Posted on 01/09/2012 6:50:44 PM PST by neverdem
Associated Press
NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — Republican front-runner Mitt Romney stumbled down the homestretch of the New Hampshire primary on Monday, declaring, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me" as his rivals intensified already fierce criticism.
"Gov. Romney enjoys firing people. I enjoy creating jobs," said former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has staked his candidacy on a strong showing in Tuesday's primary and has shown signs of gaining ground in recent polls.
Romney is the odds-on favorite in New Hampshire, and Huntsman as well as other Republicans who are contesting the state have generally been content to vie for second place in hopes of emerging as his main rival in the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21.
(Excerpt) Read more at minnesota.publicradio.org ...
He should have watched his words better...but that is hard to do 24x7. They are all taking him out of context and using it against him.
But he did say that this business was for the grown ups and required broad shoulders.
He’s going to take NH handily...but SC will not come so easy and the others are all stepping up their games there now.
Still, for a more conservative candidate to have a shot at Romney...Santorum, Newt and Perry have to quickly boil down to a single candidate...or Mitt will take them, or will be very close to them each and every time as they split the vote.
unless you are a Romney supporter, why would you care who is attacking him and how?
See comment# 25.
Does FR now state as official policy that we believe nobody should ever be fired? Really? Isn’t it a good thing that if somebody isn’t providing the service you want, you should be able to fire them? Really?
It looks like you didn't read any comments on the thread. See comment# 25. I don't want Romney as the nominee now for sure. He has a political tin ear now for the general election. He's toast.
>> What a fool!
Indeed. But evidently such brevity will not stand without explanation.
If Romney said this, and it’s on tape.
It will cost the GOP the election. Just that one ad.
Romney must lose the primary.
It’s important.
Oh, this is a NH primary. It’s on tape. I’m surprised we don’t have tape of the candidates taking a leak... 0:45
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBfWB64iHAs
I remember that one ad 4 years ago they kept playing over and over right before the election of McCain saying he “voted with Bush over 90% of the time.” In the interview they were challenging McCain on whether he was conservative enough. It ended up being used to tie him to the unpopular Bush administration. It’s amazing how they can sink your candidacy with just one line.
The problem really isn’t with the phrase itself. If not for Romney’s history at Bain Capital, this phrase wouldn’t hold any relevance on its own. The real problem is the same problem that cost Romney the Senate race in 1994. He has an extremely problematic and often politically ugly history in the private sector when it comes to job creation/destruction thanks to his time at Bain Capital.
The history itself when laid out by Kennedy in ads was enough to sink him in 1994. But this line cut-and-pasted into some of the Bain capital narratives with footage of laid-off workers telling their stories is just absolute political solid gold for the opposition. You couldn’t buy a slogan that good for an ad with 5 million dollars from a Las Vegas mogul but Romney just gave it away for free. This’ll be used to make an ad that ranks right up there with the Kerry windsurfing ad as the one that perfectly crystallized the opposition narrative on the candidate to devastating effect.
Hopefully Newt uses it first, so we can either see if Romney gets immunized to it or if he takes the fall and lets another candidate pick up the mantle before it’s too late for the GOP this year.
Because YOU and Newt are smearing John O Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans for TRUE in your zeal to hide Newts past liberal activities with your liberal 'Romney-boat' nonsense. Newt's responses were identical to Kerry's in 2004.
Did you libs really think that Obama was going to play nice and not run ads ads on Newt as Romney-PACs did with the hundreds of millions of dollars he is banking? Were you just going to deny that Newt did things that anyone can easily search the internet for in response? Newt was clearly un-prepared.
It doesn't matter. Rats give no quarter. Romney's toast. He blew it. If he wants any political future, he should withdraw from the race. He gave the rats the equivalent of the Goldwater "Daisy" ad with the countdown to the nuke detonation, supposedly shown only once. Whatever, I saw it in 1964.
Controlling the political lexicon is important. (note my tagline)
Republicans should not be using "-boating" as a suffix when talking about alleged smears because the swift boat vets were telling the truth about Lurch. Duh!
As a supervisor, I absolutely agree with Romney; there is intense pressure to tiptoe around the incompetent protected minorities, while “Anglo” guys are let go at the drop of a hat. I don’t enjoy firing people, but I don’t enjoy carrying dead weight, either.
For example, Kansas isn't a "red state" and conservatives should stop calling it that. Red has always referred to a communist regime. Thus, the People's Republic of China is a red state. It's been called Red China for many years because of that. Kansas is a true blue conservative state, as you would say in other part of the world to describe a right-of-center government.
Likewise, Ted Stevens wasn't "swift-boated" when he was brought up on phony corruption charges that were immediately dismissed after his defeat at the polls. Swift Boat Veterans told the TRUTH about John Kerry's puffed up Vietnam "service". Whereas the allegations against Stevens were blatantly FALSE and the Justice Dept. probe found evidence of gross prosecutorial misconduct. It was factual as the "Al Gore was more conservative than most Republicans when Perry endorsed him" stuff that Perrybots make up.
Using this terminology only helps the mainstream media with its goal of history revisionism. They want people to people to associate "red" conservatism with horrible dictatorial regimes and convince the public Kerry was defeated by "smears" created by Karl Rove. (the libs also kept insisting the conservative claim that John Kerry was in favor of gay marriage but wouldn't admit it in public was a "smear", though Kerry himself has now come in favor of gay marriage once he's back running in a safe RAT state. Wow! Some smear) But, of course, many of Newt's supporters are engaged in their own history revisionism (the newly created myth in 2011 that Newt was doing a wonderful job enacting conservative legislation until he was "removed" by a "RINO-lead coup" in 1998), so I'm not surprised they go along with the MSM on this one.
you can smell the FEAR...its only going to get worse til the primary is done, when reality of mittens and third party will exponentially ramp up the fear to suicidal levels...
Obviously the Onada derangement syndrome has infected the RINO Romneybots. It is to be expected though. Romney and his RINO cheerleaders are products of the Marxists. They are propagandized, programmed and brain dead useful idiots.
On this particular issue, Romney at Bain Capital and his use of words here that he is being ripped for:
Since Romney is claiming he created jobs in private industry as an election/economy pitch it seems fair that jobs that he worked to liquidate be considered too. The remarks that Perry made that I saw don't seem out of line.
Making money in business by doing things that results in layoffs is not evil, it's capitalism and necessary. The problem is, and I said this before, Romney making big money by being involved in layoffs while supporting TARP bailouts of investors who made bad (risky) investment decisions with taxpayer $$$ would be one hell-of-a-gift to Obama if he is nominated. It would be different if Romney opposed bailouts and stimulus when Bush was POTUS, but he was for them. Opportunists like him show themselves as obvious hypocrites who only believe in capitalism when it makes them $$$ and socialism when it makes them $$$.
Newt is not making especially good arguments as he is going after Romney on this ‘laying off workers to get rich’ issue, he sounds just like the libs on MSNBC and the OWS talking about the rich getting richer by laying off workers.
Newt should go after Romney, but not shoot at the Swift Boat Vets and capitalism in the process.
Bottom line is that Romney and the Establishment are fairies.
They are the rich kid that wants to call you names and hit you and then call mommy when somebody fights back.
I am a Romney hater, however, this is unfair. If the statement is read in context, it is wonderful, not evil.
Agreed...he made a major error and it will (and is) understandably being used against him.
Best it comes out now in any case, to either sink him, or, as you say, for him to be able to adequately answer it and immunize himself against it.
I do not believe there is anything criminal, or even unethical in what he did. They invested in firms, tryin to turn them around and make a profit. Quite a few they did and have sterling stories to tell. Others they did not profit on and lost money themsleves on. Others they got their investment back...and even more...but the companies failed anyway. Those things happen in the free market despite the best efforts of all involved, and are not the intent of the investors going in. But the class warfare people will zero in on those and use them to make the capitalists look like robber barrons.
Romney simply has to go through the whole list...know it by heart...and have a good solid, free market answer for each. If he hasn’t already done that I would be surprised...and he better have it spelled out, naturally, on the tip of his tongue for each and every company because Gingrich first (who has his own ties to investment companies that did the same) and then the left are going to hammer it relentlessly.
I still hope somehow Santorum, Perry and Gingrich can narrow down to a single candidate quickly to coalese the conservative vote. That is the only way they will beat Romney in any case IMHO.
Exactly, this is a major gaffe and will be taken out of context in the general election. That’s the primary process. The more blood in the water the stronger the nominee.
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