Plan B Forum

I thought Ann Romney's speech was brilliant...

The camera loves Ann Romney...

She has a quality of genuineness that comes across strikingly....

I really wish she were the candidate...

Nothing drove this contrast home as effectively as when her husband, looking and acting like the reincarnation of Wink Martindale, joined her on the stage...

I'm beginning to wonder if Romney is taking Botox injections....

Can a 65 year old man have a forehead and face that bereft of expression naturally?

Almost like a male version of Joan Rivers...

Christie gave a great speech....

For Christie....

Bush-Christie 2016!

Be careful what you wish for Jim.

I'm talking about Jeb Bush, Big RR...

Ann is the botoxed one.

And I was filled with sympathetic feelings when she talked about their early struggles while going to college.

It must have been very difficult to have been born into millionaire families and then having to deal what what us lower class citizens have always needed to do in order to succeed in life.

She was pandering to the women voters. And she succeeded at doing a very obvious job of it.

The only people that could possibly buy into mrs romney's speech are those who decided long ago to vote for the Mitt.

Along with a few of the undecided dumbshits.

The apple never falls far from the tree Jim.

And the 2012 Presidential Election goes to:

(All that needs to be written in eight words)
Obama: 281 Electoral Votes
Romney: 257 Electoral Votes
...........................

Bush-Christie 2016? Not a chance unless the Crisco Kid loses 150 pounds between now and then. And that would be a very fat chance!

Yeah, and the other option is a President who believes, with 23 million unemployed, that the most important thing we can do is figure out a way to re-hire more government bureaucrats, and re-build our manufacturing base with solar panels and windmills...

The way to put America back to work in Obama Land, is to put middle aged accountants to work weather striping windows...

I don't think so....

It's a very, very sad situation...

It really is to weep....

Barack Obama had an opportunity,when he came into Office...Rare in American politics, to really change the game...To genuinely use the good will that he enjoyed across the board to create a "post partisan" environment...

To remove the poison that had existed since the Clinton Years....And he blew it...

He blew it when he turned the stimulus over to Nancy Pelosi....

And he never recovered from that...And he never will get that opportunity again....

Mitt Romney will certainly never get that opportunity either....

Whoever is elected for the next four years, Democratic or Republican,...

They will not have that opportunity....Someone else may in 2016; Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton..

But neither of the candidates running today will ever have that opportunity...Neither Obama nor Romney has the where-with-all to gather the wind in their fist and make history...

Neither one of them....Obama had the chance, but he blew it...

Romney hasn't the ability, even if he wanted too...

I support Mitt Romney, not because I like the man,; personally I find him quite odious...

As I've pointed out before, he has the distinction of being the only serious candidate ( the others being McCain, Huckabee, Thompson, and Giuliani) that I never seriously considered supporting in 2008...

Frankly, I find him a little creepy...

(He reminds me a bit of Norm Appleton from National Lampoon...can't find a picture...but be that as it may...)

But Mitt Romney isn't running against The Ideal....

He isn't running against The Second Coming Of Jesus Christ....(Or even the First Coming Of Jesus Christ....)

And no one would mistake Mitt Romney for either Coming of Jesus Christ....

But he doesn't have to be a Coming Of Jesus Christ, First, Second, or otherwise....(Or even
A Latter Day Saint...)

All he has to be is a man who has a marginally greater understanding of how geo-politics and macro economics work than a well meaning fellow who believes that the way the 21st Century becomes an American Century like the 20th Century is if we just build enough wind mills and solar panels...

On balance, its not a really high bar....

Lord Jim wrote:The way to put America back to work in Obama Land, is to put middle aged accountants to work weather striping windows...

Yeah.

The leaders of the Republican party want to put Americans back to work.

In the same way that medieval potentates wanted their serfs to keep on working.

Lord Jim wrote:All he has to be is a man who has a marginally greater understanding of how geo-politics and macro economics work than a well meaning fellow who believes that the way the 21st Century becomes an American Century like the 20th Century is if we just build enough wind mills and solar panels...

Which, as between the two major parties, leaves only Obama in the running.

This is going to be, by far, the least enthusiastic vote I will cast in a Presidential election, since the first one I cast with great enthusiasm in 1980....

But again, Romney is not running against the ideal....

He's running against a guy who sincerely believes that the most pressing unemployment problem we face is to put the 350,000 government bureaucrats who have been laid off back to work....

If every single one of those folks were re-hired tomorrow, it would represent one good month of job creation....

In a country that needs about two years worth of that kind of job creation, every month for us to get out of the hole we're in....

(Of course, while putting all those bureaucrats back to work wouldn't represent a drop in the bucket from an employment stand point, it would mean a lot of money in terms of union dues to help fill Democratic campaign coffers....)

The fact that it is the recovery of the private sector that would put more of those government bureaucrats back to work on a sustainable basis, (by raising state tax revenues with more people employed paying into the system) seems to be completely lost on him....

As unhappy as I am with Romney, I am completely turned off by Team Obama's campaign theme....

I understand why they are doing what they are doing from a political standpoint, (they really have no choice if they want to win; they sure as hell can't run on "It's Morning In America"...they'd look delusional) but I'm still deeply depressed by it...

The President Of The United States, the one time supposed agent of "hope and change" is now pinning his re-election hopes on fear and class warfare....

"Re-elect President Obama because his opponent only pays about 13% in taxes, and that's probably less than you do"

Ain't exactly an up-lifting message....

We have one party trying to sell the lie that if we just tax "the rich" a little more, we'll solve all our problems, and the other with a large faction calling for cuts so draconian and politically unpalatable, that if they actually happened it would very nearly represent the unraveling of the post New Deal Social Contract....

We cannot tax or cut our way out of this mess...

We can only grow our way out of it, and neither party is carrying this message....

That's really where the debate ought to be...

It shouldn't be about how we make ourselves feel better by punishing people who have done well, versus politically unsustainable austerity schemes....

The debate ought to be about how to best grow the economy....And neither candidate is even talking about this...

(That's one of the things I really like about Jeb Bush, BTW; as far as I can see from his interviews and what I've read that he's written, he's the only major national political figure focused on this...it's a damn shame he isn't the nominee.)

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I'll say it again....

Start growing the economy back at a 3-4 percent annual level, and bring the unemployment rate back down to the 4% range, and all of these apocalyptic debt projections disappear...There's no conceivable combination of tax increases or budget cuts that comes anywhere close to doing for the economic health of this country what that would do....

And neither of these candidates is even making this a part of the national debate, (except in the most perfunctory lip service kind of way)

As I said, it's very depressing...

No matter who wins this race, I don't see much improvement on the horizon....

Lord Jim wrote:I'm talking about Jeb Bush, Big RR...

And while I am no fan of Jeb, I was referring to Christie. He can give a reasonably good speech, but he's not someone I'd want anywhere near the oval office.

As for the choices this election presents Jim, while I understand your disillusionment with the Obama team, and i share your view of Mitt, do you really want to see one elected over the other? I don't, and I'd far rather see neither elected. I'm getting really tired of voting against someone, rather than for someone worthy of my vote and will not vote for either. And if this results in the election of Mitt or Obama, so be it. At least I will hope my failure to support either of the front runners (along with the thousands of others doing likewise) will express my dissatisfaction with the politics as usual and tell the party bosses that they can't take my/our support for granted.

We cannot tax or cut our way out of this mess...

We can only grow our way out of it, and neither party is carrying this message..../quote]

While I tend to agree with you, I also think we do have an obligation as a people to help those most affected by this (which is most certainly not of their own doing) by taking steps to help them--and if this costs us additional taxes (and/or debt), that's a cost we have to bear. and few in either parties are discussing that as well--some say they people just have rely on themselves, others just ignore the problem generally as it is not a group easily pandered to. Yes some programs have begun, but we need more--and it is not politically easy to discuss this. Oh, Obama can "feel their pain", just like Clinton said he did, but they need action, not sympathy (either that or we'll need a lot more police to keep them in line).

I'd far rather see neither elected.

Yes, but we both know that isn't going to happen....

On my short list of people I'd like to see as President, neither one of these guys would make the top 100....

So I'm going to vote for #146 over #173....

If people took that position 160 years ago, the Republican Party would never have been born.

I am not saying that any groundswell of third party support is going to happen in this election. But if you are not satisfied with the status quo in the two major parties, you have to start somewhere. American history has seen several times when the then two-party system was overthrown, and several more when third parties have made substantial inroads. There is no reason that cannot happen again.

Scooter, we had a real shot at that back in the early 90's with the Reform Party....(But then of course Ross Perot turned out to be a kook and then the whole thing got taken over by Pat Buchanan and driven off a cliff)

The original premise of the Reform Party was a sound one that I think could have been attractive to a broad range of people....

Fiscal responsibility, and strong national defense, but without all the "social issues" hoo hah, or the radical Randian "government has no role to play" crapola....

I have to agree Scooter, and casting my vote for an "unelectable" third party candidate, IMHO, makes a bigger difference than just choosing the least objectionable of the two major party candidates. Yes, there are times when one candidate is so bad I must hold my nose and vote for the other, and other times (like with W) when I underestimate how bad the more objectionable candidate is, but if more people would vote for a candidate rather than against one, I do think a difference could be made.

Jim--I agree, and i do think we could have other choices in the future as well, if we demand them.

A lot of people are going to feel very silly on Wednesday morning, November 7th.

Romney is going to win handily. Every rational poll today has it either dead even or trending to Romney. The few that don't are all "cooked." This is a horrible situation for an incumbent. People who make their decision at the last minute generally go for the challenger, and that will be true in "spades" this time - no play on words intended - when the economy is so bad.

Never was the quadrennial key question more apt: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

One doesn't even need to spell out the answer, it is so obvious.

What America needs now is a little "R&R."

And we shall have it.

When I can't see a candidate I want to vote for I usually check out the third party candidates and see which one I most agree with. Seems I'll be in that camp (at least for the presidential seat) on this one. NY will go to Obama no matter how I vote so getting some third party agenda looked at might help us.
Local seats up for grabs I pay much more attention to.