The Other McCain

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Hard To Tell If The Tom Brokaw Diction Will Save Mitt Romney

Posted on | November 9, 2011 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

What struck me about Mitt at the Defending the American Dream Summit was how Romney will hang onto a consonant when giving a speech. The way Brokaw sounds, as if consonants get lodged in the sinuses. Mitt sounds like a congested Buckley serving bumper stickers without brilliance. The effect, like the rest of Romney’s campaign, seems directed at somebody who isn’t me. Possibly somebody above me in the food chain. He’s still got that Bruce Campbell thing going, though, so at least the presentation looks swell.

Enter Newt. William Jacobson deftly rebuts Jennifer Rubin’s efforts at recycling anti-Newt charges:

It will not work. Gingrich has done for his past indiscretions what Romney refuses to do for Romneycare: Apologize.
People will forgive those who make mistakes, own up to them, and move on to better things. Romney supporters will have to do better than tearing down other Republicans to unstick Romney from his 25%.

This is likely the case. If Newt has come so far that he can actually apologize to Doug Hoffman for the NY-23 debacle, perhaps he shall have truly repented. I’d expect some variation on the Buckley rule. Breath not held.

Looking forward to the foreign policy debate at Heritage on 22 November, Newt’s command of facts and history could seriously threaten Mitt’s bumper sticker collection and blue state diction. Herman Cain, of course, will be beset by allegations he sexually harassed a woman from Vanuatu, or maybe Xanadu. Would you sexually harass Olivia Newton John? I can admit to a crush on the bad Sandy from Grease, those decades past. Governor Huntsman could be interesting if his conversation with his supporter in New Hampshire is complete, and he attends. We still haven’t heard enough from Santorum. Paul can be relied upon for to do Ron Ron Ron, de do Ron Ron, and Bachmann will support the Israeli dude that #OccupyResoluteDesk has to deal with every day.

More Romney queasiness at Left Coast Rebel. Via Ann Althouse, remember to ‘Shop smart. Shop S-Mart‘:I guess if you’re the de facto GOP nominee, then you can just phone in the rest of the primary season?

Category: Debates, Politics, Republicans

Comments

15 Responses to “Hard To Tell If The Tom Brokaw Diction Will Save Mitt Romney”

  1. Katy Benningfield
    November 9th, 2011 @ 9:51 am

    Good one.  Way to go Smitty.

  2. ThePaganTemple
    November 9th, 2011 @ 10:03 am

    If Mitt wins the nomination I’ll vote for him, but I won’t be doing a lot of blogging about it. I think I’ll turn my blog into an entertainment oriented blog. I’ll need something to cheer myself up.

  3. Anonymous
    November 9th, 2011 @ 10:17 am

    I don’t really care about the Hoffman thing.  I disagreed, but that (like the COD stuff in Delaware) comes down to tactics, or trusting the locals when you don’t really have full information or whatever.

    No, the thing that is my #1 bitch about Newt was the global warming thing. I don’t see that he’s properly atoned or repudiated that.  I disagree with the “science” and the statist proposals for dealing with it.  His spin on that commercial with Pelosi is as much of a walkback as Romney’s defense of Romneycare, IMHO.

  4. smitty
    November 9th, 2011 @ 11:22 am

    Hey, if you’re cool with the Ruling Class Overlords making all the calls, no problem.

  5. Anonymous
    November 9th, 2011 @ 11:32 am

    That’s clearly not what I said.  In fact, I said the opposite.

  6. smitty
    November 9th, 2011 @ 11:48 am

    My response was my read on: I don’t really care about the Hoffman thing. However, let me walk back my, let’s call it ‘reactionary’ response.
    Ultimately, those in office are adjusting to the fact that, while people may not remember, the internet never forgets.
    Adjusting my response to your original reply, there isn’t much difference between tossing Hoffman under the bus, RomneyCare, and Global Warming in terms of contempt for the will of the people.

  7. Anonymous
    November 9th, 2011 @ 12:06 pm

    That’s fair, especially since I didn’t really elaborate, so I’ll do so now.

    I think the NY Republican party’s way of picking candidates was really dumb.  However, it is what it is.  I think it’s legitimate to decide to support the locals in the name of unity, etc, over ideological purity (viz., Scott Brown, Christine O’Donnell).  I think that reasonable people can disagree with respect to the Buckley rule and political strategy and tactics.

    As I said, I disagreed with Newt in that case, but that disagreement is in a whole ‘nother league than his AGW commercial with Pelosi.  That issue (politically) is all about our betters telling us what we can and can’t do.  And the science that’s pointed to as justification is worse than the original analysis of the CLASS act.

  8. Adjoran
    November 9th, 2011 @ 12:56 pm

    Newt just has a long history of these things.  It’s not that he apologized – any moron can do that.  Has he CHANGED?  With the half-mil line of credit at Tiffany’s, the Mediterranean cruise in the spring which caused most of his staff to quit, and his lackadaisical campaign schedule relying mainly on debates and free media, I don’t see it.  He’s still the same self-absorbed jerk he always was.  Great idea man, did a great job as the attack dog against the Foley-Rosty Democrats, but no real feel for when he is going to turn people off.

    My biggest concern with Romney is the global warming crap.  His time in Massachusetts was bound to expose him to constant bleating of enviro-wacko nonsense, and the trend in corporate America in the last couple of decades is to go along with all the nuts to get along and avoid protests, everybody wants to be ‘green’ at any cost.  I don’t worry nearly so much about RomneyCare as that stuff. 

    A Republican Congress will send up market-oriented health care reform, like interstate group insurance and medical savings accounts; there will be no chance even to propose an ObamaCare Lite even if he had the inclination (which I doubt).  But as we’ve seen with Obama, a lot of bad environmental regs can be put in effect without any congressional input at all.

    Neither do I understand the complaints about his flip on abortion.  He went the right way.  I want converts, the more the merrier.  In fact, when I hear people bragging about being pro-life for over forty years (like me) my first thought is:  a big fat lot of good we did, wasn’t it?  Roe v Wade is as entrenched as ever and Planned Parenthood is eating high on the federal hog.

  9. Anonymous
    November 9th, 2011 @ 1:22 pm

    Where your theory falls apart is two fold:
    1. that you are assuming we’ll have a Conservative Congress that the Copperheads and their RINO enablers won’t block it.
    2. It’s amazing what the bureaucracy can do or fail to do when the President and his Cabinet won’t insist on accountability because they actually like what they are doing. Exhibit A: Fast and Furious. Exhibit B: Fish and Wildlife faking lynx habitat data a few years back. Once the law or regulation is on the books, Leftists can use the courts to tie anything up in knots, and that’s assuming that ORomney will pick actual conservatives.

    Again, all we are getting with ORomney is crap sandwich dipped in “bipartisan” coating. No thanks, get on with the crash so we can get through the pain quicker.

  10. Anonymous
    November 9th, 2011 @ 4:57 pm

    On FNC’s SR Gingrich said that commercial was the dumbest thing he’d ever done, if Romney would say the same about Masscare and admit that only lunatics think carbon caps are a rational response to Gaia worship he might move a notch up from Obama’s dog in my rankings. He would still be below Adjoran’s dog.

  11. Anonymous
    November 9th, 2011 @ 5:00 pm

    The environmental stuff is spot on and goes to the larger problem with Romney.

  12. AngelaTC
    November 9th, 2011 @ 5:05 pm

    Foreign policy debate? With one exception, they all believe the same thing.  The only debate will be how big  the nuclear first strike on Iran needs to be.

    Because actually talking to them? That would be freaking insane.  Killing hundreds of thousands people in a country that has never made a first strike against anybody is the only plan that makes sense.

  13. ThePaganTemple
    November 9th, 2011 @ 5:19 pm

    See this is precisely the reason I would definitely have to not just hold my nose to vote for Ron Paul, I’d have to carry a barf bag into the polling place with me. He talks pure blatant nonsense, and because people like you like his economic philosophy, which is mostly spot on, you’re willing to shut down your brain and believe him when he starts singing Kumbaya as though he were a bongo player for some early sixties lefty folk band. No, technically Iran has never conducted a “first strike”. They use their proxies to do all their dirty work. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Allawite clique in Syria. I only wish killing a few hundred thousand of them would be sufficient.

  14. Anonymous
    November 9th, 2011 @ 5:49 pm

    I’m having a tough time deciphering this comment.  first, and most obviously, no one else believes what Ron Paul believes.

    My sarcasm detector is running strange, or maybe getting mixed messages between the two paragraphs.  Is there much else worth saying to Iran besides, “Stop it.  Or else.”  Credibly, of course.

    Also, the first strike stuff?  Don’t surrogates like Hamas or Hezbollah count?  I mean, there’s also their body of work against us in Iraq.  Can’t we at least flatten the bomb factories?

    Foreign policy also gets into trade policy, and I expect some differences there based on past statements, e.g., Romney wants a trade war with China.  I expect there are others who would go with him, and it would be nice to smoke them out, too.

  15. Anonymous
    November 13th, 2011 @ 11:39 am

    Did Newt apologize for Scozzafava?  I must have missed it.