US Presidential Election Campaign 2012

LOL or whatever it is the young people say.

Obama thinks a lot of us punch above our weight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erYpXzE9Pxs

I see Rick Santorum has “suspended” his campaign. Lack of money or a acting in the good of the party? Shame though, it was amusing watching the republicans tear each other apart.

I don’t think this will necessarily result in the GOP becoming all sweetness and light in standing behind Romney now. Santorum ended his campaign because Gingrich won’t and because the rules for the Texas primary won’t be changed in time to give him 155 delegates. Santorum now becomes the undefeated candidate, a party heavyweight and natural candidate for 2016, which he will start to campaign for now.

There’s no certainty that Santorum will endorse Romney.

But the thing Romney has going for him is that the far right hate Obama more than they hate him, so many will grudgingly vote for Romney.

The GOP battle will continue, but with the certainty that Romney is the candidate. What will be interesting now is who his running mate would be, whether he goes with someone on the mental side of the party, or a beige centrist one like himself.
Thankfully Gingrich hasn’t given up, though he’ll run out of money soon probably.

A poll out today (by NBC I think) has Obama 51% Romney 44% which is a pretty big lead.

On a personal level, I would just like to thank Rick Santorum for his efforts. After Rick Perry got knocked out, all hope was gone, but Santorum took the ball and ran with it, giving hope to all of us praying for a deeply religious, racist, homophobic, conservative, gun toting, science denying fuckwit nutjob candidate. Roll on 2016.

Apparently his daughter is extremely ill.

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Romney chooses 42 year old Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate.

It’s an interesting choice, has the possibility to make the rest of the campaign more idealogical on economic grounds and therefore more interesting. His budgetary vision, with its tax cuts for the wealthiest under the banner of deficit cutting, seems fairly bonkers to me. You’d think that when the Reagan Democrats in the rust belt that will be very important in determining the outcome have a closer look that they will be very sceptical but you never really know.

I’m surprised that after Palin they’ve again gone for someone inexperienced

He’s a million times smarter than Palin and comes across quite well. Not sure how he is on foreign policy, but he should be well able to spoof it until he learns if he needs to. He’s not that inexperienced either - been in Congress for 14 years. I don’t think him personally will be an issue, but picking him is a tacit endorsement of his budget by Romney and there’s plenty in his budget that the Obama campaign should be able to successfully attack.

Theres more holes in his budget than a swiss cheese braz

Well high taxes and budget cuts haven’t done a whole pile for economic growth in recent years. The Swedes have cut taxes and are enjoying economic growth. So did the Poles, and without dismantling social support. People spend money more effectively than Government and when people spend money jobs get created.

Yes neo liberalism worked wonders for various European economies Balbec.

WIthout regulation, I agree with you. We are a good example of that. Governments have to know when to take away the punch bowl.

Governments aren’t capable of taking away the punch bowl. That’s the problem.

I’m sympathetic to the viewpoint that there is a level beyond which taxes shouldn’t go, especially on businesses. I think that America is a long way below that level. Besides, the Ryan budget fairly explicitly dismantles social support. Finally, the super-rich don’t tend to spend marginal benefits from tax cuts, they just save more. A tax cut on billionaires takes money out of the economy.

There was a congressional election in a republican district in upstate NY lately in which the republican ran on paul ryans budget plans and was beaten by the democrat ,expect the same in november

Fantastic interview with Dan Rather on how the US media is influenced and controlled - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/aug/24/dan-rather-gary-younge-longer-video

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2012/08/hbc-90008805

Paul Ryan worries me.

His speech to the convention was of course crammed full of lies and the fact checking websites would be going into overdrive (I was listening to NPR last night and they pointed out 3 very big lies). But it was very very clever. He talked about how Obama can say he inherited a lot of problems, but what has he done about them? Thereby neutralising that argument for a lot of people. Then talked about twenty and thirtysomethings still living at home, with no future - an appeal aimed at the younger demographic voting for Obama.

He’s a shrewd politician and clearly far more intelligent than Romney. He’s a lying, right wing, Catholic loooney nut job, but a clever one and if Romney was to win (which I’m getting increasingly worried about) I reckon it could all be down to Ryan.

Romney isn’t going to win, have you looked at the polls?

In other news, Clint Eastwood apparently gave a truly hilarious speech at the RNC.