If there’s been a single, enduring pattern in the Republican presidential primaries, it’s that Mitt Romney—or a staff member—can’t help but offend someone after winning an election. To wit, here’s communications director Eric Fehrnstrom on CNN this morning:
HOST: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election.
FEHRNSTROM: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.
If you’re the kind of person who has followed the Republican presidential primaries since the beginning, then it’s fair to say that things are a little boring right now. For all of his good fortune, Rick Santorum hasn’t been able to translate his wins into support from the GOP, and for all of his ups and downs, Mitt Romney hasn’t actually lost the position he reached at the end of January, when he won big in the Florida primary. Romney is still the presumptive nominee, and his big win in Illinois—51 percent to 31 percent for Santorum—will strengthen his path to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination.
This kind of statistic is incredibly misleading when it’s not included in context.
A new study “argues that President Obama’s strong association with an issue like health care should polarize public opinion by racial attitudes and race.”
The Susan G. Komen Foundation has hit a rough patch since its attempt, earlier this year, to defund breast screening services provided by Planned Parenthood.
If you want to know the priorities behind Paul Ryan’s latest budget, “The Path to Prosperity,” look no further than the line he delivered to the audience at the American Enterprise Institute. “We’ve become a nation of net takers versus makers,” said the House budget chair.
The United States is facing a crushing burden of debt – a debt that will soon surpass the size of the entire U.S. economy and ultimately capsize it if left on its present course.
From reality:
This graph shows the amount the United States pays per year on interest for its debt. If this is what being “crushed by debt” looks like, then we’re doing pretty well.
Later this morning, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan will unveil his latest budget plan, “The Path to Prosperity.” Like the “Roadmap” released last year—and passed by House Republicans—the Path to Prosperity fits neatly within Ryan’s self-described Randian ideology: It would slash social and entitlement spending and direct the savings to lower taxes on rich people and corporations. Despite this, as Matthew Yglesias points out, Ryan has a habit of portraying his policies as somehow beneficial to the broad majority of Americans. I plan to be in the audience for Ryan’s unveiling, but in the meantime, here are a few things to remember and look out for as Ryan tries to sell his program to the public.
Michael Bay wants to take the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and turn them into aliens. There goes my childhood.
My guess is that, as per usual, Paul Ryan will use tomorrow’s event to propose regressive cuts to existing social programs but insist that it’s necessary to save our fiscal future, or something. Also, there will be large tax cuts for rich people.
As Greg Sargent, Steve Benen, and others have amply demonstrated, Mitt Romney has a problem with the truth. Throughout his campaign, he has openly lied about his previous positions, his beliefs, and the records of his opponents, Republican or otherwise. In a speech today on economic freedom at the University of Chicago, Romney continued the trend, building a mostly substanceless case against President Obama on the basis of half-truths and falsehoods. You can read the whole speech if you’d like.
Like many people, I’ve been following the Trayvon Martin case with sadness and horror. If you’re not aware of the facts of the case, I recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blogging on the subject, as well as work from The Huffington Post and The New York Times.
This week begins with a little positive news about economic expectations: according to Gallup, 19 percent of Americans say that this is a “good time” to find a “quality” job, the highest since September 2008:
Of course, the larger lesson is that “good” is relative. Five years ago, before the economy collapsed in a horrible mess, 45 percent of Americans said that it was a good time to find a quality job. But the labor market is far worse than it was then, and at the moment, things are actually looking up if one in five Americans think that they could find a decent job in this environment.
BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller looks at the Obama campaign’s attempt to bring health-care reform into the spotlight for the first time since the “shellacking” Democrats received in the 2010 midterm elections:
The new case, though, is less factual, and more emotional. It emerged first in the 17-minute “documentary” the campaign released last week, narrated by Tom Hanks. […]
One thing that has gone unremarked upon in the continuing story of Latino disdain for the Republican Party—and its desperate attempt at damage control—is the degree to which Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court was a pivotal event for the GOP’s relationship to the Latino community.
What do you get when you combine Mitt Romney and Lucille Bluth? Hilarity..
I haven’t played the new Mass Effect (I don’t have a device that can run it!), but I have heard a lot about the controversy surrounding the ending. Here is a quick thought: It seems clear to me that the entire game is “the ending,” as would be the case in any kind of trilogy. That the last 10 minutes aren’t what players expected doesn’t negate the fact that players had a real part in how the proceeding 30 hours unfolded.
Reporting from a campaign event in Rosemont, Illinois, Felicia Sonmez (of the Washington Post) tweeted this odd attack from Mitt Romney on Obama’s private sector experience:
“It’s hard to create a job if you never had one,” Romney says of Obama.
