Mitt Romney
Romney welcomes birther clown Trump’s support
Notorious former fake candidate robo-calls for the "electable" Republican
Mitt Romney and Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Julie Jacobson) Oft-bankrupt make-believe mogul and sexist buffoon Donald Trump is figuratively hitting the campaign trail in support of the man he endorsed earlier this month, Mitt Romney.
The repellent reality television personality has recorded robo-calls for Romney, because nothing makes a person more excited to vote than the sound of Donald Trump invading your personal space and hectoring you for no reason. Citizens across Michigan can look forward to unsolicited phone calls from a recording of the guy who tells D-list celebrities that they’re fired, only instead he will be telling them that the former governor of Massachusetts is “a good man” and former Sen. Rick Santorum is a “career politician.”
Any decent human being with a modicum of shame would be embarrassed to be seen publicly with Mr. Trump, which is partly why Romney refused to be photographed with the grotesque parody of American wealth-worship when meeting with him late last year, but Romney is in desperation mode as he seeks to win the support of a bunch of people who just don’t like him very much. Now Trump is headlining Romney fundraisers and making radio appearances on behalf of the candidate and making sure that Americans know that they can expect Mr. Romney to be as fine a president as Trump University is a (non-accredited for-profit online) college.
Romney, truly the “Trump Steaks” of Republican presidential candidates, is statistically tied with Rick Santorum in the most recent Michigan poll, and running even with Santorum nationally as well, but this Trump endorsement should be a huge help in his efforts to win over the all-important “credulous racist birther moron” vote.
Trump made sure his big endorsement coincided with the premiere of the new season of “Celebrity Apprentice,” and he is also counting on the fact that everyone basically forgot exactly how toxic his own pretend run for the nomination eventually became last year. And basically only liberal blogs are even bringing up the fact that Trump’s “platform” as a candidate was dark insinuations about the president’s birthplace and personal history, and that it collapsed entirely after the president actually released his “long-form birth certificate,” which showed that his already released regular birth certificate was genuine and accurate. (Though a couple conservatives have criticized Romney’s open embrace of Trump, more because Trump is extremely unpopular than because he’s a racist fraud.)
Romney indulging Trump by accepting his endorsement was gross, and Romney recruiting Trump to actively campaign for him should be universally declared well outside the realm of “acceptable” national campaign behavior, but it’s maybe too obviously sad and desperate for people to get up in arms about. (And the political press is uncomfortable explicitly calling a ridiculous con artist a ridiculous con artist, even when it’s post-birtherism Donald Trump, so the lack of “nationally reviled untrustworthy clown endorses candidate” headlines at the traditional news organizations is not terribly surprising.) But it’s also gross that NBC renewed Trump’s contract and launched a new season of his terrible show, and it did it for similar reasons as Romney: He gets ratings, and headlines.
It just shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored that the only substantial difference between campaigning with Donald Trump and campaigning with Orly Taitz is that Trump is considered kosher because he’s a major-network TV star. (Well, and Orly has much better hair.)
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
Romney’s Bill Clinton gambit
He's praising the former president to paint Obama as a liberal – and to court his devotees. Why it won't work
(Credit: Reuters/Jim Young) Desperate Mitt Romney is not only taking credit for the auto bailout he opposed, and pretending to be a “job creator” rather than a Bain Capital job destroyer. Now he’s regularly praising former President Bill Clinton as a centrist whose legacy has been betrayed by the “liberal” President Obama. Actual liberals laugh, but can Romney’s gambit work?
Of course not, but Mitt’s not giving up.
In Lansing, Mich. last week, Romney derided Obama as an “old school liberal” compared to Clinton, who he called a “new Democrat.” Where Clinton “said the era of big government was over, President Obama brought it back with a vengeance,” Romney told a crowd of college students. A campaign official told CNN that Obama “really turned his back” on Clinton’s policies, including welfare reform and middle class tax cuts.
Continue Reading CloseJoan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh.
Romney’s “vampire capitalism”
Obama's focus on Bain Capital could hurt Romney with working-class white voters and all the economy's victims
Mitt Romney (Credit: Reuters) Former Obama auto “czar” Steve Rattner stepped on his old boss’s message a little Monday morning, telling the folks on “Morning Joe” that President Obama’s just-released ad blasting Mitt Romney’s Bain career was “unfair.” As Rattner explained: “Bain Capital’s responsibility was never to create 100,000 jobs, or some other number, it was to make profits for its investors.” Rattner is a big Democratic Party donor who worked at Lehman Brothers before starting his own private equity firm, Quadrangle (where he was accused of participating in a New York state pension fund kickback scheme and paid millions of dollars in settlements without admitting wrongdoing).
Continue Reading CloseJoan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh.
Culture war commencements
Obama's speech at Barnard and Romney's at Liberty were a stark illustration of their ideological differences
President Obama at Barnard College and Mitt Romney at Liberty University
(Credit: AP) It’s come to this: “An incredibly boring white guy.” That was how a “Republican official familiar with the campaign officials” described the “prized pick” for Mitt Romney’s vice presidential candidate. Framed as the Romney campaign’s desire not to make John McCain’s mistakes, it distills something fundamental about this election — how it’s become a culture war in the most profound sense, one way of looking at the world diametrically opposed to the other.
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Irin Carmon is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @irincarmon or email her at icarmon@salon.com. More Irin Carmon.
Yes, Mitt gets worse
Romney's chuckling non-apology for his prep school bullying shows his entitlement and lack of empathy
Mitt Romney (Credit: AP/Jae C. Hong) It’s not precisely the same as Gary Hart daring reporters to follow him, when faced with Donna Rice rumors back in 1988, and then getting caught in an affair. But when Ann Romney pointed to her husband’s fun-and-games prankster high school days to show us “the real Mitt,” she made those years even more interesting and relevant to political reporters, and potentially to voters. “I still look at him as the boy that I met in high school when he was playing all the jokes and really just being crazy, pretty crazy,” she told the CBS “Early Show” 10 days ago. “There’s a wild and crazy man in there.”
Continue Reading CloseJoan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh.
Using Bush’s playbook
"Karl Rove politics" aren't quite dead: Obama's strategy in 2012 will mirror W's in 2004
George W. Bush and Barack Obama (Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing) Barack Obama’s presidency was born from nothing so much as his repudiation of George W. Bush’s administration — its policies and politics, its style and tone. One of Obama’s most effective 2008 stump speech refrains was his promise to end the era of “Scooter Libby justice, ‘Brownie’ incompetence and Karl Rove politics.”
But the political dynamics for winning a second presidential term often differ markedly from winning the first. So don’t be surprised by many eerie parallels between Obama’s 2012 reelection bid and Bush’s 2004 campaign. The president may not rely upon “Karl Rove politics” in the strictest sense, and nobody would confuse David Axelrod with Rove. But Obama’s reelection route and rhetoric may bear more than a few Rovian hallmarks.
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