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Home Page > Blogs > News blogs > Periscope > Mitt Romney not to blame for GOP distress as election nears -- Policies that turn off women, Hispanics were not his creation

Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Mitt Romney not to blame for GOP distress as election nears -- Policies that turn off women, Hispanics were not his creation

Posted on Saturday, September 22, 2012 at 08:57 AM

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Mitt Romney

Don’t blame Mitt Romney for the dire prospects for the GOP in the November election.

Blame the GOP.

Romney has been saddled with a bunch of positions that make it increasingly difficult for him to be elected.

Consider the swing state of Virginia.

Romney trails with women there by a massive 18 points and eight points overall according to a Washington Post poll.

Was it something he said?

No, it was something that state GOP politicians did ----they passed a law insisting that every woman even considering having an abortion have a transvaginal ultrasound done.

The procedure is described as “a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”

You didn’t have to be in favor of abortion to understand, if you are a woman in Virginia that such a procedure is a horrific invasion of privacy by the government in what is a very difficult time for any woman.

Then there was leading candidate Rick Santorum who stated he was against contraception when he was running, reflecting a large group in his own party.

Little wonder women everywhere, but especially in Virginia, are fleeing the GOP in droves.

Consider Hispanics, where Romney trails by a massive margin, 74 to 26 in one recent poll.

Back in 2004 George W. Bush won 46 per cent of the Hispanic vote.

That was before the GOP mounted massive anti-immigrant campaigns across the US, turning huge amounts of Hispanics against them.

So don’t blame Romney for that either.

Peggy Noonan and others are laying into the Romney campaign saying it is amateurish and ill-prepared.

But the GOP vehicle that Romney is travelling in already has two flat tires marked Hispanics and women.

The slew to the right is not Romney’s doing, he’s a moderate centrist in GOP terms.

But he is saddled with positions he cannot possibly defend.

Therein as Brutus remarked lies the fault, ”not in the stars but in ourselves” if the GOP looked properly at it.

Blaming Romney is just passing the buck; the GOP presidential candidate is gradually becoming unelectable as much for what his party is doing and standing for as his own lackluster campaign.

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26 comments

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Nicomax | Sep 22, 2012, 01:26 PM EDT

Romney bought into the grand strategy of the GOP campaign which was essentially to mark BHO as 'other', discredit similar 'others' such as Hispanics, Muslims, African-Americans, etc., and then institute voter suppression efforts to discourage 'others' from voting. Mitt joking about his father who ran for POTUS in 1968 was born in Mexico from parents who were US citizens was totally off message with this strategy, and in effect ended any further birther talk about BHO since, as birthers claim, his mother, an American citizen, gave birth to BHO while visiting in Kenya. Ole Mitt is not thinking this whole thing through very carefully.

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weeknocky | Sep 22, 2012, 01:25 PM EDT

The president had the opportunity in his first two years in office to pass his "Dream Act" when the Democrat Party controlled the House and the Senate. Why didn't he bring it then? C'mon folks, it's all political crap he learned in Chicago from his friends who are all acolytes of Saul Alinsky.

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allentown | Sep 22, 2012, 11:21 AM EDT

Nial claims: "Massive immigrant campaigns turn off latino voters". When you read this you realize why Romney has to convince voters that most of the media outlets have an agenda. Nial's agenda is to have 50,000 Irish illegal aliens keep their jobs. He refers to that as "The GOP's Massive Anti-Immigrant Campaign". If Romney wins, the illegal aliens are going home.

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eiriamach | Sep 22, 2012, 10:48 AM EDT

Niall says, "don’t blame Romney" for losing the Hispanic vote? Romney grossly insulted Hispanics with his quip that "it would be helpful to be Latino," as though Hispanic voters vote for the name only, not the policies. Linda Chavez and a few other Hispanics will vote for him despite his insults, his opposition to the Dream Act, his promise to rescind Obama's executive order protecting the adult children of undocumented workers, and his ridiculous plan to encourage "self-deportation." But the GOP has lost most Hispanic voters, with the help of Mitt!

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Eschetic | Sep 22, 2012, 10:45 AM EDT

Sorry, Arthur, but your premises are hopelessly flawed on almost every point, starting with Romney's "not inheriting" his wealth (are you too young or ignorant of Republican electoral history to remember his father, George!?) and continuing through the lack of understanding that limiting abortion access to "life threatening issues, rape and incest" IS an attack on women's rights (and the Romney Platform goes far beyond that in any case). The Romney who I wholeheartedly supported as Governor of Massachusetts is not the Romney who's running now - and anyone who learned anything from the Bush SR. administration knows that when a politician sells out to the Right Wing they stay bought. Yes, the economy *could* be better - if right wing Republicans in Congress hadn't done everything in their power to block substantive efforts from the Administration to aid it rather than responsibly COMPROMISE and GOVERN - but it's WORLDS better than the last time we allowed "your" people to hold the tiller of the ship of state. The polls will undoubtedly tighten a bit again before election day (Mitt can't stay this honest ALL the time!), but in the words of Lincoln, "you CAN'T fool all of the people all of the time." Most voters are starting to wake up to the Right Wing's blarney and hate & code word campaigns.

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Arthur Cola | Sep 22, 2012, 10:24 AM EDT

It seems to me that it was the people of VA who elected their State Legislators and therefore they knew full well what those candidates positions were. The left has done an outstanding job in labeling Romney as being too rich and waging a war on women. Both are bull for we've had really rich guys as President before, i.e. Kennedy, Roosevelt, to name two. At least Romeny didn't inherit his wealth, he made it on his own. And as Gov. of MA he certainly did nothing to harm Roe vs Wade decision. This issue is why should we taxpayers pay for abortions. Our birth rate in the US is down. WHY? Has the lack of education as to what an abortion does ever been promoted so that this law of which you write wouldn't be necessary? It is clear that Romney upholds a woman's right to have an abortion in cases of life threatening issues, rape and incest cases. So where's the war on women? The left cannot talk about the economy and jobs because the situation is terrible. So they're using social issues as their banner flag becuase it raises emotions and that's how many people vote. Come November one can only hope that the people will see the forest through this smoke shield of media bias and choose two men to lead our nation, one who is a genius in economics and budget areas, Rep. Paul Ryan and one who proved he can lead and create business, Gov.Mitt Romney.

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handsome68 | Sep 22, 2012, 10:23 AM EDT

I'll say one thing about youse liberal omadhauns. You seem to be masters and mistresses of selective thinking. If your education did not include that, I'll quote it for you: "Selective thinking is the process by which one focuses on favourable evidence in order to justify a belief, ignoring unfavourable evidence." Romney is flawed, but Obama is more flawed.

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Eschetic | Sep 22, 2012, 10:22 AM EDT

Talk about the "credibility of a gnat", mike!! I can only question O'Dowd's reasoning this time in that Romney IS responsible, like McCain before him, for turning every aspect of his campaign - starting with a surface pretty but substantively laughable vice presidential nominee - over to the extreme Right Wing which he had catered to to win the nomination from a bunch of other gnat-brained right wing stooges. We gave him the nomination because he's hurt the "under ticket" the least, but it was no bargain. This election *might* have been won, despite a president who pulled the nation back from the brink of a depression caused by the "conservative" agenda and restored international respect to the country with firm leadership rather than the "shoot from the hip" cowboy diplomacy those like "mikehoulihan" seem to favor. (If that's "failure," we need a lot more of it! The country could have accomplished SO much more had it not been for our party's ADMITTED obstructionism over the last four years.) After the deserved debacle we're facing in November, the Right Wing will once again be screaming (as they already are) that they lost because of a candidate who wouldn't dance their dance - even though he hopped to every note they asked for. It's time for REAL Republicans to toss out the Tea Party Twits once and for all and take back the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Gerry Ford!

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Frosty38 | Sep 22, 2012, 10:18 AM EDT

Let me tell you what the newspaper in :THE Home of his mom" is writing about the lower half of the team. Paul Ryan got mixed reactions at ARRP he drew boos and shouts in New Orleans. Bet that made BOBBY G happy

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mikehoulihan | Sep 22, 2012, 09:59 AM EDT

Niall, you have the credibility of a gnat. Sorry but your agenda is showing. Obama is a failure and will be defeated soundly. Polls are bullshit just like most of the stuff printed in Irish Central.

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tom/peggy | Sep 22, 2012, 09:34 AM EDT

What nothing about President Obama's interview by UniVision? Now that had substance! By the way Peggy Noonan endorsed Obama in 2008.

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