Anyone but Hillary!

Utah Amicus's Steve Olsen:

The following anecdote illustrates, in a just a few words, a very important message for those few voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina who (unfortunately) will largely decide who the Democratic presidential nominee will be.

On last Sunday's Meet the Press, one of the discussion panelists told the following story. A reporter was talking with a small businessman in Iowa who was a lifelong Republican and self described Reaganite. He was complaining to the reporter how disillusioned he was with today's Republican Party, citing among other things the massive borrowing, spending and government growth during the Bush Administration. The man said he was so disgusted with the GOP he was actually considering voting for Democrats in 2008.

At that point, the reporter asked the man, "So, would you consider voting for Hillary?" At the mention of that name, the man's eyes hardened, and he replied with just one word:

Never!

If, for some reason, Barack Obama tanks in the first several primaries/caucuses, I will be voting for anyone who has a shot at beating Hillary Clinton.

Why?

First, because I trust her about as much as Fib Romney.

Secondly, and most important, she hurts everyone down the ticket here in Utah. Her disapproval rating is in the mid-40s nationwide, and even lower in Utah. Having a strong name at the top of the ticket helps everyone from our party down the line.

And, here in Utah, that's what's important.

Because while our 5 Electoral Votes will (barring a miracle) go to the Republican, having someone to inspire Utah Democrats will drive them to the polls.

-Bob

Flip Romney on Farm Subsidies

(hat tip: JM Bell)

2007:



1994:



-Bob

P.S. Mitt's no longer the leader in Iowa.

Clinton not the leader in Iowa

Anyone who is sick of hearing that Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic Nominee will be glad to hear this from the Washington Post:

The top three Democratic contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key fronts, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared to handle the war in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama gets the support of 30 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, compared to 26 percent for Clinton, 22 percent for former senator John Edwards and 11 percent for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. The results are only marginally changed from a Post-ABC poll in late July, but in a state likely to set the course for the rest of the nominating process, there are significant signs of progress for Obama -- and harbingers of concern for Clinton....

Obama is running even with Clinton among women in Iowa, drawing 32 percent to her 31 percent, despite the fact that the Clinton campaign has built its effort around attracting female voters.

I have seen other polls that have Hillary ahead by as much as 10% in Iowa, but those polls had her ahead by 20% just a month ago.

Utah Loves Obama (and Romney, too, but I bet you knew that)

(Hat Tip: Saintless)

In obvious news this weekend, a Deseret News poll found that Utah loves Mitt Romney.

The Breakdown:

Romney: 65%
Giuliani: 8%
McCain: 6%
Grandpa Fred: 3%
Ron Paul: 1%

If Mitt wasn't dominating everyone here, he would just as well hang 'em up.

A little more surprising was the numbers from the Democrats:

Obama 42%
Edwards 18%
Hillary 16%

-Bob

Voting in the Feb 5 Presidential Primary

There has been some confusion in the comments of an earlier post about the procedures for who can vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary on February 5.

I did some searching, and I came accross the following. It is in the Utah Delegate Selection Plan for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Section I, Paragraph B(7)(a), found on page 1 (emphasis mine):

Participation in Utah’s delegate selection process is open to all voters who wish to participate as Democrats. All registered voters in Utah who registered as Democrats or unaffiliated on their voter registration form shall be allowed to participate in the state-run Presidential Primary. Their choice of ballot shall be recorded by election officials and they shall not be allowed to participate in the primary election voting for another Party’s presidential candidates. The deadline for persons who wish to change their official party designation or register to vote in the Presidential Primary election is Monday, January 7, 2008 by mail or after that date by the close of business on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at the local office of the County Clerk. All citizens of the United States who will be 18 years of age by the 2008 general election and reside in the voting precinct for which the caucus is held and publicly declare themselves to be participating as Democrats may vote at the precinct caucuses and be elected as delegates to the County, State and National Conventions. (Rules 2.A. & 2.C. & Reg. 4.3.)

Ron Paul speaks truth

I don't agree with him all of the time, but Ron Paul is quickly moving up the ranks of my favorite Presidential Candidates.

(Video edited and posted to YouTube by the Paul campaign.)

Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul: Iraq War Not Conservative

At the Republican Presidential Debate last night, Ron Paul (R-TX) stated that the Iraq War, along with other elements of the Bush Administration, were not conservative.

Watch the clip at Crooks and Liars...

-Bob

Romney's not a Mormon, he's a Scientologist.

In an interview on FOXNews, Mitt Romney was asked for his two favorite books.

The first one he mentioned is the Bible. I hope he takes some time to read that one again.

The second was Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard.

Yes, that L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology.

Cobert had a little fun with that choice.

Maybe Mitt can get Tom Cruise out of the closet (gratuitous South Park reference).

-Bob

Politics can be FUN(ny) sometimes....

From Utah for Obama:

On the way home from the Organizing Meeting, Jenee and I were riding in my Jeep with the top off. We wound up behind a vehicle with a bunch of liberal bumper stickers, including an oval one that said "Obama" and had some unreadable text below that. I happened to have 1 extra bumper sticker with me, and made a joke about giving the driver a "real Obama bumper sticker". We wound up stopped behind her at a left turn light that had just turned red, so Jenee jumped out of the Jeep and ran up to her and told her "here, you need a bigger one". She said the lady looked surprised at first, then smiled and laughed, saying "thank you". I wouldn't say this should be a normal way for us to connect with Obama supporters, but it sure was a fun and unusual experience!

Being Stubborn Isn't A Foreign Policy

I like Bill Richardson. He's my second choice of Presidential Candidates.

Here's a new ad from him. The title of this post is the last line, and it's the best quote on Foreign Policy I've seen.



-Bob

"The Only Thing We Have To Sell Is Fear Itself..."

"If a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001... Never ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for (terrorists) to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!"

-Rudy Giuliani

Oh, and Rudy, I'd love to go back on defense or offense. We're playing Special Teams right now, and our ST isn't doing so well....

-Bob

Mitt Romney's View on America's biggest challenge

YouTUBE has started inviting a different Campaign each week to ask a question of YouTubers. The first candidate was Mitt Romney. Several people turned the tables and asked him what HIS position was.

His response?



Jihad.

Yep. Selling the fear card. Not the deficit. Not poverty or jobs. Not even playing the morals card.

He plays the terrorism card.

-Bob

P.S. If Jihad is America's greatest challenge, isn't it partly to be because George W Bush has effed up the War on Terror?

Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is the wife of US Senator and Presidential Hopeful Barack Obama. The following is a speech that she gave to Women for Obama in Chicago:

Obama on Letterman

Here's Barack Obama on Monday's David Letterman show. (edited by the Obama Campaign)

Mitt Romney's 540-degree turn on abortion

Much has been made about Mitt Romney's 180-degree turn on issues such as abortion since his campaigns in 1994 and 2002. However, He had annother position in 2001, making it a full one-and-a-half rotation from 1994-2007.

Salt Lake Tribune, July 11, 2001, page B1:

While Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney insists he has no thought of using the 2002 Winter Games as a springboard to Utah elective office, he and his supporters are busy attempting to rewrite the history of his public position supporting abortion rights.

It is an issue that could seal the fate of any aspiring Republican politician in conservative Utah.

"I do not wish to be labeled pro-choice," Romney wrote this week in a letter to the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune.

"I have never felt comfortable with the labels associated with the abortion issue. Because the Olympics is not about politics, I plan to keep my views on political issues to myself."

Romney allies in recent days also contacted news media organizations to challenge the "pro-choice" description of Romney used in a recent Tribune story exploring his political prospects in Utah or Massachusetts.

"That upset him to be characterized as pro-choice," said Kem Gardner, a developer, political activist and Romney friend. "He has told me he is not pro-choice.

"He believes in the right choice -- and he believes the right choice [in the case of unwanted pregnancy] is adoption," said Gardner, a one-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate who acknowledged he would like to persuade Romney to run for governor -- as a Republican -- after the Olympics.

Asked about Romney's stand in favor of legal abortion during his unsuccessful 1994 campaign against Massachusetts Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy, Gardner said that was a carefully crafted position intended to sound more firm than it was.

"He was running against Ted Kennedy in a state that was 80 percent pro-choice and to have any chance at all, he was waffling," said Gardner.

Romney, in Moscow for meetings of the International Olympic Committee, declined to comment through a SLOC spokeswoman.

"He is declining interviews right now on that," said Nancy Volmer. "The letter he sent the editor should answer any questions."

Actually it only seems to raise more, clashing as it does with the stand he assumed six years ago.

"Mitt has always been consistent in his pro-choice position," then-Romney spokesman Charles Manning told the Boston Globe in September 1994.

The newspaper wrote about Romney's endorsement by an anti-abortion group even as the candidate "portrays himself as a strong supporter of abortion rights."

In the same interview, Manning described the differences between Romney and Kennedy on abortion as "tiny nuances."

During an Oct. 25, 1994, campaign debate, Romney described a family tragedy that shaped his own views in favor of "safe and legal" abortions. He revealed that a relative -- identified by the Boston Herald as the sister-in-law of Romney's sister -- had died in the 1960s as a result of a botched, illegal abortion.

"Since that time, my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter," Romney was quoted in the Globe.

Countering Kennedy's charge that he was flip-flopping on the abortion issue, Romney said during the same debate, "You will not see me wavering on that or be multiple choice."

"We considered him pro-choice," Beverly Cooper of Utahns for Choice said in an interview this week. She said Romney's stated position that he supported a woman's right to abortion but personally opposed the procedure was suggested to other candidates as a "good conservative choice position for Utah."

While such a position might work for a Democrat in the Beehive State, it probably would be a political death sentence for a Republican candidate. GOP nominating conventions are dominated by conservatives who view abortion as a life-and-death issue, literally.

"Romney would have a hard time running in Utah because he is Mr. Pro-Choice -- if he, in fact, is pro-choice," said lobbyist and Republican activist Doug Foxley. "I haven't heard him say that, but I have heard others say it about him."

Don Ruzicka, co-founder of the conservative Utah Republican Assembly, said a stand favoring abortion rights could doom an aspiring GOP hopeful.

"He would have a very difficult time getting through the process if he was clearly pro-choice, which we refer to as pro-abortion," said Ruzicka. "It would be very difficult to tap-dance around that. If there's any issue in Utah that is really kind of a litmus test, the abortion issue is one of them, if not the one."

Obama and the Proper Role of Religion in Government

Over the past two months, I have gained an appreciation for Edward Lalone's writings. He is a fellow LDS supporter of Barack Obama. His thoughts are very insightful.

There was recently an email sent out to the Mormons for Obama listserv asking about Mormons and Romney vs Obama. Brother Lalone sent out a reply, which I asked him to repost as a blog entry on the Mormons for Obama blog, which he did.

I'll post the Romney stuff later, but I want to concentrate today on one aspect that he raised as it relates to Obama and the proper role of religion in government.

To begin we should probably take a look at D&C 134 because this section of the Doctrine and Covenants gives special treatment to our beliefs on the role of government and of individuals in relation to government. I want to draw special notice to D&C 134:4 and then to something Obama has said.

D&C 134:4 explains that,

"We believe that religion is instituted of God; and that men are amenable to him, and to him only, for the exercise of it, unless their religious opinions prompt them to infringe upon the rights and liberties of others..." - D&C 134:4

Obama has said,

"Liberalism teaches us to be tolerant of other people's religious beliefs, so long as those beliefs don't cause anyone harm or impinge on another's right to believe differently."

Obama's position on the role of religion in public policy is also consistent with the views which have been expressed by the general authorities. In the words of Elder Oaks,

"Some moral absolutes or convictions must be at the foundation of any system of law. This does not mean that all laws are so based. Many laws and administrative actions are simply a matter of wisdom or expediency. But many laws and administrative actions are based upon the moral standards of our society. If most of us believe that it is wrong to kill or steal or lie, our laws will include punishment for those acts. If most of us believe that it is right to care for the poor and needy, our laws will accomplish or facilitate those activities. Society continually legislates morality. The only question is whose morality and what legislation. In the United States, the moral absolutes are the ones derived from what we refer to as the Judeo-Christian tradition, as set forth in the Bible—Old Testament and New Testament...To avoid any suggestion of adopting or contradicting any particular religious absolute, some secularists argue that our laws must be entirely neutral, with no discernable relation to any particular religious tradition. Such proposed neutrality is unrealistic, unless we are willing to cut away the entire idea that there are moral absolutes."

I'll add here some words of Barack Obama that I think are relevant on the subject that Edward left out:

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles. (emphasis added)

Click here to read more of Edward Lalone's Post.
Click here to read Barack Obama's Speech on Religion.

-Bob

Mitt-Flop purchasing PACs, White House

Since he is limited as to how much of his own money he can spend on his own campaign to purchase the White House, Mitt Romney is using that money to buy PACs that will support him.

Sunday's New York Times:

Last December, a foundation controlled by Mr. Romney made contributions of $10,000 to $15,000 to each of three Massachusetts organizations associated with major national conservative groups: the antiabortion Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Massachusetts Citizens for Limited Taxation and the Christian conservative Massachusetts Family Institute.

Mr. Romney and a group of his supporters also contributed a total of about $10,000 to a nonprofit group affiliated with National Review. Over the past two years, he contributed $35,000 to the Federalist Society, an influential network of conservative lawyers. And in December 2005, he contributed $25,000 to the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative research organization.

All of the groups told the Times that Romney had not contributed before.

Sure, you could possibly attribute this to him donating to causes that he believes in, or at least has believed in for a few years.

However, this is the man who bought himself the Governorship of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Nearly 2/3 of his most expesive campaign in state history came from his own pocket.

Hat Tip: Part of the Plan

-Bob

Mitt-Flop Turns on France, MA, UT. Is DC Next?

Mormons Against Romney:

Is there another candidate as familiar with France out there as Romney should be? Romney was a Mormon missionary in France, lived among French people daily, spoke French. France is generous enough to let young LDS men and women into the country to talk about religion. Romney deciding that he should exploit anti-France sentiment for his own political gain is simply shameless. (The fact that he is also going to be campaigning against MA is equally despicable.) When a community opens its doors to you and lets you in when it doesn’t have to, a measure of appreciation towards that community is appropriate. Romney does not need to go around drinking wine and driving a Citroen, or even that he has to agree with any particular political position popular in France. He does, however, have a responsibility to treat France with respect, since he was allowed into their country. Since he has so much experience with France he knows that they aren't a true threat to the United States, a fact that seems to be tacitly acknowledged in the use of the term "bogeyman".

He's selling out the country he lived in for 2 years as a missionary, Refuses to mention the state he lived in the international spotlight in (except for when he's taking money from that state's residents), and made fun of the state he ran for four years.

I hate to see what he will do if he makes the District of Columbia his new home.

-Bob

!984 or 2008? Vote Different

One of my favorite books is 1984. It is so mind blowing, and at the same time scary because of how many parallels we see in today's world. (FOXNews' "1/2 Hour News Hour of Hate" is one example.)

In the real 1984, Apple Computers launched a television advertisement during the Super Bowl. It is credited with starting the trend of "Super Bowl Ads." It was a teaser for the launch of the Macintosh entitled "Think Different."

Someone has taken that ad and turned it into an ad for Barack Obama entitled "Vote Different."



-Bob

ExpertVoter.org

Years ago I wanted to start a website that compiled a list of local candidate's views on various topics. Like an in-depth voters guide.

Over the years, several have developed for Presidential condenders, but not like the one I saw today.

ExpertVoter.org posts video for different issues that each candidate has addressed. Want to hear, in his own words, what Republican John McCain said about Global Warming? There's a video there. How about Democratic Candidate Dennis Kucinich on Social Security? Or Libertarian George Phillies on Iraq? Or Independant Ruth Bryant White on Immigration? It's all there.

Some of the videos are the official videos from the candidates, but most of them are from interviews or rallys that someone has recorded and posted on YouTube.

-Bob

(Thanks to the person who Commented on an earlier post with the suggestion.)