Romney's home state blues: can he make history?

By Paddy Ryan

In the history of the United States, no GOP Presidential nominee has lost their home state and won the Presidency. This trend is an issue for Mitt Romney, who is now 24 points behind President Obama in Massachusetts, according to RealClearPolitics.

Below is a list of every Republican to ever win the Presidency. Each one of them won their home state.

1860 – (R) Abraham Lincoln wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Illinois.
1864 – (R) President Lincoln wins re-election. Wins home state – Illinois.
1868 – (R) Ulysses S. Grant wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Illinois.
1872 – (R) President Grant wins re-election. Wins home state – Illinois.  
1876 – (R) Rutherford B. Hayes wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Ohio.
1880 – (R) James Garfield wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Ohio.
1888 – (R) Benjamin Harrison wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Indiana.
1896 – (R) William McKinley wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Ohio.
1900 – (R) President McKinley wins re-election. Wins home state – Ohio.
1904 – (R) Theodore Roosevelt wins the Presidency. Wins home state – New York.
1908 – (R) William Howard Taft wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Ohio.
1920 – (R) Warren G. Harding wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Ohio.
1924 – (R) Calvin Coolidge wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Massachusetts.
1928 – (R) Herbert Hoover wins the Presidency. Wins home state – California.
1952 – (R) Dwight D. Eisenhower wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Kansas.
1956 – (R) President Eisenhower wins re-election. Wins home state – Kansas.
1968 – (R) Richard Nixon wins the Presidency. Wins home state – California.
1972 – (R) President Nixon wins re-election. Wins home state – California.
1980 – (R) Ronald Reagan wins the Presidency. Wins home state – California.
1984 – (R) President Reagan wins re-election. Wins home state – California.
1988 – (R) George H.W. Bush wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Texas.
2000 – (R) George W. Bush wins the Presidency. Wins home state – Texas
2004 – (R) President Bush wins re-election. Wins home state – Texas.

Every Republican President in American history - Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and both Bush's - carried their respective home state.

If Mitt Romney beats President Obama and wins the White House, it will be the first time in American history that a Republican nominee wins the election without carrying his home state.

That's not all.

The last time a Republican nominee for President couldn't win his home state was in 1944 when Thomas Dewey lost his home state of New York to Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, this shouldn't really count because New York was FDR's home state as well.

Take the FDR elections out of the equation, and the last time a GOP nominee failed to win his home state was in 1912, when the unpopular GOP President, William Howard Taft, failed to win his home state of Ohio, and thus failed to win his re-election.

Maybe Romney should have concentrated more on Massachusetts, or maybe GOP voters should have realized that they never won the White House with a nominee who couldn't win his home state.

Either way, Romney must have the home state blues because history's trend-line is on the side of President Obama. Romney will become yet another GOP candidate to lose his home state and, in turn, lose the election.

Mitt Romney Debates Himself

FACT: We're better off then we were four years ago

From Pat Garofalo – ThinkProgress

republished by Paddy Ryan

The Romney campaign this week is basing its message off of former President Reagan’s “are you better off?” question from his 1980 campaign, even though Romney himself admitted in an interview earlier this year that “of course [the economy is] getting better” under President Obama. And the numbers don’t lie.

While the economy is only recovering slowly, the trend lines when it comes to jobs, wealth, and the success of American business are all moving in the right direction, as these charts by the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Christian Weller show:

more...

UPDATE: Romney makes outrageous, 'dog whistle' birth certificate joke

Hey baby I want that birth certificate!

Romney birth certificate joke blasted as ‘racism’ and ‘gutterball politics’

From Muriel Kane – The Raw Story

republished by Paddy Ryan

Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki issued a scathing criticism, telling MSNBC, “This is the kind of gutterball politics that will and should turn the American people off. This is a pattern. Mitt Romney has questioned repeatedly over the last several months whether the president understands America, whether he understands freedom — he’s wrapped his arms around Donald Trump, one of the originators of the birther movement, so we’ve seen a pattern here.”

Rachel Maddow made a similar observation, pointing out on Twitter, “Today’s remarks follow 5 straight Romney ads about Obama being the president of lazy welfare recipients taking your $. Not subtle.”

However, the harshest words may have come from Andrew Rosenthal at the New York Times editorial page.

“Politicians sometimes think they can get away with saying something profoundly offensive or just plain stupid by acting like it was a joke,” Rosenthal wrote. “It never works, just like it didn’t work today when Mr. Romney shamelessly played the birther card in what seems like an increasingly desperate campaign against President Obama.”

“Today’s crack was way over the line,” he continued. “His audience laughed and applauded, probably not because they thought Mr. Romney was doing hilarious stand-up comedy, but because they knew exactly what he was up to. … It’s racism, pure and simple.”

Romney makes outrageous, 'dog whistle' birth certificate joke

By Paddy Ryan

Today, Mitt Romney made an outrageous, off-color joke regarding President Obama's birth certificate;

Ginger Gibson reports from the joint Romney-Ryan rally in Commerce, Mich.:

Starting his speech with a reflection on his love for Michigan, Romney explained that he and Ann Romney are proud natives and named the hospitals where they were born.

"Now I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital," Romney said, continuing: "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."

The crowd cheered in response.

Obama V. Romney on taxes, in under three minutes

By Paddy Ryan

Calculate your own annual family income here.

A clear choice; new ad from Bill Clinton

GOP: 'We Built This!' live from government funded convention center

By Paddy Ryan

This Tuesday, Republicans are hosting their “We Built This” night, live from the Tampa Bay Times Forum arena. Tuesday night's theme, and the list of speakers, will be used to celebrate the American entrepreneurial spirit and to attack the President's comments which were made in July, and have since been taken way out-of-context.

Government built 62 % of this!

Kelly Ayotte, John Kasich, and Bob McDonnell will bash the President's comments, and describe how business is successful without any government help whatsoever. These GOP speakers will proudly take the stage at the Tampa Bay Times Forum arena, declaring to the world that government isn't responsible for the success of the private sector.

There's one problem though. The Tampa Bay Times Forum arena wouldn't have been built without government help. The arena was funded and built primarily with government money. In fact, 62 percent of the building project was financed with government money.

"The Tampa Bay Times Forum arena, which houses the Tampa Bay Lightning, was built in 1996 as the 'Ice Palace' with 62% government funds. The total budget for the project was $139 million, of which public money accounted for $86 million and team money accounted for $53 million."

Maybe the GOP should think about renaming Tuesday's session, the “we only built 38 percent of this” night.

Romney's religious cult, his “most important treasure”

By Paddy Ryan

Mitt Romney's Mormon faith is a major issue. It raises red flags about his fundamental beliefs. Since President Obama's faith is fair game, then I think Mitt Romney's faith, which was founded on trickery and con-artistry, should be fair game too.

Mitt Romney, who is a certified bishop in the Mormon church, has built his entire life around the Mormon faith. In a little-known commencement speech to his prep school alma-mater, Mitt Romney described his Mormon faith as “one of the most important treasures of my life.”

A religion, started less than 200 years ago by a con-man, a religion that has been exposed as a cult (by all sides of the political spectrum), is Mitt Romney's “most important treasure”. Comforting.

Here are some wacky, out-of-this-world beliefs that Romney and his fellow Mormon's hold:

- God is a man, made of flesh and blood, and he lives on the planet Kolob.

- There is no hell, but there are three heavens.

- The punishment for being a bad Mormon is that you don’t get to reach the third heaven, where God dwells.

- Lucifer was Jesus’ brother, back on the original earth, where God and Jesus dwelled.

- The biblical characters Adam and Eve once lived in America, which is where the Garden of Eden was really located.

- We were all spirit children together with God in the 'pre-existence'.

- People of African descent are "cursed with a skin of blackness” and the curse was based on their performance in the pre-existence.

- Baptism happens for children at age 8 and at age 12 they are allowed to go to the temple and do baptisms for the dead, these posthumous "blessings" are intended to "save" ancestors and others who weren't baptized in life or were baptized "without proper authority."

- There will be a literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes, Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent.

- Christ will reign personally upon the earth, and the earth will be renewed and receive its 'paradisiacal glory'.

Although most of Romney's religious beliefs are strange, I think that one of his strangest is the belief in secretive posthumous baptisms. This issue fascinates me.

"A Mormon may propose the baptism of another person posthumously. Church members have performed the ritual on Buddha, Catholic popes, 9/11 hijackers, William Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley, President Obama's mother and even reportedly Jesus Christ. In 2002, the managing director of the Mormon's family and church history department told The New Yorker magazine that as many as 200 million dead people had been baptized as Mormons.

In 1994, an Israeli genealogist researching her family in the Mormons' computerized International Genealogical Index made a startling discovery. Her grandfather, a religiously observant Jew killed in the Holocaust, had been posthumously baptized as a Mormon. Distraught, she alerted other Jewish genealogists who soon learned that some 380,000 Holocaust victims, including Anne Frank, had been baptized. Plus, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, and scientist Albert Einstein had received this treatment."

Wow. If that doesn't sound like some shady medicine man, rainmaker, voodoo-magic wizardry, than I don't know what does. How can any sane, rational, intelligent minded person, like Mitt Romney, ever take these beliefs to heart?

Last Monday, top Romney advisor Kevin Madden said,

“The governor’s faith is part of who he is, … It’s informed how he’s raised his family, it’s informed how he’s had a strong marriage.”

I am not a religious person. I understand that all different religious beliefs can sound a little outrageous, but Mormons are definitely in the major leagues when it comes to sounding ridiculous.

Call me crazy but, I'm not comfortable with a President who believes that God is a flesh and blood man living on the planet Kolob, a President who believes that Zion will be built upon the American continent and believes that people of African descent are "cursed with a skin of blackness” based on performance in some fairytale 'pre-existence'. I don't feel comfortable with a President who refers to his faith, which includes these fundamental pillars of Mormonism, as his “most important treasure”.

Romney’s False Welfare Attacks Ignore His Own Plans To Gut Programs For The Poor

By Melissa Boteach from ThinkProgress Economy

republished by Paddy Ryan

To distract the public from their plans to funnel additional tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan — the GOP’s presidential ticket — are engaging in one of the oldest and most cynical forms of class warfare: using a manufactured welfare fight as an wedge issue to foster resentment among voters.

Middle-class Mitt

The Romney campaign has spent the past several weeks hammering the airwaves with an ad that claims that “President Obama Ended Work Requirements For Welfare” telling voters that he just wants to “hand them a check.” The implication? That while you’re working hard to make ends meet, Obama wants to enable freeloading and give lazy people your tax dollars. We’d be naïve to ignore the racial implications of such an argument.

The claim is blatantly false. The Obama administration has actually proposed to strengthen work requirements by empowering states to innovate on strategies to move 20 percent more of the caseload into sustainable employment. It’s also silly — both Republican and Democratic governors have requested such an action from the administration because the current system is not leading to sustainable jobs for struggling families. Providing greater room for states to experiment with bipartisan ideas could help move the debate in the right direction by providing more information on what strategies work and should be replicated. In fact, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney himself requested similar flexibility and Ryan has worked for similar reforms as a member of Congress.

Unfortunately, the Romney/Ryan campaign appears to have made the calculation that rather than have a debate on the merits about how to expand economic opportunity for our most vulnerable citizens, they would be better served by using false welfare ads as a distraction from the fact that the policies championed by the ticket would provide greater tax cuts to the top 1 percent while slamming the middle-class and increasing poverty.

Our country desperately needs a substantive debate on how to create good jobs and how to better connect the most disadvantaged workers to them. Many low-income workers on TANF are unable to access the child care they need to make work possible and ultimately end up spending nearly half their income on care for their children. Low-wage workers are constantly facing the threat of a layoff because more than 80 percent lack access to a single paid sick day to take care of themselves, a sick kid, or an elderly relative.

Romney and Ryan have been silent on these issues, in part because the budget plan they champion would gut the work supports, such as childcare, job training, and Head Start, that provide greater economic opportunity for working and middle class voters alike. Contrasting these proposed cuts to their tax cuts for the wealthy is not a debate they want to have with the public. Insert shiny (and false) welfare ad as a distraction.

The public should see this strategy for what it is – a crass political tactic to distract voters from Romney’s plans to provide additional tax cuts to the wealthy and dodge the real debate we need to be having about how to create jobs and move struggling families into the middle-class.