Tag Archives: romney

Dilbert on the Debate

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Some gems from Scott Adams' review of the first 2012 Presidential debate:

I think Romney has a hypnotist for an advisor, or at least someone skilled in the dark arts of psychology and influence. I just watched him repeatedly lie to me and came away thinking he'd be a good choice for managing the economy. I'm not saying he actually would be a good choice, but he did something impressive: He made me think he wouldn't cut taxes at the same time he told his base he would. As a trained hypnotist myself, I rank his debate performance as breathtakingly brilliant. (Seriously.)

Meanwhile, President Obama was learning the hard way that the worst time to have anniversary sex is right before a debate. He looked a bit too relaxed. I think he should have lit a cigarette, taken a long puff, exhaled, and told the crowd that Romney would do for the country what the President just did for the First Lady. That would be totally bad ass. Then he could toss in a zinger about how awesome the sex was right after killing Bin Laden. I think we all know that evening was ear muff time for the Secret Service.

Jim Lehrer, who apparently died several months ago, moderated the debate. The pundits have been harsh on him today. But who else do you hire for the first debate? Do you hire someone who works for a Republican news network or someone from a Democrat news networks? Apparently the debate producers scoured the United States and decided that the only non-partisan left was a cadaver.

So glad I didn't watch.

The Battle for the Southern, White, Evangelical, Working Class Vote

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Reuters has an interesting article about the challenges Romney and Obama face with lower income whites in the south. Let's just say that being rich and Mormon complicates things for Romney:

Reuters/Ipsos polling data compiled over the past several months shows that, across the Bible Belt, 38 percent of these voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is "very wealthy" than one who isn't. This is well above the 20 percent who said they would be less likely to vote for an African-American…

According to Reuters/Ipsos polling data, however, 35 percent of voters overall, and the same proportion of lower- and middle-income white Bible Belt voters, say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is Mormon.

Even the fact that a (rather shocking) number of Republicans believe President Obama to be a Muslim (the horrors!) is somewhat offset by Romney being a Mormon:

In a survey conducted this summer by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life, almost a third of Republicans said they believe Obama is Muslim, compared with 16 percent of independents and 8 percent of Democrats. The falsehood is a frequent theme of conservative talk radio.

Still, the challenge for the GOP is to ensure that white evangelicals, most of whom voted for other candidates in the primary, are sufficiently enthusiastic about Romney to make it to the polls…

In 2008, Parrish was a fan of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who was defeated in the GOP primary. She counts him as a Facebook friend. She has yet to "friend" Romney, although she plans to vote for him.

"I'm not extremely excited," she confessed. "I'd prefer not to have a Mormon."

Nonetheless, she added, "Romney seems to align himself with conservative values."

Long story short, what would normally have been a slam dunk demographic for a Republican in 2012 ain't necessarily so. The Republicans certainly did themselves no favor by nominating a rich Mormon with the charisma of stale Wonder Bread. 

The Importance of Copy Editors

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Copy editors are important. Don't believe it? The folks at Groupon and Mitt Romney's campaign would probably disagree with you right about now.

GrouponDeal
Groupon's daily email today featured the subject line, "Father's Day deals for the man who gave birth to you" and linked to a page with the header, "Celebrate the Man Who Gave Birth to You." Your mother would likely be shocked to learn that your father gave birth to you. She'd also likely wonder what caused her so much pain those many years ago. Sure these headlines are better than "Celebrate your sperm donor" but they're still woefully inaccurate.

Abetteramercia

Then there's the Romney campaign's photo application that lets you take pictures of various things and then overlay a pro-Romney message on them. One problem: the message that was supposed to read "A Better America" instead reads "A Better Amercia." Granted it's not really a scandalous development for the campaign, but when you're fronting the party that's become known for being led by anti-intellectuals (Sarah Palin anyone) it's not the kind of message you want to send.

There are plenty of good copy editors out there, and given what's happened to the publishing industry of late they probably come pretty cheap. Maybe Groupon and Romney's communication team should look them up. 

Side note: If you read more than one sentence of the thousands written for this blog it will become painfully obvious that this is a highly ironic post. A copy editor's "red pen" has never graced these pages and it shows.