Magic Pants for Pres!!!

[Long Run]

Of course, for entertainment value, it would be worth it to see liberals suffocate and bloviate now that Mitt's SEP-IRA has to have at least doubled in value in the last 8 years, and other nonsense.

[Lord Jim]

I just heard on CNN that Romney is expected to tell supporters in a phone conference in the next hour that he is not running...

All the speculation has been that he would tell them that he is running...

We'll see if CNN got it right...

Fingers crossed...

ETA:

Here's what the Daily Beast was saying just two hours ago:

Mitt Romney Is Running for President

Mitt Romney will call senior donors at 11 a.m. ET Friday to give them “an update” on his campaign plans. Sources have told The Daily Beast that the former Massachusetts governor will announce his intention to explore a third run for the White House. Romney and his senior aides believe he is the best placed candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton. In a memo sent by Romney to his inner circle Thursday, he highlighted three reasons he should run: He thinks he’s the only qualified Republican in the field, polling is favorable to a win, and he thinks he can do better as a campaigner in 2016. Romney had originally intended to wait until later in the cycle but the bullish entry of Jeb Bush into the field encouraged him to jump early.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/201 ... ident.html

ETA II:

His statement was just broadcast. He's out.

[Guinevere]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/us/mi ... -news&_r=0

Mittens says no.

[Guinevere]

Of course, for entertainment value, it would be worth it to see liberals suffocate and bloviate now that Mitt's SEP-IRA has to have at least doubled in value in the last 8 years, and other nonsense.

My IRA has at least doubled in value in the last 8 years too. So what?

[Big RR]

Is it no, or let's just wait until the others rip each other apart and then come in as the savior? I'm leaning toward the latter.

[Lord Jim]

Keep hope alive, Big RR...

[Big RR]

Hope? By no means; just an observation. I learned my lesson with W against hoping the competition nominates a poor candidate (how bad could he be?).

[Guinevere]

Is it no, or let's just wait until the others rip each other apart and then come in as the savior? I'm leaning toward the latter.

Wouldn't surprise me. Mittens isn't the most truthful teller of tales.

[Lord Jim]

I listened to his statement, and yes he did go on at some length about what a great candidate he would have been and how much support he has, but if he's envisioning a scenario where a deadlocked convention turns to him as the party's savior, then his problem isn't magic pants...

It's magic mushrooms...

[Big RR]

I always thought that's what LBJ was hoping for in 68.

[Lord Jim]

He also took a not-so-subtle left-handed parting shot at Jeb:

I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee. In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case.

[Gob]

In the land that loves winners, he had the aura of a serial loser.

[Big RR]

Well Romney's not the only serial loser; Hubert Humphrey lost the nomination in 1960, kissed Johnson's ass from 64-68 as vice president (ostensibly to get presidential credibility), lost a squeaker to Nixon in 1968, and even considered running for the nomination (or at least being open to a draft if the convention were deadlocked) in 1976.

Nixon lost in 1960, walked away cursing the press (and saying they'd miss kicking him--probably while his wife wore her "good republican cloth coat") around, and won in 1968 and 1972 (only to resign a couple of years later).

Reagan missed out on at least two primaries (as I recall) before getting the nomination and winning in 1980.

Sometimes we desert the losers, sometimes they come back like the energizer bunny.

[MajGenl.Meade]

[RayThom]

Thanks for the times
That you've given us
The memories are all in our mind
And now that we've come
To the end of our rainbow
There's something
I must say out loud
You're once, twice
Three times a loser
Yes you're once twice
Three times a loser...

Yep, the underwear lost its magic. See ya' in 2020, Mitt.

[Lord Jim]

Hubert Humphrey lost the nomination in 1960, kissed Johnson's ass from 64-68 as vice president (ostensibly to get presidential credibility), lost a squeaker to Nixon in 1968, and even considered running for the nomination (or at least being open to a draft if the convention were deadlocked) in 1976.

He also ran in '72, and was part of a floor fight to try to deny McGovern the nomination by changing the rules on the "Winner Take All" primaries...

But he was only nominated once...

Nixon lost in 1960, walked away cursing the press (and saying they'd miss kicking him--probably while his wife wore her "good republican cloth coat") around, and won in 1968 and 1972 (only to resign a couple of years later).

You've jumbled together several events there...

The "good republican cloth coat" line comes from the "Checkers Speech" in 1952, when he was in danger of being thrown off the ticket as Veep...(a speech that was without question the first brilliant use of television)

The " This is my last press conference...You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more" line came from his press conference after his defeat in 1962 for the Governorship of California, when running against Edmund G. "Pat" Brown SR....

(Jerry's father, who was defeated four years later by an underestimated "B actor" for Governor of California...)

The Romney supporters tried to draw analogy between a third try for the Presidency between him and Mr. Reagan...

But that comparison is an epic fail from an historical point of view...

Mr. Reagan's first "run" in 1968 was a last minute, completely symbolic move that was made after Dick Nixon already had the delegate count sewn up...

In '76, Mr. Reagan came within a hair's length of unseating a sitting President for the nomination...

Four years later, when he won the nomination, he was elected in a landslide...

The legitimate historical parallels that Romney faced weren't those candidates who had run multiple times for The Presidency...

It was those candidates, who having lost in a general election, were nominated again...

In modern political times, there are only three...(Two Republicans and one Democrat; only one of which succeeded)

Thomas Dewey: who was nominated to run against FDR in 1944, and again against Truman in '48...

In '48 he was seen as a very strong candidate, and Truman was seen as hopeless...(Especially after the Dems split between their Southern supporters with "The Dixiecrats" and their Left wing Henry Wallace "Progressive Party" supporters)

But Dewey ran a "coronation" style lackluster campaign...and of course, the rest is history....

Adalai Stevenson:

Cajoled into running against Eisenhower by Truman in 1952, he had even less enthusiasm for running against him in 1956...

But being the "Good Party Man" that Stevenson was, the party bosses prevailed on him to accept the nomination despite the inevitable spanking that he would receive in the general election from Ike...

In '56, Stevenson was so disinterested in the outcome of the election that he did something that no major party nominee has done before or since...

He threw the decision for the Vice Presidential nomination out to the delegates, without selecting a running mate...

(A Senator From Tennessee who was making a name for himself as an "organized crime buster", Estes Kefauver, narrowly beat out a young Senator from Massachusetts named Jack Kennedy...)

Richard Nixon:

The only person in modern political times who was nominated by a major party, lost the general election, and was re-nominated and elected...

(Dick Nixon was a man who had a foot in both camps; he was clever enough to pull back together the Goldwater and Rockefeller wings of the party...)

So, Mitt and his supporters would have had the unenviable and significant task not of showing that he could be the next Ronald Reagan...

But that he could be the next Richard Nixon.. .

[rubato]

Of course, for entertainment value, it would be worth it to see liberals suffocate and bloviate now that Mitt's SEP-IRA has to have at least doubled in value in the last 8 years, and other nonsense.

8 years is not an untypical doubling time for somewhat conservative investments. Not even interesting. What people objected to with Mitt is a $20 to 102 million IRA he amassed by contributing $30,000 a year for 15 years. Even if it is narrowly legal, morally it stinks.


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ra/261500/

"... I have also wondered how Romney did it, and after Rattner remarks, determined once and for all to get to the bottom of this mystery: How can an individual retirement account that was limited by law to annual contributions of at most $30,000 grow into a fund with more than $100 million in it?

This is not something your average American can do, and not only because the average American in not likely to have Romney's investing prowess or his ability to hire people with exceptional investing skills.

The truth about Romney's IRA is that its massive size has very little to do with choosing the right investments and a lot more to do with the alchemy of the private-equity business itself and the opportunities that come out of that insular world for people like Romney, who was the founder and chief executive of Bain Capital for at least 15 years.

If we stipulate that when he was at Bain from 1984 to 1999, Romney put the maximum $30,000 a year into his so-called SEP-IRA, then as a baseline his IRA should have had a value of $450,000 by the time he left to run the Salt Lake City Olympic Games. If he was a talented investor and his IRA grew tenfold -- something not many people can achieve -- his IRA would be have been worth $4.5 million, a far cry indeed from the upper range of $102 million he says it is worth. (The lower range Romney put for disclosure purposes on his IRA was $20 million.) ... "

yrs,
rubato