Most people will form an opinion based on gut feel and then try to look for facts to justify.

I believe that the other Repub cadidates hate Romney at a very fundamental level. That's why Huck is biting at his ankles, and the governors of California and Florida endorsing the hated McCain, over their fellow Governor Romney.

There is something especially dislikable about smug boy scout Romney, who is on shamelessly coloring his postions based on whether he's running for Gov of Mass or Repub Pres of the US and, trying really hard to out republican the other candidates.

McCains negatives are old news and the Republicans have probably gotten used to the stink. Romney however is a brand new unpleasent odor that can't simply be scrubbed out even with a gallon of "Regan" body wash. All McCain has to do is let Romney be Romney...and the nomination is McCain's.

You make an excellent point. Also, I'm not sure Romney has the credibility to accuse anyone else of being a liar. Perhaps the tactic would have worked coming from the "preacher" instead.

You my friend think Romney is stupid. It would be stupid of you to think that is how we all see it.

What they're saying about the debate II

From MittRomney.Com:

Fox News' Frank Luntz: FOX NEWS' FRANK LUNTZ: "First off, who won the debate tonight? I always begin that way." VOTER: "Romney." LUNTZ: "Who says John McCain won the debate tonight raise your hands, 3, only 4 of you. Who says Mitt Romney, about half of you." (Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes," 1/30/08)

National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "He hit back and defending his honor and truth on Iraq. I don't think most Americans get "timetables was a buzzword." I think they get that neither of these guys are Harry Reid. The sum of it is oddly, unnecessarily, McCain came off badly during an Iraq round." (Kathryn Jean Lopez, "Is Romney Reading the Corner?" National Review's The Corner Blog, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

- Lopez: "I think Romney came off effective and competent." (Kathryn Jean Lopez, "Weird, Irritating Debate," National Review's The Corner Blog, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham: "Mitt Romney is exactly right on letting states take the lead on global warming and emissions standards if they want to tighten them, but he does the work McCain wouldn't do by pointing out that those actions have consequences in higher costs and lost jobs. When he talks these issues, he is smart and right." (Mary Katharine Ham, "Global Warming Mania!" Townhall Blog, www.townhall.com, Posted 1/30/08)

Captain's Quarters' Ed Morrissey: "Mitt Romney won this debate. He looked crisp, sharp, had facts at his command, and exuded confidence." (Ed Morrissey, "Live Blog And Wrap Up," Captain's Quarters' Blog, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

CNN's Bill Schneider: "A couple of Romney's answers were quite good, particularly on the Iraq timetables issue." (Bill Schneider, "The Night's Big Winner: Huckabee," CNN's Political Ticker Blog, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

- Schneider: "Romney's giving a pretty interesting conservative explanation of a health care plan that otherwise makes conservatives nervous. As he explains, it forces people to pay their own way - which they get." (Bill Schneider, "Romney Makes A Sale On Health Care," CNN's Political Ticker, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

- Schneider: "Romney's giving a full-throated rebuttal to McCain's charge that he proposed a timetable on Iraq withdrawal – and he's right. That was a strong answer." (Bill Schneider, "Romney Calls McCain Out," CNN's Political Ticker, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

National Review's Mark Hemingway: "I think I can say that Romney was the clear winner in the debate." (Mark Hemingway, "For the First Time," National Review's The Corner Blog, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

- Hemingway: "[Gov. Romney] showed an admirable fighting spirit." (Mark Hemingway, "For the First Time," National Review's The Corner Blog, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

- Hemingway: "Romney kept his head about him and remained gracious even as a number of his charges against McCain stuck." (Mark Hemingway, "For the First Time," National Review's The Corner Blog, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder: "Applause from audience when Romney says Reagan would have found the dirty tricks reprehensible." (Marc Ambinder, "Debate Wire," Atlantic Online, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

- Ambinder: "Romney gives a strong answer that weaves together his experience with his resume...notes that Abe Lincoln wasn't a military leader..." (Marc Ambinder, "Debate Wire," Atlantic Online, <link> Posted 1/30/08)

Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds: "GOOD POINT BY ROMNEY about how McCain shouldn't 'demean' people who start businesses. McCain has been doing that a lot, acting as if meeting a payroll is somehow less honorable than working for the government." (Glenn Reynolds, "Good Point By Romney," Blog, http://instapundit.com/, Posted 1/30/08)

Wow... Is that what you call fair and balanced? I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of all these highly respected media puppets.

And then McCain gets to run as Bob Dole against Obama's Bill Clinton in the real race.

I suspect there will be similar consequences....

Wendy73, I bet your daytime job is to find favouable quotes from critics, for movies that really suck.

To Fox, National Review and other "establishment" Republicans Romney is wet dream. He's a glossy veneer that will put his priorities in proper order, Party, Tax Reduction, God and Country in that order.

Whether you agree or disagree with McCain, his intention always seem to be to put Country first & that's why he's always getting in trouble with the establishment repubs who don't like him.

Incidentially they're suspicius of Huck, because they think he'll put God first.

However boy scout Mitt, knows that life's a game and you need to shift positions just to stay ahead. He'll honor the Republican Party and Party loyalty above all else. Unfortunately he's still an jerk and most repubs are not establishment.

Although this probably has little to do with why the GOP nomination is playing out the way it is, the Republicans should be glad they'll ultimately be campaigning on McCain's record, not Romney's. Romney's politics are probably closer to my own than McCain's, but it's hard to defend Romney's record at his last job. He was an absolutely terrible governor. There's a reason he didn't dare run for re-election. He had an approval rating in the 30s by election day, and his Lt. Gov., who was essentially his proxy for a vote of confidence, got demolished by a two-to-one margin, at the hands of a candidate who didn't have even a third her campaign warchest. The people of Massachusetts thought the Romney administration was an abject failure, and didn't want any part of anything associated with it.

When you look at the stats, it shouldn't be surprising. On Romney's watch pretty much every measurable indicator of social and economic wellbeing trended negatively, in Massachusetts, relative to the rest of the country. For example, Massachusetts tradiationally had lower unemployment than the nation as a whole, and had markedly lower unemployment back when Romney came to office. By the time he left, it was markedly higher than the national average. Since his departure, it's gone back to being lower again.

When you look at the stats, you see the same kind of trend repeated again and again. The Commonwealth slummed badly through the years of Romney's leadership, after having had a terrific run under both Democrats and Republicans before him. The people who had to live through his incompetence can't stand the guy, which is why he decided not to run for reeelection.

In addition to being an ineffectual governor, he was also a pretty shifty one. He spent much of his time out of the state, wooing conservatives in the South, to set himself up for a presidential run. While the people of Massachusetts were paying him a salary, he was in Dixie making fun of the folks back home, for conservative laughs, to forward his own ambitions.

John McCain's record presents its own problems -- especially his flip-flop on amnesty for illegals, and his overall extremism. But I'd find it a lot easier to run on his record than Romney's.

Romney is trying to buy his way, to heaven. Romney is acting like Donald Trump and trying to fire McCain. Sorry, the good ole Washington boys don't get fired by snug boy scout x-Governors, x-CEO types. They take alot of bullets and keep on pluggin, as you saw McCain do.

We all saw Romney do so many double takes on McCain's response to his remarks, it was like watching a old Saturday morning Tom and Jerry cartoon, with Mickey and Goofy waiting in the wings, trying to get a word in edge wise.

Personally, I like Ron Paul, however he has snowballs chance in hell of making it sadly, even as VP.

-DOH

Speaking as a Mass resident, Romney's tenure wasn't a complete disaster. When he entered the governorship he faced massive debts and was forced into difficult cuts of which its unfair to be overly critical. The reason we hate him so is that for the second half of his term he stopped being governor when he started running for president. Not only was he out of the commonwealth over half the time, but he was constantly attacking us for being too liberal. He started championing a bill against gay marriage (a practice that a majority of the state supports and that had no chance of passing) and deriding the citizens who voted into office as being godless liberals who he was trying to steer to a better path. He was biting the had that fed him to appeal to the party base in other parts of the country where it seems Massachusetts has become a dirty word (Massachusetts liberal).

So now that he's turned his back on the people that voted him into office in the first place, and derided a state that was liberal enough to vote in a mormon (something that polling indicates the evangelical vote he's coveting refuses to do), mocked our value system to the point of practically calling us unamerican and to top it off threw Kerry Healy under the bus of his own ambition we say Mitt deserves what he gets.

One can't really quote FOX news when looking for any real debate information, or information on anything actually. These are the people who blamed the economic downturn on a lack of consumer confidence based on the possability that the democrats would win the white house. To their credit their unabashedly shameless in their bias...a bias which incudes disdain for McCain.

On some litmus test issues he will take what is considered a somewhat liberal stance (although in this polarized political world when someone takes a moderate stance they are considered traitors), true to his maverick image. He also can compromise for bipartisan support, which is how democracy is supposed to work but many in his parties base consider democrats the enemy (as do overzealous democrats) and consider any ground given up unnaceptable. Thus the Ann Coulter ilk who have hijacked their party consider him a wolf in sheeps clothing.

Not that this is a McCain endorsement. Its just to point out that FOX news as decided to support Mitt since his sound bytes are their sound bytes and they color their reporting based upon the answers they want to hear.

Most states were likewise faced with fiscal problems back when Romney came to office. So, we are left with the fact that Massachusetts trended negatively relative to the country as a whole on his watch, even with other states having similar problems to deal with. He sold himself as a guy with the business acumen to bring investment to the state, but, instead, the state lost out to other states on his watch. In fact, by the time he left, we were even losing out in terms of population. Fortunately, most of the negative Romney trends seem to have reversed since Patrick came to office. For example, we went from having an unemployment rate markedly higher than the national average, at the end of Romney's term, to having one markedly lower than the national average, today.

Of course, I agree that Romney's slimey road show had a lot to do with how he's despised in this state. At a time when he was cashing checks from the People of Massachusetts, he was neglecting the job he'd been hired to perform, and instead making the rounds of Republican get togethers in the South. Worse, he spent that time badmouthing his constituents in order to promote his own personal ambitions. That was deeply unethical.

It is pretty funny to watch him being shown the door by the very kind of bigots he was so eager to please. In Massachusetts he got a chance that most states without a large Mormon population would never give to a Mormon, because we're so liberal and secular. He spit in the face of that tolerance, and threw himself in with the evangelical nutjobs, only to find that they wouldn't vote for someone outside the mainline protestant tradition. He thought he'd get the Huckabee votes, because he thought the rest of the country was fairly open-minded about Mormonism, the way Massachusetts is. I can't suppress my glee at seeing such a slug get his comeuppance.