Posted on 10/19/2011 5:22:56 PM PDT by smoothsailing
October 19, 2011
Well, this much is clear: Rick Perry's campaign takes its cues from this blog, which just a few days ago asked in a headline, "Time for Perry to Bring up Mitt's lawn care?" Apparently, it was time. The question that came to my mind as that remarkable fracas last night was occurring was: could this turn into Mitt Romney's driver's license moment? Hillary Clinton was sailing along on an aura of inevitability in the fall of 2007, acing the debates much as Romney has done, when she found herself ganged up in a Philadelphia debate over her ambiguous stance over whether or not illegal immigrants in New York state should be allowed drivers' licenses.
It was a damaging moment because it brought to the fore all at once the less appealing side of her political persona, the trimming and calculating Hillary. There was a sudden similar risk in Perry's attack on Mitt's lawn workers (and what is it, anyway, with immigration as the issue that sparks revelatory moments in both parties' debates?) -- it reacquainted viewers very clearly with the Romney that he had managed to submerge so far in the campaign, the supremely wealthy suburban Boston pol who finds it unnervingly easy to talk away past positions or actions in blatant denial of the historical record. It will be up to viewers to decide what they make of this Mitt -- appealing to Anderson Cooper to restore order, his face red, his voice raised to a full shout -- in the constant replaying that the back and forth is sure to get in the coming days. Me, I thought the Times' Alessandra Stanley nailed it: "Romney looked a little like a country club tennis player dealing with a nonmember guest who gauchely calls a ball in that was obviously out."
Still, for this to turn into an equivalent of Hillary's driver's license moment will require that there is another candidate who is able to capitalize on this opening the way that Barack Obama was able to do then, as he deftly zeroed in on the triangulating Hillary in the Jefferson-Jackson speech in Des Moines that revived his campaign. This is the chance for Rick Perry's team to prove they're as good as everyone in Texas says they are.
VIDEO-Romney & Perry Take the Gloves Off
What was more telling was Romney’s assertion that he couldn’t hire ILLEGALS because he was running for POTUS.
romney got exposed as a liar by the boston paper twice.
last night he lied multiply.
He knew he was rehiring a company that regularly hired illegal alien lawn boys and cheap tarts.
That's actually much worse than Whitman ~ she did not hire that woman twice, just once (albeit for several years).
Romney knew his boosters in the audience would try to rattle Perry into skipping the "repeat offender" part of the story.
That seemed to me very much like the Algore's funny animal noises during the first Bush (43) debate!
Huntsman was absolutely correct to NOT attend this particular debate. The misbehavior of the audience coordinated with the attempt by Romney to prevent the utterance of the FULL STORY by another candidate definitely put the lie to "Oh, gee whiz guys, those people are always clean, and neat and so polite".
Sometimes I guess they're not.
We might also ask how it was that Huntsman knew that would happen. Was he in on it? Does he have a spy in the Perry camp?
Here’s hoping.
areca palms.
Is this a joke? I don’t like Romney, but he BLASTED Perry on this, just vaporized him! Perry could do no more than stand there and scowl and look like an idiot. I think Romney and Perry are both turd candidates, but Romney sure looked good compared to Perry last night.
Perry would be a hell of a lot smarter to shut up about Romney’s flip-flops on immigration and instead try to lock up the social conservatives he’s been courting for years. Romney certainly has plenty of flip flops on those issues.
I HAVE seen HONDURANS.
SANTORUM: Mitt, the governor of Massachusetts just is coming forward saying we have to pick up the job left undone by Romneycare, which is doing something about cutting health care costs.
What you did is exactly what Barack Obama did: focused on the wrong problem. Herman always says you've got to find the right problem. Well, the right problem is health care costs. What you did with a top-down, government-run program was focus on the problem of health care access. You expanded the pool of insurance without controlling costs. You've blown a hole in the budget up there. And you authored in Obamacare, which is going to blow a hole in the budget of this country.
COOPER: Governor Romney, I'm going to give you 30 seconds.
ROMNEY: I'm -- I'm sorry, Rick, that you find so much to dislike in my plan, but I'll tell you, the people in Massachusetts like it by about a 3-1 margin.
And we dealt with a challenge that we had, a lot of people that were expecting government to pay their way. And we said, you know what? If people have the capacity to care for themselves and pay their own way, they should.
Now, I can tell you this, it's absolutely right that there's a lot that needs to be done. And I didn't get the job done in Massachusetts in getting the health care costs down in this country. It's something I think we have got to do at the national level. I intend to do that.
But one thing is for sure. What Obama has done is imposed on the nation a plan that will not work, that must be repealed. And when it comes to knowledge about health care and how to get our health care system working, I may not be a doctor like this one right over here, but I sure understand how to bring the cost of health care down and how to also make sure that we have a system that works for the American people.
SANTORUM: It didn't do it. It didn't do it.
It's pretty obvious Romney cannot be counted on to follow rules he's agreed to. That's a bad sign in a President ~ like another Obama.
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I really don’t trust Romney, but in the debate, I saw Romney trying to explain in simple terms what happened but Perry, who I thought was acting like a hothead, wouldn’t let him finish. Seemed to me Romney, to his credit, kept calm even though he couldn’t finish his sentences with Perry basically yelling over his attempts to speak. I thought that made Perry look bad.
See my note on Whitman. It may have been beaten to death but it worked!
Whatever it takes. I could care less if it’s a “faux issue.”
This guy has been teflon on major issues (Romneycare, immigrations, etc). So it would be ironic if he went down on some minor issue like this.
It wasn’t Romney’s turn.
A “company that cares”, how? By discriminating against international workers? By illegally demanding greater proof from new employees?
What’s he going to do, call up all the landscapers he can find and ask if they hire illegals?
Now, I think Romney is thoroughly inadequate re: illegal immigration, and only marginally better than Perry on the issue. I’d rather have Cain, Santorum, Gingrich or Bachmann be my nominee, but there’s no way to hang him on this particular angle.
Last thing we need is another Texas Governor who has trouble putting 2 sentences together, need to fight the domestic communists with an ideological bludgeon.
Right now it looks like Cain Gingrich, and I hope the first act of their Administration is to send Romney to Kolob.
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