Political Ruminations

6 Quotes About Mitt Romney

1. Newt Gingrich derides Romney for his work as a corporate raider for Bain Capital.

“Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that, in fact, the whole goals of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation, would find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever, legal ways to loot out a company.”

2. Marc B. Wolpow, a former managing director at Bain Capital, on Romney’s career as a corporate raider.

“They're whitewashing his career now. We had a scheme where the rich got richer. I did it, and I feel good about it. But I'm not planning to run for office.”

3. Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum, researched Romney's record and said that Massachusetts remained behind the U.S. average during Romney’s tenure as the governor in job creation, economic growth and wage increases¹.

“As a strict labor market economist looking at the record, Massachusetts did very poorly during the Romney years. On every measure you’ve got, the state  was a substantial under-performer.”

4. The Perry Campaign’s response after Romney’s famous gaffe “I like being able to fire people.”.

“Voters are just now meeting the Real Romney — the buyout tycoon who executed takeovers, bankrupted businesses, and sent jobs overseas while killing American jobs.”

5. Newt Gingrich to Mitt Romney, (who pretended that he didn’t run for reelection in Mass. because he wasn’t interested in being a career politician) during the Republican primary debate leading up to the New Hampshire primary election:

“Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney? The fact is, you ran in '94 (for the Senate) and lost. That's why you weren't serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating (as governor in 2006), you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You have been running consistently for years and years and years. So this idea that suddenly citizenship showed up in your mind, just level with the American people. You've been running for -- at least since the 1990s.”

6. Rick Perry campaigning in South Carolina:

“Mitt Romney has never worried about pink slip. He might have worried about not having enough of them to hand out. But he’s not worried about losing his job.”

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¹ During Romney’s time as governor, Massachusetts ranked 47th among the 50 states in job creation, and Massachusetts rate of job growth was only 0.9%, lagging  far behind the national average of +5%.

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Morning Quote: Rick Perry

“Absolutely, I’d vote against it. Get people to work.”

- Rick Perry when asked by CNN if he would vote against extending the payroll tax cut and the soon to expire unemployment benefits extension.

Morning Quote: Barack Obama

“We’ve been a little bit lazy I think over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.”

- President Barack Obama in a quote intentionally taken out of context by GOP presidential candidates hacks, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, and used to boondoggle the American people in to thinking that President Obama thinks that Americans in general are “lazy”, when taken in context, President Obama is clearly talking about the business community.

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

“And I will tell ya, it’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the ahh, what’s the third one there? Let’s see… The third agency of government I would do away with – education, uh the, commerce, and let’s see, I can’t. The third one I can’t. Sorry. Oops.”

- Rick Perry at the GOP debate in [Oakland University] Auburn Hills, Michigan last night, promising to do away with the Departments of Commerce, Education, and although Perry couldn’t remember the third one, but according to his stinking book, it is the Department of Energy.  Watch:

Adding........according to my son, who is a student at OU, there were protesters, including some OU professors, in front of the building where the debate was held, a fact I have not seen discussed elsewhere.

Morning Quote: Mrs. Rick Perry

“He truly felt like he was called to do this. We still feel called to do this. We are being brutalized by our opponents and by our party. So much of that is I think they look at him because of his faith. He is the only true conservative. Well, there are some other conservatives, and they are there for good reasons. And they may feel like God called them too. But I truly feel that we are here for that purpose.”

~ Anita Perry tells us that her husband, presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), was “called by God” to run for the presidency.

Morning Quote: Rick Perry Spokesman

Gov. Rick Perry’s spokesman, Mark Miner, alluding to the Perry campaigns reaction to  the criticism of Perry’s debate performances, and his loss of the straw poll in Florida last week:

“We’re not going to change what we’re doing. It’s a long race.”

Right Wing Propaganda: Rick Perry’s First Campaign Ad

Well. There is nothing I can say about this (piece of propaganda/crap) Rick Perry campaign ad that hasn’t already been said better by others, including Bob Cesca, who has a piece up on Huffington Post that’s just a must read for everyone.

Anyway, watch this video, and make a concerted effort not to yell “America, Fuck Yeah!” or “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

Leaving aside all of the bullshit histrionics, and the false patriotism, the worst part of the video is Perry’s “Zero Jobs” Big Lie, a claim rated ‘Pants on Fire’ by the non-partisan Politifact.

Or maybe it’s throughout the vid with Perry ranting on about the greatness of AMERICA (Fuck Yeah!), when this is the very same guy who threatened to SECEDE from the United States of AMERICA (Fuck Yeah!) over the stimulus bill in 2009, and in 2010 used federal stimulus dollars to make up 97% of his budget shortfall.

Truly disgusting ad.

Morning Quote: Andrew Sullivan

Conservative blogger, Andrew Sullivan on the characteristics Gov. Rick Perry has in common with those who served in the Bush administration:

“It has sickened me - the lack of morality, the lack of accountability, the constant recourse to mass amnesia [Sullivan is talking about the Bush administration]. And in a man like Perry, you see all the characteristics of this belligerent, diplomatically autistic, aggressively stupid, and fundamentalist psyche. The dragon we thought we had slain is stalking the land again.”

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

The usual type of Republican nonsense from Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), in a TIME magazine interview:

 “I still believe they [Obama administration] are socialist. Their policies prove that almost daily.”

Via Taegan Goddard

Video: Jon Stewart Part 1 & 2 “Oh My God, Rick Perry is Going to Be Our Next President!”

Hilarious.....and scary.

Watch Part I:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Watch Part II:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Morning Quote: Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart riffs on presidential hopefuls, Gov. Rick Perry (TX), and Mitt Romney after the Republican primary debate on Wednesday night:

“Mitt Romney is Ralph Lauren Polo Eau de Toilette. Rick Perry is the resin form of the pheromone found in Sri Lankan tiger semen.”

Image of tigers captured from the video.

The video is Part 2 of Stewart's 2-part feature "Oh my God, Rick Perry is going to be our next president", and you can watch both videos  here.

Via Ashby

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

Republican presidential hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, snipes at Mitt Romney on job creation:

“There is no one who's gonna be sitting on that stage who has the record of job creation I have. There's one in particular who's created jobs all around the world. While he was the governor of Massachusetts he didn't create many jobs.”

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

In 1994, Karl Rove helped Rick Perry (R-TX) become the Texas agriculture commissioner. At that time, Perry compared his own intellect vs. that of Karl Rove:

“My brain is like a chicken pot pie. His is like a refrigerator that is all very organized — pickles here, salad there. ”

Gov. Perry = George W. Bush? No. Perry is dumber (however impossible that may seem), and he is far more conservative.

Were he to win the presidency, he would be nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for the people of this country.

Via Andrew Sullivan

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

Rick Perry (R-TX)  on the Laura Ingraham (R) radio show, via Reuters:

“With all due respect to anybody that's out there either directly or indirectly criticizing me because I speak plainly, I call it like I see it.

Look, I am not an establishment figure -- never have been and frankly I don't want to be. I dislike Washington. I think it's a seedy place.”

Perry does speak the language of the far right extremists very plainly.

Rick Perry is an Idiot

Confronted with the fact that Texas has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation (despite the statewide policy which decrees that they teach only abstinence as a means of reducing teen pregnancy rates), Rick Perry understands so little about the biology of human beings, that he can only continue spewing “abstinence works”, ad infinitum.

The abstinence thing is nothing more than an attempt to control the biological drives of humans, a policy forever doomed to failure, since human beings were programmed to procreate. Thus, the silliness of abstinence education cannot be underestimated.  How much more successful could Texas be in reducing teen pregnancy rates if instead of teaching abstinence, they used those funds to teach teens how to stay safe and avoid pregnancy?

Watch:

And this is the guy who is now the frontrunner in the field of  2012 GOP presidential candidates.

Adding.......I’ve heard a number of pundits posit that “Perry is George W. Bush II”. There is a comparison to be made between the two men, but in my opinion, the much more far right Rick Perry makes George W. Bush look like a Liberal.

H/T Bob Cesca

Quote of the Day

I had no idea that there was bad blood between the Bush family, and Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), and I’m thrilled to hear it, because Perry as a general election candidate worries me.

Howard Dean in an MSNBC interview on the intent of the Bush family towards Gov. Perry as a 2012 candidate for the GOP nomination:

“They know what they're doing, and they are ruthless, and they [Bush political team]  are going to take Perry out.”

Quote of the Day

Paul Krugman on Rick Perry’s threat to Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, in a piece titled “Ignorance, Paranoia, and Implied Violence”:

“Actually, what Perry said is even worse than most writing on it has suggested. Yes, he’s showing ignorance of the basics of monetary policy; yes, he appears to have implicitly threatened violence against my former department head. (Incidentally, threats of that kind are a long-standing feature of modern GOP rhetoric; as early as 1993, Republican Senators would joke about what might happen to Bill Clinton if he visited their states, and the Broders of the world pretended not to notice).

But somehow everyone I’ve read seems to miss the bit about Bernanke playing politics — implying that anything he does would be in the interests of helping Obama get reelected.

That’s a hell of an accusation to make — especially when you bear in mind that Bernanke was a Bush appointee. But this is apparently how people like Perry think.

After this, I suspect that Perry is a shoo-in for the nomination.”

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

Presidential hopeful, Gov. Rick Perry on Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke (Bernanke was originally appointed by George W. Bush), in an attempt to make Bernanke seem as though he’s been playing partisan politics for the Democrats:

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”

According to Andrew Sullivan, the phrase “treat him pretty ugly down in Texas” means lynching, emphasis mine:

What Perry is now shown to have said has a plain meaning. He'd support lynching the Fed Chairman. And he believes that Bernanke's attempts to prevent a Second Great Depression are partisan politics, and an attempt to rig the election. He seems to think, in other words, that the man who was the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and was appointed to Fed Chairman by George W. Bush is somehow a Democratic party operative trying to win the election for Obama. It's a staggering assault on the integrity of a civil servant grappling with some of the most serious economic problems this country has faced in our lifetime.

Yes, as Talk Progress notes, treason is a capital offense. And there is no doubt what a bully means when he says someone should be treated "pretty ugly" in Texas. There you have the mindset of a man who could issue a death warrant for an innocent man and who would bring back the most brutal torture techniques he could get away with.

Tony Fratto, former Deputy Press Secretary to George W. Bush, responds on Twitter:

Gov. Perry's comments about Chmn. Bernanke are inappropriate and unpresidential.

With any luck, Rick Perry may be out when he is just barely in.

Via Sullivan

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

Presidential hopeful, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) leads off with this piece of far right blather:

“One of the reasons that I'm running for president is I want to make sure that every young man and woman who puts on the uniform of the United States respects highly the president of the United States.”

Ben Smith notes the reversal of the usual, emphasis mine:

The line is a reversal of the usual pledges of respect for the military from politicians, and Perry seemed to suggest that Obama lacks the qualities of a commander-in-chief in being able to command the troops.

The line could be taken either as a slur on the military -- they're pretty much obligated to respect the president, or at least the presidency; or as a sort of validation of military doubts about civilian leadership, which isn't exactly standard issue politics in the developed world.

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

Rick Perry tells TIME magazine that he actually made the decision to run for the presidency 45 days ago:

“I'm very calm in my heart that this is what I'm supposed to be doing.”

Oh goody.

Via Taegan Goddard

Morning Quote

Via Sullivan: “a Texas primary voter, when asked about the charge that his preferred candidate for governor, Rick Perry, may have presided over the execution of an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham.”

“It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

Rick Perry “Called” to Run for President

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) isn’t quite ready to announce, but he really feels like he should run……you know, because he’s been “called”:

“I’m not ready to tell you that I’m ready to announce that I’m in, but I’m getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do. This is what America needs.”

No thanks, Gov. Wingnut. America “needs” you  just about as much as America needs another major terrorist attack. Actually, even less than that.

Morning Quote: James Carville

James Carville talking about Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX)during an interview on CNN:

“He talks a lot and he's not very bright. And that's a combination I like in Republicans.”

Rick Perry to Run for GOP Presidential Nomination

Currently unofficial, the word is that Perry will announce in August.

Republican campaign veteran tells us that Texas Governor Rick Perry has decided to run for President, though the official word from Team Perry is still a definite maybe.

Our normally reliable Republican source reports that Mr. Perry has surveyed the field and decided to get in the race later this summer, perhaps around the time of the national prayer meeting that Mr. Perry is hosting on August 6 at a Houston football stadium. Our source also reports that Mr. Perry is aiming to compete in the Iowa Straw Poll, even though it occurs just a week later, on August 13. The thinking is that apparent front-runner Mitt Romney "does not reflect the Republican Party" and is therefore vulnerable to a credible challenge from the right, especially after Mr. Romney's recent squishy remarks on global warming.

Very predictable. We knew that Romney nor Huntsman would go over well with the far right loons.

Image of Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) via The Wall Street Journal.

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in December 2000:

“Certainly, you are not going to see a great philosophical difference between Rick Perry and George Bush.”

Via Political Wire