N.H. paper gives Mitt an 'anti-endorsement'
Newspapers in primary and caucus states often issue endorsements for presidential candidates. But the Concord (N.H) Monitor has broken with tradition in running an editorial explaining why former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney should not be elected president.
Romney campaign officials ascribe the editorial to the liberal mindset of the Monitor's editorial staff.
Romney campaign officials ascribe the editorial to the liberal mindset of the Monitor's editorial staff.
Comments
Just looking at the comments you left at my blog (Iowans for Romney) a couple of weeks ago about us exposing Huckabee's record as a late-surging under-vetted candidate that the MSM happily is giving a pass to (at the behest of the DNC . . . who still hasn't attacked Huck) it is telling that your blog has turned into exactly what you were saddened and disappointed that our blog had become . . . a vehicle to attack the challenger to our preferred 08 candidate.
Interesting irony there, eh?
The MSM- and the Romney campaign- have done their worst, and the "Huckaboom" continues. And the Romney campaign keeps exposing itself as the dishonest, mean-spirited and franticALly desperate enterprise it is.
No, Jeff. There's no irony here. What there is is rather the playing out of the warning I gave you when you first set out on the path of attacking a fellow Republican- and more than that, of spreading falsehoods and half-truths about him- just because your guy's candidacy has tanked and he has left him in the dust.
A panicked, hostile and dishonest response to a guy who has overcome the advantage Romney's money bought him and continues either to lead him or to eat away his lead in state after state is, perhaps, an understandable response, at one level. But that warning still holds true, and it's a rule of politics as ironclad as the rule of nature that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west: when you start attacking the other guy, you leave him no choice but to reply in kind.
Stop lying about Mike Huckabee, Jeff, and I'll be glad to stop abetting the long-delayed vetting of Mitt Romney's record as Massachusetts governor, the the questionable judgment he continues to exercise in this campaign.
In short, Jeff, to quote an admittedly crude political proverb that simply is too apt to avoid, when you initiate a pissing contest with somebody, you, too, are apt to become wet.
Welcome to Political Reality 101, Jeff.
when was the last time you looked at a poll...the huckaboom continues? He was at like 16 points above Romney, and now according to the latest ARG poll, Romney is within a 2 points of Huckabee.
ARG GOP Iowa Caucus
Mike Huckabee 23% (28%)
Mitt Romney 21% (17%)
John McCain 17% (20%)
Rudy Giuliani 14% (13%)
Ron Paul 10% (4%)
Fred Thompson 3% (5%)
Duncan Hunter 2% (0%)
Alan Keyes 2% (1%)
Undecided 8% (11%)
As for the pissing comment...i think what Jeff meant is that Huckabee supporters try the "holier than thou" attitude and say that they are not into attacking other candidates...personally I don't care if you attack him...i like the attacks as they allow me to look at things about a candidate from both sides. Which is why i am no longer a huckabee supporter...after looking at all the facts (i know you don't like that word, you would rather call them falsehoods, well to each his own) about each candidate I think Huckabee's record speaks for itself.
"ROmney left in the dust" yeah leading in Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, Wyoming, and in statistical dead heat in Iowa...man that Romney guy is just self-imploding.
First off, name to me one "lie" that I've told about Huckabee.
Second, I think you're a week or two behind the times. The Huckaboom has ended and he's actually fallen off the last week or two (and the polls have been showing it in Iowa and nationally).
He's panicked enough to be going on Meet The Press next sunday after his campaign officials said two weeks ago that he wouldn't/didn't need to.
It's just been baffling to watch his patch-work illogical campaign. Populism and the Fair Tax (which will undoubtedly lay a greater percentage of the tax burden at the middle class/poor than currently).
Refuses to go back against scholarships for illegals/in-state tuition, but his new plans says that all illegals have 120 days to register and leave the country (but what about all the effort they exerted in AR schools?)
He's even more confused than he is callow on foreign policy.
It's been very interesting to watch . . . but he's feeling the heat and even Rush Limbaugh levied an "undorsement".
In fact check this out.
Huckabee and his supporters always seem to point out that Romney's attacking him. The already nascent Huck-a-bust will undoubtedly be blamed on Romney by Huck and his supporters. However . . . I don't think that Romney had anything to do with the fact that essentially every conservative with a microphone or blog has been railing against Huckabee for the last few weeks. Need some evidence?:
Rush Limbaugh
Condoleezza Rice
Michelle Malkin
Ann Coulter
Phyllis Schlafly
Bob Novak (others here & here)
Peggy Noonan
Charles Krauthammer
Sean Hannity (kind of . . . not frontal attacks, but plenty of comments expressing concern with him as the potential GOP nominee)
Laura Ingraham
Fred Barnes
Michael Barone
Mark Steyn
George Will-- ( these comments too on a TV news show)
Glenn Beck (semi "reconciliation" ---- but then he's still not too impressed)
Matt Drudge (it's obvious that he has a bone to pick with Huckabee given his coverage of late)
David Limbaugh (another here)
Kim Strassell
Donald Lambro
Jonah Goldberg
Pat Buchanan
Michael Reagan
John Fund (an interesting video here)
Jim Geraghty
Tony Blankley
Howie Carr
Kathryn Jean Lopez (another here)
James Taranto (also here too, and don't forget Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 of the "No Truck with Huck" series)
Rich Lowry (this one too)
Clarence Page
Dean Barnett
Mark Hemingway
Walter Williams
Austin Hill
Tom Bevan
Jack Kelly
Deroy Murdock
David Frum
Jonathan Alder
John Hinderaker
Bruce Bartlett
Victor Davis Hanson
Johnathan Tobin
Hugh Hewitt (and another)
Frank Gaffney (who Huck claimed was one of his Foreign Policy advisors)
Lori Byrd
Peter Wehner
Douglas MacKinnon
Paul Mirengoff ( here and here too)
The Editors of National Review (Oh yeah, this one too and both were written BEFORE the NR endorsed Romney)
Mitt Romney :)
Fred Thompson :)
Rudy Giuliani :)
Ron Paul :)
You can just hear and feel all of these conservative/GOP icons pleading with the voters: "PLEASE DON'T MAKE US TRY TO DEFEND THIS GUY!!!" (should he be the nominee).
Conclusion: Huckabee's not a full-spectrum conservative and the GOP would be unwise to give him the nomination. Romney has had to point out the un-conservative spots in Huck's record because the MSM/DNC axis sure hasn't been (they want him as the GOP nominee) and because McCain and Rudy want Huck to win Iowa to stifle Romney's path to the nomination. However, Romney is hardly alone in pointing out Huckabee's worrisome record.
Individual polls mean very little. Polls are mainly useful for showing trends- and the "trend" you guys try to claim is simply over too short a time to be significant. The fact is that Huckabee continues to hold an average lead of 3.7% in the last eight polls here in Iowa.
Half-four of the eight, spaced widely apart to eliminate any impression of a trend either way- show him with leads of from six to eight percent.
When a candidate is outspent in a state by a margin of ten to one, even the numbers you cite would be solid evidence that a "boom" in his favor is very much a ongoing thing. And when one actually looks at the numbers, that impression is only confirmed. Yes, at one point several weeks ago, when the Romney collapse here in Iowa happened, Huckabee's lead was as high as you say- in a couple of polls. One even had him up 22 percent- almost as high as Romney's lead for most of the past year! But what remains is a pretty steady picture of Huckabee probably between five and seven points ahead.
Note that all but one of the recent polls continues to show Huckabee in the lead, and that half of them have that lead outside the margin of error.
Unlike Romney's lead over Huckabee in Michigan.
That series of statistically anomylous polls Jeff tries to make use of> did seem to show the very result you suggest- except that they were contradicted not only by polls taken at the same time, but with a larger sample, but by the polls taken subsequently. If we throw out all polls contradicted by simultaneous polls, Huckabee's average lead in Iowa is six percent.
But what the polls here in Iowa, taken as a whole, show right now is a Huckabee lead of anywhere between one and eight percent, with an average of lead 3.7%. Admittedly, the race is volatile. But the slightest glance at the chart shows that every time Huckabee's lead drops a couple of points, it keeps promptly coming back up by at least that much. So I'm afraid that your suggestion that the boom is over is a fantasy. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that your impression that it is a boom is the fantasy. No reasonable person would prefer Romney's numbers in Iowa right now to Huckabee's.
Keep whistling in the dark, jarebear!
Oh, Jeff. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff!
Have you ever heard the word chutzpah? It's a remarkable Yiddish word, often defined as "that quality exhibited by a person who murders both his parents, and then pleads for mercy on the ground that he's an orphan." For you to accuse me of overheated rhetoric is a classic example!
You've tried to hang the Wayne Dumond thing on Huckabee despite knowing that Huckabee took no official action at all in the case-and that the case that he "twisted the arms" of three Democratic parole board members with both political and personal motives to want to hurt Huckabee depends literally, 100% on nothing but their own claim to that effect.
You've implied that somehow Mitt Romney was toughter on crime than Mike Huckabee because Romney tried-and failed- to institute penalties on first time meth dealers several orders of magnitude less severe than the ones Mike Huckabee recommended the Arkansas legislature adopt- a reduction in Arkansas penalties he urged at the request of state prosecutors trying to do something about catastrophic prison overcrowding!
You go on and on about Huckabee's willingness to let the children of illegal immigrants go to state universities under certain circumstances, while ignoring Romney's personal sympathy for exactly the approach Huckabee took as governor of Massachusetts(in fairness, Romney did not finally do what he agreed with Huckabee would be the fair thing for the kids involved lest their parents be rewarded for breaking the law).
Jeff, there hastn't been a day go by for months when you haven't make false claims and statements in your ongoing, panic-driven negative campaign against the candidate who's waxing your guy's tail here in Iowa. And Romney's plunge from the lead is the only reason you're doing it.
You're scared, Jeff. And it's you, not I, who is behind the times. I recommend the links in my response to jarebear, in which I document that with the exception of a few polls directly contradicted by others taken during the same period, and with greater samples, Huckabee has continued to hold a steady lead in Iowa throughout the past several weeks. And with the exception of a single anomylous poll nationally, Huckabee continues to run consistently- and Romney third or fouth.
Neither in Iowa nor nationally, Jeff, would I trade Huckabee's numbers for Romney's. And huff and puff as you may, I don't think in my shoes you'd make the deal, either!
Jeff, there's a limit to how much smoke you can blow. That's a long list you have there of people who have been critical of Mike Huckabee. That's what happens when you become the leader of the pack. Since Romney has never occupied that position nationally, and never will, he has still avoided the attention he rightly should receive for his shameful record in judicial appointments, for example. I'm sorry, but the fact that Mitt Romney, Full Spectrum Conservative, is a recent and convenient convert to conservatism on most of the issues on that spectrum doesn't fill a great many of us with confidence.
Better a man with conscience enough to go against the flow once in a while than one who can blend into the conservative background so effortlessly after years and years of being anything but a conservative on so many issues!
Do you seriously want to tout Mitt Romney's foreign policy credentials? Get serious! You do deserve credit for addressing matters of substance instead of dealing in your patented ad hominems when it comes to the Fair Tax, but it remains the one way of financing the Federal government which does not require the retention of a massive bureaucracy- a matter of no little concern to those of us who see the size and power of the IRS as a bad thing.
I was gratified to see you say recently on your blog that you were so tired of running down Mike Huckabee that you'd decided to say something positive about Mitt Romney for a change. If you and your fellow Romney supporters had stuck to that plan all along, Jeff, I wouldn't have gone negative myself.
The fact is- deny it all you want- that Mike Huckabee has continued to run an essentially positive campaign despite the extreme provocation the non-stop attacks and chronic misrepresentation of the facts the panic that springs of your realization that your guy's cause is failing has motivated you to produce.
But the fact is, Jeff, that Mitt Romney- admittedly given lots of very understandable grief for his late and politically expedient conversion to conservative positions on so many issues- has been wholly unvetted as to his record. The MSM has been convinced that Giuliani is the man, and hasn't really taken off after any of the other candidates.
But if you keep it up, more and more of the record of that guy who kept passing over conservative judges and appointing Democrats who turned Massachusetts murderers loose is going to come forward. The nastiness of the Romney campaign only produces anomosity among people whose willingness to consider Romney as a second choice down the line you're really going to need.
Bottom line: Huckabee is still first in Iowa, and second nationally; Romney is still second in Iowa, and fourth nationally. Spin that any way you want. But it isn't working, Jeff... and if you keep it up, it's going to backfire.
Time to consider your own rhetoric, my friend. You're not doing your candidate any good.
"Huckaboom" over, indeed!