Mitt Romney: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud

I’m not sure most people know that about her, really.

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Oh. Well. Hunh. I don’t know what to tell those guys then.

She is up by about 20 points though.

There’s something funny about Romney calling someone else a phony, after his campain of trying to sound hard-right in 2012. The man’s socially pretty conservative, but on a lot of issues, he’s pretty in the center. Outside the coasts. I’d wager he’s seen as being to the left. Right-wing media is practically shitting themselves to spread the message that he’s a lefty loony now. I’m sorry, I think the code phrase is “establishment Republican”.

There’s something deeply weird about a candidate admitting on national TV that he’s bought politicians’ influence, yet he’s still seen as an anti-establishment candidate.

Who am I kidding. Among the people I know, it’s mostly his thinly veiled xenophobia/racist message that resonates. Including, I’ll add, someone I know whose last name is Guerrero.

It all makes me incredibly sad.

I know it’s lazy to try to blame one person for all their problems, but I put a lot of blame on Karl Rove, even if he is persona non grata among the Real Conservatives™ these days. He was one of the strongest proponents of the us vs. them, conservatives vs. liberals attitude over the past 20-30 years. The problem that comes in is when you have dozens of different groups with their own definition of “conservative” who are convinced that what they don’t like is “liberal”. For example, I’ve seen Ron Paul describes as a “lefty loonie” more than once.

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I’m more likely to think of them as ideologues rather than egomaniacs, but the key thing is that they’re consistent and thus predicable. Trump is not.

I figure Romney made this statement against Trump as a marketing stunt inspired from Ronald Reagan’s 1976 convention speech; where Reagan showed to be more Presidential than Ford, and it helped Reagan get the support needed to win in 1980.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney is trying to position himself for a third attempt in four years.

Below is a youtube video discussing that 1976 speech.

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Ludwig von Mises?

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Close. Looked a bit similar. Had economic theories. Try again.

Arnold Schwarzenegger?

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I was in the back rooms in Kansas City with the Republican party officials at the time. They did not “realize they’d made a mistake” after that short concession speech. They knew there was a small but vocal minority of delegates rooting for Reagan, but he was considered too extremist and “wacko” for the party then. Ford really was the candidate that represented the Republican party at the time.

Four years later, the party backed Reagan while holding their noses because they realized his increased popularity over the intervening years meant he was their best chance at getting a Republican back into the White House.

Four years later, he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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The problem is, Rubio and Cruz (and Clinton, to a large degree) are also phonies and frauds.

Really? Clinton is going to appoint a SCOTUS judge that will dictate how vaginas are to be used? Clinton will rescind Obamacare? Clinton will pretend climate change doesn’t exist? Clinton will allow Christianity to dominate public spaces, schools, and government buildings? Clinton will make it a priority to make national parks gun-friendly zones? Clinton will discriminate against muslims? Clinton will cut taxes on the ultra-wealthy? Clinton will eliminate the EPA and the IRS? Clinton will eliminate the graduated income tax and impose a flat tax?

No, Clinton isn’t perfect. But please don’t say she’s “to a large degree” as fraudulent as the ultra-conservative robots that are Rubio and Cruz.

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This is a popular meme of the far Right to try to persuade voters that their candidates are mainstream.

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To be accurate, I suspect that Cruz is a denialist because of the oil lobby, and Trump because wind farms and solar panels might spoil the view from one of his golf courses (as well as his Saudi connections).

I was reading that the fast-growing Chinese company Xiaomi has a committee of 20 engineers who decide which businesses to invest in, rather than marketing people. Engineers are slow to change their minds (it is naturally a conservative profession) but they tend to be science-led when they do. With these attitudes, when the Chinese leadership and business decides that the time has come to take climate change seriously, I suspect that the opinions of US politicians will cease to matter.

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Interesting, but are you saying that it appears that they’ve wisely determined that so far, there’s no cause for alarm?

No. The problem for the Chinese government has been how to maintain phenomenal growth rates. To do that they have used cheap coal, hydro, and ignoring of environmental protection.
The result is dangerous levels of smog in cities and high levels of water pollution, exactly as happened in the West until the 1950s.
The Chinese government now has to maintain living standards (and some growth) while fixing the mess. But, unlike politicians in Washington, they only have to look out of the window to see the size of the problem, or rather the brown cloud preventing them seeing anything. I suspect this will concentrate their minds wonderfully, especially as rich Chinese desert the country for somewhere cleaner and less likely to be affected by climate change.

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Will that be the moon, or Mars?

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FWIW, I can’t say how I know this, but in fact they are seriously researching alternative energy sources to deal with the problem.

More than the U.S. government is, sadly.

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Who actually makes most of the world’s solar panels?

Big supercomputers are currently being used to try to figure out the “safest” places to live, and I am sure that as the Koch brothers continue to claim that AGW is a hoax, some of the investment funds they control will be working out where to invest for maximum returns as it starts to bite. In fact, AGW denialism would be a good strategy for large investors because it would reduce the price pressure on the areas that interest them.
A lot of rich Chinese are moving to the UK or Canada. Where I live in the UK has rather benign weather on the whole. The increase in tropical storms makes us a bit wetter but snow is getting rarer. We’re pretty self-sufficient in food, water and energy generation. I live 100M above sea level, on a well drained slope. Our air quality is excellent. This area is likely to remain comfortably livable for the next hundred years at least without needing either air conditioning or a large amount of heating. That’s what I’m talking about.

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All true except leaving out the fact that Hitler declared war on the US on December 11, 1941. The choice was made for us. I admit I did not recall lend-lease started before Pearl Harbor.

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