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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

2012 Here Are Three Stories You Probably Won't Read About Mitt Romney

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 4:15 PM

1. The Nation published a great blog post about how Mitt Romney's recent bus tour through Wisconsin and Iowa has cautiously skipped over towns that are still hurting from Bain Capital-related job losses. Workers at one factory wanted Romney to come and see how the plant had been gutted by Bain shipping jobs to China.

2. Romney wants you to know that Barack Obama's auto bailout was successful, but if Mitt Romney had been president, it would have been super-extra-double-successful, boasting that "I would have done it faster than he did and saved us about $20 billion."

3. Not that you care. Buzzfeed points out that Mitt Romney stories don't draw anywhere near the blog traffic that stories about President Obama do. I've noticed this for a while now—back when the Republican field was chock-full of freaks, Romney stories would get very little by way of comments or reshares or any other sort of attention. As the freaks fell by the wayside, attention in Romney stories grew, but we're nowhere near Palin- or Santorum-—or even Perry-—style levels of interest. (Romney is still dwarfed on Twitter by the president, too.) I expect the numbers to keep growing after the Olympics, once everyone's attention is squarely placed on the election, but I don't know if a baseline Mitt Romney story is ever going to draw the same attention as a baseline John McCain story.

And I also don't know if this is good news or bad news for Mitt Romney. Just because something is popular on the internet doesn't mean it's popular in the real world. It could suggest a demographic difference—in age, in wealth, in hobbies—or it could wind up meaning nothing at all.

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"President" Romney to you....

Posted by Nothing x 3 = Nothing on June 20, 2012 at 4:27 PM

I'm so tired of him, I can't even tell you. His voice. His mendacity. His NERVE! That corporate monotone delivery of his. How everything is soulless, memorized - his lack of convictions. Everything about him is fake. Fake! I'm sure even the sideburns aren't real. His plastic attack-dog Barbie wife. And it's not even July! How can people stand him? Even from this distance, I can tell that the vast majority of people will quickly grow to detest him, like they did Bush - Worse than Bush, because at least Bush was natural and likeable. Romney is just a national catastrophe waiting to happen.

Posted by floater on June 20, 2012 at 5:02 PM

Romneybot is boring. that's why articles about him don't draw blog traffic. Apart from being a serial liar and frat boy, who has spent the last 6 years running to add the White House to his collection of large homes, what more do we need to know about him?

Posted by Patricia Kayden on June 20, 2012 at 5:12 PM

Hindsight is 20/20, Willard.

I once saw David Frum make a good point to Bill Maher: out of all the GOP primary candidates, who would you want to be president? Rmoney is the only one who seems sane, albeit one who is unable to communicate human emotions. He was the only acceptable alternative out of the lot of them. Woohoo.

Why does he want to be president anyway? To fufill a Mormon prophecy? Because his Dad tasked him with it?

Posted by Max Solomon on June 20, 2012 at 5:52 PM

Given Obama might be facing impeachment (ala Nixon) over Fast & Furious, y'all should get used to saying President Romney.

Holder's been charged with contempt of Congress. Obama had to claim executive privilege to prevent Congress from getting access to the cover-up documents. It's a sad day for the Republic.

Posted by delbert on June 20, 2012 at 7:12 PM

Romney is boring.

B.O.R.I.N.G.

McCain, for all his faults, was at least an interesting person. And his choice of Palin, insane as it was, at least gave us something to talk about. But Romney is just deadly dull by comparison.

Posted by Reverse Polarity on June 20, 2012 at 7:31 PM

@5 oh please Bush II did that sort of thing for breakfast and you people passed out from clapping so hard.

This is the normal GOP bs

Posted by California Kid on June 20, 2012 at 7:51 PM

@7 Bitch please.

Valerie Plame - Special Prosecutor, Merry Fitzmas, Scooter Libby, Headline News for months.

Fast & Furious - 2 American law enforcement officers dead, 300+ Mexican civilians dead, thousands of guns in the hands of drug cartels courtesy of the DOJ. NBC finally mentions it last week, about 3 years late.

The news media sitting on the story for Obama may end up burning him, with the scandal finally hitting the "too big to hide" stage right before the election.

Posted by delbert on June 20, 2012 at 9:45 PM

@8: let's assume Boehner's willing to bite off impeachment, the 2nd impeachment of a Democratic president in a row, in the middle of a re-election campaign.

What's your end game? The Democratic-controlled Senate doesn't vote to convict, and the people are so angry they put Rmoney in office?

Bitch, please.

Posted by Max Solomon on June 20, 2012 at 9:50 PM

So, hold up...

You're telling me that the candidate for president who is behind in the polls and lacking momentum currently, stayed away from areas that were particularly unfavorable to him and he also stated that his ideas are better than the person against whom he's running?

Stop the fucking presses. Why would I not read those stories? They're just so friggin' enlightening. Thank you SOOOOOOOO MUCH for compiling them all in one place for me. I feel dumber just from skimming the bits that I did from your post.

Posted by malcolmxy on June 21, 2012 at 3:54 AM

The Romney camp just keeps proving they are morons. Why can't they learn from Microsoft, and just keep a bunch of paid bloggers & commenters on staff? They have saturation-bombed the internet following that 'Surface' vapor announcement, and the Windows Phone 8 idiocy. It's not like the Rmoney campaign can't afford to keep the astroturf well-watered as well.

Posted by Karlheinz Arschbomber

on June 21, 2012 at 5:41 AM

@10: It is a shame Constant forced you to click this link, skim the stories, and then take the time to past a comment about them. What an asshole.

Posted by Theodore Gorath on June 21, 2012 at 7:09 AM

Bush II -- took us into a ruinous and expensive war to one-up his father, who attacked Saddam but let him live.

Now Rmoney is trying to be president to one-up his own father, who lost the Republican nomination for the Presidential race in 1968 to Nixon. Can we stop with the politicians with daddy issues?

Posted by --MC on June 21, 2012 at 7:43 AM

@13 Um, "Dreams of My Father" ?

Posted by Sir Vic on June 21, 2012 at 9:19 AM

@12

I'm more of a dick, really, than an asshole.

Thank you, though, for noting why my comments weren't 100% spot on, though. I mean, hell, when you have no argument to counter comments you don't like, just call the person an asshole.

It has no substantive use, but I'm sure it made you feel better, didn't it, douchebag?

Posted by malcolmxy on June 21, 2012 at 10:31 AM

@15: I was not calling you an asshole, but calling Constant an asshole for forcing you to read his post and comment on it.

But everyone here already knows you are a puerile asshole, you have made it quite clear.

Posted by Theodore Gorath on June 21, 2012 at 11:45 AM