Effective immediately, defending Mitt Romney’s flip-flops must cease. Your new instructions are to insist that the man is a rock and deny that flip-flopping ever occurred. We understand and apologize for any comment trolling activities that this might disrupt.
Please watch this space for further updates.
Kasnarski
OT, but check this comment out by a “friend” of mine on Facebook:
“I AM REALLY SCARED!!! OCCUPY WALL STREET is funded my people who want to destroy this country. A few are brain washing or paying off people to occupy, create chaos, vandalize, scare others by threats and VIOLENCE.
Stop and think…would you want your kids riding their bikes with their friends through Oakland without you?
Occupy is more like supported gang violence…its just slower result.”
It takes every ounce of energy I have to not want to punch the computer screen in the face. How to deal with these morans?
FlipYrWhig
Are there any “Romneyites”? Is it possible to have a passionate attachment to that guy? I feel like even his most ardent supporters are grudging and defensive.
Hunter Gathers
The only thing consistent about Mittens is his constant consumption of pomade.
deep cap
What the Romney Campaign needs is a good GROPING incident.
JGabriel
Tim F.:
Anyone still defending flip-flopping will be
airbrushedphotoshopped from any photographs with Mitt, and indeed from history itself. TheCominternRepubintern has spoken..
David in NY
Our buddy “Reality Check” should be by any second. I think he’s the world’s only actual Romney fan (if not paid shill). Yesterday, he was all “Mitt changes when the data changes.” Wonder what the new day will bring?
jl
Thanks for the heads up. I can start writing a hypothetical Bobo/Will/Douthat column in my head now, that will be close enough so I don’t have to pay any attention to the real ones that will pop up within a week.
As commenter ‘handy’ suggested after one my stupid japes yesterday, a good new slogan would be
“Mitt Romney For President. When Your Thermostat Just Won’t Do!”
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/11/03/willard-romney-flunks-another-turing-test/#comment-2857571
Note: I took the liberty of adding an exclamation point, in order to make a real deal campaign slogan.
MattF
@David in NY: In fact, ‘Mitt changes when the data changes’ sounds right, if you mean polling data. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
jl
@David in NY: I think Reality Check said he was a Pawlenty man, and supported Romney as a second choice after TPaw dropped out. Which is why he knows Romney is a sure winner.
Something like that.
Probably one of the cleverer spoofs by one of the BJ front pagers, but I like it anyway.
Villago Delenda Est
If Romney were the one with three former employees coming forward with accusations of sexual harassment, you could not shut the “Anyone but the Mormon” crowd up about how he’s totally unacceptable as the GOP nominee now.
You could try to shut them up, but you’d end up looking like Chip Diller attempting to calm the crowd at the Faber College homecoming parade…
scav
@MattF: geeky point. Data, not Information. A well oiled weather vane.
Violet
Has Mitt tried something like, “Regular people change their minds all the time. I’m just a regular guy.” ?
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF:
This does explain why he is now denouncing “Obama Care” which was pretty much explicitly modeled on the “Romney Care” plan that he used to launch his ongoing bid to be President many years ago.
KG
@MattF: I think it just dawned on me why so many in the GOP don’t like Romney. He is everything they’ve accused Dem candidates of being since 1992. He’s a flip flopper (Kerry). He changes his positions with the polls (Clinton). He’s an Ivy Leaguer, son of a politician who doesn’t connect with ordinary folks (Gore – I’ll let the Irony Committee weigh in on that charge). The only thing he needs now is an affair (I will not make the obvious Mormon joke, I will not make the obvious Mormon joke, I will not make the obvious Mormon joke)
David in NY
@MattF:
I actually pointed that out to RC, but could not hang around for a response.
dmsilev
Quoth Romney: “I’ve been as consistent as human beings can be,”
What he really means is that his software was written to attempt to mimic human variability. Unfortunately, the driver software for his random number generator was written by the same group that develops printer drivers for HP.
David in NY
@Violet: Actually, yes. Doesn’t change his mind more than average, I believe.
Ed: see comment above for exact quote
dmsilev
@Hunter Gathers:
Not true. He’s been consistent in the belief that Mitt Romney should be President. It’s a core value, see.
Loneoak
I suspect that since Romney appears to be the favorite of the East Coast GOP that his fans also tend to believe that the stock market is controlled by the confidence fairies. How do confidence fairies like presidents that change their positions constantly?
pamelabrown
Too bad for us that the conservatives can’t get their act together and support one of their crazies because while @ 3 out of 4 repugs. reject him, I believe that he will be their nominee. Period.
Thus is power of a shape-shifter.
Amir Khalid
@Hunter Gathers:
Mitt Romney should know he’s not supposed to eat that stuff. (Off-topic: Why does the word “pomade” remind me of Rosemary Clooney’s nephew George in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? ?)
harlana
If you watched Rachel Maddow last night you will understand that he has never changed positions on anything, it’s just that sometimes the sophisticated and nuanced way in which he expresses himself confuses people and they’re too dumb to recognize that he has, in fact, remained completely consistent (as consistent as “a human being can be”) throughout his entire political career.
o.O
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
I think they’re called “authoritarian followers”, and they’ll be passionately attached to whomever their leader tells them to be passionately attached to for as long as the leader tells them to be.
Steve
@David in NY: I doubt he is paid, but check out this comment that was randomly dropped into a completely non-political thread at volokh.com last night:
So uh, I’m not saying the Romney campaign is going around posting shill messages, but you can make up your own mind on this one.
David in NY
@harlana: can someone who claims to be “nuanced” get the GOP nomination?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@David in NY: Only if they are compassionate.
Pangloss
It’s too bad Mitt Romney grew up in a wealthy political family. He could have been one of the all-time greats in used car sales.
David in NY
@Steve:
Samuel Johnson should probably have amended his dictum, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” to cover his case: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote [such senseless tripe], except for money.”
Snarki, child of Loki
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hey, he tried to do the honorable thing and marry all of them. Is it his fault that they turned him down?
jl
@David in NY: The dogwhistles need to be nuanced, as Perry found out to his dismay.
JPL
haha..There will be many.
Hunter Gathers
@Amir Khalid:
“Well, I don’t want Fop, goddamn it! I’m a Dapper Dan man! ”
“Watch your language, young feller, this is a public market. Now if you want Dapper Dan, I can order it for you, have it in a couple of weeks.”
“Well, ain’t this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!”
trollhattan
@David in NY:
Speaking of trolls, where’s jwest with his/her/its “hope you Liberals are ready for President Bachmann” posts? Good times.
Poopyman
@Pangloss: He is not what I’d call a great “closer”.
David in NY
@Steve: Funny. RC could just be obsessive-compulsive. Or he could be paid. Hard call — that comment shows a devotion to the “Romney cause” (whichever one it is) that is quite odd.
Napoleon
@Steve:
Actually for somewhat similar reasoning I have thought anyone in Obama’s camp so much as saying anything about Romney prior to him having what appears to be pretty much a lock on the nomination, let alone run an ad, is a really bad idea. Clearly the base is not in love with him but if Obama’s camp appears to fear him you could have a rally round the candidate effect. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or Cleek’s definition of what is a conservative.
David in NY
@trollhattan: shorter jwest: “The past is for loosers. Go Herman!”
Hoodie
From the Benen post:
You see, he’s consistent in view of his Prime Directive, as flip-flopping is simply what’s necessary to achieve it. He’s Captain Kirk in the Omega Glory, and we’re the Yangs and the Khoms.
David in NY
I actually liked Mitt’s daddy George, the governor of Michigan when I was in high school and college. George sold new cars. The first new car our family ever had was one of his Ramblers. And George had actually made his own money and was quite genuine. And he was more liberal (and far less corrupt) than Richard Nixon, which means he was probably more liberal than Barack Obama. Those were the days.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hoodie:
I’m reminded of the guys from the Federation timeline integrity office talking to Captain Cisco about the entire Trouble with Tribbles incident on DS9, and the mere mention of Kirk’s name caused their eyes to roll out of their sockets and into a close orbit of the station.
TooManyJens
@Kasnarski: I’ve got a friend like that, only more pugnacious in a Fox News sort of way. (What can I say, I knew him a long time ago.) I should probably just suck it up and defriend him, but I don’t want the drama.
elisabeth
@Napoleon:
I’ve thought that having the Obama camp suggest Romney is inevitable might rally support for the anti-Romney.
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est:
Sisko. The name is Sisko.
(WP wouldn’t let me edit my own post, possibly because the post number changed when someone freed a prior post by another person from moderation hell.)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@KG: He also needs a good tan.
Villago Delenda Est
@elisabeth:
Who is the host of the anti-Romney now that Cain has demonstrated he has feet of clay? Is Newt the next anti-Romney? Newt thinks so…says his contributions have skyrocketed after the breaking of the Cain involved with sexual harassment claims story on Sunday night.
Then again, Newt has sexual scandal (of a different nature than Cain’s, to be sure) problems of his own.
Napoleon
@elisabeth:
If literally that was all they said I could see that. But if they start attacking him or running negative ads about him? (although to take the other side, if its negative ads that will turn off the conservative base by suggesting he is a secret liberal or something like that, who knows).
TooManyJens
I suppose that’s true in a way, but I wouldn’t brag too much about clearing that bar.
“Look! I can jump six inches off the ground!”
“That’s nice, dear. Go play.”
Gravenstone
@David in NY:
Fixxored
MikeJ
@Poopyman:
That’s how he became a mormon. Had already given up coffee. Coffee is for closers.
jl
@Napoleon:
“Newt has sexual scandal”
I would say a series of ethical and moral scandals strongly suggestive of depravity. So, not a problem for a GOPper, and probably what elevates his level of support among the GOP primary voters from nothing to pathetically weak.
David in NY
@Gravenstone: Just to be clear, what you “fixxored” was a quote from Reality Check, not me, and I fixxored it myself a couple of days ago.
Amir Khalid
I think I’ve heard that answer from another politician in recent years, but I can’t quite remember who …
lacp
Dude moves between positions faster than a neutrino in the Hadron Collider.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
jl, that was me, I think you clicked on the wrong comment for the reply, easy to do.
Newt’s capacity for self delusion is prodigious, to be sure.
Gravenstone
@David in NY: Oh, I know it came from the idiot child (well, Mark 2, since m_c, et alia would be Mark 1). I still hold that my formulation is accurate. Rarely has there been a pander bear like the Mittster.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
A hint: it was an answer to a “gotcha!” question!
Bill E Pilgrim
Okay I’m now convinced that Reality Check is DougJ. Linking to an article with a paragraph that’s verbatim what RC wrote in a previous thread was the giveaway.
Also note lack of reality in this thread, er, not lack of reality but well you know what I mean, which I would say falls in the “Ever notice you don’t see them in the same room ever?” category.
Edit: Oh except this is by Tim F. D’oh. Can’t keep crackpot conspiracies straight around here. Okay maybe it’s him.
David in NY
@Gravenstone: That’s OK. I just want no responsibility, even apparent responsibility, for his nonsense.
MikeJ
@Bill E Pilgrim: So DougJ is also TimF?
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ: Sure why not. As long as it’s all wild guesses and speculation, let’s go full Perot.
Also BTW, “Coffee is for closers” was good, and by coincidence is apparently what Herman Cain thinks also, according to the complaint.
pete
@MikeJ: We are all Spartacus.
Bill E Pilgrim
@pete: I’m not.
David in NY
We’ve got the complaint?
Bill E Pilgrim
@David in NY:
“and then, the testimony reads, he invited her to his hotel room, saying that it would help them get closure.”
I was joking. I mean we have something, dribs and drabs, some details. But I was kidding.
trollhattan
@TooManyJens:
Anybody with a reasonably functioning brain observing the primaries understands Romney is the only Republican candidate Obama would actually need to campaign against. With any of the others, he could just kick back in the Barcalounger and watch them self-immolate. (Huntsman doesn’t count.)
It’s just not that mysterious what the strategy is.
MikeJ
@Bill E Pilgrim: Please don’t talk about Herman Cain and talk about stuff coming out in dribs and drabs. I just had lunch.
Rome Again
@Kasnarski:
with this
Rome Again
@Roger Moore:
Grover Norquist? Couldn’t possibly be Rush Limbaugh. LOL
Rome Again
Disagree. The Republican that scares Democrats the most is the one the Tea Party fully and faithfully endorses somehow getting more than 49% of the general electorate’s vote. That guy isn’t getting elected in 2012, but when he does, I’m going to repatriate.
imbrium
From my parsing of the righty idiotsphere, the waterboarded logic seems to run thusly:
By running ads targeting Romney, Obama’s campaign is trying to cement the convictionless one’s air of inevitability and “choose” the candidate for them.
Thus proving that Democrats think Romney will be a pushover and that Obama is secretly terrified of ‘trainwreck of a candidate X.’
Providing concrete evidence that they should vote for ‘trainwreck of a candidate X,’ both as a screw you to the Left-wing/establishment conspiracy trying to force a candidate chosen by the plurality of their own primary voters upon them and because the Socialist/Marxist demonrats have let slip who they’re really afraid of.
It is delicious…
Triassic Sands
Romney’s been as consistent as any human being with multiple personality disorder can be. The problem is he doesn’t have MPD, he’s just a colossal phony.
Ben Cisco (mobile)
@Villago Delenda Est 40 & 42: That was a good episode.
__
Also, I accept the blame for the spelling error.
PanurgeATL
@Kasnarski:
Did you reply to the comment?