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George Will On Romney: The Republicans Have Found Their Michael Dukakis
Mediaite ^ | October 23, 2011 | James Crugnale

Posted on 10/23/2011 8:29:08 PM PDT by Eagle Forgotten

In a stinging comparison that is sure to leave a mark, on Sunday’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour, George Will said the rise of Herman Cain had a lot to do with Republicans coming to the realization that Mitt Romney is their Michael Dukakis. “A technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology,” Will observed.

(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...


TOPICS: Campaign News; Parties
KEYWORDS: bowb4romney; cain; dukakis; georgefwill; georgewill; homosexualagenda; libertarians; nomination; rinoromney; romney; romney4bigdig; romney4clinton; romney4dnc; romney4hischoice; romney4iag; romney4kennedy; romney4kerry; romney4libjudges; romney4obama; romney4obamacare; romney4romney; romney4sharia; romneytherino; themagicrino; will
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To: Eagle Forgotten

First intelligent thing will has said in quite a while...


41 posted on 10/24/2011 12:39:58 AM PDT by goat granny
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To: precisionshootist
You wrote: Romney is certainly not the perfect candidate as far as conservatives are concerned but he is orders of magnitude better than Dukakis.

Will isn't saying that Romney and Dukakis are of equal merit in the eyes of conservatives. He's saying that Romney is to the Republican Party as Dukakis was to the Democratic Party: The governor who doesn't excite his party's base, but who hopes that his aura of managerial competence will win over independents.
42 posted on 10/24/2011 12:59:14 AM PDT by Eagle Forgotten
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To: Eagle Forgotten

EXCELLENT!


43 posted on 10/24/2011 2:29:51 AM PDT by silverleaf (Common sense is not so common - Voltaire)
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To: se_ohio_young_conservative

You thought Atwater was a conservative? I thought it was clear that Atwater’s only reason for being in politics was to get his picture in the paper. One thing that clinched it for me was his getting Buddy Roemer to switch parties.


44 posted on 10/24/2011 4:55:29 AM PDT by scrabblehack
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To: se_ohio_young_conservative

You thought Atwater was a conservative? I thought it was clear that Atwater’s only reason for being in politics was to get his picture in the paper. One thing that clinched it for me was his getting Buddy Roemer to switch parties.


45 posted on 10/24/2011 4:55:29 AM PDT by scrabblehack
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To: Eagle Forgotten

Will makes a good point, but notice how Matthew Dowd, consummate GOP insider, paints Cain as an “outsider”.

Cain, for the record, has long been an insider, having been a lobbyist, co-chaired Steve Forbes’s campaign in 2000, making appearances for years for the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity, etc.. But the Establishment wants to present him as an “outsider” to draw in all the tea party rubes.

Dowd, BTW, was a Democrat in TX up until 2000, and he was an Bushie insider, playing a key role in W’s reelection campaign in particular.


46 posted on 10/24/2011 5:10:04 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: rep-always
He’s black.

Romney will be black for you if it polls better...

I'm not sure I'm kidding.

47 posted on 10/24/2011 5:12:27 AM PDT by Caipirabob ( Communists... Socialists... Democrats...Traitors... Who can tell the difference?)
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To: Houghton M.
The 1960 Rat ticket lost too. It’s just that Richard J. Daley “fixed” things.

ABSOLUTELY right! And you have hit on a favorite topic of mine, which is how American history might have taken a drastically different turn had the LEGITIMATE winning political ticket of Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge contested the results, demanded a recount, and taken office.

First of all, there would have been consistency and continuity from the Eisenhower to the Nixon Administration, and we would very well have NOT had the Soviets via their proxy Castro playing missile games in Cuba. Why?

Khrushchev had already taken the measure of Nixon during their famous 'kitchen debate', and he had witnessed Nixon facing a possible sudden death by protesting mobs in South America, and he knew that Nixon was not somebody to screw around with. But Kennedy? He was an unproven and uncertain new Chief Executive and Khrushchev believed he could get away with pushing JFK around and except for an enormous series of lucky breaks on the part of JFK, we might very well have ended up in a nuclear war with the Soviets due to Moscow's political miscalculations, combined with JFK's inexperience.
48 posted on 10/24/2011 5:38:53 AM PDT by mkjessup (Is Herman Cain the best conservative candidate? If you say "no", then tell me who IS!!)
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To: 9YearLurker

“paints Cain as an “outsider”.”

Cain is a latter day Wendell Willkie. If Cain gets the nomination it will be the first time in 72 years that a republican with no political experience/baggage is the party nominee for president.

You might could say Willkie was the first ‘Tea Party’ candidate. His populist support won him the nomination over the likes of Robert Taft, Herbert Hoover and Thomas Dewey - the republican standard bearers of the day.

I’m making the analogy simply on the basis that neither Cain or Willkie have held political office before running for the presidency and both have strong business backgrounds.

I don’t know enough about Cain’s foreign policy views to make a comparison, although Willkie wrote a book called “One World” stating that economic interests will bind the nations into one world. That is certainly happening.

Willkie considered himself a classic liberal, but that term in the 1930-1940’s had a totally different connotation. It was the opposite of progressive ideology. Today, he would probably call himself a libertarian.

Willkie was once a democrat and held Wilson in high regard. Willkie was a lawyer who defended communists and Nazis. He called each case as he saw it in terms of individual liberty.

Willkie only garnered 80 some electoral votes in the election against FDR. The start of the war in Europe assured Roosevelt’s election to a third term.


49 posted on 10/24/2011 5:41:16 AM PDT by A'elian' nation (Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred. Jacques Barzun)
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To: lquist1
I just don’t know how the GOP elite can be so blind to all these facts staring them right in the face.
That's easy.

The GOP elite would rather lose the WH and keep control of the party, than have a Tea Party candidate win the WH and with it control of the Republican Party.

The GOP elite care only about their own phony-baloney jobs in the party. They do not care about America or the rights and freedoms of its citizens.

50 posted on 10/24/2011 5:52:44 AM PDT by samtheman (Newt? Can you do it? Can you repudiate your time on the Pelosi couch?)
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To: Attention Surplus Disorder
Dukakis was soundly kicked to the curb after he lost, discarded like a dirty rag. I think he is regarded as a mistake (to have selected as a candidate) and is resentful of never having been elevated to some kind of tribal elder. He’s nothing like Jimmy Carter, who despite his exalted position of being one of the worst presidents ever and a towering goofball, is somehow regarded as a great man by many. Kerry still commands some respect. Don’t ask me why. But Dukakis ended up being like a piece of spoiled meat, you just want to wrap it up, dispose of it, and not see it nor smell it any more nor think about ever having owned it.
Interesting point. Kerry and Carter are still revered by the commies, while Dukakis was flushed. Why?
51 posted on 10/24/2011 5:55:20 AM PDT by samtheman (Newt? Can you do it? Can you repudiate your time on the Pelosi couch?)
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To: precisionshootist

“Romney is certainly not the perfect candidate as far as conservatives are concerned but he is orders of magnitude better than Dukakis.”

Based on what?

(besides the “R” following his name?)


52 posted on 10/24/2011 6:03:45 AM PDT by Grunthor (Poster may come off as abrasive, perhaps even rude. Consider this your warning.)
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To: Eagle Forgotten

You wrote: Romney is certainly not the perfect candidate as far as conservatives are concerned but he is orders of magnitude better than Dukakis.

Will isn’t saying that Romney and Dukakis are of equal merit in the eyes of conservatives. He’s saying that Romney is to the Republican Party as Dukakis was to the Democratic Party: The governor who doesn’t excite his party’s base, but who hopes that his aura of managerial competence will win over independents.


I understand what he was getting at but I still think he’s way off. Dukakis was handed one of the largest political defeats in our time. Romney on the other hand will mop the floor with Obama in a general election. Take away the out and out vote fraud and conspiracy to elect Obama by the media and Obama goes down in an absolute landslide.


53 posted on 10/24/2011 6:22:29 AM PDT by precisionshootist
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To: A'elian' nation

Cain doesn’t have enough foreign policy views to make a comparison.

But he ain’t no “outsider”.


54 posted on 10/24/2011 6:26:03 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: Eagle Forgotten
“A technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology,” Will observed.

Will lost me at 'competence'.

55 posted on 10/24/2011 6:28:20 AM PDT by Lazamataz (When I see pictures or videos of the Occupation, all that I see is an ocean of mostly white faces.)
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To: samtheman
You had to be here back in the day.

After the presidential election a lot of things came out about MA under Dukakis watch. The local media knew but kept it under wraps until after the election. The state budget was a mess, assigning fake SS# to illegal aliens, tons of cronyism. Dukakis was toast as governor and he took half the state legislature with him.

Kerry is loved by the local moonbat contingent and for the most part doesn't lift a finger in the Senate. They like Carter because he doesn't miss a chance to bash Republicans.

56 posted on 10/24/2011 7:02:54 AM PDT by outpostinmass2
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To: scrabblehack

I don’t know. But he kicked Democrats around like rag dolls. thats good enough for me !


57 posted on 10/24/2011 7:37:58 AM PDT by se_ohio_young_conservative
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To: mkjessup

Even if Nixon could have flipped Illinois. He needed one more big state or a couple of smaller states to flip his way in Electoral Votes. The margin in Texas, Michigan and Missouri were too big to over come.


58 posted on 10/24/2011 7:41:18 AM PDT by se_ohio_young_conservative
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To: mkjessup

But I will say this. His politics and backround were more populist and he was a complicated figure. With the country being more conservative in the early 60s, Nixon could have been a great President if he would have won.

He was a great man even with his flaw. For someone to go through what he went through (much of it self inflicted) and then come back in such a classy way in the last two decades of his life and go out a statesman. thats amazing to me.


59 posted on 10/24/2011 7:54:40 AM PDT by se_ohio_young_conservative
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To: Eagle Forgotten

Does that mean SNL will hire Jon Lovitz to portray Romney?


60 posted on 10/24/2011 7:57:00 AM PDT by dfwgator
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