Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

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Rick Santorum wins Alabama and Mississippi, big spending Romney places third

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From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum won the Alabama and Mississippi primaries Tuesday, pulling off another pair of surprise victories and boosting his claim to be the conservative alternative to Republican front-runner Mitt Romney.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who built his campaign around the Southern strategy, appeared headed to a second-place finish in both states while Mr. Romney was trailing slightly in third.

The result marked a surprisingly strong showing for Mr. Santorum, as polls had suggested a tight race between Messrs. Romney and Gingrich for the lead in both states. Mr. Santorum had even begun to suggest that he was fighting for a strong showing rather than a win.

In jubilant remarks to supporters in Louisiana, another Southern state whose primary is coming up, Mr. Santorum took a shot at Mr. Romney. “People have said ‘You’re being outspent’ and people are talking about the math and that this race is inevitable,” Mr. Santorum said. “For someone who thinks this race is inevitable, he spent a whole lot of money against me.”

The results were an undeniable boost for Mr. Santorum in his bid to position himself as the conservative alternative to Mr. Romney. Since the beginning of the GOP nomination battle last year, Mr. Romney has benefited from a division among his more conservative rivals.

“I don’t think there was a single poll that had me anywhere close to a win in Mississippi,” Mr. Santorum told supporters. He added, “This campaign is about ordinary folks…going out there and exceeding expectations, defying the odds, because we believe in something bigger than ourselves.”

The Romney campaign had devoted last-minute resources to put its candidate over the top. Mr. Romney made a hastily scheduled visit to Mobile, Ala., on Monday, and an outside group supporting his candidacy spent nearly $2.3 million in Alabama and Mississippi.

Is Santorum too socially conservative?

Let’s see:

The New York Times focused on the “treacherous political ground” occupied by President Obama as the election draws closer, while proving wrong pro-Obama assumptions made in recent stories by Times reporters Susan Saulny and Jackie Calmes, in Tuesday’s front-page poll analysis “Obama’s Rating Falls as Poll Reflects Volatility,” by Jim Rutenberg and Marjorie Connelly.

[…]The responses to poll questions #73 and #74, asking whether employers and religious groups should be forced to cover birth control for their employees, showed that most respondents favor employers be allowed to opt out of covering birth control for moral reasons (51% were in favor of the opt out, while 40% favored making coverage mandatory. The gap grew when the question was narrowed down to “religiously affiliated employers” like hospitals (57% were in favor of the opt out, 36% in favor of the mandate).

[…]As Kaus puts it:

If the Times says women were “split,” you know that must mean they were actually narrowly against the NYT‘s preferred position. Sure enough, when asked, “Should health insurance plans for all employees have to cover the full cost of birth control for female employees or should employers be able to opt out for moral or religious reasons?” women favored opting out by a 46-44 margin. The margin increased to a decisive 53-38  for “religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university.”

The Times has pushed hard on the idea that the debate over birth control and abortion is hurting the party among women. Yet the actual poll data contradicted anti-Republican anecdotes forwarded by Times reporter Susan Saulny on Sunday suggesting “centrist women” were abandoning the GOP and fleeing to Obama.

CBS News broke the poll results from Republican primary voters down by male and female and found that, despite the liberal media insinuation that the issues of birth control and abortion were scaring away women voters, Republican women were actually breaking toward socially conservative candidate Rick Santorum over Mitt Romney by a strong 41%-27% margin. (Men went for Romney over Santorum 32%-27%.) 

Maybe voters should stop worrying about electability and just vote for the best candidate. With an economy like this, my keyboard could run against Obama and win. The man has failed at everything he has tried in the last 3.5 years.

More about Rick Santorum

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Green socialists backing Romney campaign with huge donations

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From the leftist Politico. (H/T Doug Ross)

Excerpt:

Will Mitt Romney flip-flop on climate change if he’s elected president?

Some big donors are betting on it.

Romney and his super PAC have taken millions from funders with strong green streaks — despite the fact that the former Massachusetts governor has run to the right in the primary, proclaiming doubts about global-warming science and trashing President Barack Obama’s greenhouse gas emissions policies.

Julian Robertson, founder of the Tiger Management hedge fund, helped put cap-and-trade legislation on the map with $60 million in contributions over the past decade to the Environmental Defense Fund.

Now, Robertson has given $1.25 million to Romney’s Restore our Future super PAC, plus the maximum $2,500 to the Romney campaign.

Other green-minded financial backers may not be giving as much as Robertson, but they still share the view that climate-change science and a solid environmental agenda wouldn’t be a lost cause if Romney won the White House.

“My feeling is that on these issues that people learn,” said former Gov. Thomas Kean (R-N.J.), who maxed out last fall to Romney with a $2,500 check. “And my hope is, as time goes on, he will understand that not everybody agrees on how you deal with these issues, but I hope he will agree with 99 percent of the scientists who believe this is an issue that we have to deal with.”

As president, Kean said he hoped Romney could duplicate his Beacon Hill successes in building coalitions with Democrats on issues such as energy and the environment. In addition, Kean noted that Romney wouldn’t face the same gridlocked climate debate of recent years, in large part because of the boom in domestic natural gas production that’s helped lower the nation’s greenhouse gas emission levels. “The whole game has changed,” Kean said.

Rob Sisson, president of the Republicans for Environmental Protection, said he’s scraping together personal funds to write a check to the Romney campaign after getting a chance to meet him for the first time last month during a town hall campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Mich.

“I think his record as governor was pretty good as far as Republicans go,” said Sisson, who also gave $1,000 last June to Jon Huntsman’s campaign. “I really get the sense from him and the folks around him with whom I’ve spoken that as president he’d really look at each situation, gather the data and really make a decision that’s best for the country.”

“If that goes against the grain of how he’s campaigning now, so be it,” Sisson added. “He’s going to be driven by data and facts and not emotions and getting pushed into one corner by one faction of the party.”

Among the other green Romney donors is Texas businessman and philanthropist Trammell S. Crow, founder of Earth Day Dallas and winner of the Republicans for Environmental Protection’s Green Elephant Award in 2007. Crow and his family have given $71,000 this cycle to Republicans, including $15,000 to the Republican National Committee and $5,000 to Romney, according to donation data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“I am voting for Mitt Romney and I believe in global warming,” Crow said in a statement to POLITICO.

Please see below for more of Obama’s disturbingly liberal positions.

Mitt Romney

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Mitt Romney raised taxes by $740 million while he was governor of Massachusetts

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Deroy Murdock explains in this Scripps Howard News Service article.

Excerpt:

Hot on the heels of his eight-vote Iowa-caucus landslide, Willard Mitt Romney is crisscrossing New Hampshire before Tuesday’s key primary. Romney is masquerading as a limited-government, free-market executive from next-door Massachusetts. From the Golden Gate to the Granite State, voters should greet Romney’s impersonation with a quarry full of skepticism.

In fact, Romney increased taxes by $309 million, mainly on corporations. These tax hikes, described by Romney apologists as “loophole closures,” totaled $128 million in 2003, $95.5 in 2004, and $85 million in 2005. That final year, Romney proposed $170 million in higher business taxes, the Boston Globe reports. However, the Bay State’s liberal, Democratic legislature balked and only approved an $85 million increase.

“Tax rates on many corporations almost doubled because of legislation supported by Romney,” Boston Science Corporation chairman Peter Nicholas explained in the January 6, 2008 Boston Herald. Also, Romney raised the tax on subchapter S corporations owned by business trusts from 5.3 percent to 9.9 percent — an 85 percent hike.

“Romney went further than any other governor in trying to wring money out of corporations,” the Council on State Taxation’s Joseph Crosby complained.

Romney also created or increased fees by $432 million. He was not dragooned into this by greedy Democratic lawmakers; Romney himself proposed these items. In 2003 alone, Romney concocted or boosted 88 fees. Romney charged more for marriage licenses (from $6 to $12), gun registrations (from $25 to $75), a used-car sales tax ($10 million), gasoline deliveries ($60 million), real-estate transfers ($175 million), and more. Particularly obnoxious was Romney’s $10 fee per Certificate of Blindness. Romney also billed blind people $15 each for discount-travel ID cards.

While Romney can take credit for a $275 million capital-gains tax rebate, property-tax relief for seniors, and a two-day, tax-free shopping holiday, he also must take responsibility for signing $740.5 million in higher taxes, plus that $85 million in business taxes that he requested and legislators rejected.

“Romney did not even fight higher death-tax rates,” notes former California State Assembly Minority Whip Steve Baldwin, a Romney critic. “When the (Massachusetts) legislature considered this issue, Romney’s official position was ‘no position.’ This echoed Barack Obama’s ‘present’ votes in the Illinois State Senate.”

As Romney drained his constituents’ pockets, the Public Policy Institute of New York’s Cost of Doing Business Index rated Massachusetts in 2006 as America’s fourth costliest state in which to practice free enterprise. The Tax Foundation dropped Massachusetts from America’s 29th most business-friendly state to No. 36. The Tax Foundation also calculated that, under Romney, Massachusetts’ per-capita tax burden increased from 9.3 percent to 9.9 percent. In real dollars, the Romney-era per-capita tax burden grew by $1,175.71.

As if impoverishing his own taxpayers were not bad enough, Romney’s March 5, 2003 signature raised taxes on non-residents retroactive to that January 1. Perpetrating taxation without representation, Romney’s law declared that, “gross income derived from… any trade or business, including any employment,” would be taxable, “regardless of the taxpayer’s residence or domicile in the year it is received.”

Consequently, according to data furnished by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, between 2002 and 2006, New Hampshire residents who work or do business in the Bay State shipped Massachusetts $95 million above what they paid when Romney arrived. The average tax paid by New Hampshirities to Massachusetts grew by 19.1 percent, from $2,392 in 2002 to $2,850 in 2006.

Romney has a pro-abortion record and pro-gay-marriage record. Not only did he pass Romneycare in Massachusetts, but now we know that he also raised taxes. Why is he running as a Republican? I don’t see anything in his record that would cause me to believe that he is a Republican.

You can see Mitt Romney explaining all of his liberal views in his own words in these videos.

Mitt Romney