comMITTed to Romney!

When Sarah Palin walks onto the stage at the Republican National Convention tonight, we conservatives and the rest of the country will get a very good read on whether her selection as McCain’s VP was a stroke of genius or a grasping at straws.

Obama doesn’t seem poised to run the table at this point. So any significant bounce the ticket gets is potentially a game changer.

I can’t wait to see the crowd’s reaction to Gov. Palin. If she gets a thunderous reception and her address is well received, with numerous applause lines, it looks very good ( barring any major gaffes from either McCain or Palin ) for a Republican win in the general election.

I am also predicting a crowd explosion when Mitt walks on stage. Megan Kelly of FOX NEWS said earlier today that when Mitt walked onto the convention floor, the crowd roared it’s approval. Get the kids, brew a fresh pot of coffee and get your favorite snacks and get ready to witness history.

~~John Cronin~~

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Romney 48%…..Huckabee 3%……Now that the electorate has had 6 months since Super Tuesday to weigh the relative merits of Romney vs. Huckabee, Romney is beating Huckabee like a rented mule.

~~John Cronin~~

{{{{DRUDGE POLL}}}} WHO WILL BE MCCAIN’S VP?…

GIULIANI

2% 348
K. B. HUTCHISON

18% 2,460
HUCKABEE

3% 454
LIEBERMAN

4% 614
PAWLENTY

7% 952
ROMNEY

48% 6,728
DARK HORSE

17% 2,390

Total Votes: 13,946

[Editor's Note: Intrade 10 AM Central time.....Romney 71.0, up 26 points]

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I remember very well the keynote speeches delivered at both Conventions in 2004. I remember being impressed with the rhetorical skills of Barack Obama. I said to a friend at the time. We’ll being hearing from him again.

I also was very impressed with the Republican speakers as well. Although I don’t like his positions, I remember Arnold Schwarzenegger was very effective in telling us why he loved this country and how grateful he was to live here.

There can be no doubt that a powerful speech at one of the major party conventions can be a career maker for a politician with national ambitions. Here’s wishing Gov. Romney the very best when he gets his chance to speak to the delegates and to the nation. Judging from his acclaimed performances at back to back CPAC conventions, I fully expect that Mitt will hit it out of the park!

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080825/NEWS/808250306

Two Massachusetts politicians — Gov. Deval Patrick and former Gov. Mitt Romney — are being counted on to create a buzz at national political conventions in the next two weeks.

Patrick, not quite halfway through his four-year term as Massachusetts governor, is scheduled to address the Democratic National Convention in Denver tomorrow night. A sizzling speech could elevate his national profile.

Romney, who served one term as Massachusetts governor, is on the list of those being considered for John McCain’s running mate. Romney is scheduled to speak Wednesday, Sept. 3, the second-to-last night of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

For Romney, who could join a McCain administration or return as a presidential candidate in 2012, the stakes couldn’t be higher. But Patrick, too, could make a splash. He insists he plans on running for re-election for governor in 2010, but a well received speech could intensify speculation he would eventually leave to join a Barack Obama administration.

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Scrippsnews.com reports on Utah’s rule that mandates that the delegates must vote for the winner of that state’s primary. As you know, Gov. Romney blew the competition away with a 90% landslide vote in Utah’s primary this past spring.

Won’t it be great to hear the chairperson of Utah’s delegation intone: “Mr./Madam Chairman, the great state of Utah proudly casts it’s 36 votes for Gov. Mitt Romney for President of the United States of America!”

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/34889

WASHINGTON –

The music will be rising into a crescendo, the hall glowing with red, blue and white stars, confetti at the waiting, when Utah delegates take the microphone in the nomination of John McCain for president and cast their ballots for — Mitt Romney.

It’s not that Utah Republicans love Romney so much they can’t bring themselves to back McCain or that they won’t let go of Romney’s failed presidential bid. It’s the rules.

As it stands, all 36 of the state’s delegates are bound on the first ballot to vote for the winner of Utah’s Republican primary: Romney, who nabbed a whopping 90 percent of the vote.

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The major party candidates are taking their time making a decision on their respective Veep picks. What are your thoughts about their strategies? Do you think they have already made their picks and that the “selection process’ is nothing but a Kabucki dance? When do you think they will announce? Will they wait until the convention, with teases continuing throughout the summer months?

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20080615/OPINION/806150330/1101/NEWS04

On the Straight Talk Express Thursday, McCain declined to promise a Boston television reporter that he’d add former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to his ticket. McCain said he was looking for a vice president who shared his “values and principles and priorities.”

Though he said it will be a while before he settles on a veep, he did say that Romney fit that bill. “Mitt Romney has earned himself a very important place in the Republican Party,” McCain said.

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I don’t know what, if anything, might come of this, but I noticed that there is a link at the Republican National Convention’s website to express interest in volunteering (click here).

I filled it out and thought it would be fun to have a nice contingent of Romney supporters there. If you’re interested, check it out!

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By: Michael Luo

NEW YORK TIMES CAUCUS

Brief article on the NYT political website. Gov. Romney has no plans to quit this race and I know from our reader’s comments that 99.9% of us have no such plans.

~~John Cronin~~

Mitt Romney is committed to barreling ahead in his bid for the Republican nomination, despite the odds being stacked against him, said his son, Tagg, a senior campaign adviser, in an interview today.

Mr. Romney delivered a pep talk to his staff this morning, he said, and his advisers are looking into buying airtime to broadcast television commercials in some of the upcoming states that are voting.

“We’re not going to project when it is we’re going to quit,” said Tagg Romney, “because we’re not planning on quitting.”

They are mapping out a farfetched possibility premised on conservative fears continuing to fester against Mr. McCain, which they hope fuels a series of wins for Mr. Romney and then perhaps get him to a point where he has enough momentum to wrest some of those promised but not officially bound delegates into his column at a contested convention.
Mr. Romney appeared to even allude to this potential route in his speech on Tuesday night, promising to take the contest “all the way to the convention.”
“There’s a whole lot of scenarios that get us there,” Tagg Romney said.

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I admire Mitt Romney’s grit and determination and I agree that he should take the fight to the convention. The stakes are too high to do anything else.

In the event that we do not win there, then I believe Gov. Romney should follow the advise given in the article below.

~~John Cronin~~

ROMNEY SHOULD FOLLOW REAGAN EXAMPLE
boblonsberry.com ^ | 02/06/08 | Bob Lonsberry

Posted on 02/06/2008 5:32:18 AM PST by shortstop

Maybe it’s like 1976.

Maybe the Republican Party needs to go through a cleansing. Maybe it needs to be torn down so someday it can be built up again.

In 1976 the Republican bosses rejected Ronald Reagan. They mocked his conservatism and went with the liberal, Gerald Ford. We were coming out of the Nixon era, a time when about all anyone agreed on was that the Republican president had been a disappointment.

The party went with a liberal and a dynamic young guy out of Georgia – who campaigned on a platform of change – got the Democratic nod. It was a centrist establishment Republican against a Democrat outsider and the Republican candidacy went down in flames.

And America got Jimmy Carter, the most pointless president of the Twentieth Century.

Maybe this year is like 1976.

George W. Bush is Richard M. Nixon. Republicans can’t wait for him to go and Democrats absolutely loathe him. He is what people want to change, they just want to turn the page and move on to something better.

Either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton play the part of Jimmy Carter. Both have exciting candidacies that are very short on specifics. Both have the potential to be absolute failures as presidents. Like Carter, they have the potential to be one-term wonders. They have the potential to follow liberal priorities right into the swamp Jimmy Carter mired the nation in.

Somehow, Barack Obama chants things about hope in a way that gets more votes than when Jesse Jackson chanted things about hope. Somehow, people have decided to read into the Obama candidacy every unresolved political fantasy of their lives. Somehow, the media and the Democrats have decided – with a straight face – that Barack Obama is the second coming of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Hillary Clinton has likewise taken on mythic proportions in the enthusiasm of her supporters.

But both Obama and Clinton will do well not to fall flat on their faces once in office.

And it’s quite likely one of them will be the next president of the United States.

Because of this year’s Gerald Ford – Senator John McCain.

He is the sort of soulless candidate who can inspire only through fear. He is a man without abiding political principle, a war hero whose war ended two generations ago. A man who in no way represents the philosophy or values of his party.

A man grassroots Republicans are going to turn their backs on.

This year is like 1976.

And Mitt Romney is Ronald Reagan.

This year, the Republican bosses are going to deny Mitt Romney the nomination. They are going to cynically play politics, they are going to go with the liberal they think can win, and they are going to value victory over principle. They are going to forget the fact that Republicans who abandon principle for success invariably end up with neither.

So it will be Jimmy Carter Take Two and Mitt Romney will go into the wilderness.

But if he is smart, he will follow the example of Ronald Reagan. Reagan used the years from 1976 to 1980 to continue his daily radio commentaries and to travel the country speaking to whomever would listen to him. He perfected his understanding of the Constitution. He spoke to group after group, preaching the simple straight-foward gospel of freedom, self-reliance, respect for life and the glory of being an American.

And at the end of four years he had not only his party’s nomination, he had one of the biggest general election margins in history.

He persisted and he prevailed and he became president of the United States.

That needs to be Mitt’s plan.

He got robbed this go ’round. His party abandoned not just him, but its own bedrock. Mitt needs to spend four years internalizing the gospel of conservatism and constitutionalism. He needs to get this stuff in his bones. And he needs to preach it across the country.

This year is like 1976.

We’ve nominated a liberal and we’ve rejected a potentially great leader.

The one will be gone soon, and – if he’s wise – the other will start preparing now for 2012.

This year is like 1976. And that one didn’t go very well for us.

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Gov. Romney seems to be making strong headway in Michigan. It’s probably thanks to the shift of focus in the campaign to economic matters where Gov. Romney is most strongly in his element (and Sen. McCain rather weak). Good news, though Iowans and New Hampshirites have both broken my heart in the last ten days and I’m gun shy about getting excited.

Looking forward though, what would a Michigan win mean for Gov. Romney? I daresay it would mean a lot and catapault him back into the top-tier in the national polls. But I find it unlikely that it would turn him into a juggernaut. Iowa and New Hampshire were Gov. Romney’s shot at running away with the nomination. Now the best he can hope for is to win a battle of attrition. Indeed, as I’m looking at the calender, Sen. McCain is really the only candidate with a real shot at running away with this (with a win in Michigan and S. Carolina).

It’s been suggested that Florida might decide things, but, really, all I think it will decide is whether Giuliani’s ridiculous Florida + 2/5 strategy will survive first contact. No matter what happens, it’s probable that we’ll have five separate winners dividing up the states on 2/5 (if, for no other reason, everyone’s home state is voting that day).

After that, the citizens in 31 states will have voted and well over 1,000 delegates decided. Far from being a deciding date, the huge number of states voting on 2/5 may well represent a point-of-no-return if the day ends with the field as muddled as it is today. Sure there are big states left to vote post-2/5 (Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania), but it’s unlikely they’ll prove any more decisive than the rest.

Which means, if Gov. Romney takes Michigan, we’re headed to a brokered convention in Minneapolis. Fun.

~~~Thomas

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