Romney withdraws

[Xavier_Onassis]

And of course, the devine Xo, knows why everyone does what they do.......obviously        Wink

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I suggest you read or listen to what Romney said, which was that the country was th war, and the Democrats would end the war, so he, in an act of patriotic fervor, would drop out so that the warmongers could all stick together in this crucial moment.  All I am reporting here is what Mitt said.

And, yes, I know, the LDS as a church does not endorse candidates....officially, though I think they were all behind Joseph Smith when he proclaimed his candidacy shortly before getting himself killed in Nauvoo. But the Mormons DO have a tradition of donating more than most Americans, and have always wanted to be more accepted. If Romney asked for more money, I am pretty sure he would get it. LOTS of it. But probably not enough to get the nomination.

[yellow_crane]

Romney has the Mormon Church behind him. What he lacks is not bucks, but votes.

The Church of Jesus CHrist of Latter Day Saints neither indorses nor provides financial support to any candidate.

The Church does not endorse political parties or candidates, nor does it permit the use of its buildings for political purposes. The Church does not participate in politics unless there is a moral question at issue, in which case the Church will often speak out.

http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?
vgnextoid=bbd508f54922d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=064a0bbce1d98010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____

All down on paper and everything.

Romney would have had a potential problem had he not belly-upped. 

Watching every state and the voting, each state was presented by the media with the percentages of each candidate in little boxes on screen.

A startling thing when it came to Utah. 

Zero votes for anybody but Romney.

The problem would have been the old "JFK and the Pope" problem.

All well and good to profess neutrality, and to promise total objectivity, should you come to be president and have to occasion a religious issue. 

Everybody knows what Romney has said about listenting to his church in matters of politics.

Everybody also saw that Utah votes l00%--0%. 

Hard to spin absolutes.

[Amianthus]

Zero votes for anybody but Romney.

Yeah, except that McCain, Paul, Huckabee, and Guiliani all got votes in Utah, too. But other than that, yeah, they all voted for Romney...

[Stray Pooch]

The problem would have been the old "JFK and the Pope" problem.
Everybody also saw that Utah votes l00%--0%. 

Hard to spin absolutes.

Especially ones that don't exist.  But even if that were true, and it is certainly likely that a large amount of Latter Day Saints voted Mitt, that would only mean that church members voted for Mitt.  That differs signifcantly from the church telling Romney what to do.  This is like saying that if a large amount of  Catholic voters voted for Kennedy it is the same as the Pope telling him how to govern.  Remember that Harry Reid is also LDS.  If you think he and Orrin Hatch (not to mention Mitt) are getting their orders from Salt Lake somebody is getting the orders wrong.

As to the Kennedy/Pope thing, Mitt already addressed it in his speech several months ago.  The only people who considered Mormonism an issue were a large percentage of Evangelical voters (and maybe Al Sharpton).  It wouldn't have been an issue in the general election.  The Dems wouldn't dare be seen as politically incorrect by picking on his religion.  Even if they tried, they would have to deal with their Senate Majority Leader being in the same faith.  Now Mitt's religious beliefs as they translated into action coudl legitimately be an issue, but only in terms of actual political policies.  Mitt could honestly say that he dealt with the church-state issue when the Mass SJC ruled on gay marriage.  He upheld the law and instructed his workers to start processing gay marriages.  He also attempted to take action to have the issue decided by the voters.  Both actions were appropriate and show both his willingness to respect the rule of law and the courage to try to change laws he disagrees with.  Of course, both sides would spin that as deciding against them and flip-flopping at the same time.  That's showbiz, folks.

[Religious Dick]

Well, unless lightning strikes McCain and Ron Paul gets the nomination, there goes the last candidate I found acceptable. I guess I'll be spending election day at a bar, doing shots of tequila....

...then again, that Voldemort guy sounds promising - his name sure turns up in interesting places...

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am simply saying that Mitt did not have a money problem so much as he had a voter problem. He could raise the money, but he couldn't raise enough votes. Being a clever businessman, he realized that he would never be president, at least not this time, and he has excused himself for reasons that seem improbable to me. He can hardly say that McCain will be the nominee, and McCain hates his guts.

Steve Forbes quit for the same reason, except that his announced motives made more sense.

I don't think that Mitt would have been as utter disaster as a president that Juniorbush was, and I doubt that his Mormonism would have caused any more problems in the White House than it caused in the Mass. Governor's mansion. His main problem seems to have been a lack of charisma, the same as Dukakis.

 

[yellow_crane]

The problem would have been the old "JFK and the Pope" problem.
Everybody also saw that Utah votes l00%--0%. 

Hard to spin absolutes.

Especially ones that don't exist.  But even if that were true, and it is certainly likely that a large amount of Latter Day Saints voted Mitt, that would only mean that church members voted for Mitt.  That differs signifcantly from the church telling Romney what to do.  This is like saying that if a large amount of  Catholic voters voted for Kennedy it is the same as the Pope telling him how to govern.  Remember that Harry Reid is also LDS.  If you think he and Orrin Hatch (not to mention Mitt) are getting their orders from Salt Lake somebody is getting the orders wrong.

As to the Kennedy/Pope thing, Mitt already addressed it in his speech several months ago.  The only people who considered Mormonism an issue were a large percentage of Evangelical voters (and maybe Al Sharpton).  It wouldn't have been an issue in the general election.  The Dems wouldn't dare be seen as politically incorrect by picking on his religion.  Even if they tried, they would have to deal with their Senate Majority Leader being in the same faith.  Now Mitt's religious beliefs as they translated into action coudl legitimately be an issue, but only in terms of actual political policies.  Mitt could honestly say that he dealt with the church-state issue when the Mass SJC ruled on gay marriage.  He upheld the law and instructed his workers to start processing gay marriages.  He also attempted to take action to have the issue decided by the voters.  Both actions were appropriate and show both his willingness to respect the rule of law and the courage to try to change laws he disagrees with.  Of course, both sides would spin that as deciding against them and flip-flopping at the same time.  That's showbiz, folks.

I agree with your last sentence, and that was the point of my post.

What I described was a glitch in the packaging of the product.

Everybody watching the returns, with voice-overs from pundits marvelling at length at how tight all the figures are.  With Hillary and Obama, we are seeing figures like 1061 to 1061.  The Republicans were almost as tight, but McCain gained some mo in the last lap.

But when all America was watching, and seeing these close percentage figures in the little boxes, all the while listening to all the discussion about how tight all the figures were, Americans saw Romney 100% to 0% in Utah. 

It was this single image more than the content. 

I am sure everybody involved in Romney's election machinery saw it as a big boo-boo.

It just stuck out.

Much of what you say is true, and it is true that Romney successfully addressed a lot of what voters naturally might be concerned about; however, a nice logical white paper usually is worth the paper it is written on.

We live in a time where millions upon millions are spent in these campaigns, and where does the money go?

Most of it is spent on sound-bites and catchy, pithy little images all contained in a sixty-second or less frame-up; framing all this up has become an art form, and we as voters are reduced to being pandered to in flashpoint fondlings.

A single negative image can carry much more weight than all the reasoned platforms most carefully constructed.  I cite as examples the loss of Ford in Tennessee and the "macaca" incident. 

I wish it were different, but it isn't.  We in here deliberate in a much more civil and responsible discussion than occurs within the cerebrum of the average voter subjected to the media mini-blitzes.

As you say . . . "that's showbiz, folks."

Politics and its media emphasis is largely "showbiz, folks."

[Amianthus]

Americans saw Romney 100% to 0% in Utah. 

Only those Americans on drugs saw that. Romney did not receive 100% of the Republican vote in Utah. As I said previously, the official results show that McCain, Paul, Huckabee, and Guiliani all got votes in Utah, too.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I think he is referring to something he saw on TV on one of the networks, in which the sign doisplayed a 100% vote for Romney.

[Amianthus]

I think he is referring to something he saw on TV on one of the networks, in which the sign doisplayed a 100% vote for Romney.

He said:

Watching every state and the voting, each state was presented by the media with the percentages of each candidate in little boxes on screen.

A startling thing when it came to Utah.

Zero votes for anybody but Romney.

and later:

Everybody watching the returns, with voice-overs from pundits marvelling at length at how tight all the figures are.  With Hillary and Obama, we are seeing figures like 1061 to 1061.  The Republicans were almost as tight, but McCain gained some mo in the last lap.

But when all America was watching, and seeing these close percentage figures in the little boxes, all the while listening to all the discussion about how tight all the figures were, Americans saw Romney 100% to 0% in Utah.

I think it's pretty obvious he is saying that election results in Utah were 100% for Romney - which is not true. Not only did he not receive any of the Democratic party's votes, he didn't even get all of the Republican party votes. And he got none of the "independent" voters, which are actually a majority of the electorate in Utah - 55% of Utah voters are registered as "unaffiliated."

[Michael Tee]

Nice T-shirt. 

Did anyone get the "goats" cartoon that came with it?  It was pretty funny, but was the guy supposed to be somebody?  the short-tempered McCain, perhaps?  or was I trying to read too much into it?

[yellow_crane]

I think he is referring to something he saw on TV on one of the networks, in which the sign doisplayed a 100% vote for Romney.

He said:

Watching every state and the voting, each state was presented by the media with the percentages of each candidate in little boxes on screen.

A startling thing when it came to Utah.

Zero votes for anybody but Romney.

and later:



I think it's pretty obvious he is saying that election results in Utah were 100% for Romney - which is not true.

No, what is obvious is that I did not say that, and was careful not to.

These percentage boxes were progressive, so even the same comparisons contained several changes.

Anybody else see these returns?  How many boxes did you see?


What I did see, and which is the core of your bullshit, was on television, and you would yet again like to call me a liar.

I either saw it or I did not.

And the point of my post was that I looked at that rather stark percentage reality, wherein no other of those hundreds I watched over the week had, at most, except during the earliest returns, 0%.  The comparison I saw--the box and figures--were, as I remember it, late in the returns. 

What I am not going to do is repair to google to try to verify what I saw on the returns.

The point was a tactical glitch that I am sure made Romney's handlers wince, since they already had on their agenda just that kind of united Utah (Mormon) religious issue to deal with.

Stop trying to make it sound like I made statements that were untrue, but that you were able to piece together to draw your own inferences, and from there to lay a charge of my misrepresenting the facts.  Simple and pure, I saw it, and I wondered.  If you do not think it a thing of political consequence to worry about, that is a separate argument you can make.   I posted on--the tactic, the worry, the fix concerns.

Had this happened to the Clinton people, Hillary would have her people working on ways to get some to vote against her, which would take care of the problem, which was a numerical reality that was unsoliticted, unexpected, misleading and harmful to the cause. 

Mentally, that box and the 100% linked people to an absolute kind of thinking not found elsewhere in the boxes, or the country.  The box was labelled Utah.  Take it from there.

Have anything to say about that, the potential harm?

Or would you rather continue on trying once again to drown me in numbers.

What a crock of shit.

I come in peace.  But like everybody else named John, if I continue to see every argument more like picking a fight, then, of course, I can change temperments.

[Xavier_Onassis]

But like everybody else named John, if I continue to see every argument more like picking a fight, then, of course, I can change temperments.
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Are Johns notably more moody or contentious than those with other names?

Keep in mind that some of us are named Peter, Johnson and Dick.
Maybe even Jeremiah.

[Amianthus]

What I did see, and which is the core of your bullshit, was on television, and you would yet again like to call me a liar.

I either saw it or I did not.

I'm pretty sure you did not.

If so, how about the network and approximate time?

[Plane]

Nice T-shirt. 

Did anyone get the "goats" cartoon that came with it?  It was pretty funny, but was the guy supposed to be somebody?  the short-tempered McCain, perhaps?  or was I trying to read too much into it?

"Goats" is not for everybody.
It has a long caricter list and a very convoluted story line.
I like it , but that may not reccomend it to you .
In this strip Woody Allen has been hired by God to manage the Universe while he is busy elesewhere.
Woody has to explain his predicament to the Immortal Fish and the Satanic Chicken
http://www.goats.com/archive/051031.html


Yes the fish bcomeing immortal and the chicken devoteing himself to Satan are also long storys.