Mitt Romney

Voters’ Remorse: The Movie

Featured image Yesterday the news broke that Netflix, whose premier political drama at the moment is House of Cards (you may very well think I prefer the British original, but I couldn’t possibly comment), is set to release a documentary about Mitt Romney and his unsuccessful six-year drive for the White House.  I’m guessing the film will set off a wave of buyers’ remorse among voters.  Romney had his flaws as a »

Worrying about candidates’ tax returns is so 2012

Featured image Remember when it was scandalous if a candidate for major office did not serve up for public scrutiny all of his tax returns going back years? Return with us now to those thrilling days of…2012. For much of that year’s presidential campaign, as Jim Geraghty recalls, Mitt Romney’s tax returns for 2011 and the period before 2010 were treated as a huge pressing issue for the wealthy candidate: Romney’s tax »

Gabriel Schoenfeld: A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign

Featured image Gabriel Schoenfeld was a senior editor of Commentary, where he published such brilliant essays as “Was Kissinger Right?” and “Could September 11 have been averted?” These essays are models of close reading, scrupulous analysis and exacting judgment. Since leaving Commentary Gabe has written books in the same mold. Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media and the Rule of Law, published in 2010, inspired by events in 2005, is nevertheless as »

What would you expect Romney to say?

Featured image Mitt Romney says that the Benghazi talking points had no bearing on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. He made this remark in response to a question by an inquisitive Jay Leno. Romney added that he doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on what could have been done differently during his campaign. “I don’t go back and look at: ‘Gee, if this would have happened differently, could I »

Clearing my spindle: I’m Not OK edition

Featured image I think the following items will be of interest to Power Line readers. I’d like to bring them to your attention without much comment. While our attention was turned elsewhere this past October, the space shuttle Endeavour made its final journey: it traveled 12-miles from Los Angeles International Airport, through Inglewood, to the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Reader Zack Russ writes that he came across this wonderful time-lapse »

The clown prince “assigns” Mitt Romney a fool’s errand

Featured image Dana Milbank, the Clown Prince of the Washington Post, assigns “a last public duty” to Mitt Romney. That assignment is “to step[] forward and to help find a way out of the fiscal standoff” by “return[ing] his party to reason.” Milbank doesn’t define “reason.” Instead, he ridicules Romney for accepting a position on the board of his longtime friend Bill Marriott, moving to California, and driving a foreign-made car. There »

The economy and the election

Featured image Please don’t miss Allahpundit’s analysis of the national exit poll. For that matter, check out the poll numbers themselves. I want to focus on the data about the economy, since the exit poll confirms that this was, primarily, an election about the economy. To understand how President Obama won an election about the economy is this weak economy, consider two sets of numbers. First, 39 percent of voters think the »

The Catholic vote in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan

Featured image Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and maybe Michigan have turned out to be among the very most important states in this year’s presidential election. These states have several things in common, one of which is a large Catholic population. Catholics represent approximately 18 percent of the population in Ohio, 29.5 percent in Wisconsin, 28.5 in Pennsylvania, and 22 percent in Michigan. A Columbus Dispatch poll gives Romney a 55 to 44 lead »

Dumbest Washington Post op-ed ever?

Featured image Considering that the Washington Post regularly runs columns by the likes of Eugene Robinson, E.J. Dionne, and Dana Milbank — few of which I read — I’m hesitant to declare any Post op-ed its dumbest ever. Yet this piece by Colbert King, which argues that Mitt Romney may well be the new Andrew Johnson, surely is a strong contender. Johnson was the racist president who succeeded Abraham Lincoln. Johnson tried »

Why Romney Will Win

Featured image Lately a simple question has been coming to mind: just how did Mitt Romney get elected governor of heavily Democratic Massachusetts ten years ago?  Romney could have run for governor of Utah instead, which would have been not only easier but would have spared us the egregious Jon Huntsman.  Saying that he ran as a moderate, pro-choice Republican is not a fully adequate explanation.  Nor is a weak Democratic opponent »

Romney is winning the Bain wars

Featured image Almost six years ago, as Mitt Romney prepared to enter the 2008 presidential campaign, his team believed that Romney’s business experience would be a huge plus. According to my sources, Romney and his staff saw a public that yearned, in the aftermath of President Bush, for a super-competent leader. Given Romney’s enormous sucess at Bain and with the 2002 Winter Olympics, he seemed to ooze super-competence. Things didn’t go according »

Essentially a draw, but whom does it help?

Featured image Many of us expected to see a vastly improved Barack Obama in tonight’s debate, and that he would find his groove at around the mid-point between his laid back first performance and Joe Biden’s over-the-top performance art. As it turned out, Obama met, and probably exceeded, these expectations. He debated quite well, attacking Romney effectively, defending his record as well as he could, and presenting himself to the audience as »

Foreign policy — a growth opportunity for Romney

Featured image With the presidential race extremely tight, and both sides having pulled out most of the stops, it’s worth considering what the candidates can do at this late date to move the needle. For Obama it will be all about turning in strong debate performances. A win in one or both of the two remaining contests might well restore the race to something like its pre-debate status. Two solid performances, even »

Romney on Foreign Policy: Does It Matter?

Featured image Tomorrow Mitt Romney will deliver a “major foreign policy address” at VMI. His speech is titled “The Mantle of Leadership.” Today his campaign distributed the following excerpts from the speech, embargoed until midnight. I will reproduce the excerpts in their entirety, and then comment on them: Of all the leaders who have called Lexington, Virginia their home, none is more distinguished than George Marshall—the Chief of Staff of the Army »

Romney unfiltered

Featured image Writing about this week’s presidential debate, Andrew McCarthy titles his weekly NRO column “Obama unfiltered.” Yet from the debate Andy takes Romney unfiltered. “With no slavish Obamedia filter between the candidates and the viewers,” Andy writes, “the Obama campaign’s ludicrous distortion of Romney collided, one on one and for all to see, with the reality of Romney.” Andy gives us Romney unfiltered in this paragraph: Whatever you may think of »

Mitt Romney on the new jobs report

Featured image In the post immediately below, I offered my view on the Labor Department’s jobs report, which says that the unemployment rate dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent last month. In sum, the purported improvement indicated by these numbers appears to have little or no basis in reality. Mitt Romney responded quickly to the report: This is not what a real recovery looks like. We created fewer jobs in September »

The Debate in Animated Form

Featured image Gotta love those Taiwanese news folks for rendering the Romney-Obama debate in animated form. (You don’t need to know Chinese to understand what’s going on, though you can click in the upper right hand corner to get a YouTube version in English).  I especially liked taking the chain saw to Big Bird while the Sesame Street cast looks on in horror.  (By the way, looks to me like Big Bird »