Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney spoke to the Utah GOP delegation yesterday and said he wasn’t interested in running in 2012 or in even a cabinet spot in a McCain administration.

After his speech, Romney told reporters he planned to continue campaigning for the GOP even after November. But he said “no thanks” to another run for the White House, even though he said his own campaign was a good experience despite some mistakes — which he declined to elaborate.

“I do not anticipate doing it again. It’s hard to imagine something like that,” Romney said.

The same goes for a spot in a McCain Cabinet, he said, because of what he saw when his father, the late George Romney, served as President Nixon’s secretary of housing and urban development.

“I really would not enjoy being in the Cabinet,” Romney said.

We’ll see, but I’m surprised to hear him so down on both prospects. And if so, why the heck is still subjecting himself to this:

Romney Hearts Huckabee

Poltics is truly the most christian of professions. After being defeated in the primaries by a guy who hates you, strung along as his loyal surrogate to not be picked as VP, keep stumping for the guy but then, to make nice with Mike Huckabee?!

To quote Homer Simpson, “This man has turned every cheek on his body.”

Sen. Reid’s not-so high opinion of Mitt Romney and is fellow Nevada Mormons:

Reid said Romney would “be a tremendous drag” on the ticket everywhere except in Nevada, where he would likely earn significant support from the Mormon community.

“I think that they like his wearing his religion on his sleeve,” Reid, also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said of Nevada Mormons. “Apparently they love his flip-flopping. He was for abortion, he’s against it. He’s for gay marriage, he’s against it. He’s for global warming, he’s against it.”

Huh!?! I seem to recall that the last thing Romney wanted to discuss was his religion but had his hand forced. And Reid’s co-religionist constituents love religious pandering and “flip-flopping”? Maybe they’ll remember that in the 2010 elections.

More: If Romney is picked, I wonder if this will be a new line of attack with Sen. Reid being perfectly situated. Sort of like Sen. Obama attacking Michael Steele in 2006.

Well for those who already didn’t know it, following the daily political gossip is about as useful as speculating on who’s going to win next year’s Super Bowl. Now the rumor du jour has it that McCain has made his decision for VP and it’s not Mitt.

While I’m not sure Romney would be the best political pick for VP, I would be disappointed because I do believe he would be the best as Vice-President. But I have been wary because I have noticed that like many GOP thought the Biden pick would make for great campaign fodder, so do many Democrats I have talked to relish a Romney choice.

However, unlike the Biden pick, on the party level it appears that the Democrats would actually prefer that he was passed over. Democrats have been campaigning (alongside Mike Huckabee’s PUMA-like antics) against a Romney pick. Which leads one to believe that they (like Huckabee) actually don’t want him on the ticket. Why?

While the the rust belt states are expected to hold the swing votes for this election, the West will also play a greater role, where a Romney ticket is thought to have some impact.

For the general election, the West, especially the Southwest, rises in strategic significance for both candidates, and Mormons are gaining more attention given their wide dispersion across the region. Although church members are heavily concentrated in Utah, where they make up more than 70 percent of the population, according to church figures, they also top 7 percent of Nevada’s population and 2 percent of Colorado’s, enough to tilt a tight race.

Not surprisingly, Utah Democrats are also hoping to avoid a Romney ticket, which would energize Utah Republicans to vote in what otherwise may be a lackluster year.

If McCain gives Romney the No. 2 spot on his ticket that “would energize what seems to be rather lethargic and unenthusiastic Republicans,” said state Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake. “It gives them a reason to turn out.”

And that may make it difficult for Democrats to win what would otherwise be tight local races, especially if those excited Romney supporters vote straight party Republican.

Who knows? Perhaps the latest slew of rumors are a headfake to add a little surprise to what may be the inevitable choice when its revealed Friday. After all, why are those men with earpieces following Mitt?

[via Hot Air]

The Veepstakes has been such a merry go round this summer with a new favorite every week, it’s hard to take a breathless report citing “sources” seriously (sort of like geek journalists reporting on the latest Facebook buyout >ahem< ).

But Mark Halperin at Time is reporting that two knowledgeable GOP sources are confirming that McCain will be picking Mitt Romney as his vice-presidential nominee.

[via Hot Air]

MORE: Now Halperin is hedging while citing a NY Times article that says its down to Romney and Pawlenty. Hot Air theorizes that Halperin’s sources were merely Romney partisans hoping to gin up some buzz. That and prey upon poor, gullible bloggers (couch! cough!) who should know better but are nearly exhausted with this election.

Either way, Gov. Huckabee sure hopes it’s not Romney. I can’t tell if he thinks he’s still running in the 2008 campaign or if he has already kicked off for 2012.

Link: sevenload.com

At least he’s emphatic that he’s not against Romney because of his religion. He spent the first 1:15 making sure we knew that Mormonism shouldn’t be the issue, then came back to it at 1:55 just to make it clear. It’s almost as if he wanted to make sure everyone knew Romney was Mormon.

It now seems clear that the recent McCain VP buzz was just supposed to keep the senator on the front page rather than actually crash Obama’s world parade. However, as the Romney name keeps getting mentioned, some interesting people are starting to push back on a Romney VP pick.

Speaking as a Mormon, Orson Scott Card “begs” McCain to not commit political suicide by picking a Mormon as his VP.

What is he going to bring you? Utah? You have Utah already.

What Mitt Romney would do, as your vice presidential candidate, is weaken you in areas that you absolutely must carry: The South and the Bible Belt.

You cannot afford to underestimate the number of people who will never vote for a ticket that includes a Mormon. . .

When you consider that in the South, the black vote will — understandably! — be energized and turn out in record numbers, the last thing you need is for the Evangelical Christian vote to be unenthusiastic, with large numbers of them sitting it out.

And from Romney’s home state, Michigan Democrats have actually produced a web ad as a preemptive strike against Romney on his biggest strength, his business experience.

I think Romney would make the best VP, but he may not be the best political choice. So OSC’s point is legitimate and pragmatic but a total concession to the crudest of identity politics.

And if the Michigan Democrats really think Romney is such a bad pick, why are they running ads discouraging McCain to NOT pick him? Somehow I don’t think they have McCain’s best interests in mind.

A few weeks ago, a spate of articles suggested that Mitt Romney was on the top of McCain’s list of potential VP picks. At the time it seemed like idle beltway gossip. But instead of subsiding, the talk is gaining momentum. In fact as I was writing this, the Drudge Report made it tonight’s headline (that or its a slow news night).

I didn’t think it was seriously possible, as McCain seemed to especially dislike Romney during the Primaries and there has been the constant concern that a Mormon on the ticket would futher alienate McCain from Evangelicals with whom he’s always had a lukewarm relationship.

Despite the obvious Romney negatives, there has been some interesting speculation and chatter that make it sound not only possible, but a good idea:

Read the rest of this entry »

I think “Subversive Mormon Pop Culture” is going to be a regular feature.

A Slate columnist projects her choice to win American Idol, “David (Hussein) Cooke”, as a Democrat and David Archuletta as the Republican:

And an especially sinister kind of Republican:

Archuleta, meanwhile, is a 17-year-old fuddy-duddy from Utah who grew up singing show tunes and Elton John . . . I’ve always imagined him as home-schooled but I have no evidence, outside his large family and unyouthful musical tastes. A Los Angeles Times blog suspected he skipped the first verse of “Imagine” on Idol because he’s a Mormon and would take offense at the line about “no religion.” I think of him more as a Mitt Romney-type—weekly transmitting secret religious messages only his fellow conservative Christians would pick up. Every week I scrutinized his song choices and his outfit, and quizzed no one in particular: Why did he choose Neil Diamond’s patriotic song “Coming to America”? Why does he have a huge anchor sewn onto his jacket? Is there some Jesus parable about an anchor?

I haven’t watched AI but it sounds like a LOT of reading between the lines is going on here. Makes me wonder who really belongs to the reality-based community.

Last night, Mitt Romney followed up on last December’s “Faith in America” with a new speech called “Freedom & Religion: Perfect Together.” The speech was given at a dinner for the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty.

He took the opportunity to answer some criticisms and adjust his comments in response. Some critics took issue that he had no word on religious liberty for those who choose to not believe. They may be happy to hear that he took their criticism to heart.

Several commentators, for instance, argued that I had failed to sufficiently acknowledge the contributions that had been made by atheists. At first, I brushed this off — after all this was a speech about faith in America, not non-faith in America. Besides, I had not enumerated the contributions of believers — why should non-believers get special treatment?

But upon reflection, I realized that while I could defend their absence from my address, I had missed an opportunity…an opportunity to clearly assert that non-believers have just as great a stake as believers in defending religious liberty.

If a society takes it upon itself to prescribe and proscribe certain streams of belief — to prohibit certain less-favored strains of conscience — it may be the non-believer who is among the first to be condemned. A coercive monopoly of belief threatens everyone, whether we are talking about those who search the philosophies of men or follow the words of God.

We are all in this together. Religious liberty and liberality of thought flow from the common conviction that it is freedom, not coercion, that exalts the individual just as it raises up the nation.

He continued with defending his also heavily questioned line “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. . . . Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” To defend those sentiments he cited the Founding Fathers and the last two popes.

As a politician, I imagine Gov. Romney wants to be known for more than just being the “Mormon candidate.” But, it’s nice to see that he hasn’t dropped his defense of religious freedom now that his personal faith isn’t under the microscope anymore. Romney may not win over any of his critics but hopefully his thoughtful response will help them see him in a better light.

Last night Mitt Romney gave his top 10 reasons for dropping out of the race.

Link: sevenload.com

(reload the page if video doesn’t appear)

Pretty good. I especially liked numbers seven and two.

10. There weren’t as many Osmonds as I thought.
9. I got tired of corkscrew landings under sniper fire.
8. As a lifelong hunter, I didn’t want to miss the start of the varmint season.
7. There wasn’t room for two Christian leaders.
6. I was upset that no one had bothered to search my passport files.
5. I needed an excuse to get fat, grow a beard and win the Nobel prize.
4. I took a bad fall at a campaign rally and broke my hair.
3. I wanted to finally take off that dark suit and tie, and kick back in a light-colored suit and tie.
2. Once my wife Ann realized I couldn’t win, my fundraising dried up.
1. There was a miscalculation in our theory: ‘As Utah goes, so goes the nation.’

A group of social conservatives is running an open letter warning John McCain that picking Mitt Romney as his Vice-President will be a “deal breaker.” The ads are being placed in cities where McCain is campaigning.

What makes this strange is that the most prominent conservative on the letter is Paul Weyrich, who endorsed Romney during the primaries. Even more odd is that the letter’s two big claims against Romney are his record on abortions and same-sex marriage. While Romney’s record on abortion is arguable his stand against SSM was pretty clear (My Mann Mitt provides links refuting both claims).

As Hot Air asks, “What’s this really about?” Evangelicals for Mitt thinks the targeting of Romney with the rise of Huckabee show “the need for a serious reformation of our movement.”

UPDATE: The group has an online petition you can sign at NoMittVP.com. There is a checkbox you can click that says “I would vote for McCain/Romney.” Some of the later names on the petition are checking that option (cough).

Marc Ambinder points out while the the petition asks that McCain choose someone who supports a Federal Marriage Amendment, McCain doesn’t while Romney does.

Last week, there were rumors and speculation that Karl Rove and other prominent Republicans were encouraging a McCain-Romney ticket for this November’s election.

Despite reports that his aides have opposed the ticket, Romney said last night in an interview that he’d accept a VP offer and downplayed the hard feelings between him and McCain, calling him the “Big Dog” (Millenial Star links to video of the interview).

Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard says that Romney would make an excellent pick for Vice-President since he’s seen as a credible president and he won’t subtract from the ticket.   

That leads to Romney. He has run a vigorous national campaign and been vetted by the press and his opponents for the Republican nomination. . .

Romney has three other add-ons. He’s acceptable to conservatives and especially to social conservatives, who disproportionately volunteer as ground troops in Republican presidential campaigns. He’s unflappable in debates. With the downturn worsening, the economy may surpass national security as the top issue of the campaign. And after years of success as a big time player in the global economy, Romney understands how markets work. He could shore up McCain’s admitted weakness on economic issues.

However, Barnes dismisses Romney’s Mormonism as a liablity a little too easily. While the role of his religion has probably been overstated, it didn’t help in the Southern primaries where the GOP desperatley needs to win.

My guess is that McCain won’t pick Romney.  He doesn’t bring the right geography or demography (sorry but the LDS voting bloc isn’t as influential as we’d like to be). 

Never mind that McCain has never tried to hide his dislike for Romney. But maybe McCain can learn from Lincoln and swallow his pride to assemble a “Team of Rivals” to create a winning team.

As much as I’d like to see McCain swallow some pride for once and pick Romney, the idea will probably remain as idle speculation.  I’ll settle my hopes on a cabinet seat should they get that far.