So Willard “Mitt” Romney, projecting his forward-thinking confidence as a pedigreed MBA vulture…
In an interview with Mitt and Ann Romney Monday by ABC News’ Diane Sawyer, Mitt Romney had two words for President Obama: “start packing.” After that quip, Romney explained that Obama’s “policies have not helped the American people.”
… has started the process of shopping around for a vice-president to show off in Tampa, if he can distract the delegates from the lap dancing emporiums. This guy has a new blood pump, but despite Cheney’s sterling CV, one can’t run a globalistic administration when one’s second-in-command is incapable of performing the traditional attendance-at-foreign-dignitaries’-funerals vice-presidential function for fear of being renditioned to the Hague for war crimes going back to the Nixon administration.
And Willard’s too personally dependent on Eric “Etch-A-Sketch” Fehrnstrom to let him get distracted from compiling Mitt’s master naughty-or-nice media list:
In late November, Mitt Romney sat for a rare interview, with Bret Baier of Fox News. It didn’t go well, and Romney returned to the set to complain to Baier about the questions. Baier went public with the encounter, making Romney seem petty and ridiculous.
__
From accounts of the episode, it seems that Romney’s staff tried to talk him out of going back to harangue Baier; what they didn’t do was volunteer to chew out Baier for him.
__
You need Eric Fehrnstrom for that. Fehrnstrom, who was not with Romney in New York that day, has no qualms about looking petty and ridiculous in Romney’s place. It’s become something of a professional specialty for him — and it’s what makes him absolutely invaluable, and irreplaceable.
__
That’s why I and other longtime Romney watchers shrugged off declarations by some pundits — and even a few Republican notables — that Fehrnstrom would have to be fired after last week’s Etch A Sketch gaffe. Romney didn’t so much as publicly rebuke Fehrnstrom…
Fortunately/fortuitously, there’s a Ladyface available among Romney’s “small circle of trust“:
In Mitt Romney’s steadily expanding corps of advisers, there remains a small circle of trust.
__
Beth Myers is in it, and that explains a lot about why the presumptive Republican presidential nominee tapped her to lead his vice presidential search.
__
Sure, having a prominent campaign woman heading such an important process is just another subtle jab at Democrats who criticize his policies toward women.
__
But that is also a critique that ignores Myers’s longtime association with Romney, as well as the repeated big responsibilities he has entrusted to a person who would equally want to be known in public as a wife and mother of two.
__
In sum, Romney knows that he can trust the 55-year-old Myers to lead a search that will be comprehensive, tactful, and – perhaps most importantly to him – discreet.
As the “decider,” as Myers described him in one interview, and as someone who likes to “wallow in data,” as the candidate has said of himself, Romney wants the first public expression of his presidential decision-making to be devoid of drama but acclaimed by would-be voters.
__
That contrasts with the chaotic process that led John McCain to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, but it echoes the way George W. Bush ran things as he marched from being governor of Texas to becoming president of the United States in 2000….
That would be this Beth Myers:
… Myers then became chief of staff for the unsuccessful 2008 campaign. This time, she’s a senior adviser and has overseen Romney’s debate preparations, among other things.
__
Prior to that, she was chief of staff to Massachusetts Treasurer Joseph D. Malone. She was also active in Texas Republican politics through the 1980s, working with Karl Rove, who was the top strategist to President George W. Bush, and more recently has been involved in the campaigns for US Senator Scott Brown, of Massachusetts.
Shorter Romney to the GOP Base: We have nothing to offer that hasn’t been already been tried, many times, and usually with disastrous results. But that should be a selling point, because, hey, you guys like outworn, venal, corrupt, kleptocratic, and gnerally disastrous!
Also, from Mr. Pierce at Esquire:
Meanwhile, while we’re all being careful not to injure Ann’s Fiandaca-swathed fee-fees, the Romneybot itself was setting out quite specific plans for the upcoming plutocracy. He also, unsurprisingly, lied his eyebrows off about the state of American politics….
He also vowed to stand up to teachers unions and warned that unions would funnel dues to Mr. Obama’s reelection campaign. “The unions will put in hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Romney said. “There’s nothing like it on our side,” he said, and he encouraged attendees to get their friends to donate, as well.
“There’s nothing like it on our side.”
__
Rick Santorum must be busting a gut over that one. Newt Gingrich’s jaw may never come off the floor. A man who money-bombed his way to the nomination of a party a substantial portion of which looks upon him as a stubborn and unsightly rash is pleading poor-mouth to a bunch of go-zillionnaires in Palm Beach because that mighty 10 percent of the American labor force that’s organized is about to unleash its mighty wrath on poor widdle him…
If a single shred of honesty remained within the Republican Party, their slogan for 2012 would run along the lines of “Old-fashioned corruption, like buying off the Supreme Court, is just too timeconsuming. We want to buy the Presidency outright — and we want a discount, for cash on the counter.”
David Koch
The biggest revelation in the ABC interview was Ann Romney saying they strapped the dog to the roof of the car “all the time.” turns out it wasn’t just a one time thing.
Amir Khalid
The more you examine Mitt, the smaller he seems. I don’t know whom he’s going to pick for the VP spot on the ticket, and I don’t really see how any running mate could help Mitt win. I just haz a sad that we probably won’t see the headline “Santorum is Romney’s No. 2”, because Mr Frothy’s dissed him too many times to be considered.
Betsy
Wait, so tokenism is a win?
They just never get it. From Michael “We’ve got a black guy, just like you’ve got a black guy” Steele, to Sarah “The gals will love her!” Palin, to Ann “I understand women! After all, I’m married to one” Romney — the ‘thugs always think it’s about having a token with the right organs or skin color.
ONCE AND FOR ALL, people, it’s about policies, not personalities.
Betsy
(but their personalities suck, too)
Mark S.
Shit, I’m pretty used to politicians lying but that one’s a doozy.
Romney is just a fundamentally unlikeable person. Even though he has been blessed with every advantage in the world, he still comes across as having a chip on his shoulder.
Someone asked Romney several months ago about his Mormon mission; he replied with the idiotic statement that he wished he could’ve been in Nam instead. Of course it was bullshit; he finished his mission in 1968 and could’ve volunteered. But why would he lie about this? Did he think it made him seem tough? Here he had a chance to come across as human, and instead he lies in the stupidest possible way.
Suffern ACE
Whoever it is, it will be a game changer. It could be another former one term governor of Massachusetts who joined a leveraged buyout firm and it will be hailed.
Steve in DC
@David
I’m not that shocked. I know a lot of people that toss their dogs on the back of a pickup truck and the dogs love it.
To me it’s not so much “strapped kennel to the roof of the car” that’s offensive. It’s “strapped kennel to the roof of a car, drove on the highway with an animal not in the car, planned only set stops for a certain time frame for the entire trip, and then just briefly hosed down the dog when it got sick” that seems just… odd.
Like each of those is not that all that bad. Dog in the back of the truck or strapped up top, yeah sure if you’re futzing around the local area. Just as planning all your trips and stops isn’t all that bad. But when you slap it all together it has all the marks of a crazy ass control freak who possesses absolutely no empathy and just looks at everything from a strictly cold and pragmatic “let me crunch the numbers for the most efficient way to do this” and then goes and does exactly that.
Combined with his inability to say anything from his heart, good or bad, and his tendency to just say whatever he thinks he should at the moment and it comes off that there is something wrong with this dude. And not wrong in the sense that he’s going to rape someone and then wear their skin like a face mask, but that he’s just not fully there.
JoyfulA
So Romney’s VP selection will be Beth Myers then?
(Wasn’t she Miss America and then got involved in New York politics?)
Steeplejack
What is with the “Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney”? His name actually is Willard Mitt Romney. “Mitt” is not a nickname.
Randy P
@Betsy:
Many folks here might be too young to remember that brain-dead Dan Quayle was picked on the theory that he resembled Robert Redford and therefore that guaranteed the women’s vote.
They didn’t even bother with tokenism in those days.
Mark S.
I thought presidential candidates gave interviews all the time. I guess Romney doesn’t.
Chris T.
Technically, there is “nothing like it” on the Republican side. Instead of collecting a few bucks at a time from a large number of people, they collect a large number of bucks ($5M, etc) at a time from a small number of people.
More simply, Republicans believe in the theory of “one dollar, one vote”.
Jay C
@Betsy:
BS: We’d certainly LIKE it to be so, but it’s a near-certainty that the Republicans will be spending most of those scores of millions of dollars Mitt claims they don’t have trying to convince the voting public of the opposite. And they will convince a non-trivial percentage, more’s the pity.
Hill Dweller
Romney is going to follow Obama around the country until the election. The President is going to Cleveland tomorrow, and Willard will be there Thursday. Douche.
Davis X. Machina
Every Burns his Smithers….
Mike G
Rmoney is the candidate for people who want their douchebag corporate boss not only controlling their work lives, but controlling the country.
Richard Fox
The “Start Packing” quip. My lord. Maybe I am tone deaf and missed the humor.
To my one good ear that is such a classless, graceless thing to say. It’s offhand remarks that sometimes reveal the aching void of character within. And that man monumentally lacks…. well, character. No $$ will buy him that.
If folks elect this prize they get exactly what they deserve.
..And oh yes, RIP Seamus.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Betsy: Gawd, this.
Donut
Well said, A-L.
bin Lurkin'
OT.. Evidently Mitt was living in his son’s unfinished basement when he voted for Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy in the 2010 special election..
Mitt and Ann have been sandbagging on us, they were “roughing it” a lot later than just in college..
Hill Dweller
@Richard Fox: Ann Romney’s “it’s our time” quip wasn’t much better.
catclub
@JoyfulA: No,
it will be Beth Myers’ son.
lamh35
@Richard Fox: yep, and the laugh from both the Rom-bot and the Fembot was the creepy bookend to the “start packing” quip.
BTW, another etch-a-sketch moment:
Andrea Mitchell @mitchellreports
KG
@Betsy: It’s about policies and personalities. No one like a dickhead, doesn’t matter how great his/her policies are, if they come off as an asshole, they will lose. It only works if people are pissed off, like the GOP base is right now. But in the general? Nope, they’re going to get crushed even if they promised to eliminate everyone’s mortgage and student loan debt and then give everyone a pony; because they’ll be dicks about it.
Suffern ACE
@Hill Dweller: He. POTUS should ditch the bus for a Trans Am and start referring to his opponent as candidate Buford “Mitt” Justice.
lamh35
@lamh35:
Andrea Mitchell @mitchellreports
JoyfulA
@efgoldman: OK, so it would have been cool to have a VP candidate who knew how to smile and greet people and carry flowers and be gracious, but Bess is probably a little old for the job, even compared with Reagan.
But Beth is apparently in her prime, and if she does for Rmoney what Cheney did for Bush, she’ll select and vet herself. She’s probably healthier than Cheney, too, and maybe won’t have to move her domicile to live in a different state. We’ll see what happens.
A little suspense here in the name of the losing VP candidate is welcome; I don’t see the November presidential results as suspenseful, and I love a mystery.
JoyfulA
@catclub: Do we know him from anywhere? What’s his first name, Briggs?
Rick Massimo
Which is not at all overconfident or presumptuous or grandiose or egotistical or uppity like President Blackityblack totally was four years ago. Because it just isn’t, that’s why. Which is so COMPLETELY not racist.
BudP
You have never put a dog on top of your car. You don’t know anyone who has put a dog on top of their car. And in all your years of driving, you have never seen a car driving down the road with a dog on top.
Mitt and Ann Romney are very weird people.
David Koch
if watch the clip, Sawyer asks the question is a soft way, and after all, it’s a softball question.
still, mittens takes a deep audible breath and doesn’t say anything, panicked that he didn’t prepare for this question, and knowing he can just remain silent any longer, he desperately just blurts out the first thought in his head, like a 3rd grader stumped in front of a class, followed by forced laughter hoping teacher gives him a pass.
Richard Fox
My question is do people see that and GET it? I mean watching that couple– does it evoke in others the same visceral repulsion I feel? Obviously Balloon Juice regulars get it, savvy folks all. :-)
–But how can anyone who just chances upon that interview– an independent voter say, or a tired worker who doesn’t follow politics and happened to catch their words? Can it all just be glossed over, that inner emptiness? Can the media machine really make that man seem in any way a leader? Oh lord… the mind reels.
I usually don’t post much as frankly I enjoy what other folks write much more than my own scribbles.. but sometimes I read something and the primal scream comes bursting out.
One last bit: one question I would love any journalist worth their salt to ask Mr. Mitt.
What policies would you enact differently than the last Republican President?
Name something new, or a departure. Please.
Just one substantive policy difference from what disastrously came before.
Sigh. …A boy can dream. Night, all. Cheers.
Mike in NC
@Mark S.:
I recall one of the books written about George W. Bush was called “Sore Winners”. It’s like being from the top 1% just isn’t enough for these sociopaths.
Mike in NC
@David Koch:
Diane Sawyer has spent most of her life employed by the GOP. Expect her to be pelting Mitt with marshmallows a lot in the next several months.
Scuffletuffle
@Randy P: I miss my Quayle Quarterly.
Ash Can
@lamh35: Oh, sweet motherfucking hell. This is just too much. I wonder if this will be enough to get anybody in the news media, anybody at all, pissed off at this shithead once and for all. How many newsies spent how much of their day reporting that this fuckwit solicited and received Nugent’s endorsement, only to get sandbagged like this? Geezus H.
The prophet Nostradumbass
packing what, heat?
samara morgan
Mathematically, Romney has already lost.
Willard needs 65% of the white vote.
But the horserace must go on.
suzanne
@samara morgan:
Fascinating, as, mathematically, the election hasn’t happened yet.
handy
@suzanne:
Ynsha Ållah?
Cain
On teh other hand, I see that we have at least 20% of the white vote who are racist I suspect. (hey, 20% is always crazy.. the rest are probably just anti-democrat anything or anti-government)
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@BudP:
__
Yep. We bought a station wagon so the dogs would have a place to ride in back. And when we got kids we bought a minivan so the dogs would have a place to ride in back. I mean, who wouldn’t? If the dog had to be crated to keep her from running up and down the van barking at trucks, we’d get a big enough vehicle to put the crate in back. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Bubblegum Tate
@Mark S.:
He reminds me of that old Norm MacDonald bit: “Did you ever find yourself telling a lie for no reason whatsoever?”
Foregone Conclusion
@Hill Dweller:
Gonna be quite embarassing when Mitt gets half the number of people as the president every. single. time.
Keith G
Ya’ll realize that the dog on car thing will not dissuade voters who otherwise may consider voting for him, though I wish it would.
Romney will be repackaged and he will be persuaded by his handlers to play ball their way. That, plus our electorate’s short attention span, plus corporate media’s woodie for (the new) Romney, plus voter suppression equals a very close race.
rikyrah
the percentages from the internals of the CNN poll, knowing how much they want to cook the books, is hilarious
Betsy
@Randy P: I remember.
When S. Palin was selected, my very first thought was, Oh, this is the female Quayle, only this time, the guys in the R strategy room were so much MORE disconnected from women than in the 80s, they didn’t even think to transfer the attractiveness feature to a male candidate.
I have always maintained, and I always will,that the main reason for choosing Palin was “she’s gorgeous! The gals will love her! “
debbie
I wonder if Mitt would be whacky enough to nominate Ann as his VP? He seems to think she’s his best weapon.
redshirt
@debbie: Good idea. And then appoint one of their Sons (the Eldest) to some prominent role as well.
Might as well go full in on the American Royalty theme. Lord knows the wingnuts will go for it, for “FREEDOM”.
Ogami Itto
Poor Seamus Romney:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/40226_Video-_What_Its_Like_for_a_Dog_in_a_Kennel_on_the_Roof_of_a_Car_on_a_Freeway
horse dave
FWIW: A friend who happens to be a republican lobbyist said that he thinks R-money will play it safe and pick Jon Kyl as his wingman.
gaz
@Keith G: According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, Mitt Romney is now the weakest presumptive presidential nominee in nearly 30 years.
Furthermore, the gender gap, the gap between Democratic and Republican support among women, is widening. Not shrinking.
For the eleventybillionth time,
Romney wins the nom, loses in the general.
I’ve been saying this for I don’t know how long.
But He. will. not. win.
It’s preordained. I think Calvin himself said as much.