Romney beats the ghosts, media launches anti-Obama campaign

Today comes word that Romney has won three more primaries, in West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina.  His vote totals were under 70% in the first case and around 65% in the latter two.  Ron Paul only received 11-15% in each state, meaning that candidates who had officially withdrawn from the race still managed to poll 19-23% against Mitt Romney.  Apparently, money can't buy all the votes, only most of them.  Romney's vote total in the primaries so far is now up over 6 million, one-third of what Hillary Clinton gained in a losing effort in 2008, and it will be surprising if he beats half her total when the primary season is over.

Rick Santorum finally gave him a grudging endorsement, but still received many votes in the primaries.

 

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/05/08/santorum_endorses_romney.html

Romney signaled how the campaign is going to go, though, which is that will be the dirtiest and most dishonest campaign in history.  Romney tacitly agrees with a woman who claims Obama should be charged with treason, misrepresenting Obama's position on the role of the Supreme Court:


http://ed.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/07/11582910-romney-silent-as-obama-accused-of-treason-at-town-hall?lite

The traditional Republican cant has been that liberal judges on the court are activists who are "legislating from the bench."  Obama simply pointed out that the two judges who have done the most "legislating from the bench" in the last twenty years are the two most conservative: Scalia and Thomas.  So Romney now has taken the opposite approach, that Supreme Court judges should "legislate from the bench" because that is their job.  Will this then prevent him from accusing the Democrats of using the courts to fix a legislative shortfall? Of course not, Republicans are nothing if not able to hold contradictory opinions simultaneously.


This is important because this shows Romney has no "limit" beyond which he will not go. He would think nothing of arresting a former president for treason if it were in his power, and he has said, "If Obama is re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon," suggesting that if in a presidential debate he thinks he has lost the election, he might well try to assassinate the president himself.

Meanwhile, he has decided he can't let his advisers out-lie him, and he has now claimed as an official position, the idea that he always advocated managed bankruptcy for the auto companies.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/05/08/mitt-romney-takes-credit-for-the-auto-bailout-say-what/

This is a direct contradiction to his repeated positions during the crisis, when he said GM should fail and it would be good for the auto industry if it did.  Certainly there is an argument that there is excess capacity in the global auto industry, and at the time India and China were thinking of buying one of the Big Three to start their invasion of the American market.  Presumably Romney wanted one of them to pick over GM's carcass.  But at no time did Romney ever advocate a "managed bankruptcy" to save the companies.

However, Romney won't be alone in his campaign. He has been helped every step of the way by the non-objective "objective" media.  He received relentlessly positive coverage from the media, mainly in defiance of the facts.  This is no surprise, of course, since we have shown on this blog that Romney actually owns a sizeable chunk of the media.

http://news.yahoo.com/media-favored-romney-over-obama-040100208.html

They are cheerleading today, and according to the latest polls, propaganda works.   His campaign has not even really begun and already he is even with the president.
 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-mct-poll-obama-romney-neck-and-neck-six-months-ahead-20120507,0,84111.story

Partly this is anti-incumbent mood, also reflected in Greece and France where governments were soundly rejected.  The rejection in those cases made sense: the economic theories they were rejecting were failed conservative policies of austerity.  How  is it that Romney is viewed as helpful to the economy when his theories are wrong and his record is one of financial crime, not intelligent enterprise?

Clearly, even when the press has been negative about Romney, it has not spoken about his business record or his economic theories.    The question is, does Obama have the ability to correct that? So far, he seems less well-organized and capable than in 2008 when he will need far more to be successful. The omens are not good.