Romney the Huckster (from Rolling Stone) - Great Read!

[Hawaii Hiker]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16983679/mitt_romney_the_huckster

Excerpt:

So when some starched-up, smooth -talking, TV-ready creature like Mitt Romney, who made his fortune laying off factory workers, walks onto college campuses and starts bashing cohabitation and having children out of wedlock, he loses young people who are tired of watching our leaders fuck things up on a grand scale and then turn around and blame our problems on stoned teenagers. Back when the Gingrich revolution was hot, even college kids bought into the reactionary rhetoric. But now that Bush and Cheney have blown that revolution to itty-bitty pieces, the Republican morality line sells like warmed-over horseshit; on college campuses, Romney comes off like a parent trying to maintain his moral authority after a messy divorce in which the kids got to watch Daddy shacking up with his secretary and Mommy hauling out the lawyers to repossess Dad's fridge"..

"For a Republican, Mitt Romney did everything right. He pinched his pennies, fired everyone in sight, worshipped God loudly and often, and kept his cock in his pants for the whole of his enormously profitable adult life, before finally jumping into politics in late middle age with a giant war chest in tow. But by the time he made it to the campaign trail, a succession of Republicans before him had already spent an entire generation crying wolf to increasingly skeptical audiences. Romney may be a great salesman, but he's running for the nomination of a party that has nothing left to sell".

[yellowcanine]

1. Gotta love this line......Matt Taibbi dies gave a way with words.

"...on college campuses, Romney comes off like a parent trying to maintain his moral authority after a messy divorce in which the kids got to watch Daddy shacking up with his secretary and Mommy hauling out the lawyers to repossess Dad's fridge."

[Yael]

2. Huge K & R for Matt Taibbi -- my new favorite pundit

[TwilightGardener]

3. Romney gets more negative press than any candidate in either party--

this has been a tremendous help for us so far. I've never heard anyone in any form of media say anything nice or positive about the guy, except to point out that he's only been married once and has a strong campaign organization--and yet, he leads in early-state polls, despite the obvious contempt. It would be truly scary if the media started to build him up with positive coverage (the way they did with Chimpy)--but so far, looks like we're safe.

[Hawaii Hiker]

4. Howard Stern talked about this article briefly this morning,

& I rushed to find it & read it myself, & it was an outstanding take on Romney, who, of all the equally worthless Republican candiates, is the WORST by far!...

[TwilightGardener]

7. I actually think Romney's the best of a bad bunch. He's not likeable, but

he's not crazy. He's a CEO-type, and the reason he's able to shed one set of convictions and adopt another set so easily is a typical feature of CEO-types: adaptability for the current market. He scares me the least because he's intelligent, cautious, flexible, and not wedded to ideology, and he's not an uber-hawk neocon like McCain and Rudy, despite his "caliphate" rhetoric. He's not a religious nut, either. But he is hampered by his image of phoniness and plastic Ken-doll looks and car-salesman ways. This is what would hurt him in the general, UNLESS the press started building him up. Hope not. I think any of our frontrunners could beat him otherwise.

[Hawaii Hiker]

8. I do think he IS a religious nut, because he has given

the secularists are evil & the we are a nation under God speechs...He is also the type that blames the entertainment industry for all the worlds ills..He basically blamed the VA Tech shootings on porn & rap music, which is CLASSIC rhetoric of the religious right...

Though he may not be Sam Brownback crazy, make no mistake, Mitt Romney is a very far right guy...

[TwilightGardener]

11. He's trying to appeal to the fundies by emphasizing the principles

they have in common, family values and religion-wise--this is his way of reassuring them that he's really a Christian, that they shouldn't worry about the magic-underwear stuff. It's disgusting, shameless pandering--but I don't think he's especially faith-driven. I think he's money-driven, which will ultimately prove a stronger hand, I think.

[soothsayer]

5. Pretty good stuff! Howard Stern was talking about it this morning.

[0007]

6. Beautifully written article. Recently John Cornyn wrote a piece

here in the Texas paper that again told us how much the Muslins hated us and soon the cold blooded killers would be poisoning our drinking water among other things.

The real question is this: If you're gunning for the GOP nomination, where do you run these days? Do you strap on your medals, limp into VFW halls and do a Band of Brothers act, a la John McCain? Do you stand up before suburban crowds, tell horror tales of hairy Muslims lurking near reservoirs and promise to bomb them all back to the Stone Age, like Rudy Giuliani? Do you wear your WWJD cap and quote the Bible, like Mike Huckabee, or freak out about rape-hungry Mexicans, like Tom Tancredo? Or do you do what Romney does: Look smooth, keep your nose clean and tour the country talking about business being the answer to all the world's ills? This bit was taken from the same article on page 4.

[DeepModem Mom]

9. K&R

[ladjf]

10. If I ever decide to go into the snake oil business, I am going to

put Romney in charge of sales. He's a natural.