“For the first time, there was a traffic jam in the Senate women’s bathroom.”
As of November 7, twenty women will be members of the U.S. Senate.
Image via Wikipedia.
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“We had 20 Republican debates, that was absolutely nuts, it opened us up to gaffes and to material that could be used against us in the general, and we were fighting these debates for a year, and the incumbent president just sat back and laughed.”
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“There was this illusion of volatility created by this spate of public polls. But in our own data, it was a really steady race.”
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“Mitt Romney's message is, 'I am going to take away Medicare from everybody under 55. I'm going to cut Medicaid for everybody by about a third, and I'm going to do that in order to finance a giant tax cut for me and my friends, and the reason I'm doing that is because half of the country contribute nothing to our national endeavors.'”
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If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.
A broad mandate this is not.
Bush staked his claim to a broad mandate and announced his top priorities at a post-election news conference, saying his 3.5 million vote victory had won him political capital that he would spend enacting his conservative agenda."I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it," Bush told reporters. "It is my style.
President Obama won with a very broad mandate (332 to 206 electoral votes and by 3.2 million votes in the popular vote) with a majority of women, hispanics, African Americans, and educated white men, and the right wing can whine and bitch all they want, but it won't change the facts.
Adds........."Republicans, who have not won as many electoral votes as Mr. Obama did on Tuesday in 24 years”
Via Ashby
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There was an abundance of hate speech on Twitter after Obama's reelection, with people hurling violent and racial epithets. Many of those tweeters were teenagers whose public Twitter accounts feature their real names and advertise their participation in the sports programs at their respective high schools.
F--king parents need to teach their children better than this. We are unbelievably fortunate to have a president who is not only a highly intelligent human being, but one who is a deeply caring individual, who is and sees himself as a man of the people, not of the ruling class. For anyone to attack this man, President Obama, not on the basis of his politics, but on the basis of the color of his skin, just makes me feel a deep sadness at the utter ignorance displayed.
This just makes me so sick.
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•Mother Nature: Don’t like the election result? Blame God: “Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.” Rove telegraphed this argument even before election day, but the fact remains that there’s almost no polling evidence at all for it. Obama’s swing state lead had stabilized well before the storm hit.
•Editors: “Then there was the anonymous New York Times headline writer who affixed “Let ‘Detroit Go Bankrupt’ to Mr. Romney’s November 2008 op-ed on reorganizing the auto companies, which the Obama campaign brought up again and again in the industrial Midwest. The president made it appear that Mr. Romney favored liquidation of the companies (which he did not), instead of an orderly reorganization (which he did).”
•The Hired Help: “A hotel employee with a cellphone camera taped Mr. Romney talking at a May fundraiser about the “47%” of the population that do not have any federal income-tax liability. When released in September, the video added to public doubts about Mr. Romney’s wealth and character.”
He also offered up another pair of juicy targets on Fox News the same day.
•Dirty Tricks: Rove told Fox that Obama won by “suppressing the vote.” Not by, say, imposing voting restrictions that disproportionately affect certain demographics, but by running mean ads about Bain Capital. And while Rove did the best he could (“The first group to respond to attacks on Bain was American Crossroads”) the real problem was….
•Mitt Romney: Rove said the Republican nominee ran a “valiant race,” but suggested that the failure to rebut the Bain attacks was exclusively a Romney issue. “We don’t do defense all that well,” he said. “It’s better to have the candidate [respond].”
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“Donald Trump, who has driven well past the last exit to relevance and peered into something closer to irresponsible here, is tweeting tonight.”
“driven well past the last exit to relevance” is a perfect description of Trump.
The image depicts Trump’s tweets on election night. Since then, Trump has deleted several of them, but note the crazy-ass Trump’s calls for a revolution.
Adding……Trump went on to harass and insult Brian Williams on Twitter after Trump learned of William’s comment. Williams never responded to him.
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PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward. (APPLAUSE)
It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people. (APPLAUSE)
Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come. (APPLAUSE)
Continue reading "Morning Quote: President Barack Obama Victory Speech" »
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“So all this other noise, I think, is coming from know-nothing, disgruntled Romney staffers who, you know, don’t like the fact that I said nice things about the President of the United States.
Well, that’s too bad for them.”
“Know-nothing, disgruntled Romney staffers”….priceless.
Adding…I have no liking for Chris Christie, but I do appreciate the fact that he praised the president despite what he knew would be certain tantrumming from the right wing. I also like that Christie put himself out there and worked at helping his people after the storm.
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(Video via Bob Cesca)
Full Text Transcript: Remarks by the First Lady and the President at Final Campaign Rally -- Des Moines, IA
Des Moines, Iowa
Continue reading "Video & Transcript: The President's Speech at Final Campaign Rally" »
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All images were swiped from The Obama Diary, (a big thank you to the folks there for doing such a wonderful job of documenting the Obama presidency up to this point). Enjoy.
In Hilliard, Ohio on Nov. 2, 2012
Lima Ohio on Nov. 2, 2012
Lima, Ohio Nov. 2, 2012
Lima, Ohio Nov. 2, 2012
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“In the past he has taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care — but he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the very health care model he signed into law in Massachusetts.”
While that doesn’t even begin to describe the problems with Romney, I’ll take it.
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Frightening to contemplate. Vote accordingly.
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“@realDonaldTrump you are full of shit!”
Be sure to read the New York Times piece on Romney versus the auto industry!
Via Ashby
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Continue reading….When General Motors tells a presidential campaign that it is engaging in “cynical campaign politics at its worst,” that’s a pretty good signal that the campaign has crossed a red line and ought to pull back. Not Mitt Romney’s campaign. Having broadcast an outrageously deceitful ad attacking the auto bailout, the campaign ignored the howls from carmakers and came back with more.
Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth.
This started months ago when he realized that his very public 2008 stance against the successful and wildly popular government bailout of G.M. and Chrysler was hurting him in the valuable states of Ohio and Michigan.
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“He [Romney] ridiculed the president — ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways. He [Romney] said “Oh, you’re going to turn back the seas."
In my part of America [NYC], we would like it if someone could’ve done that yesterday.”
There is a 95% + consensus amongst climatologists that anthropogenic climate change is not only real, but stunningly dangerous to survival on planet Earth. And still, Big Oil--Fossil Fuels [thank you, Koch brothers] has sold America the idea that it doesn’t exist. And this industry has been criminally aided and abetted by Republicans.
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GH: Can you tell me, what campaign issue is closest to your heart?
AR: I've been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people's lives if they don't get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers' unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.
Republicans are big on privatizing public education for a very simple reason. They own, and/or are invested in charter schools, And they hate the unions.
If Ann Romney were to become the FLOTUS, it will be the first time in the history of this country that we’ve ever had a first lady who wanted to destroy our system of public education rather than enhance it.
What’s been happening in Wisconsin, Florida, and other states tells us just how much the Republicans want to tear down our system of education. In an article published by The Progressive magazine in 2011, Ruth Conniff on the Republican assault on public education:
Wisconsin is on the leading edge of a national assault on public education. Walker made a big name for himself with his explosive move to bust public employee unions and take away teachers’ bargaining rights. Now comes the next phase.
“We’ve been hearing about this for years now,” says Democratic state representative Sondy Pope-Roberts. “I see Wisconsin as the first domino in a line. As this falls, I see other states hoping to achieve our quote-unquote success . . . by crushing unions and taking public schools private.”
Wisconsin has long had a strong public school system. But the conservative Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee has also been a national incubator for vouchers and other school privatization efforts.
“We started by being the first state to have a voucher school, in Milwaukee,” Pope-Roberts says. “Now we will be the first state to . . . basically create charter school districts.”
Instead of being approved by local school boards, under S.B. 22 these charters would be overseen by a nine-member board appointed by the governor and leaders of the legislature.
The bill would encourage the rapid expansion of virtual charters, which would receive the same per-pupil tax dollars as bricks-and-mortar schools, and could enroll students all over the state.
Walker’s other proposals include lifting the income cap for vouchers, so wealthy families could receive public funds to send their kids to private schools.
Conniff believes that the war on education is motivated by a desire to “drown government in a bathtub”:
The war on public schools is part of the conservative dream to “get government down to the size where you can drown it in the bathtub,” as conservative guru Grover Norquist so memorably put it.
This is where we differ. If you follow the money behind the charter schools in various areas, you’ll see that they are owned by either Republicans or Republican think tanks. It is, in my opinion, primarily about the money.
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“I have seen more Romney ads about he's going to get tough on China. To use President Clinton's phrase, in another context, “that takes a lot of brass”.
Romney get tough on China? The same man the Washington Post said pioneered outsourcing? The same man who criticized the president of the United States for taking action against China and saving thousands of American jobs in steel and the rubber industry?
So when you hear Gov. Romney say he'd protect government jobs by getting tough on China, I got a word for you: malarkey. Absolute malarkey. Look, his saying he'll get tough on China is only out done by his bizarre claim about the auto industry,
Within two weeks he's [Romney] running an ad in this state saying that President Obama made the companies go bankrupt, gave the industry [to] the Italians, who are selling it to the Chinese.
I have never seen anything like that. It's an absolutely patently false assertion. It's such an outrageous assertion that [it’s] one of the few times in my memory Chrysler has felt obliged to go public saying Jeep has no intention of outsourcing production of their models out of America to China. Chrysler Corporation, which is highly unusual, said “a careful and unbiased reading would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments”. Have they no shame?
Romney will say anything, absolutely anything, to win this thing.”
You can view the Romney ad here. The rebuke to Romney by Chrysler is here. The shame felt by Romney at being caught in yet another big lie is …….well, non-existent.
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Think again. Watch:
And that’s not even the half of it.
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“It's ok for a candidate to make a flub, but to not correct it, to not say ' I was wrong about that….' The campaign was asked, 'Are you sure [Romney] actually meant that? Because that doesn't seem to be true.' No response clearing that up from the [Romney] campaign.
There's been a truthfulness problem with the Romney campaign that connects even to the very basic issues like the economy in the states where it most matters.”
“Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats.
Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.”
Last week, Mitt Romney made now infamous comments in Defiance, Ohio claiming that Jeep was going to “move all production” to China. The comments were immediately exposed as completely false. This, however, did not stop the Romney campaign from doubling down on the comments and making several other misleading claims in a TV spot. And when that ad came in for heavy criticism, they again doubled down by putting out an even more egregiously misleading radio ad about the auto bailout.
Well, the reviews of Romney’s desperate Ohio Hail Mary are in — and they’re not pretty.
Fact Checkers: “Pants on Fire,” “4 Pinocchios”
Continue reading "Mitt Romney is a Liar - Jeep is Not Moving Production Overseas" »
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Well, that’s pretty clear. Mr. Romney would like to see those of us who are not in the 1%, fend for ourselves. Disasters included.
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Hurricane Sandy churned through the Atlantic Ocean on Monday en route to what forecasters agreed would be a devastating landfall that is expected to paralyze life for millions of people in more than a half-dozen states in the Northeast, with widespread power failures, a halt in transportation systems and extensive evacuations.
The huge storm, which has been picking up speed over water, was producing sustained winds of 90 miles per hour by 11 a.m., up from 75 m.p.h. on Sunday night, an indication of continual strengthening. Earlier on Monday, the center of Hurricane Sandy made its expected turn toward the New Jersey coast. The National Hurricane Center said the center of the storm was now moving north northwest at 18 m.p.h. […]
President Obama is back in the White House today, having abandoned his re-election campaign temporarily in order to deal with the storm. From President Obama on Frankenstorm Sandy:
This is a serious storm, but we are going to do what it takes to keep people safe and secure, and make sure the communities affected get the assistance they need. FEMA is working with state and local governments to respond effectively. We all owe a debt of thanks to the first responders who will be dealing with the immediate impact of the storm.
If you live in the storm's path, please listen to state and local authorities about where and how to take shelter and stay safe -- and encourage your friends and family to do the same.
If you are asked to evacuate, please take that seriously.
For more information on how to prepare for this storm, visit Ready.gov.
And if you'd like to find out how to support relief efforts where they're needed most, please visit the Red Cross or your local relief organization:
http://my.barackobama.com/Red-CrossMichelle and I are keeping everyone in the affected areas in our thoughts and prayers. Be safe.
Barack
This thing is being billed as a real monster, a “frankenstorm” if you will, so please take all necessary precautions to stay safe.
If you’re interested in how Sandy might affect the election, Nate Silver breaks it down.
If you’re curious as to what constitutes a “frankenstorm”, Joe Romm has the info.
Think Progress has related articles:
. Hurricane Sandy: The Worst-Case Scenario For New York City Is Unimaginable
. How House Republicans Would Make It Harder To Provide Hurricane Relief
. Trenberth: Hurricane Sandy Mixes Super-Storm Conditions With Climate Change
. How Romney And Ryan Would Severely Impair Disaster Relief Efforts
Image credit: Steve Helber/Associated Press
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“We're coming down to the 11th hour. We're facing a violent storm [Hurricane Sandy]. It's nothing compared to the storm we'll face if you don't make the right decision in this election.”
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From the Rolling Stone interview, via TPM:
Have you ever read Ayn Rand?
[OBAMA] Sure.What do you think Paul Ryan's obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?
[OBAMA] Well, you'd have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.
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You may have noticed that I’ve not updated the Obama vs. Romney category very often recently. The reason behind my thinking on that is that because we’re so close to the election, the race is tightening, and the polls tend to vary widely. Gallup polling, for instance, has proven to be a real outlier over the past few weeks, and has caused Obama supporters to become very despondent, unnecessarily so.
So, earlier in the week, polls showed Romney edging ahead by a slight amount. Today, the candidates are polling as even. But, that isn’t the whole story, and the polls aren’t the be all and end all when it comes to accuracy.
I watch Nate Silver’s predictions, along with Intrade. Silver changes his prediction daily, and at no point has he shown Romney either in the lead, or even that close. Same with Intrade.
Today, Silver has the president winning with 290.8 electoral votes and Romney losing with 247.2 electoral votes. Silver says President Obama has a 71% chance to win this election, while Mitt Romney has a 29% chance of winning the election.
Another factor to look at, but not to take as seriously, are the tracking polls which survey the early voters, and they put President Obama ahead by a hefty margin:
The latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll finds President Obama had a lead of 53% to 42% among the 17% of the surveyed registered voters who said they had already cast their vote.
In the crucial swing state of Ohio, a new Time poll finds Obama holds a two-to-one lead over Romney among those who have voted early, 60% to 30%.
In any case, it it a very, very tight election. Under no circumstances should Democrats consider it to be “in the bag”. Vote, and do whatever you can to make sure others are also able to vote. This may be the most important election in your lifetime.
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In his book, "No Apology" (page 264) published in 2010, Mitt Romney calls American culture “superior”, and multiculturalism a “fraud”: “The multiculturalism movement must be unmasked for the fraud it is. There are superior cultures, and ours is one of them.”
Via Chez Pazienza
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“I believe we should use any and all means necessary to take out people who pose a threat to us and our friends around the world. And it’s widely reported that drones are being used in drone strikes, and I support that and entirely, and feel the president was right to up the usage of that technology, and believe that we should continue to use it, to continue to go after the people that represent a threat to this nation and to our friends.”
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According to Nate Silver, Ohio has a 50 percent chance of determining the outcome of this election.
You have to ask yourself why anyone in the Romney family would put themselves in such a position, especially since we know, and they know that we know, that modern Republicans just love to steal them some elections.
This should certainly be illegal as hell.
Mainstream media is avoiding this story. Because they’re gutless. Huge big thing continues to brew however, and you can read an update to Rick Ungar’s article on page 3 of his original piece, an update which points to a situation that’s actually worse than he thought when he wrote the piece. however, it seems that Ungar is unwilling to assign any motivations or possible guilt to anyone, probably because he values his job. That is not to say that it did not take some huge cojones to write the article to begin with, because it did.
Salon.com also has a piece up on this topic.
This is going to be a very interesting election, and you can bet that all eyes will be on Hamilton County, Ohio and the Hart Intercivic voting machines.
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Bruce Jessen - a critical figure in developing the Gestapo-derived torture techniques used by the Bush-Cheney administration - has just become the bishop of Spokane’s 6th Ward in the Mormon church. Torture did not come up in any of the presidential debates. But we know now that Romney's Mormon faith will not stand in the way of its return. More on Jessen's history of bringing torture into the heart of America is here.
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BOB SCHIEFFER, MODERATOR: Good evening from the campus of Lynn University here in Boca Raton, Florida. This is the fourth and last debate of the 2012 campaign, brought to you by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
This one’s on foreign policy. I’m Bob Schieffer of CBS News. The questions are mine, and I have not shared them with the candidates or their aides.
Continue reading "Full Text Transcript of the Third Presidential Debate" »
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You can read the full text transcript of the debate here.
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“Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.”
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John Kerry: Mitt apparently had no binders on foreign policy.
John Kerry: debate was commander in chief vs campaigner in confusion, President O won
Stephanie Cutter: While Obama put toughest sanctions on Iran in history, Romney invested in Chinese & Russian oil comps doing biz with the Iran. #romneywrong
Stephanie Cutter: Obama on Romney's understanding of defense: "Yes, we have fewer ships than we had in 1916. We also have fewer horses and bayonettes."
Ruffus Gifford: "Pants on fire": The President never "apologized" for America. Not once. http://OFA.BO/fvoSu5 #RomneyWrong
Rufus Gifford: President Obama has provided Israel with record-high levels of funding. http://OFA.BO/2DJLFM #StrongerWithObama
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“I think under President Obama we have the best relationship on the issue of security. Never were the security [...] needs better met than today under president Obama.”
“I don’t think that anyone can raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel.”
“Negotiating with Iran is perceived as a sign of beginning to forsake Israel. That is where I think the basic difference is between Romney and Obama. What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. Therefore when [he recently] said, he doesn’t think there should be a war with Iran, this does not ring true. It is not consistent with other things he has said.”
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In a stunning piece dated October 29, the iconic magazine, The New Yorker, endorsed Barack Obama, offering details on his accomplishments and the lack of Willard Mitt Romney’s integrity, ending with this sobering paragraph:
The reëlection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney—a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity. A two-term Obama Administration will leave an enduringly positive imprint on political life. It will bolster the ideal of good governance and a social vision that tempers individualism with a concern for community. Every Presidential election involves a contest over the idea of America. Obama’s America—one that progresses, however falteringly, toward social justice, tolerance, and equality—represents the future that this country deserves.
Take the time to read the entire piece. If you’re an Obama supporter or an undecided voter, it is worth your time.
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Remember the secret video………the 47 percent video? In that same video, or the full length version of it, Mitt Romney had an exchange with an audience member in which Romney said he would “work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity”. The “opportunity” Romney referred to was a foreign policy crisis.
Audience member: If you get the call as president, and you had hostages…Ronald Reagan was able to make a statement, even before he became, was actually sworn in—
Romney: Yeah—
Audience member: the hostages were released—
Romney: on the day of his inauguration, yeah.
Audience member: So my question is, really, how can you sort of duplicate that scenario?
Romney: Ohhhh [A few chuckles in audience.] I'm gonna ask you, how do I duplicate that scenario.
Audience member: I think that had to do with the fact that the Iranians perceived Reagan would do something to really get them out. In other words [unintelligible]…and that's why I'm suggesting that something that you say over the next few months gets the Iranians to understand that their pursuit of the bomb is something that you would predict and I think that's something that could possibly resonate very well with American Republican voters.
In 1980, when Carter was on the verge of achieving the release of the hostages, Ronald Reagan’s people told the Iranians that if they would wait to release the hostages until right after the election, Reagan would give them a sweet arms deal. This eventually resulted in the Iran Contra scandal, and Jimmy Carter lost re-election because Republicans will do anything to win.
Romney: I appreciate the idea. I can't—one of the other things that's frustrating to me is that at a typical day like this, when I do three or four events like this, the number of foreign policy questions that I get are between zero and one. And the American people are not concentrated at all on China, on Russia, Iran, Iraq. This president's failure to put in place a status forces agreement allowing 10-20,000 troops to stay in Iraq? Unthinkable! And yet, in that election, in the Jimmy Carter election, the fact that we have hostages in Iran, I mean, that was all we talked about. And we had the two helicopters crash in the desert, I mean that's—that was—that was the focus, and so him solving that made all the difference in the world. I'm afraid today if you said, "We got Iran to agree to stand down a nuclear weapon," they'd go hold on. It's really a, but…by the way, if something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.
“We have seen a foreign policy of weakness and decline in American influence and respect. Yesterday, we saw the consequences of this perceived weakness.”
Mitt Romney cares only about achieving the power of the American presidency. He cares little for the well being of his American countrymen. Remember this as you watch the foreign policy debate tonight, and vote accordingly.
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