September 24, 2012

"The window is narrowing for Romney, and he’s in deep, deep trouble."

Said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who worked on the  POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll, which showed Obama ahead but not beyond the margin of error. Thanks for your highly professional opinion there, Ms. Lake! She burbles on:
"Ultimately, people don’t like this guy. If they don’t like someone, it’s hard to get people to vote for him — particularly to fire someone they do like."
Deep, deep. Like... like... like. Here's an opinion-taker/shaper who seems to need to say her key words at least twice. So, thanks for the info! What a terrible, terrible man this Mitt Romney is! We do not like him. No no no no no.

But, speaking of liking and not liking to fire people, old man Romney — the villainous wretch! — said it well:



"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

Clint Eastwood said it well — if real-time grappling for thoughts is good — in his empty-chair speech:
[Y]ou, we -- we own this country. We -- we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours. And -- so -- they are just going to come around and beg for votes every few years. It is the same old deal. But I just think it is important that you realize , that you're the best in the world. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or whether you're libertarian or whatever, you are the best. And we should not ever forget that. And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.

61 comments:

Mark O said...

His trouble is so deep, he's tied with the worst President in the history of the country.

Known Unknown said...

I like to look at the polling data to see if the poll is worth any shit.

This one isn't bad, but Hard Dems outpace Hard GOP 405-362, yet Conservative ideology beats Liberal 576-375. Republican is one subset, but Democratic gets split into Conservative Dem and Mod/Liberal Dem subsets.




chickelit said...

Obama needs to appeal well beyond his 47% in order to win this thing.

Will he have more than 47% of the needed Electoral College votes?

And what happened to that draft Gary Johnson movement here last week in the comments?

rhetorical. lol

blessings, take care.

TWM said...

What's deep is the bullshit the MSM,Dem pollsters, and Barry's campaign keep pushing on the public. I with the folks saying Romney's ahead already and absent a REAL gaffe, he wins.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Unlike the left, I do not blindly worship any political candidate. Like Eastwood says - they work for us.

Obama has failed. He's a terrible president and radical leftwing Paul Kgurgman ideologue. Obama's support is shrinking and only the blind faithful and low information voters are left. The media are pulling out all the stops to push him, cover for him, and make excuses for him. I don't like that.

McTriumph said...

The whole point of the MSM and Obama's campaign has been to drive down Romney's likability numbers. The media spent all last week deriding Romney's comments instead of Obama's Middle-east implosion, why?

Peter said...

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

When you think of all the government programs, and how few of them actually work, I think it's a good attitude. Well, no: actually I think it's a great attitude. We, the public, pay for all this stuff; so what's so mean about demanding accountability.

Consider (for example) Headstart. It's insanely expensive, yet seems to produce no lasting improvement. What would be wrong with an initiative to distribute grants to study whether assorted federal government programs actually work? Surely, any government program that consumes $billions every year should be able to point to replicated, randomized field trials to support its effectiveness- and if it cannot, should be de-funded. It's not just about saving money but about using what is spent effectively.

What's missing in the "I like to fire people" image is the unseen benefit. We see someone getting fired, and empathize. But do we consider that the fired employee will be replaced with another, better employee- and empathize with that newly hired employee's good fortune? (Not to mention the employer's good fortune in having a better employee).

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

McTriumph asks...

"Why?" A: Our media is hack Pravda.

Farmer said...

I don't see what's supposedly unlikeable about Romney. He seems like a good guy.

Anonymous said...

radical leftwing Paul Kgurgman ideologue.

You really have no idea what "radical leftwing" means do you? Krugman is a mainstream, albeit slightly left of center, economist. There is nothing remotely radical about his economics or politics.

The true radicals, albeit right wing, are those libertarians pushing Ayn Rand economics.

clint said...

Peter: "
What's missing in the "I like to fire people" image is the unseen benefit. We see someone getting fired, and empathize. But do we consider that the fired employee will be replaced with another, better employee- and empathize with that newly hired employee's good fortune? (Not to mention the employer's good fortune in having a better employee)."

Don't forget the benefit to the *customer* from having the non-performing employee replaced with someone better.

That would be the students in our public schools getting better teachers. That would be more helpful customer service at the DMV. And so on...

Brennan said...

The whole point of the MSM and Obama's campaign has been to drive down Romney's likability numbers. The media spent all last week deriding Romney's comments instead of Obama's Middle-east implosion, why?

Yep. This is why any campaign adviser that says you don't have to engage the MSM is a bad liar.

edutcher said...

What Mark O said.

I will once again quote NRO

What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR [Interactive Voice Response] polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are ‘not enthusiastic’ to vote or non-voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this.

Seeing Red said...

Freder - you're British, aren't you?

To British, he would seem what you think he is.


BTW - if you are British, you're welcome.

paul a'barge said...

Click to look at Celinda

Oof-dah! Now that's a mug to drag through life, no?

The next time you ladies go to the beauty parlor and you tell your hairdresser that you want a butch hair-do, show the hairdresser this photo.

edutcher said...

Well, Ann did call her a Democrat pollster.

(s/b pollstress, but...)

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Krugman is a mainstream, albeit slightly left of center, economist. There is nothing remotely radical about his economics or politics.


LOL.

jungatheart said...

Meow.

If it's true about the 47%, a fair number of them won't have the get-up-and-go to haul their asses to the polls. Except for those old fuckers. They're tough old birds.

Darrell said...

All Democrats are "mainstream" reasonable characters. All Republicans are dangerous extremists.

Humperdink said...

"Krugman is a mainstream, albeit slightly left of center, economist."

Krugman? Mainstream? Every time his opens his mouth he states the stimuli weren't large enough. $15 trillion in debt isn't enough?

FF, you're living in an alternative universe with him.

TosaGuy said...

You mean to say, former Enron advisor, Paul Krugman.

The Crack Emcee said...

Turning the country over to people who are owned, themselves, has never struck me as the greatest strategy for OUR ownership of this nation.

But, whatever.

Of course, YMMV, since you'll never mention or even consider that yourselves...

Brennan said...

There is nothing remotely radical about his economics or politics.

QE forever is radical. QE forever in order for the state to spend whatever it wants forever is more radical.

TWM said...

"You really have no idea what "radical leftwing" means do you? Krugman is a mainstream, albeit slightly left of center, economist. There is nothing remotely radical about his economics or politics."

Stop with the hillarity, you made my Coke Zero shoot out my nose . . .

dreams said...

Romney is going to win, the crooked lying liberal media cooked polls are wrong. People are going to be surprised by how badly Obama loses. And don't discount political correctness, people are telling the pollsters what they think they want to hear not what they really believe.
I'm feeling good, though I just wish we could vote tomorrow and get it over with.

Shanna said...

Don't forget the benefit to the *customer* from having the non-performing employee replaced with someone better.

Also the benefit to other employees in not having to cover for or resent lazy coworkers…

ricpic said...

"And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go."

If the Romney ad people don't feature this Eastwood quote over and over again in the run up to the election...they're brain dead. Preferably with Clint speaking the line. This single line can win it for them if they only have the smarts to use it. And it really doesn't take that much in smarts. Watch them not use it.

McTriumph said...

Paul Krugman is an "expert" and Nobel winner in international trade. He has been wrong at every twist and turn concerning domestic economics. His prediction of 15+% compounded GDP growth till 2013, noting the effects of TARP, the stimulus and QE1 after the "Great Recession" was unfortunately wrong. Of course he's an expert so he has doubled and tripled down, his predictions aren't wrong, the government is just not running high enough deficits. So we are running a trillion plus deficits a year, we are on QEterniy now so as to prop up the stock market artificially, cover Obama's ass, devalue the dollar and screw the thrifty and consumers. The Fed is buying US bonds because no one else will and only a fool believes that the stock market performance reflex a health economy or growth.

Larry J said...

Don't forget the benefit to the *customer* from having the non-performing employee replaced with someone better.

That would be the students in our public schools getting better teachers. That would be more helpful customer service at the DMV. And so on...


Better still, we need to determine why so many service jobs like the DMV are filled by government employees in the first place. Most non-law enforcement government jobs could be more effectively out-sourced to private contractors. Those contractors would be more accountable because they can be fired or lose the contract for poor service. You also wouldn't be contributing to the public employee pension debt bomb that's crippling so many cities.

My former employer (the largest company no one has ever heard of) performs these out-sourced services for many government entities overseas. We talk about England's socialized medicine but when it comes to government, they're a lot more free enterprise than the US. My company ran railroads, prisons, passport offices, trash collection, bus services and a host of other things that are mostly staffed by government employees here. So, who is the more socialist?

Seeing Red said...

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."


John Adams


Damn dead old white guy is right again.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Democrats are not conducting their campaign as if they expect to win. If this woman actually believed what she was saying, she would simply be sitting back with a contented smile on her face. Instead they are using their minions in the press to repeat the mantra over and over, hoping that the great unwashed will believe it, too. It doesn't seem to be working. The polls are still tied, which means Romney is substantially ahead. Celinda Lake is very, very worried.

Nathan Alexander said...

Antecedent:
- Tea Party demonstrations broke out across the nation.
- Citizens confronted politicians in "town hall" meetings to the point that Democrats stopped holding them.

Result: 2010 GOP wave election

Antecedent:
- Chik-Fil-A receives an outpouring of support after a ginned-up social conflict
- Dinesh D'Souza's documentary starts in one theater, but demand ballooned that up to 18k. Including deep-blue places like NYC
- lines stretch around the block to meet Romney
- Obama has to move DNC to smaller locale because he can't fill a stadium
- Attempts to re-start Occupy protests pretty much fizzle
- Media claims Obama has 18k audience in location that actually only holds 5k when full (and the rally was only half-full)

Result?

Well, there is no way Romney loses a blow-out. But these are very real indications that Obama is going to lose in a landslide GOP wave election...the 2nd in a short span.

How will Democrats and their operatives with bylines in the news media try to deny a mandate this time?

edutcher said...

deborah said...

Meow.

If it's true about the 47%, a fair number of them won't have the get-up-and-go to haul their asses to the polls. Except for those old fuckers. They're tough old birds.


Precisely.

What puts them on the government rolls is why they're so unreliable as voters.

They're a big part of the 50% who never show up; one of the reasons we're not Europe is that we don't have those "use or lose" laws about the franchise.

If we did, the Demos would be sure they got out the vote.

CWJ said...

@Nathan A

But deny it they will.

shiloh said...

"Thanks for your highly professional opinion there"

Says the superficiality addict, cruel neutrality laughing stock who's been smitten w/mittens since 2007 ...

Too funny!

campy said...

Romney may (or may not) win the votes of most people who will go to the polls, but he cannot and will not "win" this election.

edutcher said...

shiloh said...

Says the superficiality addict, cruel neutrality laughing stock who's been smitten w/mittens since 2007 ...

Which, of course, explains how she was for McCain until he lost her and she ended up voting for Choom.

He's even worse, once you take away the verbal and graphic tics.

Ctmom4 said...

So, in this poll, Obama has a lead that is within the margin of error, and Romney has a double digit lead among middle class voters, and Romney's in "deep, deep trouble"?

Seeing Red said...

Greg Mankiew has a very interesting post that concerns Kruggie, Freder, you should check him out.

shiloh said...

Speaking of superficiality, Althouse is also smitten w/Scott Walker, Scott Brown and Paul Ryan. Go figure!

Known Unknown said...

Better still, we need to determine why so many service jobs like the DMV are filled by government employees in the first place. Most non-law enforcement government jobs could be more effectively out-sourced to private contractors. Those contractors would be more accountable because they can be fired or lose the contract for poor service. You also wouldn't be contributing to the public employee pension debt bomb that's crippling so many cities.

I love Larry J for his naivety.

The Crack Emcee said...

Seeing Red,

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."

John Adams

Damn dead old white guy is right again.


“Either al-Koran or the Sword.”

Joseph Smith

Damn dead old white guy is,...Oh, never mind.

shiloh said...

Paul Ryan: Cayman Islands “The Place You Hide Your Money”

>

Romney can't decide if ERs are socialism ...

In a 2007 interview with Glenn Beck, Romney called the fact that people without insurance were able to get "free care" in emergency rooms "a form of socialism."

"When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that's not a form of socialism, I don't know what is," he said at the time. "So my plan did something quite different. It said, you know what? If people can afford to buy insurance ... or if they can pay their own way, then they either buy that insurance or pay their own way, but they no longer look to government to hand out free care. And that, in my opinion, is ultimate conservativism."


or a great health care plan

Pelley: Does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who don't have it today?

Romney: Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance, people-- we-- if someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.

Pelley: That's the most expensive way to do it. [...]

Romney: Different, again, different states have different ways of doing that. Some provide that care through clinics. Some provide the care through emergency rooms. In my state, we found a solution that worked for my state. But I wouldn't take what we did in Massachusetts and say to Texas, "You've got to take the Massachusetts model."


Epiphany notwithstanding, Willard's totally confused!

Romney ~ "It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility."

After about a year of looking at data—and not making much progress—we had a collective epiphany of sorts, an obvious one, as important observations often are: the people in Massachusetts who didn't have health insurance were, in fact, already receiving health care. Under federal law, hospitals had to stabilize and treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions. And our state's hospitals were offering even more assistance than the federal government required. That meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn't have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured buy insurance instead and obtain treatment in the way that the vast majority of individuals did—before acute conditions developed—the cost of insuring everyone in the state might not be as expensive as I had feared.

edutcher said...

Translation:

blah, blah, blah.

He really is lost without his little tics, isn't he?

Known Unknown said...

Romney ~ "It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility."

The ER is not the place to care for the common cold.

damikesc said...

Another week, another slate of "ROMNEY IS DOOMED!" articles in the media.

Yeah, they can be ignored nicely.

Krugman is a mainstream, albeit slightly left of center, economist. There is nothing remotely radical about his economics or politics.

Says the guy who thinks Marx is basically mainstream...

The true radicals, albeit right wing, are those libertarians pushing Ayn Rand economics.

Yes, why change? After all, high unemployment indefinitely and increasing debt constantly --- what could possibly go wrong?

gerry said...

WTF echo chamber is this person in?

Bryan C said...

shiloh, the only confusion here is your inability to understand the concept of "states". Romney states it pretty clearly:

"In my state, we found a solution that worked for my state. But I wouldn't take what we did in Massachusetts and say to Texas, "You've got to take the Massachusetts model."

There ya go. This is why we have states. And why Presidents and the federal government shouldn't imagine themselves to be omniscient. Or omnipotent.

ken in tx said...

The John Adams quote about debt reminds me of something from Korean history. After the Japanese coerced the last Korean princess to marry into the Japanese royal family, and got a toehold in the Korean government, one of the first things they did was takeover the Korean banks. They foreclosed on all important Korean assets and turned the property over to Japanese ownership. Next they took over the schools and made Japanese the official language. It became illegal to speak Korean in public.

Many older Koreans hate the Japanese but they can speak Japanese as well as they speak Korean (Han Gul).

BTW, the cherry trees in DC that were a gift from the Japanese government, actually came from the Korean island of Chedju Do.

Larry J said...

EMD said...

I love Larry J for his naivety.


Out-sourcing government jobs works as proven in England and elsewhere. Maybe it's naive to believe the taxpayers deserve better service for their money. Maybe it's naive to believe that often menial administrative jobs don't have to be done by government employees with bloated salaries, pension plans and benefits that private sector people don't have.

The public employee pension timebomb is getting ready to blow. Don't expect people who have no pensions to peacefully allow government to bankrupt us to pay for bloated public employee benefits. I'm not going to eat dogfood in retirement so bureaucrats can enjoy steak.

Crunchy Frog said...

Geez Crack, how long are you going to be stuck on stupid? Either Romney is going to win, or Obama will be reelected. There is no other scenario available. There is no None Of The Above. There is no Sarah Palin write-in campaign.

Everyone here knows your feelings about Romney in particular, and Mormons in general. You consider Mormonism a cult full of Stepford wives and husbands.

Guess what - so do I. And guess what else - I don't care.

Romney can sacrifice llamas to Chthulu on the white house lawn for all I care. He's still better than the Marxist, Black Liberation Theologist piece of trash we have there now.

Stop stealing my money. Fix the economy. Stop leaving Israel hung out to dry. Build the Keystone Pipeline. And yes, drill baby drill.

He's not going to convert my kids. My job as a father is to protect the spiritual health of my children, so I don't have to worry about society's effects on their souls. I have done so.

Would that others here had done the same.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

I guess if we go to a restaurant and we get lousy service, we are supposed to go back and reward that bad service with our patronage.

Oh yea..

Known Unknown said...

Out-sourcing government jobs works as proven in England and elsewhere. Maybe it's naive to believe the taxpayers deserve better service for their money. Maybe it's naive to believe that often menial administrative jobs don't have to be done by government employees with bloated salaries, pension plans and benefits that private sector people don't have.

You asked why this doesn't happen more often.

You must be new to this blog and have not read the countless posts about public service employee unions and their party apparatus and the Walker recall.

I'm on your side, but to ask why it doesn't happen when you can plainly see why, I would find a little naive.

Known Unknown said...

I guess if we go to a restaurant and we get lousy service, we are supposed to go back and reward that bad service with our patronage.

No, we feel bad for those who cannot, either by their circumstance or position in society, provide better service. Those poor souls who have been held down by the high standards of service dictated by the select few (1%).

Therefore, in the name of justice and fairness, we must immediately pass the American Services Improvement Act of 2012, which provides service-deficient providers with service-enrichment training programs, courtesy endowment grants, and also streamlines and centralizes service standards under the aegis of the newly-established Service Provider Assistance Authority, a subsidiary of the Food & Drug Administration. The Act and its subsequent programs and conditions are to be fully-funded by a small food processing fee on dining-room receipts for those whose food costs exceed $27.43 for a combined family of four.

It's the only way to get the equitable and fair service Americans deserve!!

Anonymous said...

To speak naively, I don't see how a serious pollster can claim any candidate, Rep or Dem, is in "deep, deep trouble" six weeks out from an election when the race may be tied within the margin of error.

There are still debates ahead and the unveiling of home stretch strategies for both sides plus, as we saw two weeks ago, the possibilities of disruptive outside events.

So clearly Celinda Lake is a propagandist here rather than an objective commentator. I wonder how many Americans have noticed how hard these people are spinning in order to bolster Obama's chances and demoralize Romney voters.

Michael K said...

"Blogger shiloh said...

Speaking of superficiality, Althouse is also smitten w/Scott Walker, Scott Brown and Paul Ryan. Go figure!"

Because they all win their elections ?


Come on, tell us. We'd love to know.

Eric said...

Krugman? Mainstream? Every time his opens his mouth he states the stimuli weren't large enough. $15 trillion in debt isn't enough?

Does that really break down on the left/right axis? I agree he's more than "slightly" to the left of the American center, but in theory you could be Keynesian and still be conservative.

The problem with Krugman is he's no longer an economist. He's a faith healer. Just like the faith healer will say you can't walk because your faith wasn't strong enough, Krugman will say the economy didn't recover because the stimulus wasn't big enough. Unless it does recover, at which point he'll try to take the credit.

But again, what makes him a leftie is his obsession with income distribution and his belief the state it the solution to every problem. Keynesianism might actually work if it were politically possible for the government pay down the debt in good times as Keynes advised.

Hell, the stimulus we had might have helped if they'd actually done something with it instead of feeding it to Democrat interest groups.

The Crack Emcee said...

Lemmy,

I guess if we go to a restaurant and we get lousy service, we are supposed to go back and reward that bad service with our patronage.

You're damned skippy:

Its decaying architecture, fluorescent lighting and kitchen prep sink wedged next to a toilet have served as fodder for a ribbing by comedian Conan O'Brien. Its 3 a.m. closing time made it a favorite for late-night club hoppers

But most of all, the Sam Wo Restaurant in the heart of Chinatown was a haven for unassuming regulars and curious tourists — who for decades streamed through the cramped kitchen and up a narrow staircase to the tiny second- and third-floor dining rooms served by a dumbwaiter.

The restaurant is believed to be the oldest in Chinatown — some say it was founded after the 1906 earthquake; others claim it opened earlier. In the 1950s, it became a hangout for Beat poets.

Edsel Ford Fung became the keystone of restaurant lore when he was dubbed "the world's rudest waiter." Fung, who died in 1984, was memorialized along with the restaurant in San Francisco author Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City." The waiter was a regular feature in the writings of late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.

Shirley Fong-Torres, a chef, writer and Chinatown restaurant tour guide, wrote in her 2008 book, "The Woman Who Ate Chinatown," that customers "came to see and be verbally abused by Edsel."

"He did not necessarily bring you what you ordered, which he sometimes scribbled down while smoking a cigarette," wrote Fong-Torres, who died last year. "He was notorious for flirting with girls, rudely criticizing customers and reminding people about tipping him."

Vic Lim, 67, a retired optometrist from El Cerrito who ate his first meal at Sam Wo's as a 2-year-old, said Friday that "Ed wasn't rude. He was actually certifiably crazy."


Mitt Romney would've fired Edsel - before anybody ever realized he was one of the most fascinating people in The City. We loved him, and his off-beat "abuse," and the shitty little restaurant where he worked.

And did you see? He flirted with girls - without facing sexual harassment charges! The man SMOKED while he worked - and wasn't forced outside like a fucking leper! And I bet you, he didn't have to piss in cup to get his job, like you do in RomneyWorld.

And, while the restaurant was small, he made good money because he didn't work in a franchise like you see all over Utah, where you go to one city and there's the Taco Time, there's the McDonald's, and there's the Burger King. Go to the next one, and there's the Taco Time, the McDonald's, and the Burger King - in the exact same places - and all paying $9.00 an hour.

Edsel Ford would've told Mitt Romney to go to Hell - and knew that's where he came from.

Oh yeah, that Mitt Romney, with his strait-laced, uptight, my-way-or-the-highway, another-motivational-speaker-is-coming-tomorrow bullshit:

He's going to do us up SWELL,...

Known Unknown said...

Mitt Romney would've fired Edsel - before anybody ever realized he was one of the most fascinating people in The City.

Just ... stop.

Rusty said...

Freder Frederson said...
radical leftwing Paul Kgurgman ideologue.

You really have no idea what "radical leftwing" means do you? Krugman is a mainstream, albeit slightly left of center, economist. There is nothing remotely radical about his economics or politics.

The true radicals, albeit right wing, are those libertarians pushing Ayn Rand economics.


Ayn Rand didn't have an economic philosophy of her own. She liked Mises and Hayek.
Just so you don't beclown yourself............

The Crack Emcee said...

EMD,

Mitt Romney would've fired Edsel - before anybody ever realized he was one of the most fascinating people in The City.

Just ... stop.

What? Are you denying it? Are there other Chinese waiters (!) you know of who have people singing their praises long after they're dead?

The man was unique - and it was wonderful to be served by him,...