincerity on the issue in the past, but said Thursday he’s convinced Romney would secure the border, prosecute employers of illegal immigrants, and make those who are here illegally return to their native countries."
The abject spineless flip flopping and pandering of Romney (and Giuliani) is just despicable and sickening to behold.
13 comments:
I don't see how that's crazy.
Like it or not, there seem to be a lot more voters who agree with Tancredo than who agree with you- I've heard it claimed that the reason Tancredo dropped out is that all the other Republicans (and even a few of the Democrats) have stolen his only issue.
So Romney's move may be sleazy, but it sure ain't crazy.
I guess I just don't buy T. Tancredo as Republican Kingmaker, nor do I see this side of this issue as being a general election vote winner. Maybe Mitt has gotten a (brown) nose in front of Rudy in their race to the bottom though.
Whereas Ron Paul keeping donations from white supremacists isn't despicable? (There are photo-ops, too.)
Note that Ron Paul is just about as negative on immigrants as Tancredo, if you actually listen to anything he says or read his website. A libertarian who wants to massively cut legal immigration? That's Ron Paul.
Not that I have any love for Tancredo, mind you.
Lol, John I didn't say Paul wasn't crazy! The only thing you can say about him is he hasn't flip-flopped. He was "crazy when crazy wasn't cool".
"nor do I see this side of this issue as being a general election vote winner."
Well that's the big question, isn't it?
Romney having a different estimate from yours as to how voters feel on a particular issue certainly doesn't make him "crazy." And given what line of work he's in, if I had to choose I'd trust his guesses about what's gonna play well with voters over yours.
Now if you want to claim the voters are crazy....
Oh, yeah, and Paul sounds a lot crazier. The folks who want to cut legal immigration are a far smaller group than the ones who want stop illegal immigration - heck, the latter group includes a lot of legal immigrants who went through the whole long annoying naturalization process, and are pissed off about seeing other people get to cut ahead in line.
And noone's calling Tancredo a "kingmaker." Romney just has to believe that Tancredo attracts more voters than he repels, even if just by a few percent.
Tancredo polled nationally pretty consistently at 1% so i think he repelled a lot more than he attracted. See here for eg.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2007-12-03-politics-poll.htm?loc=interstitialskip
you have honestly hurt my feelings badly by saying that you think Romney knows more about politics than I do.
You guys are all wrong...
*Angus, Phelan didn't say Romney knew more about politics than you.
*Ralph, How can you conclude that b/c Angus is a prof, Mitt knows more about playing to voters? On the contrary, Angus is probably a prof b/c he realizes he couldn't simultaneously play to voters and maintain integrity. Mitt also realizes this.
*Thacker, The bill of rights gaurantees our right to be white, black, or even chartreuse supremacists if we choose.
I looked at the poll. Tancredo won 1% if an 8-way race. They did *not* have a positive/negative/who? type breakdown for him. If that breakdown was something like 5%/4%/91% he'd be coming in last in that poll, and he'd still be a net plus for Romney.
Given that Tancredo is a bit of a johnny-one-note, it's quite possible that anyone who doesn't care much either way about immigration has never heard of the guy in relation to anything they care about. That's not the same as high negatives.
Also, right now Romeny's main concern is getting nominated. He may be hoping that by the time of the general election the name Tancredo will be completely forgotten. Or even if he doesn't have a specific idea how to deal with immigration in the general, he may just be applying that old Massachusetts politicians' adage: "We'll drive off of that bridge when we get to it."
The writer who can't be bothered to work up a thoughtful critique often resorts to some version of the tedious epithet "crazy." That insult has the virtue of requiring no effort to prove, and it can't be contradicted by the person so labeled. In other words, it's intellectually lame.
my critique is this: Romney is a spineless, unprincipled, bottom feeder who in his haste to get to the bottom in Iowa is fast making himself unelectable nationally. Tancredoism is NOT popular nationwide and is a vote loser. There is only so much pandering to the nativists that the Reps. can indulge in, without it biting them in the butts in the general election. I am sorry that one word, meant and used in humor, confused you so much that you couldn't see that all of the above is in the "intellectually lame" post.
I fully agree with Angus. Then again, I am actually somewhat happy that Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot with such gusto (remember Wilson in CA?) This will guarantee a (Dem) prez in 2008, and likely beyond, if they insist on the nativist route.
I am a socially-liberal, free-marketeer, atheist. So I am pretty alienated by both Dems and Reps. But nowadays I find Reps way more dangerous than Dems. I miss Bill!
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