“Mittens” Romney? Americans don’t know Republican frontrunner’s real name
Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney’s real first name is not Mitt – and it’s not Gromit or Mittens either.
According to a new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll released on Tuesday, only 6 percent of respondents knew that the former Massachusetts governor’s first name is actually Willard. Mitt is his middle name.
About 20 percent of voters thought Romney’s first name was Mitt, 18 percent thought it was Mitchell and 8 percent picked Milton, while Gromit and Mittens received 2 percent each. Forty four percent said they didn’t know what his real name was.
“Would it sound dumb of us to admit that we were secretly hoping for Mittens?” Vanity Fair quipped.
The poll surveyed 951 adults nationwide by telephone between Nov. 18—21. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.
Photo credit: Mitt Romney greets audience members at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, January 3, 2012. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Mitt Romney says Obama breaks vows, just like Kim Kardashian
President Barack Obama and reality television celebrity Kim Kardashian have something in common, according to Mitt Romney – they don’t know how to keep a promise.
“I’ve been looking at some video clips on YouTube of President Obama, then-candidate Obama, going through Iowa, making promises,” Romney said during a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Sunday.
“I think the gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I’ve seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of until death do we part,” said the Republican presidential candidate.
Kardashian filed for divorce on Oct. 31, just 72 days after marrying basketball player Kris Humphries in a lavish televised wedding that was billed as a “fairytale.” She is one of the highest-paid reality stars on U.S. television, with 2010 earnings estimated at $6 million from her TV show, clothing line, perfume, jewelry and tanning cream and other product endorsements and appearances.
In October, First Lady Michelle Obama told a group of reporters that her husband didn’t like their daughters, Malia and Sasha, watching the Kardashian reality television shows.
Romney is hoping to become the Republican presidential nominee to challenge Obama at the Nov. 6 election. Polls show Romney in a three way fight with Texas congressman Ron Paul and Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum ahead of Tuesday’s caucuses in Iowa, but recent polls in New Hampshire predict a landslide victory at the state’s Jan. 10 primary for the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts.
Just awful. I can only assume he is going for an ‘Oh No He Did-ent’ moment with the Facebook generation
Santorum momentum doesn’t transfer to New Hampshire
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has seen his star rise in Iowa, where polls show him moving into third place behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. But in New Hampshire he’s still mired in the fourth tier of Republican candidates. Two new polls out today show Romney with a wide lead in the Granite State and Ron Paul running second with Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich tied for fourth.
Santorum is buried at 3 percent in one of the polls, by Suffolk University, and at 4 percent in the second, by Magellan Strategies–about even with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Still, Santorum is making a push in the state with a release today claiming he has 23 endorsements from New Hampshire state legislators and the announcement yesterday that he would buy television time for a new ad making the case that he is the Republican most likely to defeat President Obama in the general election.
But some of Santorum’s policy stances may be at odds with those of many New Hampshire voters — for example, his opposition to birth control, a position that may harm his campaign in a state where Republicans are more pro-choice than the country as a whole. Here’s a 2006 video of Santorum explaining his stance:
Four and a half Romney men
Josh, Joe (Tagg’s son), Craig, Tagg and Matt in Manchester.
The impossibly handsome, all-American foursome that walked into the Windham Restaurant on Thursday morning might have meant that a Ralph Lauren photo shoot was getting under way. Or it could have just meant that the Romney boys were back in town.
With Papa Romney busy campaigning in Iowa, four of his five sons — Tagg, Matt, Josh and Craig — as well as his grandson, Joe, stumped for the candidate in New Hampshire, regaling voters with stories of Mitt and his various exploits as family man extraordinaire, legendary household tightwad, savior of the Salt Lake City Olympics, and so on.
In their almost-matching outfits, down to the white checked shirts often favored by their famous father, the Romney boys seemed eerily reminiscent of that other good-looking Mormon group, the Osmonds.
“What we can do is brag about him, in ways that he can’t brag about himself,” Tagg Romney said. “We’ve been doing everything we can.” In the family hierarchy Tagg is “the oldest one” or alternatively, as he noted, “the only one who got stuck with a strange name.”
Craig (left) and Josh Romney in Manchester.
Craig, the “youngest and funniest” Romney, had the crowd laughing in Concord by recalling how his father, usually portrayed as the ultimate square, learned the radical Olympic sport of skeleton — basically, sliding down an icy track face-first on a flimsy sled — on a dare from NBC.
Four and a half Romney men? This is just the story you look for at 0700 AM. What do these boys have to say to the working man? Just because they tell a story means that I get a warm feeling, no thankyou.
Perry attacks more conservative rivals, ignores Romney
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s latest ads don’t even bother attacking Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney. With polls showing him in fifth place among Republicans in Iowa and seventh in New Hampshire, Perry’s aim is now to emerge as one of the top two conservative options to Romney.
To get there, he needs to knock off some of the other candidates polling immediately in front of him — which is why his latest TV ad in Iowa attacks Rep. Ron Paul, Rep. Michele Bachmann, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum, but doesn’t mention Romney.
“The fox guarding the hen house is like asking a congressman to fix Washington,” the ad’s narrator says. “Bad idea. Their years in Congress left us with debt and bailouts.”
Here’s the video, via RPerry2012/YouTube:
With Santorum seeing a boost in Iowa polls — a CNN/Time magazine poll yesterday found him in third place in Iowa, with 16 percent — Perry is doubling down on the former Pennsylvania congressman. In a new Iowa radio ad, which takes the format of a TV game show, Perry highlights Santorum’s record of supporting earmarked federal monies for his constituents:
“Who personally demanded more than $1 billion of earmarks in his 16 years in Congress?” a narrator asks. “Jay, from Ames?”
“Rick Santorum?” answers the fictitious Jay.
“Right,” the narrator says. “Santorum grabbed for a billion in earmarks, until voters kicked him out of office in a landslide.”
Watch a video version of the radio ad, courtesy of RPerry2012/YouTube:
Romney unveils happy ad for TV, goes negative on the web
Mitt Romney’s campaign is out with a new, upbeat television ad in Iowa extolling “the American ideals of economic freedom and opportunity.” The video weaves together farm imagery and a soaring voice-over by Romney, who says that “the principles that made this nation a great and powerful leader in the world have not lost their meaning”:
“When generations of immigrants looked up and saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time, one thing they knew beyond any doubt, and that is they were coming to a place where anything was possible. That in America, their children would have a better life”
Meanwhile, his campaign issued a new web video targeting President Obama that coincided with Romney’s visit to Davenport, Iowa, yesterday, four years after Obama visited the Mississippi River city as a candidate. “It is time for this pessimistic president to step aside and let American optimism that built this greatest nation on earth, build a greater future for our children,” Romney says in the video.
Behind the scenes, the Romney campaign continued to go negative on Gingrich, blasting reporters a lengthy opposition sheet highlighting Gingrich’s support for 1990s spending bills that contained earmarks. A quote from Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul highlights the line of attack:
“A lot of things have changed since 1998, but Newt Gingrich’s unreliable fiscal leadership is not one of them. Thirteen years ago, Speaker Gingrich derided fiscal conservatives as the ‘perfectionist caucus’ and ‘petty dictators’ while he backed a massive spending bill cheered by Democrats and the Clinton White House. Weeks later, when House conservatives decided a new leader was needed, Speaker Gingrich called them ‘cannibals.’ That is not the type of leader Republicans are looking for in 2012.”
Watch Romney’s sunny new ad, “Freedom and Opportunity”:
New Hampshire paper, Huntsman launch fresh attacks on Ron Paul
New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, the Union Leader, suspended its attacks on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Thursday to turn its editorial fire on Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The newspaper, which helped fuel Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls in late November after it endorsed the former House speaker, published a front page editorial, titled “Ron Paul is truly dangerous,” criticizing Paul’s dovish views on Iran and the treatment of captured terror suspects. Paul’s views, in the words of publisher Joe McQuaid, are “warped” and “nuts.”
McQuaid writes:
Never mind Paul being the favored candidate of the lunatic fringe (see white supremacists, anti-Semites, truthers, etc.). Never mind his refusal to disavow a third-party run (which would only help President Obama’s reelection). His defenders say they admire Ron Paul’s “consistency.” It is true, Paul has been consistently spouting this nonsense. It is about time New Hampshire voters showed him the door.
Meanwhile, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has staked his entire campaign on the Granite State but has seen Paul surge ahead of him in polls there, is out with a hard-hitting new ad highlighting some loony statements contained in Paul’s newsletters. Among them: a claim that Martin Luther King was a “pro-communist philanderer,” another claim suggesting “90 if not 95 percent of black males in [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal if not entirely criminal” and the suggestion of a “federal-homosexual cover-up of AIDS.” Paul has said he wasn’t the author of the controversial statements, which appeared in letters with names like Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter.
Watch Jon Huntsman’s new anti-Paul ad, “Unelectable”:
Credit: Jon2012HQ/YouTube
Hmmmmm ….. The slander has to match the character and that aint happening so, …. Like Ron Paul said before concerning this lie, ” IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO ” ? …. P.S, What a waist of campaign money .
Ex-candidate Forbes criticizes Romney and Gingrich
When Steve Forbes endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry in October, Perry was still riding high in the polls and the magazine publisher and two-time GOP candidate appeared set to be one of the most influential economic advisers to a top White House contender. Now, with Perry buried in fourth place in national polls, Forbes could be forgiven for changing horses.
He hasn’t, and today he began a three-day swing through New Hampshire to campaign on Perry’s behalf.
Speaking at a luncheon at the Rotary Club, where previous guest speakers included a local choir and three Rotarians who had recently visited Pakistan, Forbes championed Perry’s flat-tax plan that he helped craft and took a few swipes at frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
Romney’s economic plan is “weak tea,” and Romney has failed to demonstrate he has a “conservative core,” not least because he told the Wall Street Journal over the weekend that he favors a flat tax, said Forbes, whose 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns were based on his flat-tax plan. “That was news to me,” he quipped. “Six months ago he was still trashing it.”
He also expressed doubts about Gingrich’s ability to overcome some of his past statements and business relationships. Gingrich has “to show he can respond to criticisms of things like Freddie Mac,” he said. “And again that’s an example of, you’ve been hit with something, how do you respond? So far he’s not been able to respond very well to it.”
Forbes, who spent about $70 million of his own money on his two presidential bids, praised Perry for the way he responded to his now-infamous November debate gaffe, in which he couldn’t recall the third agency of government he’d eliminate. “What impressed me was after that debate, at a time when you would want to crawl in a corner and not get up in the morning, he did go to all the TV networks, did talk about what happened, took the jokes and engaged in self-deprecation and voters like that,” he said.
Ron Paul attacks Gingrich and Romney in new ad
Republican Ron Paul has unveiled a hard-hitting new attack ad in Iowa and New Hampshire. As violins play anxiously in the background and washed-out images of the Capitol and other Washington landmarks flash across the screen, a voice-over warns that the “Washington machine” is “strangling” the American economy.
The implication: Washington is a conspiracy of insider politicians — politicians like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney — working against the people.
“Serial hypocrites and flip-floppers can’t clean up the mess,” the narrator says ominously, as images of Gingrich and Romney flash on the screen. “Ron Paul,” the voice says in closing, is “the one we’ve been looking for.”
Watch Paul’s ad:
Credit: ronpaul/YouTube
Romney casts “Virginia” Gingrich as Lucille Ball
Republican White House hopeful Newt Gingrich has termed his failure to make it onto the presidential primary ballot in Virginia, the state where he lives and is leading in the polls, in pretty grandiose terms, comparing the weekend events to Pearl Harbor. That allowed rival Mitt Romney to get off a zinger on Monday as he prepared to leave the friendly confines of New Hampshire for three days of tough campaigning in Iowa.
On Saturday, Gingrich’s national campaign director Michael Krull put out a statement after his candidate was knocked off the Virginia ballot for failing to garner enough verifiable signatures from residents: “Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected setback, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action,” Krull said on Facebook.
Campaigning at a lobster-and-chowder shack in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Romney was asked about Gingrich’s ballot woes. “I think he compared that to Pearl Harbor. It’s more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory,” Romney said to laughter, evoking a classic scene from U.S. television history. The 1952 episode of “I Love Lucy” had the red-headed comedian and her BFF Ethel trying to hold down jobs at a candy factory while their husbands subbed in to do the housework. Ineptitude, and hilarity, ensues.
Mitt Romney addresses supporters during a rally held outside of Geno’s Chowder & Sandwich Shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, December 27, 2011. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi
The former Massachusetts governor now flies to Iowa for three days of campaigning in his spacious Romnibus. Locked in a three-way tussle for the caucuses with Gingrich and Texas Representative Ron Paul, Romney dutifully declined to make any forecasts in a state where he has made few appearances this year but has helped unleash a torrent of negative advertising against the former U.S. House speaker.
“I’m really not going to get into the prognostications business,” Romney said while pushing through a mob of fans and media toward the sanctuary of his black SUV. “I don’t think there’s any one state you need to win…I want to win in a lot of states. I’m hoping to do well enough to get the 1,150 delegates.”
“If I were to get elected,” he said, “there would be an immediate buoyancy to the economy.”
“Romney also promised that if he was elected everyone would get a free puppy and every Friday at work would be Margarita Happy Hour Day.”
Keep dreaming. Maybe he should promise us $2/gallon gas too while he’s at it.
This is interesting. I thought his name was Mitford, don’t even know why. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and I think Mitt is a top-notch, smart, successful good-looking guy!