Mitt Romney Quotes

Mitt Romney's email was hacked! So if you start getting messages that sound like they're from a bot, he's fixed the problem.

The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.

Draft-dodging is what chicken-hawks do best. Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh (this capon claimed he had a cyst on his fat ass), Newt Gingrich, former Attorney General John Ashcroft—he received seven deferments to teach business education at Southwest Missouri State—pompous Bill O’Reilly, Jeb Bush, hey, throw in John Wayne—they were all draft-dodgers. Not a single one of these mouth-breathing, cowardly, and meretricious buffoons fought for his country. All plumped for deferments. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani? Did not serve. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney? Did not serve in the military. (He served the Mormon Church on a thirty-month mission to France.) Former Senator Fred Thompson? Did not serve. Former President Ronald Reagan? Due to poor eyesight, he served in a noncombat role making movies for the Army in southern California during WWII. He later seems to have confused his role as an actor playing a tail gunner with the real thing. Did Rahm Emanuel serve? Yes, he did during the Gulf War 1991—in the Israeli Army. John Boehner did not serve, not a fucking second. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY? Not a minute! Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-MS? Avoided the draft. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ—did not serve. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Cornyn, R-TX—did not serve. Former Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair John Ensign, R-NV? Did not serve. Jack Kemp? Dan Quayle? Never served a day. Not an hour. Not an afternoon. These are the jackasses that cherish memorial services and love to salute and adore hearing “Taps.

In order to become a success, a business doesn't just have to do well, it has to to better than its competitors. Being number one isn't just about bragging rights. Often it means the difference between prospering and merely hanging on.

America is not better off than it was $1.8 trillion dollars ago.

I bathe in statistics.

Corporations are people my friend

In 2012, President Barack Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, who didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. It was the usual bargain for J. Karacehennem and other people of the Loony Left. You supported a person whose policies you agreed with, sort of, but who you felt was too beholden to corporate interests and whose foreign policy made you sick. If you didn’t support this person, the alternative was something even worse. Voting was little more than triage.

Between 1994 and 2008, an individual health-care mandate was a standard GOP nostrum, promoted not only by Mitt Romney, but by Newt Gingrich when he was the highest elected Republican official in the country, and it was endorsed by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Now the mandate is the work of the devil, and authoritarian followers of the GOP, like faithful party members in Orwell’s 1984, believe “we’ve always been at war” against mandates.

Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people.

Central to America's rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition with the vision of the goodness and possibilities of every human life.

Mitt Romney is the American Borat

By the 2012 presidential election cycle, their company counted among its clients both the Obama re-election campaign and the campaign of Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

I thought of gross things like maggots and Mitt Romney and I was able to keep my errant dick under control.

Anybody who thinks factory jobs were good jobs needs to go visit somebody on a line,” she said. “Most people wouldn’t survive in a factory. Mitt Romney would die in a week.

I oppose same-sex marriage but I would advance equal rights in employment for gay and lesbian people. I appointed a few judges who were gay and I had few people in my cabinet that I found out were gay. I never asked peoples sexual orientation.

... "England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions." ~ nothing about its people and their steel will or courage, nothing about their history and legacy we share, nothing about the timbre of their values and virtues, just "..

Here’s what presidential candidate Mitt Romney said about Barack Obama: Barack Obama is not a very good President. He said Barack Obama doesn’t do a very good job on the economy; he said that Obama’s foreign policy has a lot of holes in it; he said Obama has done a pretty poor job across the board of working in bipartisan fashion. But, Romney added, Obama’s a good guy. He’s a good family man, a good husband, a man who believes in the basic principles espoused by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He is not someone you should be afraid of in any way. Essentially, Romney’s campaign slogan was this: “Obama: Good Guy, Bad President.

In our co-lecturing days, Flo Kennedy and I were sitting in the back of a taxi on the way to the Boston airport, discussing Flo’s book Abortion Rap. The driver, an old Irish woman, the only such cabbie I’ve ever seen, turned to us at a traffic light and said the immortal words, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!” Would she have wanted to own her words in public? I don’t know, but I so wish we had asked her name. When Flo and I told this taxi story at speeches, the driver’s sentence spread on T-shirts, political buttons, clinic walls, and protest banners from Washington to Vatican Square, from Ireland to Nigeria. By 2012, almost forty years after that taxi ride, the driver’s words were on a banner outside the Republican National Convention in Tampa, when the party nominated Mitt Romney for president of the United States on a platform that included criminalizing abortion. Neither Flo nor the taxi driver could have lived to see him lose—and yet they were there.

I oppose same-sex marriage and civil unions but I support domestic partnership between gay and lesbian couples. I have no problem with gay and lesbian couples adopting. I support equal benefits for same-sex couples such as hospital visitation rights

In many of these subsidy programs, no jobs are created. Instead the state income taxes are given to companies that agree to move jobs from one state across the border to another, as AMC Theatres agreed to do in moving its headquarters from Kansas City, Missouri, to Leawood, Kansas, just ten miles away. AMC will get to pocket $47 million withheld from its workers, a boon to its major owners: J. P. Morgan, Apollo Management, the Carlyle Group and the firm Mitt Romney cofounded in 1984, Bain Capital Management.

No, Schale explained, Trump’s numbers weren’t just big, they were unreal. In rural Polk County, smack-dab in the center of the state, Hillary would collect 3,000 more votes than Obama did in 2012—but Trump would add more than 25,000 votes to Mitt Romney’s total. In Pasco County, a swath of suburbs north of Tampa–St. Petersburg, Trump outran Romney by 30,000 votes. Pasco was one of the counties Schale was paying special attention to because the Tampa area tended to attract retirees from the Rust Belt—folks whose political leanings reflected those of hometowns in the industrial Midwest. In

And here’s what Barack Obama and his surrogates said about Mitt Romney: Mitt Romney is the worst guy since Mussolini. Mitt Romney is the guy who straps dogs to the top of cars. Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who wants to “put y’all back in chains.” Mitt Romney is leading a “war on women” and, in fact, has compiled a binder full of women that he can then use to prosecute his war. Mitt Romney is the type of guy who would specifically fire an employee so that five years later his wife would die of cancer thanks to lack of health insurance. Mitt Romney would take his money and put it in an overseas bank account specifically to deprive the American people of money. The Obama campaign slogan: “Romney: Rich, Sexist, Racist Jackass.

Obama’s embrace of nuance distinguished him sharply from his GOP antagonists. Back in 2004, President George W. Bush told Senator Joe Biden, “I don’t do nuance.” Former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, even blamed Trump’s ascendance in 2016 on precisely this penchant of Obama’s, writing in the Wall Street Journal that, “after seven years of the cool, weak and endlessly nuanced ‘no drama Obama,’ voters are looking for a strong leader who speaks in short, declarative sentences.” His remarks mirror criticisms made several years earlier by Mitt Romney, who accused the then-president of being “tentative, indecisive, timid and nuanced.” (The response of one liberal pundit shows the fluid perspective clearly: “Obama is ‘nuanced’? Yes, but can someone explain why that’s a bad thing? It’s a complex, ‘turbulent,’ and ever-changing world. Having a chief executive who appreciates and is aware of ‘nuance’ strikes me as positive.”)

Mitt Romney's first interview with Zombie Reagan: Mitt Romney came in with cheerful assurance, because he wasn’t capable of anything else. “Let me first welcome you back to this side of the veil, Mr. President.” “Yeah, Mitt, it’s good to see you looking so well. Your father says hello, and he wanted me to add specially that whatever unfortunate negative things you might remember him saying to you when you were a kid, he always tried to tell you the truth and he hopes you’ve used it to improve, and he understands that even with the help of those comments, it might just not have been in you to improve. He wants you to remember he still loves you no matter what you’ve become, or even if you haven’t chosen to become any one thing in particular.” “That’s very kind. I miss my dad even now.” “Oh, so do I. I remember George as always that kind of guy, he had your back, whenever you’d think to watch your back, you’d find him somewhere around there, ready for action with that knife already drawn.

Of course the results of the election were shocking at the time, but in hindsight, they were consistent with the trends of previous elections. Trump continued to build on Republican advantages with the middle class and the non-college educated whites. Meanwhile, the power of identity liberalism to boost turnout among the minority community proved to be a mirage. African American turnout was down significantly from 2008 and 2012 without the nation's first black president on the ticket. And Trump actually increased the share of the vote received from African Americans and Hispanic over Mitt Romney. It turns out the identity liberalism even alienates members of minority groups more concerned about economic issues than niche social justice fights. Furthermore, Donald Trump was making an appeal based on identity as well -- that of being an American. His patriotic call to Make America Great Again overwhelmed explicit appeals to race, gender and sexual orientation. This universal appeal based on broad issues and common culture trumped identity liberalism.

To understand President Obama’s second term, however, all you need to know are the following three: First, the Country Clubbers. Guardians of the GOP’s upper-crust traditions, they believed in lower taxes, less regulation, and being polite. They were led in Congress by Speaker John Boehner. They held out hope for the resurrection of Mitt Romney. Their fortunes were not on the rise. Second, the Flat Earth Society, with Sarah Palin as its patron saint. These were the hard-core conspiracy theorists. They insisted that President Obama had faked his long-form birth certificate. They were certain that bike-share programs were a world-domination plot fostered by the UN. Finally, the Holy Warriors. Some of these crusaders were, in fact, religious. Others were more likely to quote The Lord of the Rings than Matthew or Luke. But regardless of where they spent their Sundays, what they shared was a worldview. Where traditional Republicans saw a debate between liberal and conservative, Holy Warriors saw an existential battle between good and evil. They warned endlessly of appeasement. They spoke of “defeating the Left” as though Satan’s minions were amassed along the Pacific coast. The Holy Warriors pursued Romneyite goals with Palinite fervor. For this reason, they were ascendant in 2013.

I would take it as a personal favor if you would use the term Ambient Temperature Risen American.” “Ha, ha, ha.” He saw that Reagan was not smiling. “Ah, of course, anyway, I just wanted to say that many of my close friends are at ambient temperature, in fact many of them have become estates, which I think we have to learn to think of as they are every bit as much a person as any corporation, or any other corporation if the estate happens to be incorporated or own a corporation, because we have to think about that. And I want you to know that I can identify very strongly with that, because, in fact, many of my ancestors are ambient temperature also, as I know from having attended their baptisms.

Of course you would, Mitt," Reagan said. "Well, I’m glad we understand each other, and I think your father would be proud of you being in his old spot, and I want you to know that when I’m choosing my Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, your resumé will be on the very top of the pile. It’s been great chatting with you but you know, I have to find a vice presidential candidate, and soon.” “Ha, ha, ha, ah it’s been great chatting with you, too, Mr. President, and—” Reagan cocked his head slightly, smiled, and caught the eye of a minion; a moment later Romney had been deposited outside the door like a discarded room service tray, having barely had time to shift from ha, ha, ha back to ah…ah…

This mostly restrictionist trend reached an important pivot in 2012. Three major developments prompted this change in direction and momentum. First, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Arizona v. United States opinion, delivering its most consequential decision on the limits of state authority in immigration in three decades. Rejecting several provisions of Arizona's controversial omnibus immigration enforcement bill, SB 1070, the opinion nevertheless still left open possibilities for state and local involvement. Second, President Barack Obama, against the backdrop of a stalemate in comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) in Congress and contentious debates over the role of the federal executive in immigration enforcement, instituted the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) program, providing administrative relief and a form of lawful presence to hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth. Finally, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate whose platform supported laws like Arizona's and called them a model for the rest of the country, lost his bid for the White House with especially steep losses among Latinos and immigrant voters. After these events in 2012, restrictive legislation at the state level waned in frequency, and a growing number of states began to pass laws aimed at the integration of unauthorized immigrants. As this book goes to press, this integrationist trend is still continuing.

Another way of expressing the history of religion is that faith has hijacked religious spirituality. The prophets and leaders of organized religions, consciously or not, have put spirituality in the service of groups defined by their creation myths. Awe-inspiring ceremonies and sacred rites and rituals and sacrifices are given the deity in return for worldly security and the promise of immortality. As part of the exchange the deity must also make correct moral decisions. Within the Christian faith, among most of the denominational tribes, God is obliged to be against one or more of the following: homosexuality, artificial contraception, female bishops, and evolution. The Founding Fathers of the United States understood the risk of tribal religious conflict very well. George Washington observed, “Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing and ought most to be deprecated.” James Madison agreed, noting the “torrents of blood” that result from religious competition. John Adams insisted that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” America has slipped a bit since then. It has become almost mandatory for political leaders to assure the electorate that they have a faith, even, as for the Mormonism of Mitt Romney, if it looks ridiculous to the great majority. Presidents often listen to the counsel of Christian advisers. The phrase “under God” was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and today no major political candidate would dare suggest it be removed.

Yet in 2012, he returned. Plenty of the speechwriters were livid. The club was the embodiment of everything we had promised to change. Was it really necessary to flatter these people, just because they were powerful and rich? In a word, yes. In fact, thanks to the Supreme Court, the rich were more powerful than ever. In 2010, the court’s five conservative justices gutted America’s campaign finance laws in the decision known as Citizens United. With no more limits to the number of attack ads they could purchase, campaigns had become another hobby for the ultrawealthy. Tired of breeding racehorses or bidding on rare wines at auction? Buy a candidate instead! I should make it clear that no one explicitly laid out a strategy regarding the dinner. I never asked point-blank if we hoped to charm billionaires into spending their billions on something other than Mitt Romney’s campaign. That said, I knew it couldn’t hurt. Hoping to mollify the one-percenters in the audience, I kept the script embarrassingly tame. I’ve got about forty-five more minutes on the State of the Union that I’d like to deliver tonight. I am eager to work with members of Congress to be entertaining tonight. But if Congress is unwilling to cooperate, I will be funny without them. Even for a politician, this was weak. But it apparently struck the right tone. POTUS barely edited the speech. A few days later, as a reward for a job well done, Favs invited me to tag along to a speechwriting-team meeting with the president. I had not set foot in the Oval Office since my performance of the Golden Girls theme song. On that occasion, President Obama remained behind his desk. For larger gatherings like this one, however, he crossed the room to a brown leather armchair, and the rest of us filled the two beige sofas on either side. Between the sofas was a coffee table. On the coffee table sat a bowl, which under George W. Bush had contained candy but under Obama was full of apples instead. Hence the ultimate Oval Office power move: grab an apple at the end of a meeting, polish it on your suit, and take a casual chomp on your way out the door. I would have sooner stuck my finger in an electrical socket. Desperate not to call attention to myself, I took the seat farthest away and kept my eyes glued to my laptop. I allowed myself just one indulgence: a quick peek at the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s right, buddy. Look who’s still here. It was only at the very end of the meeting, as we rose from the surprisingly comfy couches, that Favs brought up the Alfalfa dinner. The right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham had been in the audience, and she was struck by the president’s poise. “She was talking about it this morning,” Favs told POTUS. “She said, ‘I don’t know if Mitt Romney can beat him.

Those 173 sizable counties are home to 54 percent of the U.S. population, and in 135 of them Trump even lagged behind the net margin performance of losing 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Trump crawled out of that mathematical hole in the all-but-forgotten communities—thousands of them. It took a lot of Bonnie Smiths, in a lot of places like Ashtabula County, to wreck political expectations—and if their political behavior in 2016 becomes an affiliation and not a dalliance, they have the potential to realign the American political construct and perhaps the country’s commercial and cultural presumptions as well.

If we can show we’re paying interns a living wage, then that makes our offensive that much more credible,” I said. Polly rubbed her temples, which is something she does when her headache pain returns. “Before you seriously consider just how much of a financial hit we would take in paying interns,” she said, “and what that would do to payroll, including my job, you should check your privilege. After you do that, get back to work.” At first, I didn’t know why my privilege had anything to do with anything, but I checked it anyway, because it’s always a good idea. I decided that she was right. A minimum-wage increase would do more to help low-income workers than the issue of whether or not my fellow interns and I were able to earn a few more dollars a week, and anything I could do to help get the legislation passed--even saying nice things about Mitt Romney!--was more important than ideological consistency and purity.

All right,” Polly said. “Your assignment for today is to say nice things about Mitt Romney.” Everyone in the conference room for the daily intern orientation groaned. A couple of people booed. “I don’t like it any more than you do,” Polly said. “But the fact is that Romney’s come out for a minimum wage increase. That puts him at odds with the House Republicans. You know how the game works as well as I do. We’re united; they’re divided. We’re for principle; they’re for political expediency. We’re the centrists; they’re the extremists. Something like this is gold for us, and you don’t let gold pass through your hands.

By any honest assessment of where we are as a party, without a major course correction, we are simply on the way out. The demographic picture of America is rapidly changing, and we have to change with it. George W. Bush got 56 percent of the white vote, and won. Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote, and lost. Every four years in this country, the electorate gets about two percentage points less white; as an increasingly old and increasingly white party, we are skidding with each passing election toward irrelevance in terms of appealing to a broad electorate. We hold out our hand, expecting our share of nonwhite votes, and yet we give these Americans too few reasons to come our way. Instead, we demonize them, marginalize them, and blame them for our country's problems. We all knew of this before the last election, but we quickly set it aside for the sugar high of populism, nativism

Hillary was still following the Mitt Romney Playbook, not realizing that she was the Romney in the race.

The factors that usually decide presidential elections—the economy, likability of the candidates, and so on—added up to a wash, and the outcome came down to a few key swing states. Mitt Romney’s campaign followed a conventional polling approach, grouping voters into broad categories and targeting each one or not. Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster, said that “if we can win independents in Ohio, we can win this race.” Romney won them by 7 percent but still lost the state and the election. In contrast, President Obama hired Rayid Ghani, a machine-learning expert, as chief scientist of his campaign, and Ghani proceeded to put together the greatest analytics operation in the history of politics. They consolidated all voter information into a single database; combined it with what they could get from social networking, marketing, and other sources; and set about predicting four things for each individual voter: how likely he or she was to support Obama, show up at the polls, respond to the campaign’s reminders to do so, and change his or her mind about the election based on a conversation about a specific issue. Based on these voter models, every night the campaign ran 66,000 simulations of the election and used the results to direct its army of volunteers: whom to call, which doors to knock on, what to say. In politics, as in business and war, there is nothing worse than seeing your opponent make moves that you don’t understand and don’t know what to do about until it’s too late. That’s what happened to the Romney campaign. They could see the other side buying ads in particular cable stations in particular towns but couldn’t tell why; their crystal ball was too fuzzy. In the end, Obama won every battleground state save North Carolina and by larger margins than even the most accurate pollsters had predicted. The most accurate pollsters, in turn, were the ones (like Nate Silver) who used the most sophisticated prediction techniques; they were less accurate than the Obama campaign because they had fewer resources. But they were a lot more accurate than the traditional pundits, whose predictions were based on their expertise. You might think the 2012 election was a fluke: most elections are not close enough for machine learning to be the deciding factor. But machine learning will cause more elections to be close in the future. In politics, as in everything, learning is an arms race. In the days of Karl Rove, a former direct marketer and data miner, the Republicans were ahead. By 2012, they’d fallen behind, but now they’re catching up again.

A strong argument can be made that Democrats are actually the greater evil, not the lesser one. Black Agenda Report (which provides “news, information and analysis from the black left”) uses the phrase “the more effective evil” to describe Barack Obama. While their analysis has focused on non-environmental issues, it holds true for Obama’s environmental record as well. Obama appears to be much more effective at advancing anti-environmental policies and programs than Republicans would be. One of the main reasons for this is Demophilia. If Mitt Romney had expanded offshore and onshore oil drilling, promoted nuclear power and fracking, attacked EPA rules, and pushed through trade agreements written by private corporations there would have been huge protests. Yet Obama does all these things with impunity while environmental organizations barely object. Demophilia enables the Democratic Party to get away with it, virtually unchallenged. Regardless

Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 could easily have been avoided by nominating a candidate that conjured up a compelling vision of America, rather than a compelling vision of your high school principal.

Stuart Stevens, who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “Trump is a nut, and he likes to surround himself with nuts. It’s a disaster for the Republican Party.

From a raw political standpoint, Trump’s decision to adopt a set of views that offended and alienated minority voters, ugly though it was, turned out well for him. He would soon go further, broadening his attacks to include illegal immigrants. Trump did so at precisely the moment when Republican leaders, led by party chairman Reince Priebus (Trump’s future chief of staff), released an “autopsy” of Mitt Romney’s defeat that included a detailed plan for how the party could recover. Its most important recommendation was that Republicans embrace comprehensive immigration reform in order to broaden their appeal to minority voters. In so many words, Republican leaders were telling their rank and file that they needed to be more like Trump during his Apprentice glory days—while Trump was arriving at the opposite conclusion and, with Bannon’s eager encouragement, doing everything he could to build a political movement around white identity politics. A wily

Recently, there has been considerable public concern about the fact that 47% of Americans pay no income tax; the presidential candidate Mitt Romney opined that these are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them. . . . These are people who pay no income tax.

The writers and thinkers on the margins of the GOP—the Claremont gang, paleoconservatives, social traditionalists, and antiestablishment national populists—felt that Trump’s victory favored their side. Such vindication may have been a mirage. Trump failed to win a popular vote majority—he captured a smaller percentage of the vote than Mitt Romney had in 2012. His Electoral College win rested on seventy-seven thousand voters spread across three states. And for all his personal excesses and haphazard policymaking, Trump stuck rather closely to the Republican agenda of tax cuts, defense spending, and conservative judicial appointments. He rarely broke faith with either the New Right interest groups he had wooed during the campaign or with his core supporters, who would continue to defend him,

Around 10:00 p.m. on that February 6, the Obama campaign informed its top contributors that the president would endorse super PAC Priorities USA Action, with the aim of benefitting from its fundraising capacity. In an email later that evening, Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina wrote to supporters that given the financial dynamics apparent in the Republican primaries, something had to give: In 2011, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney raised $30 million from fewer than 200 contributors. Ninety six percent of what they’ve spent so far, more than $18 million, has been on attack ads. The main engine of Romney’s campaign has an average contribution of roughly $150,000. The stakes are too important to play by two different sets of rules. If we fail to act, we concede this election to a small group of powerful people intent on removing the president at any cost. (Thrush 2012) The age of the super PAC in presidential politics had begun. The emergence of super PACs represented a new era of American campaign finance. Prior to some groundbreaking federal court decisions in early 2010, almost all money that was funneled into the political system was subject to “hard money” limitations. That is, since the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002, anyone wishing to donate to a political committee (such as a campaign, PAC, or “527” organization) was constrained by campaign finance law.

Mitt the Ripper” was in fact a campaign ad, styled like the classic attack ads that become all too familiar to Americans in even-numbered years. This one happened to appear on the television screens of South Carolinians in mid-January, sandwiched between others supporting or attacking Romney and the other Republican presidential candidates. There could be little doubt that Colbert’s group was behind “Mitt the Ripper,” because as the ad was concluding, a crucial bit of text appeared underneath a doctored image of Romney giddily running corporate logos through a wood chipper: “Paid for by Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Which is Responsible for the Content of This Advertising. Not Authorized by any Candidate or Candidate’s Committee.” Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow (ABTT) was among a new type of player in American politics. It was not a corporate advocacy group like Citizens United, nor was it a for-profit corporation. Rather, ABTT was a “super PAC” that Colbert had created in an effort to further a national conversation about the newly expanded ability of groups to influence the political process with unlimited—and sometimes anonymous—contributions. Colbert’s super PAC, like hundreds of others functioning during the 2012 election, was able to solicit contributions of any size from individuals, corporations, and labor unions, so long as it only used the funds for political advertising, and so long as it did not “coordinate” its activities with any political campaign or committee.

The People of the United States are still living with the consequences of the last time their president acted upon his internal religious beliefs instead of the external truth.  George Bush deeply believed “he was called by God to lead the nation” and that he was “an instrument of Providence.”  Bush said, “Events aren’t moved by blind change and chance ... [but] by the hand of a just and faithful God.”  Bush started an illegal and unjustified war in Iraq, which has cost the American People a trillion dollars, thousands of lives and untold suffering because “God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.

Mitt Romney believes that "Radical violent Islam seeks to destroy" America, and 34 percent of conservative Republicans persist in the belief that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim.  Among those who accept that Obama is a Christian, however, 82 percent are comfortable with his religion, whereas only 75 percent of Republicans are comfortable with Romney's Mormon religion.  At the same time, 50 percent of Americans claim to know little or nothing about Mormonism, 35 percent reject the religion as a Christian faith, and 42 percent state they would feel uncomfortable with a Mormon president. [1] Speaking about his religion in 2007, Romney called upon the example of John Kennedy in saying "Like him, I am an American running for president.  I do not define my candidacy by my religion.  A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

Romney had tried to explain his reasoning to this chorus of confidants, but they were still urging him not to shut the door. They contended that even if he didn’t want to launch a formal campaign right now, it would be a mistake to take himself entirely out of the running. They laid out a vivid, detailed scenario in which a fractured Republican Party—divided by a wide field of niche presidential candidates—fails to unite behind a single nominee in 2016, and ends up with a chaotic, historic floor fight at the national convention. Facing a televised descent into disarray, the GOP delegates would naturally turn to Romney—the fully vetted, steady-handed Republican statesman—for salvation. Your party might still need you, Mitt’s loyalists insisted. The country might still need you!

One American political figure saw Russia for the growing menace that it was and was willing to call Putin out for his transgressions. During President Obama’s reelection campaign, Mitt Romney warned of a growing Russian strategic threat, highlighting their role as “our number one geopolitical foe.”[208] The response from President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and other Democrats was not to echo his sentiment, but actually to ridicule Romney and support the Russian government. President Obama hurled insults, saying Romney was “stuck in a Cold War mind warp” [209] and in a nationally televised debate mocked the former governor, saying “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back…” [210] When asked to respond to Romney’s comment, Secretary Clinton refused to rebuke the over-the-top and false Obama campaign attacks. Instead, she delivered a message that echoed campaign talking points arguing that skepticism of Russia was outdated: “I think it’s somewhat dated to be looking backwards,” she said, adding, “In many of the areas where we are working to solve problems, Russia has been an ally.”[211] A month after Secretary Clinton’s statement on Romney, Putin rejected Obama’s calls for a landmark summit.[212] He didn’t seem to share the secretary’s view that the two countries were working together. It was ironic that while Obama and Clinton were saying Romney was in a “Cold War mind warp,”[213] the Russian leader was waging a virulent, anti-America “election campaign” (that’s if you can call what they did in Russia an “election”). In fact, if anyone was in a Cold War mind warp, it was Putin, and his behavior demonstrated just how right Romney was about Russia’s intentions. “Putin has helped stoke anti-Americanism as part of his campaign emphasizing a strong Russia,” Reuters reported. “He has warned the West not to interfere in Syria or Iran, and accused the United States of ‘political engineering’ around the world.”[214] And his invective was aimed not just at the United States. He singled out Secretary Clinton for verbal assault. Putin unleashed the assault Nov. 27 [2011] in a nationally televised address as he accepted the presidential nomination, suggesting that the independent election monitor Golos, which gets financing from the United States and Europe, was a U.S. vehicle for influencing the elections here. Since then, Golos has been turned out of its Moscow office and its Samara branch has come under tax investigation. Duma deputies are considering banning all foreign grants to Russian organizations. Then Putin accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of sending a signal to demonstrators to begin protesting the fairness of the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections.[215] [Emphasis added.] Despite all the evidence that the Russians had no interest in working with the U.S., President Obama and Secretary Clinton seemed to believe that we were just a Putin and Obama election victory away from making progress. In March 2012, President Obama was caught on a live microphone making a private pledge of flexibility on missile defense “after my election” to Dmitry Medvedev.[216] The episode lent credence to the notion that while the administration’s public unilateral concessions were bad enough, it might have been giving away even more in private. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Putin didn’t abandon his anti-American attitudes after he won the presidential “election.” In the last few weeks of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, Putin signed a law banning American adoption of Russian children,[217] in a move that could be seen as nothing less than a slap in the face to the United States. Russia had been one of the leading sources of children for U.S. adoptions.[218] This disservice to Russian orphans in need of a home was the final offensive act in a long trail of human rights abuses for which Secretary Clinton failed to hold Russia accountable.

Obama argued to the press in mid-June that the decision to withdraw even a residual force was made not by him but by the Iraqis when they refused to sign a new Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, early in his presidency. As had been the case with his attempt to argue that it was the world and not he who set the Syria red line, within twenty-four hours the Washington Post published an article noting that during the [2012] campaign in a debate with opponent Mitt Romney, Obama had in fact taken credit for making the decision to get all US troops out of Iraq.

The most controversial part of the controversial legislation now derided by Republicans as “Obamacare”—the mandate that individuals buy health insurance—was originally proposed by Republican economists, championed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, introduced in Congress by Republican politicians, and enacted in Massachusetts under Republican governor Mitt Romney.16 Planned Parenthood, now anathema to Republicans because of its pro-choice policies, enjoyed the support of two of the biggest dynasties of Republican politics, the Goldwater and Bush families, until the rise of the Religious Right in the 1980s made the pro-life position a litmus test for the GOP. And Republican platforms from 1940 to 1976 endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment for women.

Ultimately, tonight’s not about the disagreements Governor Romney and I may have. It’s what we have in common, beginning with our unusual names. Actually, Mitt is his middle name. I wish I could use my middle name.” (Obama, Barack Hussein, D-Ill., U.S. president; Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner; New York, N.Y.; 10/18/2012.)

And lastly, the pictures of George Bush and Mitt Romney on his wall sent up flaming red flags. Ugh. A black republican?

Mitt Romney forcefully declared his interest in a third presidential run to a room full of powerful Republican donors Friday, disrupting the fluid 2016 GOP field as would-be rival Jeb Bush was moving swiftly to consolidate establishment support.

Romney was proving an inept candidate—incapable of connecting with voters, inspiring conservatives, or restraining himself from planting his penny loafers in his piehole—was no surprise. What troubled them more was that Mitt was winning only by burying his rivals in an avalanche of money and manure.

His body guy, Garrett Jackson, thought his boss could use a catnap—just fifteen minutes would help. With the guests still arriving, he found a quiet room, Leder’s home office, with a comfy chair and deposited Romney in it. “Rest,” Jackson said. Out in the dining area, Jackson and trip director Charlie Pearce swept the room for cameras. In April, there had been a kerfuffle when someone posted a video of Mitt speaking at a donor event in Kentucky, and another when he and his wife were overheard by the press at a Florida fund-raiser. (Ann was caught describing Hilary Rosen’s comments as an “early birthday present.”)

The Wall Street Journal (The Wall Street Journal) - Clip This Article on Location 1055 | Added on Tuesday, May 5, 2015 5:10:24 PM OPINION Baltimore Is Not About Race Government-induced dependency is the problem—and it’s one with a long history. By William McGurn | 801 words For those who see the rioting in Baltimore as primarily about race, two broad reactions dominate. One group sees rampaging young men fouling their own neighborhoods and concludes nothing can be done because the social pathologies are so overwhelming. In some cities, this view manifests itself in the unspoken but cynical policing that effectively cedes whole neighborhoods to the thugs. The other group tut-tuts about root causes. Take your pick: inequality, poverty, injustice. Or, as President Obama intimated in an ugly aside on the rioting, a Republican Congress that will never agree to the “massive investments” (in other words, billions more in federal spending) required “if we are serious about solving this problem.” There is another view. In this view, the disaster of inner cities isn’t primarily about race at all. It’s about the consequences of 50 years of progressive misrule—which on race has proved an equal-opportunity failure. Baltimore is but the latest liberal-blue city where government has failed to do the one thing it ought—i.e., put the cops on the side of the vulnerable and law-abiding—while pursuing “solutions” that in practice enfeeble families and social institutions and local economies. These supposed solutions do this by substituting federal transfers for fathers and families. They do it by favoring community organizing and government projects over private investment. And they do it by propping up failing public-school systems that operate as jobs programs for the teachers unions instead of centers of learning. If our inner-city African-American communities suffer disproportionately from crippling social pathologies that make upward mobility difficult—and they do—it is in large part because they have disproportionately been on the receiving end of this five-decade-long progressive experiment in government beneficence. How do we know? Because when we look at a slice of white America that was showered with the same Great Society good intentions—Appalachia—we find the same dysfunctions: greater dependency, more single-parent families and the absence of the good, private-sector jobs that only a growing economy can create. Remember, in the mid-1960s when President Johnson put a face on America’s “war on poverty,” he didn’t do it from an urban ghetto. He did it from the front porch of a shack in eastern Kentucky’s Martin County, where a white family of 10 eked out a subsistence living on an income of $400 a year. In many ways, rural Martin County and urban Baltimore could not be more different. Martin County is 92% white while Baltimore is two-thirds black. Each has seen important sources of good-paying jobs dry up—Martin County in coal mining, Baltimore in manufacturing. In the last presidential election, Martin Country voted 6 to 1 for Mitt Romney while Baltimore went 9 to 1 for Barack Obama. Yet the Great Society’s legacy has been depressingly similar. In a remarkable dispatch two years ago, the Lexington Herald-Leader’s John Cheves noted that the war on poverty sent $2.1 billion to Martin County alone (pop. 12,537) through programs including “welfare, food stamps, jobless benefits, disability compensation, school subsidies, affordable housing, worker training, economic development incentives, Head Start for poor children and expanded Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.” The result? “The problem facing Appalachia today isn’t Third World poverty,” writes Mr. Cheves. “It’s dependence on government assistance.” Just one example: When Congress imposed work requirements and lifetime caps for welfare during the Clinton administration, claims of disability jumped. Mr. Cheves quotes

There may be times in your life when you may feel that it is a bit of a burden being a member of the [LDS] Church. Some folks will think you're not Christian, some may be insulted that you don't drink, and others will think you're trying to be better than them by not swearing. But I can affirm this: your fellow members of the Church will be a blessing to you that far more than compensates. They will bless you when you are sick, lift you up when you fall, help you raise a teenager, counsel you about a job, and yes, even move your unpacked junk. We are not perfect. As a matter of fact, in many things we are probably no better than anyone else. But we are remarkably good at reaching out our hands to one another in need. Decide to be one of those who does just that.

Two weeks ago, Hillary announced that “we need to get unaccountable money out of the political system.” Yet just a few days earlier, her team made the shocking pronouncement that Hillary’s campaign intends to raise $2.5 billion, more than Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent combined in 2014. Just how “accountable” is $2.5 billion of spending, and just what would those donors think they’re buying?

What do you think might happen if half of America, rather than the current 20% or so, suddenly demanded that their political candidates not be blithering idiots? Well, I’ll tell you one thing: the Rick Santorums and Sarah Palins and Michelle Bachmanns and Mitt Romneys of the world wouldn't get within a hundred miles of Washington or any other political institution.

America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home. Mitt Romney

We still don’t have the full story on Benghazi, but thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch we know a lot more and are in a position to continue to crack open the Benghazi cover-up. Take the email that showed the military was prepared, indeed was in the process of launching timely assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA annex where two Americans died. The Washington Examiner correctly noted that the email “casts doubt on previous testimony from high level officials, several of whom suggested there was never any kind of military unit that could have been in a position to mount a rescue mission during the hours-long attack on Benghazi.” All this goes to underscore the value of Judicial Watch’s independent watchdog activities and our leadership in forcing truth and accountability over the Benghazi scandal. The lies and inaction by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice (who is now Obama’s national security adviser) were monstrous. Rather than tell the truth, and risk political blowback for the Libya mess and the lack of security, the Obama administration abandoned those under fire and pretended that the attack had nothing to do with terrorism. Judicial Watch saw through the lies and began what has become the most nationally significant investigation ever by a non-governmental entity. Our Benghazi FOIA requests and subsequent lawsuits changed history. Our disclosure of White House records confirming that top political operatives at the White House concocted the talking points used by Susan Rice to mislead the American people in order save Obama’s reelection prospects rocked Washington. These smoking-gun documents embarrassed all of Congress and forced Speaker John Boehner to appoint the House Select Committee on Benghazi. And, as you’ll see, the pressure from our Benghazi litigation led to the disclosure of the Clinton email scandal, the historical ramifications of which we are now witnessing. If the American people had known the truth—that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go—and yet lied and covered this fact up—Mitt Romney might very well be president. Our Benghazi disclosures also show connections between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war—and confirm that the US knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists.

Despite the refusal of the Obama Justice Department to prosecute anyone at the IRS, it is clear that what happened was an epic clampdown on any conservative voices speaking or advocating against the president’s disastrous policies and in favor of patriotism and adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law. Over the course of twenty-seven months leading up to the 2012 election, not a single Tea Party–type organization received tax-exempt status. Many were unable to operate; others disbanded because donors refused to fund them without the IRS seal of approval; some organizations and their donors were audited without justification; and many incurred legal fees and costs fighting the unlawful conduct by Lerner and other IRS employees. The IRS suppressed the entire Tea Party movement just in time to help Obama win reelection. And everyone in the administration involved in this outrageous conduct got away with it without being punished or prosecuted. Was it simply a case of retribution against the perceived “enemies” of the administration? No, this was much bigger than political payback. It was a systematic and concerted effort to squash the Tea Party movement—one of the most organic and powerful political movements in recent memory—during an election season. [See Appendix for select IRS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.] This was about campaign politics. It was a scandal for the ages. President Obama obviously wanted this done even if he gave no direct orders for it. In 2015, he told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that “you don’t want all this money pouring through non-profits.” But there is no law preventing money from “pouring through non-profits” that they use to achieve their legal purposes and the objectives of their members. Who didn’t want this money pouring through nonprofits? Barack Obama. In the subsequent FOIA litigation filed by Judicial Watch, the IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about what Lois Lerner and other senior officials had done. The IRS, including its top political appointees like IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, have much to answer for over their contempt of court and of Congress. And the Department of Justice lawyers and officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable as well. If the Tea Party and other conservative groups had been fully active in the critical months leading up to the 2012 election, would Mitt Romney have been elected president? We will, of course, never know for certain. But we do know that President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service targeted right-leaning organizations applying for tax-exempt status and prevented them from entering the fray during that period. That is how you steal an election in plain sight. Accountability is not something we will get from the Obama administration. But Judicial Watch will continue its independent investigation and certainly any new presidential administration should take a fresh look at this IRS scandal.

Now, back to the American voter. Let’s assume you’ve been watching this messaging battle, and now you have two choices: Barack Obama, Not a Very Good President vs. Mitt Romney, The Worst Guy Ever. Who are you going to vote for? Most people would pick “nice guy, bad politician” over Mussolini. And they did.

Discouraging the formation of dynasties is particularly important. If a billionaire dies and leaves his money to his family, there are going to be a bunch of worthless nephews sitting around half-finished castles playing Nintendo all day. Since not everybody has a billionaire uncle, this would be unfair to poor people, who may not be able to afford Nintendos. Rich families could otherwise deploy their vast wealth to buy elections for themselves or others, as happened with presidents Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Hence

Mitt Romney (the 2012 Republican presidential nominee) summed up his view simply: “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.” He’s right. And this is a really big deal.

The connection between birthrates and politics is arresting. In 2012 each of the ten states with the highest fertility rates voted for Mitt Romney. The top five were the mostly rural states of Utah, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Idaho. None are remotely politically competitive at the presidential level. In contrast, all eleven states with birthrates below sixty births per thousand women of childbearing age went to Barack Obama, with Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut making up the bottom five in fertility.

Automobile preference, it seems, follows a pattern similar to baby names. Just as Michael and David are popular names with all types of people, so, too, are Honda Accords, Ford Focuses, and Toyota Camrys. Indeed, the top five cars that YourMechanic services are exactly the same in both blue and red states and districts. But interesting differences appear beyond consensus top sellers. YourMechanic identified cars in each state and congressional district that were “unusually popular”—that is, which were overrepresented compared with the national average. So, for example, a Volkswagen Jetta is not a particularly popular car nationally, but in certain states and districts there are a lot of them. The red/blue divide manifests itself clearly when it comes to unusually popular vehicles. In the twenty-four states won by Mitt Romney in 2012, the most unusually popular car was American-made in three-quarters of them. Of the twenty-six states that Barack Obama won that year, the most unusually popular car was foreign-made more than two-thirds of the time. The Jetta is big in New Hampshire, for example. Two different Subarus, the Japanese automaker with the especially gay-friendly reputation, are unusually popular in Maine, Oregon, and Colorado. In contrast, the Chevrolet Silverado is the most unusually popular vehicle in Louisiana and Arkansas, with the Chevrolet Impala being particularly prevalent in Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

Trump’s election and the fiercely loyal support he received from the GOP—even when stoking a violent insurrection against the U.S. Congress in the final days of his term—exposed how one of the nation’s major political parties had been radicalized. Top leaders were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to preserve their party’s power. As Stuart Stevens, a major Republican campaign operative who had managed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, argued in his book It Was All a Lie, “In the end, the Republican Party rallied behind Donald Trump because if that was the deal needed to regain power, what was the problem? The rest? The principles? The values? It was all a lie.

President Obama paid approximately 30% of his income in taxes and Governor Romney paid less than 13% in taxes, Mitt Romney began the downhill slide that would cost him the election. Taxes, again, were a focal point in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Rather than find out how people like Mitt Romney and President Donald Trump pay less in taxes legally, the poor and middle class get angry. While President Trump promises to reduce taxes for the poor and middle class, the reality is the rich will always pay less in taxes. The reason the rich pay less in taxes goes back to rich dad’s lesson number one: “The rich don’t work for money.” As long as a person works for money, they will pay taxes. Even when Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was promising to raise the taxes on the rich, she was promising to raise the taxes on those with high incomes—people like doctors, actors, and lawyers—not the real rich.

Stay Loyal to People, Not Organizations Mitt Romney was wrong—corporations aren’t people. As British Lord Chancellor Edward Thurow observed more than two centuries ago, business enterprises “have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned.” As such, they do not deserve your affection or your loyalty, nor can they repay it in kind. Churches, countries, and even the occasional private firm have been touting loyalty to abstract organizations for centuries, usually as a ploy to convince young people to do brave and foolish things like go to war so old people can keep their land and treasure. It. Is. Bullshit. The most impressive students in my class are the young men and women who have served their country. We benefit (hugely) from their loyalty to our country, but I don’t think we (the United States) pay them their due. I believe it’s a bad trade for them. Be loyal to people. People transcend corporations, and people, unlike corporations, value loyalty. Good leaders know they are only as good as the team standing behind them—and once they have forged a bond of trust with someone, will do whatever it takes to keep that person happy and on their team. If your boss isn’t fighting for you, you either have a bad boss or you are a bad employee.

even though Black and brown people are disproportionately poor, white Americans constitute the majority of low-income people who escape poverty because of government safety net programs. Nonetheless, the idea that Black people are the “takers” in society while white people are the hardworking taxpayers—the “makers”—has become a core part of the zero-sum story preached by wealthy political elites. Whether it’s the more subtle “47 percent” version from millionaire Mitt Romney or the more racially explicit Fox News version sponsored by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, it works. In 2016, the majority of white moderates (53 percent) and white conservatives (69 percent) said that Black Americans take more than we give to society. We take more than we give.

Elizabeth Phelps, a neuroscientist at New York University, stated that while it is correct that the amygdala is affected by a state of anxiety, the same holds true for strong odors, sexually stimulating images, and so on. It is rash and misleading to claim, on these grounds alone, that a candidate like Mitt Romney throws the electorate into a state of anxiety (Legrenzi 63).

As former UN ambassador John Bolton documents in persuasive detail in his book Surrender Is Not An Option, diplomats and State Department negotiators are often more motivated to secure an agreement—even those they know will become mere window dressing that will be ignored by the party across the table—than they are to push for actual, verifiable results favorable to America. When diplomatic success is measured by the agreements and documents we have produced rather than by behavior that has actually changed, we create a false sense of security that prevents us from recognizing and dealing with real threats. The multitude of North Korean agreements, celebrated

All this reductionist commentary might have been fair game, had it been directed at all the primary candidates: say, Senator Joe Biden’s obvious hair transplants; or Senator John Edwards’s resemblance to a Ken doll; or Governor Mitt Romney’s capped teeth and dyed hair; or Senator John McCain’s special shoes to make him taller; or Governor Bill Richardson’s resemblance to an unmade bed; or Senator Obama’s ears, about which he himself made jokes. But it wasn’t.

Jucikas typed in a query, and a list of links popped up. He clicked on one of the many people who went by that name in Nebraska – and there was everything about her, right up on the screen. Here’s her photo, here’s where she works, here’s her house. Here are her kids, this is where they go to school, this is the car she drives. She voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, she loves Katy Perry, she drives an Audi, she’s a bit basic … and on and on and on. We knew everything about her – and for many records, the information was updated in real time, so if she posted to Facebook, we could see it happening.

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won’t promise that now. Yes, our path is harder – but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer – but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes...

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney stepped forward and called out Trump for what he clearly was—“a phony, a fraud.

Wow. A black guy with a Muslim name? You think he could be a fucking CORPORATE TOOL like Mitt Romney? He could be worse. Cuz you don't see it coming.

Whether it’s the more subtle “47 percent” version from millionaire Mitt Romney or the more racially explicit Fox News version sponsored by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, it works. In 2016, the majority of white moderates (53 percent) and white conservatives (69 percent) said that Black Americans take more than we give to society. We take more than we give.

Manafort’s ouster extinguished the last vestige of hope for Republicans praying that Trump would at last pivot to a more statesmanlike approach. No one believed he had any chance of winning in November; their desperation, at this point, was driven purely by the desire to limit the scope of the expected GOP losses down the ticket. Bannon’s elevation was simply unimaginable, the Republican establishment’s worst nightmare come to life. “This is the bunker scene in Downfall, only the Trump crowd won’t tell Hitler the truth. It’s utter madness,” said Stuart Stevens, who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “Trump is a nut, and he likes to surround himself with nuts. It’s a disaster for the Republican Party.” Although few Republicans knew Bannon personally, many were acquainted with Breitbart’s aggressive, hard-edged populism, often because they had been on the receiving end of one of its journalistic assaults. Bannon, they understood, would pay no heed at all to the sensitivities of down-ballot Republicans, and indeed would gladly indulge Trump’s impulse to burn everything down. “If you were looking for a tone or pivot, Bannon will pivot you in a dark, racist, and divisive direction,” said the GOP consultant Rick Wilson. “It’ll be a nationalist, hateful campaign. Republicans should run away.

To understand the impact of this combination of gerrymandering and the geographic factors, consider that Barack Obama received some 5 million more votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012 yet carried only 209 House districts. Romney carried 226.

it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components.” The Obama campaign couldn’t move fast enough to create a new ad. “What a president believes matters,” it declared. “Mitt Romney’s companies were pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low-wage countries. He supports tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. President Obama believes in insourcing. He fought to save the U.S. auto industry and favors tax cuts for companies that bring jobs home. Outsourcing versus Insourcing. It matters.