We’ve got the first nuggets out of Mitt Romney big immigration speech coming later today. And the gist seems to be that he’s going to duck the question of whether he’s for or against, would keep or change President Obama’s new mini-Dream Act.
While some candidates give lip service to the idea of transparency, Mitt Romney is the first guy to run for office while being completely, totally transparent. Light passes right through the guy without bouncing, bending or refracting in any way. It is a wonder that TV cameras pick him up at all.
scav
He’s read somewhere that vampires are popular. They also don’t drink caffeinated or alcoholic drinks.
beltane
Does Mitt Romney actually exist in 3-dimensional form or is he a hologram created by the Koch Brothers?
amk
Isn’t transparent romney an oxymoron ?
Villago Delenda Est
He bravely ran away
Bravely ran away away!
When danger reared its ugly head
he bravely turned his tail and fled!
Yes, brave Sir Mittens turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
elmo
@scav:
I jumped into comments specifically to make a vampire joke, only to find you here before me. Curses! ::shakes fist::
MattF
‘Invisible’ and ‘transparent’ are not the same thing:
youtube.com/watch?v=GRSbC6HAgNE
Hunter Gathers
Mittens is such a pansy that I think my toddler would be able to kick his ass.
Culture of Truth
“People have asked if I will let stand the President’s executive order. The answer is that I will put in place my own long-term solution”
I don’t think answer means what he thinks it means.
scav
@elmo: Nothing wrong with more vampire jokes. We could Count them.
Yutsano
@Hunter Gathers: No shit. He just pandered to the Latino conference by saying…he’ll do exactly what Obama did. Only with moar sparkles?
Over/under on how long it takes for him to deny that’s what he said? I’m going 48 hours.
Culture of Truth
Romney: math and engineering students should have green cards stapled to the their diplomas
That might make them hard to carry around, but ok
SatanicPanic
He doesn’t need his horse to dance around these questions, he can do it himself, thank you very much
Culture of Truth
Right, Romney owns Staples. Self-dealing.
Punchy
See also, too, the Republican plan for health care after Johnnie and the Boys bounce the ACA outtie the door.
Culture of Truth
“Our plan is Repeal and Replace.”
“Replace with what?”
“A white guy”
TenguPhule
Wrong!
Mitt Romney is the T-1000 candidate. He changes shape to match his victim’s perceptions, then quietly disposes of them while they’re off guard.
Valdivia
To me the worst part is the media glowing about how artfully he dodged saying anything (See TPM’s front-page) as if they had absolutely no fucking agency in letting him skate. If they actually pressed him to take a fucking stand he wouldn’t be artfully treading any needle. Assholes.
/end of rant
TenguPhule
I call under, probably six hours at most.
gene108
Heard a snippet from a Romney speech to Latinos. He actually had a decent idea to appeal to Latinos and not cheese off wingutopia.
He’d bump up the processing time for family sponsored Green Cards, so if one person in the U.S. has a Green Card he/she can unite the family more quickly than now.
One of the most dysfunctional aspects of immigration policy is the quota system, where people from countries that have high immigration to the U.S. have to wait longer to get Green Cards, while other countries like say Sweden have unused visas under the quota system.
Mexicans really get jammed for family sponroship because of this. Indians and Chinese get jammed for employment based sponsorship.
quannlace
I always think of him as a blob of jello. Unflavored.
Dork
@Hunter Gathers: No, he would just offer to buy your toddler from you and then shut him down, leaving you and the wife out of work.
Brachiator
What the Mittbot 2000 has said so far is typical GOP boilerplate:
But he is also working to the template with respect to Obama, which speaks to the deepest hopes of fearful conservatives to expunge every trace of Obama’s record as president: “Romney says he will ‘replace and supersede’ Obama’s immigration plan.”
These goons are always on message. Whatever Obama has done is insufficient and must be erased and replaced, as only a Real White American Republican Presidential Candidate(tm) can do.
Jebediah
@Villago Delenda Est:
Since the GOP thinks it is both appropriate and hee-larious to honk horns while the President speaks, maybe a sound truck could follow Rmoney around and play the music Sir Robin’s musicians played for him.
Maybe too few people would get it…
beltane
@quannlace: I read somewhere that the state with the highest Jello consumption in the US is Utah. Not the highest per capita Jello consumption, mind you, but the highest total amount of Jello eaten. That’s a lot of Jello.
Do they take communion with this stuff in Utah?
Jebediah
@scav:
That gave me a giggle, and it is too perfect that you said it to Elmo.
Chukwu
Cellophane, Mr. Cellophane
Shoulda been my name, Mr. Cellophane
Cause you can look right through me…
Walk right by me…
And never know I’m there.
Anoniminous
I am almost tempted to work and vote for The RomBot (Rev. 2012 – C2) as an experiment to see how long it takes for him to totally fuck the US and global political-economies.
scav
@Chukwu: Sellout Fame, Mr. Sellout Fame? New and improved! Easy-On, Easy-Off! Sticks to only what you want at the that exact instant.
Omnes Omnibus
@quannlace: Aspic?
Keith
I am surprised he hasn’t pushed the ‘my father was born in Mexico. U my peeps.’ angle yet.
Linda Featheringill
@Brachiator:
They’re trying to make him a nonperson? Good luck on that one. I think that Barack Obama will be remembered until most of the people in this country have died off. And a good part of the rest of the world has died off.
Or perhaps they are just trying to erase all evidence of his effectiveness. Because he just cannot be superior in any way. Because white supremacy, etc. If they want to accomplish this, they’re going to have to do better than Romney.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
Republicans loooove tough guys. And to Republicans, all you need to do to be “tough” is talk about how you’re tough. You don’t want to do anything bold or noble or tough; no that might take time, valuable time, which you could otherwise be using to talk about how tough you are. I can’t believe anybody would even think about voting for this guy; he makes Bush the Younger look like Winston Churchill. I can’t wait to see what they unearth to run in 2016; the way they’re going, they’ll nominate an actual jellyfish.
jayackroyd
I’m gonna pimp this one more time, because I think Culture of Truth documented this particular atrocity particularly well–Face the Nation last Sunday.
bit.ly/MbgsVk
jayackroyd
@Jebediah:
You could stake your life on it.
Bokonon
Clearly, Romney thinks that running as a complete cipher (or … a blank etch-a-sketch screen) will work if all you do is attack, attack, attack, talk about jobs, jobs, jobs, and let the negative advertisements tear down the other guy. Enough voters will project their views onto you as the alternative to Obama that you will win.
Worked during the GOP primaries, didn’t it? The unlikeable, phony guy with weak personal support and unclear, shifting policies but LOTS of money pulled it off, didn’t he?
Besides, as Grover Norquist has said, the GOP doesn’t WANT a strong President with his own views. They just want someone who will do what he is told by the party – and hold the signing pen for their agenda.
I think a lot of Republican voters are in the same camp. They want to win. They are cynical about the candidate himself. Besides, whatever Mitt Romney’s real views are – if he has any at all – the right wing of the party OWNS him now, after the primaries, and he has pledged undying fealty.
jl
What I heard in excerpts from the speech was a cheesy attempt to seem to say something while saying nothing.
Anyone know what ‘pig in the poke’ is in Spanish.
Yes, there were some good ideas in it, but those good ideas were all conditional on getting something else. Staple the green card to you diploma, IF you can get a diploma if you are not rich under Rmoneducation (and if you can get through the system if you are undocumented with Romney’s unspecified replacement?). Yeah family reunification, IF someone already has a green card.
But on the big question on everyone’s minds: would he continue Obama’s policy, he tried to finesse it with vague assurances about some unspecified replacement. Sounds too much like GOP position on health care reform to me. We see what that turned out to be: nothing.
Maybe the wingnuts are so foolish to fall for this. I doubt normal people are who have a serious stake in the issues.
I understand we can compare and contrast with Obama’s speech tomorrow.
I am biased but also, Romney’s delivery grates me. It seems so transparent. The cadence and inflections telegraph to me, a conniving con man delivering a BS pitch, who does not mean one damn thing he says. It is all an opening propaganda barrage in the ongoing evolution of The BS Deal he plans to ram down your throat as soon as he can acquire the power and pretext to do the ramming. AKA: how rich money and liability shuffling con artist leverage buy out tycoons think and operate.
Way way worse than McCain.
I try to think of who else comes to mind whose delivery was so obviously transparent BS, and I think of Rumsfeld. But maybe it is just me.
Jebediah
@Linda Featheringill:
And it is too late to do anything about the comparisons to Bush.
eric
I think looking at how English-speaking media respond to the speech is not fully enlightening. Perhaps the Spanish speaking media viewed the speech in a way that will better reflect (or mold) Latino reaction to the speech. I do not, however, understand spanish…so, little help here.
Valdivia
@eric:
I checked with Jorge Ramos’ twitter and nothing yet. I wil keep my eye on the story.
rikyrah
I would like to know how this went over in Spanish-speaking media.
jl
@rikyrah:
I would like to know too.
I can’t find a Spanish language report or opinion on the speech yet, and my Spanish so bad now not sure I could translate it properly.
But I do see that most stories about Romney on immigration start with something along the lines of “declinó responder directamente”. You don’t need a whole lot of Spanish to get the gist of that. You might do a search on the speech on Spanish language internet. If you see those words in the headline or first sentence, then I would say his speech did not change the perceptions.
But, I will keep an eye out for what the reaction is in Spanish speaking media.
Brachiator
@Linda Featheringill:
I agree that I think that Obama will be well regarded by history. That’s why it is both strange and sad to listen to the GOP narrative about Obama’s failure and being the worst president ever.
And yeah, there has been a persistent noxious sentiment that whatever Obama has tried to do, either he was doing what he was told, was doing what anyone would do, or that whatever he did would have been done better had it been done by a Real White American President(tm).
I have been surprised at how easily most of the nation accomodated itself to an African American president, but also surprised at the deeply fearful and resentful counter-reaction of those who fell into hatred and racial anxiety.
Bubblegum Tate
It’s the Fabian strategy!
Valdivia
@jl: @rikyrah:
Univision News has no particular story on the speech by Romney yet and they have one story saying Romney hasn’t said what he will do with regards to Obama’s policies, they state clearly he has said many times he would veto the DreamAct.
Unlike the Obama announcement last week Romney is not even trending as a story in their site.
Brachiator
@jl:
El pigo en el pokeo?
Or perhaps El Romneyo, in honor of Mittens’ Mexican ancestors.
Valdivia
I see that apparently Romney got some boos today, why is this not a bigger story?
gene108
@Brachiator:
Republicans balked at this, when Bush, Jr. introduced it. It didn’t pass the circa 2006 Republican Congress, so it sure won’t pass with modern Congressional Republicans.
The thing with Green Cards for families of legal immigrants is it is something Romney can do by executive order and will help a lot of Latino families.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: I think the bigger story is Jeb! completely upstaged him. And I’m not sure I agree with Ann since Jeb! would have to be a right-wing nut regarding teh browns or he’d never make it in the primary.
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
you are right the whole idea that Jeb would win the latino vote is grandstanding but he would get numbers more similar to those his brother got not the middling ones Romney gets.
LanceThruster
Mitt Romney – Human green screen
Willard Chroma Key – Twirling, twirling, twirling, towards freedom!
Brachiator
@gene108:
RE: as well as beef up temporary work visas for low-skilled workers.
Very true. Here, the Tea Party and conservative extremists flipped off the mercantile Republicans trying to insure an inflow of cheap labor.
But use of executive orders is bad. Oh, yeah, only when Obama does it.
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
When HW refered to certain of his grandkids as “The Brown ones” wasn’t it Jeb’s spawn he was referencing?
So very many Bushes I can’t keep up with them all. When is Jenna and tonic getting into poly-tiks?
yopd1
He wouldn’t even answer a direct question on the DREAM act from an undocumented student who it affects.
LanceThruster
Willard needs a “santorum” type word/phrase added to the lexicon.
Like the Mittiple meanings of his positions.
Or that he pays big money to get into his wife’s dressage and do it with a horse in front of large crowds of elite furries.
Maude
@trollhattan:
That’s right and I was just thinking of that. Great minds think alike.
LanceThruster
Not ebony but ivory,
We’ll return there through perfect Rmoney
SIDE BY SIDE!? Like on a piano keyboard?!
OH Lord! Why can we…[insert draconian GOPolicy here]
KXB
Bush could not get through a fairly sane immigration reform when he was president. By what stretch of imagination would Romney get one through?
Yutsano
@trollhattan:
Yup. Methinks there is more than slight disapproval of the Mexican wife. I shudder to think of what Babs says.
Jenna is playing journalist for awhile. But from how she talks about her experience overseas she may not be wingnutty enough. Think Meghan McCain being all RINOy.
Origuy
@jl:
There’s an entire Wikipedia article on equivalences to this expression. Looks like “to buy a pig in a poke” is “dar gato por liebre”, to buy a cat instead of a hare.
jl
@Origuy:
Thanks. It says Chinese version is ‘sell dog meat for mutton’
Uh oh. unPC alert. They better change that one.
Seems like ‘cat in a sack’ is most popular.
Not sure why Estonian and Finnish versions are different, since they are so closely related.
Odie Hugh Manatee
You mean that Mitt’s transparent enough to strap to the roof of my greenhouse?
TenguPhule
Mitting: To speak of anything while saying nothing of substance.
Weaselone
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Materials that burst into flames when subjected to direct sunlight are not ideal candidates for greenhouse construction or higher office.
LanceThruster
@TenguPhule: Sometimes worse than nothing of substance as when “taking a Mitt.”