Posted on 05/30/2007 7:19:37 AM PDT by Reaganesque
WASHINGTON — Just a few weeks ago, advisers to Mitt Romney spoke about a steady, gradual climb from obscurity to the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Mitt Romney, speaking in Lakeland, Fla., Thursday, appears to have momentum on his side among GOP presidential contenders.
Now, Romney has rocketed from behind and is leading the race or is neck and neck for the lead in the pivotal states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
The road to next January's voting still is marked by numerous potholes, including persistent charges that he's a flip-flopper without conviction, a Mormon faith still unfamiliar and perhaps suspect to some voters as well as potential new competition from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Sen. Fred Thompson.
Also, his rapid rise may say as much about the fickleness of Republicans this early in the campaign as it does about the former Massachusetts governor.
But for now at least, Romney enters the summer astride the top tier and within reach of being able to claim that he's the front-runner for the nomination.
"He clearly has the three M's: media, money and momentum," independent pollster John Zogby said.
Romney led the field in fund raising in the first three months of this year. Yet until now, he trailed in popularity well behind Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain in most polls, either nationally or in early voting states such as Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina.
However, a poll in Iowa by The Des Moines Register last week found Romney leaping ahead with the support of 30 percent of likely attendees at January's precinct caucuses, well ahead of McCain's 18 percent and Giuliani's 17 percent.
In another new Iowa survey by the Republican public relations firm Strategic Vision, Romney led with 20 percent, up sharply from 8 percent the month before. He was followed by Giuliani with 18 percent and McCain with 16 percent. (A third poll showed McCain with 18 percent, Giuliani with 17 percent and Romney with 16 percent.)
Romney surged in New Hampshire as well. A new Zogby poll there found he had the support of 35 percent of likely primary voters, up from 25 percent the month before. That was well ahead of Giuliani and McCain, each with 19 percent.
Analysts and insiders pointed to three reasons for the Romney rise:
• Good reviews from party members and pundits for his performance in the party's first debate, May 3 in California.
• Unusually early television advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire. Romney has been advertising there for weeks, boasting about his record as a business executive and governor. A new ad Thursday bragged that he cut spending and taxes as governor and "enforced immigration laws, stood up for traditional marriage and the sanctity of human life."
• His rivals are in trouble with the party's conservative base. Giuliani's support for abortion rights was highlighted in the first two debates, a problem in a party that still opposes abortion rights. McCain stood with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., on an immigration bill widely reviled by conservatives as amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Romney's criticism of the immigration proposal — which is similar to one he supported a year ago — drew a sharp rebuke from McCain.
That, conservative strategist Greg Mueller said, was a mistake that helped elevate Romney as THE conservative critic of the unpopular proposal among the presidential candidates. "The McCain attack is the best thing that's happened to Romney since the day he got in," Mueller said.
He still faces formidable obstacles.
Foremost is the charge that he's a campaign convert to conservatism after running as a more moderate or liberal candidate in Massachusetts. Notably, he supported abortion rights when he ran for the Senate against Kennedy in 1994 and now opposes them.
"That could be his Achilles' heel," said David Johnson of Strategic Vision, which found in its new poll that Romney loses 4 percentage points of his support when voters are reminded that he supported abortion rights and gay rights in the 1990s.
"That's the one reluctance about Mitt Romney among conservatives," Johnson said. "They don't know if he's a true conservative."
The other potential challenge is his Mormon faith. In Iowa, the recent Register poll found that 1 out of 5 Republicans said they were less likely to vote for Romney because of his faith. But Mueller suggested that social conservatives eventually would care more about what Romney would do in the Oval Office than what he would do in church.
"Is there an undercurrent out there nervous about the Mormon thing? Sure. But they really want to know where he stands on the issues they care about," Mueller said.
Romney's campaign aides say he can answer the flip-flop questions by pointing to his record as governor.
"The only position he's ever changed is on life, and he changed in the right direction," Romney's campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said. "It was a matter of him recognizing he was wrong in the past and now he's right on the issue."
Madden also said that Romney's faith faded as an issue when people met the candidate and realized that he "shares the same hopes and aspirations that Americans of many faiths do."
In the end, those close to Romney tamp down any talk of his being the front-runner, perhaps fearful of raising expectations too high and setting him up for a fall if and when the polls in those early states change again.
"It's still fluid. I expect they will change," Madden said.
But he said the key to Romney's success of recent weeks and his hopes for the coming months were the same: that people get to know him and his record — and that they like him.
Reagan wouldn't pass your litmus test. He had the same position as Romney.
Why do I feel like I’m dealing with a petulant 5 year old having a tantrum whenever you post your diatribe? Waa, Waa, Waa. Grow up and get a life. Live in the now, not the past. I’m sorry you had a bad experience with bad members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Uh, here’s gem for ya: Bad things happen when people make bad choices regardless of thier religious affiliations. It’s a fact of life you need to embrace - it’s called reality.
BTW, I’m not friends with those people in Vegas. I don’t personally know Rory. I’m friends with other family members of Mr. Reid here in Northern Nevada. What’s funny regarding those family members is that even though we disagree politically on most issues, these particular family members are good people. I don’t have to agree with them on every issue in order to appreciate the good in them.
It seems to me that you are the one with the God complex inasmuch as anyone that doesn’t agree with YOUR lunacy is a heretic. What’s the name of YOUR church? Geez, you sound like a liberal on his soapbox.
Give it a rest cuz now you’re just getting b o r i n g. Zzzzzzzzzzz...
“A simple decent apology about the cricket thing and I promise I will never bring it up again.”
Apologize for what? Saying that a superstitious Mormon told me not to step on Mormon crickets?
I will apologize when you find one other qualified person on my planet Earth who can definitively say “here is the quotation where FastCoyote says every Mormon from here to Kolob says you can’t step on Mormon Crickets”.
Since you can’t do it, and I’ve even offered $100 to you to show where I said that, I think you are outed as someone who is all hat and no cattle.
Provide the quote that says “all Mormons believe” or apologize for being a defamer and liar.
It’s really simple, either you have the quote or you don’t.
Adapted from Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, “Discover Your Heritage: ‘They Will Kill Us!’ “ New Era, Sept. 1974, 3637.
“As one who has had my sources ridiculed as being prejudiced, I see that the source you use for “saving the book of commandments” is the New Era magazine, an official magazine of the LDS church. Can you provide a neutral source for this story?”
It is quite likely the story is true. What I find amusing is that when Mormon mobs and militia are involved, as at the Nauvoo Expositor incident as commanded by General Smith under cover of law, this is justified against malcontents. It just seems events can never be interpreted as the fault of Mormons.
Ronald Reagan, concerning gun control:
"You won't get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There's only one way to get real gun control: Disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up and if you don't actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time... It's a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun controllers. I happen to know this from personal experience."
Ronald Reagan was the best President in my lifetime, so far.
So now it's one Mormon. It was a group of Mormons before and you generalized it to other Mormons. You got laughed off the thread. I am guessing most FReepers don't care enough to read the original link which I have provided in a previous post but the record is there for all to see. I stand by my claim. You clearly generalized your experience of "Holy Crickets" to include other Mormons. You also swore at posters who called you on it. I have already provided you the text where you generalize (and swear at other FReepers). Maybe if you deny it enough you can make it seem like it never happened. I can't help it if Yes means No or Black Means White to you. That's your own problem.
I think I'm done with our little chat about this today, Feel free to respond, I know you will.
“Maybe if you deny it enough you can make it seem like it never happened. “
My sin, if there is one, would be on the order of “who stepped on the crickets”
On the other hand, what you deny is that Joseph Smith was a dirtbag who slept with other men’s wives, slept with underage children and had 33 wives AT LEAST.
So I will be happy to trade any semantic cricket transgressions I conceivably have made for your denial that your prophet was little better than a whoremaster. Harsh statement I know, but just look up Joseph Smith’s genealogy in your own Mormon family genealogy site, and cross link to Heber Kimbal and Brigham Young and the accusation is not deniable.
I deny cricket heresy, you deny whoremaster heresy, and we’ll see who is believed.
A lot of Freepers say that, but (Rudy is) the only candidate who’s got the edge on Hillary in the Florida polls. If he’s so unpopular among NYers, then why do they support him?
We don't.
Still haven't seen your polling data. But I found my own.
Giuliani lagging with the home crowd [Unpopular in New York]. A highlight:
In a possible head-to-head general election matchup, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton led Giuliani, 52 percent to 39 percent, among voters statewide. An April poll from Siena had Clinton with a much smaller lead, 48 percent to 43 percent.
Giuliani's favorable rating with all voters statewide was 51 percent, down from 63 percent in January of this year.
The former mayor's favorable rating in New York City was just 44 percent. Fifty-two percent of city voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Giuliani.
Why do you think New Yorkers support Rudy? We know him too well for that.
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