This hilarious video, which was put up on YouTube a few days ago, fits perfectly with the “Etch-A-Sketch” meme created by the Romney campaign yesterday when a Romney adviser said that their big plan for the general election was to erase all of lies they told during the GOP primary that were designed to appeal to right wing voters and create all new lies that are designed to appeal to the general electorate.
President Obama on the campaign trail talking about Health Care Reform: “We designed a program that actually previously had support of Republicans, including the person who may end up being the Republican standard bearer and is now pretending like he came up with something different.”
Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom says that the general election allows Romney to press a “reset button” on his issue positions, and that it’s “almost like an Etch A Sketch — you can shake it up and we start all over again.”
This confirms what most people who have been paying attention to Romney’s political career already know: Romney is a serial panderer. The term “flip flopping” doesn’t really fit because that phrase suggests that he had a position to flip from. But in reality Romney doesn’t seem to actually have any positions, he only has the things he says to appeal to whoever he is talking to at that particular moment.
In the Republican primary he’s talking to mostly far right wing Republican voters so he pretends to have a lot of right wing positions. When he was running for office in Massachusetts he had to appeal to a more liberal crowd so he pretended to have progressive positions.
This fall he’ll probably pretend to be somewhere in-between while saying we should ignore his previous pandering to right wingers in the Republican primaries and to progressives in Massachusetts.
With all of this pretending it’s impossible to know what Romney actually believes about anything.
This is the first in a series of “on the issues” posts for the 2012 presidential election. Each post will be on a particular issue, this post will be on the issue of abortion.
The positions of President Barack Obama, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum will be included in each post. When Romney or Santorum secures the Republican nomination, the other candidate will be dropped.
The Presidential Candidates on Abortion
Barack Obama – Pro-Choice. During his time in the Senate, Obama got a 100% rating in NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Congressional Record.
Rick Santorum – Pro-Life. Santorum is not only Pro-Life but he’s made his consistent opposition to a women’s right to choose a primary plank of his campaign.
Mitt Romney – Romney was Pro-Choice (at least as late as 2002 as the video below shows) but now he claims to be Pro-Life. This is one of many issues that Romney has flip-flopped on. On each of these “flip flop” issues it’s difficult to know where Romney really stands as it appears he just changes his view depending on who he is trying to get to vote for him at that particular time.
This short documentary narrated by Tom Hanks covers President Barack Obama’s first term in the White House. This documentary, which puts the past four years in some much needed context, is titled “The Road We’ve Traveled.”
Key Points
+ The economy was in a free fall as President George W. Bush left office and President Obama took over.
- “An economic crisis beyond anything anybody had imagined.”
- “The auto industry was literally days from collapse.”
- “As deep as anything we’ve experienced since the Great Depression.”
- “The financial system is locked up and it could collapse.”
- “This is going to add trillions of dollars to our debt.”
+ Before the President’s Recovery Act the economy was hemorrhaging jobs.
- There have now been 24 consecutive months of private sector job growth.
- During the low point of the Bush Recession, in early 2009, the US economy was losing 800,000+ jobs per month. Now we are gaining 200,000+ jobs per month.
+ The President’s bold action saved the auto industry.
- Mitt Romney wanted to “Let Detroit go bankrupt” and the polling at that time indicated that giving the auto industry a bailout was unpopular.
This new Pew Poll of general election match-ups between President Obama and the two leading Republican candidates (Mitt Romney & Rick Santorum) has the President way out in front of both of them.
Update: Mississippi has been called for Santorum too. Meanwhile, despite significantly outspending his rivals once again, Romney looks like he is going to finish in 3rd place behind both Santorum & Gingrich in both states.
Looking through the results of the Republican primaries so far I’ve noticed that of the 14 states that Romney has won thus far only four of them were McCain/Palin states in 2008 (Arizona, Wyoming, Alaska, & Idaho.)
In comparison; 7 of the 10 states Santorum has won thus far have been red states (Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas, Alabama, & Mississippi) and both of Newt Gingrich’s wins were in red states (Georgia & South Carolina.)
This means that so far Romney is just 4 for 13 in red states but 10 for 13 in blue states.
