Romney Drops Presidential Bid

In a stunning and sobering move Mitt Romney suspended his presidential bid today. That effectively locks up the nomination for the worst possible GOP candidate John McCain.

I hearby renounce my affiliation with the Republican party.

Thompson
Tancredo
Hunter
Romney
Huckabee
Brownback
Richardson
Ron Paul
Obama
McCain
Hillary

I will not vote for John McCain.

News link at FOX

ABC Blogs Misquote Romney on the NRA.

In this blog article reporter Jake Trapper quotes Mitt Romney in an interview with Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith as saying

I was pleased that when I ran for Governor that I received the endorsement of the NRA and I hope to receive their support now.

The actual audio can be found here.

The actual quote was

I was pleased that as I ran for governor, I received the support of the NRA and I hope to receive their support now.

Notice the slight word difference. The ACTUAL wording was "support" but ABC Blogs have his wording as "endorsed". Now the words to some people mean the same thing, but they are not the same word.

According to Merriam-Webster "support" means "to promote the interests or cause of"

Endorse means "to express support or approval of publicly and definitely".

Now the NRA DID support Romney in several occasions. The NRA has NOT endorsed Romney. Romney was speaking the truth.

Some months back Romney did make the mistake of saying "endorsed" instead of "support" and had to clarify. Now with this blatant misquote ABC and several blogs have picked up that Romney claimed "endorsement" again.

Hint to ABC. When you "quote" someone, make sure what you quoted is actually the quote and not put in different words.

Will this matter? No probably not. The people that are hanging on Romney's not 100% pro-gun stance won't care what the difference is. Neither will those that think Romney is a pathological liar.

Romney's a Mormon!?

Well I had my first argument at work today with someone about Romney.

The crux of the argument was that I am supporting Romney because he is Mormon and I'm a Mormon.

Well first of all that is not true. His religion makes absolutely NO difference if I am going to vote for him or not.

She said "bullshit". Okay yelled "bullshit" but yelling saying whatever.

I said I didn't know Romney was LDS until sometime after he declared his candidacy.

She said "bullshit". Okay yelled "bullshit" but yelling saying whatever.

She asked...okay declared actually...that I thought Romney's religion was why people were voting for him.

She said his "religious beliefs would play a part in his presidency". I asked exactly what beliefs would disqualify him as being President. She couldn't answer....at all. Didn't even have a hem and hah to think about. She just knew he was Mormon and that's bad.

Sigh. Whatever. If you can't get past the religion part of any candidate then I don't want to talk to you.

For reference sake Romney was not my first choice...except when he was the only declared candidate besides Rudy.

Here is the full list, in order, including people that dropped out before the season even started.

Thompson
Tancredo
Hunter
Romney
Huckabee
Brownback
McCain

Notice from this list Romney is my FOURTH choice overall.

Religion plays absolutely no part in my decision to support Romney at this time and religion has NEVER played a part in my candidate selection. I'm a little bit more politically minded, active, and informed to fall back on the "what's his religion" question.

I don't care.

Mitt Happens - I'm a Flip-Flopper

Mitt Romney is a flipper.

On several issues (okay two, pro-life, 2nd Amendment) Mitt has flipped his views since running for governor of Massachusetts. Both issues he has moved to the right on. Mitt has flipped, but I haven't seen no flop.

I am a flip-flopper.

When Mitt Romney announced his candidacy I originally said "this is my guy...". I knew him from his bailing out of the doomed SLC Olympics and turning it into one of the best Olympics ever. I knew he was a wildly successful businessman.

But the caviet to that was I also said "unless Fred Thompson gets into the race." Now this was well before Fred jumped in, well before rumors started that Fred might jump in. I was one of the first few hundred that jumped onto the "Draft Fred" bandwagon.

Fred dropped out yesterday, so I have flopped back to Romney.

Expect lots of Romney commentary. If Romney isn't your guy well sorry, deal with it. This is my blog I say what I want.

More on the Nevada vote

In the interest of full disclosure I admit I am LDS. However I keep my religion out of politics and my politics out of religion. The next few posts though I'm going to have to dwell into religion and Romney.

The first of these posts is further looking at the 94% of the Mormon vote that Romney got in Nevada. I'm sure at this point in time (now that we are down to three effectively) Utah, Idaho, Arizona and California LDS will follow suit. States that have already voted we don't have as specific demographic information that we had in Nevada so one can't say if Wyoming for example got 94% of the LDS vote going Romney.

Take your average Mormon who is politically active and would vote in the primaries.

Now you have the front runner choices of Romney, McCain, and Huckabee. Lets say for arguement sake that Romney is NOT a Mormon.

Now who does the Mormon vote for?

Answer is still Romney.

Why? Because Huck and McCain both have record of anti-Mormon rhetoric. Huck posing the fake question of "Don't Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers" and McCain's campaign eluding to the Mormon church supporting Hamas and treating women like the Taliban.

Imo McCain's campaign statements were worse then Huck's supposedly honest(yea right) question.

Enter Romney who hasn't said anything about other candidates religions at all and recognizes that if he was President he would need the prayers of all faiths.

Romney LDS or not out of the three front runners GOP LDS voters are going to vote Romney because of the treatment the other two have given the religion.

Sure there was still Ron Paul, Rudy, or Fred Thompson to vote for but come on...do any of these guys really have a shot? Incidentally Ron Paul did get more of the LDS vote then Rudy, Huck, or Fred combined.