VIDEO, Romney Running Out Of Gas In Michigan and losing in his native state. Santorum 33%, Romney 27% - "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" : headline on a New York Times opinion piece Mitt Romney wrote in late 2008, arguing against a U.S. taxpayer bailout of America's iconic auto industry

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CNN VIDEO, LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor, ESPN.COM Sr. Writer.

Uploaded by MrObamanos on Feb 17, 2012

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.

That was the headline on a New York Times opinion piece Mitt Romney wrote in late 2008, arguing against a U.S. taxpayer bailout of America's iconic auto industry.

It was a tough-love message from the son of a former Michigan governor, a made-in-Detroit politician who felt government intervention "virtually guaranteed" the demise of Chrysler and General Motors.

Fast forward almost four years. The carmakers are making money again and Romney is the one in trouble - unexpectedly battling Rick Santo-rum ahead of Michigan's Republican presidential primary on Feb. 28.

Romney launched a major effort Tuesday to rescue his campaign in the Great Lakes State, amid concerns that defeat there is not only possible, but potentially crippling to his White House ambitions.

"The Romney people know they are in some trouble here," says Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University.

The save-Michigan strategy includes a new television ad touting Romney's family ties to the auto industry and a bid to clarify the reasons he opposed the $85-billion US bailout for Chrysler and GM.

Romney's super PAC, Restore our Future, is supplementing the candidate's effort with its own $640,000 ad buy - further evidence the former Massachusetts governor's allies think his campaign is sputtering in Michigan.

"A loss in Michigan would be the most devastating blow yet to Romney's candidacy," says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "He grew up there, his father was governor, and he won the state four years ago. There is just no way Romney could spin this defeat to minimize it."

The new Michigan TV ad shows Romney behind the wheel of a Chrysler and features footage of classic Detroit cars. The candidate reminiscences about attending the Detroit auto show with his father, George, who was chief executive of American Motors in the 1950s and early 1960s. Romney was born in Detroit and his father was governor of Michigan from 1963-69.

In a separate opinion piece published in Tuesday's Detroit News, Romney says he opposed the Obama administration's bailout of Chrysler and General Motors because it was "crony capitalism" that amounted to "an $85-billion sweetheart deal" for auto unions at the expense of company creditors.

"The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business," Romney writes. "The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President (Barack) Obama's management of the American economy are evident in what he did."

The ad and article are aimed at Re-publican primary voters, who polls show are warming to Santorum.

The former Pennsylvania governor, who won nominating contests last week in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, has emphasized his own blue-collar roots and championed the need for a rebirth of American manufacturing.

A Rasmussen Reports poll on Feb. 13 showed Santorum with a three-point lead over Romney in Michigan. A separate Public Policy Polling survey found a wider Santorum advantage. Nationally, a New York Times/ CBS News poll on Tuesday showed Santorum with 30-per-cent support and Romney with 27 per cent.

While Romney has one eye on Santorum, he appears also to be targeting independent voters whose sup-port he will need to make Michigan competitive in November if he wins the GOP nomination.

Obama's campaign has repeatedly attacked Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, saying "there would not be an American auto industry" if the former Massachusetts governor had been in the White House.

Romney Running Out Of Gas In Michigan

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William Galston : Obama’s reelection prospects have brightened considerably because Americans now believe their country’s economic health is improving. Obama’s re-election will depend on whether they continue believing so in the nine months until election day

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The New Republic
The Obama Campaign Has Momentum, But Can It Keep It?
February 16, 2012

By William Galston
William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor at The New Republic.

The Obama Campaign Has Momentum, But Can It Keep It?

Some excerpts :

It turns out that the American public is an exquisitely sensitive barometer of real economic developments. Between January and September of 2011, job creation ranged from anemic to imperceptible, the number of unemployed Americans didn’t budge, and neither did the unemployment rate. Since then, the number of employed Americans has risen by 1.5 million, the number of unemployed has declined by more than 1.2 million, and the unemployment rate has declined from 9.0 to 8.3 percent. If these trends continue at this pace for the next nine months, Obama will be sworn in for a second term.

Still, as so often happens, the consensus has shifted too abruptly, moving from “Obama’s toast” to “none of these bums can beat him.” Obama’s chances may have improved, but 2012 is still a close race and will remain so unless the economy outperforms most expectations.

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The bottom line: Romney is bloodied but not mortally wounded, while the president is doing better but is not yet out of danger. And despite Santorum’s rapid rise, which could lead to his nomination if he prevails in Michigan, the evidence currently available does not sustain what is becoming the core argument of his primary campaign—that in the industrial Midwest, his alleged blue-collar appeal would make him a stronger general election candidate than Romney against Obama. Romney and Obama as favorites, Santorum as a long-shot: The overall political situation has changed since last fall, but not as much as many people think. In the minds of swing voters, the economy will still be the deciding factor.

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Ezra Klein : "The legislation Obama has already signed into law is far greater in scope and ambition than anything he has subsequently proposed, or is likely to pass. For Obama’s presidency to be remembered as one of the most consequential in recent American history, he does not need a new strategy, or a new personality."

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"He simply needs to win a second term so that he can protect the accomplishments of his first".

Washington Post
The best way to judge Obama’s first term — and his second
By Ezra Klein
February 12, 2012


The best way to judge Obama’s first term — and his second


Some excerpts :

The most important fact of Obama’s reelection campaign is that, if he wins, the single most important accomplishment of his second term will be protecting the gains of his first term. If he wins, the Affordable Care Act — barring a truly unexpected ruling from the Supreme Court — becomes the law of the land. If he wins, Dodd-Frank becomes the law on Wall Street. If he loses, both policies are likely to be either rolled back or hollowed out. Bush’s victory in the Gulf War withstood Bill Clinton’s election, and the Camp David agreement was not undone by Ronald Reagan. In Obama’s case, however, a failure to win a second term will not just color his accomplishments. It will decide their fate.

Moreover, if Obama did win a second term his accomplishments would be comparatively limited. He will not enjoy anything like the congressional majorities of his first two years again. He is likely to face a Republican House or a Republican Senate or both. What he can accomplish in terms of new legislation will thus depend on how much congressional Republicans want him to accomplish in terms of new legislation. Though there’s some reason to believe that losing the 2012 election could empower more moderate factions in the GOP, anything beyond modest levels of cooperation would remain unlikely. Divided government is not the place for miracles. As such, it’s likely to be the legislation from Obama’s first term that decides his legacy and holds the most hope of addressing the country’s toughest policy problems.

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We also know what Obama wants to do. Raise taxes on the wealthy. Invest in infrastructure. Address climate change. Reduce the deficit, albeit on a more gradual path than many Republicans say they would prefer. Roll back Citizens United. End the war in Afghanistan. And, perhaps most importantly, entrench the major pieces of legislation passed in his first term.

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Great Information of CNN/Census Bureau about number of Latinos in the 15 key Swing States, Data, Information, Electoral Votes, Margins of Victory of Barack Obama or John McCain

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Jeb Bush recently wrote that Hispanic voters will represent the margin of victory in the 15 swing states that will decide in November 2012 - Obama won North Carolina by only 14,177 votes. Since then, Hispanic voter registration in North Carolina has nearly doubled to 130,615.

Please note that this information of the Census Bureau is "Old" and "Outdated" .... Today's Numbers of possible Latino Voting Age Population should be higher.

CNN

February 12, 2012

Will Hispanic voters swing the 2012 race?
Source CNN Political Research Team and U. S. Bureau of Census

Charles Garcia of García Trujillo Marketing Business

Editor's note: Charles Garcia is the CEO of Garcia Trujillo, a business focused on the Hispanic market, and the author of "Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows." A native of the Republic of Panama, he now lives in Florida. Watch Garcia on Friday in the 9 a.m. hour on CNN Newsroom.

Will Hispanic voters swing the 2012 race?

First Column is Change in Latino Voting Age Population

Second Column is Electoral Votes of the State

Third Column is Margin or Excess Of Obama Victory Votes

                                    Change              Electoral       Margin of Obama Victory

Arizona                     ( 35,254 )              11                  ( 195,404 )

Colorado                     21,358                  9                     214,987

Florida                      384,707                 29                     236,450

Indiana                        34,189                11                       28,391

Iowa                            15,115                   6                     146,561

Michigan                      4,967                 16                     823,940

Missouri                     17,846                 10                     ( 3,903 )

Nevada                      38,039                    6                    120,909

New Hampshire          1,852                    4                     68,292

New Mexico             34,746                     5                   125,590

North Carolina          78,043                  15                     14,177

Ohio                           33,961                  18                   258,897

Pennsylvania             88,656                  20                   620,478

Virginia                      73,986                  13                  234,527

Wisconsin                   24,721                 10                  414,818

Total                        716,933                  163               3,507,324

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"If you would have told the average liberal four years ago that their president would pass health care reform, repeal don’t ask/don’t tell, end the war in Iraq, and start downsizing the Pentagon—and that, after all that, Obama would still be in a strong position to win re-election

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.. they would probably have taken the deal. The process was messy and endlessly frustrating, but it got to the right place"

And add the killing of Osama Bin Laden !

The New Republic
In Which I Question Obama’s “Long-Game” Strategy
By Noam Scheiber
February 14, 2012


In Which I Question Obama’s “Long-Game” Strategy


Some excerpts :

But this logic breaks down as it relates to the economy. When it comes to the economy, you can’t simply tell people not to worry about three years of punishingly high unemployment because it worked out in the end. Those were still three years of punishingly high unemployment, and they were absolutely miserable for the large number of people who couldn’t provide for their families, or who worried they wouldn’t be able to.

Worse, if you buy Andrew’s long-game argument, some otherwise avoidable amount of pain was actually necessary. In order for the rope-a-dope strategy to work, after all, you have to patiently absorb a lot of blows—blows you otherwise would have countered—before you make your move and reclaim the initiative. As a practical matter, those blows came when the administration was either too preoccupied with deficit-reduction, not focused enough on getting more stimulus, or both. (Obviously, the hundreds of billions in stimulus Obama did procure was enormously helpful. But he missed opportunities for more, both in the original Recovery Act and later on.

So, yes, Obama’s long-game appears to have worked politically, to the extent that it was a conscious strategy. But substantively, it left something to be desired. And, in the end, a president has to be judged on both counts.

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SALON.COM : Repeat of History : Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole in 1996 - Supertitious, Supernatural, Mysterious resemblance to the 2012 contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney - Cauldron of Witches

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SALON.COM
The GOP’s emerging Bob Dole problem
The last Republican to take on a Democratic president never recovered from his primary season wounds
By Steve Kornacki
Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The GOP’s emerging Bob Dole problem


Some excerpts :

Like Obama, Bill Clinton began the 1996 cycle on the heels of an epic midterm election defeat and with the opposition party convinced it had found the formula to defeat him. But the Republican Party’s image plunged in 1995 and early ’96, the product of overreach by its new congressional majority and the toxic antics of a House speaker named Newt Gingrich, while the economy — and Clinton’s approval scores — improved. By the time Bob Dole, who suffered an embarrassing series of early primary season defeats (including to Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire), finally secured the GOP nomination he was running far behind Clinton. And despite predictions throughout the spring of ’96 that the race would ultimately tighten, it never really did.

After his defeat, Dole was known to lament that the election had come two years too late. Obama’s recent gains are tenuous, but it seems a lot more likely now than it did a few months ago that the 2012 Republican nominee will end up saying the same thing.

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Obama's New Budget : To favor college kids ( He won this demographic in 2008 by an extraordinary margin ) - Obama to help community colleges, financial aid and tax credits for them and their students. Loans for undergraduate students

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Obama campaign’s attempts to rally the middle class, a narrative of shared responsibility including adequate taxation of the rich that are now in a wonderful paradise of extremely low taxes.

This is a proposal to strongly help American Youngsters in their Education, and to help the Middle Class and the Real Small Businesses that are creating Real Jobs. And not falling in the delusions and traps of the discredited "Trickle Down Economics" ( that is giving money to the rich, allegedly to help the Poor )

POLITICO.COM
President Obama's budget targets key voters
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN
Februaryh 14, 2012


President Obama's budget targets key voters

Some excerpts :

Families that earn more than $250,000 aren’t in the clear, despite the efforts of some leading congressional Democrats to raise the threshold for new taxes to the more politically palatable $1 million mark.

It turns out that Obama doesn’t just want to eliminate the Bush-era tax cuts for these upper-income families and limit the amount of charitable deductions they can take — two ideas he renews in the budget.

He also proposed taxing dividends as ordinary income, raising the top rate to 39.6 percent from 15 percent. It was a move that surprised analysts because he hasn’t advocated such a high rate in the past.

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“We simply can’t afford to devote $206 billion for lower tax rates for the highest-income Americans,” Gene Sperling, White House director of the National Economic Council, told reporters Monday. “Our system for taxing investment income for the most well-off Americans is clearly broken.”

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And Obama went to bat once again for teachers and first responders — two more key allies — by renewing his call for $30 billion to prevent layoffs at the state and local levels.

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But Obama and his team made a strategic decision months ago to put the deficit second to job creation — and it has served them well politically if not fiscally, as the unemployment rate has declined to its lowest level in three years.

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Play to the Rust Belt

Obama continues his play for the industrial Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions — crucial battlegrounds — with a series of tax incentives aimed at manufacturers.

Manufacturers that create jobs at home? They get a tax break. Communities affected by manufacturing job losses? They get $6 billion in targeted assistance. Companies that pursue advanced manufacturing? They get double the amount of deductions.

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Big banks face a $61 billion tax, which is doubled from last year and would help fund the president’s mortgage refinancing program. The financial services industry doesn’t like Obama’s Buffett Rule for a minimum 30 percent tax rate for millionaires, or his plan to hike taxes on dividends for the wealthy, or his promises to raise the carried interest rate that targets private equity and hedge fund managers. Oil and gas companies risk losing $41 billion in subsidies.

The initiatives play well with progressives, tap into the anger harnessed by the Occupy Wall Street movement and box in Republicans, particularly Romney, as defenders of the wealthy and corporations.

“With full knowledge that this will not pass or there will not be a deal, Obama is using the budget document to set up a very popular argument in the election campaign,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive advocacy group.

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POLITICO.COM : Derail Mitt Romney : "Rick Santorum’s campaign is eyeing a pair of swiftly approaching Midwestern primary states as its best — and perhaps only — opportunity to deal a mortal blow to Mitt Romney and permanently transform the Republican presidential race into a one-on-one duel to the finish"

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"Rick Santorum's team sees plentiful opportunities to harvest delegates over the next month in states such as North Dakota, Oklahoma and Kansas — inexpensive political arenas that lean strongly to the right".

POLITICO.COM
Rick Santorum’s plan to derail Mitt Romney
By ALEXANDER BURNS and MAGGIE HABERMAN
February 13, 2012

Rick Santorum’s plan to derail Mitt Romney

Some excerpts :

A potential path to breaking open the race against Romney, they say, could run through Michigan’s Feb. 28 election and Ohio’s Super Tuesday vote on March 6 — two Rust Belt primaries in which they believe Santorum’s working-class background and manufacturing-heavy message will resonate. (Arizona’s winner-take-all primary, also on Feb. 28, looks less inviting.)

The privately held hope in the Santorum camp is that beating Romney in his native state of Michigan or in the ultimate general election battleground of Ohio would discredit, on a grand scale, the on-and-off Republican front-runner and make the other candidates in the race irrelevant in the remaining contests.

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“A state like Michigan, a state like Ohio, you do look at those and say, Santorum’s blue-collar background versus Romney’s Wall Street background, we believe is a great contrast to have.”

Santorum himself went a bit further in a Fox News interview last week, saying he believed he could beat Romney in Michigan, though Romney won the state in 2008 and grew up there when his father, George Romney, was governor.

And even as they work to lay the foundation for a longer struggle against Romney, Santorum’s team has already taken tentative steps toward a more aggressive posture in Michigan and Ohio.

They’ve brought on state directors in both states, plus Tennessee. A media-buying source said Santorum has inquired about cable television rates in Ohio and aides to the former senator said they are preparing to run ads there and in Michigan.

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More than a few of the Super Tuesday states fit that bill: Santorum campaigned last week in Oklahoma and is scheduled to visit Idaho and North Dakota in the next few days. Should Santorum fall short against Romney in the big-ticket Midwestern battlegrounds, his advisers believe he could press on with a campaign aimed at building a conservative coalition, delegate by delegate, for the Tampa convention.

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The other theory of the case, however, is that Santorum’s surge is proof positive that the Republican Party simply does not want to nominate Romney for president. Maybe (and even proponents of the theory acknowledge it’s only a maybe) Santorum’s sweep of last Tuesday’s primaries tore up the expectation among primary voters that the GOP will settle on Romney and created an opening for Santorum to knock him off.

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“I think he’s going to win Tennessee. He’s not going to win Georgia, but in states where there’s large evangelical populations, where they don’t have a native son running, I think he’s going to do well. I think he’s going to win Oklahoma,” said Land, who is neutral in the race. “He has won the battle with Newt Gingrich for the social conservative vote.”

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“I think you might actually see, because of the Tuesday election, exponential growth in the Santorum camp,” the Santorum ally said. “People have paid attention but didn’t think he could win.”

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Republicans are creating a magic mentality, Obama bad guy, Mitt Romney Superman fixes everything overnight with his superpowers of a super genius. In fact dismembering corporations and firing people is not a good preparation to be president

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It is topmost in naivete to believe that Obama and his aides are incompetent fools that do not know how to fix the economy and that Mitt Romney is a Superhero of Economics that will fix everything with his super intelligence.

The Big Harm of Republicans to the Economy during the 8 years of George W. Bush are not easily repaired in a year or two.

Naivete is credulousness, gullibility - tendency to believe too readily and therefore to be easily deceived - and the Republican voters in the primaries are champions of this horrible defect, being extremely innocent to fall into traps of sophistry and deceit.

Just because Mitt Romney says something with lots of self-assurance, the topic or sentence does not have to be true. Remember that he was a "Mormon Missionary" and he thus acquired a lot of shrewdness to deceive fools. He is a great actor and histrionic and can easily wear two masks : that is the etymology and definition of Hypocrite, a Greek Word that means the mask of an actor. It also means lack of character and value.

The "Free Dictionary" also defines "Naivete" as "simple mindedness, simpleness, simplicity - a lack of penetration or subtlety".

Mitt Romney buys a corporation in Bain Capital. Mitt is a pink-slipper, he gives pink slips to people in that corporation to fire them from their jobs. Later he can sell the assets of the wounded corporation at a better price.

Is he going to sell America Incorporated and fire all his employees and workers ??

I agree that Mitt Romney is a great speculator and has lots of shrewdness to hide gains and profits in Caribbean Paradises to avoid paying taxes or to hide unlawful transactions and tricks. That Mitt Romney plays dirty games and ugly tricks is something that my intuition strongly tells me.

He is the supreme opportunist in Business and Politics ... But what is the use of that to guide a nation ??.

At least President Obama is a honest and decent guy, and a great lawyer and intellectual. I do not have the slightest doubt that Obama is a guy with greater intellectuality and knowledge of History than Mitt Romney. Obama has a greater knowledge of the human heart, Obama has greater humanity and kindness than Mitt Romney.

Mitt has the qualities of the Economic Predator and Political Con Man, a swindler and deceiver. Like his Mormon "prophets" Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Vicente Duque

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Robert Reich : "Mitt Romney wants to increase the incomes of people earning more than $1 million a year by an average of $295,874 annually - By reducing government revenues, Romney's tax cuts would squeeze programs for the poor even further"

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Mitt Romney pays a very low tax rate on Big earnings of $20 million and he wants to pay even less with his absurd tax proposals. Mitt Romney is making as much as the combined earnings of a thousand American families at or just above the poverty line"

"Extending the Bush tax cuts will add $1.2 trillion to the nation's budget deficit in just two years".

What Mitt Romney wants is a Plutocracy with Racist Overtones. And the Middle Class will be downgraded and pushed to be very Poor.

San Francisco Chronicle
Middle class losing ground even amidst job growth
Sunday, February 12, 2012

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future."

Middle class losing ground even amidst job growth


Some excerpts :

Mitt Romney says he's not concerned about the very poor because they have safety nets to protect them. He says he's concerned about the middle class. Romney doesn't seem to realize how much of the middle class is becoming poor.

But Romney doesn't like safety nets to begin with. He has been accusing President Obama of inviting a culture of dependency. "Over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society," he says over and over, arguing that our economic problems stem from a sharp rise in dependency. Get rid of these benefits and people will work harder.

He and other Republicans point to government data showing that direct payments to individuals have shot up by almost $600 billion since 2009, a 32 percent increase. And 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit such as food stamps or unemployment insurance, up from 44 percent in 2008.

But Romney and other Republicans have cause and effect backward. The reason for the rise in benefits is that Americans got clobbered in 2008, and many are still sinking. They and their families need whatever help they can get.

The real scandal is that America's safety nets are too small and shot through with holes. Only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits, for example, because they weren't working full time or long enough on a single job before they were let go.

The unemployment system doesn't recognize how many Americans work part time on several jobs, and move from job to job.

Romney's budget proposals would shred safety nets even more. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his plan would throw 10 million low-income people off the benefit rolls for food stamps or cut benefits by thousands of dollars a year, or some combination.

"These cuts would primarily affect very low-income families with children, seniors and people with disabilities," the center concludes.

At the same time, Romney's tax plan would boost the incomes of America's most wealthy citizens, who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation's total income. Romney wants to permanently extend George W. Bush's tax cuts, reduce corporate income tax rates, and eliminate the estate tax.

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